> It derives from the fact that I am my kids' parent.
Kaiwen, please understand that I am not trying to be offensive when I say this, but I am very, very glad that you are not my parent.
I am old enough now that I am right on the cusp between "kid" and "parent"; friends of mine are raising children. When I was younger, I believed quite firmly that children should have the right to a life independent of their parents' monitoring their every move, and that view has not dimmed the older I get.
I do not advocate that parents be completely ignorant of their children's actions; that way leads us to disaster. But parents who attempt to monitor their children's every move are doing them a disservice. Let's face it; the parent will not always be there, the child/will/ grow up, will go to college, will move out of the house. The most that a parent should be able to hope to do is instill in his/her child the basis of a moral code, one that the parent hopes will serve his/her child well. Treating children like they are objects to be protected and kept in ignorance only postpones the day when that ignorance cannot be maintained, and increases the risk that the child will not be able to handle what comes with that loss of ignorance.
Like it or not, children are not their parents; they are not carbon copies of the process that spawned them. I don't know about you, but *my* moral code was pretty much formed by the time I was about thirteen or so -- and it was radically different from my parents'. And in adhering to that moral code, I did indeed do things that my parents would not have approved of. Yes, I was living under their roof, and yes, I did respect that enough so that I did not engage in any of those behaviours while in their home -- but I was not in their home 24/7.
/Why/ does providing genetic material to another person grant one the right to monitor their every action? Why does being a parent grant one the right to know everything that a child does? And most importantly, when does that right end -- 15, 17, 18, 25, never?
And what of those of my friends, while growing up, whose moral codes divulged so drastically from their parents that the two could never be reconciled? What of my best friend in high school, who committed suicide because his parents had found out that he was gay and tried to 'cure' him? What of my other friend, whose religion was not that of her parents, and because of that suffered daily abuse -- and I don't mean verbal abuse?
A parent should not have the right to know everything about a child's life when that knowledge would place the child in danger. I believe that if one teaches one's child one's own ideas of 'right' and 'wrong', one then must stand back and let the child make his/her own decisions. To do otherwise isn't to raise a child; it's to raise a sheep.
> Perhaps there's a FAQ out there on how to > properly massage the hands and wrists.
I haven't found one, perhaps because it's very tough to write about this rather than demonstrate it, but here's what I've learned from watching and talking with my massage therapist. =)
First, a lot of hand/wrist pain can be, and often is, caused by tension in the upper and arms. I begin with the biceps and work my way all the way down to the fingertips, and that seems to work well.
The best to use is a light touch, just enough to work the muscles, without causing undue pain; the most common technique is a small circular motion, which should be (if you're doing it on yourself) clockwise on the right arm, and counterclockwise on the left arm, so that the force of the pressure is directed towards one's heart.
With the lower arm, one should go along the muscles on both the top and the underside of the arm, beginning at the wrist and working one's way down to the elbow, with the fingers that are doing the massaging creating a sort of spiral motion. You should be able to feel the tendons and the muscles, and feel where the worst tension is -- avoid the temptation to just stay there massaging the part that feels most tense! It might make it feel better in the short term, but it will hurt the next day. Besides, if one place is tense, that's usually a result of tension elsewhere.
The hands are probably where it's going to feel the best, and the best thing to do there is to start at the base of the fingers and (again using that tiny circular motion) work down to the base of the thumb/edge of the palm. For hand pain caused by typing, the places that will feel best are along the edge of the palm, from the webbing where the thumb meets the hand all the way around to the opposite edge of the wrist.
I'd suggest teaming up with another geek in the office who has hand pain; that's what I did for a while, and man, did it feel good. ^_^
Re:This site annoys me a little
on
Dumb Laws
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· Score: 1
> Some of these laws aren't dumb like they think, > they are just old and were never looked at again.
And some, like the no-profanity law in Raritan, NJ, were enacted a few years ago and are still being actively enforced.
I live in the town next to Raritan, and believe me, we had fun with that. "Fuck! Oh, wait, we're in Raritan! Gotta watch that!"
(Note: the ordinance *does* only refer to public places.)
Also, the reason that there are no self-service gas stations in NJ has to do with one of our governors, who was trying to increase the number of jobs in the state. It hasn't much worked; most gas stations are terribly understaffed, and I usually just get out of my car and top off the tank myself. The first time I was confronted with self-serve in MA -- I was seventeen and had just started driving -- I was utterly/lost/ for a few minutes. "Duh. Where's the attendant?" ^_^
> You knew you had RSI when you took the job, and now you're being > a complete jerk, apparently, because your employer didn't > make the RSI didn't go away.
