It takes a quarter of a second to delete an email.
You idiots think people should go to jail or pay gigantic fees when the remedy to their actions at the VERY MOST takes a couple
seconds a day.
It's easy to ignore these trolls that always get posted when there is a spam thread, but we should analyze this a bit and see what the real costs are.
It may take a quarter of a second to delete an e-mail, but consider the total time of loading the subject lines, reading them and then deleting. It's hard to measure, but I'd estimate at least 2 seconds of my time before the message is gone. A few are not obvious spam and take much longer to download and read enough of to decide to delete.
The average goes way above 2 seconds each.
The typical billing rate for a Senior Software Engineer would be about US$0.025 per second. Thus, the minimum cost to delete an e-mail is US$0.05 and may average a couple of times that.
Just to see what the total effects of this spam are, let's take some order of magnitude estimates and do some multiplying:
200 business days/year
5 spams/day
1.0E+7 employees getting spam (probably more)
Total cost of spam per year: US$500,000,000.
Holy cow! I did that computation while writing this and didn't expect it to be that big.
spam is not only an annoyance, it's expensive!
(To everyone but the spammer).
Retirement age should be at the point where the individual is incompitent/unable to perform their duties.
I disagree. "Retirement" should occur when the individual decides that s/he has sufficient financial resources (e.g., 401k) to not have to work and that s/he would rather be retired than working. Becoming unable to perform ones duties is more a disability issue, but some people may decide to retire if they think that it has become too difficult to perform their duties.
Among my acquaintences I can think of one who has adequate funds, recently retired at age 55 and says he is enjoying it. Another has the money, is working when he can find the work, and recently passed age 80.
I think that's a bit niave. Yes, I definately agree it should be brought up when the industries say they need more foriegners brought in,
shouldn't dump older folks because of their salary, etc. However, the science and engineering fields are expanding and do need more
students, and if your trying to say we're all working for nothing and the industry really isn't expanding past killing off old people..
I am not in to foreigner bashing. I don't believe a person's opportunities should be limited by who they chose for parents.
Let me make the point in a different way. There may be a need for more students. But many companies (I'd say most from what I see) waste or underutilize the engineering talent that is available to them. There are mandatory retirement ages, poor working conditions (e.g., cubicles), overspecified job requirements, etc., etc.
This may not be surprising. Companys should try to minimize costs. Unfortunately, they sometimes do this by displacing costs. For example, hiring recent graduates that someone else paid to get trained.
It doesn't make much sense to have a mandatory retirement age, though. They have higher salaries, but the point of raising their salaries was to keep them from going to another employer because they had valuable skills.
In general though, should companies be allowed to tell their employees that their service is no longer appreciated for the sole fact that
their age has progressed to a certain number?
Allowed to? Yes, they should be allowed to. You shouldn't outlaw every dumb thing someone might want to do. But why would they want to?
This and any other example of age discrimination should be recorded in a file and brought up any time someone says there is a shortage of technical workers.
Also, this sort of thing should be brought up anytime someone says we need to increase the number of students enrolled in engineering or science. It would be dumb to start a career in a field where you could get kicked out just for reaching a particular age.
What do you mean "smack of". It is rather
blatant age discrimination. One more reason
not to go to work for Intel. That and cubicles
and maybe other things.
Age discrimination is evidence that there is no shortage of technical workers.
IMHO, offices with 2 or 3 closely matched people work best. The productivity also depends on the type of person you are (I
personally like most to work alone in my office). I worked before in a war-room like setting, with 3 other people in the same
room, and music/phones/talk was a great nuisance.
This does not compute! You think offices with 2-3 people are best, but you most like to work alone.
If you like to work best alone, why do you think
offices with 2-3 people are best? Being alone
in an office with 2-3 other people sounds like a
bit of a contradiction. What did you really mean?
Fun, Fun, Fun. We were the most psyched team in the company - people used to come in just to feel the vibe (I am not a new
ager at all). We decorated the room madly - cant post a picture of the door, but it looks like a totem pole. We had a TV - and
watched every play-off game that was on... We drank every night, and ate at a local sports bar...
Does this imply that a war room will only
work if people's private lives and personal
preferences are closely
matched? I am not a sports fan, don't drink
everynight and avoid sports bars. I'd avoid
the group on off hours if I were placed in
such a group. Would too much "diversity"
ruin the dynamics?
The IBM Santa Teresa report 25 years ago showed
the right way to build offices for software
developers: private offices with a door and
window. They need to be near common areas for
meetings. This was later supported by Peopleware.
The big problem with the Santa Teresa design
is that it is an optimal solution. Since no brain
power goes into finding better solutions, it all
goes into finding excuses for not implementing it.
These war rooms were only compared to
"traditional offices", ie those dreaded cubicles.
This article also used an oxymoron: "private
cubicle".
