This has been covered in/. so much in the past, one more time can't hurt;
The whole 'working from home' thing is a complete myth. The *ONLY* people who actually get to work from home is CXOs and their buddies. Anyone working at the bottom of the food chain (90% of any company's employees) gets told that they can't work from home.
*EVERY* company I work for *SAY* they want people to work from home, but what they actually mean is that *THE BOSSES* want to work from home, while all the worker bees sit patiently and quietly in their cubicals/open plan offices, working busily, because they can't TRUST worker bees not to slack off when they work from home - hell, the honcho's all slack off, so if everyone in the company worked from home, nothing would get done!
And guess who fills out all the surveys that 'measures' this so-called surge in 'working from home'? You guessed it: The honchos.
I really doubt that I'll ever get the opportunity to work from home in any meaningful capacity in my working life, ever. I don't think with the increase of WiFi or ADSL or Bluetooth or whatever is going to increase the chances of worker bees actually getting to sit at home and work for 90% of their time.
Oh, sure, you can work from home *WHEN YOU ARE SICK*.
Many years ago, when melissa did the rounds, it took out my corporate mail system and wreacked bloody hell with our systems. It wasn't as bad as the new trojans out there now, but it was bad enough.
I think thats when I decided the life of a Unix admin would be better...:)
When I lived in London, I used to subscribe to OnDigital, which sounds a lot like this service.
The main problem I had with it was that due to constraints in bandwidth (I suppose) they used a lower bitrate for the encodings.
This meant I could see a lot of the encoding artifacts, and for me it really was too much of a distraction. I was obsessing over it rather than enjoying the show.
Yes, I know, it sounds sad, but it was only marginally acceptable quality, and for someone with a keen eye it meant it was unacceptable.
I hope that whatever technology they use in the US, the pick a better algorithm for encoding the video and/or use a higher bitrate.
Yup, I have to concur, doctor. Its all very nice to say it costs you X amount of water, for instance - but water isn't exactly lost is it? I mean, its going to find its way back into the system via evaporation etc.
"Not. Bloody. Likely."
Indeed.
Slashdot is the ONLY site on the net that is getting slashdotted 24/7. I'd love to see their bandwidth usage:D
But seriously, its a bit odd that one of the largest sites on the net keeps going down. Maybe they need me to come in and build them a redundant network/server farm;)
Yeah, the wireless power thing is a bit of a problem.
Actually, I'd be happy if manufacturers could just stick to a standard for DC power, then you could buy DC power converters with multiple outlets.
Still I have visions of Tesla coils arcing across the room and frying random parts of the house... hahaha... a Red Alert defense system in my living room!:D
My ex-girlfriend had an 'episode' a few years ago where she lost all her balance. The doctors diagnosed here with an ear infection, and gave her some medicine and told her to take it easy.
She got better from that, but after a while she started getting severe stomach pains. Doctor diagnosed her with a kidney infection and gave her increasingly strong doses of antibiotics which steadily made her very very ill indeed. Eventually, she was on the strongest available and her body was so wracked with pain she had to stop taking them... then she was ok and got better.
Then, after all this, she started feeling tired and worn-out all the time. We saw doctor after doctor who just told her to "Pull your socks up" and "snap out of it" and "its all in your head, there is nothing wrong with you".
Eventually, she found a doctor in Wales who would listen to her and the doctor said that she had the symptoms of ME. Note that ME is just a bunch of symptoms, NOT a diagnosis, so the doc kept trying to find out what was causing the ME symptoms.
A year or so ago, I got an email from her telling me she had a cancer in her pituitary gland. She was undergoing therapy for it, and the doctors were hopeful they could fix the problem, though of course the gland itself is very small and very important to various body processes.
So, doctors mis-diagnose, and if they don't believe that you are feeling the way you are, then sometimes its a good idea to research more on the net about your problem! My ex only found the good doctors after many months of searching around on websites looking for people in the same situation as her.
One thing is for sure, if I ever start feeling inexplicably tired and worn-out, I'll be getting a head-scan;)
You don't have to register their tags at the same time. You could do it any time afterward, like, while they are waiting in line for a driver's license or when they walk into any government office for some other reason such as a birth, death or marriage. And you'll still be able to TRACK the id's, and record it in a DB from day 1.
Even if you don't know who they are, if for any reason you wanted to find out - maybe you suspect ID #7234237990162 of being a terrorist - then its not hard to find out, is it?
And then you just fill out the last fields in the DB - Name, Address, Birthdate.. etc, and it all falls together.
Most people have a scar on their left arm from some innoculation that we all get when we're babies. I forget what it's for - measels I think. Anyway - what it's for is unimportant. (I think the X-Files had a wonderful episode where they postulated that the tissue collected from every innoculation went into a big storehouse for a genetic database)
One could very easily see how a government could set it up so that everyone was tagged during this innoculation.