Yes, I knew that I had RSI when I took the job. And no, I'm not expecting that the employer should make the RSI go away; you *can't* make RSI go away once it's present.
I *brought* my own fscking keyboard to work. They wouldn't let me install it. Get it through your head -- employers are *not* on the employee's side in matters such as these. They are in it to make a buck, not to protect employee health. And far too many companies are wedded to their own way of doing things. And I ask you -- why must the employee fight to protect his or own health in a work environment, while the company can get away with inducing those damages unscathed?
I'm not espousing "my way" in the sense that I think that government should step in and micro-manage a workplace. However, there is *no reason* why workers should be given inadequate material with which to do their job and then have no recourse to getting that situation rectified without having to leave the job.
*How* does legislation that *protects* an employee consitiute 'bullying'? Why does a system in which employees are given *more* rights and *more* ways to get what they need obviously stir such anger and vitriol in you? Perhaps you would rather go back to the days when workers were abused for sixteen hours a day in sub-human working conditions, with dangerous chemicals and equipment, with no regulatory body to step in and say "No, you can't do that" -- the very conditions OSHA was created to prevent.
> This seems to be one of those cases where > self-regulation would be the better answer.
Unfortunately, companies will often choose to save money in the short-term and ignore the long-term implications -- whether out of bureaucracy or stupidity, I'm not sure. It's been my experience that the larger the company, the less willing they are to take proper care of their employees. Take a look at history and the rise of the union movement for examples...
> If your company wont get you a chair because you need one, > then maybe you should look for another company.
Excellent idea, but idealistic. It is not always practical to switch jobs, and I'm afraid that the attitude is more widespread than one might imagine. Believe me, if I *could* find another job, I would. I've been looking.
Besides, why should the worker suffer because the company is unwilling to Do The Right Thing? That's the sort of attitude that led to the sub-human working conditions of factories in the early half of the century. "If you don't like it, get another job". That is precisely what OSHA was founded to *prevent*.
> Mostly, it's been going to overwheight whiners who would be better off > if they simply exercised and tried to keep healthy. A thousand > dollar chair won't solve their problems.
So, you're fortunate enough to not have RSI problems. That's great for you, and I really am honestly happy that you don't encounter the kind of pain that I live with every day.
Not everyone is as fortunate, however. I work at a job -- not programming; it's more data-entry and information processing -- where I need to spend nearly seven and a half hours every day sitting in front of my keyboard typing away. My employer, when designing the office, took *none* of the standard ergonomic guidelines into effect. The desks are ridiculously high, the keyboard trays that have been supplied break at the slightest hint of pressure, and the chairs are only mildly adjustable; the keyboards are ridiculously small, particularly for those of us with very large hands, and each individual workstation can only be customized so far. After *one* hour of sitting and typing, I was in so much pain that I couldn't even make a fist.
I went to the doctor back in February (I'd been diagnosed with carpal tunnel previously, and was doing just fine with it, based on sane and sensible guidelines for my home workstation) and got a specialist to order that my workstation at work be altered to provide a more ergonomic work environment. My company attempted to weasel out of things by stating that their workstations already were ergonomic, without providing any support for that statement and ignoring my assertation that the existing equipment was doing more harm than good. It is now November, and I will estimate that I lost nearly a month's productive time before finally having the surgery performed -- a step that might not have been necessary had I gotten the support I needed beforehand.
It seems to me that legislation such as this is a *good* thing. If we can prevent these problems before they reach the state that mine has gotten to, where I need a total of two and a half months off work for the surgery and the physical therapy, not only will it benefit the *worker* (no one should ever, *ever* have to physically destroy him or herself for a job) but it will also benefit the corporation (less employee absence, more productivity).
Sometimes, legislation is *necessary*. Corporations are unwilling to Do The Right Thing by themselves a lot of the time; it takes a fairly big stick to convince them.
As for people who have RSI problems being "whiners" -- I had reached the point where I was physically incapable of making a fist. Not just because of the pain, which is crippling, but because the muscles *refused to listen*. You cannot drive when you cannot grip the steering wheel. Among many other things. I have a remarkably high pain threshold, but living with debilitating pain/constantly/ will wear nearly anyone down. Some people are more susceptible to RSI injuries than others, and preventative measures will only take you so far. It's about time that someone forced these bastards who abuse their workers and claim that their conditions are all psychosomatic to wake up and smell the coffee.
