You'll be kicking yourself for losing those job offers whent the comany does fold.
I've dealt with HR, mostly on the basis of interviewing potentials, and one fairly important point revolves around "Where do you work now?"" and, to a lesser extent, "Why do you want to switch jobs."
I've had the unfortunate experience of being 'downsized', and the even more ridiculous experience of being on the losing side of an internal political war (of which I had no part, and joined 1/2 way through). In the first case, I was surprised, and had a heck of a time getting a new job - the HR belief is that if you were laid off, _obviously_ you weren't good. There is some recognition that this isn't always the case, but most HR types aren't the brightest candles in the marquee. The second time, I already had a job lined up, left on a Friday, started up elsewhere on the Monday. The new job was not necessarily ideal, but it seriously helped with both the cash flow, and with getting the next job ("I currently work at xxx." and "I'm looking for something more challenging than web design.").
No trite answer will help you resolve your problem, but company loyalty is a rather mythical item in this day and age. Your primary responsibility is to yourself (and any family). Loyalty is a desirable trait, but blind loyalty can get you into trouble.
I left one company for a bunch of reasons - one of which was I picked up more and more responsibilities, ended up the sole person capable of supporting several systems, and still being treated as dirt. Yes, they were royally screwed by my leaving, despite my best efforts at a painless transition. Part of the 'loyalty' thing is that it works two ways. If they show zero reason for you to be loyal, then don't. It's that simple. Incompetent management is one of the best indicators that they're not worth your time.
Non-competes are a strange beast, legally. For many businesses, the n-c has to be restricted to the local area. However, there have been a few cases where a person has moved very far away, but the product of the second company was sold in the same market as the first, and the n-c came up in court. It used to be that if the courts found even one term in an n-c contract invalid, the whole thing was declared void. If, for example, it could be interpreted as denying you the right to earn a living anywhere while working in your field. Or the area was considered too large (yep, 15 miles is a reasonable for a beautician n-c, 16 is not!;) (Spas, BTW, are becoming infested with n-c's, too).
I worked for a company that hit me with an n-c a few months after I started. (Which, btw, violated the terms of my contract, but anyway). The sad thing was it had like 27 different points on it, of which 3 were totally illegal, and were actually case examples from one of my first year law courses. Let's just say head office was still living in the sixties.
The main point of n-c's these days is the threat factor. It may be illegal... but what individual has the money to fight M$ in court?
A couple of years back, there was a small article regarding telomeres (a little sequence at the ends of DNA strands), and their role in aging. Essentially, as cells replicate, this sequence shrinks, and eventually reaches a threshold level where replication stops (senescence). At this point aging kicks in. What was interesting was that using rat cells in a petri dish, they were able to reverse the process.
Even more interesting was how hard they got jumped on.
Since then, they've replicated the process with human cells (our cells have ~ 75 replications in them: applying the appropriate chemicals (telomerase)) the number has been pushed to 225 with no signs of degradation). And the steps that are involved are being charted backwards, to find out what either a/ triggers aging, or b/ stops the non-aging process. It's actually rather hard to find out much on the issue; many companies are playing it close, in hopes of a huge payout; and seemingly legitimate fears of hordes of pitchfork, torch and injuction waving religious nuts (membership in the Christian Right qualifies) and Luddites.
Theoretically, there may be a simple chemical trigger we could take, like a daily pill, that would reverse/halt the aging process.
I don't see stem cells as the route to immortality (as in, unaging). They are and will continue to be vital in fundamental research, and the treatment of injuries/disease.
And I'd highly recommend an old classic, The Trouble with Lichen, as covering many problems that a greatly extended lifespan will cause society.
Where the f$ck do you live? I've regularly walked down streets, in the middle of 'large' cities (4 million plus), where I'm the only person. Besides which, you're kinda supporting my argument here - I'm saying that it's unrealistic to expect everyone to defend themselves - in whatever arena (mugging/computer/personal data), and your counter requires 3 helpful bystanders.
Yes, but it's a question of balancing risks.
Absolutely correct. The risk is lower if only police are legally allowed to carry guns.
Right now robbing people carries a certain risk level. If those people started carrying guns, the risk
level goes up. Obviously not everyone is going to have a gun, or use it, or be a good shot. But what are you, the mugger, going to do if suddenly there's a fairly good chance that your victim, or a bystander, will have the means and motive to fight back? Eventually you're going to
give up and switch to stealing TVs from warehouses, and everyone will be happier.
Actually, the answer is not that the mugger will give up. The answer comes in two parts. First, muggers in the US use guns. A lot. And a lot more than anywhere else. Why? Because they're easy to obtain, and a lot more effective than a knife. The second result is even more disturbing. In many US cities where the average victim is likely to be carrying a gun, the muggers have adopted a simple philosophy. It's even easier to take a wallet/purse from a dead body, and there are no witnesses left over.
The idea of everyone carrying is absurd, and, reducto ad absurdium, the muggers response to even a moderate percentage of the population carrying is even more absurd. The rest of the world looks with horror on the US, and its criminal statistics. Unfortunately, it's ingrained into the American psyche, and has unfortunate carry-overs into other areas. Like Personal Data - hey, everyone has the right do do whatever the hell they want, until they hurt someone. So there's nothing _really_ there to stop someone from building a nuke in their New York apartment. Hey! He hasn't hurt anyone yet! Of course, prosecuting _after_ the fact is kinda pointless. Just as pointless as prosecuting muggers who've shot and killed their victims, in that the whole damn scenario could have been resolved by applying a little intelligence beforehand, and recognizing what is a realistic 'limitation' on an individuals freedom.
Uh, yeah. Sure. To put it in perspective, Japan executed 6 people last year, the us 98. By the numbers, one would guess the US would be, what, 16 times larger? Funny, but despite the US constitution, that number is slightly closer to 2 and a third times larger. Shows just how effective having a civil populace armed to the teeth is in reducing serious (i.e. requiring the death penalty) crime. Or could it be that having a huge number of individuals wandering around carrying guns leads to more crimes requiring the death penalty ? Nah, that's too simplistic.
Actually, my reference was to the poor Japanese who got blown away, for the doubly heinous crime of seeking directions, and not speaking American. Oh, yeah, and absolutely no criminal charges were lodged. Can't infringe on that constitutional right to bear arms, yep yep yep.
Six. Ninety-Eight. Tell me again how Japan has 'one of the worst human rights records'? How about percentage incarcerated? Nope, the US wins hands down there, again, blowing that 2.3 times figure out of the water. I guess that Constitution is worth the paper it's printed on, and not much more.