We have it in Australia, and I see the same scars here all the time in Japan and I saw them in England - I wonder how many other countries do this innoculation?
God, I'm turning into a paranoid nut... but in this day and age, I'm wondering if thats actually just a sensible precaution.
Well, I have my 2.0Ghz Athlon 64 3200+ overclocked to 2.2Ghz... I am pretty sure I could take it to 2.4Ghz, the thing is running at about 34C right now... and its stable.
I'm a bit frightened of overclocking it too much, I have no idea what all the voltage and other tweaks do and whether I should be tweaking them along with the CPU speed.. heh:)
Anyway. This machine is a screamer. Fastest thing I've ever seen...
Funnily enough, its the narrow sweet spot in my Digital SLR (FinePix S2Pro) thats making me think about moving back to film.
Slide film doesn't seem to be quite as narrow as the CCDs in digital cameras. It really doesn't take much to blow the exposure on a digital camera.
I've "invested" heavily in Nikkor glass, so I'll probably go for an N80. or something similar. The F100 looks tempting but its very expensive. I am not even considering the F5.
Note that I didn't say that I thought it was a good idea, just that he might have got less time. Not everything makes sense to us foreigners. Sometimes you just have to shrug and accept it.
From discussions I've had with people here on the matter, if you look like you're truly repentant and willing to accept any punishment that's meted out to you, the sentencing is more lenient. The more you try to protest your innocence, the more that the law will look at you unfavourably.
I don't know if this is true nor not, just my impression from many discussions I've had with Japanese and gaijin alike. Ask me after I've lived here for another 4 or 5 years.
And yes, there's probably something seriously screwed up in the legal system here. I know enough that I'm terrified of it;) Maybe that's the point.
Lastly, I agree the "shiyouganai" (hey, thats what Word Lookup tells me is the spelling - personally, I prefer using "shikataganai") factor is a big one. I guess I'm just a big cuddly fuzzy hearted optimist.
What I said was purely based on what I've been told by people I trust (heresay nontheless). I don't know anyone who has actually had to go to court here.
But yeah, unless you're a foreigner, you can get off easily.
That goes without saying really.
Actually, if he'd just "confessed" and apologised profusely, he still might have got a more lenient sentence. Maybe get out in a couple of years.
In any case, its an unfortunate incident, I'm going to forward it to people I know here in Japan. I don't think the locals really understand how screwed up the legal system is here:)
The thing about Japan is that if something is not in the media, people don't care about it. If there was more public knowledge of this case in the street, I'm sure there would be enough public pressure to have his case re-examined.
Maybe stand at Shinjuku station and hand out leaflets, or something.
Mental note: never take anyone else's luggage through Narita.
The Oedo line in Tokyo is fully automated. I think many others here are too.
There is still a driver though, unlike the DLR in London.
The guy sits there to make sure that people are clear of the doors etc before he presses a green button. He also holds another button down to keep the system under computer control like a dead man's handle.
So, basically, the human is there to make sure nothing goes wrong, but otherwise the computer is in control.
Advantages of this system is a wonderfully smooth ride - the computer is programmed to take off and stop in smooth motions rather than the sometimes jerky stopping/starting that humans do.
The other advantage is that if anything DOES go wrong, a human is there watching everything to pull the plug if needs be.
Right way to do things I think. The Japanese have their heads screwed on tight when it comes to public transport...
I don't know for sure, and I don't have any data to back up my assertion, but I have a strong feeling that Fortune 1000 sites are not the busiest sites out there.
For instance, a Fortune 1000 server probably only serves a few sites.
Most people running server farms doing mass hosting can serve tens of thousands of sites off a single server running Apache (or Zeus, etc).
I really doubt the relevance of this, especially in light of the fact that a lot of large companies will have a "MS software only" policy these days.
Slashdot Mirror
This has been covered in /. so much in the past, one more time can't hurt;
The whole 'working from home' thing is a complete myth. The *ONLY* people who actually get to work from home is CXOs and their buddies. Anyone working at the bottom of the food chain (90% of any company's employees) gets told that they can't work from home.
*EVERY* company I work for *SAY* they want people to work from home, but what they actually mean is that *THE BOSSES* want to work from home, while all the worker bees sit patiently and quietly in their cubicals/open plan offices, working busily, because they can't TRUST worker bees not to slack off when they work from home - hell, the honcho's all slack off, so if everyone in the company worked from home, nothing would get done!
And guess who fills out all the surveys that 'measures' this so-called surge in 'working from home'? You guessed it: The honchos.
