There's not a whole lot of danger to this
on
Getting More Face Time
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Facial transplants could help so many, from folks who've survived car accidents to (as mentioned in one article) cancer patients to kids with birth defects. The surgery at best would provide the image of a normal, healthy, whole face, which is how we get a lot of non-verbal information from people. It's not like there would be a strong resemblence to the deceased due to differences in not only bone struction, but also in habitual expressions and personality.
There's really not much chance of any one person being able to "steal" another's family or life with this technology. The recipient would have to 1) have the same physical structure, 2) be one fantastic actor, and 3) manage to imitate body odor as well. While the third may seem trivial, there's a lot of research regarding pheromone-immune system links to mate selection. The transplanted party's significant others and pets would still recognize him or her via smell.
The Federal Communications Commission in June revoked EchoStar's license for using the high-speed Ka-band frequency because it said the satellite TV company missed construction milestones.
EchoStar immediately appealed and submitted a photograph of a satellite under construction with the high-speed capability.
Gee, maybe all Saddam has to provide is photographic evidence and an appeal to overcome US objections to missing disarmament deadlines?;)
Unfortunately, $27,000 is just the software savings and it would be offset by the cost of the extra support staff. Realistically, most of the affected schools are not going to have IT staff capable of supporting all the packages listed whick will require hiring additional people or training those already in place. Nonetheless, using open-source software for back-end applications could pay off in additional system reliability.
Setting up user systems to work with OSS would be another story. As unpleasant as it is, most educators are at least passing familiar with standard m$ products & can use them with minimal effort. Retraining all teachers to use and teach with computer-based Open Source educational products would be much more expensive.
An additional problem is that - unless there is a dramatic shift in OS and office system usage over the next 6-8 years - most of the kids going through that school system will be hired by companies using m$ products. Teaching them to work with systems they may never encounter in Real Life (such as the Apple IIe's in my old school) is a disservice.
I do like the idea of using Open Source systems in our public schools & see it as a great way to diversify & cut costs. However, there are a lot of other issues to consider other than direct savings on software.
... as far as these things go. Considering that their losses are down to under $6 million/ year (per their last quarterly SEC filing), and that their income is up $0.5 million from a year ago while they've cut non-content-related (i.e. marketing and administrative) expenses by the same about, they could be viable in a few more years.
It would take less than 200,000 new subscribers at the $30 rate for them to break even, less than 7% of the 2.7 million unique visitors they cite for December 2000. The main problem, of course, is time.
Salon has been around since the beginning of the internet boom & have a loyal reader base. Unfortuntely, most of their readers are used to getting their info for free & at this point it's going to be an uphill battle to convince folks to cough up for what they've been using all along. Will they be able to do so before they have to declare bankruptcy? Let's hope not.
Somethingawful.com featured a Photoshopped French stamp bearing Fermat's likeness. Someone had changed the text to read "I have discovered a truly remarkable joke that this stamp is too small to contain."
(I wish I could find the link to the original, but I dare not bring up that site here at work!)
And why would anyone care about the former Rolling Stone?
His use of the domain name for individual promotion isn't any more critical to his career than the present owner. It certainly wasn't important enough for him to register it when it was available.
Perhaps he could learn a lesson from his former band mates? The Rolling Stones are well known, but nonetheless they've certainly have a reasonable understanding with the magazine of the same name.
Why couldn't the *former* member compromise about this as well (especially since the owner was born wtih that name)? billwyman.org or williamwyman.com or any of a dozen variants are readily available.
Mr. Friedman makes a number of good points in his case, but he overlooks one major requirement for a reputation: a fixed public identity. In the case of the diamond dealers cited in the article, each dealer was known throughout the community, if not to every individual, at least to every dealer's uncle's best friend, etc. Getting caught doing something dishonest brought down the censure of the entire community: extended family, friends, congregation members & leaders, neighbors. Other dealers, especially would be likely to boycott and direct customers away from an unethical persont to protect the entire industry.
