True, except it's a bunch of "IANAL's" splitting legal issue hairs. Which does equate to wasted effort. Effort which I have now wasted more effort on defending the wasted effort comment... oh dammit, now I'm splitting hairs! Argh!
I think the person who sent in this "Ask Slashdot" probably isn't quite sure about the hardware and addressing limitations of a 32-bit or 64-bit machine, nor the restrictions in place on the average SOFTWARE that runs on those machines. If the original poster really NEEDED more than 4GB of RAM, they'd be working in a University lab or a company performing very large calculations on datasets with custom written software, and there would be people who could hook them up with such heavy duty computing power.
My guess is that the poster has 'heard' of 16GB RAM architectures for your standard computer and his boss, upon hearing this news, decided that "16GB must certainly be better than 4GB for that ailing SQL Server - buy me one!" Too bad this type of computer will most likely not improve the ailing SQL Server all that much after it has been purchased, but that's the business world for ya!
My second guess is that the poster is now quite well informed of the options available to him thanks to all the/.'ers who pretend to hate googling this info for other people, and then post like crazy their findings while ranting about having to so the whole time.;)
We're dealing with a librarian here, people. And as we all know from experience, librarians are stereotypically quite weird, usually nasty people in this country. I doubt it changes much if you go overseas.;)
Civilization 3 can also be controlled solely via the mouse interface I believe. It's turn-based, and I'm sure a lot of/.'ers can attest to its addictive and enjoyable gaming qualities.;)
Yes, he most definitely is. My sister-in-law worked, briefly, for a small, regional art distribution company. Her supervisor infected the company (and shut them down - the whole company - for days at a time) TWICE because she thought the virus-ridden "email was sent directly to her, so it must have been legitamate." This is also the same supervisor who nearly gave my sister-in-law a written warning because she changed the Windows desktop wallpaper, stating that doing so could make viruses happen and icons magically disappear.
Who cares about compile times? Sounds like you don't even need drivers written to support streaming media because that's already built-in. In other words, all you would have to worry about is assembling the parts, getting some graphics guys to build the GUI for your PVR, and then you throw just enough assembly code to run the GUI for your PVR, filesystem stuff, and a few other low level memory and subsystem drivers (like TCP/IP) and you'd be all set. And 400MHz can EASILY handle assembly coded drivers and apps that provide a wonderful multimedia experience to Joe Sixpack.
My wife WILL be a lawyer very soon, and she knows this stuff. So we go to purchase a copy of TurboTax at BestBuy because they are advertising that you get Quicken 2005 and Quickbooks 2005 for free! Not seeing the fine print on the box, we didn't realize you had to first purchase those two software titles seperately, then get the rebates from within the TurboTax box and mail in all this shit to get your refunds for Quicken and Quickbooks. Being thoroughly frustrated and not wanting to go through the hassle of doing all this, we decided to return the software. After all, the back of the BestBuy receipt said no return of video game software, DEFECTIVE SOFTWARE, DVDs, etc etc could be made. Notice that we never even loaded TurboTax onto a computer, never opened the disk sleave even, so TurboTax was NOT defective software, nor did it fit any other categories on the back of the receipt for "things that can't be returned."
After a lengthy argument with the all-knowing college kids manning the Customer Service desk at our local Best Buy we gave up. Best Buy obviously wasn't going to do anything - it would be a waste of our time to even continue to pursue that avenue (even after calling the 1-800 Best Buy # like we did and got the same response), and small claims court - which is where we'd have to file our legal complaint - would cost $40+ just in filing fees, not to mention all the time wasted down that path. So basically, unless you can get your money back from the person you bought it from, you're probably fucked.
Companies knowingly write these EULA's and Terms of Sale for us individual consumers to intentionally protect themselves. If they're overeaching their bounds, they know that if you waste enough of your own time and money to raise such a stink about it, it's still cheaper to eventually pay you off. And if you think class action lawsuits are the way to go, think again. It takes a lawyer (or several) to organize that endeavor, and even then it's gotta be worth THEIR efforts to push the big companies for a big payout. So Best Buy and Blizzard are just protecting their interests as much as possible, knowing that if you really freak out about it they can just pay you off, keep their rules in place, and continue to screw the majority of their consumers in the interest of company profit margins. It makes sense, even if it's not at all fair. You would do the same if you ran those companies.