As a carpal tunnel sufferer myself (recovering from the second half of the surgery, which was done on Friday) I just don't see touch screen ever catching on. It's a smaller area of contact, and I find that after about half an hour of using a touchpad my hand starts getting cramped and sore, mostly from the postion you have to hold your hand at for clicking. If you meant a touchscreen that was the monitor itself, it would involve too much holding the hand and arm at an unnatural position and place far too much strain on the shoulder and elbow to hold the hand/arm up to touch the monitor.
My ideal input device at the moment is a trackball -- Kensington Orbit, to be precise; the things are beautifully designed and fit my hand perfectly -- but input devices are much more of an individual thing. There's far too much variation on hand side and shape to state that there is "One True Way". All of the ergonomic studies that I've seen state that a solution should be individually tailored and that any solution involving input devices should include frequent rest and occasional change-of-input-device to vary the stresses placed upon the hand and body.
I can see the pen being a godsend for artists -- an artist friend of mine uses a tablet for her drawing, and she adores it -- but again, as a CTS sufferer, I couldn't use one. I haven't been able to hold a pen/pencil for about two years now, and don't expect that the surgery will radically change that.
> The notion of "self-insurance" is quite common for extremely huge > organizations where they figure that they have such a huge number > of potential sources of claims that it makes sense to keep the > insurance money and pay the costs of claims as they come up.
Self-insurance is very common for major corporations for such things as Workers' Compensation insurance, but not quite for the reason you've stated. It's because a major company is capable of assessing only its own risk and setting the rate of money they need to set aside. Quick lesson in how insurance works, so that I can make my point:
The concept of insurance runs on two principles -- risk and indemnity. Risk is the likelihood that a loss will occur; indemnity is the principle of returning the insured to the state of being whole -- ie, taking them back to the state they were in before the loss. Often, this is impossible (ie, life insurance -- you can't bring someone back to life) and in that case, the company will compensate the insured for the loss in a monetary fashion (such as the loss of income that the deceased would have earned).
In order to have such coverage, the insured must pay for it. In order to set the premium rates, the insurance company assesses how likely it is that an insured will have a loss; they calculate the risk. Insurance companies have huge tables (known as actuarial tables) that contain nothing but demographic data and histories of loss; using those tables, they can calculate roughly how likely it is for an individual to suffer a loss. The premiums charged to that individual then reflect the amount of risk that the insured represents. This is why, for instance, a person who receives a speeding ticket will see his/her auto insurance go up; it demonstrates that the individual is more of a risk for the insurance company.
The advantage of this for the insurance company is that they have a broad pool of insureds, some of whom are in high-risk brackets, some of whom are not. The people who are higher-risk will indeed get charged more, but the people who are at a lower risk will be charged at such a rate that they are partially financing the high-risk insureds. In such a manner is the financial liability to the insurance company spread out over the entire pool of insureds. Fred Smith from Sheboygan, who has never had an insurance claim in his life, drives slowly, only goes to the grocery store on Fridays, etc, etc, is partially financing the insurance company's ability to assume the risk for Jane Doe, who drives everywhere at 90 miles an hour and has had her license suspended six times for careless driving.
Major corporations, however, find the process of partially subsidizing other companies' insurance distasteful. Looking at workers' comp, it's easy to see that an automobile factory would have a much higher assessment of risk than a sedate law office. To this end, companies are permitted to self-insure as long as certain conditions are met. In my example, let's say that the law firm of Dewey, Cheatem and Howe chooses to self-insure for their workers' compensation coverage. The amount of money that they need to set aside for potential claims would likely be much, much less than they would need to pay an insurance company for the same coverage, because they would likely have a smaller range of possible losses, and thusly less risk.
So basically, I'm just nitpicking your assertation that a company self-insures because of the number of claims; it's usually because of the nature of the claims involved.
In the UPS case, it appears that it might indeed have been detrimental to the consumer. In most of the cases where self-insurance is permittable, it is on an internal basis; the company is insuring itself against certain risks incurred by the company. In the UPS case, it appears that self-insurance was a roundabout way of saving the company money and evading US tax and insurance laws. The clouding issue is the fact that UPS was not directly insuring itself, however; it was using reinsurance.
Reinsurance is another mechanism that the insurance companies use to reduce their own potential liability. The example that my insurance instructor gave me was a basketball player insuring his hands for $20 million. That is a very large risk for the insurance company, and a claim on such a policy could cause the company immediate financial distress. In order to protect itself, the company will often purchase insurance for itself with other insurance companies, thus diversifying the risk -- XYZ Insurance, who has written that $20 million policy, would then go to ABC Insurance and take out a policy for $1 million, to DEF Insurance and take out another policy for $1 million, etc. That way a sudden claim will not cause a catastrophic drop in the original company's general fund, the account out of which claims are paid.
