I am about halfway through The Dilbert Principle, reading it for the first time. Working in a big company myself, I am unbelievably surprised how many aspects of corporate culture Scott got right in his book. I see, almost verbatim, phrases and communications about Mission and Vision Statements (and how they differ, etc) in the book and in my job. I'd say its a very good down-to-Earth book, one of those 'How it really is' books that you won't get from most other authors.
Lets see... if they make it louder, I can turn the volume down, to a minimum of 0 (no sound). If they make it quieter, I can only turn it up to max, then if its still not loud enough I won't be able to hear it. I don't think it's that tough of a choice. Besides, if I take a lower-max-volume audio stream and turn it up "too loud" it doesn't seem to sound as good as when I have a higher-max-volume stream that I have to turn down the volume. Maybe its my speakers, but I'd rather have the choice of volume than to be tied to one setting or another.
I recently watched 'The Hills Have Eyes', the remake that was realized a few years ago. It was one of the more violent movies that I have seen in the last couple months, and reading this article made me ask myself why should movie studios be able to release a movie depicting a person ripping away flesh from another dead person, and eating it, yet punching a prostitute in the face until she bleeds is a major taboo. I grew up on Friday the 13th movies, tons of zombie movies showing the walking dead devouring the living, sometimes very graphically, but when you throw a little sex (hello, Cinemax is as close to soft-core porn as you can get without pay-per-view) or violence in a game, call the National Guard, our children are at risk! I know there are people who believe that doing something has more of an effect than watching something, and I think to a certain extent that is true, but healthy-minded teenagers (I agree that younger kids shouldn't be exposed to that kind of thing) should have no trouble separating what is real with what is fiction.
My six-year-old daughter asked me recently about what the police do to bad guys that they catch, and what to the bad guys do to get in trouble. Knowing that it wouldn't show her anything too bad, I turned on 'Cops' and let her watch an episode of that. I told her that it seems that is probably more of what police officers have to deal with, but of course there are days where the bad people are "a lot badder". She seemed to understand, and immediately asked if that's why they carry guns. She then made a comment about some of the games that she has seen me play, and asked me if I have ever shot anyone. I replied no, I've never even pointed a gun at anyone. She replied again with "I've seen you shoot people in the games that you play, but I know that's not real, so its a lot different than doing it for real."
As bad as it sounds, she even cheered me one while watching me play Resident Evil 4 on my Wii. (Silent kid, I didn't hear her sneak up behind me) and she also was able to discern what is real and what is not.
People are saying that games with excessive violence shouldn't be able to be sold to minors. As much as I hate censorship and govermental control, I think there is some merit to this. I wouldn't want my daughter when she is 11 or something to be able to go buy some movie like "The Hills Have Eyes" without me knowing, and I'd feel the same way about video games. Until I know for sure that she can handle things, I will continue to prescreen what she watches and what she plays, but as a parent I feel it is MY choice, not the government's.
I remember seeing a 3D Java app from some NASA (or some NASA-related website) where you could view, in simulated real-time, the position of all the known satellites that are currently orbiting the Earth. It included the ISS, and Mir before it was brought down. I wonder if Google has any plan to incorporate that kind of thing into their application. It would be pretty cool if I could zoom into my house, and see (real-time if possible) what satellites were passing over my house just by zooming out enough.
Instead of offering a free education (scholarship) outright, make it free if they succeed in getting a certain GPA or final grades for particular classes. Perhaps some type of a deferred loan that they have to submit, agreeing to the notion that if they achieve a certain GPA in one of the approved majors of study (math, science, engineering, etc) they will receive a waiver for their loan, meaning they do not have to repay it. Otherwise they will be obligated to pay it back, probably with financing.
If we give high school graduates a free education with no strings attached, some of them might feel that they have nothing to lose if they decide to screw up. Speaking from direct experience, as well as several of my friends, I know I would have worked much harder if I had known I would have to pay back the loan if I didn't get a particular GPA or certain grades in certain subjects. As it was I finally finished school free of charge, but only because I got a job at the University where I attended, and they offered free tuition for employees.