Heh, you mentioned several "respectable" news media outlets as "professional." That reminds me of an article in my local newspaper about two weeks ago that was meant as a humorous stereotyping of our local cities neighborhoods. What's sad is that the "journalist" gave no credits to the more humorous and candid email that was getting forwarded around my office earlier that week that was in essence THE EXACT SAME ARTICLE. The "journalist" of our "respected" city newspaper (The Columbus Dispatch) changed some stuff, chopped out some stuff to get the article to fit on a front page of that newspaper section, and claimed that bit as his own.
Slashdot is bad, it's true, but I've lost much faith in the "professional" publications too. At least on Slashdot you can see the general consensus of the readership either refuting or bolstering the info presented on/.
This is absolutely the best truth about the workplace -> find a manager that can balance those abilities well and you will really enjoy what you do, even if it's not your "dream" job.
My current manager is awesome at those attributes you described, and even better: he knows it. He's a cocky son-of-a-bitch, but only about managing and making decisions. He knows when to rely on others for the more technical stuff of our jobs. He's managed to keep our group together and increase our usefulness in our little space of the company specifically because he knows when to let us do the work, and when we need to be encouraged to "fix" those parts of our work which we're not as good at - usually regarding the soft skills stuff.
And yes, I really enjoy my job, even though it's not my "dream" job.
This sounds like a troll. Shrink-wrap software is generally not protecting companies of a decent size (>100 or so employees is my wild guess). So who cares about EULA's in this respect? Service Level Agreements and other contractually binding (and checked by lawyers working for each company that is part of the deal) generally DO stipulate certain monetary penalties will be paid if a company's product fails to live up to certain agreed upon standards of usability.
So YES, those "EULA's" ARE enforceable. Parent poster had it right, but only in certain circumstances. For a decent size company who's profits heavily depend on the software Just Working almost all the time, it would be better to go with a vendor that can pay up when things go horribly wrong. Think of it as "doing business" insurance. For the smaller guy, (and sometimes even the big guys), the FOSS alternatives still make sense.
It's "cheap", and by cheap I mean free as in "already installed on the PC when I bought it" cheap. No installation work needed, I'm used to using it's features, etc. - that's what the typical computer user would say these days.
And if the computer "breaks" or slows down it's not that expensive to go buy a new one. It's just a part of our American "throw-away" consumerism. Apple computer users are like the Jaguar and Mercedes crowd - they're pretty damn expensive cars, but they'll last for a long time and look great on the road no matter how old they are. Linux computer users trying to use Linux on the desktop are like the "ricers." The car doesn't always work, is usually a "work in progress," but when done right can demolish any comparably priced car. They're still not as classy or long-lasting as the Mercedes and Jaguars, but every once in a while they're pretty cool.
'Cept Linux users don't get hot booth babes at the trade shows.
If you want to control a distribution system that plays the same songs things get more complicated, you'll need Apple computer's RTSP server and some client software to get everything sync'd throughout the house.
Why not just whip up a bash script which sends a signal to any or all client computers that are running xmms that tells xmms to play the track number requested at precisely the same time? Kinda like the 'shutdown' command, except instead of specifying a 'countdown time' before reboot, specify a "hard" time 1s in the future from when the sending client sends the message to begin playing the exact same track. I would think 1s would be plenty of time to allow for any bandwidth or client communication issues. Make sure each client is getting it's time from an ntp server, and that 1s delay to get every client in sync to play the song won't even seem noticeable. Seems doable to me...
In our current condo my wife's laptop w/ wifi can pick up three distinct networks from our second bedroom. Thankfully they're all encrypted, but none-the-less, being the young, upscale neighborhood that it is I wouldn't doubt there are 2.4GHz phones, wifi (obviously), and potentially other radio waves flying through the air all over the place. I wired up my home using the existing Cat-5 wires that were originally installed to provide phone jacks in each room. No, the crosstalk on the wires between my Vonage phone line, my landline, and the Ethernet wires has never really been that bad. I'm sure it would be "safer" if my Cat-5 cable wasn't trying to do two things at once (voice + data), but it's better than contesting with all those signals in the air.
