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  1. This might result in you getting overlooked for promotions, but so be it.

    1) Not if everyone figures out "hey, pla actually has a life! I want in on that!" and does the same thing; and,
    2) You won't find me putting up with any company that has a "work yourself to death" culture for long enough to get promoted anyway.

    If nothing else, I thank the Millennials for changing the BS work-before-life attitude that evolved in the '80s. Perhaps in another 20 years we'll actually have halfway decent working conditions in the US, with vacations and guaranteed sick time and everything. Of course, more likely they'll just sell out like the former-hippy 'Boomers who created the '80s did. I'll enjoy it while it lasts, though. :)

  2. Re:I answer work e-mail from home. on Pew Survey: Tech Increases Productivity, But Also Time Spent Working · · Score: 1

    6/10. And you only scored that high because someone bit.

  3. I use tech. Tech doesn't use me. on Pew Survey: Tech Increases Productivity, But Also Time Spent Working · · Score: 2

    I will typically check my email (work or otherwise) as it comes in on my phone. Key word there, "check" - not "act on", not "respond to", not even "give a second thought".

    I have always made it entirely clear to my employers that I treat my free time as my free time. Any time outside of 9-to-5, my employer should fully expect to find me either three hours from the nearest computer, or three sheets to the wind, or asleep, or any of a number of other conditions that would preclude me actually "working". Note that I don't act like a dick about it - If something needs to happen off-hours, I usually count as the first one to volunteer to stay late... With the understanding that I will come in similarly late the next day.

    That said, I do appreciate having an "early warning system" for serious problems... If a server goes down over the weekend, I'll make a point of preparing myself for the inevitable barrage of shit that will fly around Monday morning - Extra cup of coffee, maybe even go in a few minutes early so I can do my normal settling-in routine before everyone expects me in six places at once.


    As for blocking websites - Do any companies seriously still not block at least some websites?

  4. Re:Neil Degrasse Tyson: Keeping it real on Slashdot Asks: The Beanies Return; Who Deserves Recognition for 2014? · · Score: 1

    Pluto: Never forget.

  5. Re:Cheaper on United and Orbitz Sue 22-Year-Old Programmer For Compiling Public Info · · Score: 1

    In my experience flights are often booked only a couple of weeks before the trip

    "A couple of weeks" means a world of difference, as far as fares go, from "on a day's notice", the condition to which I replied.


    the exact timing of a meeting is often unknown up until the last moment.

    Ah, you don't mean business, you mean "business". Actually getting something productive done requires preparation. Schmoozing on the links, however? Suuure, fly first class with an hour's notice on the company dime, fuck those shareholders!

  6. Re:Cheaper on United and Orbitz Sue 22-Year-Old Programmer For Compiling Public Info · · Score: 1

    Is that before or after inflation?

    Inflation-adjusted.


    Because I'm pretty sure I couldn't get a flight from Chicago to LA on a day's notice in 1980 for the equivalent purchasing power of what it costs today.

    Probably true - But you've compared one niche use case (and one drastically affected by improved technology, at that) against the market as a whole. Even accepting that business travel (and freight) makes up the vast majority of air traffic, most of it doesn't happen on a moment's notice.

  7. Re:They can't be abusive on Aereo Gets OK From Bankruptcy Court To Auction Technology Assets · · Score: 1

    Do we know who the creditors are? I was under the impression that it was the networks.

    Typically, "real" creditors take precedence over tort claimants in the US.

    In the case of Aereo, a 2019 filed recently lists Quality Investment Properties, L3 (yes, that L3), and C7, basically for providing physical space, power, and telecom services.

  8. Re:Cheaper on United and Orbitz Sue 22-Year-Old Programmer For Compiling Public Info · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That wouldn't work, unless they all do it at the same time.

    If only we had some sort of, I dunno, Civil Aeronautics Board that could keep these insolvent assclowns in check.

    Yes, fares have technically dropped since deregulation - The GAO found they went down a whopping 9%. Meanwhile, the overall experience of flying has gone from "fun" to "buy two seats if you don't like having 10x the risk of developing a DVT, and enjoy your complimentary three peanuts".

  9. Re:Cheaper on United and Orbitz Sue 22-Year-Old Programmer For Compiling Public Info · · Score: 5, Informative

    Why would this ever be cheaper?

    Because the price of (domestic) air travel has nothing to do with expenses or distance, and everything to do with marketing games.

    First, how many people want to go from NY to LA or vice-versa every day? Getting as big of a slice of that pie as possible matters more than getting a few extra bucks for the ticket. How many people want to go from NY or LA to Detroit, however? Probably not anywhere near as many; But, if you fly Delta, you will pay less to stop in Detroit for a connector than you will for a direct flight. So... Just don't catch the connector. Simple as that!

    You can verify this for yourself - Go to any of the major travel search sites and pick a random longish trip with one layover. Now compare the price of that longer trip against the cost of flying directly to the layover city - It will almost always cost significantly more.

    If the airlines don't want people to find ways to game the system, they can make the problem vanish overnight - Stop making the system itself a game. Turn air travel into a "utility" model, with a sane, predictable pricing structure (something like $X per mile plus $Y per individual flight, plus any applicable passenger class upcharges). Instead, the entire industry would rather piss around with games and "loyalty" programs and such.

