I don't care what someones "political affiliation is" anymore. It's more of a fashion statement for people now than a thought out decision.
***I heard some news thing on channel X (owned by corporation X) and I'm all pissed off cause they say Corporation Y and govt. official Y are causing children to die, think of the children! lets go protest! (runs out and protests and posts on slashdot). Hrmmmm... sounds typical to me. How about bothering to check first.
Thank you for your sensible and well thought out post, I wish mine was as good.
Porn sites want to earn money. They earn money by having people pay with credit cards. People under the age of 18 are highly unlikely to have credit cards, and even less likely to pay a porn site even if the should happen to have a credit card.
Well, actually, I don't agree with this. Plenty of kids have credit cards or access to them in some way, legal or illegal. Not that this is right, but it's the way it is. And agreeing with you that pr0n operators care only about the money, they don't care if it's a 12 year old or a 70 year old as long as they have the magic plastic.
I agree on not having censorship in libraries, cause they are not a purely for kids. That's similar to not showing r-rated films in theatres cause kids go there too.
The whole rest of your argument is actually counterproductive. You are suggesting that parent's lose control of raising their children in order to let the children raise themselves?
See, I understand that some parents (ones that should be tortured and shot, IMO) abuse their kids. But you can't stop that. Kids, overall, though need to come to their parents with problems and their parents need to deal with the problems. It is not acceptible to think that we need information available in libraries so kids can try to get advice anonymously online about abuse that they may have suffered. These are kids. They need to be talking to their parents. Now, this can only be accomplished if you are a good parent and your children have learned to come to you with problems. But this is not a valid argument for having or not having censorship in libraries. Schools provide couselors, doctors will talk with kids, teachers, church folk would (I'm guessing there, I don't have a religion but my wife does and they seem like nice folks).
While I think it's noble that you want children to be able to go try to find information, I wouldn't want my kids, after being abused by someone (again, assuming the abuser is not the parent) to be online in a chat room asking random people about abuse, etc. Hrm. I won't even go into who might be lurking there. Nope. They will come to me and I will help them, and hopefully not be jailed for feeding the goblin-sub-human-sheitmonkey to my dog.
*interestingly enough, I think I remember some years back a man shooting another man who had sexually molested his children and the judge letting him go... long while back, can't be too sure on accuracy... I think in colorado?*
Anyway, I think any parent would rather guide their child (parent their child, if you will) through these troubles, rather than them trying to handle it on their own.
Of course all this logic only applies to humans. By humans I mean people who have kids and care for them, or choose not to have kids. People who do not care for their children are not human and should not be allowed to live on this planet. People who harm children purposely or maliciously (spankings are fine, beatings are not) should be executed.
But then again, I am not so concerned with children finding porn on the web, a child who is learning seeks information, good and bad. The lucky kids are the ones who's parents will talk to them about it.
Heck, I used to get excited at the Sears catalog when I was young. All those lady's in their underwear... whooo! ya know, back then we didn't have no in-ter-net but we managed to find naked girls just fine.
1. Ruins? no. Changes drastically? yup.
Good or bad? Depends on your perspective.
In some cases it's great, it can provide more reliable water sources for irrigation both upstream and downstream, not to mention a resevoir for areas that can use it (not that many do, but it can) And some are screaming now that they are releasing greenhouse gases from rotting vegetation. Um, well, lets see, the oldest plants going into this are what, maybe 100 year old trees? which would have been removed prior anyway in most cases. So on average you probably have 2 year old plants. In their 2 year life span they gathered those gases efficiently from the atmosphere. Their biodegrading after death is innevitable. It would happen anyway. It's not bad. It's completely normal. Are you suggesting that plants shouldn't be allowed to die because it's a pollutant? That is absurd. This is not a valid argument. When you compare the life cycle in the natural generation of these gases to be gathered and contained, and our "forced" release of them (though it is inevitable anyway), I think you'll see a miniscule thing. Now consider oil. How many billions of years did it take to create it? How much destructive energy are we releasing quickly by using it? I think if we used a very very tiny amount of oil, it wouldn't be noticeable because the earth would compensate, but at the rate we use it? Heck no.
Now... we see the error of your ways.
2. Um. Please tell me you are kidding. Do you have the foggiest concept of the mass of the earth? a big storm in the Atlantic will move more water on it's way up the coast than the US will move into dams probably in it's existence. Yeah, this stuff slides back down. Well, we retain a portion comparable to what? an atom to NYC? if you put a drop of water on a basketball, you'd still be making a comparison so amazingly larger than what we do that it's ridiculous.
Next you'll be claiming that Scientology is a religion.
um. NO.