It's kinda sad, really. On paper, the US Constitution just isn't too bad. But look at some of the things the UN report on Japan mentions - things like discriminatory laws against women, illegitimate kids - and then compare that to the _actual_ treatment. Florida only put women on the jury rolls by default in 1992. The percentage of blacks in American prisons is greater than their percentage of the population, and greater than their percentage of the poor. Heck, even the Koreans don't get treated that bad in good ol' Nippon.
Typical gullible socialist. I hope you get mugged several times with an illegal handgun. Don't worry, the guy who does it probably votes the same way you do.
Well, I'm happy to see you got modded down, but I thought I'd address the fallacy in your argument anyway.
I'm actually pretty good with a gun. But my 90 yr old grandmother can't even lift one. Your solution - everyone packing a gun - fails to take into account the large number of people who can't use one. Going a step further, let's say I can shoot a mugger first (a big and highly unlikely assumption) 90% of the time. By the seventh mugging, my overall survival rate has dropped to less than 50%. Heck, if you assume the average mugger shoots right at the 50th percentile (which is far too low), that means 50% of the time the victim gets shot while trying to resist
OK, let's flip back to the privacy issue. I run a machine with 3 OS (Win95/Be/Linux), a DSL line, and no, you can't have my IP.;) I don't expect everyone out there to approach the level of security I have. Now, as someone concerned with everyone else's security, is it more effective to try and bring everyone's machine up to my level, or try something at a higher level? The problem with the first solution is that the majority of computer and Mac users are clueless about security.
Now for personal information. I worked for the company that originated the whole credit rating formula thingie. I _know_ just how much info they have on the average individual, and from how many sources they gather that info. I've taken some steps which minimize the problem. Can't remember when I received my last piece of spam, but it has to be over four years back . Similar to the gun/mugging and computer/security issue, do you realistically expect the average individual to understand and implement the techniques required to protect themselves?
It is far easier to pass laws with real teeth to keep corporations in line.
Take, for example, the MIB (Medical Information Bureau). Only those individuals with a genuine interest in your health - as in, requiring your signiture to that effect - can view it. They can't even use the information from the MIB by itself - they must independently verify the data. Fines for violating these two basic laws run into the millions... AFAIK, the last company to violate the first (by forging a signature) went belly up from the fine. Anyone can access their own record on the MIB, and correct it - and thousands of people do. Compare that to the current fiasco with the credit companies. They aren't regulated. Getting your credit record corrected is virtually beyond the power of any individual.
Frankly, I think the punishments for child sex offenders are too light,...
Which illustrates another point of the whole debacle. Do you care if the person had a speeding ticket? You can find that out. How about membership in some questionable organizations (Socialist party? Wiccan?/.?) You can find that out too.
I find the US to be utterly pathetic with regards to discrimination. Here, they take the view if it's NOT protected by law, then it's fair game. If you're a guy, and wear a skirt, that's grounds for dismissal. If you happen to be (quietly) Jewish, working for a rabidly pro-Christian boss, that's supposedly protected. (Both the above two are actual cases, where the employee in question was recognized as #1 in the company, until that 'questionable' piece of info came out.)
So, here's a question for ya: Do you agree with the idea that after jail time is over, the person has repaid their debt to society? Or does the fact that convicted pedophiles have, for all intents and purposes, a 100% recidivism rate, mean you want to be able to check a potential day-care provider's name against the conviction list?
Insurance companies forget traffic offenses after a suitable period. But I don't think I would want a persons conviction for pedophilia wiped after seven (or ten) years. Regrettably, it's really hard to make any kind of guideline to distinguish between what should be kept around and what shouldn't. Especially when opinions differ radically (e.g. pedophilia)
The other side of the coin is to take responsibility for your own protection...
Yep yep yep, spoken like a true Yank. Someone wanders onto your property, feel free to blow them away. Dang gov'mint raises taxes, head on down to the local IRS or Post office, and start blowin' those thievin' scum away... {/sarcasm off} Of course, then the numerous members of the local police take you down. Which is why there are certain laws necessary: the imbalance of power between an individual and an organization can be staggering.
In the US, a citizen can still take the IRS to court to appeal a decision - admittedly, it's getting too costly for the average citizen to do, but at least the option is still there. You want to control your personal data? How the f$ck do you expect to get all the various companies - credit agencies, banks, credit card companies, marketing companies, to name a few - which store your personal date, to just delete it? Do you think your resources could make the slightest difference if you tried to sue, when compared to the gazillions of bucks they can spend to shut you up? Do you really want to spend weeks on the phone or writing letters to these companies, and, even if you do, are you sure you've got them all? Not to mention your letters/calls are going to be treated with the same degree of concern that they reserve for buzzing gnats... squashed, and thrown in the trash.
The individual can still make an impact on their gov't representative. Which is far, far more than you're going to have on a corporation, unless you take the McVeigh route.
BTW, apologies to any non-English speaking Japanese seeking directions accidentally blown away by US citizens '...taking responsibility for their own protection by arming themselves...'
If verys specific conditions aren't met, a nuclear missile simply won't detonate.
I have a very serious question, though. They're talking about a binary laser, with 30-40 shots, designed to 'weaken' the skin of a missile. OK, I've got a great idea for a '747-with-ABL' missile: 600 mph, and one inch armour. Let's see, I could probably get something like that for, oh, twenty or thrity thou. If I really wanted to be *certain*, but 41 of them. Keep launching till I see a big explosion in the sky. Given that subsonic missiles are probably going to take quite a bit of deformation before dying, the ABL hasn't got great targetting, and it's going to be really easy to slap a bit of armour on a missile, I'd expect the explosion to come within the first five launched. 40*30,000 is 700,000, around 3/4 of a mil. Compared to the cost of this beast, we're talking, what, billions of dollars? What a total waste of money! Any third world country can pick up enough missiles to shoot this plane down for under a million. Says volumes about the mentality of the US military mindset.
Heh, I used to work for one of their competitors in the health care software biz. Our secret for sucess (and boy, were we succeding!) was two-fold. First, we delivered a quality product (actually got a 100% rating from the feds!) that did what it was supposed to, on time. Second, Unisys kept f$cking up royally, and pissing people off big-time. Let's see, the head of Iowa's computer department made a quote to the effect 'Unisys will never work in this state again as long as I'm here'. They got booted from Wisconsin 6 months into a 3 year contract (man, you _really_ have to screw up/piss people off to get that kind of speed out of a state government).