In the case of the internet, there is no single "community." The anonymous nature of the media makes pinning a particular crime to a particular individual much more difficult. Use of aliases and private identities allows people to engage in virtual activities they would not consider in real life. For example, many pedophiles have managed to amuse themselves without families or spouses being aware of nature of their online activities until the police showed up. Your neighbor may regularly rip people off on eBay, but if you don't shop there or simply don't know his eBay identity, then you'll never know. Were he caught shoplifting down the street, he'd be likely to move out of embarassment, but on the internet he can safely defraud people hundreds of kilometers away.
No, if anything *more* legal survelliance and action is needed to improve the cybereconomy, not less. Until there is as great a certainty that online crimes will be caught and punished to the same degree as their Real Life counterparts online business will not have the credability (much less the overall profitability) of brick-and-mortar stores.
This is a silly thing to say, since by reading only published books you are in fact doing precisely that.
This is a silly assumption, as I never said I read only published books. I simply do not care to read books online, preferring the comfort and social aspects of Real Life.
How many unpublished manuscripts have you read? Ever?
Quite a few, actually. *None* of them online, however & most of them in someone's living room.
A number of my friends are writers & poets, most of whom are unpublished. One of the great things about socializing in Real Life is getting leads for great material you'd otherwise never look at, published or unpublished. (How many folks today will voluntarily pick up "Return of the Native" or "The Inferno"?)
Perhaps someday someone will point out a gem online & maybe I'll print it out in small font with narrow margins and read it. When most of one's literary social circle doesn't use computers for other than e-mail and word processing, however, that's highly unlikely.
When I pick up a book, it is to escape from staring at the monitor all day. I like to kick back with a nice hot cup of tea and one of my cats in my lap & relax, which somehow isn't possible even with my comfy computer setup.
While I have never depended on a "publisher to make an editorial decision," I do depend on my friends & get most of my recommendations from folks who only turn on a PC to check e-mail. This resulted in my dropping over $100 yesterday, alone on stuff such as Dylan Thomas, Bukowski, Pratchett, Le Guin, Naipail, and Hardy. Many of these are copyrighted classics that won't be available online for another 75+ years and all are well worth paying $7-35 for a lifetime of enjoyment. Yes, they'll sit on my shelf and represent killed trees, but the electricity required to power my PC long enough was probably generated with coal that will shorten the lives of even more trees and people as well. My library, on the other hand, is passed around to all my interested friends and family, a warm, physical, and comforting way to share enjoyment of the greatest poetry and prose. As with all great electronic innovations, "free" online books bypass the enjoyable interpersonal element, be it of sharing a story or chatting with the librarian.
Yes, there could be some great literature online & maybe someday I'll find something work getting a headache to read. For now, however, I'm content with a system that ain't broke; the bookstore when I've got the money and the library when I don't.
Most of all of these problems boil down to simple rudeness and inconsideration. It wouldn't be so bad if theater managers would post basic rules for consideration and *enforce* them. I've hardly seen a movie in a theater since the people I was with complained four times about the shrieking and popcorn-throwing kiddies to no avail. The theater had already got its $5 matinee charge from all of us and really didn't care if anyone left early.
Great for them 'cause I've not been back & that had *nothing* to do with DVDs. I don't even have a home theater. A simple PC works fine.
Given the current state of the industry - and Apple's situation in general - one would think any move that would cut the costs of hosting and attending a trade convention would be appreciated. Perhaps they dislike leaving the Big Apple for symbolic reasons?
If my math is correct, about 230 million suns could fit into that same volume, so it doesn't impress me that the claimed mass of the black hole is only between 2.6 and 3.7 million times that of the sun.
As I understand it, all the mass of a black hole is compressed into a singularity at the center of an event horizon with the volume between effectively empty. The impressive thing about a black hole is the incredible density of the compacted mass at the center, not the distance at which the black hole starts taking effect or the actual mass in the middle.
WRT the provability of the existence of God - I'm curious...what evidence would be sufficient to convince you?
How about consistent, reproducible, scientific evidence?
Oh, wait, in order to meet scientific standards, you must have a falsifiable hypothesis. Unfortunately the definition of God prevents testing of the falsifiable hypothesis "There is a God."
