But then I learned how bad open-plan offices can get.
I'm sure that open-plan offices can work, but only if everyone understands that sound carries. When you have an office full of Loud Howards who alternate between shouting on the phone and shouting on the phone to be louder than the other Loud Howards, it gets completely unreasonable.
The supply room in your office shouldn't stock foam earplugs because people need them. People shouldn't need to wear noise-cancelling headphones and have their supervisors buy white noise generators just to block everything else out and be able to concentrate their own work. These are signs to management that either people need to respect the space they're in, or they need to give everyone their own space.
Mayor Bloomberg's (like the company, not the mayor) corporate management style has resulted in elementary school students being taught nothing except taking tests. I'm a private music teacher and I try to sneak some math in, especially for the younger kids. When I ask them about what they're learning in math or science they used to discuss it with me for a while (giving us both a break from scales and theory) - for the past year they just shrug and say 'studying to take the test.' The overpaid Bloomberg cronies at the Board of Ed actually spy on the teachers to make sure they aren't deviating from the 'lesson plan'.
I think you need to look beyond Bloomberg here. What you describe sounds like something imposed by No Child Left Behind.
My sister graduated a year ago with a degree in secondary math education. She took a job teaching in a smallish town in upstate to teach 7th grade, and was teaching with 3 other math teachers. She had the exact same experience with the lesson plan. All 4 teachers had to move in lockstep on the lesson plan, unable to move ahead early if all the students caught onto a given day's material quickly, unable to spend extra time on a particular lesson if students were having trouble with it. They all used identical exams, and taught from the same set of Powerpoint slides.
At commencement, my sister's department head addressed all the parents and graduating students and called the law "No Child Left Untested." Even educators know that No Child Left Behind is BS.
She left in April due in large part to issues with the other teachers she worked with (we believe she was pushed out by an administrator flexing some nepotism muscles) and has completely lost interest in teaching because of how she was treated and forced to teach by this school.
The goal of a lot of IT work, security especially, is to produce nothing.
Or to enable the more efficient production of "something" (also known as "making the business run better).
Or, in the case of IT security, the goal is to prevent things. The guard at the front desk is physical security - he doesn't produce anything, yet many companies wouldn't think of being without his work.
Asking your bank for one? I was given mine by my bank, no other option. "Here, you're taking this."
While they were at it, they issued a new card # to my wife, for the same account - the old cards had the same number on both hers and mine.
For the tinfoil crowd, the few times I've used it, I had to make physical contact between the card and the reader - I couldn't just wave it by. In fact, the first 2 times I used it, it took me several attempts to get a read. It's pretty weak, but I don't know if that's the card or the reader.
Actually, I was thinking about the pickup trucks that exploded when hit on the side, but thanks for reminding me about the Pinto.
But it was GM trucks that exploded on side impact, not Ford. And Dateline Gatilsday couldn't even make their crash tests reproduce the problem, they had to rig the gas tanks with fireworks for the show.
Ford has had explosion problems with both the Pinto and the Crown Victoria, with the tanks in much closer proximity to occupants than on GM trucks.
I don't much like Starbucks but a good cup of coffee (maybe from an independent coffee shop) is much better that a bad cup of coffee. With gas, all the gas stations are selling the same thing.
You'd like to think so. Fact of the matter is, they don't.
I will never buy gas at BJ's Wholesale Club again. Sure, the price may be 4-8 cents/gallon cheaper, but my gas mileage drops by 10% when I use their gas as compared to Hess or Mobil. We confirmed this with my wife's car as well. I spend less per gallon, but more per mile. BJ's uses 10% Ethanol, whereas most other stations in the area don't. I've since managed to talk my mother in law out of buying her gas at BJ's, explaining to her that the real cost that matters, dollars per mile driven, is higher.
An acquaintance found the same thing with Sunoco. He had been using the same Sunoco station for years, one which used 10% Ethanol. He switched to a non-Ethanol station (selling for the same price per gallon) at my prodding, and immediately saw an increase in mileage of more than 10%, without changing his driving habits.
So no, not all gas stations are selling the same thing.