  10. Re:Dude, wait... on Neil DeGrasse Tyson Explains His Christmas Tweet · · Score: 2

    there's also a difference between posting verifiable objective truths and, well, being a dick about it.

    Making a cute joke by changing the expected ending of a bit of useless glurge to something unexpected doesn't count as "being a dick".


    I'm certainly not going to bust into any of Dr. DeGrasse-Tyson's celebrations and go out of my way to tell him why the reason he celebrates it is bullshit

    His original tweet doesn't say anything negative about Christmas or Jesus. He didn't comment on how the church usurped the winter solstice with a made-up birthday, he didn't snipe that at least Newton actually exists, he didn't even mock the annual materialism-fest. He just wished Newton a happy birthday.

    Look at it this way - If he had made a similarly clever tweet where you expected the ending to involve the tooth fairy, would anyone have cried foul?

  11. Re:What... on Gmail Reportedly Has Been Blocked In China · · Score: 1

    I think it would be simple enough for China to block all incoming email from Google servers/accounts. So ya, that is how the Internet works when you build a giant firewall around your country.

    You might reasonably think that. You'd have it wrong, though.

    The Great Firewall can trivially stop people from (directly) connecting to Google itself, and can stop Google from sending traffic directly to servers in China.

    How, though, does the Great Firewall stop email from going between Google servers in the US, and Yahoo/Microsoft/etc servers in the US? Short answer: It doesn't.

    "Blocking" GMail may well effectively mean that few people in China use GMail. But TFA's assertion that it will affect anyone outside of China? Complete rubbish.

  12. Re:Good news! on Sony To Release the Interview Online Today; Apple Won't Play Ball · · Score: 2

    And even if they were the same, I love how /. is so fixated on one mistake one department made over a decade ago.

    How about the repeat three years ago?

    And let's not forget about "OtherOS" four years ago.

    Or profiteering from Whitney Houston's extremely convenient death two years ago.


    No, Sony's PR problem doesn't come from "one mistake one department made over a decade ago", it comes from their entire corporate ethos, which their latest woes merely exemplify. They pretty much have made it a holiday tradition of shoving their foot up our asses on a yearly basis, and then expecting us to just smile and ask when the next gen of Playstation will come out so we can re-buy our entire game library that doesn't work on their empty promises of backward compatibility.

  13. Re:Violence against police ... on Study: Police Body-Cams Reduce Unacceptable Use of Force · · Score: 3, Informative

    Again, exceptions don't prove the rule.

    You have an odd definition of "exceptions", when I specifically included both the bad cops and the rest of their departments. "But you left out that one really really good cop in a coma for the past 30 years!"


    And bystander videos do not exactly tell the whole story.

    True enough. Why, in that first video I linked, you don't get to see the context - That the guy had just run over a spike mat, lost control of the vehicle, and almost hit a cop. Clearly that missing details justifies half a dozen armed thugs beating the shit out of an unconscious guy lying bleeding on the side of the highway. Damned biased bystanders, always trying to make the police look bad!


    We get to see a far more complete portrayal of events.

    Except, of course, when the cameras "malfunction" at those very convenient moments when the accused suddenly has an attack of clumsiness and walks into a brick wall... Repeatedly.


    That is why police body cams are so much more useful.

    And that is why police hate hate hate mandatory camera policies to the point that they piss and moan and vandalized the cameras and threaten to go on illegal strikes over them.

  14. Re:Violence against police ... on Study: Police Body-Cams Reduce Unacceptable Use of Force · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Exceptions don't prove the rule.

    You see all those "good" cops standing around "just doing their jobs" in those videos?

    The guy choking the drunk college kid out doesn't prove the rule. All those "good" cops doing nothing, however, do.

    For every bad cop we hear about, know that an entire fucking department has facilitated his behavior, making them every bit as worthless as the "bad" ones.

  15. Re:Violence against police ... on Study: Police Body-Cams Reduce Unacceptable Use of Force · · Score: 4, Informative

    Violence against police is why police react so forcefully.

    Uh-huh. Why, just look at the violence from this unconscious asshole! Why, that threatening way he got thrown from the car when it rolled over at highway speeds - Heck, even I felt intimidated by him, just watching the video!


    People who are compliant tend not to get shot.

    Right - They just get tased, pepper-sprayed, and/or choked out for shits n' giggles.


    The only good cops know they have a camera trained on them (and can't just smash it and harass the photographer), period.

  16. Re:"Looms" is not a transitive verb on Serious Economic Crisis Looms In Russia, China May Help · · Score: 1

    Hmm, I just can't see it. How do plant stems help parse that particular turd?

  17. Re:"Looms" is not a transitive verb on Serious Economic Crisis Looms In Russia, China May Help · · Score: 3, Informative

    It can, however, stand on its own, making the "Hamming-correct" headline read as follows:

    "Serious Economic Crisis Looms; Russian China May Help".

    So clearly, flatware manufactured in Russia might just save us all from the looming non-specific economic crisis. Time to open a Pottery Barn in Moscow!