I choose to err on the side of simplicity, with an infinite and random universe that is large enough for extremely unlikely events (such as life and evolution) to occur. There's no need for a higher power to explain anything, just a sufficiently large universe.
It's long been an easy way for the clueless to get online with a minimum of pain or actually having to learn anything. I definitely plan to get my mother online via AOL so I can pawn her whiny phone calls off on the poor AOL staffers who are paid to deal with the functionally computer illiterate. It's what they're there for. Since there will always be newbies and the terminally cluefree, there will always be a market for products like AOL. It's ultimate niche may not be the massive media-infotainment-merchandising one-stop shop that they've aspired to, but it they focus on their original & enduring strenth, they will remain viable, although much reduced.
Besides, while they do open the floodgates for any idiot to get online, put up a cheesy webpage, and harass the knowledgeable, they also make it easier to set up filters for my hotmail account. I have all aol.com addy's blocked.
How quickly the former bastion of communism has adopted such a thoroughly democratic and capitalistic means of funding its space program. They could not get ahead under the old forced-contribution system so now they beat the US at their own game, getting those most interested and enthusiastic about space to pay for their research. I'm glad there's still such originality and creativity in science, even if it's mostly seen in creative means of scraping for funding.
... and for a chunk less than I paid for my then-topline "Beam Me Up Scotty" model Motorola a couple of years ago. It looks a little awkward for use as a cell phone (I prefer flip-open models) and a little small for a PDA, but I'd definitely be interested when mine finally breaks.
... is the additional requirement to register all "critical databases":
"The protection of sensitive data is essential for a functioning of a modern society. As stated in the Electronic Communications and Transaction Act, the information that is of importance to the protection of the national security of the country or the economic and social well-being will be declared as critical. All critical databases will be identified and registered with the Department of Communications which includes the details of the database administrator, the location of the database and the general description of the categories or types of information stored in the critical database.The registered information will be treated as confidential. The protection, management and control of critical databases must comply with the minimum standards that might be prescribed by the Minister. The audit will be performed, from time to time either by Cyber Inspectors or an independent auditor to evaluate the compliance."
Given such vague standards for "critical" almost *any* commercial database could be deemed "of importance to the protection of the national security of the country or the economic and social well-being." Amazon.com's database contains names and addresses of persons purchasing "how-to" books on terrorism and building bombs? It's critical! A Pr0n site has kept track of all visitors? Some of them *might* be criminals and dangerous to "social well-being."
Yes, there's also issues with persons living in SA downloading crypto software from foreign companies that haven't registered (are they liable or not?), but most of that is easily bypassed. Just have a visitor bring the "protected" code in on a floppy and distribute it internally.
The database restrictions have much more serious implications...
While having periphials talk directly to each other is a nice idea in theory, getting equipment manufacturers to settle on communications and driver standards to make it happen will be extremely difficult.
If a standard does grow out of this innovation, it will make life a *lot* easier for all the kind folks writing Linux drivers for obscure devices.
Very true. Perhaps I should have clarified that my vision is terrible - ~3.75 and ~4.75 - and has slowly been getting worse all my life. In my case, the odds of coming out worse in the long run are fairly small. For someone with reasonable vision, no, gains from the surgery would not be worth the risk.
... a couple of the developers I work with have had corrective eye surgery and have wonderful things to say about it. One fellow even had the new LADIK procedure and was back at work programming the next day. Yes, there's always risks, but driving to work in a metropolitan area is probably less healthy in the long run.
Hopefully this lawsuit will be the first of many. If enough states jump on the bandwagon & make it easier for private individuals to sue, this crap can at least be pushed out of the US (or any other country that set a good precedent). A few class-action lawsuits with only 10-20,000 offended parties receiving $100-500 apiece plus legal fees would go a *long* way to making spam economically unfeasible.
Tracking spammed e-mail addresses and affected ISPs would be the biggest challange, but a database set up to process forwarded spam (such as (uce@ftc.gov) could provide plenty of evidence as to the extent of the problem and damages. Set up a system so persons who use it reap the rewards of successful spammer prosecutions & you have the perfect incentive to get people to report this superficially "harmless" crime.