Make it free if they prove themselves, otherwise there will be at least some students who just take advantage of it. Perhaps this provision was already made, but I didn't see any reference to it in TFA.
So that gives them what... 27 days to copy all of that data to another database? If they're going to shut down a database, why do they need to wait all that time? Just shut it down now. It's not like it needs a cooldown period or something. Delete it before some last-minute tool can get in there and mess with it.
From TFA: But, Walsh said, "any state that's refusing to implement this key recommendation by the 9/11 Commission, and whose state driver's licenses are as a result used in another terrorist attack, should be held responsible."
I've heard of people hijacking planes with guns, knives, even box-cutters. I don't think I'd ever be able to sharpen my driver's license down sharp enough to be in line with a prison shank.
How hard do you think it would be for a "terrorist" already living in this country to get one of these IDs at the DMV? From my own experience those workers probably aren't the best and the brightest.
Well I think if 'antibacterial' soap is a better seller, maybe I better give up my idea of a 'Bacterial' Soap. "It's cheaper than the alternative... why pay extra for those extra molecules that they say aren't even necessary? Try new Bacterial Soap!!"
I have been a Netflix subscriber for a long time, and only recently did I have to call their customer service for the first time. I received the usual email notification that a movie shipped, and that I should receive it the next day. The next day the movie never came, but I did receive another email for the same movie saying that it had been received by Netflix, never having been at my house. Being a new release, and fearing that it would be a while before it might show up again, I called their customer service, and the person I talked to was very friendly, and fixed the issue right away. She put another copy of that movie in the mail to me that very day, in addition to the 3 movies I already had out. (The next movie in my queue had already shipped when they received the other one) and I was not charged for the extra movie. I was very pleased with their attention to the situation, as they could easily have said 'Just put it in your queue again.'
And unlike just about every other browser including IE, Firefox/Mozilla _still_ doesn't have per-site white/blacklists for Java/Plugins/Javascript after a decade. I shouldn't have to constantly go into the options to flip a big on/off switch before I click a link to another site and then remember to toggle it again before I leave.
Yes, this would be an even better solution, just as you can block per-site cookies... We can only dream...
Unlike Internet Explorer, Firefox (as I'm sure many of you already know) made it extremely easy to turn off Java and Javascript. I just go into the Tools, Options, and click on the content tab, then there are two nice checkboxes to disable Java and Javascript. If I go to a page that I've never been to before, and I think that there might be the slightest chance of something uncooth going on, I'll uncheck those boxes before I click on it. It's saved me a few times considering the page source code I've looked at. One of these days I might write some kind of addon to make a nice button at the top that toggles Java/JS, unless of course there is already such a thing.
They will always find ways around the blockers and whatnot, but there are simple ways to avoid them, the simplest and most fulproof method is to unplug the NIC. (Let's see your spyware phone-home now bitch!);-)
Yes, actually we do have a fundamental right to drive.
Sorry, where does it say that?
The fact that you don't need a license to drive on (your own) private property just means the traffic laws are written to account for public roadways. Is it necessary for the government to create a law that you need a license to drive on private property? No, not in my opinion, but it is still something they can (try to) control with a law. They prohibit narcotic use on private property, they prohibit murder, rape, arson, etc. on private property... see my pattern?
In my opinion there no excuse for drunk driving, but these people who have been convicted of it 8 times and still have a license need to be stopped. Once is bad enough. Do it twice and you should never be allowed to drive anywhere in the country again. Maybe that might be a deterrant strong enough to stop some people from doing it.
Another idea, impose an alcohol tax (I can almost hear the eyes rolling from this suggestion) that would fund free cab rides for those whose BAL are above the local legal limit. Obviously there are kinks in the idea, ie getting drunk for the purposes of getting a free ride home...
I don't think that it should rest on the bartender's shoulders to determine if someone is too drunk to drive, but there needs to be some mechanism in place to keep people from getting behind the wheel of a car while drunk.