  18. Re:Interesting on Hotel Group Asks FCC For Permission To Block Some Outside Wi-Fi · · Score: 1

    Context, much?

    "Hotel Group Asks FCC For Permission To Block Some Outside Wi-Fi".

    Putting two and two together - If hotels would block WiFi to make a buck, why not cell signals?

  19. Re:Interesting on Hotel Group Asks FCC For Permission To Block Some Outside Wi-Fi · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Killing your guest's cell phones is not liable to earn you many repeat customers

    Why would the FCC grant the hotels permission to block WiFi, but not all RF?

    The core "problem" here centers around lost revenue due to people inside the hotel using self-provided free or lower-cost alternatives to the insanely expensive crap internet access the hotels themselves provide. Why stop with internet? Just think how much more money the hotels could make by blocking phone service as well!

    Repeat guests? C'mon, really? You shop for hotels the same way the rest of us do - Either your employer tells you "you will stay here", or you use a price search and pick the lowest place that doesn't mention rats in the toilet.

  20. Re:MITM legalized at last on BT, Sky, and Virgin Enforce UK Porn Blocks By Hijacking Browsers · · Score: 1

    How is this denying service, unless you have some sort of extreme mental handicap that makes you incapable of making a simple decision?

    I have a contract that says "I will give you X dollars for Y bandwidth each month". And as many overwhelmingly one-sided ISP-favoring clauses as that contract does include, I can comfortably say that not one of them makes any mention whatsoever of "occasionally we'll intercept your session to ask you useless questions".

    As for "incapable" - My ability to answer has no relevance here - If I just don't want to answer their damned question, they can fuck right off, hmm?

  21. Re:Nice on BT, Sky, and Virgin Enforce UK Porn Blocks By Hijacking Browsers · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's pretty standard for providers to redirect to one of their pages when they need to bring something to a user's attention, or get user-input.

    Bullshit. I have never had my ISP hijack my connection to either communicate with me, or to get my input. They typically just include a flyer with my monthly bill (which I promptly discard, because I have zero interest in any relationship with my ISP beyond "I give you dollars, you serve up the bits I request").


    And it's not hijacking.

    I request page X. They serve me page Y that demands that I take some action before they'll let me get to page X. Tell me, AC, how do you define hijacking, if that doesn't do it for you? "Saaay, nice airplane you have here! For your own good, though, we just can't let it go on to Dallas until you give us all your jewelry and electronics".


    I do have to wonder, though - What will the UK nannies do if essentially the entire country opts out and says "Yeah, thanks, but we want our porn and violence, thankyouverymuch"?

  22. Proof of coding skill beats certs, *BUT*... on Using Your Open-Source Contributions To Land a Full-Time Job · · Score: 1

    The real reason your open source skills don't help get you a job as much as you might like?

    The business world uses the Microsoft foodchain. Simple as that.

    Like it or not (personally, I don't, and I say that as someone who started as a Linux guy - But pla gots ta eat, son), if you compete for a job against someone similarly competent overall, but familiar with MSSQL, VS201X, Azure, and all the rest of the relatively recent MS buzzwords - You may as well not even go back to the second round of interviews.

    Even worse - And I say this from experience - The few shops that really do use Linux in production environments do so because you'll have an annual IT budget measured in hundreds of dollars with an expectation of five-9's uptime.


    / Cue a dozen responses of "but we use Oracle / Linux / SAP / XServe at my job" that do more to prove my point than refute it.

  23. Re:LOL ... w00t? on Amazon "Suppresses" Book With Too Many Hyphens · · Score: 2, Insightful

    So, on a standard US keyboard, is this sign a minus or a hyphen?: -

    Gonna piss off the typography police here, but...

    Yes. They mean the same damned thing, and don't give me any crap about one looking a little longer than the other. A hyphen is a dash is a minus sign is any mid-height horizontal line.

    Readability scores? Seriously? I will damned well use whatever character comes out when I press the key between "0" and "=" on my keyboard, and to hell with your broken automated readers that can't deal with the default character produced by 99.9% of keyboards in the English-speaking world.

  24. How about "no"? on Putting Time Out In Time Out: The Science of Discipline · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They want to redefine "discipline" in order to change our culture.

    That's nice, Tina, dear. You play your little make-believe games with all the other ivory-tower bleeding hearts, while the adults get real work done.

  25. Re: "tl;dr" doesn't make you look smarter. on Quantum Physics Just Got Less Complicated · · Score: 2

    We've personally dealt with long-time academics who have no real world experience. They'll spew theoretical crap all day long, and those of us who have worked in industry see it for what it is: crap.

    In CompSci, I would tend to agree with you; and the humanities do count as complete bullshit, so nothing for them to really get objectively "wrong". :)

    But in Quantum Physics? In that domain, the academics overlap 100% with "industry". Sure, you could argue that virtually the entirety of the semiconductor industry depends on quantum physics, but IMO, that field evolved incrementally from the "Cat's whisker" (which may as well have worked by magic for all its users understood about it), not from any sort of first-principles breakthrough as verification of the theory.