Reinsurance is a very common practice in the insurance industry, particularly in the property and casualty insurance market (auto, home, liability), because of the possibility of natural disasters that affect an entire area. For instance, a company that insures large blocks of Florida, say, might purchase reinsurance for itself in a company that doesn't have much business written in Florida at all. That way, a natural disaster in Florida wouldn't bankrupt the company. The company I work for was heavily involved in the area that was hit by the Oklahoma tornado a while back, and the only thing that saved our P&C department was the fact that we had a great deal of reinsurance and therefore did not need to pay all the claims ourselves.
In this case, UPS appears to have purchased its insurance with a standard insurance company, and then that company purchased reinsurance with the company UPS owned. This is going to make things a little stickier.
Disclaimer: I am an insurance agent, but this is not insurance advice. See your local insurance agent who is familiar with your state laws for any specific insurance questions.
> One of the things I found most interesting in that article was the note about > how many of the schools are creating their own problem by too-aggressive > control of school newspapers.
I actually ran into that problem when I was in high school -- nearly seven years ago -- and editing the school newspaper. We sold ads to offset the cost of printing (the school board didn't give us nearly enough funding) and had accepted an ad from Planned Parenthood that was, in my opinion, very tasteful and emphasized PP as a last resort -- that one should visit teachers, clergy, parents, etc. first. The school board tried to get us to pull it. Now, PP had been one of our staunchest advertisers for years, and they had a very expensive half-page ad contract for the full year, and we were/not/ going to let that slip away from us -- and besides, most of us were rabid free-speech advocates.
It took four phone calls to the Student Press Law Center, one to the ACLU, and a *lot* of conversations with the school board before they would back down. And for the rest of the year, they made it a point of trying to censor the paper whenever they could. We had an entire print run confiscated and burned one month.
And of course, since the entire editorial staff at that point was a bunch of hopeless liberals, myself included, that made us mad. And we started pushing the line as much as we could, purposely offending the administration in such a way that they could/not/ say anything about it. We did a three-month series on personal freedoms and liberties in American high schools, highlighting just how many of your rights you sign away when you set foot on their property.
By the end of the year, we were on first-name terms with one of the lawyers at the SPLC.:)
Looking back at it, we had a lot of fun that year. It was stressful, and annoying, and very aggrivating, but it taught us a lot of important lessons -- namely, that until you stand up for your rights, those rights can be slowly bled away from you. It was a very valuable experience for me -- but in the ideal world, it wouldn't have been necessary.
And if anyone had tried to/touch/ a personal and non-school-related web site, I would have been screaming/bloody murder/. My sympathy and support goes to the individual involved.
> But they can sure as anything verify the blocks they've sent, and if they get > a report of a hit, they can verify it themselves using a reference > implementation, or quietly submit it to someone else and see if they get the > same results.
If I were the designers of the SETI@Home project, I wouldn't be worried about false positives; those are easily verified by running the data on their own machines -- which they do anyway, IIRC, upon finding something that a client marked 'interesting'. I would be worried about false/negatives/ -- either malicious (someone doesn't want the project to succeed, and therefore returns all false blocks) or self-serving (someone wants to bump his/her score up more and in order to do so, returns blocks marked as processed that have not been touched).
As much as I like the idea of open source, in a situation like this, I don't think it's advised.
> Now, the question: Which do you think is more likely, Microsoft settling or appealing?
And in addition to that, which do you think would be more beneficial, both in the legal sense and for the consumer -- a settlement or an appeal?
If Microsoft decides to settle, to make the best of a bad situation and avoid dragging the case out, they would have more control over the punitive damages applied. However, if they think that they have a chance of the FoF being overturned (which relates to questions elsewhere in the thread as to the likeliness/legality of such), they might choose to gamble it all, and risk heavier damages in exchange for the chance of a clear victory.
Which do you think would be the better of the two?
> I really hate telephone spam because I sleep wierd hours and they wake me up.
Ugh, I remember dealing with that when I was working graveyard. There *is* a lot more of a precedent for getting rid of "telephone spam", or telemarketing (TM) calls, though. For instance:
1). Federal law prohibits TM calls made outside of a certain "window" (which I believe is 8AM to 9PM, but I am not certain). This doesn't much help those of us who work graveyard, but there *is* legislation.
