Giving notice is a courtesy to the company and it must be earned.
>>If you're leaving these days it's not uncommon to get escorted to the door...
Then, if this is standard practice at your company, do not provide notice. Just quit, walk out, and never look back. Clean out your office over the preceeding week, then simply say to your manager on the last hour of your last day "I quit, effective immediately. I'm not coming back tomorrow, and I did not give notice because of the poor way this company responds to those who resign (e.g. "perp walk"). Goodbye and good luck." Or just send them an email over the weekend. It might sound harsh but if they truly respond this poorly to resignations, you have nothing to lose anyway.
The funny part is, I'll bet the clueless executives have had at least one profanely expensive "retreat" this year where they listened to expensive consultants's opinions on boosting employee morale and/or commitment.
You wouldn't have the bits shipped back to you -- you simply leave the wing set there at the airport and drive off on your way. You rent a different set of wings when you get to the other airport.
>>Every time you call an IVR or reach an automated speech system, someone's worked at it to make it not just functional, but also usable and friendly.
Well, except for the system used by the Cable TV, credit card, bank, telco, computer tech support, university admissions, etc. company. 'Cause those systems seem like they're designed with the sole purpose of making it as difficult as possible to actually speak to a human being. The end result is I'm typically about as happy as Alanis Morissette on a blind date by the time I get to speak to someone with a funny accent who knows even less than I do about the subject matter.
>>Man those folded up wings make for some gigantic blind spots when you're driving on the road. True, but that's not such a big deal -- you don't have to look out for anyone else if you're sure they're looking at you.
But considering this a bit further, why drive around town with wings and a tail assembly? It would be more useful if you could leave all that at the airport. Think of the way you rent a moving van, either round-trip (cheaper) or one-way, I imagine the same model could work here. Just rent the wings when you need them.
Drive in, pay your deposit, attach wings and tail structure -> fly to destination -> detach assembly (store it in a locker? drop it off permanently?) Anyway, when you're ready to go home, just drive back to the airport, pick up your pieces, reassemble and fly.
Good post, but hardware firewalls are not infallible as they are also affected by Lesson #2 (made by humans who make mistakes) and can be hacked, as per Lesson #1.
So, rather than have an either/or solution, why not apply all the tools at our disposal? * If you have a hardware firewall, use it. * If you have a software firewall, use that, too.
And regardless, run a service such as "Little Snitch" which requires each application explicitly ask permission before communicating with external resources (e.g. "phoning home").
>>It would be slightly unfair to make the game 45 US dollars everywhere, because in some countries people don't make that much money in a week
So how are they affording a DX8 video card (or better) and a PC with enough RAM and a CPU powerful enough to run this game? That argument doesn't add up.
Just curious. Are you also against reimportation of 'cheap' medicines from foreign markets back to the US?
You have said that Americans should pay more because they can. What about wealthy foreigners in otherwise poor countries. Are they taking advantage of the local market forces? Should poor Americans get a price break because they are penalized by being in an expensive market?
Now (and here's where it gets interesting...) what if the product isn't software? Pharmaceutical companies make most their profits in the US, to subsidize the socialized ("free") medicine in the rest of the world. But notice they get mighty pissed off if someone reimports their medicines from somewhere "cheap" back to the States. You see, they're still getting paid, but not as much as they want and the business plan depends on these artificial boundaries, even though the world is becoming less divided and more accessable thanks to technology. IOW, their business model is becoming antiquated. So they must either fight for more artificial boundary enforcement, or raise the prices elsewhere+lower them in USA.
Then again, I could imagine it would be a reasonable compromise for Valve to check you actually played the game for an extended period of time in Russia...
Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I imagine it's reasonable for Valve to quick fucking with products people paid good money for and breaking things via remote control just because they're greedy. So a product moved across a national border or an ocean or whatever -- big deal. Happens all the time and that's the nature of the modern world. The copy from India or Taiwan or whatever was legal and I'm sure Valve would prefer that it stay far, far away from the more profitable countries (so as to not illustrate the price disparity) but that's not reality.