... unfortunately, I don't have my research library at hand. However, I will try to get back to you with empirical data. Until then, here's a few suggestions:
You've already identified one of the main reasons for maintaining the status quo: if you are considering quitting over this, most likely many other employees are as well. Given the cost of recruiting and training new people, eliminating flex time could prove extremely costly. I'd suggest providing The Powers That Be with an off-the-cuff cost-benefit analysis. an informal survey of your work group to get % consider leaving & % likihood that they would consider leaving. Figure in average recruiting (HR man-hours, signing bonuses, advertising - usually $5-10k per hire in tech companies), training, and lost productivity costs and you have a rough estimate of the *immediate* cost of the policy change:
# of affected employees x % who would consider leaving x % likelihood of leaving x replacement cost per person
You can also point out that a fixed-schedule is not necessitated by your industry. As a rule of thumb, flex-time is not appropriate for industries that need to meet regular, daily deadlines - e.g. finance, education, transportation, broadcasting, etc. - but is of extreme utility in those with sporadic but major deadlines, such as software development. As noted by many others already, it allows workers to satisfactorily meet both personal and work needs.
Also, again as noted, flex-time allows for persons with non-standard circadian rhythyms to function more effectively. While 60% of the population naturally is most effective between 9am & 5pm (hence the standard business schedule), 40% does not. In cases where someone's natural biorhythym varies from that scedule by more than 6 hours, forcing them onto it can have a serious impact on productivity. (Think of the problems with workers on 2nd shift...)
There's a lot of information available thourgh both the APA (www.apa.org) and the National Institure of Occupational Safety and Health on shiftwork & the benefits of flextime, should you have time to dig. Throwing a bit of research and a few large numbers$ at your managers would definitely help.
Good luck,
"C":)
Slashdot Mirror
Facial transplants could help so many, from folks who've survived car accidents to (as mentioned in one article) cancer patients to kids with birth defects. The surgery at best would provide the image of a normal, healthy, whole face, which is how we get a lot of non-verbal information from people. It's not like there would be a strong resemblence to the deceased due to differences in not only bone struction, but also in habitual expressions and personality.
There's really not much chance of any one person being able to "steal" another's family or life with this technology. The recipient would have to 1) have the same physical structure, 2) be one fantastic actor, and 3) manage to imitate body odor as well. While the third may seem trivial, there's a lot of research regarding pheromone-immune system links to mate selection. The transplanted party's significant others and pets would still recognize him or her via smell.
Just think of the market for music video and movie productions, not to mention overpaid entertainers.
"C"
The Federal Communications Commission in June revoked EchoStar's license for using the high-speed Ka-band frequency because it said the satellite TV company missed construction milestones.
;)
EchoStar immediately appealed and submitted a photograph of a satellite under construction with the high-speed capability.
Gee, maybe all Saddam has to provide is photographic evidence and an appeal to overcome US objections to missing disarmament deadlines?
Unfortunately, $27,000 is just the software savings and it would be offset by the cost of the extra support staff. Realistically, most of the affected schools are not going to have IT staff capable of supporting all the packages listed whick will require hiring additional people or training those already in place. Nonetheless, using open-source software for back-end applications could pay off in additional system reliability.
Setting up user systems to work with OSS would be another story. As unpleasant as it is, most educators are at least passing familiar with standard m$ products & can use them with minimal effort. Retraining all teachers to use and teach with computer-based Open Source educational products would be much more expensive.
An additional problem is that - unless there is a dramatic shift in OS and office system usage over the next 6-8 years - most of the kids going through that school system will be hired by companies using m$ products. Teaching them to work with systems they may never encounter in Real Life (such as the Apple IIe's in my old school) is a disservice.
I do like the idea of using Open Source systems in our public schools & see it as a great way to diversify & cut costs. However, there are a lot of other issues to consider other than direct savings on software.
... as far as these things go. Considering that their losses are down to under $6 million/ year (per their last quarterly SEC filing), and that their income is up $0.5 million from a year ago while they've cut non-content-related (i.e. marketing and administrative) expenses by the same about, they could be viable in a few more years.