2). Federal law has also mandated that each company that performs TM calls must maintain a "do not call" list of people who do not wish to be solicited. This can be done proactively -- ie, you do NOT need to wait for the company to call *you* before you ask to be placed on that list. I would recommend calling the various long distance companies, your insurance carrier, any insurance carrier you no longer use but had business with in the past, your credit card company, your bank, etc. and being placed on their DNC list ahead of time; then, when you receive a TM call, ask to be placed on their DNC list immediately and ask for written confirmation to be sent to you. Get names and specific times, write them down, and hold on to that written confirmation. If they call you again, the fine is paid directly to you. Easy money. ^_~
3). There are 10 states that have a state-wide opt-out list, and even more states with such legislation pending. Check in your state to see if you live in one of them, and then add your phone number (you do not need to supply an address or a name in most states; just the phone # will suffice).
For more information, see Putting an End to Telephone Solicitations. Personally, now that I'm off graveyard, I like playing with the telemarketers when I get them on the line. A bunch of my friends have written up a whole set of rules and points values for what we call the Telemarketer Game (5 points if the TM puts his/her supervisor on the line without you having to ask, 10 points if the TM hangs up on *you*, 1 point every time you can clearly force the TM to diverge from his/her script, etc, etc). It's time-consuming, but it's *fun*. And you can always ask to be placed on the DNC list after you're done.
> We spent several days hunting down any email address we could find > for these assholes and sending them a threatening sounding > letter our company lawyer had crafted for us.
It's been stated before, but I think it bears repeating:
Do *not* reply to people who spam you! That merely confirms to them that they have hit a "live" address -- ie, one that is read by a human. Instead, complain to the appropriate abuse@ or postmaster@ addresses, if the mail comes from a legitimate ISP, or the upstream provider, if it is an ISP that has proven to be unresponsive to spam complaints. Otherwise, you'll *never* get off the lists... and even when you do with that spammer, he'll sell your address to 10 others.
> Since neither the ISP's nor the gov't is likely to force DMA > and its members to bear the true cost of their activities, perhaps > the more technologically savvy among DMA's victim/recipients > should do so (without violating any laws, of course).
I still like the idea that a friend of mine came up with (hi, Joe, if you're reading!)
Find out who the spammers are. Find out their addresses. Then get together a bunch of scary sysadmin types (and most of the sysadmin types I know are pretty scary). Dress up in all black. Wear leather. And dark sunglasses. And never, ever smile. Show up at the spammer's door -- preferably at home but if that's not possible, at their offices. Maintain a perfectly pleasant, professional demeanor, but drop some very, very not-so-subtle hints that you *really* don't like spam. Let them know why you don't like spam. Cite specific cases. Give then numbers on how much of YOUR time it wastes. DO NOT in any way, shape, or form do or say anything that could be construed as a threat in a court of law -- the objective is not to get *your* butt thrown in jail. Meanwhile, your scary sysadmin associates should just stand behind you and loom.
The point that you're trying to get across here is, basically, that Spam Gets You Visited By Scary People.
Imagine how much fun that would be. "Mr. Wallace, my associates and I would like a moment of your time to discuss something with you..."
> How many women out there use male names in > public forums to avoid unwanted attention?
Personally, I tend to go for a gender-neutral logon, and I notice a/lot/ more annoying solicitations when I switch to an obviously female nick. I hang out on MOOs a lot, and it's/amazing/ what some of these people will page you with when you're obviously a woman; on LambdaMOO, most of the women I know switch their gender to plural or neuter. It's sad that such deception is necessary, but that's been the case for as long as I've been into MOOs.
> He's right however. Good coverage, with exactly the right level of bias;)
"She", actually. ^_~ And I'm serious. It's nice to see/. proactively reaching out and doing some pieces about the impact of the news that gets reported, rather than linking to work done by others. While there is nothing wrong with the latter, and it is certainly how/. got its reputation, that reputation has now brought/. to a place where it is an excellent repository for original content such as this.
Thanks Robin, this is a great analysis for those of us who haven't been able to get to any of the mirrors yet -- this discussion promises to be valuable as hell. Top-notch journalism!
> They're more than capable of FUD'ing an economy without a > full-strength Microsoft to Congress.
This is part of what worries me about MSFT having just been included in the Dow. While yes, there were three other new companies included, and yes, there is a corrective factor, if MSFT takes a plunge, who knows what sort of panic it could incite -- or what sort of/threat/ of panic M$ could use to prevent some of the more drastic proposals.
Then again, I'd been considering shorting MSFT for a while, and would have if I'd had any spare cash. ^_~
> My question to you guys is, what punishments, if any, should be layed upon Microsoft?
I believe that Microsoft should be forced to open-source Windows, or at least the crucial parts like the APIs. Part of the allegations, as I'm sure you all know, include the fact that M$ is holding back on crucial information that prevents competitors from utilizing the advantages that Microsoft has itself in creating applications for the Windows platform.
