Maybe one day we'll be able to split the atom or something.
Maybe one day there will be an entity that I trust to run a nuclear power plant safely and efficiently. Private industry is too focused on profit over safety, the government is too incompetent to do so. That, and the problem of waste that's hazardous for 10,000 years....
There's an easy fix to the Best Buy problem: Don't set foot in one of those places unless it's to get hands-on with something you'll buy elsewhere. I finally had had enough of their "please voluntarily pay more for this product" sales approach and vowed to never buy anything from them ever again.
Some of us have the radical belief that marketers don't have a FSM-given right to market to us. If I want widget X, 30 seconds online will tell me where I can get it, and a range of prices.
Besides, who needs to justify their desire for privacy? Is it really anyone's business what brand of widget X I buy? And has anyone realized the fact that lots of people will INTENTIONALLY either 1) not buy that brand or 2) patronize that retailer if their advertising is seen as too intrusive or annoying?
If someone wants to know what purchases I've made, they can pay me to tell them. I'm not in the habit of giving away valuable information for free.
In this context "fundie" is a nickname for Christian Fundamentalists, who take the Bible as literal truth, as opposed to metaphor. It's closely associated with religious zealotry in the USA. (I'm sure there are some Fundamentalists that are perfectly reasonable and pleasant human beings. I just haven't met any.)
And spend an even greater amount of money in a suit that is doomed to be resolved in favor of the defendant (RIAA, who has much better/more expensive lawyers than you have access to) and/or bankrupt you further? Good luck getting an attorney to even take your case, much less affording the up-front legal fees.
What people are forgetting is that the RIAA doesn't need to win the lawsuit in order to accomplish their goals. It's enough for the RIAA that you've been forced to pay large legal fees in your defense. Winning is irrelevant to them. Sure, they might get an admonishment from the trial judge in a small number of cases (or, in an even smaller number of cases, lose outright) but most torts of this kind will never see the inside of a courtroom.
You're paying for that access. You're responsible for any abuse over the service that you pay for. That's *your* IP. Good luck proving that it wasn't you that was downloading the illegal material in a court of law, where they don't even know the difference between a MAC and a Mac. I can't think of too many things that would be a bigger headache than explaining the concept of a MAC address to some ancient fossil of a judge, let alone how an IP address is different from a MAC address.
Leave your access point open if you want, but realize that you're taking responsibility for all the bits that go over that connection. Personally, I have mine locked down nine ways from Sunday.
I was told that the scarcer the resource the more valuable it will be worth.
Not if all the consumers of said resource (employers) decide to work the angles in the system in such a way that the value of said resource is minimized, in terms of compensation. IOW, if everyone treats them like shit, they can all get away with it. It's not like they can just quit and find another job, they get deported if they do.
There's no shortage of IT workers. There's a shortage of IT workers able/willing to work for the salaries/benefits companies are offering.
I wonder how many workers in the Valley are unemployed because of the incompetence of said recruiters? I think it's quite possible that there's jobs out there that are a match with an unemployed worker, but the recruiters (who you have to deal with if you want a job) are too stupid/ignorant/incompetent/lazy to do their jobs properly.
I agree. I know programmers/IT types/Slashdot readers are a cynical lot, but I don't really think this is the time or place to make flippant jokes about irresponsible behavior. Pesty thing, that first amendment; you've got to take the good with the bad.
You mean "three down". I'm all for social Darwinism, but this retard took people with him. Sadly, this isn't an atypical result; seems every couple of weeks you hear about a drunk driver who whanged into some poor bastard's minivan and killed people, but walked away without a scratch on themselves. This seems analogous, except for the suicide part.
Plus, as much as I hate spam, I'd rather see this guy rot in a cell than dead.
They had Marketing handling the beta at my last job. Which is one of the reasons that I'm not there anymore.
Seriously, on what planet is this a good idea? The ability of the average Marketing drone to communicate even the highest level information regarding a problem (for example, 'the website is down' when there's really just a typo on the homepage) is dangerously poor.