Put simply: The customer bought something from an authorized vendor; there was an exchange of good for payment. Give them their game, Valve, or return them their money. Anything less makes you a common thief. End of story.
If Congress really wanted to assure affordable internet access, they'd set about removing the "Universal Access Fee" (a/k/a "e-Rate" or the "Gore Tax") which has long since fulfilled it's stated purpose of subsidizing internet access to rural schools. (According to the FCC, 99% of public schools are connected to the Internet). And while they're at it, they can shut down the Universal Service Administrative Company, which is a bureaucracy set up to administer these funds. It should be easy, right? A school asks for funds to help establish internet access, an application is reviewed and funds transferred... well, here's a little link to a flowchart showing how out-of-control a government agency can become in only a few years: http://www.usac.org/_res/documents/sl/pdf/application-process-flow-chart.pdf
>>Apple's market share is over 8% now. Those customers are coming from somewhere.
Exactly! But there's more to the number than the statistics would indicate.
In the past three years most of my family switched to a Mac. I switched (desktop and laptop), my college-aged daughter bought a mac, I switched my parents and inlaws, and two of my colleagues switched off their PCs and are now using Macs for everyday work. So that's seven Macs in my immediate circle of family and friends. But only two of them were new machines, the rest were used G4s. The statistics in this review are only counting sales of new computers, so these switchers are "invisible."
However, that brings up a question I've had for some time. It's quite common to hear about people switching from PCs to Macs. What about the other direction?What percentage of people switch from Macs to PCs. I would wager that figure is extremely low.
Agreed, it may be a money-maker, but it's not good for those who love great games and look forward to more being created in the future. Can anyone here name just one company that got better in terms of product quality and service AFTER a merger? I certainly cannot, and am not aware of any.
So, to summarize this business deal: EA= Big Daddies, Bioware = Little Sisters, and if history is any guide to how EA treats their people, bioware's programmers/artists = corpses being robbed of their mana. And where do the customers factor in? We're the fellow passengers on the airplane that crashed during the Bioshock opening scene -- literary filler which exists only because it can't be logically avoided.
Thank you for speaking the truth about this evil cult!
Predictable teary-eyed response from leftwing apologists/Islamic Seething/fatwa/hilarity shall ensure in 3... 2...
(turning now to the greater Slashdot community) And you libs who are now lining up to mod me down... think about this: Why is it you excuse barbaric behaviour from Muslims but hold others to higher standards? Could it be your own "soft" racism of low expectations? Instead of modding me, would you care to refute any of the points of the parent post? Nah, 'cause you know you cant.
And yeah, I'm using my Karma bonus for this post... Just cause I can. Suck it, apologists.
No, the newton was a mobile computer with a gesture-driven interface designed for a stylus, built on the concept of documents. The iPhone is a voice communications device that plays music. I believe Newton ][ could benefit greatly from the gestures (pinching to zoom, etc.) present in the iPhone but the two products have different fundamental purposes.
Having said that, I REALLY want a new Newton. The MessagePad 2100 was a brilliant computer, IMO as important and groundbreaking as the Apple Lisa. But, like Lisa, it was too soon -- the market was not ready. Hopefully, like the Lisa with it's little brother Macintosh, v2 will come to the rescue?
I hate to write a "yeah, what he said!" post but I do agree entirely with everything you've said! This game, for me, is THE high-water mark. It was a "novel set in motion" with a fantastic story of human redemption. It presented a believable world populated with remarkable characters I still think about from time to time.
IMO, PS:T is the hands-down best game I've ever played.
I finally made it to High School and then I decided this time, it wasn't going to happen again. Some kid tried it on and I opted to belt him one in the nose. His nose was thoroughly broken and he was out of school for a week.
Yeah! Now THAT'S what I call a "Youtube moment!" Post the torrent when you get a chance...
Woz designed the Apple ][ from scratch, invented the A][ hard drive controller, wrote the system monitor in machine code (without the aid of an assember, mind you!) as well as the Integer Basic interpreter and did this at least twice (he lost the source code) and it was several bytes smaller the second time, etc. etc. etc.
