There is no right answer to this conundrum simply because there are too many variables.
-Some policemen will be honourable sticklers for the rules and would never interpret silence as a sign of guilt. -Alternatively, some take the default position that silence = something to hide. -Some are masters of language and will twist what little you have or have not said to make you squirm and say more. -Plus you never know what other people are saying, are they making a liar out of you?
Rather than try to answer an unanswerable question, it would be better for people to be more educated about how law enforcement works so that they can make informed decisions should they find themselves in a situation where a policeman is asking questions.
In my experience the most important thing is to document what you are going to do in detail and make sure the client understands.
Produce mockups of the finished site and any backend admin interfaces. Specify what functionality the site has and be clear about any functionality that is being omitted.
For example, if you develop a CMS that requires the user to process story images offline in an editor like Photoshop, then make sure the cleint understands. If you don't many clueless clients will assume that the CMS will handle it for them and get upset whent they learn otherwise. If you don't adequately document the deliverables the client will most likely demand changes during the development process.
Keep contracts simple, specify what you are going to deliver and when and also touch on rights and who will own the resulting IP on the site/code. Do insert something to say that the client cannot withold payment if you are late becuase of something you need from the client. E.g. the code is complete and you need images from the client to let the site go live and they will not supply them. This can be done without scary legalese. The law provides a certain amount of legal protection that you do not need to repeat in a contract. You do not need to mention that you will sue your client if they don't pay, you have that legal right to begin with.
Accept that you will be learning as you go along. You will encounter bad clients, but you will learn from that and know what sort of clients to avoid in future.
Also, be very careful about tax! Be honest and keep money aside to pay it when due.
I turned down a development job with a bank as they wanted to do a security screen on my wife.
I will admit that they did say they would still employ me even if my wife refused permission to do the screen. However, I did pick up the distinct impression that they wouldn't be very happy if my she were to refuse the screening.
They can check me all they want (bar fingerprints), but my wife has nothing to do with it.
I worked for a Stream International for a few months. When I worked there they provided support for HP, Compaq, Dell and a few other smaller PC manufacturers. I had just finished my computing degree and seeing as there were no decent jobs to be had, I took a job at Stream.
The support we provided was shit, simple as that. A good 90% of reps knew nothing about computers before starting work and were lucky to get 2 weeks of training. The 'mentors' who were supposed to train us were useless as well. There was an obsession with the DOS debug.exe application. They seemed to think it could fix any PC problem. I did try to explain it was more of a programmers tool, but they wouldn't listen. Outside of the big name contracts (i.e. the smaller PC makers) there was a policy of making the caller do a low level format of their system (using debug.exe WTF?) and re-install Windows before an engineer was sent out. I once took a call from an elderly chap who had been forced to reformat his system twice and lose all his data, simply because his keyboard was set to the US layout rather than the UK layout. I got sick of the low wages and questionable ethics and left the place after three months.
Most PC manufacturers see support as an expense they need to minimise, so it is inevitable support quality will suffer. My experience taught me never to use technical support lines ever again.
Maybe I'm looking at this in a too simplistic way, but why not make it illegal for telemarkers who circumvent national do not call lists to trade.
Or to put it another way - if you go to India to get cheap VoIP calls and to get round our do not call regs. Then we will make it illegal for your products to be traded, sold or delivered in our country.
If you take away the market, then hopefully telemarketers will stop.
I've tried converting people to Linux, most have been quite happy until they found a cool piece of software and then realised they had to start editing the configure files. And all because the developer devloped it on another distro.
Most users don't just want consistency, they want ease of use. What sort of OS requires a substantial chunk of software to be compiled by the user? Why do different distros have completely different configuation tools? Why does one OS need so many IM clients, when it still doesn't have a decent vector drawing app?
One word: Polish! Thats what Linux needs. The Linux community needs to address some pretty basic issues regarding usability and consistency. Theres too many developers and not enough usability bods. Under the hood Linux is pretty damn good, but it'll never take on Windows until it gets a reputation for ease of use, consistency and a 'wow' factor.