And, as espionage is rampant in the industry, they also managed to undercut us in Florida by a suspiciously small amount. Conversely, word came back from their accounting department (in an unmarked brown envelope ) that it was costing Unisys just under a million a month there. The huge fraud case in the Florida health care system was pretty much entirely attributable to Unisys.
Except that many places, the trend is not to have the manager _there_. Sometimes true, sometimes just a fiction to brush on off. Also, the 'manager' is often little more than a drone earning five cents an hour more than the person you're talking to. (And this isn't limited to the credit industry.)
If you bombard them with enough certified letters, results will come.
Yep, you're out all the bucks you've spent on certified mail. Generally speaking, most of the complaint letters are filed in the blue circular file, rather than acted on.
There is no logical reason to pay hundreds of dollars to clear up a credit bureau's mistake - your mom simply didn't know the right way to go about it.
There are, within the industry, various 'levels' of identity theft/confusion. Getting denied credit because someone with the same name as you has done something bad is right at the bottom of the scale. When your own bank starts calling you, and you start receiving threatening phone calls from companies you've never dealt with, that's at the top of the list.
One of the worst cases I've heard of was a guy who had the misfortune of having the same name as a (convicted) bank robber who managed to escape, and then disappear from the face of the planet. The innocent guy ended up carrying around a card from his local sherrif saying 'This man is not the so-and-so wanted for armed robbery and escape'. The reason for getting the card was the several trips to jail, sometimes overnight. Can you imagine getting pulled over for a spot check (e.g. New Years Eve sobriety test) and getting arrested? Repeatedly? Eventually, he ended up carrying a licence and ID with a different name, because some cops refused to believe the card. That's how f$cked up the system is.
My mother was within days of having her bank account frozen, and credit record permanently destroyed, because she had to prove to the numerous companies the person they were after had the same name, but wasn't her. Going down to a public notary, signing a piece of paper, and sending copies of that paper to the bank, credit companies, and all others companies robbed, and posting a copy in the paper (again, for legal reasons), is not cheap. It is outrageous that the victim of identity theft would have to spend money to resolve the issue, but that's the way the system is currently.
Most people don't have the time, knowledge, nor money to get these things straightened out. Generally, the law (US) is set up to give the benefit to the smaller party against the larger, particularly in cases of individuals against large corporate entities. Unfortunately, the current problems are growing because the industry found a way to put the onus of proof back onto the individual. Legal, but against the spirit of the law. There have been some attempts to pass legislation at the state level to prevent this, but one of the 'tricks' these companies use is short-lived spin-offs, often out-of state, and thus effectively out-of-jurisdiction.
As an extreme example, one individual on our database had a rather unfortunate case of identity theft. Person managed to get hold of his SIN (which just ain't that hard). Guy had his account cleared out, arrested for passing bad cheques, lost his job because he was 'obviously' criminal, had accounts frozen by the IRS, lost his house for failing to make morgage payments, and the utility companies too. Let's see: The bank is supposed to verify the signature against the one on file, the company was guilty of wrongful dismissal, the IRS is suppossed to allow payments from accounts for necessities like mortgages, utilities and the like. Given that, at the end of this incident, he was broke, so had no money to fight these unfair and illegal actions against him, do you really think the system ain't broke, or that spending a couple of hundred dollars to prevent it wasn't a good idea?
Similar issue. I moved from Canada to the US. Perfect credit rating north of the border. My own VISA card since 16. Owned a house, car. Suddenly... Tried to buy a new set of washer & dryer from Sears. Couldn't accept my Canadian card. So applied for a US one. After putting the items through on it, got a warning letter... card limit was at the minimum ($500), less than the amount I spent.
Kinda pissed off, so I looked into it. In the US, there are federal laws that prevent US companies from asking for credit reports from foreign companies. Now, strange as it seems, Sears Canada and Sears USA are two different companies. This piece of xenophopic protectionist garbage legislation written by pork-barelling scum (GA, ask how I really feel;) was intended to be used to promote the use of American credit agencies. So if there's a multinational credit agency, it's HQ (legal base of oerations) must be in the US.
During the first six months, I had to use my Canadian Visa card, since I couldn't get an American one (despite all the 'You are pre-approved!' mail), had a $500 loan rejected ("Sorry, we equate no credit history with bad credit history! Have a nice day!"). Of course, I was able to buy a house. A pay stub, and one call from the credit company to Canada, and everything was peachy.
But I gotta say, the US system is seriously f$cked. And it seemed that most of the drones I dealt with knew it, and accepted their powerlessness to change anything.
As far as erroneous entries, I'm sure these are few and far between,
I worked for one of the largest companies which do credit histories. Errors are neither few nor far between, and there was a serious, ongoing project to discover if there was any way to halt the growth of erroneous data. The basic concensus there was 'not a hope'.
and while it may be a pain to get cleared up, they will get cleared up... just cite quotes from the Consumer Credit Rights Act and the companies will most likely aide you in any erroneous entries.
You are so out of touch with reality it just isn't funny. My mother ended up paying hundreds of dollars in fees to clear her credit rating... because someone with the same name had passed bad cheques. 99.999% of the people answering the phones these days are minimum wage drones. Not adequately trained to deal with the problem, and not paid enough to give a damn.
Just my opinion... I could be wrong
You are. You're also missing one of the biggest points of the article. People, often through no fault of their own, are getting screwed. And, food for thought: I've got some ignorant a$$holes of my case simply by telling them if I find my name on a credit report, I will sue. Sending documentation just doesn't seem to do a thing. I've been turned over to credit collection agencies twice, once by MCI (despite the fact they owed me money, my local carrier couldn't get them to correct their accounting, after 18 months of trying.), and once by a garbage company (I cancelled the service by both mail and phone... yet somehow they managed to continue the service for the owner, and still track me down in another state.) Bottom line: the quality of financial responsibilty among the corporate world has plummeted with the advance of computers. It's reached the point where only the threat of lawsuits can get a company to actually do anything to correct an entry.
There are plenty of other horror stories... one of my favourites dealt with someone who was denied a loan (and essentially had her credit history trashed)... tracked the info back to my company, which tracked it back to a on-line collection company, which had got the info from one of their clients, which had been shut down the government for fraudulent practices. The collection company couldn't get their system to correct it (bill cancellation under their system had to come from the originator of the debt notification). They managed to finally (manually) delete the client, at which point they couldn't send an update to us. Ours wasn't quite as hard to fix, after a letter arrived from her lawyer;). So the individual in question, after nearly two years getting this fiasco straightened out, went back to the bank, and got denied again. They'd switched credit rating firms during the period. Apparently she actually slugged the loan officer. I'd consider it justified.