Gates, Davidoff and Allen as a team gave us a hacked version of someone else's basic interpreter. Gates gave us donkey.bas
>>The fact that they give people time off to work on their own ideas is exactly matches some of the things that made Apple great.
Wait one second here! Are we talking about the same Apple Computer company because the one I know about routinely worked its engineering teams (all the way from the Apple ][gs, Lisa, Macintosh up through Newton) to the point of complete exhaustion and then at various times, during the "Black Friday" purges, suddenly ended people's careers. Frantic system development and high stress was the norm. To attempt to cast it as anything else is pure spin.
Maybe Jobs' Reality Distortion Field is finally affecting The Woz. Or maybe this mythical "time off" applies only to Apple Fellows and the most senior employees.
>>Kerry was actually asking the cops to leave the kid alone. Technically, yes, but with all the enthusiasm of Willy Wonka... "No, stop, don't go in there."
I'm thinking that, for £190 one could buy many hundred liters of bottled water. Considering a person requires about 2 liters daily for drinking, cooking, and toilet use this is about a month's worth for a family.
Besides, if you're without clean water for longer than a month, it might be a clue that it's time to take your family and leave.
>>If only they could find a bullshit-absorbing mineral.
Slashdotium 404. A rare, low-energy isotope of unobtanium. A naturally occurring byproduct of cheetos, Jolt and bad upbringing, frequently found in mother's basements and video arcades it is of no known use.
So, for the densest concentration of Swedish students in the country, their perception of Vista is "broken/doesn't work/incompatible." That's a serious problem! There's no telling how many future sales this will prevent both among current consumers and future sales, when these students will be out of university and in corporations where they'll influence (and eventually become) decisionmakers. Besides, how much time/money was (and is being) spent to deal with this bug?
Slashdot Mirror
Giving notice is a courtesy to the company and it must be earned.
>>If you're leaving these days it's not uncommon to get escorted to the door...
Then, if this is standard practice at your company, do not provide notice. Just quit, walk out, and never look back.
Clean out your office over the preceeding week, then simply say to your manager on the last hour of your last day "I quit, effective immediately. I'm not coming back tomorrow, and I did not give notice because of the poor way this company responds to those who resign (e.g. "perp walk"). Goodbye and good luck." Or just send them an email over the weekend. It might sound harsh but if they truly respond this poorly to resignations, you have nothing to lose anyway.
The funny part is, I'll bet the clueless executives have had at least one profanely expensive "retreat" this year where they listened to expensive consultants's opinions on boosting employee morale and/or commitment.
Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear.
You wouldn't have the bits shipped back to you -- you simply leave the wing set there at the airport and drive off on your way. You rent a different set of wings when you get to the other airport.
>>Every time you call an IVR or reach an automated speech system, someone's worked at it to make it not just functional, but also usable and friendly.
Well, except for the system used by the Cable TV, credit card, bank, telco, computer tech support, university admissions, etc. company. 'Cause those systems seem like they're designed with the sole purpose of making it as difficult as possible to actually speak to a human being. The end result is I'm typically about as happy as Alanis Morissette on a blind date by the time I get to speak to someone with a funny accent who knows even less than I do about the subject matter.
>>Man those folded up wings make for some gigantic blind spots when you're driving on the road.
True, but that's not such a big deal -- you don't have to look out for anyone else if you're sure they're looking at you.
But considering this a bit further, why drive around town with wings and a tail assembly? It would be more useful if you could leave all that at the airport. Think of the way you rent a moving van, either round-trip (cheaper) or one-way, I imagine the same model could work here. Just rent the wings when you need them.
Drive in, pay your deposit, attach wings and tail structure -> fly to destination -> detach assembly (store it in a locker? drop it off permanently?)
Anyway, when you're ready to go home, just drive back to the airport, pick up your pieces, reassemble and fly.
jellomizer,
Good post, but hardware firewalls are not infallible as they are also affected by Lesson #2 (made by humans who make mistakes) and can be hacked, as per Lesson #1.
So, rather than have an either/or solution, why not apply all the tools at our disposal?