The university isn't obligated to provide internet access at all. The primary intended use of that internet access is for academic purposes. If they're using BT for legitimate academic purposes, then whatever problem there is should be addressed. If they're not, it can wait.
BT uses bandwidth, and bandwidth costs money. Room & board are billed separately from all other university services, and that room & board bill doesn't include internet in most cases. Housing, contrary to what you may believe, isn't cheap. The students get planty out of the deal - they don't have to pay for water, electricity, maintenance, food, most cleaning, heat, and grounds maintenance (the sidewalks don't shovel themselves).
How is the university a monopoly? You have thousands of universities to choose from. If you don't like one school's terms & requirements, don't go there.
That's the key question. When I was in college, the network and internet access were provided "for academic use". Obviously, when you have thousands of people living on the campus 24/7 for 8 months out of the year, there will be plenty of non-academic use, but that's understood and accepted, as long as you're keeping it reasonable. Call up the helpdesk and complain that your Quake(World) ping times are slow or you're lagging, and they aren't going to work much at "fixing" it. Run a high-volume server (web or game), and they'll come shut you down, unless it's directly related to something you're doing academically. If you're having trouble downloading something from MIT for a research paper, and they'll take care of it.
Are the students using BT for legitimate academic purposes, or are they using it to download entertainment? Don't even get into the "gray area" of judging whether the content being downloaded is legal or not. If they have educational needs that are being met by BT, then there's an argument for "improving" that service. If not, why spend the time and bandwidth money on it?
If it's about Linux ISOs, set up a local mirror for the student body and ask them to use that. Bonus being that they'll download it faster than they ever could with BT.
Every single one of them is impartially investigated
But the simple fact that a person was investigated is enough of a black mark, at least inside the company (it likely wouldn't be known outside the company). Whether that person is cleared or not, there's still an air of suspicion that hangs around them forever.
OJ Simpson was investigated, tried, and ultimately acquitted of being a murderer. Yet how many people still think he did it?
One would like to believe that anyone that passionate about the subject does in fact vote. I know I do, but the parent has a point: a lot of people vote who a) follow strictly party lines no matter what, b) vote for "the nice people who left that flyer at my house," or c) don't have a clue what or who is on the ballot but are going to vote anyway.
You forgot D) don't have any school-age children, and thus will vote down any school budget for no good reason - just to do it.
Seriously, if you didn't count the contingent of seniors who were bussed en masse to the polls every year for school budget votes, I think you'd find a lot more school budgets passing.
Not that I think they shouldn't be allowed to vote - it's just that people need to take action, vote themselves, and encourage others to do the same to counteract that force.
Don't forget that (in most US States), the state, county and sometimes city profits from rebates too. Example:
$50 purchase price with 3% states tax and 4% county sales tax. $1.50 revenue for the state, $2 revenue for the county, $53.50 total bill for the consumer.
$100 purchase price, $50 rebate: $107 bill for the customer. $3 revenue for the state, $4 revenue for the county, $50 rebate for the customer - final cost to the customer $57.39 (including postage). Plus whatever interest the company earns on that $50 during the 3 months it takes to "proces" the rebate.
These 2 deals "appear" to be equivalent, at first glance - $100, with a $50 rebate vs. $50 straight up. In fact the rebate costs you nearly $4 more than a straight-up $50 purchase.
Is the whole genetically modified cells (which/what kind of cells?) going to be a problem for the religious types who fret about these things?
Only until their own mortality comes into question. At least, for most of them.
Then they aren't terribly serious about their religion in the first place.
My wife worked in a hospital (children's ICU to be specific) for about 18 months and routinely had cases where she had to tell the parents "if you refuse blood products for your child, his/her chances for survival are less than half what they are if you accept them." And many, many times, the parents still refused for religious reasons.
These are the people who will still say "no" even when it's their own mortality in question.
On another note, I find that I use less fuel when crossing the state on US-20 than on I-90. The only way I can figure that you would use more fuel is that you must have been driving with one foot on each pedal. Yes, the time can be a killer if you are in a hurry, but the scenery is very much worth it if you are not in a hurry.
One foot on each pedal? Forgetting about all the traffic, stoplights, hills, etc. which eat fuel that you don't hit on the interstate, are we?