This systems looks very similar to screens I've seen in pubs and shopping centres. Instead of a fancy holgrapic system, all that is used is a bog-standard projector and a piece of frosted glass.
My employment contract states quite clearly that I do not discuss company policy outside of the company. If I do then I'll be picking up my P45!
Just about every other company has similar clauses in employment contracts, I would presume Google does too.
If the guy has been sacked then its his fault. This ain't a good-or-evil company issue, its simply a case of someone breaching his terms of employment, simple as that. I can't see what Google has done wrong here.
Apart from the obvious hole BT have dug themselves in to, this goes to show that perhaps BT should employ more experienced staff to look after their high-profile websites. If the techie concerned thought Lynx was dodgy then clearly he hasn't been using the internet all that long.
...an engineer by the name of Delia Derbyshire could get sound generators to do stuff even the designers had no idea they were capable of.
How could you mention Delia Derbyshire without mentioning the rather famous sci-fi TV theme tune she realised from the music by Ron Grainger?
Why is it such an issue?
on
Digital Packrats
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· Score: 2, Insightful
This story makes me wonder why some people are making an issue out of digital weight. I have stacks of CDs and DVDs loaded with all sorts of stuff I'll probably never use again. So what? All my important data stays on my PC and gets backed up occasionally to a CD-RW.
I can't see whats wrong with having so much digital data. In fact I get a wee bit excited when I go throught a CD I recorded several years ago and find an old photo or video I'd forgotten all about.
I know people who have got CS degrees from several different universitys, including the University of Manchester and "new university's" (the dozens of polytechnics that became full uni's in the 80s/90s).
The people I know from Manchester haven't faired particulalrly better or worse job-wise from uni's with less well known CS departments. Employers recruit on merit and ability, a degree just gets your foot in the door. There is one obvious exception, if you want to work in R&D heavy companies or work in academia, a red brick degree will definately help. I found this out when I applied to do a Phd only to be told my new university degree didn't carry as much weight with the admissions board as would a red brick degree. I suppose it boils down to a belief that the older a univeristy is the more it encourages theoretical thinking (or something like that).
For me its all academic really, I gave up working in IT as I got dissolusioned with the way the industry was going, far too cut-throat and lack of job security.
Well I for one am definately buying more albums as a result of exploring new (to me) music on P2P networks. I'd never heard of Vanglis before P2P came along, now I own his entire back catalog. Surely, I'm not the only one like this?
I've had my mother moaning to me all week because her pension has ben delayed. She decided now was the time to have her pension paid in to her bank account instead of being paid by order book. She only decided to do this because the DSS were bugging her to do so as they are doing away with order books. I think EDS and the government should be apolgising to all the people who will undoubtably be in the same predicament as me ma.
The whole concept of Sealand is a wee bit mad. Despite what the 'King' of Sealand says, no one recognises it as a proper country. If Sealand were to start offering services that annoys business interests in the UK or elsewhere, I'm sure the UK goverment would be quite happy to go out and demolish the platform and thus no more Sealand.
Anyone who thinks Sealand affords them any form of legal protection would be as mad the Sealand King himslef.
I know a few friends who run one man software firms. They aren't true software firms though. Their main focus of work is in devoping bespoke software (scripts, really) to integrate office aplications. Most of their work comes from local companies who would like fancy financial manamgement systems, but can't afford them. So they turn to local programmers to code something that makes MS Office look like SAP. Theres also a fair bit of web development work tied in to their businesses as well.
The days where one man could develop a major piece of software on his own are diminshing fast. Its not a skills issue, nor a patent issues (I live in the UK where software patents aren't an issue, yet!). Its simply a resource issue. Coding tools are expensive. Clients wan't quality control and performance guarantees, that one-man operations can't provide. There is the technology explosion where a coder has to be an expert in multiple languages and technologies so that he can have the widest audience for his work. If someone does get lucky and develops something truly amazing, then there is a risk that a software house with more resources will copy that programs functionality and the lone coder will get nothing for his efforts.