It would take less than 200,000 new subscribers at the $30 rate for them to break even, less than 7% of the 2.7 million unique visitors they cite for December 2000.
The main problem, of course, is time.
Salon has been around since the beginning of the internet boom & have a loyal reader base. Unfortuntely, most of their readers are used to getting their info for free & at this point it's going to be an uphill battle to convince folks to cough up for what they've been using all along. Will they be able to do so before they have to declare bankruptcy? Let's hope not.
Somethingawful.com featured a Photoshopped French stamp bearing Fermat's likeness. Someone had changed the text to read "I have discovered a truly remarkable joke that this stamp is too small to contain."
(I wish I could find the link to the original, but I dare not bring up that site here at work!)
So who the heck has heard of Bill Wyman?
And why would anyone care about the former Rolling Stone?
His use of the domain name for individual promotion isn't any more critical to his career than the present owner. It certainly wasn't important enough for him to register it when it was available.
Perhaps he could learn a lesson from his former band mates? The Rolling Stones are well known, but nonetheless they've certainly have a reasonable understanding with the magazine of the same name.
Why couldn't the *former* member compromise about this as well (especially since the owner was born wtih that name)? billwyman.org or williamwyman.com or any of a dozen variants are readily available.
Mr. Friedman makes a number of good points in his case, but he overlooks one major requirement for a reputation: a fixed public identity. In the case of the diamond dealers cited in the article, each dealer was known throughout the community, if not to every individual, at least to every dealer's uncle's best friend, etc. Getting caught doing something dishonest brought down the censure of the entire community: extended family, friends, congregation members & leaders, neighbors. Other dealers, especially would be likely to boycott and direct customers away from an unethical persont to protect the entire industry.
In the case of the internet, there is no single "community." The anonymous nature of the media makes pinning a particular crime to a particular individual much more difficult. Use of aliases and private identities allows people to engage in virtual activities they would not consider in real life. For example, many pedophiles have managed to amuse themselves without families or spouses being aware of nature of their online activities until the police showed up. Your neighbor may regularly rip people off on eBay, but if you don't shop there or simply don't know his eBay identity, then you'll never know. Were he caught shoplifting down the street, he'd be likely to move out of embarassment, but on the internet he can safely defraud people hundreds of kilometers away.
No, if anything *more* legal survelliance and action is needed to improve the cybereconomy, not less. Until there is as great a certainty that online crimes will be caught and punished to the same degree as their Real Life counterparts online business will not have the credability (much less the overall profitability) of brick-and-mortar stores.
This is a silly thing to say, since by reading only published books you are in fact doing precisely that.
This is a silly assumption, as I never said I read only published books. I simply do not care to read books online, preferring the comfort and social aspects of Real Life.
How many unpublished manuscripts have you read? Ever?
Quite a few, actually. *None* of them online, however & most of them in someone's living room.
A number of my friends are writers & poets, most of whom are unpublished. One of the great things about socializing in Real Life is getting leads for great material you'd otherwise never look at, published or unpublished. (How many folks today will voluntarily pick up "Return of the Native" or "The Inferno"?)
Perhaps someday someone will point out a gem online & maybe I'll print it out in small font with narrow margins and read it. When most of one's literary social circle doesn't use computers for other than e-mail and word processing, however, that's highly unlikely.
When I pick up a book, it is to escape from staring at the monitor all day. I like to kick back with a nice hot cup of tea and one of my cats in my lap & relax, which somehow isn't possible even with my comfy computer setup.
While I have never depended on a "publisher to make an editorial decision," I do depend on my friends & get most of my recommendations from folks who only turn on a PC to check e-mail. This resulted in my dropping over $100 yesterday, alone on stuff such as Dylan Thomas, Bukowski, Pratchett, Le Guin, Naipail, and Hardy. Many of these are copyrighted classics that won't be available online for another 75+ years and all are well worth paying $7-35 for a lifetime of enjoyment. Yes, they'll sit on my shelf and represent killed trees, but the electricity required to power my PC long enough was probably generated with coal that will shorten the lives of even more trees and people as well. My library, on the other hand, is passed around to all my interested friends and family, a warm, physical, and comforting way to share enjoyment of the greatest poetry and prose. As with all great electronic innovations, "free" online books bypass the enjoyable interpersonal element, be it of sharing a story or chatting with the librarian.