His idea is sound. Nothing written anywhere there says that you couldn't stage a skit in front of one of these cameras and request the footage. He's suggesting something akin to going into a local convenience store or bank, putting on a show for the camera there, then requesting the footage of the show to submit to the contest. If it was a news cameraperson and you were jumping in the background and putting ears on folks, you could be denied the footage, since it was their camera for media use; but in the case of the security camera, the footage is still publicly available.
I think you just got confused as to which cameras he was referring to.
I agree with you completely. I learned the hard way at my last job, a.com that is still clinging to life.
They are now trying to not be a dotcom but a tv production company (probably because all the tech folks pretty much quit).
Now I have a decent job, not super high pay, but I'm respected and for the most part my opinions are listened too. I do have to put up with politiking and crap that I have realized you will never ever completely escape, but I accept it now.
It's nice when companies call now and I can say that I have a great job, and they'd have to meet this list of criteria for me to be interested in their position. Serious ones looking for good employees are pleased, and we talk, most are not serious and I don't have to worry about them calling back.
One trick I use is to keep my portfolio updated and keep my resume online in a few formats for download. Then when you get the calls from people who just want to "keyword" your resume and crap like that, I point them at my domain and say "have at it" if they are not interested in going and looking for themselves, then I don't want to deal with them, obviously they are not serious.
Same goes with companies. I will give them the URL for my portfolio, and a cd if they request it, and if I end up talking to them, I ask questions about what they thought of parts of it. If they can't answer cause they haven't looked I ask them to call back after they have, because I want them interested in ME, not some words on a resume, and my portfolio is their first view of my stuff.
I also get serious and let them know that I won't accept a position for less than X amount a year, and it has to have great benefits or add on another Y amount....
Now that I've known this I've gotten probably 3 serious offers in the last 3 months, ones that I actually spent time investigating and such and eventually decided not to take, but would have been good jobs.
For the most part you need to decide what you want and tell that to the company when they call or you interview. I find most are happy when you do, because they don't have to worry about you coming and leaving in 6 months or whatever. Also make sure that they want YOU, not just a body.
I was at a web.com company for a while. I liked the folks there and had a crapload of responsibilities, which I liked. But it became apparent that the "business" side was not really interested in reality, but rather just wanted to talk it up into a huge deal and then try to sell it, working or not. I would get asked/told that we needed to develop this or that feature into the product I was developing for the web and I'd tell them, Okay, that will take 3 weeks extra for product completion... They'd say "No, we need that tomorrow to show the VC's!" and I'd say that cannot happen.
It went back and forth with silly things like that for a while, and I got kind of fed up with trying to take care of everything with the help of only one other guy (who was very smart, but was a student in the beginning).
Anyway, I realized that there was no way to make these guys see reality. They were hiring the high school pals and flying them around the country to party and all sorts of silliness but I had to argue to get them to settle on a service provider for hosting our product...
I updated my resume and started getting calls, eventually interviewing and being offered the job I'm at now. I told them that I had an offer, and that I'd stay if they could come close to it, but they got all silly and childish and said
"We accept your resignation" when I had yet to give one. I said okay, when do you want me out, they said in two weeks. I said okay, later that day they sent a friend of mine there to tell me they wanted me to not come back the next day. They didn't even have the decency to do it themselves.
Anyway, i got paid for the two weeks, took time off to enjoy myself, and started my new job early and got a bonus of overlapping paychecks.
I think it's important to keep your resume fresh and keep your portfolio or whatever is important for your job updated and current online somewhere. I keep mine on my own domain so I don't ever have to scramble if I need it. I get calls all the time, and have had to start screening to find which of the folks are serious with cool jobs I might be interested in and which are calling for random headhunter crap.
Anyway, I think it's fairly standard to be asked not to come back once you resign or are resigned, but they still have to pay you for the time or else do some other severence thing unless they can pull some swifty manuevers on you.
My trick now is to go to interviews and specifically ask how much control I get, etc. etc. and to tell them outright that if I don't get autonomy and control over my areas I won't take the job. Some still try to talk me into it, but most appreciate the honesty either way. I have had some more offers that way, but I won't go to anywhere not operating in the Black now. No more startups for me.
Now that would really suck.
Dammit, I work hard and fast (um... )
really, I do. I get a ton of work done, I never leave a job unfinished. If I complete something I get more to do and keep going. Sometimes, though, I like to screw off. On a friday afternoon when I'm a weeks worth of work ahead of my co-workers I might finish something and say "Hey, I'm gonna go outside and smoke a butt, drink a coke, and blink at the bright sunlight that is hurting my poor flourescent adjusted eyes"
Or I might have the shits one day.
I like spicey food - it happens. don't laugh dammit.
Do I really want my boss popping into the shitter saying
"Hey, um, I noticed you've been in here over 15 minutes, is everything okay?"
"uh, yeah, I, um, well, ate burritos last night"
"Well, don't eat burritos on a work night, okay? It cuts into your productivity"
F that.