The lone coders I know make a decent enough living, they can pay the bills and go out for a few drinks, but they won't be buying a BMW anytime soon. Theres street sweepers who earn more than they do, which is actually quite a depressing thought.
I've seen loads of LCD monitors in action and never seen anything like that.
The company I work for is replacing the CRT's in its computerised signalboxes with LCD panels, they wouldn't be doing this if there was a time lag issue with such monitors. It would become a safety issue when you are controlling high-speed train movements.
If you ask me, its definately a problem with the OP's setup. After all, would LCD's be seeling in such numnbers if it was a known problem?
If youve got a lot of gear to protect one of the large secure steel tool cabinets you see on building sites would do the job. You can buy them from most professional building supplies stores. They are very heavy duty and have plenty of locking and anchoring points. Only downside to this is that it is a bit of a clumsy solution and you have to remember to lock it when you leave. But it will be the most secure you are going to get, short of buying a safe.
IMHO there is no right or wrong way to approach this. There is always a temptation to lie and you may find that you can get away with lying, but how can you be sure your next potential employer won't find out?
I've been in a similar situation. I accounted for gaps in my employment record with total honesty. I tended to use positive phrases such as "Seeking Employment" as oppsed to just "Unemployed". If you've done any training in jobless periods, say so as it can only help improve your appearance to a potential employer. Recruiters have to be realists, people do get made redundant, its a fact of life.
No matter what you may think, lying can have dire consequences. Especially now with the companies like Equifax offering the employment market equivilent to credit referencing.
Its a two way process. Would you consider a company that recruits people who lie to be a company that has a good future? I'd prefer to work for a comany which makes sure its employees are suitably qualified and experienced.
A good example of the hazzards of lying would be with a company used to work for. A new guy started as a VB developer. After two days someone from HR came down to speak to him. They went off in to a break out room. He was escorted out five minutes later in tears, while someone else cleared his desk for him. Turns out he'd been less than honest on his application. He had been found out because someone who used to work for the comany he had claimed to have worked at, mentioned in passing "I don't remember him". A few phone calls were made and he was out the door.
I work for a large British railway infrastrucure provider, i.e. Network Rail!
We are are on the slippery slope to adopting Linux.
A lot of our internal finance systems are being switched over to the Oracle/Java E-business suite on Linux servers.
OK we are still on NT 4 desktops (we are very, very conservative as regards IT infrastructure). We will switch to Win2K desktops eventually. However, what happens after that is anyones guess. We already stripped Unisys of their IT support contract to save money, all our IT staff are now in-house. Linux does seem the next logical step. Several senior IT staff have hinted to me that wide-scale Linux adoption may be the next step they take.
We want cheap, very cheap. If we can train our own in-house IT staff to support Linux without having to pay outside companies then all the well.
Once companies realise that they can have a comprehensive and reliable IT infrastructure based on Linux, without havong to employ an outside firm such as Sun or IBM then Linux will become a big thing.
And as far as I am concerned the sooner the better!
I was at school when the Domesday project was being built, in fact my school was one the schools responsible for covering part of Carlisle in Cumbria.
Our school bough one of the Domesday kits and on the first day all the teachers were bringing us through in to the library class by class to show it off. This was until one of the teachers dropped one of the discs and it shattered, bearing that in mind I am very surprised there are still discs in woking order after all this time.
I would hope now that they will work on some of the other discs that used the Domesday hardware. I vividly remember a disc that featured an interacitve film. Basically the topic was about wathching a group of kids mucking around and every 2-3 minutes it would freeze and various options would appear over the characters, e.g "Simon calls Peter stupid". Depending on what you chose (using the track ball) the film would take a different path, either they would all go home happy or they would end up in some sort of trouble. Never mind the brainwashing apsects of the film (i.e. don't misbehave kids), the technology was trail blazing. This was in 1987! Years before DVD and even now I've seen very few interactive DVD films.
Aparently there was over an hour of film and 4 possible endings to a 15 minute program on one of those discs. Whats more the system was very quick and totally foolproof.