So I guess I ask my original question again: Why does everyone get so damn pissed off at spam?
Am I an Internet old timer already? There was
a time before spam. I used my work address in
USENET postings. It got into the first spammer
lists and will be there forever. It is too
late to use a hotmail account to avoid spam.
But it only takes a few seconds to delete,
right? Yes, that's true. Now, let's see...
My rate (what my employer charges customers)
is about US$0.025 per second. So if it takes
3 seconds to check and delete a spam that's
3 * $0.025 = $0.075. Not much? Probably lots
more than it cost the spammer to send it.
This is interesting. Suppose there are a million individuals getting 10 spams a day at
work. That comes out to US$750000 per day
or about $187 million wasted per year.
Thanks for posting that, it'll be useful.
Anybody know what happened to spambait.com?
It used to point to 127.0.0.1. Now somebody
seems to be trying to use it for regular IP node.
In a nutshell: The evil M has a 75% market share, next is Ericsson with less the 10 percent.
Essentially, when you're dealing with a (virtually) monopoly you do not have any choice.
That 75% market share leaves 25% of a fairly
large market for other companies. You do have
a choice. Ones that come to mind:
Ericsson (GE)
E. F. Johnson
Vertex (Yaesu)
Icom
The real question is why do people choose the
big M. Quality? Price? Or just because they're
big?
To make matters worse, there are people in the office that use EXTREME quantities of cheap
cologne and perfume. This LITERALLY forces me to stay a minimum of 20 feet away to avoid
getting a headache.
Kids today just know how good they've got it.:-)
It wasn't too many years ago that peope
actually smoked tobacco in the office.
One manager at a place I worked liked a
particularly revolting brand of pipe tobacco.
He would occasionally go into his office and
close the door so his smoking wouldn't bother
anyone else. After about half an hour enough
had seeped under the door into the terminal
area outside his office that the terminals
were abandoned.
I've worked in an environment where music is situated throughout the whole office and blasted out
loud all day long. You could hear the speakers over your headphones.
My workarea on a contract a couple of years
ago had speakers throughout the area piping in
a local radio station. It was one I often
listen to at home, but I didn't want to hear it
at the office. Fortunately, the PA speakers were
not too high and they had on/off switches on them.
Many years ago I fixed another problem by
just bringing in a wire cutter late at night.
A quick snip fixed the problem.
What I want:
- A private office. One that I have room for a white board on one wall (or a window that I can write
on with dry erase markers!), a window, and room for posters and paintings to make the place feel
like home, and desk and bookshelves like I have now plus a side table and a guest chair.
I have that: Private office, door, white board,
windows, desk, bookshelf, file cabinet, separate
computer table for the PC monitor and keyboard
so I can use the desk for paper, posters on
the walls, extra table for stuff, even
a guest chair. And I'm just an average C++
developer.
You can have it. The reason so many employers
have such bad work environments is that they
can get away with it.
Did you ask your current
employer what kind of work space they had? The
next time you go for a job interview ask about
the work environment. Ask to actually see it.
25 years ago IBM had some architects design the
Santa Teresa labs based on user input. They got
it right then and only a few employers have
figured out the right way to do it:
Individual offices. They need about 100 sq ft
of space minimum.
"Outside awareness". i.e., windows
Adequate meeting areas.
DeMarco and Lister have a bunch of good ideas, too. Like getting rid of paging.
My current employer has an excellent evironment:
private offices for everyone (some shared now due to rapid growth). Each office has a door and
a window. Some people have incandescent lights,
but during the day most lighting is sunlight.
After the last move they got rid of the paging.
My previous employer had one thing better: windows that open.
The one thing IBM didn't know about in
1976 is telecommuting. Some people do it a lot.
For many projects it's hard to not meet with
other team members on a regular basis.
Slashdot Mirror
It's easy to ignore these trolls that always get posted when there is a spam thread, but we should analyze this a bit and see what the real costs are.
It may take a quarter of a second to delete an e-mail, but consider the total time of loading the subject lines, reading them and then deleting. It's hard to measure, but I'd estimate at least 2 seconds of my time before the message is gone. A few are not obvious spam and take much longer to download and read enough of to decide to delete. The average goes way above 2 seconds each.
The typical billing rate for a Senior Software Engineer would be about US$0.025 per second. Thus, the minimum cost to delete an e-mail is US$0.05 and may average a couple of times that.
Just to see what the total effects of this spam are, let's take some order of magnitude estimates and do some multiplying:
Total cost of spam per year: US$500,000,000.
Holy cow! I did that computation while writing this and didn't expect it to be that big.
spam is not only an annoyance, it's expensive! (To everyone but the spammer).