I fought tooth and nail to not carry this f-ing beeper around (and lost) ((btw, my job, webmaster, has no use for a beeper))
If they tried to spring this crap on me I would just have to quit.
I saw a tv special about the Air Force jump. Its freaking berserk. I mean, it's cool that we can dump people off of those hieghts and they can manage to live through it, but isn't it a bit like testing how tough your toy trucks are by dropping them off higher and higher tables? When they break you make a better truck and try again?
I dunno. My brother is Airborn qualified, as is my dad, my aunt, my uncle, and more of my family, and I think it's kind of retarded to jump out of airplanes anyway, but I suppose sending people around the world to shoot at each other is kind of dumb too, but necessary. The people doing this stuff for the heck of it, or to set a record, now that's just stupid without explanation.
Who covers their insurance? I suppose you don't need health insurance, more like hose-and-bucket-cleanup-and-truckload-of-dirt-for- the-crater insurance
Absolutely right.
And besides, this is an attempt to make an across the board % tax reduction. This isn't a reduction of higher percent for those who make more, it's flat. I play X% less, you pay x% less, we all pay X% less. If someone isn't earning enough to pay taxes, or is paying very little, sure, the % won't amount to much, but for people who do pay significant taxes it will.
Saying rich people don't want tax cuts is absurd and you should be banned from a keyboard for the remainder of the month. That's the same thing as saying people want to give their money away. Some may, but certainly not a significant amount. I want to keep my money, so do MOST people. We don't like paying taxes, but we do, because they are a necessity. When the govt. decides they can give some back, cause we've been good and things are going well, I'm all for it.
Sure, they might cut back on some areas, but we spend way too much money (as a nation) on crap that we should not be paying for. I'm not saying the space program is crap, I personally think it rules, but I'd rather get my tax cut and get out of debt and be able to buy a house soon than send an unmanned probe to pluto, build a returnable spacecraft, or have a space station.
And of course I don't want my money going to pay for people who don't want to work. I support the lower tax rates for the poor, meaning they pay less into the pool.
Perhaps, mr. tim, next time you pull your head out of your ### long enough to post, you'll think more before you do.
I've made the crack for it.
on
License to Sit
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· Score: 1
Upon the release of the new seat, I headed out to my garage to do some 1337 h4x0r stuff. I took a board (open source of course, cause all else sux). and used my 5yb3r 5@w to hone it into an evil chair license violating mechanism...
I'd make it available for download to you, but the company is suing me, so make sure you give them a big ole DOS slap my h4x0r friends.
You can go buy the parts at home depot, secretly labeled "plywood" and "saw"
but don't tell anyone I told you that, I might get arrested.
My first real official "career" type job was as a network admin and webmaster for the performing arts venue at my university... only about 40 machines total, it was a great job, the people ruled, even if they weren't exactly savy, they learned well... except the director. I've never known a more mentally stunted individual in such a position of importance....
I got called into his office several times:
1) In a panic he calls me, I rush on over, he's sweating and wide eyed saying "I deleted Microsoft Office from my machine" I'm thinking... man, is he really dumb enough to hack one of my boxes on accident? So I look, his apps are all still there, and all will start up... so now I'm a bit worried, thinking he's just insane, and I finally realize he's worried about the stupid shortcut bar. I made him a button on the desktop to "Install MS Office" so he could use it if he ever "deleted" office again... phew, what a turd.
2) I got moved to a different office, and was next to his... one day he was "moved" by a performance he had seen the previous night (he flew around the world going to plays and shows to see if he wanted them at our venue... sweet job) and he hooked up his stereo in his office and started playing a cd of the piece really loud... all day long, so annoying... towards the end of the day he comes in and says his computer is broken... I figure he danced around and knocked it over or something, so I go look... This turd had actually unplugged it to plug in his stereo, and was unable to realize he needed to plug it back in.
Anyway... there's more, but this is already long...
What I learned there, though, was that people in general need good tech support. They need people who are nice and won't call them an idiot to their face, and can figure out what their problem is after hearing it from them in "idiot-ese". Once I was able to start understanding what their problem really was (i need internet installed, i deleted netscape, etc...) things ran so much more smoothly and they were ultimately very pleased. These people got free ISP service from the university, but many actually paid for service from other companies because the tech support was available and good... it was a small ISP owned by an @sshole, but his tech support folks were genuinely nice and always did their best to help. They also understood idiot-ese, the most important thing they could...
So I do not think small ISP's will ever completely disappear. Being able to have no computer knowledge, but pay someone to set up your machine, make you shortcuts and a pretty desktop and show you how to push a few buttons and then surf the web, who will answer all your ?'s quickly and politely, made these folks pay for something they got for free without the tech support...