One of the basic assumptions is that the human brain is built to think about the world in terms of things that have properties and behaviour. We
can think in terms of procedures and execution flow as well, but we're not nearly as good at it
Of course, that brings up the whole issue of people associating things differently. I see a chair and think 'computer time!', Bob sees a chair and thinks 'Furniture', Jolene sees a chair and thinks 'Beige'. Speaking solely from personal experience, the vast majority of OO types I've worked with haven't got a clue on data structures: they simply shoehorn in something that works. No thoughts for efficiency of execution, ease of coding, nor future mods.
The worst example of OO stupidity I've seen was where there was huge buy-in, from a VP, through Directors, Managers, Team leads, and, of course, the hordes of OO programmers hired. An insurance proposal system, displaying less that 1000 individuals. Names, addresses, health plans selected, dependents... it took over five minutes to build the data on the most maxed PCs available. The mainframe side (for the calculations) did it's work in fractions of a second. Each recalc - fraction of a sec on mainframe, five minutes on PC. Stupid thing was, a couple of us started waving our red flags over a year before the project ran into the wall. As the article says, it often requires a total leap of faith to accept OO. And once someone has made that leap, no amount of reason can bring them back. Stupid thing was, I implemented virtually an identicle system a decade previous, using (thankfully non-GUI) CICS.
OO, and the Visual bunch seem to be more obsessed with looking pretty and 'current', than actually doing the job. In that I totally agree with the article.
Actually, there's a nifty little program out there called Xenoprobe... maybe not quite as good as a real tricorder, but humourous, and doesn't require a plug in card.
My sis uses her Visor for some real med progs, too. Drug interaction lists are a lot easier to carry on PDA than the binders (constant updates) it otherwise requires.
Sliding a little from the original topic, but anyway... ( Rant ) Our current government (USA) is, by and large, extremely right wing. Agencies such as the NSA, FBI, DEA are even more so. Now, let's take a look at some 'Socialist' leaning countries - Canada, England, Sweden, Japan. How often do the police conduct illegal wiretaps, conduct dubious 'raids' (often killing innocent people), utilyze the 'confiscate now, return someday' philosophy, comparing these 'Socialist' contries with the Home of the Free (tm)? Speaking as a computer professional who has done just a little government work (US), do you have a fscking clue the difference in how much data your friends in Washington keep on it's citizenry compared to these others? (Hint: it's a couple or three orders of magnitude higher than the next runner up). Canada doesn't have quite as high an average standard of living... conversely, we don't have the poverty that 20-30% of Americans suffer. And we don't have the security problems (i.e. FBI, ATF). There are plenty of bills like the above (Hatch is responsible for quite a few, thank goodness Gramms just got blown off the map, pity McCain is still around) in effect. You make the comment "We don't need a bigger government we need a constitutional government that doesn't step over it's bounds." Guess what? You aren't going to get it if you keep voting only Democrat/Republican!!! Morons like you listen to the rhetoric that the current D/R (but primarily Republican) politicos spew about 'less government', and believe it. Geez, Hatch is a powerful guy within his party. He isn't an anomaly. And you have the sheer idiocy to attack someone outside the D/R structure for fear of what they MIGHT do?!?! Unfsckingbelievable!!! The current fiasco (e.g. export, prosecution, media hype) with encryption is pretty much entirely blamable on the paranoid status-quo attitudes that right-wingers. The current huge bloated carcass sitting in Washington didn't grow because Nadar and his ilk were in power, it grew to it's current size because know-nothings (i.e. you) kept voting the D/R power structure back in. (/rant )
"You list a paragraph about how much you don't trust government authorities and yet you say that this should make us want someone who wants the government to have MORE power, almost to the point of socialism
Sorry, but 1/ The government is not really an entity. I distrust individual politicos, particularly the Washington breed. I distrust the Ottawa crowd significantly less. I _really_ distrust the FBI - those I've encountered are right wing and rightious. The RCMP types have been a little to the right (typical of cops in most places), but generally I wouldn't worry about them breaking into my place to plant keyboard taps.; and 2/ The govenrment (US) already has and uses these powers on a regular basis. You're quite delusional if you fail to recognize this. Mantra spouting card carrying members of either party (D/R) scare me... people have brains, D/R types use theirs only to forward their narrow agenda, and fail to consider the welfare of the greater number.
Legally, I can think of one precedent that is going to cause this to be shot down. The FBI/DEA/(B)ATF slid an add-on bill through a few years back, making it an offense to wear a bullet-proof vest when being arrested. The court ruled, quite reasonably, that this was complete bullsoup, in that the law made a perfectly legal action illegal solely upon the discretion of LE officers. A strict interpretation of that law allowed the FBI to arrest you, charge with whatever AND wearing a vest, dropping the other charges, and still getting a conviction! I can just see them trying the same sort of nonsense here - tap, arrest, drop other charges, but get the conviction because you were obviously up to no good, hiding behind encryption like that!.
Just grabbed a Visor deluxe for spouse for Christmas... The phone costs more if you buy it without their 'plan'... and there is no coverage in my area under one of their 'approved partners'... Is this lame or what?
And I don't even want to respond to why I would rather use a calculator instead of a slide rule...
I grew up as electronic calculators became standard. I learned the slide rule for the heck of it. There are a couple of good reasons for using a slide rule. There is one reason, however, that would justify crushing every electronic number cruncher out there:
order of magnitude
The modern generation of calculator kiddies make this mistake a lot. Cute in the schools, potentially fatal in the real world (engineering, architecture, and chemistry, to name three areas where shifting decimals have caused fatal accidents).
Almost every technology has a downside - in this case, a loss of understanding of where the answer should be.
On a marginally related tangent, how many people out there can take the Nth root of a number? Mandatory in my father's day, my class only learned square roots, and they don't teach it at all now (speaking of US/Canadian schools). There have been a couple of times when knowing how has been very useful... and people raised on electronic calculators would never have even dreamt of applying it, because they simply were never taught.
Geez, I saw this implemented several years back. Engineering office, using AutoCAD, with mutiple monitors per user. A couple of the people there had the 'keyboard with touchpad', as well as a regular mouse. Very useful having a pointer on different screens. I think the implementation had something to do with the net-admin's desire for killer gaming, rather than enhanced productivity. Oddly enough, I think it was a DOS/Win 3.x system.