What I'm saying is if the submitter of this ask slashdot has Cat-5 cables already installed in the house he can easily turn those into voice/data cables and connect up everything with Ethernet. As for sound... well, I'd suggest just running wire under the floorboards via the basement and drilling holes up through the floors. Wire up the mounted surround sound speakers and you're good to go. Bonus points for installing MythTV on a lowprofile destop that sits underneath the floor.;)
Why, it's Mandrake of course! Those Frenchies are such stalwarts of stability, steadfastness, and sheer willpower to withstand any attack on their infrastructure that I can't imagine a computer operating system that isn't founded on exactly the same principles!
It is far more painful (and quickly becomes painful at that) for me to try writing an extended amount of anything these days because I typically type almost everything. It is easier and requires less muscle manipulation to type letters and words and symbols using a keyboard than to hold a pencil or pen and actually form the letters, words, and symbols the "old" way. I would say all this repetitive stress injury syndrome crap is due to our increased workloads in Western civilization, not necessarily the fancy new tech gadgets. In the 1800's, one letter could take a week or more to write, send, and get a response to from loved ones or business colleagues. Today it's constant im's, emails, and blackberry messages going back and forth as fast as you can type. Let's face it, today's communication delays are 100% human and have little to do with the technological limits. It took me several minutes to type this crap out, but it takes 0.43 seconds to post it to slashdot. Chill out on the digital communications and you won't injure yourself. Don't chill out and live with the consequences.
That's not a free market! A free market means you're free to sell your product no matter what your size or "power". If Dell has juicier contracts in the cheap-ass computer market than you as the little guy do, then I guess they're better at getting the juicy contracts. A Free market promotes the ideal that you can compete on features, or price, or service and support, or a myriad other "twists" on the product(s) that the big conglomerate is selling.
In the computer industry, granted, we don't quite have a "fair" market because Microsoft has violated anti-trust laws and not really paid for their inequity, but that says nothing about whether the market is free or not. There are PLENTY of other computer software companies aren't there? There's just not very many software companies making operating systems because Microsoft has stomped that idea like a little tiny bug.
The ultra-liberals on/. seem to forget the distinction between "fair" and "free" too often.
Another thought... How would people react to dangers if they could live for centuries? Suddenly, you're not risking the experiences of 10 or 20 or 50 years of life. You're risking the experiences of 100 or 200 or 500 years of life. Ouch. One might well think twice before pushing some of the boundaries in those cases.
Ahh, but isn't this the point exactly? Even if we were able to "dig deep enough" to determine all the things to enable us to live even 2x as long as is the current average life expectancy, accidents still happen. Murder still happens. Wars still happen. Tsunamis still happen! (Pardon the reference, but it is important in this topic of discussion) Ultimately, the longer you live the greater the odds become that you'll fall prey to one of these COMPLETELY UNAVOIDABLE causes of death.
We would seriously have to be able to reconstruct brains, memories, thoughts,... EVERYTHING to maintain a lifetime of 1000yrs plus in this day and age. There are just too many dangerous activities going on all around us. And if you camped out in a cave somewhere for 1000yrs just to avoid the majority of dangers, what kind of life would that be?
Oh I doubt michael needs to be *that* devious, although I wouldn't put it past him. Somehow I think there's yet another agreement behind the scenes at ol'/. with our venerable "editors" and one of the VC firms or marketing firms on that list. Besides, michael has never resorted to this sort of "disclaimer" on any of the other even less professional, more inflammatory story submissions that he's posted in the past.
Physics isn't uncool! I love studying physics related stuff. It's the Physics professors that you get stuck with in undergrad level physics courses that are so uncool! Having transferred through 3 different schools now, and having gotten a D in every entry-level physics class so far (due to my severe dislike of the professors which only fuels my desire to completely slack off in the classes), I have had to retake Physics 101 three times now. I know, that appears to not support the fact that I enjoy Physics, but I really do. I just have a real problem doing the work when the professor is pissing me off so badly.