I really doubt that I'll ever get the opportunity to work from home in any meaningful capacity in my working life, ever. I don't think with the increase of WiFi or ADSL or Bluetooth or whatever is going to increase the chances of worker bees actually getting to sit at home and work for 90% of their time.
Oh, sure, you can work from home *WHEN YOU ARE SICK*.
Those of us who have been on IRC since the good-old-days have known for YEARS that IRC is evil.
I feel your pain.
... :)
Many years ago, when melissa did the rounds, it took out my corporate mail system and wreacked bloody hell with our systems. It wasn't as bad as the new trojans out there now, but it was bad enough.
I think thats when I decided the life of a Unix admin would be better
I, too, value my sleep.
Oh, I hear that hot chick in Pepsi's Marketing division wants to marry you ...
When I lived in London, I used to subscribe to OnDigital, which sounds a lot like this service.
The main problem I had with it was that due to constraints in bandwidth (I suppose) they used a lower bitrate for the encodings.
This meant I could see a lot of the encoding artifacts, and for me it really was too much of a distraction. I was obsessing over it rather than enjoying the show.
Yes, I know, it sounds sad, but it was only marginally acceptable quality, and for someone with a keen eye it meant it was unacceptable.
I hope that whatever technology they use in the US, the pick a better algorithm for encoding the video and/or use a higher bitrate.
OnDigital went bust not so long ago.
true, rtfa, I guess ;)
Yup, I have to concur, doctor. Its all very nice to say it costs you X amount of water, for instance - but water isn't exactly lost is it? I mean, its going to find its way back into the system via evaporation etc. "Not. Bloody. Likely." Indeed.
Its pretty difficult to set up.
Like, it refers to setting a secret password somewhere, but I can't find it!
Gah!
*bashes head on wall*
I don't know why that was marked as troll. I decoded it. Was funny!
:(
Oh well, some people have no sense of humour
Oh, give them a break.
:D
;)
Slashdot is the ONLY site on the net that is getting slashdotted 24/7. I'd love to see their bandwidth usage
But seriously, its a bit odd that one of the largest sites on the net keeps going down. Maybe they need me to come in and build them a redundant network/server farm
Haha!
... hahaha ... a Red Alert defense system in my living room! :D
Yeah, the wireless power thing is a bit of a problem.
Actually, I'd be happy if manufacturers could just stick to a standard for DC power, then you could buy DC power converters with multiple outlets.
Still I have visions of Tesla coils arcing across the room and frying random parts of the house
They are often wrong.
;)
My ex-girlfriend had an 'episode' a few years ago where she lost all her balance. The doctors diagnosed here with an ear infection, and gave her some medicine and told her to take it easy.
She got better from that, but after a while she started getting severe stomach pains. Doctor diagnosed her with a kidney infection and gave her increasingly strong doses of antibiotics which steadily made her very very ill indeed. Eventually, she was on the strongest available and her body was so wracked with pain she had to stop taking them... then she was ok and got better.
Then, after all this, she started feeling tired and worn-out all the time. We saw doctor after doctor who just told her to "Pull your socks up" and "snap out of it" and "its all in your head, there is nothing wrong with you".
Eventually, she found a doctor in Wales who would listen to her and the doctor said that she had the symptoms of ME. Note that ME is just a bunch of symptoms, NOT a diagnosis, so the doc kept trying to find out what was causing the ME symptoms.
A year or so ago, I got an email from her telling me she had a cancer in her pituitary gland. She was undergoing therapy for it, and the doctors were hopeful they could fix the problem, though of course the gland itself is very small and very important to various body processes.
So, doctors mis-diagnose, and if they don't believe that you are feeling the way you are, then sometimes its a good idea to research more on the net about your problem! My ex only found the good doctors after many months of searching around on websites looking for people in the same situation as her.
One thing is for sure, if I ever start feeling inexplicably tired and worn-out, I'll be getting a head-scan
You don't have to register their tags at the same time. You could do it any time afterward, like, while they are waiting in line for a driver's license or when they walk into any government office for some other reason such as a birth, death or marriage. And you'll still be able to TRACK the id's, and record it in a DB from day 1.
.. etc, and it all falls together.
Even if you don't know who they are, if for any reason you wanted to find out - maybe you suspect ID #7234237990162 of being a terrorist - then its not hard to find out, is it?
And then you just fill out the last fields in the DB - Name, Address, Birthdate
Or, you package every innoculation as a self-contained shot - one shot per child - and stuff each one with unique nano RFIDs.
:)
The nurses etc wouldn't have a clue.
Thats how
no, you are not.
... but in this day and age, I'm wondering if thats actually just a sensible precaution.