I don't have the extension that forces it to use SSL, but all you have to do to force the connection manually is add the 's' after http, and the session will reload under SSL. Hopefully you haven't already been compromised at that point.
I'm going to look for the Firefox extension now...
And charging $5.00 for a $1.00 bottle of water, or $6.75 for 50 cents worth of popcorn isn't stealing? Yes I know people have the option of buying nothing to eat in a theater, but they also aren't allowed to bring anything else in with them. If the "The National Association of Theater Owners" are able to rob anyone who enjoys eating popcorn or Twizzlers in a theater, why should they get so bent out of shape when someone offers free advertising on a 20 second clip?
I didn't plan on seeing the original Matrix movie in the theater either, until a friend showed me a clip that he had downloaded (of the scene where he wakes up in the "real world" goo-pod) on his computer.
Another AC post, I should have stopped reading at 'Coward'. My karma is already 'Excellent' according to the website here, I don't have a need for karma. My intent was a subtle bash at Microsoft.
I didn't expect my post to be modded funny honestly, but what pissed me off was that the obviously offtopic, admittedly creative post about how my post wasn't funny got modded up...
*shrug* I still don't give a shit, but if you're going to criticize, have the balls to post as yourself. Posting anything as an AC is the same as karma whoring in my opinion... too afraid that you might lose precious karma points at yet another offtopic post.
Come on mods... this fucking piece of shit post gets a fucking funny mod, and my comment afterward gets 'Troll'? The fucking usefulness of the moderation system just took a huge nosedive. Like I give a shit about karma here after that display of stupidity. Mod me down to a fucking -5, I don't give a fuck. At least my attempt at humor had fucking something to do with the original topic.
So if I took a DNA sequence, converted the letters to notes and started playing on my old high school saxophone, I'd be infringing on a patent?
What kind of morons do we have working at the PTO nowadays? That's the most ridiculous thing I've heard of in a long time. Maybe I should go through with filing my patent about making a squeaking noise by blowing air through my two thumbs with a blade of grass in between them. Unbelievable.
Microsoft has announced that it is partnering with a Japanese automaker to incorporate Windows Vista Auto Edition with all of their car systems.
In other news, family of 4 dies as their Japanese car careens off of a cliff after experiencing a BSOD in their Microsoft Windows Vista Auto Edition software.
I wonder if they have any plans to be part of the BOINC project. After being a seti@home user for several years, then finally following it over to BOINC, I can't help but think of BOINC every time I hear something about distributed computing.
I know BOINC isn't the end-all-be-all of distributed computing, but it seems they gathered a large following once Seti@home project moved there, especially with what I would newbies or laymen to distributed computing in general. It might seem a smart move considering the variety of projects they already have along with their current userbase.
I know I'm probably going to get flamed from hell and back, but I just have to ask this question:
Can they really report monetary loss if someone using the pirated version of would never have purchased it in the first place?
I'm not condoning illegal activity, but under the following circumstances, can monetary loss still be claimed if someone downloads (for example) Microsoft Office 2000, but:
1) doesn't incur any direct charges to Microsoft (ie cd media, bandwidth, etc) 2) would never have purchased the software in the first place (ie poor college student)
I would think that they would only be able to claim a loss if they otherwise would have made money, if not for the piracy. I know the EULAs and laws and what not, but I'm talking more about actually saying 'we lost money'. On top of that, the person is gaining experience and skill with that product which, I would think, could drastically increase their chances of actually paying for it in the future (ie poor college student gets a job due to his mad Office skillz and makes enough money to buy Office 2003) or supporting/working for a company that uses it.
Again, I'm not condoning piracy, but those claims of monetary loss always make me think of someone running out of the Microsoft bank vault with a few bags with '$$$' printed on them, and it makes me laugh.
Slashdot Mirror
I am about halfway through The Dilbert Principle, reading it for the first time. Working in a big company myself, I am unbelievably surprised how many aspects of corporate culture Scott got right in his book. I see, almost verbatim, phrases and communications about Mission and Vision Statements (and how they differ, etc) in the book and in my job. I'd say its a very good down-to-Earth book, one of those 'How it really is' books that you won't get from most other authors.