As an 11 year old obsessed with technology I was in awe of all this fancy equipment, Domesday wasn't just a great archiving project it also introduced some fancy technology which even today seems new fangled.
What the BBC and their partners should have done is to add new material to the Domesday archive every 5 or so years. As well as the obvious enrichment of the archive, this would also mean there was a chance to update the technology in steps in order to keep track with data storage devlopements. Instead once it was finished it was forgotten about, meaning 15 years later when people realise the value of the project you have to get university's on board to make sense of the storage medium, data and software. That would have been a much better way to preserve the data.
This will really worry them then
on
A Tour of Pixar
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· Score: 1
In the UK Stelios Haji-Ioannou, he who founded easyjet and a dozen other budet businessew called easySomething has opened a new business called easyCinema. A budget cinema offering with minimal staff, not even a box office. You have to print a barcode ticket from their booking website and scan it at automated turnstiles to get it.
With the staff numbers cut to the bone, it ain't going to be too hard for people to smuggle in camcorders, which will no doubt worry the studios.
I think the reason why kids don't watch Saturday morning TV anymore is that well, its rubbish!
I live in the UK and I was brought up watching a program in the late70s/early 80s called TISWAS. It was totally revolutionary at the time. Basically the program was based around total anarchy, where kids could gunge adults and the presenters went mad along with the kids in the studio. One thing this program was noted for was as amany adults as kids watched it and there even a late night adult spin off called OTT, which went too far and had to be pulled. TISWAS was fun and I would never ever miss it. It knocked the socks off the BBC's effort of Noel Edmonds Multi Couloured Swap Shop, a kids TV show based around the concept of kids swapping things!
When it was taken off the air in the early 80s, it was replaced by programs that wanted to be like TISWAS, but where the presenters and producers didn't have the will or the guts to pull off some of the stunts that were frequent in TISWAS. As time went on Saturday morning TV got more and more sterile, instead of letting kids let off steam on a Saturday morning, these programs started lecturing kids on how they should live their lives, but more importantly they became big long adverts for the latest band/toy or TV show.
I grew up and stopped watching Saturday morning TV in the late 80s. By that time Saturday Morning programms seemed to be based around modern cartoons made only to get kids to buy the mercandise or having the presenters lick up to some new pop star. That would have never happened on TISWAS, if a pop star wanted to promote a record, they would have to get a soaking and stay in the cage for the duration of the show. Nowadays the PR people would never allow that. There have been a few bright lights since TISWAS I can think of Paralell 9 and No. 73, but on the whole most programs were rubbish.
I put the decline in Saturday morning kids TV down to the gradual commercialisation of the format and the lack of willingness to innovate, simple as that.
Just report them to the police as a nuisance callers. To be fair only do this with persistent callers, you don't want to be annoying the police.
I once had one company call me on a regular basis trying to get me to join some weird racehorse owning syndicate. They certainly did not have my permission to call, I made it very clear they were not to call me again and they kept making repeat calls. In my book that classified them as a nusiance caller. I went to the police and reported them as such and the calls stopped soon after.
Think about it, unsolicited telemarketing calls do fit in to the definition of being a nuisance call. They are unwanted, they don't have permission to call you, they can cause distress (especially when they call when you are doing something important) and most importantly they have a nasty habit of keeping making repeat calls despite being told not to. If you are really being bothered by such calls, just report them to the police as nusiance callers its cheaper than taking them to court. Plus police action takes the form of a crminal complaint, as opposed to court action which is a civil action, criminal action is more likely to scare the telemarketers.
In the UK the online version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire used to have full screen adverts. If you used IE a new window in kiosk mode would open and a flash animation would play out. Whats bad enough is the huge obnoxious advert, whats worse is that the task bar is hidden. For me that wasn't a problem, I just hit Alt-F4, but for less computer literate users they must have been annoyed/panicked when this happened.
I might be wrong, but surely covering the taskbar and denying the user the means to control their computer must break some sort of law? Even if it is only for a few seconds?
These ads didn't seem to be used for too long, so that must say something about how effective they were. Thank goodness for Mozilla!