It seems to me that agile development is the key to bypassing Marketing altogether. Once the clients start realizing "Hey, we can tell the developers what's broken directly instead of dealing with that twit with the plastic smile and no clue in Marketing," then we'll finally be able to fire all those useless hunks of dead weight and actually start providing the customer with what they need, not what Marketing tells them they need. (Or, even worse, marketing promising the customer the sun, moon, and stars in a man-month, and then getting pissy when reality sets in and what they promised can't be delivered.)
Marketing shouldn't be let within 50 feet of any kind of technical feedback process. They might spill their lattes on it.
If you don't want to be computer support for friends and family, DON'T.
Personally I think it's Just Fine that people WITH knowledge have advantages over those that DON'T. It's called social Darwinism, and it's far too rare for my taste. It's not like someone will DIE because they have to reboot their routers too many times, and those of us with the technical knowledge to prevent such a scenario aren't in a position to enslave the rest. Those who lack knowledge can always LEARN, and if they're too lazy to do so, then that's their problem.
The Grandma scenario can be avoided by answering every request for help with "Reboot the router" first and foremost. Eventually Grandma will figure out that that fixes the problem 85% of the time, you get fewer calls, and Grandma gets to see the pictures of her grandkids that she's looking to see.
Then you're the exception that proves the rule. How many of your co-workers left/were laid off/took a cut in pay/$other_way_to_get_screwed?
Not all M&A activity is bad - and in a capitalist system, it is a necessary component.
I disagree. Greed requires this behavior, not capitalism. There's a very fine distinction, I know, and the union is nearly the size of either result set. Capitalism concentrates money/power at the top, not the bottom (where the 'rubber meets the road', so to speak, meaning 'people do do actual work') and those without power get screwed. Sure, you'll hear about someone acting contrary to this trend (like the Oreck guy after hurricane Katrina, look it up) but most companies are REQUIRED under penalty of stockholder lawsuit to be as piggy and greedy as possible.
The point I was trying to make was that NEARLY ALL of the people who do actual work get screwed as a result of M&A. (The case study I like to refer to is at HP.. they bought Compaq, choked on it, laid off like 10,000 workers, and the CEO walked away with nine figures after getting fired.) If I had to guess, you're either in middle management, or someone listened to you when you told them that, despite your doing actual work, you were essential personnel.
If you are uncomfortable with the uncertainty around your continued employment, then there are two options: live with that stress and all of the potential negatives and positives continued employment or sudden termination bring -OR- take your fate into your own hands and go in search of employment elsewhere ahead of time and on your own terms. No one can really tell you which is better, as you have to determine what your threshold for uncertainty and stress is.
The first choice is a non-starter. With employment law as it is in this country, nobody is assured of having a job for the next ten minutes under the BEST of circumstances. Add a merger, acquisition, $bullshit_MBA_speak_for_were_going_to_screw_you_over, whatever, and things become even less secure.
The way you can tell if your job is in jeopardy in this situation is this: Do you do actual work? If so, do you get paid the industry average or better? Then you have to assume that you're done, and you can be laid off at any given moment in the name of 'cost-cutting' and 'consolidation'.
Get a new job now. RIGHT NOW. Don't wait for some management douchebag to decide that you're non-essential and can be trimmed off as 'fat'. If everyone took this option, 'brain drain' would become more of a deterrent for mergers/acquisitions/etc, and MAYBE those who make money off others' hard work would think twice if there were more serious consequences for their bad behavior. (Yeah, I know, that's awfully glass-half-full for me. Sue me.)
tl;dr GET THE FUCK OUT NOW. These things always end badly for people who do actual work.
This logic would entail that if you bring your car to your friend's house (with their implied permission, since they know you are coming to visit), ownership of the car automatically transfers to your friend.
No, it's more like if you were to go over your friend's house and write on the walls, your friend would own what you wrote. IBM used to do this; they had pads of paper that had "All contents property of IBM" on them. It was an aggressive way of saying anything that you produced with resources they provided, they owned.
This logic would entail that your e-mail belongs to your ISP.
Your relationship with your ISP is not the same as an employer/employee relationship. Comcast might put a cablemodem in my house, but they still own it. There's also nothing save for market forces keeping Comcast from reading my email anyway, which is why I use webmail over an encrypted connection.
Once it's on that drive, it's not personal anymore. I don't care who you spoke with who implied/said it would remain personal; their machine, their rules.