Lets see... if they make it louder, I can turn the volume down, to a minimum of 0 (no sound). If they make it quieter, I can only turn it up to max, then if its still not loud enough I won't be able to hear it. I don't think it's that tough of a choice. Besides, if I take a lower-max-volume audio stream and turn it up "too loud" it doesn't seem to sound as good as when I have a higher-max-volume stream that I have to turn down the volume. Maybe its my speakers, but I'd rather have the choice of volume than to be tied to one setting or another.
I was wondering the same thing.... Mod error in your favor, collect one +5 mod. ;-)
If someone can be sued for their opinions... man I'm going to make a TON of money from my mother-in-law!
You're thinking of JTrack:
science.nasa.gov/realtime/jtrack/3d/JTrack3D.html
That is the one! Thanks for the link. I did a very feeble search earlier and couldn't find it.
I recently watched 'The Hills Have Eyes', the remake that was realized a few years ago. It was one of the more violent movies that I have seen in the last couple months, and reading this article made me ask myself why should movie studios be able to release a movie depicting a person ripping away flesh from another dead person, and eating it, yet punching a prostitute in the face until she bleeds is a major taboo. I grew up on Friday the 13th movies, tons of zombie movies showing the walking dead devouring the living, sometimes very graphically, but when you throw a little sex (hello, Cinemax is as close to soft-core porn as you can get without pay-per-view) or violence in a game, call the National Guard, our children are at risk! I know there are people who believe that doing something has more of an effect than watching something, and I think to a certain extent that is true, but healthy-minded teenagers (I agree that younger kids shouldn't be exposed to that kind of thing) should have no trouble separating what is real with what is fiction.
My six-year-old daughter asked me recently about what the police do to bad guys that they catch, and what to the bad guys do to get in trouble. Knowing that it wouldn't show her anything too bad, I turned on 'Cops' and let her watch an episode of that. I told her that it seems that is probably more of what police officers have to deal with, but of course there are days where the bad people are "a lot badder". She seemed to understand, and immediately asked if that's why they carry guns. She then made a comment about some of the games that she has seen me play, and asked me if I have ever shot anyone. I replied no, I've never even pointed a gun at anyone. She replied again with "I've seen you shoot people in the games that you play, but I know that's not real, so its a lot different than doing it for real."
As bad as it sounds, she even cheered me one while watching me play Resident Evil 4 on my Wii. (Silent kid, I didn't hear her sneak up behind me) and she also was able to discern what is real and what is not.
People are saying that games with excessive violence shouldn't be able to be sold to minors. As much as I hate censorship and govermental control, I think there is some merit to this. I wouldn't want my daughter when she is 11 or something to be able to go buy some movie like "The Hills Have Eyes" without me knowing, and I'd feel the same way about video games. Until I know for sure that she can handle things, I will continue to prescreen what she watches and what she plays, but as a parent I feel it is MY choice, not the government's.
I remember seeing a 3D Java app from some NASA (or some NASA-related website) where you could view, in simulated real-time, the position of all the known satellites that are currently orbiting the Earth. It included the ISS, and Mir before it was brought down. I wonder if Google has any plan to incorporate that kind of thing into their application. It would be pretty cool if I could zoom into my house, and see (real-time if possible) what satellites were passing over my house just by zooming out enough.
Instead of offering a free education (scholarship) outright, make it free if they succeed in getting a certain GPA or final grades for particular classes. Perhaps some type of a deferred loan that they have to submit, agreeing to the notion that if they achieve a certain GPA in one of the approved majors of study (math, science, engineering, etc) they will receive a waiver for their loan, meaning they do not have to repay it. Otherwise they will be obligated to pay it back, probably with financing.
If we give high school graduates a free education with no strings attached, some of them might feel that they have nothing to lose if they decide to screw up. Speaking from direct experience, as well as several of my friends, I know I would have worked much harder if I had known I would have to pay back the loan if I didn't get a particular GPA or certain grades in certain subjects. As it was I finally finished school free of charge, but only because I got a job at the University where I attended, and they offered free tuition for employees.