Yes, there could be some great literature online & maybe someday I'll find something work getting a headache to read. For now, however, I'm content with a system that ain't broke; the bookstore when I've got the money and the library when I don't.
Maybe it's dog-friendly, but at 7.5 pounds how is it going to hold up to the teething Labrador next door?
Sounds like a lot of fun for when the cats misbehave, though.
"Here kitty kitty kitty..."
But how many parents pay attention to that?
Most of all of these problems boil down to simple rudeness and inconsideration. It wouldn't be so bad if theater managers would post basic rules for consideration and *enforce* them. I've hardly seen a movie in a theater since the people I was with complained four times about the shrieking and popcorn-throwing kiddies to no avail. The theater had already got its $5 matinee charge from all of us and really didn't care if anyone left early.
Great for them 'cause I've not been back & that had *nothing* to do with DVDs. I don't even have a home theater. A simple PC works fine.
Given the current state of the industry - and Apple's situation in general - one would think any move that would cut the costs of hosting and attending a trade convention would be appreciated. Perhaps they dislike leaving the Big Apple for symbolic reasons?
If my math is correct, about 230 million suns could fit into that same volume, so it doesn't impress me that the claimed mass of the black hole is only between 2.6 and 3.7 million times that of the sun.
As I understand it, all the mass of a black hole is compressed into a singularity at the center of an event horizon with the volume between effectively empty. The impressive thing about a black hole is the incredible density of the compacted mass at the center, not the distance at which the black hole starts taking effect or the actual mass in the middle.
WRT the provability of the existence of God - I'm curious...what evidence would be sufficient to convince you?
How about consistent, reproducible, scientific evidence?
Oh, wait, in order to meet scientific standards, you must have a falsifiable hypothesis. Unfortunately the definition of God prevents testing of the falsifiable hypothesis "There is a God."
I choose to err on the side of simplicity, with an infinite and random universe that is large enough for extremely unlikely events (such as life and evolution) to occur. There's no need for a higher power to explain anything, just a sufficiently large universe.
"C"
It's long been an easy way for the clueless to get online with a minimum of pain or actually having to learn anything. I definitely plan to get my mother online via AOL so I can pawn her whiny phone calls off on the poor AOL staffers who are paid to deal with the functionally computer illiterate. It's what they're there for. Since there will always be newbies and the terminally cluefree, there will always be a market for products like AOL. It's ultimate niche may not be the massive media-infotainment-merchandising one-stop shop that they've aspired to, but it they focus on their original & enduring strenth, they will remain viable, although much reduced.
;)
Besides, while they do open the floodgates for any idiot to get online, put up a cheesy webpage, and harass the knowledgeable, they also make it easier to set up filters for my hotmail account. I have all aol.com addy's blocked.
"C"
How quickly the former bastion of communism has adopted such a thoroughly democratic and capitalistic means of funding its space program. They could not get ahead under the old forced-contribution system so now they beat the US at their own game, getting those most interested and enthusiastic about space to pay for their research. I'm glad there's still such originality and creativity in science, even if it's mostly seen in creative means of scraping for funding.
... and for a chunk less than I paid for my then-topline "Beam Me Up Scotty" model Motorola a couple of years ago. It looks a little awkward for use as a cell phone (I prefer flip-open models) and a little small for a PDA, but I'd definitely be interested when mine finally breaks.
... is the additional requirement to register all "critical databases":
"The protection of sensitive data is essential for a functioning of a modern society. As stated in the Electronic Communications and Transaction Act, the information that is of importance to the protection of the national security of the country or the economic and social well-being will be declared as critical. All critical databases will be identified and registered with the Department of Communications which includes the details of the database administrator, the location of the database and the general description of the categories or types of information stored in the critical database.The registered information will be treated as confidential. The protection, management and control of critical databases must comply with the minimum standards that might be prescribed by the Minister. The audit will be performed, from time to time either by Cyber Inspectors or an independent auditor to evaluate the compliance."