If push came to shove, and there was pirated/illegal content on that drive provided by the company, then the company would be on the hook just as much as the user. Your "word of mouth" is worse than useless in this case, and in the abscence of anything in writing, it is assumed that the company retains complete and total control over what is on that machine.
And how do you define "snoop"? Reading/viewing these files? Looking at the filenames?
Actually, it doesn't really matter. The company has the right to view any and all files that are on machines that it owns. You have no expectation of privacy here.
If you want stuff to be personal, store it on a personal machine. Use an encrypted webmail account if you want to be able to access email/files that you don't want your company seeing (although I know more than one company that would consider such actions on their machines to be misuse of company resources.)
Not all companies have a policy against having any personal material on the machines. Some might even encourage that.
I've worked at a company that did not have an acceptable use policy like what you describe. I had to spend several hours a week cleaning the porn out of salesmens' laptops. I was also threatened with sanctions if I told anyone what they could and couldn't do with their computer (I was on the help desk.) I wonder if the company's stockholders would be interested in why there's porn on company equipment...
In that case, the hard drive still belongs to the company, but some of the data may not.
Sorry, wrong. Their equipment, their data, no matter what the source or content. If there's data on that machine that does not belong to the company, or isn't directly related to the company's business, then it shouldn't be there.
Not only does the info not belong to the employee, but it doesn't belong to the company, either (belongs to an outside party), and most employees are not supposed to have the info.
But it's data obtained in the course of doing business. It's still related, and therefore the admin can/should be able to manipulate it as necessary to keep the system running.
In that case, snooping by an employee who was not party to the NDA may be a serious problem.
While deliberate 'snooping' is and should be a terminable offense in most companies, there are times when it's made necessary by your job description.
And the company's officers may have no right to see the data: it doesn't matter if they are the employee's manager, or even if they are the CEO.
I see this happening: Executive: "I want to see what's on that employee's laptop." IT guy: "I don't think that that's information you should be privy to." Executive: "You're fired, clean out your desk." Executives see whatever they want whenever they want, and getting in their way because of an ethical concern is generally a Career Limiting Event, even if you're in the right.
It's not like the "Big corps ftl!" doesn't have some compelling evidence to back it up. I don't have to remind you of what Enron pulled. Plus, if a company is publicly traded, they're *required* to minimize costs, lest they be sued by their stockholders.
Why is pointing a finger at Chernobyl a joke? At best it should be an example of what is possible using less-safe nuclear power generation.
I'll second that. So long as there's a profit motive in generating nuclear power, it will not be 'safe'.
You could argue that that applies to oil- or coal- burning power plants, but when one of those plants has an accident, it doesn't spew radioactive steam all over five states.
I'd like to hear what the pro-nuclear slashdotters would do to alleviate the cost- and corner-cutting that would inevitably happen in a power plant run by a private company.
Also, I'd like to remind everyone that even if we DID start to extract oil from where we can't right now (alaska wildlife reserve, offshore oil drilling) it would have negligible effects on our oil prices or supply for at least ten years. By then, if we seriously applied ourselves to making alternative energy sources more viable and practical, we wouldn't need the new capacity. There's some exciting work going on in photovoltaics; if we used the energy the new generation PVs generated to power electric cars, we could lower our independence on foreign oil AND reduce our carbon emissions.
So, what IS the preferred way of 'cold-calling' someone via email?
There isn't one. Spam is spam, no matter how you might try to tart it up with marketing-speak.
What is the etiquette for marketing to people via email by purchasing (or obtaining/harvesting) a list?
Finding another way to market your product is the proper thing to do here.
What IS a good way to email-market, especially the first time? Thoughts?
That's like asking "What's the best way to steal something?" Marketing via unsolicited email is a bad act in and of itself, and there are plenty of viable alternatives. Consider buying some ad space from Google or Yahoo.
Writing obfuscated code can be interpreted as a counter-productive attempt to create job security. If your coders are worried about the Vice President Of Things That Begin With H on Alternate Tuesdays swooping in and 'improving competitiveness' by laying off a bunch of people who do actual work, then of COURSE they'll try to make themselves indispensable. This is a failing of the corporate culture, and thus not ALL the blame can lie with the coders themselves.