Re:Where are the free (as in speech) ISPs?
on
Juno And Privacy
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· Score: 1
telocity provides this for me.
they are also nice, answer the phone during business hours (for cali, i'm on the east coast though) and had me up and running in 30 days.
they helped me without hassle on setting up my domain, etc. etc... and they even sent me the dsl modem and instructions and such to do it myself after I assured them that I could manage it and didn't want to pay for installation....
I'm sure someone has a problem with them, but I haven't, and after 9 months of waiting on two different companies, they are a breath of fresh air.
www.telocity.com
please don't flame as an AC. If you don't like them for some reason, speak up, I'd be interested in hearing it, this is only from my experiance, after all.
they are getting terminals, right?
machines provided so they can surf web sites that are "allowed" by their government (obviously they won't be seeing news about how the rest of the world is doing, they might leave then). So they are getting glorified TV sets with access to 4 billion channels, mostly of crap, with plenty of commercials, and very little useable content, most of it not written in portugese... and most of them don't speak english...
I fail to see how they will be developing skills to pull themselves out of the gutter by having a tv in the house at the cost of over a month's salary.
If they were instead being provided with courses in computer science at a cost of 200 dollars and computers were installed at libraries or other public places (yes I know they have few libraries - not the point) so that anyone could access them and it wasn't a terminal so they could practice some of what they had learned, then MAYBE they'd have the chance to try to pull themselves up
I loved your comment by the way, it made me smile already this morning.
Does anyone else see the irony in producing computers that people can get for 200 dollars so that they can close the "digital gap"? I mean, come on, if they can't afford a 500$ computer and a telephone line, they are probably poor enough that they live in substandard housing and/or recieve poor medical attention and/or have crappy schools and/or live on a poor diet and/or etc. etc.
a list of things a thousand times long and each infinitely more powerful than being able to watch pr0n online. Are we to believe that these people will get their 200$ computers that will only allow them access to the web and email and this will solve the rest of their problems? And don't forget, we are talking about Brazil, for the love of pete, they have much more important issues that internet access.
I think some brazilian politian has a buddy who stands to make a crapload off of this.
The other point is, who is paying for this. If the government is sucking up the "loss" in the sales, where is that money coming from, taxxed people? So now you will take other people's money away so that less fortunate won't fall behind on the latest issue of "the Onion" and can keep up with slashdot? WTF?
If an american politician suggested we take money from the rich to buy Power Ranger toys for the poor, or rather, make them available cheaper to the poor, don't you think it would be stopped?
This is sheer stupidity. Folks who are so scared of being thought of as back-woods or less than first world because they aren't all trapped by AOL yet and aren't berated with banner ads for $hit they will never be able to afford that they'll sink valuable resources into a worthless effort such as this. It's a damn shame.
while overall I believe I agree with your sentiments, I must point out that currently the majority of humans are of low intelligence (my opinion) and we cannot simply cast off the lives of the stupid for that reason alone. I also don't believe there is anything wrong with being less intelligent. As long as the world in general has enough geniuses to keep us moving forward, why would we need everyone to be a genius? It doesn't make sense to have everyone with triple digit IQ's then force some to work at 7-11 because we want our latte's and bear claws on the way to work...
I would support stricter breeding laws though. Yeah, breeding laws.
Scoff if you like, but I think a standard needs to be developed, and this is two tier.
Tier One:
don't let the po folk breed. (send hatemail to jack@ass.com). They'll be up in arms, but why should they be allowed to generate more population that will be forced to endure poverty and poor health, etc. etc.... does that not violate the constitutional rights of their potential offspring? It would also be nice if democrats quit taking more of my paycheck so the poor could stay at home and have more kids, but that's another story.
Tier Two:
Selective Breeding. Also touchy, moreso probably than preventing breeding in substandard conditions. Say I have a genetic disorder that causes expensive healthcare, pain, suffering, etc... I actually do have one, but it's not all that bad most days. Now I do wish I didn't have it, but I don't wish I was dead because of it. Of course, if I had been selectively bred, so that the genes that cause it (and it is genes) never perpetuated, then I wouldn't have to worry about it. You can say I wouldn't be me, etc... but you can also STFU. The basic playout would be that people who could provide properly for a child could have one, if their genetic materials were of high enough quality, it could be made from theirs. If their genes were not high enough quality, or they had problems like sickle-cell, etc. then they would recieve implantation from a properly arranged combination of sperm and egg, or possibly from donor DNA in the form of cloning.
Now people who can care for children have them, and at the same time the human race improves. I know I'd be willing to sacrifice having a kid that looked like me for a healthier, happier one that was still raised by me. Of course the general nature of Americans to be selfish goes directly against this sort of well thought out improvement for all.
thank you for your time.
Slashdot Mirror
*clap* *clap* *clap*
Thank you.
I don't care what someones "political affiliation is" anymore. It's more of a fashion statement for people now than a thought out decision.
