Step one: If there is any type of documentation available - the best kind is huge, outdated and inaccurate - hand that over in the first place and tell him to study that first. If he complains, just insist that those are critiacle base without which no further training is possible. Add in for a good measure company security and safety standard, best practice documents and whatever other documents the quality department is able to provide.
Step two: Answer only questions asked by the replacement. Things he doesn't ask for he obviously doens't want to know and learned from step one.
Step three: Answer most questions by referring to vague areas in the documents studied in step one. The question how to add a user should be aswered with a reference to the LDAP administration guide, the company network security standards and the company process for new user applications. If any field on the application form isn't filled correctly, have him send it back.
Step four: If customers need to be handled, have him handle the nasty ones, but make sure he follows all necessary rules.
Step five: No overtime. In at 9, out at 5, no matter what urgent business waits. Your task is only to train your replacment, not to do you previous work.
This way, everything you do is absolutely legal and conforms to the company rules, your training is a total waste of time, very frustrating for the replacement and you gain lot of spare time while he researches useless documentations.
If you want to get creative, you can also file written complaints with your boss that the trainee he refuses to follow the company standards and procedures.
No, the metric screws are the easy ones, you can get them everywhere, the whole civilized world is using them. The hard one are those weird screws using that imperial measurement. Usually they come in some strange dimension like 13/59.
Interesting idea in the sense that putting your family jewels in a grinder is an interesting idea.
The authour sounds very young, inexperienced and full of naive optimism. If he ever had to maintain legacy code where generation of coders had to add unplanned features under time pressure, he'd know that from a certain point on a rewrite is the only solution to progress.
Once the effort of trying to understand some crufty code with lot of dead weigth exceeds the effort of a rewrite it, the ideas in his article become pure fiction. And Netscape is about the worst example he could have chosen, considering what a piece of crap Netscape 4 was comparing to the current Mozilla.
> How come companies like Kiss cant'be > punished by Law?
Because the GPL is a rather weak weapon to make their life miserable. They just have to fix the problem or publish the source to their customers and the case collapses. This approach may be very sensible in a civilised society but not a good tool to annoy your neighbour.
After reading the article, I have the strong feeling, the author shouldn't have written 90% of the article - the long and boring part without real message. But unfortunatly, boring your audience isn't a taboo these days.
As the spammers are selling the addresses by volume, you can't poison the list by adding to it. The CD are only generated for those suckers willing to pay for it, and the more the better. None of the spammers are concerned about data quality of their products, I guess.
And most likely, they generated some of the email addresses themselves anyway.
The big red button on my TV-set turned out to be the perfect Ad-skipping device with 100% accuracy. The loss of little content hidden between the commercial can be discounted as negligeable.
If you replace all words 'nigger' in Blazing Saddles with beeps, the movie would sound like a bird concerto. On the other hand, if you replace it with 'person of african-american origin', it would probably run an hour longer.
For most of it/dev/null is the prime choice of storage medium. This should really be an opportunity companies producing high speed, high capacity null-devices.
You must be very young, otherwise you'd remember a few years ago, the USSR and Chine definitively weren't the top dogs, but a lot of countries were very interested what they say.
And, to confound you further, the biggest dog in the town sometimes is not as important as the not-so-big dog gnawing at your legs.
> Assume you have financial data and that is compromised. > That may be more costly (think class action lawsuit or such) > than the cost to recover your systems.
Security is not really cost efficient, compared to the cost of a clueless manager-oid denying all stories of intrusion. And actual damage to data can always be fobbed off to computer errors, you know Windows and such.
And in the very unlikely case of a class action suit, the trial will go on for so long, that all concerned managers will be dangling from their golden parachutes in safety.
So again, what was the purpose of this security thingy?
Paper and pencil votes are so retro, our american friends couldn't abide by it.
It's far more progressive to have some punched cards shipped across the country to offer concerned parties at least the chance to tamper with the votes.