It's not so much about being "in a hurry" as it is getting to the destination in a reasonable amount of time, with time left in the day to actually do things at your destination and have the energy to do so.
How would charging for access to highways be any different from paying to ride on the bus or train? that way only the people who use it have to pay for it. Those unwilling to pay for the use of the highway can use other roads leaving the toll roads free for those who are willing to pay to save a few minutes.
If only it were so easy. In Upstate NY, I-90 (the only interstate crossing the state East-West, unless you count I-86 which is still being built and follows the PA border) is a toll road, but the alternative to taking it isn't matter of "a few minutes" - the difference can be 30 minutes to several hours, depending on the distance you're travelling. A few years ago, I travelled about half the length of the state one weekend on I-90, and the trip was about 2 1/2 hours, toll cost was a couple bucks. I made the return trip on non-toll roads and it took me nearly six hours. Toll cost: $0. Extra fuel cost, at least $5 (longer distance, even though the start and end points didn't change). So that was basically a wash. The time was a killer.
Actually, I-90 in NY was supposed to become free quite a few years ago after the tolls paid off the construction costs. Now those tolls cover some of the maintenance, but are also the primary source of funding for the recreational Erie Canal system, which can't sustain itself.
It's been over 2 years since I filed my complaint.
I did actually get a refund from the company a couple months ago due to a number of the items that I had purchased arriving broken, but there was no mention of it being a BBB-inspired action - they just said they were cleaning out records and found my refund request.
This was a BBB chapter in south Florida, and all indications from the website were that theirs was the correct website to work through for the county where the business I had trouble with was located.
Don't bother with the BBB. Your time is better spent moving up the T-Mobile chain of command. The BBB has no teeth and won't help your case against them.
I filed a claim with the BBB a couple years ago and all I did was fill out paperwork (well, web forms). I was never interviewed by the BBB, never called by the BBB, and they never (to my knowledge) contacted the company I filed the claim against to work with them as my advocate. I have no evidence that they did anything at all.
The hours I spent documenting & compiling everything for the BBB, everything I sent them, may as well have been pitched into a black hole.
A simple financial penalty isn't enough. Let's say MegaBank "loses" my personal data. They get slapped a $1K fine. I never see the money in my pocket. Life goes on for them. Meh, a little bad PR, a little hit to the bottom line this quarter. In a year, no one will remember.
But I'm calling every credit bureau asking that a fraud watch flag be put on my account. That'll cost me time and money. I call every financial institution I deal with, every bank, credit card, student loan services, cable company, mortgage company, insurance companies, my employer, investment account managers, etc. It consumes 2-3 days, minimum, of my time and likely more money. Then the trouble of getting new bank account numbers, credit card numbers, etc. issued and updating everyplace that I've got an auto-charge or auto-debit system set up with. This takes weeks, and maybe even more expense.
No way is a $1000 fine satisfactory. I want this to cost me nothing out of pocket, and my time in cleaning up their mess compensated for. I don't mind recording the time in a logbook as long as there is a timely, well-defined and mandatory process which will compensate me at the hands of MegaBank for their screw-up. I want MegaBank taking care of the fraud flag at the credit bureaus for me. I want MegaBank changing any account numbers for accounts I hold with them, and communicating that to the other institutions that affects (they know who I transact with using those accounts).
say $1,000 per individual affected by the security lapse. That would put a value on the data
$1,000 is a pittance compared to the potential financial loss, damage to one's credit & identity, and expenses incurred cleaning up someone else's mess.
And those affected would never see that money anyway, it'd simply be revenue for the states and the lawyers.
Slashdot Mirror
CBS doesn't air a Sunday night game. NBC snagged the rights to that one.
But then I learned how bad open-plan offices can get.
I'm sure that open-plan offices can work, but only if everyone understands that sound carries. When you have an office full of Loud Howards who alternate between shouting on the phone and shouting on the phone to be louder than the other Loud Howards, it gets completely unreasonable.
The supply room in your office shouldn't stock foam earplugs because people need them. People shouldn't need to wear noise-cancelling headphones and have their supervisors buy white noise generators just to block everything else out and be able to concentrate their own work. These are signs to management that either people need to respect the space they're in, or they need to give everyone their own space.