I disagree. "Retirement" should occur when the individual decides that s/he has sufficient financial resources (e.g., 401k) to not have to work and that s/he would rather be retired than working. Becoming unable to perform ones duties is more a disability issue, but some people may decide to retire if they think that it has become too difficult to perform their duties.
Among my acquaintences I can think of one who has adequate funds, recently retired at age 55 and says he is enjoying it. Another has the money, is working when he can find the work, and recently passed age 80.
I am not in to foreigner bashing. I don't believe a person's opportunities should be limited by who they chose for parents.
Let me make the point in a different way. There may be a need for more students. But many companies (I'd say most from what I see) waste or underutilize the engineering talent that is available to them. There are mandatory retirement ages, poor working conditions (e.g., cubicles), overspecified job requirements, etc., etc.
This may not be surprising. Companys should try to minimize costs. Unfortunately, they sometimes do this by displacing costs. For example, hiring recent graduates that someone else paid to get trained.
It doesn't make much sense to have a mandatory retirement age, though. They have higher salaries, but the point of raising their salaries was to keep them from going to another employer because they had valuable skills.
This and any other example of age discrimination should be recorded in a file and brought up any time someone says there is a shortage of technical workers.
Also, this sort of thing should be brought up anytime someone says we need to increase the number of students enrolled in engineering or science. It would be dumb to start a career in a field where you could get kicked out just for reaching a particular age.
What do you mean "smack of". It is rather blatant age discrimination. One more reason not to go to work for Intel. That and cubicles and maybe other things.
Age discrimination is evidence that there is no shortage of technical workers.
Illegal? IANAL.
Does this imply that a war room will only work if people's private lives and personal preferences are closely matched? I am not a sports fan, don't drink everynight and avoid sports bars. I'd avoid the group on off hours if I were placed in such a group. Would too much "diversity" ruin the dynamics?
The IBM Santa Teresa report 25 years ago showed the right way to build offices for software developers: private offices with a door and window. They need to be near common areas for meetings. This was later supported by Peopleware.
The big problem with the Santa Teresa design is that it is an optimal solution. Since no brain power goes into finding better solutions, it all goes into finding excuses for not implementing it.
These war rooms were only compared to "traditional offices", ie those dreaded cubicles.
This article also used an oxymoron: "private cubicle".
Am I an Internet old timer already? There was a time before spam. I used my work address in USENET postings. It got into the first spammer lists and will be there forever. It is too late to use a hotmail account to avoid spam.
But it only takes a few seconds to delete, right? Yes, that's true. Now, let's see... My rate (what my employer charges customers) is about US$0.025 per second. So if it takes 3 seconds to check and delete a spam that's 3 * $0.025 = $0.075. Not much? Probably lots more than it cost the spammer to send it.
This is interesting. Suppose there are a million individuals getting 10 spams a day at work. That comes out to US$750000 per day or about $187 million wasted per year.
Thanks for posting that, it'll be useful. Anybody know what happened to spambait.com? It used to point to 127.0.0.1. Now somebody seems to be trying to use it for regular IP node.
That 75% market share leaves 25% of a fairly large market for other companies. You do have a choice. Ones that come to mind:
The real question is why do people choose the big M. Quality? Price? Or just because they're big?
Kids today just know how good they've got it. :-)
It wasn't too many years ago that peope actually smoked tobacco in the office.
One manager at a place I worked liked a particularly revolting brand of pipe tobacco. He would occasionally go into his office and close the door so his smoking wouldn't bother anyone else. After about half an hour enough had seeped under the door into the terminal area outside his office that the terminals were abandoned.
My workarea on a contract a couple of years ago had speakers throughout the area piping in a local radio station. It was one I often listen to at home, but I didn't want to hear it at the office. Fortunately, the PA speakers were not too high and they had on/off switches on them.
Many years ago I fixed another problem by just bringing in a wire cutter late at night. A quick snip fixed the problem.
I have that: Private office, door, white board, windows, desk, bookshelf, file cabinet, separate computer table for the PC monitor and keyboard so I can use the desk for paper, posters on the walls, extra table for stuff, even a guest chair. And I'm just an average C++ developer.
You can have it. The reason so many employers have such bad work environments is that they can get away with it. Did you ask your current employer what kind of work space they had? The next time you go for a job interview ask about the work environment. Ask to actually see it.
25 years ago IBM had some architects design the Santa Teresa labs based on user input. They got it right then and only a few employers have figured out the right way to do it:
DeMarco and Lister have a bunch of good ideas, too. Like getting rid of paging.
My current employer has an excellent evironment: private offices for everyone (some shared now due to rapid growth). Each office has a door and a window. Some people have incandescent lights, but during the day most lighting is sunlight. After the last move they got rid of the paging.
My previous employer had one thing better: windows that open.
The one thing IBM didn't know about in 1976 is telecommuting. Some people do it a lot. For many projects it's hard to not meet with other team members on a regular basis.