And as we all know, computers are here to make our life easier, so they're a defnitive must on the shopping list of the discerning election-fraudster.
There are two primary things we want to accomplish with EVotes -- first, we want to make the voting process easier to engage in. Second, we want to make the counting process more efficient (less costly).
All these discussion about costs and speed usually leave out the primary goals of a democratic voting procedure, which should be:
The ballots are secret so that nobody can be persecuted for his vote.
The final tally reflects accurately the will of people having voted. For accountability purposes the count should be easy to verify so that allegions of election fraud can be resoved without doubt.
All entitled citizen can take part in the election and cast their vote in a safe and a easy manner.
I seriously doubt, that the average citizen is capable to even understand the necessary steps to check whether a computer-voting machine has been tampered with, not even to think about being able to verify the authenticity.
Considering how many ways have been found to tamper with simple and easy to understand paper ballots, adding the possibilities for fraud offered by a computer are mind-boggling.
Without any paper trail, "The computer said so" will be the final arguments about whether election results are correct. Going by how reliable computer systems are runing in banks and the IRS, this isn't really a very high standard of confidence for a democracy.
If a paper trail is generated anyway, why is it necessary to replace technologies understood and trusted by most people - pens or stamps - with computers? The only added feature is that the secrecy of an election can be more easily be subverted.
That fact that those computers are running Windows and a voting software written by half-wits is making things only slightly worse. Even the best and most open system design won't reach the trustworthiness and accountability of a simple pen or stamp.
This fine has not been levied because SCO is lying.
The german LinuxTag is currently suing SCO german to forbid them to claim Linux contains illegal parts of Unix in Germany. As part of the procedure, a temporary injunction has been granted which orders SCO Germany not to use those claims until the matter is settled. SCO only failed to comply with this court order and has been fined for it.
Should LinuxTag lose the lawsuit, SCO can ask from them for damages resulting from the injucntion.
But in no way this has any relevance whether the claims by SCO are true or whether they're lying.
Yes, the keyboard production process has constantly been improved. Very few of those improvements went into better quality or comfort, most went to save costs.
Even without adjusting for inflation, I doubt it was possible in the 80's to get cheap keyboards at todays prices.
You obviously never had to type on a grid keyboard. If you're built like the average human, when the fingers of both hands on the keyboard, the arms are at an angel (45 to 60 degree) relative to the keyboard.
Staggering the keys allows you to reach the keys on the other rows by simply extending or moving back the finger. No rotation is necessary for most letters. With perfect grid layouts, the finger movement is far more complex and the chance of hitting the correct is greatly reduced.
So called ergonomic keyboards try to solve the problem by splitting the keyboard and rotating the halves.
Except for very crude typing requirements, nobody in his right mind uses a grid layout.
Sorry, even if you write wrong in all caps it won't make it more true.
In the time of mechanical typewriter (not those new-fangled IBM Selectric thingies), each key move by lever transmission a hammer from the rest position to the paper. Once the letter is stamped on the paper, the hammer moved back. The combined trajectories of all hammers describe a funnel shape ending one character wide at the paper.
The design of the QWERTY keyboard strived to optimise the trajectories of common letters, so they move as long as possible without interference of each other and allowing this way to type the next letter before the hammer for the last letter is back in the rest position. Certain combinations were therefore fast to type, others not, giving typing text a certain distincive cadence.
> Why not actually hold software companies to the promises they make?
If you don't take the packages at the regular inflated prices without any guarantees, but ask for any sort of guarantee or service level agreement, you're going to pay for it - lots. Very soon, you reach prices like for mil-spec equipment nobody but the military can afford.
And should you be unlucky enough to pay those prices, it won't help you a lot either. In case of non-performance, at best you'll get some of you surcharge back, in the worst case you have the chance of sueing a worthless trading company that folds as soon as you win.
So in the end, discard any dreams of quality and expect to get whatever you see, just like with a used car. Praying that the worst bugs won't hurt you too much and will strike your neighbour instead work well too.