Let's see, here's how my physics prof's broke down:
Physics prof. #1: A dweeb. Seemingly could not remove his elbows from the sides of his corpulent belly. Subsequently, this made him look like a retarded Tyranosauros Rex when he had to jump to pull down the overhead screen that time that the overhead screen pull cord was stuck up high and he couldn't reach it. Also talked slowly, monotonously, and had this really weird dweeby voice. Couldn't understand how to relate to the students when they asked a question.
Physics prof. #2: Not so bad, but not so good. Spoke over everyone's heads, didn't know how to relate to those he was trying to teach. An elitist.
Physics prof. #3: What an ass! Talks slowly, is tough on the eyes (looks like a hard alcoholic (red face) GNU hippie that isn't as fat as a GNU hippie, but seemingly has the same personal grooming habits as one). Gets upset when students ask questions. Repeats himself 5+ times about everything and likes to not always finish sentences when speaking. I seriously would have had the lab done in under 30 minutes last night if he would've just given us the info and sent us to lab instead of droning on and on. (I was there for 1.5hrs)
So you see, the biggest problem is social ineptitude on the part of Physics professors at the undergrad level, not a lack of "coolness" on the subject of Physics.
I completely agree with you, but the guy she was flirting with couldn't rate her a '100' on a scale of 1-10 if he were to take an exit survey. So ultimately that extra time spent flirting with him probably didn't have any statistically significant bearing on the call center's quality score, and negatively impacted the productivity. Look, I know everyone wants to be treated well when they call the hell-desk, but let's face it: you're not going to get flirted with by your helpdesk representative every time. Besides, the caller initiated the flirtation. If the helpdesk rep wanted to continue that conversation she could easily do it "offline" after her shift.
Oh I'm not saying it was necessarily wrong from the standpoint of whether or not the guy in the article should have had to report such a thing. All I was trying to point out was that he was ratting the rep out for something the cell phone company probably disallowed their customer service rep's from doing. Yes, sure that might be a lame policy to have, but I know that in a big call center that is handling 1000's of calls per day, flirting with a customer for an extra 5 minutes will probably be looked down upon as "unproductive work" which it really is. Whether or not that's too strict of a policy is up for debate of course.
Regardless of that, this article still has nothing to do with "YRO" because there's no deception or infringement of the customer's rights here, nor of the rep's rights... they do know they get quality monitored all the time, so flirting with a customer is a risk she was willing to knowingly take.
I agree, michael is once again being a socialist prick. If he had actually read the frickin' article he'd also notice this gem:
Recently, Pike stumbled onto a call where a young male customer was flirting with a female service agent at a cell phone company. After some giggles and banter, the woman relented and gave her personal phone number to the customer. Pike quickly alerted the cell phone company to the phone date.
Notice here that the phone monitor dude, Pike, is not calling the cell phone company to go get that evil customer. No. He's calling to tell the cell phone company that they have a representative of their company setting up a date with a customer. This obviously puts the company in a sticky situation since they're most likely NOT in the business of being a match-making service, and this kind of behavior is almost certainly NOT allowed on "company time."
And I have listened to these monitored calls. Being the evil Big Brother that I am, I can tell you that not once have I even cared how the customer acted or behaved. All we're concerned about is how well did our agents handle the customer's question, complaint, or problem. More often than not we see agents not doing the right thing, just like the article mentioned. I truly do not see how this story relates to "My Rights Online" AT ALL!
I hope michael gets sick and tired of our berating his pathetic trolling and leaves/. soon, just like Katz.
I find myself daydreaming in my bedroom at night right before I go to sleep after burning an hour or two on CounterStrike how best to protect the hostage (my wife) from the intruding terrorists coming up the stairs. Should I take cover and snipe with my 9mm, or rush 'em before they round the bend of the stairs? I won't even go into my thoughts of what it would be like if I actually owned an auto-shottie!
Slashdot Mirror
True, except it's a bunch of "IANAL's" splitting legal issue hairs. Which does equate to wasted effort. Effort which I have now wasted more effort on defending the wasted effort comment... oh dammit, now I'm splitting hairs! Argh!
