This guy is an idiot. Every single place I've worked at has a very clear computer policy, you know what consequences you face if you disobey it.
And I seriously doubt his few minutes here and there were harmless. For one thing, it was probably a significant amount of time. I just timed myself playing solitaire, it took me 60 seconds to get stuck. It takes a fair bit longer than that to win most games. He was probably wasting a significant amount of time. Also, the federal government mandates that we get periodic times to goof off, they're called breaks. If you need more than that, something's wrong.
As for the people saying it's impossible to be productive 8 hours a day...I call BS. You're trying to slack off. Come up against a wall with one project? Work on another, don't goof off. Get caught up on your filing if you need some time away from something that's frustrating you.
I have some friends who live together. Between the three of them, there are four computers in the home. They occasionally get reformatted and reinstalled ("cleaned") due to viruses and the like. They have broadband, and they have a wireless setup. Trust me, none of them are beyond the novice stage.
It's entirely possible for that guy to be telling the truth. It's also entirely possible he ain't.
Having done recreation therapy at a large hospital, and been in charge of numerous things you'd expect to get stolen (VHS tapes, DVDs, craft supplies, a GameGear and games, etc.), you'd be surprised at how RARELY things get stolen.
Most of the stuff stolen from our hospital was stuff that wasn't going to adversely affect patients -- a package of gauze here and there, the staff microwave, etc.
-Jenn
Re:Focus on Artificial life
on
The Los Alamos Bug
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Lots of seemingly meaningless scientific pursuits have led to things that have had huge impacts on human life.
I seem to recall a silly woman, who specialized in x-ray crystallography, taking a picture of a molecule she wasn't supposed to be wasting her time on. If it weren't for Rosalind Franklin doing that, the discovery of the structure of DNA would have been delayed for god only knows how long.
Sure, the Microsoft updates are quite often OS-updates. But of the three I downloaded and installed this morning, at least one was specifically for IE (didn't check the other two). I see way more critical/high risk updates coming from Microsoft for IE than I do for Firefox.
Before you go using the (rather bad) logic that OSS is bad because of the issuance of a high risk patch, you might want to look at how many high risk patches Microsoft has released compared to the Firefox people.
My roommate paid less than that for a '75 Chevy Nova when he was 17, and he was from a family in which all the males got lots and lots of tickets.
My '73 Karmann Ghia runs me about $65 a month for full coverage, well beyond the legal minimum. I'm a 24 year old female. It was about $75 a month when I started driving.
I absolutely loved MadMaze, and periodically have searched online to see if I could find it again.
I remember getting pretty dang far and then all of a sudden my maps didn't fit together right and I never made it past this one point. Oh, how I loved and hated that game.
Just to be nitpicky...A prion is, by definition, an abnormal protein. So saying "malformed prion" is like saying "malformed malformed protein." And "normal prion," well, we'll leave that as an exercise to the reader.
And what happens when people have legitimate uses for executables? More than once I've e-mailed myself an executable I had on a home machine so I could access it at work or school, all because it was too large to fit on a floppy or (later) my thumb drive.
Well, I can't speak for any of the professional quality cameras...but I just got a Nikon Coolpix 5600...it came with software. That software hasn't been anywhere near my laptop. Don't need it. Stick a USB cable into the camera, stick the other end of same cable into my laptop, and bam, I've got the pictures.
Anyways, even if the professional cameras weren't THIS easy, you can still get your pictures just fine in Adobe PS, it's just that the white balance info is missing.
For those with really horrible vision (like me), or astigmatism (like me), lasik surgery doesn't have a success rate high enough for me to risk it. At this point in time, dealing with contacts and glasses is preferable to the chance of making my vision even worse.
Hopefully, however, the technique will improve even more with time and I'll eventually have perfect vision.
Sort of true, not entirely. How would you explain people who have cochlear implants? By all accounts, those work pretty dang well.
Also, comparing it to language development is a big stretch, vision and language are vastly different, particularly since vision isn't "learned" like language is.
Slashdot Mirror
This guy is an idiot. Every single place I've worked at has a very clear computer policy, you know what consequences you face if you disobey it.
And I seriously doubt his few minutes here and there were harmless. For one thing, it was probably a significant amount of time. I just timed myself playing solitaire, it took me 60 seconds to get stuck. It takes a fair bit longer than that to win most games. He was probably wasting a significant amount of time. Also, the federal government mandates that we get periodic times to goof off, they're called breaks. If you need more than that, something's wrong.
As for the people saying it's impossible to be productive 8 hours a day...I call BS. You're trying to slack off. Come up against a wall with one project? Work on another, don't goof off. Get caught up on your filing if you need some time away from something that's frustrating you.
Earn your money, people.
This is year 10 of me using Windows virus free.