> And if I posted an article on how great Linux is, would > I have to give space to Microsoft for a rebuttal?
No, you wouldn't.
On the other hand, if you'd post that Windows XP is made out of mushed baby toes, Microsoft can ask you to post their version of the story telling that no baby toes are involved in the production of Windows and only the best quality fertilizer on the market is used.
With all the crap floating around on the internet, the source of information is essential. If CNN.com posts one version of a story and dinkyblog.org another one, independently of the actual truth of either story, the CNN version will be considered the truth my most people, whereas the dinkyblog version will at best reach the status of a crack-pot's rambling - for the extremly few people even find this story.
While with print media there was some minimal chance to reach the same audience with paid ads, on websites there isn't even that.
The proposed directive rectifies this by giving the offended party the chance to get the same exposure than. In print publication it's a minor inconvenience and with the possibilities of links, for sites it's even less efforts.
So why are you all so upset by this, is there no common sense left from all those free speech campaining?
> As a practical matter, I don't think anyone can realistically > expect to be fully compensated for the extra hours. It's part of the job.
No Coyote-san, this is a very common failing with people who don't know better.
Everyone should be expected to be compensated for all work he's doing.
Take as an example how it works here. If you're salaried, it means your employer gets 40 hours work per week out of it. If he wants more, he'll pay for them - some of it at inflated rates.
Even if you get a monthly flat fee compensation for overtime, it only applies to a certain amount hours per month (usually 20 to 30 hours), the overtime being closely related to additional amount.
If you ask how a business can operate without unpaid overtime, it's very easy: Time to delivery is simply a factor that can't be adjusted at will, just like taxes and the weather won't follow unreasonable business plans. They plan for it and worst case say it's not possible.
Slashdot Mirror
Even better: Stick to the rules.
Step one: If there is any type of documentation available - the best kind is huge, outdated and inaccurate - hand that over in the first place and tell him to study that first. If he complains, just insist that those are critiacle base without which no further training is possible. Add in for a good measure company security and safety standard, best practice documents and whatever other documents the quality department is able to provide.
Step two: Answer only questions asked by the replacement. Things he doesn't ask for he obviously doens't want to know and learned from step one.
Step three: Answer most questions by referring to vague areas in the documents studied in step one. The question how to add a user should be aswered with a reference to the LDAP administration guide, the company network security standards and the company process for new user applications. If any field on the application form isn't filled correctly, have him send it back.
Step four: If customers need to be handled, have him handle the nasty ones, but make sure he follows all necessary rules.
Step five: No overtime. In at 9, out at 5, no matter what urgent business waits. Your task is only to train your replacment, not to do you previous work.
This way, everything you do is absolutely legal and conforms to the company rules, your training is a total waste of time, very frustrating for the replacement and you gain lot of spare time while he researches useless documentations.
If you want to get creative, you can also file written complaints with your boss that the trainee he refuses to follow the company standards and procedures.
Those columns of numbers align quite well, because the designers of this font made all the numbers of equal width.
Facts have this annoying tendency to mess up the best theories..
No, the metric screws are the easy ones, you can get them everywhere, the whole civilized world is using them. The hard one are those weird screws using that imperial measurement. Usually they come in some strange dimension like 13/59.
Interesting idea in the sense that putting your family jewels in a grinder is an interesting idea.
The authour sounds very young, inexperienced and full of naive optimism. If he ever had to maintain legacy code where generation of coders had to add unplanned features under time pressure, he'd know that from a certain point on a rewrite is the only solution to progress.
Once the effort of trying to understand some crufty code with lot of dead weigth exceeds the effort of a rewrite it, the ideas in his article become pure fiction. And Netscape is about the worst example he could have chosen, considering what a piece of crap Netscape 4 was comparing to the current Mozilla.
> How come companies like Kiss cant'be
> punished by Law?