Re:Technology isnt everything - competition drives
on
The Renaissance
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The chinese had the movable letter printing technique and the paper technique for maybe 500 years before the europeans invented it. Still, it did not lead to this takeoff of culture, the explosion of scientific breakthroughs etc.
Actually, the evidence indicates the Koreans had the first movable-type printing press.
As to why it had little impact in China, that's a little more complex. The number one series is the works of Confuscious. The Chinese culture valued very traditional books. Change was not good. So they used printing presses - but only for existing works. Full page plates.
So, other cultures had the printing press waaaay before Gutenberg, and didn't have a 'Renaissance'. Kind of totally disproves the main thesis of the book, doesn't it?
Real lesson: if you want your data protected, don't put it in a computer
Of course, you could always go the laptop/plamtop route. I'd like to see the FBI break in and bug something almost grafted to your body. Heck, the Xybernaut models _are_ grafted to your body;)
Geez, that is conservative. Although a huge percentage of the population is not connected, I'd guess that the rest of us more than make up for it.
While phone usage is significantly less than North America - something to do with the per minute charges - downloading is the same as elsewhere. As bandwidth expands, and websites get more complex (Flash, QT et al) and use more memory, as video-conferencing becomes the norm, the per day usage goes through the roof. Throw in the pr0n downloads, and the storage required defies imagination. (OK, not really, but it's going to be several orders of magnitude larger than that Terrabyte est.)
Speaking of which, wouldn't intercepting and storing someone's discreetly paid-for pr0n count as theft? Would the gov't be guilty of violating certain (e.g. pedophile) laws just by possesing a copy?
Personally, I'm sick of the mantra "We need it to prevent pedophiles/drug dealers/terrorists". The existing laws regarding rights are there to prevent imbeciles (like those who suggested this) from creating a society like 1984 - no 'crime', but no 'life' either.
Rack up the hours early. I like getting a few 'spare' hours on account early in the week... that way, if something comes up unexpectedly, I can deal with it (e.g. car breakdown, sick kid). If something bad _doesn't_ come up, I take off early on Friday afternoon. (OK, I maintain a min of 44 hours before splitting, but that's generally done by Thursday evening). I tend to get in early, and leave late, to avoid rush hour traffic... leaving early on a Friday has the same benefit.
Lunch. Most days, I'm quite happy to inhale my food at my desk while I type. I don't need or want a full hour. If I get in at six, I can leave at two, not three. Mandatory lunch 'hours' are for sales reps and managers. Those of us who don't need to network over beer'n'nachos at the local sports bar are quite happy to forego the time off in the middle of the day, effectively getting the same hour at the end of the day instead.
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I've dealt with HR, mostly on the basis of interviewing potentials, and one fairly important point revolves around "Where do you work now?"" and, to a lesser extent, "Why do you want to switch jobs."
I've had the unfortunate experience of being 'downsized', and the even more ridiculous experience of being on the losing side of an internal political war (of which I had no part, and joined 1/2 way through). In the first case, I was surprised, and had a heck of a time getting a new job - the HR belief is that if you were laid off, _obviously_ you weren't good. There is some recognition that this isn't always the case, but most HR types aren't the brightest candles in the marquee. The second time, I already had a job lined up, left on a Friday, started up elsewhere on the Monday. The new job was not necessarily ideal, but it seriously helped with both the cash flow, and with getting the next job ("I currently work at xxx." and "I'm looking for something more challenging than web design.").
No trite answer will help you resolve your problem, but company loyalty is a rather mythical item in this day and age. Your primary responsibility is to yourself (and any family). Loyalty is a desirable trait, but blind loyalty can get you into trouble.
I left one company for a bunch of reasons - one of which was I picked up more and more responsibilities, ended up the sole person capable of supporting several systems, and still being treated as dirt. Yes, they were royally screwed by my leaving, despite my best efforts at a painless transition. Part of the 'loyalty' thing is that it works two ways. If they show zero reason for you to be loyal, then don't. It's that simple. Incompetent management is one of the best indicators that they're not worth your time.
I worked for a company that hit me with an n-c a few months after I started. (Which, btw, violated the terms of my contract, but anyway). The sad thing was it had like 27 different points on it, of which 3 were totally illegal, and were actually case examples from one of my first year law courses. Let's just say head office was still living in the sixties.
The main point of n-c's these days is the threat factor. It may be illegal ... but what individual has the money to fight M$ in court?
Even more interesting was how hard they got jumped on.
Since then, they've replicated the process with human cells (our cells have ~ 75 replications in them: applying the appropriate chemicals (telomerase)) the number has been pushed to 225 with no signs of degradation). And the steps that are involved are being charted backwards, to find out what either a/ triggers aging, or b/ stops the non-aging process. It's actually rather hard to find out much on the issue; many companies are playing it close, in hopes of a huge payout; and seemingly legitimate fears of hordes of pitchfork, torch and injuction waving religious nuts (membership in the Christian Right qualifies) and Luddites.
Theoretically, there may be a simple chemical trigger we could take, like a daily pill, that would reverse/halt the aging process.
I don't see stem cells as the route to immortality (as in, unaging). They are and will continue to be vital in fundamental research, and the treatment of injuries/disease.
And I'd highly recommend an old classic, The Trouble with Lichen, as covering many problems that a greatly extended lifespan will cause society.
Where the f$ck do you live? I've regularly walked down streets, in the middle of 'large' cities (4 million plus), where I'm the only person. Besides which, you're kinda supporting my argument here - I'm saying that it's unrealistic to expect everyone to defend themselves - in whatever arena (mugging/computer/personal data), and your counter requires 3 helpful bystanders.
Yes, but it's a question of balancing risks.
Absolutely correct. The risk is lower if only police are legally allowed to carry guns.
Right now robbing people carries a certain risk level. If those people started carrying guns, the risk level goes up. Obviously not everyone is going to have a gun, or use it, or be a good shot. But what are you, the mugger, going to do if suddenly there's a fairly good chance that your victim, or a bystander, will have the means and motive to fight back? Eventually you're going to give up and switch to stealing TVs from warehouses, and everyone will be happier.
Actually, the answer is not that the mugger will give up. The answer comes in two parts. First, muggers in the US use guns. A lot. And a lot more than anywhere else. Why? Because they're easy to obtain, and a lot more effective than a knife. The second result is even more disturbing. In many US cities where the average victim is likely to be carrying a gun, the muggers have adopted a simple philosophy. It's even easier to take a wallet/purse from a dead body, and there are no witnesses left over.