Make it free if they prove themselves, otherwise there will be at least some students who just take advantage of it. Perhaps this provision was already made, but I didn't see any reference to it in TFA.
So that gives them what... 27 days to copy all of that data to another database? If they're going to shut down a database, why do they need to wait all that time? Just shut it down now. It's not like it needs a cooldown period or something. Delete it before some last-minute tool can get in there and mess with it.
From TFA:
But, Walsh said, "any state that's refusing to implement this key recommendation by the 9/11 Commission, and whose state driver's licenses are as a result used in another terrorist attack, should be held responsible."
I've heard of people hijacking planes with guns, knives, even box-cutters. I don't think I'd ever be able to sharpen my driver's license down sharp enough to be in line with a prison shank.
How hard do you think it would be for a "terrorist" already living in this country to get one of these IDs at the DMV? From my own experience those workers probably aren't the best and the brightest.
Well I think if 'antibacterial' soap is a better seller, maybe I better give up my idea of a 'Bacterial' Soap. "It's cheaper than the alternative... why pay extra for those extra molecules that they say aren't even necessary? Try new Bacterial Soap!!"
I have been a Netflix subscriber for a long time, and only recently did I have to call their customer service for the first time. I received the usual email notification that a movie shipped, and that I should receive it the next day. The next day the movie never came, but I did receive another email for the same movie saying that it had been received by Netflix, never having been at my house. Being a new release, and fearing that it would be a while before it might show up again, I called their customer service, and the person I talked to was very friendly, and fixed the issue right away. She put another copy of that movie in the mail to me that very day, in addition to the 3 movies I already had out. (The next movie in my queue had already shipped when they received the other one) and I was not charged for the extra movie. I was very pleased with their attention to the situation, as they could easily have said 'Just put it in your queue again.'
And unlike just about every other browser including IE, Firefox/Mozilla _still_ doesn't have per-site white/blacklists for Java/Plugins/Javascript after a decade. I shouldn't have to constantly go into the options to flip a big on/off switch before I click a link to another site and then remember to toggle it again before I leave.
Yes, this would be an even better solution, just as you can block per-site cookies...
We can only dream...
Unlike Internet Explorer, Firefox (as I'm sure many of you already know) made it extremely easy to turn off Java and Javascript. I just go into the Tools, Options, and click on the content tab, then there are two nice checkboxes to disable Java and Javascript. If I go to a page that I've never been to before, and I think that there might be the slightest chance of something uncooth going on, I'll uncheck those boxes before I click on it. It's saved me a few times considering the page source code I've looked at. One of these days I might write some kind of addon to make a nice button at the top that toggles Java/JS, unless of course there is already such a thing.
;-)
They will always find ways around the blockers and whatnot, but there are simple ways to avoid them, the simplest and most fulproof method is to unplug the NIC. (Let's see your spyware phone-home now bitch!)
Yes, actually we do have a fundamental right to drive.
Sorry, where does it say that?
The fact that you don't need a license to drive on (your own) private property just means the traffic laws are written to account for public roadways. Is it necessary for the government to create a law that you need a license to drive on private property? No, not in my opinion, but it is still something they can (try to) control with a law. They prohibit narcotic use on private property, they prohibit murder, rape, arson, etc. on private property... see my pattern?
In my opinion there no excuse for drunk driving, but these people who have been convicted of it 8 times and still have a license need to be stopped. Once is bad enough. Do it twice and you should never be allowed to drive anywhere in the country again. Maybe that might be a deterrant strong enough to stop some people from doing it.
Another idea, impose an alcohol tax (I can almost hear the eyes rolling from this suggestion) that would fund free cab rides for those whose BAL are above the local legal limit. Obviously there are kinks in the idea, ie getting drunk for the purposes of getting a free ride home...