My sister graduated a year ago with a degree in secondary math education. She took a job teaching in a smallish town in upstate to teach 7th grade, and was teaching with 3 other math teachers. She had the exact same experience with the lesson plan. All 4 teachers had to move in lockstep on the lesson plan, unable to move ahead early if all the students caught onto a given day's material quickly, unable to spend extra time on a particular lesson if students were having trouble with it. They all used identical exams, and taught from the same set of Powerpoint slides.
At commencement, my sister's department head addressed all the parents and graduating students and called the law "No Child Left Untested." Even educators know that No Child Left Behind is BS.
She left in April due in large part to issues with the other teachers she worked with (we believe she was pushed out by an administrator flexing some nepotism muscles) and has completely lost interest in teaching because of how she was treated and forced to teach by this school.
Or, in the case of IT security, the goal is to prevent things. The guard at the front desk is physical security - he doesn't produce anything, yet many companies wouldn't think of being without his work.
Asking your bank for one? I was given mine by my bank, no other option. "Here, you're taking this."
While they were at it, they issued a new card # to my wife, for the same account - the old cards had the same number on both hers and mine.
For the tinfoil crowd, the few times I've used it, I had to make physical contact between the card and the reader - I couldn't just wave it by. In fact, the first 2 times I used it, it took me several attempts to get a read. It's pretty weak, but I don't know if that's the card or the reader.
Ford has had explosion problems with both the Pinto and the Crown Victoria, with the tanks in much closer proximity to occupants than on GM trucks.
I will never buy gas at BJ's Wholesale Club again. Sure, the price may be 4-8 cents/gallon cheaper, but my gas mileage drops by 10% when I use their gas as compared to Hess or Mobil. We confirmed this with my wife's car as well. I spend less per gallon, but more per mile. BJ's uses 10% Ethanol, whereas most other stations in the area don't. I've since managed to talk my mother in law out of buying her gas at BJ's, explaining to her that the real cost that matters, dollars per mile driven, is higher.
An acquaintance found the same thing with Sunoco. He had been using the same Sunoco station for years, one which used 10% Ethanol. He switched to a non-Ethanol station (selling for the same price per gallon) at my prodding, and immediately saw an increase in mileage of more than 10%, without changing his driving habits.
So no, not all gas stations are selling the same thing.
The university isn't obligated to provide internet access at all. The primary intended use of that internet access is for academic purposes. If they're using BT for legitimate academic purposes, then whatever problem there is should be addressed. If they're not, it can wait.
BT uses bandwidth, and bandwidth costs money. Room & board are billed separately from all other university services, and that room & board bill doesn't include internet in most cases. Housing, contrary to what you may believe, isn't cheap. The students get planty out of the deal - they don't have to pay for water, electricity, maintenance, food, most cleaning, heat, and grounds maintenance (the sidewalks don't shovel themselves).
How is the university a monopoly? You have thousands of universities to choose from. If you don't like one school's terms & requirements, don't go there.
That's the key question. When I was in college, the network and internet access were provided "for academic use". Obviously, when you have thousands of people living on the campus 24/7 for 8 months out of the year, there will be plenty of non-academic use, but that's understood and accepted, as long as you're keeping it reasonable. Call up the helpdesk and complain that your Quake(World) ping times are slow or you're lagging, and they aren't going to work much at "fixing" it. Run a high-volume server (web or game), and they'll come shut you down, unless it's directly related to something you're doing academically. If you're having trouble downloading something from MIT for a research paper, and they'll take care of it.
Are the students using BT for legitimate academic purposes, or are they using it to download entertainment? Don't even get into the "gray area" of judging whether the content being downloaded is legal or not. If they have educational needs that are being met by BT, then there's an argument for "improving" that service. If not, why spend the time and bandwidth money on it?
If it's about Linux ISOs, set up a local mirror for the student body and ask them to use that. Bonus being that they'll download it faster than they ever could with BT.
OJ Simpson was investigated, tried, and ultimately acquitted of being a murderer. Yet how many people still think he did it?