Given such vague standards for "critical" almost *any* commercial database could be deemed "of importance to the protection of the national security of the country or the economic and social well-being." Amazon.com's database contains names and addresses of persons purchasing "how-to" books on terrorism and building bombs? It's critical! A Pr0n site has kept track of all visitors? Some of them *might* be criminals and dangerous to "social well-being."
Yes, there's also issues with persons living in SA downloading crypto software from foreign companies that haven't registered (are they liable or not?), but most of that is easily bypassed. Just have a visitor bring the "protected" code in on a floppy and distribute it internally.
The database restrictions have much more serious implications...
While having periphials talk directly to each other is a nice idea in theory, getting equipment manufacturers to settle on communications and driver standards to make it happen will be extremely difficult.
If a standard does grow out of this innovation, it will make life a *lot* easier for all the kind folks writing Linux drivers for obscure devices.
Good luck to them!
Very true. Perhaps I should have clarified that my vision is terrible - ~3.75 and ~4.75 - and has slowly been getting worse all my life. In my case, the odds of coming out worse in the long run are fairly small. For someone with reasonable vision, no, gains from the surgery would not be worth the risk.
... a couple of the developers I work with have had corrective eye surgery and have wonderful things to say about it. One fellow even had the new LADIK procedure and was back at work programming the next day. Yes, there's always risks, but driving to work in a metropolitan area is probably less healthy in the long run.
... would be the next logical step.
Hopefully this lawsuit will be the first of many. If enough states jump on the bandwagon & make it easier for private individuals to sue, this crap can at least be pushed out of the US (or any other country that set a good precedent). A few class-action lawsuits with only 10-20,000 offended parties receiving $100-500 apiece plus legal fees would go a *long* way to making spam economically unfeasible.
Tracking spammed e-mail addresses and affected ISPs would be the biggest challange, but a database set up to process forwarded spam (such as (uce@ftc.gov) could provide plenty of evidence as to the extent of the problem and damages. Set up a system so persons who use it reap the rewards of successful spammer prosecutions & you have the perfect incentive to get people to report this superficially "harmless" crime.
... unfortunately, I don't have my research library at hand. However, I will try to get back to you with empirical data. Until then, here's a few suggestions: You've already identified one of the main reasons for maintaining the status quo: if you are considering quitting over this, most likely many other employees are as well. Given the cost of recruiting and training new people, eliminating flex time could prove extremely costly. I'd suggest providing The Powers That Be with an off-the-cuff cost-benefit analysis. an informal survey of your work group to get % consider leaving & % likihood that they would consider leaving. Figure in average recruiting (HR man-hours, signing bonuses, advertising - usually $5-10k per hire in tech companies), training, and lost productivity costs and you have a rough estimate of the *immediate* cost of the policy change: # of affected employees x % who would consider leaving x % likelihood of leaving x replacement cost per person You can also point out that a fixed-schedule is not necessitated by your industry. As a rule of thumb, flex-time is not appropriate for industries that need to meet regular, daily deadlines - e.g. finance, education, transportation, broadcasting, etc. - but is of extreme utility in those with sporadic but major deadlines, such as software development. As noted by many others already, it allows workers to satisfactorily meet both personal and work needs. Also, again as noted, flex-time allows for persons with non-standard circadian rhythyms to function more effectively. While 60% of the population naturally is most effective between 9am & 5pm (hence the standard business schedule), 40% does not. In cases where someone's natural biorhythym varies from that scedule by more than 6 hours, forcing them onto it can have a serious impact on productivity. (Think of the problems with workers on 2nd shift...) There's a lot of information available thourgh both the APA (www.apa.org) and the National Institure of Occupational Safety and Health on shiftwork & the benefits of flextime, should you have time to dig. Throwing a bit of research and a few large numbers$ at your managers would definitely help. Good luck, "C" :)