One could also argue that some write obfuscated code as part of a preemptive revenge tactic on the employer who lays them off. Personally, I think there's value in making sure that your former employer suffers when they lay you off for no good reason without allowing you time to find a new job. It's pretty much the only leverage the average employee has in the US job market. Granted, good coders won't have trouble finding a new job unless they have severe personality problems (and they're out there, it's not just a stereotype), but so long as the majority of states are "at-will" employment states (meaning you can be fired at any time with no notice or reason given, and your employer is only obligated to give you pay earned to date when they frogmarch you out of the office) then this practice will exist.
Should coders write obfuscated code in an attempt to generate job security? In an ideal world, no. We don't live in an ideal world, therefore IMHO this practice is at least understandable.
Slashdot Mirror
There you go, bringing facts into the argument again.
Anyone not replacing their incandescents with CFLs when the incandescents burn out is either 1) lazy, 2) cheap, and/or 3) ill-informed.
Maybe one day there will be an entity that I trust to run a nuclear power plant safely and efficiently. Private industry is too focused on profit over safety, the government is too incompetent to do so. That, and the problem of waste that's hazardous for 10,000 years....
There's an easy fix to the Best Buy problem: Don't set foot in one of those places unless it's to get hands-on with something you'll buy elsewhere. I finally had had enough of their "please voluntarily pay more for this product" sales approach and vowed to never buy anything from them ever again.
Vote with your wallet.
Some of us have the radical belief that marketers don't have a FSM-given right to market to us. If I want widget X, 30 seconds online will tell me where I can get it, and a range of prices.
Besides, who needs to justify their desire for privacy? Is it really anyone's business what brand of widget X I buy? And has anyone realized the fact that lots of people will INTENTIONALLY either 1) not buy that brand or 2) patronize that retailer if their advertising is seen as too intrusive or annoying?
If someone wants to know what purchases I've made, they can pay me to tell them. I'm not in the habit of giving away valuable information for free.
In this context "fundie" is a nickname for Christian Fundamentalists, who take the Bible as literal truth, as opposed to metaphor. It's closely associated with religious zealotry in the USA. (I'm sure there are some Fundamentalists that are perfectly reasonable and pleasant human beings. I just haven't met any.)
And spend an even greater amount of money in a suit that is doomed to be resolved in favor of the defendant (RIAA, who has much better/more expensive lawyers than you have access to) and/or bankrupt you further? Good luck getting an attorney to even take your case, much less affording the up-front legal fees.
What people are forgetting is that the RIAA doesn't need to win the lawsuit in order to accomplish their goals. It's enough for the RIAA that you've been forced to pay large legal fees in your defense. Winning is irrelevant to them. Sure, they might get an admonishment from the trial judge in a small number of cases (or, in an even smaller number of cases, lose outright) but most torts of this kind will never see the inside of a courtroom.
You're paying for that access. You're responsible for any abuse over the service that you pay for. That's *your* IP. Good luck proving that it wasn't you that was downloading the illegal material in a court of law, where they don't even know the difference between a MAC and a Mac. I can't think of too many things that would be a bigger headache than explaining the concept of a MAC address to some ancient fossil of a judge, let alone how an IP address is different from a MAC address.
Leave your access point open if you want, but realize that you're taking responsibility for all the bits that go over that connection. Personally, I have mine locked down nine ways from Sunday.
No more coffee for you.
Nixon got pardoned, and as far as I can remember, he never even got indicted.
Not if all the consumers of said resource (employers) decide to work the angles in the system in such a way that the value of said resource is minimized, in terms of compensation. IOW, if everyone treats them like shit, they can all get away with it. It's not like they can just quit and find another job, they get deported if they do.
To-may-to, to-mah-to.
As far as I'm concerned, a recruiter is a recruiter, no matter what their employment status.
Did I mention that I think working for HR is like stealing from the company?
There's no shortage of IT workers. There's a shortage of IT workers able/willing to work for the salaries/benefits companies are offering.