I don't think that it should rest on the bartender's shoulders to determine if someone is too drunk to drive, but there needs to be some mechanism in place to keep people from getting behind the wheel of a car while drunk.
I don't have the extension that forces it to use SSL, but all you have to do to force the connection manually is add the 's' after http, and the session will reload under SSL. Hopefully you haven't already been compromised at that point.
I'm going to look for the Firefox extension now...
And charging $5.00 for a $1.00 bottle of water, or $6.75 for 50 cents worth of popcorn isn't stealing? Yes I know people have the option of buying nothing to eat in a theater, but they also aren't allowed to bring anything else in with them. If the "The National Association of Theater Owners" are able to rob anyone who enjoys eating popcorn or Twizzlers in a theater, why should they get so bent out of shape when someone offers free advertising on a 20 second clip?
I didn't plan on seeing the original Matrix movie in the theater either, until a friend showed me a clip that he had downloaded (of the scene where he wakes up in the "real world" goo-pod) on his computer.
Another AC post, I should have stopped reading at 'Coward'. My karma is already 'Excellent' according to the website here, I don't have a need for karma. My intent was a subtle bash at Microsoft.
I didn't expect my post to be modded funny honestly, but what pissed me off was that the obviously offtopic, admittedly creative post about how my post wasn't funny got modded up...
*shrug* I still don't give a shit, but if you're going to criticize, have the balls to post as yourself. Posting anything as an AC is the same as karma whoring in my opinion... too afraid that you might lose precious karma points at yet another offtopic post.
Come on mods... this fucking piece of shit post gets a fucking funny mod, and my comment afterward gets 'Troll'? The fucking usefulness of the moderation system just took a huge nosedive. Like I give a shit about karma here after that display of stupidity. Mod me down to a fucking -5, I don't give a fuck. At least my attempt at humor had fucking something to do with the original topic.
So if I took a DNA sequence, converted the letters to notes and started playing on my old high school saxophone, I'd be infringing on a patent?
What kind of morons do we have working at the PTO nowadays? That's the most ridiculous thing I've heard of in a long time. Maybe I should go through with filing my patent about making a squeaking noise by blowing air through my two thumbs with a blade of grass in between them. Unbelievable.
Wow, who pissed in your corn flakes this morning?
North Korea called, they want their unchecked aggression back.
Microsoft has announced that it is partnering with a Japanese automaker to incorporate Windows Vista Auto Edition with all of their car systems.
In other news, family of 4 dies as their Japanese car careens off of a cliff after experiencing a BSOD in their Microsoft Windows Vista Auto Edition software.
I wonder if they have any plans to be part of the BOINC project. After being a seti@home user for several years, then finally following it over to BOINC, I can't help but think of BOINC every time I hear something about distributed computing.
I know BOINC isn't the end-all-be-all of distributed computing, but it seems they gathered a large following once Seti@home project moved there, especially with what I would newbies or laymen to distributed computing in general. It might seem a smart move considering the variety of projects they already have along with their current userbase.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer reported today that Microsoft has just sold their 300,000th Windows license!
I know I'm probably going to get flamed from hell and back, but I just have to ask this question:
Can they really report monetary loss if someone using the pirated version of would never have purchased it in the first place?
I'm not condoning illegal activity, but under the following circumstances, can monetary loss still be claimed if someone downloads (for example) Microsoft Office 2000, but:
1) doesn't incur any direct charges to Microsoft (ie cd media, bandwidth, etc)
2) would never have purchased the software in the first place (ie poor college student)
I would think that they would only be able to claim a loss if they otherwise would have made money, if not for the piracy. I know the EULAs and laws and what not, but I'm talking more about actually saying 'we lost money'. On top of that, the person is gaining experience and skill with that product which, I would think, could drastically increase their chances of actually paying for it in the future (ie poor college student gets a job due to his mad Office skillz and makes enough money to buy Office 2003) or supporting/working for a company that uses it.
Again, I'm not condoning piracy, but those claims of monetary loss always make me think of someone running out of the Microsoft bank vault with a few bags with '$$$' printed on them, and it makes me laugh.