***I heard some news thing on channel X (owned by corporation X) and I'm all pissed off cause they say Corporation Y and govt. official Y are causing children to die, think of the children! lets go protest! (runs out and protests and posts on slashdot). Hrmmmm... sounds typical to me. How about bothering to check first.
Thank you for your sensible and well thought out post, I wish mine was as good.
I agree and disagree.
Porn sites want to earn money. They earn money by having people pay with credit cards. People under the age of 18 are highly unlikely to have credit cards, and even less likely to pay a porn site even if the should happen to have a credit card.
Well, actually, I don't agree with this. Plenty of kids have credit cards or access to them in some way, legal or illegal. Not that this is right, but it's the way it is. And agreeing with you that pr0n operators care only about the money, they don't care if it's a 12 year old or a 70 year old as long as they have the magic plastic.
I agree on not having censorship in libraries, cause they are not a purely for kids. That's similar to not showing r-rated films in theatres cause kids go there too.
The whole rest of your argument is actually counterproductive. You are suggesting that parent's lose control of raising their children in order to let the children raise themselves?
See, I understand that some parents (ones that should be tortured and shot, IMO) abuse their kids. But you can't stop that. Kids, overall, though need to come to their parents with problems and their parents need to deal with the problems. It is not acceptible to think that we need information available in libraries so kids can try to get advice anonymously online about abuse that they may have suffered. These are kids. They need to be talking to their parents. Now, this can only be accomplished if you are a good parent and your children have learned to come to you with problems. But this is not a valid argument for having or not having censorship in libraries. Schools provide couselors, doctors will talk with kids, teachers, church folk would (I'm guessing there, I don't have a religion but my wife does and they seem like nice folks).
While I think it's noble that you want children to be able to go try to find information, I wouldn't want my kids, after being abused by someone (again, assuming the abuser is not the parent) to be online in a chat room asking random people about abuse, etc. Hrm. I won't even go into who might be lurking there. Nope. They will come to me and I will help them, and hopefully not be jailed for feeding the goblin-sub-human-sheitmonkey to my dog.
*interestingly enough, I think I remember some years back a man shooting another man who had sexually molested his children and the judge letting him go... long while back, can't be too sure on accuracy... I think in colorado?*
Anyway, I think any parent would rather guide their child (parent their child, if you will) through these troubles, rather than them trying to handle it on their own.
Of course all this logic only applies to humans. By humans I mean people who have kids and care for them, or choose not to have kids. People who do not care for their children are not human and should not be allowed to live on this planet. People who harm children purposely or maliciously (spankings are fine, beatings are not) should be executed.
But then again, I am not so concerned with children finding porn on the web, a child who is learning seeks information, good and bad. The lucky kids are the ones who's parents will talk to them about it.
Heck, I used to get excited at the Sears catalog when I was young. All those lady's in their underwear... whooo! ya know, back then we didn't have no in-ter-net but we managed to find naked girls just fine.
and I was spanked. and I'm not a serial killer.
1. Ruins? no. Changes drastically? yup.
Good or bad? Depends on your perspective.
In some cases it's great, it can provide more reliable water sources for irrigation both upstream and downstream, not to mention a resevoir for areas that can use it (not that many do, but it can) And some are screaming now that they are releasing greenhouse gases from rotting vegetation. Um, well, lets see, the oldest plants going into this are what, maybe 100 year old trees? which would have been removed prior anyway in most cases. So on average you probably have 2 year old plants. In their 2 year life span they gathered those gases efficiently from the atmosphere. Their biodegrading after death is innevitable. It would happen anyway. It's not bad. It's completely normal. Are you suggesting that plants shouldn't be allowed to die because it's a pollutant? That is absurd. This is not a valid argument. When you compare the life cycle in the natural generation of these gases to be gathered and contained, and our "forced" release of them (though it is inevitable anyway), I think you'll see a miniscule thing. Now consider oil. How many billions of years did it take to create it? How much destructive energy are we releasing quickly by using it? I think if we used a very very tiny amount of oil, it wouldn't be noticeable because the earth would compensate, but at the rate we use it? Heck no.
Now... we see the error of your ways.
2. Um. Please tell me you are kidding. Do you have the foggiest concept of the mass of the earth? a big storm in the Atlantic will move more water on it's way up the coast than the US will move into dams probably in it's existence. Yeah, this stuff slides back down. Well, we retain a portion comparable to what? an atom to NYC? if you put a drop of water on a basketball, you'd still be making a comparison so amazingly larger than what we do that it's ridiculous.
Next you'll be claiming that Scientology is a religion.
um. NO.
His idea is sound. Nothing written anywhere there says that you couldn't stage a skit in front of one of these cameras and request the footage. He's suggesting something akin to going into a local convenience store or bank, putting on a show for the camera there, then requesting the footage of the show to submit to the contest. If it was a news cameraperson and you were jumping in the background and putting ears on folks, you could be denied the footage, since it was their camera for media use; but in the case of the security camera, the footage is still publicly available.