I think the person who sent in this "Ask Slashdot" probably isn't quite sure about the hardware and addressing limitations of a 32-bit or 64-bit machine, nor the restrictions in place on the average SOFTWARE that runs on those machines. If the original poster really NEEDED more than 4GB of RAM, they'd be working in a University lab or a company performing very large calculations on datasets with custom written software, and there would be people who could hook them up with such heavy duty computing power.
/.'ers who pretend to hate googling this info for other people, and then post like crazy their findings while ranting about having to so the whole time. ;)
My guess is that the poster has 'heard' of 16GB RAM architectures for your standard computer and his boss, upon hearing this news, decided that "16GB must certainly be better than 4GB for that ailing SQL Server - buy me one!" Too bad this type of computer will most likely not improve the ailing SQL Server all that much after it has been purchased, but that's the business world for ya!
My second guess is that the poster is now quite well informed of the options available to him thanks to all the
We're dealing with a librarian here, people. And as we all know from experience, librarians are stereotypically quite weird, usually nasty people in this country. I doubt it changes much if you go overseas. ;)
It's a joke, laugh, you uptight librarians!
Civilization 3 can also be controlled solely via the mouse interface I believe. It's turn-based, and I'm sure a lot of /.'ers can attest to its addictive and enjoyable gaming qualities. ;)
Yes, he most definitely is. My sister-in-law worked, briefly, for a small, regional art distribution company. Her supervisor infected the company (and shut them down - the whole company - for days at a time) TWICE because she thought the virus-ridden "email was sent directly to her, so it must have been legitamate." This is also the same supervisor who nearly gave my sister-in-law a written warning because she changed the Windows desktop wallpaper, stating that doing so could make viruses happen and icons magically disappear.
Yes, the average user IS just that dumb.
Who cares about compile times? Sounds like you don't even need drivers written to support streaming media because that's already built-in. In other words, all you would have to worry about is assembling the parts, getting some graphics guys to build the GUI for your PVR, and then you throw just enough assembly code to run the GUI for your PVR, filesystem stuff, and a few other low level memory and subsystem drivers (like TCP/IP) and you'd be all set. And 400MHz can EASILY handle assembly coded drivers and apps that provide a wonderful multimedia experience to Joe Sixpack.
My wife WILL be a lawyer very soon, and she knows this stuff. So we go to purchase a copy of TurboTax at BestBuy because they are advertising that you get Quicken 2005 and Quickbooks 2005 for free! Not seeing the fine print on the box, we didn't realize you had to first purchase those two software titles seperately, then get the rebates from within the TurboTax box and mail in all this shit to get your refunds for Quicken and Quickbooks. Being thoroughly frustrated and not wanting to go through the hassle of doing all this, we decided to return the software. After all, the back of the BestBuy receipt said no return of video game software, DEFECTIVE SOFTWARE, DVDs, etc etc could be made. Notice that we never even loaded TurboTax onto a computer, never opened the disk sleave even, so TurboTax was NOT defective software, nor did it fit any other categories on the back of the receipt for "things that can't be returned."
After a lengthy argument with the all-knowing college kids manning the Customer Service desk at our local Best Buy we gave up. Best Buy obviously wasn't going to do anything - it would be a waste of our time to even continue to pursue that avenue (even after calling the 1-800 Best Buy # like we did and got the same response), and small claims court - which is where we'd have to file our legal complaint - would cost $40+ just in filing fees, not to mention all the time wasted down that path. So basically, unless you can get your money back from the person you bought it from, you're probably fucked.
Companies knowingly write these EULA's and Terms of Sale for us individual consumers to intentionally protect themselves. If they're overeaching their bounds, they know that if you waste enough of your own time and money to raise such a stink about it, it's still cheaper to eventually pay you off. And if you think class action lawsuits are the way to go, think again. It takes a lawyer (or several) to organize that endeavor, and even then it's gotta be worth THEIR efforts to push the big companies for a big payout. So Best Buy and Blizzard are just protecting their interests as much as possible, knowing that if you really freak out about it they can just pay you off, keep their rules in place, and continue to screw the majority of their consumers in the interest of company profit margins. It makes sense, even if it's not at all fair. You would do the same if you ran those companies.