Slashdot Mirror
There is no right answer to this conundrum simply because there are too many variables.
-Some policemen will be honourable sticklers for the rules and would never interpret silence as a sign of guilt.
-Alternatively, some take the default position that silence = something to hide.
-Some are masters of language and will twist what little you have or have not said to make you squirm and say more.
-Plus you never know what other people are saying, are they making a liar out of you?
Rather than try to answer an unanswerable question, it would be better for people to be more educated about how law enforcement works so that they can make informed decisions should they find themselves in a situation where a policeman is asking questions.
In my experience the most important thing is to document what you are going to do in detail and make sure the client understands.
Produce mockups of the finished site and any backend admin interfaces. Specify what functionality the site has and be clear about any functionality that is being omitted.
For example, if you develop a CMS that requires the user to process story images offline in an editor like Photoshop, then make sure the cleint understands. If you don't many clueless clients will assume that the CMS will handle it for them and get upset whent they learn otherwise. If you don't adequately document the deliverables the client will most likely demand changes during the development process.
Keep contracts simple, specify what you are going to deliver and when and also touch on rights and who will own the resulting IP on the site/code. Do insert something to say that the client cannot withold payment if you are late becuase of something you need from the client. E.g. the code is complete and you need images from the client to let the site go live and they will not supply them. This can be done without scary legalese. The law provides a certain amount of legal protection that you do not need to repeat in a contract. You do not need to mention that you will sue your client if they don't pay, you have that legal right to begin with.
Accept that you will be learning as you go along. You will encounter bad clients, but you will learn from that and know what sort of clients to avoid in future.
Also, be very careful about tax! Be honest and keep money aside to pay it when due.
I turned down a development job with a bank as they wanted to do a security screen on my wife.
I will admit that they did say they would still employ me even if my wife refused permission to do the screen. However, I did pick up the distinct impression that they wouldn't be very happy if my she were to refuse the screening.
They can check me all they want (bar fingerprints), but my wife has nothing to do with it.
I worked for a Stream International for a few months. When I worked there they provided support for HP, Compaq, Dell and a few other smaller PC manufacturers. I had just finished my computing degree and seeing as there were no decent jobs to be had, I took a job at Stream.
The support we provided was shit, simple as that. A good 90% of reps knew nothing about computers before starting work and were lucky to get 2 weeks of training. The 'mentors' who were supposed to train us were useless as well. There was an obsession with the DOS debug.exe application. They seemed to think it could fix any PC problem. I did try to explain it was more of a programmers tool, but they wouldn't listen. Outside of the big name contracts (i.e. the smaller PC makers) there was a policy of making the caller do a low level format of their system (using debug.exe WTF?) and re-install Windows before an engineer was sent out. I once took a call from an elderly chap who had been forced to reformat his system twice and lose all his data, simply because his keyboard was set to the US layout rather than the UK layout. I got sick of the low wages and questionable ethics and left the place after three months.
Most PC manufacturers see support as an expense they need to minimise, so it is inevitable support quality will suffer. My experience taught me never to use technical support lines ever again.
Maybe I'm looking at this in a too simplistic way, but why not make it illegal for telemarkers who circumvent national do not call lists to trade.
Or to put it another way - if you go to India to get cheap VoIP calls and to get round our do not call regs. Then we will make it illegal for your products to be traded, sold or delivered in our country.
If you take away the market, then hopefully telemarketers will stop.
I've tried converting people to Linux, most have been quite happy until they found a cool piece of software and then realised they had to start editing the configure files. And all because the developer devloped it on another distro.
Most users don't just want consistency, they want ease of use. What sort of OS requires a substantial chunk of software to be compiled by the user? Why do different distros have completely different configuation tools? Why does one OS need so many IM clients, when it still doesn't have a decent vector drawing app?
One word: Polish! Thats what Linux needs. The Linux community needs to address some pretty basic issues regarding usability and consistency. Theres too many developers and not enough usability bods. Under the hood Linux is pretty damn good, but it'll never take on Windows until it gets a reputation for ease of use, consistency and a 'wow' factor.