I think you just got confused as to which cameras he was referring to.
I agree with you completely. I learned the hard way at my last job, a .com that is still clinging to life.
They are now trying to not be a dotcom but a tv production company (probably because all the tech folks pretty much quit).
Now I have a decent job, not super high pay, but I'm respected and for the most part my opinions are listened too. I do have to put up with politiking and crap that I have realized you will never ever completely escape, but I accept it now.
It's nice when companies call now and I can say that I have a great job, and they'd have to meet this list of criteria for me to be interested in their position. Serious ones looking for good employees are pleased, and we talk, most are not serious and I don't have to worry about them calling back.
One trick I use is to keep my portfolio updated and keep my resume online in a few formats for download. Then when you get the calls from people who just want to "keyword" your resume and crap like that, I point them at my domain and say "have at it" if they are not interested in going and looking for themselves, then I don't want to deal with them, obviously they are not serious.
Same goes with companies. I will give them the URL for my portfolio, and a cd if they request it, and if I end up talking to them, I ask questions about what they thought of parts of it. If they can't answer cause they haven't looked I ask them to call back after they have, because I want them interested in ME, not some words on a resume, and my portfolio is their first view of my stuff.
I also get serious and let them know that I won't accept a position for less than X amount a year, and it has to have great benefits or add on another Y amount....
Now that I've known this I've gotten probably 3 serious offers in the last 3 months, ones that I actually spent time investigating and such and eventually decided not to take, but would have been good jobs.
For the most part you need to decide what you want and tell that to the company when they call or you interview. I find most are happy when you do, because they don't have to worry about you coming and leaving in 6 months or whatever. Also make sure that they want YOU, not just a body.
I was at a web .com company for a while. I liked the folks there and had a crapload of responsibilities, which I liked. But it became apparent that the "business" side was not really interested in reality, but rather just wanted to talk it up into a huge deal and then try to sell it, working or not. I would get asked/told that we needed to develop this or that feature into the product I was developing for the web and I'd tell them, Okay, that will take 3 weeks extra for product completion... They'd say "No, we need that tomorrow to show the VC's!" and I'd say that cannot happen.
It went back and forth with silly things like that for a while, and I got kind of fed up with trying to take care of everything with the help of only one other guy (who was very smart, but was a student in the beginning).
Anyway, I realized that there was no way to make these guys see reality. They were hiring the high school pals and flying them around the country to party and all sorts of silliness but I had to argue to get them to settle on a service provider for hosting our product...
I updated my resume and started getting calls, eventually interviewing and being offered the job I'm at now. I told them that I had an offer, and that I'd stay if they could come close to it, but they got all silly and childish and said
"We accept your resignation" when I had yet to give one. I said okay, when do you want me out, they said in two weeks. I said okay, later that day they sent a friend of mine there to tell me they wanted me to not come back the next day. They didn't even have the decency to do it themselves.
Anyway, i got paid for the two weeks, took time off to enjoy myself, and started my new job early and got a bonus of overlapping paychecks.
I think it's important to keep your resume fresh and keep your portfolio or whatever is important for your job updated and current online somewhere. I keep mine on my own domain so I don't ever have to scramble if I need it. I get calls all the time, and have had to start screening to find which of the folks are serious with cool jobs I might be interested in and which are calling for random headhunter crap.
Anyway, I think it's fairly standard to be asked not to come back once you resign or are resigned, but they still have to pay you for the time or else do some other severence thing unless they can pull some swifty manuevers on you.
My trick now is to go to interviews and specifically ask how much control I get, etc. etc. and to tell them outright that if I don't get autonomy and control over my areas I won't take the job. Some still try to talk me into it, but most appreciate the honesty either way. I have had some more offers that way, but I won't go to anywhere not operating in the Black now. No more startups for me.
Now that would really suck. Dammit, I work hard and fast (um... ) really, I do. I get a ton of work done, I never leave a job unfinished. If I complete something I get more to do and keep going. Sometimes, though, I like to screw off. On a friday afternoon when I'm a weeks worth of work ahead of my co-workers I might finish something and say "Hey, I'm gonna go outside and smoke a butt, drink a coke, and blink at the bright sunlight that is hurting my poor flourescent adjusted eyes" Or I might have the shits one day. I like spicey food - it happens. don't laugh dammit. Do I really want my boss popping into the shitter saying "Hey, um, I noticed you've been in here over 15 minutes, is everything okay?" "uh, yeah, I, um, well, ate burritos last night" "Well, don't eat burritos on a work night, okay? It cuts into your productivity" F that. I fought tooth and nail to not carry this f-ing beeper around (and lost) ((btw, my job, webmaster, has no use for a beeper)) If they tried to spring this crap on me I would just have to quit.