Seriously, if you didn't count the contingent of seniors who were bussed en masse to the polls every year for school budget votes, I think you'd find a lot more school budgets passing.
Not that I think they shouldn't be allowed to vote - it's just that people need to take action, vote themselves, and encourage others to do the same to counteract that force.
It's Jon Carmack who's said that.
Don't forget that (in most US States), the state, county and sometimes city profits from rebates too. Example:
$50 purchase price with 3% states tax and 4% county sales tax. $1.50 revenue for the state, $2 revenue for the county, $53.50 total bill for the consumer.
$100 purchase price, $50 rebate: $107 bill for the customer. $3 revenue for the state, $4 revenue for the county, $50 rebate for the customer - final cost to the customer $57.39 (including postage). Plus whatever interest the company earns on that $50 during the 3 months it takes to "proces" the rebate.
These 2 deals "appear" to be equivalent, at first glance - $100, with a $50 rebate vs. $50 straight up. In fact the rebate costs you nearly $4 more than a straight-up $50 purchase.
My wife worked in a hospital (children's ICU to be specific) for about 18 months and routinely had cases where she had to tell the parents "if you refuse blood products for your child, his/her chances for survival are less than half what they are if you accept them." And many, many times, the parents still refused for religious reasons.
These are the people who will still say "no" even when it's their own mortality in question.
It's not so much about being "in a hurry" as it is getting to the destination in a reasonable amount of time, with time left in the day to actually do things at your destination and have the energy to do so.
Actually, I-90 in NY was supposed to become free quite a few years ago after the tolls paid off the construction costs. Now those tolls cover some of the maintenance, but are also the primary source of funding for the recreational Erie Canal system, which can't sustain itself.
is that he got about $150 (maybe more) in free paint and labor out of a car dealer.
It's been over 2 years since I filed my complaint.
I did actually get a refund from the company a couple months ago due to a number of the items that I had purchased arriving broken, but there was no mention of it being a BBB-inspired action - they just said they were cleaning out records and found my refund request.
FCC != BBB
Nextel actually does have to answer to the FCC, and the FCC does have some clout.
This was a BBB chapter in south Florida, and all indications from the website were that theirs was the correct website to work through for the county where the business I had trouble with was located.
Don't bother with the BBB. Your time is better spent moving up the T-Mobile chain of command. The BBB has no teeth and won't help your case against them.
I filed a claim with the BBB a couple years ago and all I did was fill out paperwork (well, web forms). I was never interviewed by the BBB, never called by the BBB, and they never (to my knowledge) contacted the company I filed the claim against to work with them as my advocate. I have no evidence that they did anything at all.
The hours I spent documenting & compiling everything for the BBB, everything I sent them, may as well have been pitched into a black hole.
A simple financial penalty isn't enough. Let's say MegaBank "loses" my personal data. They get slapped a $1K fine. I never see the money in my pocket. Life goes on for them. Meh, a little bad PR, a little hit to the bottom line this quarter. In a year, no one will remember.
But I'm calling every credit bureau asking that a fraud watch flag be put on my account. That'll cost me time and money. I call every financial institution I deal with, every bank, credit card, student loan services, cable company, mortgage company, insurance companies, my employer, investment account managers, etc. It consumes 2-3 days, minimum, of my time and likely more money. Then the trouble of getting new bank account numbers, credit card numbers, etc. issued and updating everyplace that I've got an auto-charge or auto-debit system set up with. This takes weeks, and maybe even more expense.
No way is a $1000 fine satisfactory. I want this to cost me nothing out of pocket, and my time in cleaning up their mess compensated for. I don't mind recording the time in a logbook as long as there is a timely, well-defined and mandatory process which will compensate me at the hands of MegaBank for their screw-up. I want MegaBank taking care of the fraud flag at the credit bureaus for me. I want MegaBank changing any account numbers for accounts I hold with them, and communicating that to the other institutions that affects (they know who I transact with using those accounts).
And those affected would never see that money anyway, it'd simply be revenue for the states and the lawyers.
NiN, "Closer"
Only took about 15 seconds to work out.
Just make sure you're clear on which meal you want.
The diatetic meal is very, very different from the diabetic meal.