* If you have a hardware firewall, use it.
* If you have a software firewall, use that, too.
And regardless, run a service such as "Little Snitch" which requires each application explicitly ask permission before communicating with external resources (e.g. "phoning home").
>>It would be slightly unfair to make the game 45 US dollars everywhere, because in some countries people don't make that much money in a week
So how are they affording a DX8 video card (or better) and a PC with enough RAM and a CPU powerful enough to run this game? That argument doesn't add up.
Just curious. Are you also against reimportation of 'cheap' medicines from foreign markets back to the US?
You have said that Americans should pay more because they can. What about wealthy foreigners in otherwise poor countries. Are they taking advantage of the local market forces? Should poor Americans get a price break because they are penalized by being in an expensive market?
Now (and here's where it gets interesting...) what if the product isn't software? Pharmaceutical companies make most their profits in the US, to subsidize the socialized ("free") medicine in the rest of the world. But notice they get mighty pissed off if someone reimports their medicines from somewhere "cheap" back to the States. You see, they're still getting paid, but not as much as they want and the business plan depends on these artificial boundaries, even though the world is becoming less divided and more accessable thanks to technology. IOW, their business model is becoming antiquated. So they must either fight for more artificial boundary enforcement, or raise the prices elsewhere+lower them in USA.
Your thoughts?
Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I imagine it's reasonable for Valve to quick fucking with products people paid good money for and breaking things via remote control just because they're greedy. So a product moved across a national border or an ocean or whatever -- big deal. Happens all the time and that's the nature of the modern world. The copy from India or Taiwan or whatever was legal and I'm sure Valve would prefer that it stay far, far away from the more profitable countries (so as to not illustrate the price disparity) but that's not reality.
Put simply: The customer bought something from an authorized vendor; there was an exchange of good for payment. Give them their game, Valve, or return them their money. Anything less makes you a common thief. End of story.
If Congress really wanted to assure affordable internet access, they'd set about removing the "Universal Access Fee" (a/k/a "e-Rate" or the "Gore Tax") which has long since fulfilled it's stated purpose of subsidizing internet access to rural schools. (According to the FCC, 99% of public schools are connected to the Internet). And while they're at it, they can shut down the Universal Service Administrative Company, which is a bureaucracy set up to administer these funds.
It should be easy, right? A school asks for funds to help establish internet access, an application is reviewed and funds transferred... well, here's a little link to a flowchart showing how out-of-control a government agency can become in only a few years:
http://www.usac.org/_res/documents/sl/pdf/application-process-flow-chart.pdf
>>I ended up picking up a macbook and its been great so far! ... ... will never be one of the idiots who rant about how great they are
>>
>>I
[sound of phonograph needle dragged across record]
Um, I hate to break the bad news to you...
>>Apple's market share is over 8% now. Those customers are coming from somewhere.
Exactly! But there's more to the number than the statistics would indicate.
In the past three years most of my family switched to a Mac. I switched (desktop and laptop), my college-aged daughter bought a mac, I switched my parents and inlaws, and two of my colleagues switched off their PCs and are now using Macs for everyday work. So that's seven Macs in my immediate circle of family and friends. But only two of them were new machines, the rest were used G4s. The statistics in this review are only counting sales of new computers, so these switchers are "invisible."
However, that brings up a question I've had for some time. It's quite common to hear about people switching from PCs to Macs. What about the other direction?What percentage of people switch from Macs to PCs. I would wager that figure is extremely low.
(And yes, Parallels desktop is awesome!)
Agreed, it may be a money-maker, but it's not good for those who love great games and look forward to more being created in the future. Can anyone here name just one company that got better in terms of product quality and service AFTER a merger? I certainly cannot, and am not aware of any.
So, to summarize this business deal: EA= Big Daddies, Bioware = Little Sisters, and if history is any guide to how EA treats their people, bioware's programmers/artists = corpses being robbed of their mana. And where do the customers factor in? We're the fellow passengers on the airplane that crashed during the Bioshock opening scene -- literary filler which exists only because it can't be logically avoided.
Thank you for speaking the truth about this evil cult!