Plus 4 years of DOS before that.
I have some friends who live together. Between the three of them, there are four computers in the home. They occasionally get reformatted and reinstalled ("cleaned") due to viruses and the like. They have broadband, and they have a wireless setup. Trust me, none of them are beyond the novice stage.
It's entirely possible for that guy to be telling the truth. It's also entirely possible he ain't.
Heck, my relatively inexpensive Nikon CoolPix 5600 ranges from 5.7-17.1mm.
Urine is sterile when it first comes out.
But it makes a really great breeding ground for bacteria (which can colonize it from the air, or the remnants of some guy's puke in the urinal, etc.).
-Jenn
Having done recreation therapy at a large hospital, and been in charge of numerous things you'd expect to get stolen (VHS tapes, DVDs, craft supplies, a GameGear and games, etc.), you'd be surprised at how RARELY things get stolen.
Most of the stuff stolen from our hospital was stuff that wasn't going to adversely affect patients -- a package of gauze here and there, the staff microwave, etc.
-Jenn
Lots of seemingly meaningless scientific pursuits have led to things that have had huge impacts on human life.
I seem to recall a silly woman, who specialized in x-ray crystallography, taking a picture of a molecule she wasn't supposed to be wasting her time on. If it weren't for Rosalind Franklin doing that, the discovery of the structure of DNA would have been delayed for god only knows how long.
Damn. So when I got results that didn't fit my hypothesis and reported non-significant results, I was doing something wrong?
Sure, the Microsoft updates are quite often OS-updates. But of the three I downloaded and installed this morning, at least one was specifically for IE (didn't check the other two). I see way more critical/high risk updates coming from Microsoft for IE than I do for Firefox.
-Jenn
Before you go using the (rather bad) logic that OSS is bad because of the issuance of a high risk patch, you might want to look at how many high risk patches Microsoft has released compared to the Firefox people.
-Jenn
I call BS on those figures.
My roommate paid less than that for a '75 Chevy Nova when he was 17, and he was from a family in which all the males got lots and lots of tickets.
My '73 Karmann Ghia runs me about $65 a month for full coverage, well beyond the legal minimum. I'm a 24 year old female. It was about $75 a month when I started driving.
-Jenn
Sovereign individuals can buy their own laptops and do with them as they please.
I don't agree in any way whatsoever with pressing felony charges, but I also don't agree with people screwing with property that is not their own.
-Jenn
I've seen slashdot down a couple times. And each time I nearly had a panic attack.
-Jenn
I absolutely loved MadMaze, and periodically have searched online to see if I could find it again.
I remember getting pretty dang far and then all of a sudden my maps didn't fit together right and I never made it past this one point. Oh, how I loved and hated that game.
-Jenn
Obsolete video technology does not make a game crappy.
The vast majority of today's games suck, it's just that most people haven't realized it 'cause they're shiny and new.
-Jenn
Just to be nitpicky...A prion is, by definition, an abnormal protein. So saying "malformed prion" is like saying "malformed malformed protein." And "normal prion," well, we'll leave that as an exercise to the reader.
There's a simple enough way for the user to avoid having the software fetch content they haven't asked for...don't download the frigging program.
Why is this so controversial?
-Jenn
And what happens when people have legitimate uses for executables? More than once I've e-mailed myself an executable I had on a home machine so I could access it at work or school, all because it was too large to fit on a floppy or (later) my thumb drive.
-Jenn
Well, I can't speak for any of the professional quality cameras...but I just got a Nikon Coolpix 5600...it came with software. That software hasn't been anywhere near my laptop. Don't need it. Stick a USB cable into the camera, stick the other end of same cable into my laptop, and bam, I've got the pictures.
Anyways, even if the professional cameras weren't THIS easy, you can still get your pictures just fine in Adobe PS, it's just that the white balance info is missing.
-Jenn
Very interesting...Will have to look that up.
Very little in neuroscience and psychology are definitive. That's why it's so fun.
For those with really horrible vision (like me), or astigmatism (like me), lasik surgery doesn't have a success rate high enough for me to risk it. At this point in time, dealing with contacts and glasses is preferable to the chance of making my vision even worse.
Hopefully, however, the technique will improve even more with time and I'll eventually have perfect vision.
Sort of true, not entirely. How would you explain people who have cochlear implants? By all accounts, those work pretty dang well.
Also, comparing it to language development is a big stretch, vision and language are vastly different, particularly since vision isn't "learned" like language is.
Uh, that has nothing to do with false advertising. One could argue for defamation, but not false advertising.
Let's not forget Watson and Crick's landmark paper elucidating the nature of DNA. It was also two pages.
Hrmm, I transport my beautiful blue Toshiba Satellite in a VW Karmann Ghia...Close enough, yes?
-Jenn