I wonder how many workers in the Valley are unemployed because of the incompetence of said recruiters? I think it's quite possible that there's jobs out there that are a match with an unemployed worker, but the recruiters (who you have to deal with if you want a job) are too stupid/ignorant/incompetent/lazy to do their jobs properly.
I agree. I know programmers/IT types/Slashdot readers are a cynical lot, but I don't really think this is the time or place to make flippant jokes about irresponsible behavior. Pesty thing, that first amendment; you've got to take the good with the bad.
You mean "three down". I'm all for social Darwinism, but this retard took people with him. Sadly, this isn't an atypical result; seems every couple of weeks you hear about a drunk driver who whanged into some poor bastard's minivan and killed people, but walked away without a scratch on themselves. This seems analogous, except for the suicide part.
Plus, as much as I hate spam, I'd rather see this guy rot in a cell than dead.
They had Marketing handling the beta at my last job. Which is one of the reasons that I'm not there anymore.
Seriously, on what planet is this a good idea? The ability of the average Marketing drone to communicate even the highest level information regarding a problem (for example, 'the website is down' when there's really just a typo on the homepage) is dangerously poor.
It seems to me that agile development is the key to bypassing Marketing altogether. Once the clients start realizing "Hey, we can tell the developers what's broken directly instead of dealing with that twit with the plastic smile and no clue in Marketing," then we'll finally be able to fire all those useless hunks of dead weight and actually start providing the customer with what they need, not what Marketing tells them they need. (Or, even worse, marketing promising the customer the sun, moon, and stars in a man-month, and then getting pissy when reality sets in and what they promised can't be delivered.)
Marketing shouldn't be let within 50 feet of any kind of technical feedback process. They might spill their lattes on it.
If you don't want to be computer support for friends and family, DON'T.
Personally I think it's Just Fine that people WITH knowledge have advantages over those that DON'T. It's called social Darwinism, and it's far too rare for my taste. It's not like someone will DIE because they have to reboot their routers too many times, and those of us with the technical knowledge to prevent such a scenario aren't in a position to enslave the rest. Those who lack knowledge can always LEARN, and if they're too lazy to do so, then that's their problem.
The Grandma scenario can be avoided by answering every request for help with "Reboot the router" first and foremost. Eventually Grandma will figure out that that fixes the problem 85% of the time, you get fewer calls, and Grandma gets to see the pictures of her grandkids that she's looking to see.
Then you're the exception that proves the rule. How many of your co-workers left/were laid off/took a cut in pay/$other_way_to_get_screwed?
I disagree. Greed requires this behavior, not capitalism. There's a very fine distinction, I know, and the union is nearly the size of either result set. Capitalism concentrates money/power at the top, not the bottom (where the 'rubber meets the road', so to speak, meaning 'people do do actual work') and those without power get screwed. Sure, you'll hear about someone acting contrary to this trend (like the Oreck guy after hurricane Katrina, look it up) but most companies are REQUIRED under penalty of stockholder lawsuit to be as piggy and greedy as possible.
The point I was trying to make was that NEARLY ALL of the people who do actual work get screwed as a result of M&A. (The case study I like to refer to is at HP.. they bought Compaq, choked on it, laid off like 10,000 workers, and the CEO walked away with nine figures after getting fired.) If I had to guess, you're either in middle management, or someone listened to you when you told them that, despite your doing actual work, you were essential personnel.
The first choice is a non-starter. With employment law as it is in this country, nobody is assured of having a job for the next ten minutes under the BEST of circumstances. Add a merger, acquisition, $bullshit_MBA_speak_for_were_going_to_screw_you_over, whatever, and things become even less secure.
The way you can tell if your job is in jeopardy in this situation is this: Do you do actual work? If so, do you get paid the industry average or better? Then you have to assume that you're done, and you can be laid off at any given moment in the name of 'cost-cutting' and 'consolidation'.
Get a new job now. RIGHT NOW. Don't wait for some management douchebag to decide that you're non-essential and can be trimmed off as 'fat'. If everyone took this option, 'brain drain' would become more of a deterrent for mergers/acquisitions/etc, and MAYBE those who make money off others' hard work would think twice if there were more serious consequences for their bad behavior. (Yeah, I know, that's awfully glass-half-full for me. Sue me.)
tl;dr GET THE FUCK OUT NOW. These things always end badly for people who do actual work.