Predictable teary-eyed response from leftwing apologists/Islamic Seething/fatwa/hilarity shall ensure in 3... 2...
(turning now to the greater Slashdot community)
And you libs who are now lining up to mod me down... think about this: Why is it you excuse barbaric behaviour from Muslims but hold others to higher standards? Could it be your own "soft" racism of low expectations? Instead of modding me, would you care to refute any of the points of the parent post? Nah, 'cause you know you cant.
And yeah, I'm using my Karma bonus for this post... Just cause I can. Suck it, apologists.
God sneezed.
No, the newton was a mobile computer with a gesture-driven interface designed for a stylus, built on the concept of documents. The iPhone is a voice communications device that plays music. I believe Newton ][ could benefit greatly from the gestures (pinching to zoom, etc.) present in the iPhone but the two products have different fundamental purposes.
Having said that, I REALLY want a new Newton. The MessagePad 2100 was a brilliant computer, IMO as important and groundbreaking as the Apple Lisa. But, like Lisa, it was too soon -- the market was not ready. Hopefully, like the Lisa with it's little brother Macintosh, v2 will come to the rescue?
I hate to write a "yeah, what he said!" post but I do agree entirely with everything you've said! This game, for me, is THE high-water mark. It was a "novel set in motion" with a fantastic story of human redemption. It presented a believable world populated with remarkable characters I still think about from time to time.
IMO, PS:T is the hands-down best game I've ever played.
Yeah! Now THAT'S what I call a "Youtube moment!" Post the torrent when you get a chance...
(yes, I'm kidding.)
Let me put this into perspective:
Woz designed the Apple ][ from scratch, invented the A][ hard drive controller, wrote the system monitor in machine code (without the aid of an assember, mind you!) as well as the Integer Basic interpreter and did this at least twice (he lost the source code) and it was several bytes smaller the second time, etc. etc. etc.
Gates, Davidoff and Allen as a team gave us a hacked version of someone else's basic interpreter. Gates gave us donkey.bas
I rest my case.
>>The fact that they give people time off to work on their own ideas is exactly matches some of the things that made Apple great.
Wait one second here! Are we talking about the same Apple Computer company because the one I know about routinely worked its engineering teams (all the way from the Apple ][gs, Lisa, Macintosh up through Newton) to the point of complete exhaustion and then at various times, during the "Black Friday" purges, suddenly ended people's careers. Frantic system development and high stress was the norm. To attempt to cast it as anything else is pure spin.
Maybe Jobs' Reality Distortion Field is finally affecting The Woz. Or maybe this mythical "time off" applies only to Apple Fellows and the most senior employees.
>>Kerry was actually asking the cops to leave the kid alone.
Technically, yes, but with all the enthusiasm of Willy Wonka... "No, stop, don't go in there."
I'm thinking that, for £190 one could buy many hundred liters of bottled water. Considering a person requires about 2 liters daily for drinking, cooking, and toilet use this is about a month's worth for a family.
Besides, if you're without clean water for longer than a month, it might be a clue that it's time to take your family and leave.
>>(Unknown uses are unusable without knowledge - so they are of no use. See?)
Right you are!! I can't mod since I've already posted here, but I'm giving that a +1 Insightful. Well done!
>>If only they could find a bullshit-absorbing mineral.
Slashdotium 404. A rare, low-energy isotope of unobtanium. A naturally occurring byproduct of cheetos, Jolt and bad upbringing, frequently found in mother's basements and video arcades it is of no known use.
>>(I understand the ads for now, due to bandwidth costs).
If that were the issue, a simple bittorrent seed would be a solution.
It's about creating a revenue stream from an otherwise worthless intellectual property.
So, for the densest concentration of Swedish students in the country, their perception of Vista is "broken/doesn't work/incompatible." That's a serious problem! There's no telling how many future sales this will prevent both among current consumers and future sales, when these students will be out of university and in corporations where they'll influence (and eventually become) decisionmakers. Besides, how much time/money was (and is being) spent to deal with this bug?
Hey MSFT, what's the Total Cost of Ownership now?