Heh, you mentioned several "respectable" news media outlets as "professional." That reminds me of an article in my local newspaper about two weeks ago that was meant as a humorous stereotyping of our local cities neighborhoods. What's sad is that the "journalist" gave no credits to the more humorous and candid email that was getting forwarded around my office earlier that week that was in essence THE EXACT SAME ARTICLE. The "journalist" of our "respected" city newspaper (The Columbus Dispatch) changed some stuff, chopped out some stuff to get the article to fit on a front page of that newspaper section, and claimed that bit as his own.
/.
Slashdot is bad, it's true, but I've lost much faith in the "professional" publications too. At least on Slashdot you can see the general consensus of the readership either refuting or bolstering the info presented on
What's next?!? The same thing we do every night, Pinky. try to Take OVer THE WORLD!
This is absolutely the best truth about the workplace -> find a manager that can balance those abilities well and you will really enjoy what you do, even if it's not your "dream" job.
My current manager is awesome at those attributes you described, and even better: he knows it. He's a cocky son-of-a-bitch, but only about managing and making decisions. He knows when to rely on others for the more technical stuff of our jobs. He's managed to keep our group together and increase our usefulness in our little space of the company specifically because he knows when to let us do the work, and when we need to be encouraged to "fix" those parts of our work which we're not as good at - usually regarding the soft skills stuff.
And yes, I really enjoy my job, even though it's not my "dream" job.
This sounds like a troll. Shrink-wrap software is generally not protecting companies of a decent size (>100 or so employees is my wild guess). So who cares about EULA's in this respect? Service Level Agreements and other contractually binding (and checked by lawyers working for each company that is part of the deal) generally DO stipulate certain monetary penalties will be paid if a company's product fails to live up to certain agreed upon standards of usability.
So YES, those "EULA's" ARE enforceable. Parent poster had it right, but only in certain circumstances. For a decent size company who's profits heavily depend on the software Just Working almost all the time, it would be better to go with a vendor that can pay up when things go horribly wrong. Think of it as "doing business" insurance. For the smaller guy, (and sometimes even the big guys), the FOSS alternatives still make sense.
It's "cheap", and by cheap I mean free as in "already installed on the PC when I bought it" cheap. No installation work needed, I'm used to using it's features, etc. - that's what the typical computer user would say these days.
And if the computer "breaks" or slows down it's not that expensive to go buy a new one. It's just a part of our American "throw-away" consumerism. Apple computer users are like the Jaguar and Mercedes crowd - they're pretty damn expensive cars, but they'll last for a long time and look great on the road no matter how old they are. Linux computer users trying to use Linux on the desktop are like the "ricers." The car doesn't always work, is usually a "work in progress," but when done right can demolish any comparably priced car. They're still not as classy or long-lasting as the Mercedes and Jaguars, but every once in a while they're pretty cool.
'Cept Linux users don't get hot booth babes at the trade shows.
If you want to control a distribution system that plays the same songs things get more complicated, you'll need Apple computer's RTSP server and some client software to get everything sync'd throughout the house.
Why not just whip up a bash script which sends a signal to any or all client computers that are running xmms that tells xmms to play the track number requested at precisely the same time? Kinda like the 'shutdown' command, except instead of specifying a 'countdown time' before reboot, specify a "hard" time 1s in the future from when the sending client sends the message to begin playing the exact same track. I would think 1s would be plenty of time to allow for any bandwidth or client communication issues. Make sure each client is getting it's time from an ntp server, and that 1s delay to get every client in sync to play the song won't even seem noticeable. Seems doable to me...
In our current condo my wife's laptop w/ wifi can pick up three distinct networks from our second bedroom. Thankfully they're all encrypted, but none-the-less, being the young, upscale neighborhood that it is I wouldn't doubt there are 2.4GHz phones, wifi (obviously), and potentially other radio waves flying through the air all over the place. I wired up my home using the existing Cat-5 wires that were originally installed to provide phone jacks in each room. No, the crosstalk on the wires between my Vonage phone line, my landline, and the Ethernet wires has never really been that bad. I'm sure it would be "safer" if my Cat-5 cable wasn't trying to do two things at once (voice + data), but it's better than contesting with all those signals in the air.