The problem, I feel, is going to be that the government -- despite Judge Jackson's obvious grasp of matters technological -- is still in a non-technological mindframe. Remedies like the breakup of AT&T or Standard Oil will not suffice in a case such as this; breaking Microsoft into, say, an OS company, a server company, and a software company will do nothing to alleviate the more gross abuses of power that they've demonstrated in the past. (And it will just line BillG's pockets more.)
I'm not a rabid open-source supporter; I have no problem using closed-source products if they'll get the job done. But I think that in this case, Microsoft has demonstrated such abuses that open-source is just about the only way to level the playing field.
> I fully expect Microsoft's stock to take a serious dive sometime > in the next year or two based on decreased earnings growth and > declining margins, and some of these additional factors could certainly > add to the downward momentum when the tide turns.
I'm not necessarily agreeing or disagreeing with you, but did anyone else notice the news that the Dow Jones average now includes Microsoft -- the first time a NASDAQ-traded stock has been included in that index -- along with Home Depot, Intel, and another company I don't rememeber at the moment? This makes me very nervous. The DJ is already hyper-inflated; adding two tech stocks is just going to make things worse.
As I recall from the last time we saw this, it expires in 2003, which is why UniSys wants to crack down on things now -- to get the last drops of blood out of the stone.
> But anecdotal evidence is not useful- what's the stats: alta or google? > Or are they each better for different sorts of searches?
More anecdotal evidence, really, but I've found that Google is much better for "popular" subjects and pages, and Altavista is better for the more obscure ones. Google is my primary search engine -- I love the nice clean interface, and hope they never change it -- but if Google doesn't find anything, I go to Altavista -- with images/off/.
> Apparently the concept illustrator for Final Fantasy (?), and this features > stuff from Final Fantasy Anthology?
Amano-sama had been the character designer and illustrator for the Final Fantasy series up through and including FF6 (FF3US). For Final Fantasy 7, he designed the city of Midgar (which was an excellent creepy postmodern metropolis) and I believe that his work on recently-released FF8 included the Gardens, a sort of academy for soldiers and mercenaries. Amano-sama has done artwork for other video game titles, including Kartia and SaGa Frontier (unfortunately, his artwork was the only redeeming quality in the latter), and is also a highly respected artist outside of the video game design field.
I would *love* to go see the exhibit running in NYC of his work, dammit! I've been a fan of Squaresoft and their Final Fantasy titles for ages.
Slashdot Mirror
> This bill appears to have failed in a floor vote today, 24 January.
...The scary thing is, unless I misread the facts, 20 people voted for it.
*shakes head*
> It derives from the fact that I am my kids' parent.
/will/ grow up, will go to college, will move out of the house. The most that a parent should be able to hope to do is instill in his/her child the basis of a moral code, one that the parent hopes will serve his/her child well. Treating children like they are objects to be protected and kept in ignorance only postpones the day when that ignorance cannot be maintained, and increases the risk that the child will not be able to handle what comes with that loss of ignorance.
Kaiwen, please understand that I am not trying to be offensive when I say this, but I am very, very glad that you are not my parent.
I am old enough now that I am right on the cusp between "kid" and "parent"; friends of mine are raising children. When I was younger, I believed quite firmly that children should have the right to a life independent of their parents' monitoring their every move, and that view has not dimmed the older I get.
I do not advocate that parents be completely ignorant of their children's actions; that way leads us to disaster. But parents who attempt to monitor their children's every move are doing them a disservice. Let's face it; the parent will not always be there, the child
Like it or not, children are not their parents; they are not carbon copies of the process that spawned them. I don't know about you, but *my* moral code was pretty much formed by the time I was about thirteen or so -- and it was radically different from my parents'. And in adhering to that moral code, I did indeed do things that my parents would not have approved of. Yes, I was living under their roof, and yes, I did respect that enough so that I did not engage in any of those behaviours while in their home -- but I was not in their home 24/7.
/Why/ does providing genetic material to another person grant one the right to monitor their every action? Why does being a parent grant one the right to know everything that a child does? And most importantly, when does that right end -- 15, 17, 18, 25, never?
And what of those of my friends, while growing up, whose moral codes divulged so drastically from their parents that the two could never be reconciled? What of my best friend in high school, who committed suicide because his parents had found out that he was gay and tried to 'cure' him? What of my other friend, whose religion was not that of her parents, and because of that suffered daily abuse -- and I don't mean verbal abuse?