This systems looks very similar to screens I've seen in pubs and shopping centres. Instead of a fancy holgrapic system, all that is used is a bog-standard projector and a piece of frosted glass.
My employment contract states quite clearly that I do not discuss company policy outside of the company. If I do then I'll be picking up my P45!
Just about every other company has similar clauses in employment contracts, I would presume Google does too.
If the guy has been sacked then its his fault. This ain't a good-or-evil company issue, its simply a case of someone breaching his terms of employment, simple as that. I can't see what Google has done wrong here.
Apart from the obvious hole BT have dug themselves in to, this goes to show that perhaps BT should employ more experienced staff to look after their high-profile websites. If the techie concerned thought Lynx was dodgy then clearly he hasn't been using the internet all that long.
...an engineer by the name of Delia Derbyshire could get sound generators to do stuff even the designers had no idea they were capable of.
How could you mention Delia Derbyshire without mentioning the rather famous sci-fi TV theme tune she realised from the music by Ron Grainger?
This story makes me wonder why some people are making an issue out of digital weight. I have stacks of CDs and DVDs loaded with all sorts of stuff I'll probably never use again. So what? All my important data stays on my PC and gets backed up occasionally to a CD-RW.
I can't see whats wrong with having so much digital data. In fact I get a wee bit excited when I go throught a CD I recorded several years ago and find an old photo or video I'd forgotten all about.
Or are they trying to flog Toshiba hard drives?
I know people who have got CS degrees from several different universitys, including the University of Manchester and "new university's" (the dozens of polytechnics that became full uni's in the 80s/90s).
The people I know from Manchester haven't faired particulalrly better or worse job-wise from uni's with less well known CS departments. Employers recruit on merit and ability, a degree just gets your foot in the door. There is one obvious exception, if you want to work in R&D heavy companies or work in academia, a red brick degree will definately help. I found this out when I applied to do a Phd only to be told my new university degree didn't carry as much weight with the admissions board as would a red brick degree. I suppose it boils down to a belief that the older a univeristy is the more it encourages theoretical thinking (or something like that).
For me its all academic really, I gave up working in IT as I got dissolusioned with the way the industry was going, far too cut-throat and lack of job security.
Well I for one am definately buying more albums as a result of exploring new (to me) music on P2P networks. I'd never heard of Vanglis before P2P came along, now I own his entire back catalog. Surely, I'm not the only one like this?
I've had my mother moaning to me all week because her pension has ben delayed. She decided now was the time to have her pension paid in to her bank account instead of being paid by order book. She only decided to do this because the DSS were bugging her to do so as they are doing away with order books. I think EDS and the government should be apolgising to all the people who will undoubtably be in the same predicament as me ma.
The whole concept of Sealand is a wee bit mad. Despite what the 'King' of Sealand says, no one recognises it as a proper country. If Sealand were to start offering services that annoys business interests in the UK or elsewhere, I'm sure the UK goverment would be quite happy to go out and demolish the platform and thus no more Sealand.
Anyone who thinks Sealand affords them any form of legal protection would be as mad the Sealand King himslef.
I know a few friends who run one man software firms. They aren't true software firms though. Their main focus of work is in devoping bespoke software (scripts, really) to integrate office aplications. Most of their work comes from local companies who would like fancy financial manamgement systems, but can't afford them. So they turn to local programmers to code something that makes MS Office look like SAP. Theres also a fair bit of web development work tied in to their businesses as well.
The days where one man could develop a major piece of software on his own are diminshing fast. Its not a skills issue, nor a patent issues (I live in the UK where software patents aren't an issue, yet!). Its simply a resource issue. Coding tools are expensive. Clients wan't quality control and performance guarantees, that one-man operations can't provide. There is the technology explosion where a coder has to be an expert in multiple languages and technologies so that he can have the widest audience for his work. If someone does get lucky and develops something truly amazing, then there is a risk that a software house with more resources will copy that programs functionality and the lone coder will get nothing for his efforts.