Once it's on that drive, it's not personal anymore. I don't care who you spoke with who implied/said it would remain personal; their machine, their rules.
If push came to shove, and there was pirated/illegal content on that drive provided by the company, then the company would be on the hook just as much as the user. Your "word of mouth" is worse than useless in this case, and in the abscence of anything in writing, it is assumed that the company retains complete and total control over what is on that machine.
And how do you define "snoop"? Reading/viewing these files? Looking at the filenames?
Actually, it doesn't really matter. The company has the right to view any and all files that are on machines that it owns. You have no expectation of privacy here.
If you want stuff to be personal, store it on a personal machine. Use an encrypted webmail account if you want to be able to access email/files that you don't want your company seeing (although I know more than one company that would consider such actions on their machines to be misuse of company resources.)
Your idealism is refreshing, but impractical:
I've worked at a company that did not have an acceptable use policy like what you describe. I had to spend several hours a week cleaning the porn out of salesmens' laptops. I was also threatened with sanctions if I told anyone what they could and couldn't do with their computer (I was on the help desk.) I wonder if the company's stockholders would be interested in why there's porn on company equipment...Sorry, wrong. Their equipment, their data, no matter what the source or content. If there's data on that machine that does not belong to the company, or isn't directly related to the company's business, then it shouldn't be there.But it's data obtained in the course of doing business. It's still related, and therefore the admin can/should be able to manipulate it as necessary to keep the system running.While deliberate 'snooping' is and should be a terminable offense in most companies, there are times when it's made necessary by your job description. I see this happening: Executive: "I want to see what's on that employee's laptop." IT guy: "I don't think that that's information you should be privy to." Executive: "You're fired, clean out your desk." Executives see whatever they want whenever they want, and getting in their way because of an ethical concern is generally a Career Limiting Event, even if you're in the right.It's not like the "Big corps ftl!" doesn't have some compelling evidence to back it up. I don't have to remind you of what Enron pulled. Plus, if a company is publicly traded, they're *required* to minimize costs, lest they be sued by their stockholders.
Why is pointing a finger at Chernobyl a joke? At best it should be an example of what is possible using less-safe nuclear power generation.
I'll second that. So long as there's a profit motive in generating nuclear power, it will not be 'safe'.
You could argue that that applies to oil- or coal- burning power plants, but when one of those plants has an accident, it doesn't spew radioactive steam all over five states.
I'd like to hear what the pro-nuclear slashdotters would do to alleviate the cost- and corner-cutting that would inevitably happen in a power plant run by a private company.
Also, I'd like to remind everyone that even if we DID start to extract oil from where we can't right now (alaska wildlife reserve, offshore oil drilling) it would have negligible effects on our oil prices or supply for at least ten years. By then, if we seriously applied ourselves to making alternative energy sources more viable and practical, we wouldn't need the new capacity. There's some exciting work going on in photovoltaics; if we used the energy the new generation PVs generated to power electric cars, we could lower our independence on foreign oil AND reduce our carbon emissions.
Writing obfuscated code can be interpreted as a counter-productive attempt to create job security. If your coders are worried about the Vice President Of Things That Begin With H on Alternate Tuesdays swooping in and 'improving competitiveness' by laying off a bunch of people who do actual work, then of COURSE they'll try to make themselves indispensable. This is a failing of the corporate culture, and thus not ALL the blame can lie with the coders themselves.
One could also argue that some write obfuscated code as part of a preemptive revenge tactic on the employer who lays them off. Personally, I think there's value in making sure that your former employer suffers when they lay you off for no good reason without allowing you time to find a new job. It's pretty much the only leverage the average employee has in the US job market. Granted, good coders won't have trouble finding a new job unless they have severe personality problems (and they're out there, it's not just a stereotype), but so long as the majority of states are "at-will" employment states (meaning you can be fired at any time with no notice or reason given, and your employer is only obligated to give you pay earned to date when they frogmarch you out of the office) then this practice will exist.
Should coders write obfuscated code in an attempt to generate job security? In an ideal world, no. We don't live in an ideal world, therefore IMHO this practice is at least understandable.