A parent should not have the right to know everything about a child's life when that knowledge would place the child in danger. I believe that if one teaches one's child one's own ideas of 'right' and 'wrong', one then must stand back and let the child make his/her own decisions. To do otherwise isn't to raise a child; it's to raise a sheep.
> Perhaps there's a FAQ out there on how to
> properly massage the hands and wrists.
I haven't found one, perhaps because it's very tough to write about this rather than demonstrate it, but here's what I've learned from watching and talking with my massage therapist. =)
First, a lot of hand/wrist pain can be, and often is, caused by tension in the upper and arms. I begin with the biceps and work my way all the way down to the fingertips, and that seems to work well.
The best to use is a light touch, just enough to work the muscles, without causing undue pain; the most common technique is a small circular motion, which should be (if you're doing it on yourself) clockwise on the right arm, and counterclockwise on the left arm, so that the force of the pressure is directed towards one's heart.
With the lower arm, one should go along the muscles on both the top and the underside of the arm, beginning at the wrist and working one's way down to the elbow, with the fingers that are doing the massaging creating a sort of spiral motion. You should be able to feel the tendons and the muscles, and feel where the worst tension is -- avoid the temptation to just stay there massaging the part that feels most tense! It might make it feel better in the short term, but it will hurt the next day. Besides, if one place is tense, that's usually a result of tension elsewhere.
The hands are probably where it's going to feel the best, and the best thing to do there is to start at the base of the fingers and (again using that tiny circular motion) work down to the base of the thumb/edge of the palm. For hand pain caused by typing, the places that will feel best are along the edge of the palm, from the webbing where the thumb meets the hand all the way around to the opposite edge of the wrist.
I'd suggest teaming up with another geek in the office who has hand pain; that's what I did for a while, and man, did it feel good. ^_^
> Some of these laws aren't dumb like they think,
/lost/ for a few minutes. "Duh. Where's the attendant?" ^_^
> they are just old and were never looked at again.
And some, like the no-profanity law in Raritan, NJ, were enacted a few years ago and are still being actively enforced.
I live in the town next to Raritan, and believe me, we had fun with that. "Fuck! Oh, wait, we're in Raritan! Gotta watch that!"
(Note: the ordinance *does* only refer to public places.)
Also, the reason that there are no self-service gas stations in NJ has to do with one of our governors, who was trying to increase the number of jobs in the state. It hasn't much worked; most gas stations are terribly understaffed, and I usually just get out of my car and top off the tank myself. The first time I was confronted with self-serve in MA -- I was seventeen and had just started driving -- I was utterly
> You knew you had RSI when you took the job, and now you're being
> a complete jerk, apparently, because your employer didn't
> make the RSI didn't go away.
Yes, I knew that I had RSI when I took the job. And no, I'm not expecting that the employer should make the RSI go away; you *can't* make RSI go away once it's present.
I *brought* my own fscking keyboard to work. They wouldn't let me install it. Get it through your head -- employers are *not* on the employee's side in matters such as these. They are in it to make a buck, not to protect employee health. And far too many companies are wedded to their own way of doing things. And I ask you -- why must the employee fight to protect his or own health in a work environment, while the company can get away with inducing those damages unscathed?
I'm not espousing "my way" in the sense that I think that government should step in and micro-manage a workplace. However, there is *no reason* why workers should be given inadequate material with which to do their job and then have no recourse to getting that situation rectified without having to leave the job.
*How* does legislation that *protects* an employee consitiute 'bullying'? Why does a system in which employees are given *more* rights and *more* ways to get what they need obviously stir such anger and vitriol in you? Perhaps you would rather go back to the days when workers were abused for sixteen hours a day in sub-human working conditions, with dangerous chemicals and equipment, with no regulatory body to step in and say "No, you can't do that" -- the very conditions OSHA was created to prevent.
> This seems to be one of those cases where
> self-regulation would be the better answer.
Unfortunately, companies will often choose to save money in the short-term and ignore the long-term implications -- whether out of bureaucracy or stupidity, I'm not sure. It's been my experience that the larger the company, the less willing they are to take proper care of their employees. Take a look at history and the rise of the union movement for examples...
> If your company wont get you a chair because you need one,
> then maybe you should look for another company.
Excellent idea, but idealistic. It is not always practical to switch jobs, and I'm afraid that the attitude is more widespread than one might imagine. Believe me, if I *could* find another job, I would. I've been looking.
Besides, why should the worker suffer because the company is unwilling to Do The Right Thing? That's the sort of attitude that led to the sub-human working conditions of factories in the early half of the century. "If you don't like it, get another job". That is precisely what OSHA was founded to *prevent*.