The lone coders I know make a decent enough living, they can pay the bills and go out for a few drinks, but they won't be buying a BMW anytime soon. Theres street sweepers who earn more than they do, which is actually quite a depressing thought.
I've seen loads of LCD monitors in action and never seen anything like that.
The company I work for is replacing the CRT's in its computerised signalboxes with LCD panels, they wouldn't be doing this if there was a time lag issue with such monitors. It would become a safety issue when you are controlling high-speed train movements.
If you ask me, its definately a problem with the OP's setup. After all, would LCD's be seeling in such numnbers if it was a known problem?
If youve got a lot of gear to protect one of the large secure steel tool cabinets you see on building sites would do the job. You can buy them from most professional building supplies stores. They are very heavy duty and have plenty of locking and anchoring points. Only downside to this is that it is a bit of a clumsy solution and you have to remember to lock it when you leave. But it will be the most secure you are going to get, short of buying a safe.
IMHO there is no right or wrong way to approach this. There is always a temptation to lie and you may find that you can get away with lying, but how can you be sure your next potential employer won't find out?
I've been in a similar situation. I accounted for gaps in my employment record with total honesty. I tended to use positive phrases such as "Seeking Employment" as oppsed to just "Unemployed". If you've done any training in jobless periods, say so as it can only help improve your appearance to a potential employer. Recruiters have to be realists, people do get made redundant, its a fact of life.
No matter what you may think, lying can have dire consequences. Especially now with the companies like Equifax offering the employment market equivilent to credit referencing.
Its a two way process. Would you consider a company that recruits people who lie to be a company that has a good future? I'd prefer to work for a comany which makes sure its employees are suitably qualified and experienced.
A good example of the hazzards of lying would be with a company used to work for. A new guy started as a VB developer. After two days someone from HR came down to speak to him. They went off in to a break out room. He was escorted out five minutes later in tears, while someone else cleared his desk for him. Turns out he'd been less than honest on his application. He had been found out because someone who used to work for the comany he had claimed to have worked at, mentioned in passing "I don't remember him". A few phone calls were made and he was out the door.
Honesty will always pay off in the end.
I work for a large British railway infrastrucure provider, i.e. Network Rail!
We are are on the slippery slope to adopting Linux.
A lot of our internal finance systems are being switched over to the Oracle/Java E-business suite on Linux servers.
OK we are still on NT 4 desktops (we are very, very conservative as regards IT infrastructure). We will switch to Win2K desktops eventually. However, what happens after that is anyones guess. We already stripped Unisys of their IT support contract to save money, all our IT staff are now in-house. Linux does seem the next logical step. Several senior IT staff have hinted to me that wide-scale Linux adoption may be the next step they take.
We want cheap, very cheap. If we can train our own in-house IT staff to support Linux without having to pay outside companies then all the well.
Once companies realise that they can have a comprehensive and reliable IT infrastructure based on Linux, without havong to employ an outside firm such as Sun or IBM then Linux will become a big thing.
And as far as I am concerned the sooner the better!
I was at school when the Domesday project was being built, in fact my school was one the schools responsible for covering part of Carlisle in Cumbria.
Our school bough one of the Domesday kits and on the first day all the teachers were bringing us through in to the library class by class to show it off. This was until one of the teachers dropped one of the discs and it shattered, bearing that in mind I am very surprised there are still discs in woking order after all this time.
I would hope now that they will work on some of the other discs that used the Domesday hardware. I vividly remember a disc that featured an interacitve film. Basically the topic was about wathching a group of kids mucking around and every 2-3 minutes it would freeze and various options would appear over the characters, e.g "Simon calls Peter stupid". Depending on what you chose (using the track ball) the film would take a different path, either they would all go home happy or they would end up in some sort of trouble. Never mind the brainwashing apsects of the film (i.e. don't misbehave kids), the technology was trail blazing. This was in 1987! Years before DVD and even now I've seen very few interactive DVD films.
Aparently there was over an hour of film and 4 possible endings to a 15 minute program on one of those discs. Whats more the system was very quick and totally foolproof.