;)
What I'm saying is if the submitter of this ask slashdot has Cat-5 cables already installed in the house he can easily turn those into voice/data cables and connect up everything with Ethernet. As for sound... well, I'd suggest just running wire under the floorboards via the basement and drilling holes up through the floors. Wire up the mounted surround sound speakers and you're good to go. Bonus points for installing MythTV on a lowprofile destop that sits underneath the floor.
Why, it's Mandrake of course! Those Frenchies are such stalwarts of stability, steadfastness, and sheer willpower to withstand any attack on their infrastructure that I can't imagine a computer operating system that isn't founded on exactly the same principles!
Right?
It is far more painful (and quickly becomes painful at that) for me to try writing an extended amount of anything these days because I typically type almost everything. It is easier and requires less muscle manipulation to type letters and words and symbols using a keyboard than to hold a pencil or pen and actually form the letters, words, and symbols the "old" way. I would say all this repetitive stress injury syndrome crap is due to our increased workloads in Western civilization, not necessarily the fancy new tech gadgets. In the 1800's, one letter could take a week or more to write, send, and get a response to from loved ones or business colleagues. Today it's constant im's, emails, and blackberry messages going back and forth as fast as you can type. Let's face it, today's communication delays are 100% human and have little to do with the technological limits. It took me several minutes to type this crap out, but it takes 0.43 seconds to post it to slashdot. Chill out on the digital communications and you won't injure yourself. Don't chill out and live with the consequences.
That's not a free market! A free market means you're free to sell your product no matter what your size or "power". If Dell has juicier contracts in the cheap-ass computer market than you as the little guy do, then I guess they're better at getting the juicy contracts. A Free market promotes the ideal that you can compete on features, or price, or service and support, or a myriad other "twists" on the product(s) that the big conglomerate is selling.
/. seem to forget the distinction between "fair" and "free" too often.
In the computer industry, granted, we don't quite have a "fair" market because Microsoft has violated anti-trust laws and not really paid for their inequity, but that says nothing about whether the market is free or not. There are PLENTY of other computer software companies aren't there? There's just not very many software companies making operating systems because Microsoft has stomped that idea like a little tiny bug.
The ultra-liberals on
Another thought... How would people react to dangers if they could live for centuries? Suddenly, you're not risking the experiences of 10 or 20 or 50 years of life. You're risking the experiences of 100 or 200 or 500 years of life. Ouch. One might well think twice before pushing some of the boundaries in those cases.
... EVERYTHING to maintain a lifetime of 1000yrs plus in this day and age. There are just too many dangerous activities going on all around us. And if you camped out in a cave somewhere for 1000yrs just to avoid the majority of dangers, what kind of life would that be?
Ahh, but isn't this the point exactly? Even if we were able to "dig deep enough" to determine all the things to enable us to live even 2x as long as is the current average life expectancy, accidents still happen. Murder still happens. Wars still happen. Tsunamis still happen! (Pardon the reference, but it is important in this topic of discussion) Ultimately, the longer you live the greater the odds become that you'll fall prey to one of these COMPLETELY UNAVOIDABLE causes of death.
We would seriously have to be able to reconstruct brains, memories, thoughts,
Oh I doubt michael needs to be *that* devious, although I wouldn't put it past him. Somehow I think there's yet another agreement behind the scenes at ol' /. with our venerable "editors" and one of the VC firms or marketing firms on that list. Besides, michael has never resorted to this sort of "disclaimer" on any of the other even less professional, more inflammatory story submissions that he's posted in the past.
Physics isn't uncool! I love studying physics related stuff. It's the Physics professors that you get stuck with in undergrad level physics courses that are so uncool! Having transferred through 3 different schools now, and having gotten a D in every entry-level physics class so far (due to my severe dislike of the professors which only fuels my desire to completely slack off in the classes), I have had to retake Physics 101 three times now. I know, that appears to not support the fact that I enjoy Physics, but I really do. I just have a real problem doing the work when the professor is pissing me off so badly.