The idea of everyone carrying is absurd, and, reducto ad absurdium, the muggers response to even a moderate percentage of the population carrying is even more absurd. The rest of the world looks with horror on the US, and its criminal statistics. Unfortunately, it's ingrained into the American psyche, and has unfortunate carry-overs into other areas. Like Personal Data - hey, everyone has the right do do whatever the hell they want, until they hurt someone. So there's nothing _really_ there to stop someone from building a nuke in their New York apartment. Hey! He hasn't hurt anyone yet! Of course, prosecuting _after_ the fact is kinda pointless. Just as pointless as prosecuting muggers who've shot and killed their victims, in that the whole damn scenario could have been resolved by applying a little intelligence beforehand, and recognizing what is a realistic 'limitation' on an individuals freedom.
Actually, my reference was to the poor Japanese who got blown away, for the doubly heinous crime of seeking directions, and not speaking American. Oh, yeah, and absolutely no criminal charges were lodged. Can't infringe on that constitutional right to bear arms, yep yep yep.
Six. Ninety-Eight. Tell me again how Japan has 'one of the worst human rights records'? How about percentage incarcerated? Nope, the US wins hands down there, again, blowing that 2.3 times figure out of the water. I guess that Constitution is worth the paper it's printed on, and not much more.
It's kinda sad, really. On paper, the US Constitution just isn't too bad. But look at some of the things the UN report on Japan mentions - things like discriminatory laws against women, illegitimate kids - and then compare that to the _actual_ treatment. Florida only put women on the jury rolls by default in 1992. The percentage of blacks in American prisons is greater than their percentage of the population, and greater than their percentage of the poor. Heck, even the Koreans don't get treated that bad in good ol' Nippon.
Well, I'm happy to see you got modded down, but I thought I'd address the fallacy in your argument anyway.
I'm actually pretty good with a gun. But my 90 yr old grandmother can't even lift one. Your solution - everyone packing a gun - fails to take into account the large number of people who can't use one. Going a step further, let's say I can shoot a mugger first (a big and highly unlikely assumption) 90% of the time. By the seventh mugging, my overall survival rate has dropped to less than 50%. Heck, if you assume the average mugger shoots right at the 50th percentile (which is far too low), that means 50% of the time the victim gets shot while trying to resist
OK, let's flip back to the privacy issue. I run a machine with 3 OS (Win95/Be/Linux), a DSL line, and no, you can't have my IP. ;) I don't expect everyone out there to approach the level of security I have. Now, as someone concerned with everyone else's security, is it more effective to try and bring everyone's machine up to my level, or try something at a higher level? The problem with the first solution is that the majority of computer and Mac users are clueless about security.
Now for personal information. I worked for the company that originated the whole credit rating formula thingie. I _know_ just how much info they have on the average individual, and from how many sources they gather that info. I've taken some steps which minimize the problem. Can't remember when I received my last piece of spam, but it has to be over four years back . Similar to the gun/mugging and computer/security issue, do you realistically expect the average individual to understand and implement the techniques required to protect themselves?
It is far easier to pass laws with real teeth to keep corporations in line.
Take, for example, the MIB (Medical Information Bureau). Only those individuals with a genuine interest in your health - as in, requiring your signiture to that effect - can view it. They can't even use the information from the MIB by itself - they must independently verify the data. Fines for violating these two basic laws run into the millions ... AFAIK, the last company to violate the first (by forging a signature) went belly up from the fine. Anyone can access their own record on the MIB, and correct it - and thousands of people do. Compare that to the current fiasco with the credit companies. They aren't regulated. Getting your credit record corrected is virtually beyond the power of any individual.
Which illustrates another point of the whole debacle. Do you care if the person had a speeding ticket? You can find that out. How about membership in some questionable organizations (Socialist party? Wiccan? /.?) You can find that out too.
I find the US to be utterly pathetic with regards to discrimination. Here, they take the view if it's NOT protected by law, then it's fair game. If you're a guy, and wear a skirt, that's grounds for dismissal. If you happen to be (quietly) Jewish, working for a rabidly pro-Christian boss, that's supposedly protected. (Both the above two are actual cases, where the employee in question was recognized as #1 in the company, until that 'questionable' piece of info came out.)
So, here's a question for ya: Do you agree with the idea that after jail time is over, the person has repaid their debt to society? Or does the fact that convicted pedophiles have, for all intents and purposes, a 100% recidivism rate, mean you want to be able to check a potential day-care provider's name against the conviction list?
Insurance companies forget traffic offenses after a suitable period. But I don't think I would want a persons conviction for pedophilia wiped after seven (or ten) years. Regrettably, it's really hard to make any kind of guideline to distinguish between what should be kept around and what shouldn't. Especially when opinions differ radically (e.g. pedophilia)
Yep yep yep, spoken like a true Yank. Someone wanders onto your property, feel free to blow them away. Dang gov'mint raises taxes, head on down to the local IRS or Post office, and start blowin' those thievin' scum away ... {/sarcasm off} Of course, then the numerous members of the local police take you down. Which is why there are certain laws necessary: the imbalance of power between an individual and an organization can be staggering.
In the US, a citizen can still take the IRS to court to appeal a decision - admittedly, it's getting too costly for the average citizen to do, but at least the option is still there. You want to control your personal data? How the f$ck do you expect to get all the various companies - credit agencies, banks, credit card companies, marketing companies, to name a few - which store your personal date, to just delete it? Do you think your resources could make the slightest difference if you tried to sue, when compared to the gazillions of bucks they can spend to shut you up? Do you really want to spend weeks on the phone or writing letters to these companies, and, even if you do, are you sure you've got them all? Not to mention your letters/calls are going to be treated with the same degree of concern that they reserve for buzzing gnats ... squashed, and thrown in the trash.
The individual can still make an impact on their gov't representative. Which is far, far more than you're going to have on a corporation, unless you take the McVeigh route.
BTW, apologies to any non-English speaking Japanese seeking directions accidentally blown away by US citizens '...taking responsibility for their own protection by arming themselves ...'
I have a very serious question, though. They're talking about a binary laser, with 30-40 shots, designed to 'weaken' the skin of a missile. OK, I've got a great idea for a '747-with-ABL' missile: 600 mph, and one inch armour. Let's see, I could probably get something like that for, oh, twenty or thrity thou. If I really wanted to be *certain*, but 41 of them. Keep launching till I see a big explosion in the sky. Given that subsonic missiles are probably going to take quite a bit of deformation before dying, the ABL hasn't got great targetting, and it's going to be really easy to slap a bit of armour on a missile, I'd expect the explosion to come within the first five launched. 40*30,000 is 700,000, around 3/4 of a mil. Compared to the cost of this beast, we're talking, what, billions of dollars? What a total waste of money! Any third world country can pick up enough missiles to shoot this plane down for under a million. Says volumes about the mentality of the US military mindset.