I saw a tv special about the Air Force jump. Its freaking berserk. I mean, it's cool that we can dump people off of those hieghts and they can manage to live through it, but isn't it a bit like testing how tough your toy trucks are by dropping them off higher and higher tables? When they break you make a better truck and try again?
- the-crater insurance
I dunno. My brother is Airborn qualified, as is my dad, my aunt, my uncle, and more of my family, and I think it's kind of retarded to jump out of airplanes anyway, but I suppose sending people around the world to shoot at each other is kind of dumb too, but necessary. The people doing this stuff for the heck of it, or to set a record, now that's just stupid without explanation.
Who covers their insurance? I suppose you don't need health insurance, more like hose-and-bucket-cleanup-and-truckload-of-dirt-for
Yoinks.
Absolutely right.
And besides, this is an attempt to make an across the board % tax reduction. This isn't a reduction of higher percent for those who make more, it's flat. I play X% less, you pay x% less, we all pay X% less. If someone isn't earning enough to pay taxes, or is paying very little, sure, the % won't amount to much, but for people who do pay significant taxes it will.
Saying rich people don't want tax cuts is absurd and you should be banned from a keyboard for the remainder of the month. That's the same thing as saying people want to give their money away. Some may, but certainly not a significant amount. I want to keep my money, so do MOST people. We don't like paying taxes, but we do, because they are a necessity. When the govt. decides they can give some back, cause we've been good and things are going well, I'm all for it.
Sure, they might cut back on some areas, but we spend way too much money (as a nation) on crap that we should not be paying for. I'm not saying the space program is crap, I personally think it rules, but I'd rather get my tax cut and get out of debt and be able to buy a house soon than send an unmanned probe to pluto, build a returnable spacecraft, or have a space station.
And of course I don't want my money going to pay for people who don't want to work. I support the lower tax rates for the poor, meaning they pay less into the pool.
Perhaps, mr. tim, next time you pull your head out of your ### long enough to post, you'll think more before you do.
Upon the release of the new seat, I headed out to my garage to do some 1337 h4x0r stuff. I took a board (open source of course, cause all else sux). and used my 5yb3r 5@w to hone it into an evil chair license violating mechanism...
I'd make it available for download to you, but the company is suing me, so make sure you give them a big ole DOS slap my h4x0r friends.
You can go buy the parts at home depot, secretly labeled "plywood" and "saw"
but don't tell anyone I told you that, I might get arrested.
Hackers Untie!
My first real official "career" type job was as a network admin and webmaster for the performing arts venue at my university... only about 40 machines total, it was a great job, the people ruled, even if they weren't exactly savy, they learned well... except the director. I've never known a more mentally stunted individual in such a position of importance.... I got called into his office several times: 1) In a panic he calls me, I rush on over, he's sweating and wide eyed saying "I deleted Microsoft Office from my machine" I'm thinking... man, is he really dumb enough to hack one of my boxes on accident? So I look, his apps are all still there, and all will start up... so now I'm a bit worried, thinking he's just insane, and I finally realize he's worried about the stupid shortcut bar. I made him a button on the desktop to "Install MS Office" so he could use it if he ever "deleted" office again... phew, what a turd. 2) I got moved to a different office, and was next to his... one day he was "moved" by a performance he had seen the previous night (he flew around the world going to plays and shows to see if he wanted them at our venue... sweet job) and he hooked up his stereo in his office and started playing a cd of the piece really loud... all day long, so annoying... towards the end of the day he comes in and says his computer is broken... I figure he danced around and knocked it over or something, so I go look... This turd had actually unplugged it to plug in his stereo, and was unable to realize he needed to plug it back in. Anyway... there's more, but this is already long... What I learned there, though, was that people in general need good tech support. They need people who are nice and won't call them an idiot to their face, and can figure out what their problem is after hearing it from them in "idiot-ese". Once I was able to start understanding what their problem really was (i need internet installed, i deleted netscape, etc...) things ran so much more smoothly and they were ultimately very pleased. These people got free ISP service from the university, but many actually paid for service from other companies because the tech support was available and good... it was a small ISP owned by an @sshole, but his tech support folks were genuinely nice and always did their best to help. They also understood idiot-ese, the most important thing they could... So I do not think small ISP's will ever completely disappear. Being able to have no computer knowledge, but pay someone to set up your machine, make you shortcuts and a pretty desktop and show you how to push a few buttons and then surf the web, who will answer all your ?'s quickly and politely, made these folks pay for something they got for free without the tech support...
telocity provides this for me.
they are also nice, answer the phone during business hours (for cali, i'm on the east coast though) and had me up and running in 30 days.
they helped me without hassle on setting up my domain, etc. etc... and they even sent me the dsl modem and instructions and such to do it myself after I assured them that I could manage it and didn't want to pay for installation....