Let's see, here's how my physics prof's broke down:
Physics prof. #1: A dweeb. Seemingly could not remove his elbows from the sides of his corpulent belly. Subsequently, this made him look like a retarded Tyranosauros Rex when he had to jump to pull down the overhead screen that time that the overhead screen pull cord was stuck up high and he couldn't reach it. Also talked slowly, monotonously, and had this really weird dweeby voice. Couldn't understand how to relate to the students when they asked a question.
Physics prof. #2: Not so bad, but not so good. Spoke over everyone's heads, didn't know how to relate to those he was trying to teach. An elitist.
Physics prof. #3: What an ass! Talks slowly, is tough on the eyes (looks like a hard alcoholic (red face) GNU hippie that isn't as fat as a GNU hippie, but seemingly has the same personal grooming habits as one). Gets upset when students ask questions. Repeats himself 5+ times about everything and likes to not always finish sentences when speaking. I seriously would have had the lab done in under 30 minutes last night if he would've just given us the info and sent us to lab instead of droning on and on. (I was there for 1.5hrs)
So you see, the biggest problem is social ineptitude on the part of Physics professors at the undergrad level, not a lack of "coolness" on the subject of Physics.
I completely agree with you, but the guy she was flirting with couldn't rate her a '100' on a scale of 1-10 if he were to take an exit survey. So ultimately that extra time spent flirting with him probably didn't have any statistically significant bearing on the call center's quality score, and negatively impacted the productivity. Look, I know everyone wants to be treated well when they call the hell-desk, but let's face it: you're not going to get flirted with by your helpdesk representative every time. Besides, the caller initiated the flirtation. If the helpdesk rep wanted to continue that conversation she could easily do it "offline" after her shift.
Oh I'm not saying it was necessarily wrong from the standpoint of whether or not the guy in the article should have had to report such a thing. All I was trying to point out was that he was ratting the rep out for something the cell phone company probably disallowed their customer service rep's from doing. Yes, sure that might be a lame policy to have, but I know that in a big call center that is handling 1000's of calls per day, flirting with a customer for an extra 5 minutes will probably be looked down upon as "unproductive work" which it really is. Whether or not that's too strict of a policy is up for debate of course.
Regardless of that, this article still has nothing to do with "YRO" because there's no deception or infringement of the customer's rights here, nor of the rep's rights... they do know they get quality monitored all the time, so flirting with a customer is a risk she was willing to knowingly take.
I agree, michael is once again being a socialist prick. If he had actually read the frickin' article he'd also notice this gem:
/. soon, just like Katz.
Recently, Pike stumbled onto a call where a young male customer was flirting with a female service agent at a cell phone company. After some giggles and banter, the woman relented and gave her personal phone number to the customer. Pike quickly alerted the cell phone company to the phone date.
Notice here that the phone monitor dude, Pike, is not calling the cell phone company to go get that evil customer. No. He's calling to tell the cell phone company that they have a representative of their company setting up a date with a customer. This obviously puts the company in a sticky situation since they're most likely NOT in the business of being a match-making service, and this kind of behavior is almost certainly NOT allowed on "company time."
And I have listened to these monitored calls. Being the evil Big Brother that I am, I can tell you that not once have I even cared how the customer acted or behaved. All we're concerned about is how well did our agents handle the customer's question, complaint, or problem. More often than not we see agents not doing the right thing, just like the article mentioned. I truly do not see how this story relates to "My Rights Online" AT ALL!
I hope michael gets sick and tired of our berating his pathetic trolling and leaves
About CS:
I find myself daydreaming in my bedroom at night right before I go to sleep after burning an hour or two on CounterStrike how best to protect the hostage (my wife) from the intruding terrorists coming up the stairs. Should I take cover and snipe with my 9mm, or rush 'em before they round the bend of the stairs? I won't even go into my thoughts of what it would be like if I actually owned an auto-shottie!
This really does work!
1) Login with your userid
2) type 'su' at the command prompt
3) fill in root's password
4) ???
5) proceed to screw up your flaky linux install