Yeah, right: KAL-007 ring any bells?
Heh, I used to work for one of their competitors in the health care software biz. Our secret for sucess (and boy, were we succeding!) was two-fold. First, we delivered a quality product (actually got a 100% rating from the feds!) that did what it was supposed to, on time. Second, Unisys kept f$cking up royally, and pissing people off big-time. Let's see, the head of Iowa's computer department made a quote to the effect 'Unisys will never work in this state again as long as I'm here'. They got booted from Wisconsin 6 months into a 3 year contract (man, you _really_ have to screw up/piss people off to get that kind of speed out of a state government).
And, as espionage is rampant in the industry, they also managed to undercut us in Florida by a suspiciously small amount. Conversely, word came back from their accounting department (in an unmarked brown envelope ) that it was costing Unisys just under a million a month there. The huge fraud case in the Florida health care system was pretty much entirely attributable to Unisys.
Except that many places, the trend is not to have the manager _there_. Sometimes true, sometimes just a fiction to brush on off. Also, the 'manager' is often little more than a drone earning five cents an hour more than the person you're talking to. (And this isn't limited to the credit industry.)
If you bombard them with enough certified letters, results will come.
Yep, you're out all the bucks you've spent on certified mail. Generally speaking, most of the complaint letters are filed in the blue circular file, rather than acted on.
There is no logical reason to pay hundreds of dollars to clear up a credit bureau's mistake - your mom simply didn't know the right way to go about it.
There are, within the industry, various 'levels' of identity theft/confusion. Getting denied credit because someone with the same name as you has done something bad is right at the bottom of the scale. When your own bank starts calling you, and you start receiving threatening phone calls from companies you've never dealt with, that's at the top of the list.
One of the worst cases I've heard of was a guy who had the misfortune of having the same name as a (convicted) bank robber who managed to escape, and then disappear from the face of the planet. The innocent guy ended up carrying around a card from his local sherrif saying 'This man is not the so-and-so wanted for armed robbery and escape'. The reason for getting the card was the several trips to jail, sometimes overnight. Can you imagine getting pulled over for a spot check (e.g. New Years Eve sobriety test) and getting arrested? Repeatedly? Eventually, he ended up carrying a licence and ID with a different name, because some cops refused to believe the card. That's how f$cked up the system is.
My mother was within days of having her bank account frozen, and credit record permanently destroyed, because she had to prove to the numerous companies the person they were after had the same name, but wasn't her. Going down to a public notary, signing a piece of paper, and sending copies of that paper to the bank, credit companies, and all others companies robbed, and posting a copy in the paper (again, for legal reasons), is not cheap. It is outrageous that the victim of identity theft would have to spend money to resolve the issue, but that's the way the system is currently.
Most people don't have the time, knowledge, nor money to get these things straightened out. Generally, the law (US) is set up to give the benefit to the smaller party against the larger, particularly in cases of individuals against large corporate entities. Unfortunately, the current problems are growing because the industry found a way to put the onus of proof back onto the individual. Legal, but against the spirit of the law. There have been some attempts to pass legislation at the state level to prevent this, but one of the 'tricks' these companies use is short-lived spin-offs, often out-of state, and thus effectively out-of-jurisdiction.
As an extreme example, one individual on our database had a rather unfortunate case of identity theft. Person managed to get hold of his SIN (which just ain't that hard). Guy had his account cleared out, arrested for passing bad cheques, lost his job because he was 'obviously' criminal, had accounts frozen by the IRS, lost his house for failing to make morgage payments, and the utility companies too. Let's see: The bank is supposed to verify the signature against the one on file, the company was guilty of wrongful dismissal, the IRS is suppossed to allow payments from accounts for necessities like mortgages, utilities and the like. Given that, at the end of this incident, he was broke, so had no money to fight these unfair and illegal actions against him, do you really think the system ain't broke, or that spending a couple of hundred dollars to prevent it wasn't a good idea?
Kinda pissed off, so I looked into it. In the US, there are federal laws that prevent US companies from asking for credit reports from foreign companies. Now, strange as it seems, Sears Canada and Sears USA are two different companies. This piece of xenophopic protectionist garbage legislation written by pork-barelling scum (GA, ask how I really feel ;) was intended to be used to promote the use of American credit agencies. So if there's a multinational credit agency, it's HQ (legal base of oerations) must be in the US.
During the first six months, I had to use my Canadian Visa card, since I couldn't get an American one (despite all the 'You are pre-approved!' mail), had a $500 loan rejected ("Sorry, we equate no credit history with bad credit history! Have a nice day!"). Of course, I was able to buy a house. A pay stub, and one call from the credit company to Canada, and everything was peachy.
But I gotta say, the US system is seriously f$cked. And it seemed that most of the drones I dealt with knew it, and accepted their powerlessness to change anything.
I worked for one of the largest companies which do credit histories. Errors are neither few nor far between, and there was a serious, ongoing project to discover if there was any way to halt the growth of erroneous data. The basic concensus there was 'not a hope'.
and while it may be a pain to get cleared up, they will get cleared up... just cite quotes from the Consumer Credit Rights Act and the companies will most likely aide you in any erroneous entries.
You are so out of touch with reality it just isn't funny. My mother ended up paying hundreds of dollars in fees to clear her credit rating ... because someone with the same name had passed bad cheques. 99.999% of the people answering the phones these days are minimum wage drones. Not adequately trained to deal with the problem, and not paid enough to give a damn.
Just my opinion... I could be wrong
You are. You're also missing one of the biggest points of the article. People, often through no fault of their own, are getting screwed. And, food for thought: I've got some ignorant a$$holes of my case simply by telling them if I find my name on a credit report, I will sue. Sending documentation just doesn't seem to do a thing. I've been turned over to credit collection agencies twice, once by MCI (despite the fact they owed me money, my local carrier couldn't get them to correct their accounting, after 18 months of trying.), and once by a garbage company (I cancelled the service by both mail and phone ... yet somehow they managed to continue the service for the owner, and still track me down in another state.) Bottom line: the quality of financial responsibilty among the corporate world has plummeted with the advance of computers. It's reached the point where only the threat of lawsuits can get a company to actually do anything to correct an entry.