Most people have a scar on their left arm from some innoculation that we all get when we're babies. I forget what it's for - measels I think. Anyway - what it's for is unimportant. (I think the X-Files had a wonderful episode where they postulated that the tissue collected from every innoculation went into a big storehouse for a genetic database)
One could very easily see how a government could set it up so that everyone was tagged during this innoculation.
We have it in Australia, and I see the same scars here all the time in Japan and I saw them in England - I wonder how many other countries do this innoculation?
God, I'm turning into a paranoid nut
Well, I have my 2.0Ghz Athlon 64 3200+ overclocked to 2.2Ghz ... I am pretty sure I could take it to 2.4Ghz, the thing is running at about 34C right now ... and its stable.
.. heh :)
I'm a bit frightened of overclocking it too much, I have no idea what all the voltage and other tweaks do and whether I should be tweaking them along with the CPU speed
Anyway. This machine is a screamer. Fastest thing I've ever seen...
Funnily enough, its the narrow sweet spot in my Digital SLR (FinePix S2Pro) thats making me think about moving back to film.
Slide film doesn't seem to be quite as narrow as the CCDs in digital cameras. It really doesn't take much to blow the exposure on a digital camera.
I've "invested" heavily in Nikkor glass, so I'll probably go for an N80. or something similar. The F100 looks tempting but its very expensive. I am not even considering the F5.
Note that I didn't say that I thought it was a good idea, just that he might have got less time. Not everything makes sense to us foreigners. Sometimes you just have to shrug and accept it.
;) Maybe that's the point.
From discussions I've had with people here on the matter, if you look like you're truly repentant and willing to accept any punishment that's meted out to you, the sentencing is more lenient. The more you try to protest your innocence, the more that the law will look at you unfavourably.
I don't know if this is true nor not, just my impression from many discussions I've had with Japanese and gaijin alike. Ask me after I've lived here for another 4 or 5 years.
And yes, there's probably something seriously screwed up in the legal system here. I know enough that I'm terrified of it
Lastly, I agree the "shiyouganai" (hey, thats what Word Lookup tells me is the spelling - personally, I prefer using "shikataganai") factor is a big one. I guess I'm just a big cuddly fuzzy hearted optimist.
What I said was purely based on what I've been told by people I trust (heresay nontheless). I don't know anyone who has actually had to go to court here.
:)
But yeah, unless you're a foreigner, you can get off easily.
That goes without saying really.
Actually, if he'd just "confessed" and apologised profusely, he still might have got a more lenient sentence. Maybe get out in a couple of years.
In any case, its an unfortunate incident, I'm going to forward it to people I know here in Japan. I don't think the locals really understand how screwed up the legal system is here
The thing about Japan is that if something is not in the media, people don't care about it. If there was more public knowledge of this case in the street, I'm sure there would be enough public pressure to have his case re-examined.
Maybe stand at Shinjuku station and hand out leaflets, or something.
Mental note: never take anyone else's luggage through Narita.
The speed of the legal system here is notoriously slow.
:)
And, I'm told, most people can escape imprisonment or heavy fining by just apologising well.
So, I'm not sure what kind of resolution the companies are expecting, but I'm sure it will be a long time til we hear anything
We've seen it all before.
I was thinking to myself, "You know, I think I've seen this before!". Why, yes I have. Last year.
There was an ISP in england that already did this. I forgot the name.
You bought a 512k ADSL line and got a 2meg in actuality - the other 1.5meg was for video on demand and TV channels.
Haha. offtopic, yes, but funny. Truth IS stranger (and funnier) than an on-topic posting to slashdot.
The Oedo line in Tokyo is fully automated. I think many others here are too.
There is still a driver though, unlike the DLR in London.
The guy sits there to make sure that people are clear of the doors etc before he presses a green button. He also holds another button down to keep the system under computer control like a dead man's handle.
So, basically, the human is there to make sure nothing goes wrong, but otherwise the computer is in control.
Advantages of this system is a wonderfully smooth ride - the computer is programmed to take off and stop in smooth motions rather than the sometimes jerky stopping/starting that humans do.
The other advantage is that if anything DOES go wrong, a human is there watching everything to pull the plug if needs be.
Right way to do things I think. The Japanese have their heads screwed on tight when it comes to public transport...
I don't know for sure, and I don't have any data to back up my assertion, but I have a strong feeling that Fortune 1000 sites are not the busiest sites out there.
For instance, a Fortune 1000 server probably only serves a few sites.
Most people running server farms doing mass hosting can serve tens of thousands of sites off a single server running Apache (or Zeus, etc).
I really doubt the relevance of this, especially in light of the fact that a lot of large companies will have a "MS software only" policy these days.
But, this is all conjecture of course.