I'm sure someone has a problem with them, but I haven't, and after 9 months of waiting on two different companies, they are a breath of fresh air.
www.telocity.com
please don't flame as an AC. If you don't like them for some reason, speak up, I'd be interested in hearing it, this is only from my experiance, after all.
they are getting terminals, right?
machines provided so they can surf web sites that are "allowed" by their government (obviously they won't be seeing news about how the rest of the world is doing, they might leave then). So they are getting glorified TV sets with access to 4 billion channels, mostly of crap, with plenty of commercials, and very little useable content, most of it not written in portugese... and most of them don't speak english...
I fail to see how they will be developing skills to pull themselves out of the gutter by having a tv in the house at the cost of over a month's salary.
If they were instead being provided with courses in computer science at a cost of 200 dollars and computers were installed at libraries or other public places (yes I know they have few libraries - not the point) so that anyone could access them and it wasn't a terminal so they could practice some of what they had learned, then MAYBE they'd have the chance to try to pull themselves up
we paid for a phone line
we paid for electricity
we bought this computer with over a month's salary
we paid for ISP
we wasted time looking for pr0n
now we have no food, medicine, education, clothes, heating/cooling, etc. etc. etc.
BUT WE ARE ON-LINE NOW.
do they seriously think that making a poor hovel internet capable fixes the greater problem?
you can put cinnoman on a horse apple and I still won't be eating it.
I loved your comment by the way, it made me smile already this morning.
Does anyone else see the irony in producing computers that people can get for 200 dollars so that they can close the "digital gap"? I mean, come on, if they can't afford a 500$ computer and a telephone line, they are probably poor enough that they live in substandard housing and/or recieve poor medical attention and/or have crappy schools and/or live on a poor diet and/or etc. etc.
a list of things a thousand times long and each infinitely more powerful than being able to watch pr0n online. Are we to believe that these people will get their 200$ computers that will only allow them access to the web and email and this will solve the rest of their problems? And don't forget, we are talking about Brazil, for the love of pete, they have much more important issues that internet access.
I think some brazilian politian has a buddy who stands to make a crapload off of this.
The other point is, who is paying for this. If the government is sucking up the "loss" in the sales, where is that money coming from, taxxed people? So now you will take other people's money away so that less fortunate won't fall behind on the latest issue of "the Onion" and can keep up with slashdot? WTF?
If an american politician suggested we take money from the rich to buy Power Ranger toys for the poor, or rather, make them available cheaper to the poor, don't you think it would be stopped?
This is sheer stupidity. Folks who are so scared of being thought of as back-woods or less than first world because they aren't all trapped by AOL yet and aren't berated with banner ads for $hit they will never be able to afford that they'll sink valuable resources into a worthless effort such as this. It's a damn shame.
while overall I believe I agree with your sentiments, I must point out that currently the majority of humans are of low intelligence (my opinion) and we cannot simply cast off the lives of the stupid for that reason alone. I also don't believe there is anything wrong with being less intelligent. As long as the world in general has enough geniuses to keep us moving forward, why would we need everyone to be a genius? It doesn't make sense to have everyone with triple digit IQ's then force some to work at 7-11 because we want our latte's and bear claws on the way to work... I would support stricter breeding laws though. Yeah, breeding laws. Scoff if you like, but I think a standard needs to be developed, and this is two tier. Tier One: don't let the po folk breed. (send hatemail to jack@ass.com). They'll be up in arms, but why should they be allowed to generate more population that will be forced to endure poverty and poor health, etc. etc.... does that not violate the constitutional rights of their potential offspring? It would also be nice if democrats quit taking more of my paycheck so the poor could stay at home and have more kids, but that's another story. Tier Two: Selective Breeding. Also touchy, moreso probably than preventing breeding in substandard conditions. Say I have a genetic disorder that causes expensive healthcare, pain, suffering, etc... I actually do have one, but it's not all that bad most days. Now I do wish I didn't have it, but I don't wish I was dead because of it. Of course, if I had been selectively bred, so that the genes that cause it (and it is genes) never perpetuated, then I wouldn't have to worry about it. You can say I wouldn't be me, etc... but you can also STFU. The basic playout would be that people who could provide properly for a child could have one, if their genetic materials were of high enough quality, it could be made from theirs. If their genes were not high enough quality, or they had problems like sickle-cell, etc. then they would recieve implantation from a properly arranged combination of sperm and egg, or possibly from donor DNA in the form of cloning. Now people who can care for children have them, and at the same time the human race improves. I know I'd be willing to sacrifice having a kid that looked like me for a healthier, happier one that was still raised by me. Of course the general nature of Americans to be selfish goes directly against this sort of well thought out improvement for all. thank you for your time.