There are plenty of other horror stories ... one of my favourites dealt with someone who was denied a loan (and essentially had her credit history trashed)... tracked the info back to my company, which tracked it back to a on-line collection company, which had got the info from one of their clients, which had been shut down the government for fraudulent practices. The collection company couldn't get their system to correct it (bill cancellation under their system had to come from the originator of the debt notification). They managed to finally (manually) delete the client, at which point they couldn't send an update to us. Ours wasn't quite as hard to fix, after a letter arrived from her lawyer ;). So the individual in question, after nearly two years getting this fiasco straightened out, went back to the bank, and got denied again. They'd switched credit rating firms during the period. Apparently she actually slugged the loan officer. I'd consider it justified.
Of course, that brings up the whole issue of people associating things differently. I see a chair and think 'computer time!', Bob sees a chair and thinks 'Furniture', Jolene sees a chair and thinks 'Beige'. Speaking solely from personal experience, the vast majority of OO types I've worked with haven't got a clue on data structures: they simply shoehorn in something that works. No thoughts for efficiency of execution, ease of coding, nor future mods.
The worst example of OO stupidity I've seen was where there was huge buy-in, from a VP, through Directors, Managers, Team leads, and, of course, the hordes of OO programmers hired. An insurance proposal system, displaying less that 1000 individuals. Names, addresses, health plans selected, dependents ... it took over five minutes to build the data on the most maxed PCs available. The mainframe side (for the calculations) did it's work in fractions of a second. Each recalc - fraction of a sec on mainframe, five minutes on PC. Stupid thing was, a couple of us started waving our red flags over a year before the project ran into the wall. As the article says, it often requires a total leap of faith to accept OO. And once someone has made that leap, no amount of reason can bring them back. Stupid thing was, I implemented virtually an identicle system a decade previous, using (thankfully non-GUI) CICS.
OO, and the Visual bunch seem to be more obsessed with looking pretty and 'current', than actually doing the job. In that I totally agree with the article.
My sis uses her Visor for some real med progs, too. Drug interaction lists are a lot easier to carry on PDA than the binders (constant updates) it otherwise requires.
"You list a paragraph about how much you don't trust government authorities and yet you say that this should make us want someone who wants the government to have MORE power, almost to the point of socialism
Sorry, but 1/ The government is not really an entity. I distrust individual politicos, particularly the Washington breed. I distrust the Ottawa crowd significantly less. I _really_ distrust the FBI - those I've encountered are right wing and rightious. The RCMP types have been a little to the right (typical of cops in most places), but generally I wouldn't worry about them breaking into my place to plant keyboard taps.; and 2/ The govenrment (US) already has and uses these powers on a regular basis. You're quite delusional if you fail to recognize this. Mantra spouting card carrying members of either party (D/R) scare me ... people have brains, D/R types use theirs only to forward their narrow agenda, and fail to consider the welfare of the greater number.
Makes you wanna Ralph, more than ever!
Just grabbed a Visor deluxe for spouse for Christmas ... The phone costs more if you buy it without their 'plan' ... and there is no coverage in my area under one of their 'approved partners' ... Is this lame or what?
I grew up as electronic calculators became standard. I learned the slide rule for the heck of it. There are a couple of good reasons for using a slide rule. There is one reason, however, that would justify crushing every electronic number cruncher out there:
order of magnitude
The modern generation of calculator kiddies make this mistake a lot. Cute in the schools, potentially fatal in the real world (engineering, architecture, and chemistry, to name three areas where shifting decimals have caused fatal accidents).
Almost every technology has a downside - in this case, a loss of understanding of where the answer should be.
On a marginally related tangent, how many people out there can take the Nth root of a number? Mandatory in my father's day, my class only learned square roots, and they don't teach it at all now (speaking of US/Canadian schools). There have been a couple of times when knowing how has been very useful ... and people raised on electronic calculators would never have even dreamt of applying it, because they simply were never taught.
Geez, I saw this implemented several years back. Engineering office, using AutoCAD, with mutiple monitors per user. A couple of the people there had the 'keyboard with touchpad', as well as a regular mouse. Very useful having a pointer on different screens. I think the implementation had something to do with the net-admin's desire for killer gaming, rather than enhanced productivity. Oddly enough, I think it was a DOS/Win 3.x system.
Actually, the evidence indicates the Koreans had the first movable-type printing press.
As to why it had little impact in China, that's a little more complex. The number one series is the works of Confuscious. The Chinese culture valued very traditional books. Change was not good. So they used printing presses - but only for existing works. Full page plates.
So, other cultures had the printing press waaaay before Gutenberg, and didn't have a 'Renaissance'. Kind of totally disproves the main thesis of the book, doesn't it?
Of course, you could always go the laptop/plamtop route. I'd like to see the FBI break in and bug something almost grafted to your body. Heck, the Xybernaut models _are_ grafted to your body ;)
While phone usage is significantly less than North America - something to do with the per minute charges - downloading is the same as elsewhere. As bandwidth expands, and websites get more complex (Flash, QT et al) and use more memory, as video-conferencing becomes the norm, the per day usage goes through the roof. Throw in the pr0n downloads, and the storage required defies imagination. (OK, not really, but it's going to be several orders of magnitude larger than that Terrabyte est.)
Speaking of which, wouldn't intercepting and storing someone's discreetly paid-for pr0n count as theft? Would the gov't be guilty of violating certain (e.g. pedophile) laws just by possesing a copy?
Personally, I'm sick of the mantra "We need it to prevent pedophiles/drug dealers/terrorists". The existing laws regarding rights are there to prevent imbeciles (like those who suggested this) from creating a society like 1984 - no 'crime', but no 'life' either.
Rack up the hours early. I like getting a few 'spare' hours on account early in the week ... that way, if something comes up unexpectedly, I can deal with it (e.g. car breakdown, sick kid). If something bad _doesn't_ come up, I take off early on Friday afternoon. (OK, I maintain a min of 44 hours before splitting, but that's generally done by Thursday evening). I tend to get in early, and leave late, to avoid rush hour traffic ... leaving early on a Friday has the same benefit.
Lunch. Most days, I'm quite happy to inhale my food at my desk while I type. I don't need or want a full hour. If I get in at six, I can leave at two, not three. Mandatory lunch 'hours' are for sales reps and managers. Those of us who don't need to network over beer'n'nachos at the local sports bar are quite happy to forego the time off in the middle of the day, effectively getting the same hour at the end of the day instead.