As an 11 year old obsessed with technology I was in awe of all this fancy equipment, Domesday wasn't just a great archiving project it also introduced some fancy technology which even today seems new fangled.
What the BBC and their partners should have done is to add new material to the Domesday archive every 5 or so years. As well as the obvious enrichment of the archive, this would also mean there was a chance to update the technology in steps in order to keep track with data storage devlopements. Instead once it was finished it was forgotten about, meaning 15 years later when people realise the value of the project you have to get university's on board to make sense of the storage medium, data and software. That would have been a much better way to preserve the data.
In the UK Stelios Haji-Ioannou, he who founded easyjet and a dozen other budet businessew called easySomething has opened a new business called easyCinema. A budget cinema offering with minimal staff, not even a box office. You have to print a barcode ticket from their booking website and scan it at automated turnstiles to get it.
With the staff numbers cut to the bone, it ain't going to be too hard for people to smuggle in camcorders, which will no doubt worry the studios.
I think the reason why kids don't watch Saturday morning TV anymore is that well, its rubbish!
I live in the UK and I was brought up watching a program in the late70s/early 80s called TISWAS. It was totally revolutionary at the time. Basically the program was based around total anarchy, where kids could gunge adults and the presenters went mad along with the kids in the studio. One thing this program was noted for was as amany adults as kids watched it and there even a late night adult spin off called OTT, which went too far and had to be pulled. TISWAS was fun and I would never ever miss it. It knocked the socks off the BBC's effort of Noel Edmonds Multi Couloured Swap Shop, a kids TV show based around the concept of kids swapping things!
When it was taken off the air in the early 80s, it was replaced by programs that wanted to be like TISWAS, but where the presenters and producers didn't have the will or the guts to pull off some of the stunts that were frequent in TISWAS. As time went on Saturday morning TV got more and more sterile, instead of letting kids let off steam on a Saturday morning, these programs started lecturing kids on how they should live their lives, but more importantly they became big long adverts for the latest band/toy or TV show.
I grew up and stopped watching Saturday morning TV in the late 80s. By that time Saturday Morning programms seemed to be based around modern cartoons made only to get kids to buy the mercandise or having the presenters lick up to some new pop star. That would have never happened on TISWAS, if a pop star wanted to promote a record, they would have to get a soaking and stay in the cage for the duration of the show. Nowadays the PR people would never allow that. There have been a few bright lights since TISWAS I can think of Paralell 9 and No. 73, but on the whole most programs were rubbish.
I put the decline in Saturday morning kids TV down to the gradual commercialisation of the format and the lack of willingness to innovate, simple as that.
Just report them to the police as a nuisance callers. To be fair only do this with persistent callers, you don't want to be annoying the police.
I once had one company call me on a regular basis trying to get me to join some weird racehorse owning syndicate. They certainly did not have my permission to call, I made it very clear they were not to call me again and they kept making repeat calls. In my book that classified them as a nusiance caller. I went to the police and reported them as such and the calls stopped soon after.
Think about it, unsolicited telemarketing calls do fit in to the definition of being a nuisance call. They are unwanted, they don't have permission to call you, they can cause distress (especially when they call when you are doing something important) and most importantly they have a nasty habit of keeping making repeat calls despite being told not to. If you are really being bothered by such calls, just report them to the police as nusiance callers its cheaper than taking them to court. Plus police action takes the form of a crminal complaint, as opposed to court action which is a civil action, criminal action is more likely to scare the telemarketers.
In the UK the online version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire used to have full screen adverts. If you used IE a new window in kiosk mode would open and a flash animation would play out. Whats bad enough is the huge obnoxious advert, whats worse is that the task bar is hidden. For me that wasn't a problem, I just hit Alt-F4, but for less computer literate users they must have been annoyed/panicked when this happened.
I might be wrong, but surely covering the taskbar and denying the user the means to control their computer must break some sort of law? Even if it is only for a few seconds?
These ads didn't seem to be used for too long, so that must say something about how effective they were. Thank goodness for Mozilla!