Because the GPL is a rather weak weapon to make their life miserable. They just have to fix the problem or publish the source to their customers and the case collapses. This approach may be very sensible in a civilised society but not a good tool to annoy your neighbour.
After reading the article, I have the strong feeling, the author shouldn't have written 90% of the article - the long and boring part without real message. But unfortunatly, boring your audience isn't a taboo these days.
As the spammers are selling the addresses by volume, you can't poison the list by adding to it. The CD are only generated for those suckers willing to pay for it, and the more the better. None of the spammers are concerned about data quality of their products, I guess.
And most likely, they generated some of the email addresses themselves anyway.
But perhaps, she really could care less because the subject at had has at least some relevance to her?
The big red button on my TV-set turned out to be the perfect Ad-skipping device with 100% accuracy. The loss of little content hidden between the commercial can be discounted as negligeable.
If you replace all words 'nigger' in Blazing Saddles with beeps, the movie would sound like a bird concerto. On the other hand, if you replace it with 'person of african-american origin', it would probably run an hour longer.
Windows is a genereic term in english, but is it in swedish or finnish?
Things like these have been done here in Europe. Pass too quickly between two toll booth and you get a bonus ticket for speeding.
The same is also done to check rest periods for truckers at the borders.
> ...it's gotta be stored somewhere!
/dev/null is the prime choice of storage medium. This should really be an opportunity companies producing high speed, high capacity null-devices.
For most of it
Where are the VC when one needs them?
You must be very young, otherwise you'd remember a few years ago, the USSR and Chine definitively weren't the top dogs, but a lot of countries were very interested what they say.
And, to confound you further, the biggest dog in the town sometimes is not as important as the not-so-big dog gnawing at your legs.
So much for dogs.
> Assume you have financial data and that is compromised.
> That may be more costly (think class action lawsuit or such)
> than the cost to recover your systems.
Security is not really cost efficient, compared to the cost of a clueless manager-oid denying all stories of intrusion. And actual damage to data can always be fobbed off to computer errors, you know Windows and such.
And in the very unlikely case of a class action suit, the trial will go on for so long, that all concerned managers will be dangling from their golden parachutes in safety.
So again, what was the purpose of this security thingy?
Paper and pencil votes are so retro, our american friends couldn't abide by it.
It's far more progressive to have some punched cards shipped across the country to offer concerned parties at least the chance to tamper with the votes.
And as we all know, computers are here to make our life easier, so they're a defnitive must on the shopping list of the discerning election-fraudster.
All these discussion about costs and speed usually leave out the primary goals of a democratic voting procedure, which should be:
The ballots are secret so that nobody can be persecuted for his vote.
The final tally reflects accurately the will of people having voted. For accountability purposes the count should be easy to verify so that allegions of election fraud can be resoved without doubt.
All entitled citizen can take part in the election and cast their vote in a safe and a easy manner.
I seriously doubt, that the average citizen is capable to even understand the necessary steps to check whether a computer-voting machine has been tampered with, not even to think about being able to verify the authenticity.
Considering how many ways have been found to tamper with simple and easy to understand paper ballots, adding the possibilities for fraud offered by a computer are mind-boggling.
Without any paper trail, "The computer said so" will be the final arguments about whether election results are correct. Going by how reliable computer systems are runing in banks and the IRS, this isn't really a very high standard of confidence for a democracy.
If a paper trail is generated anyway, why is it necessary to replace technologies understood and trusted by most people - pens or stamps - with computers? The only added feature is that the secrecy of an election can be more easily be subverted.
That fact that those computers are running Windows and a voting software written by half-wits is making things only slightly worse. Even the best and most open system design won't reach the trustworthiness and accountability of a simple pen or stamp.
This fine has not been levied because SCO is lying.
The german LinuxTag is currently suing SCO german to forbid them to claim Linux contains illegal parts of Unix in Germany. As part of the procedure, a temporary injunction has been granted which orders SCO Germany not to use those claims until the matter is settled. SCO only failed to comply with this court order and has been fined for it.
Should LinuxTag lose the lawsuit, SCO can ask from them for damages resulting from the injucntion.
But in no way this has any relevance whether the claims by SCO are true or whether they're lying.
Yes, the keyboard production process has constantly been improved. Very few of those improvements went into better quality or comfort, most went to save costs.
Even without adjusting for inflation, I doubt it was possible in the 80's to get cheap keyboards at todays prices.
You obviously never had to type on a grid keyboard. If you're built like the average human, when the fingers of both hands on the keyboard, the arms are at an angel (45 to 60 degree) relative to the keyboard.
Staggering the keys allows you to reach the keys on the other rows by simply extending or moving back the finger. No rotation is necessary for most letters. With perfect grid layouts, the finger movement is far more complex and the chance of hitting the correct is greatly reduced.
So called ergonomic keyboards try to solve the problem by splitting the keyboard and rotating the halves.
Except for very crude typing requirements, nobody in his right mind uses a grid layout.
Sorry, even if you write wrong in all caps it won't make it more true.
In the time of mechanical typewriter (not those new-fangled IBM Selectric thingies), each key move by lever transmission a hammer from the rest position to the paper. Once the letter is stamped on the paper, the hammer moved back. The combined trajectories of all hammers describe a funnel shape ending one character wide at the paper.
The design of the QWERTY keyboard strived to optimise the trajectories of common letters, so they move as long as possible without interference of each other and allowing this way to type the next letter before the hammer for the last letter is back in the rest position. Certain combinations were therefore fast to type, others not, giving typing text a certain distincive cadence.
> Why not actually hold software companies to the promises they make?
If you don't take the packages at the regular inflated prices without any guarantees, but ask for any sort of guarantee or service level agreement, you're going to pay for it - lots. Very soon, you reach prices like for mil-spec equipment nobody but the military can afford.
And should you be unlucky enough to pay those prices, it won't help you a lot either. In case of non-performance, at best you'll get some of you surcharge back, in the worst case you have the chance of sueing a worthless trading company that folds as soon as you win.
So in the end, discard any dreams of quality and expect to get whatever you see, just like with a used car. Praying that the worst bugs won't hurt you too much and will strike your neighbour instead work well too.
> And if I posted an article on how great Linux is, would
> I have to give space to Microsoft for a rebuttal?
No, you wouldn't.
On the other hand, if you'd post that Windows XP is made out of mushed baby toes, Microsoft can ask you to post their version of the story telling that no baby toes are involved in the production of Windows and only the best quality fertilizer on the market is used.
With all the crap floating around on the internet, the source of information is essential. If CNN.com posts one version of a story and dinkyblog.org another one, independently of the actual truth of either story, the CNN version will be considered the truth my most people, whereas the dinkyblog version will at best reach the status of a crack-pot's rambling - for the extremly few people even find this story.
While with print media there was some minimal chance to reach the same audience with paid ads, on websites there isn't even that.
The proposed directive rectifies this by giving the offended party the chance to get the same exposure than. In print publication it's a minor inconvenience and with the possibilities of links, for sites it's even less efforts.
So why are you all so upset by this, is there no common sense left from all those free speech campaining?
> As a practical matter, I don't think anyone can realistically
> expect to be fully compensated for the extra hours. It's part of the job.
No Coyote-san, this is a very common failing with people who don't know better.
Everyone should be expected to be compensated for all work he's doing.
Take as an example how it works here. If you're salaried, it means your employer gets 40 hours work per week out of it. If he wants more, he'll pay for them - some of it at inflated rates.
Even if you get a monthly flat fee compensation for overtime, it only applies to a certain amount hours per month (usually 20 to 30 hours), the overtime being closely related to additional amount.
If you ask how a business can operate without unpaid overtime, it's very easy: Time to delivery is simply a factor that can't be adjusted at will, just like taxes and the weather won't follow unreasonable business plans. They plan for it and worst case say it's not possible.