> Mostly, it's been going to overwheight whiners who would be better off
/constantly/ will wear nearly anyone down. Some people are more susceptible to RSI injuries than others, and preventative measures will only take you so far. It's about time that someone forced these bastards who abuse their workers and claim that their conditions are all psychosomatic to wake up and smell the coffee.
> if they simply exercised and tried to keep healthy. A thousand
> dollar chair won't solve their problems.
So, you're fortunate enough to not have RSI problems. That's great for you, and I really am honestly happy that you don't encounter the kind of pain that I live with every day.
Not everyone is as fortunate, however. I work at a job -- not programming; it's more data-entry and information processing -- where I need to spend nearly seven and a half hours every day sitting in front of my keyboard typing away. My employer, when designing the office, took *none* of the standard ergonomic guidelines into effect. The desks are ridiculously high, the keyboard trays that have been supplied break at the slightest hint of pressure, and the chairs are only mildly adjustable; the keyboards are ridiculously small, particularly for those of us with very large hands, and each individual workstation can only be customized so far. After *one* hour of sitting and typing, I was in so much pain that I couldn't even make a fist.
I went to the doctor back in February (I'd been diagnosed with carpal tunnel previously, and was doing just fine with it, based on sane and sensible guidelines for my home workstation) and got a specialist to order that my workstation at work be altered to provide a more ergonomic work environment. My company attempted to weasel out of things by stating that their workstations already were ergonomic, without providing any support for that statement and ignoring my assertation that the existing equipment was doing more harm than good. It is now November, and I will estimate that I lost nearly a month's productive time before finally having the surgery performed -- a step that might not have been necessary had I gotten the support I needed beforehand.
It seems to me that legislation such as this is a *good* thing. If we can prevent these problems before they reach the state that mine has gotten to, where I need a total of two and a half months off work for the surgery and the physical therapy, not only will it benefit the *worker* (no one should ever, *ever* have to physically destroy him or herself for a job) but it will also benefit the corporation (less employee absence, more productivity).
Sometimes, legislation is *necessary*. Corporations are unwilling to Do The Right Thing by themselves a lot of the time; it takes a fairly big stick to convince them.
As for people who have RSI problems being "whiners" -- I had reached the point where I was physically incapable of making a fist. Not just because of the pain, which is crippling, but because the muscles *refused to listen*. You cannot drive when you cannot grip the steering wheel. Among many other things. I have a remarkably high pain threshold, but living with debilitating pain
> Touch screen would be a lot better.
As a carpal tunnel sufferer myself (recovering from the second half of the surgery, which was done on Friday) I just don't see touch screen ever catching on. It's a smaller area of contact, and I find that after about half an hour of using a touchpad my hand starts getting cramped and sore, mostly from the postion you have to hold your hand at for clicking. If you meant a touchscreen that was the monitor itself, it would involve too much holding the hand and arm at an unnatural position and place far too much strain on the shoulder and elbow to hold the hand/arm up to touch the monitor.
My ideal input device at the moment is a trackball -- Kensington Orbit, to be precise; the things are beautifully designed and fit my hand perfectly -- but input devices are much more of an individual thing. There's far too much variation on hand side and shape to state that there is "One True Way". All of the ergonomic studies that I've seen state that a solution should be individually tailored and that any solution involving input devices should include frequent rest and occasional change-of-input-device to vary the stresses placed upon the hand and body.
I can see the pen being a godsend for artists -- an artist friend of mine uses a tablet for her drawing, and she adores it -- but again, as a CTS sufferer, I couldn't use one. I haven't been able to hold a pen/pencil for about two years now, and don't expect that the surgery will radically change that.
> The notion of "self-insurance" is quite common for extremely huge
> organizations where they figure that they have such a huge number
> of potential sources of claims that it makes sense to keep the
> insurance money and pay the costs of claims as they come up.
Self-insurance is very common for major corporations for such things as Workers' Compensation insurance, but not quite for the reason you've stated. It's because a major company is capable of assessing only its own risk and setting the rate of money they need to set aside. Quick lesson in how insurance works, so that I can make my point:
The concept of insurance runs on two principles -- risk and indemnity. Risk is the likelihood that a loss will occur; indemnity is the principle of returning the insured to the state of being whole -- ie, taking them back to the state they were in before the loss. Often, this is impossible (ie, life insurance -- you can't bring someone back to life) and in that case, the company will compensate the insured for the loss in a monetary fashion (such as the loss of income that the deceased would have earned).
In order to have such coverage, the insured must pay for it. In order to set the premium rates, the insurance company assesses how likely it is that an insured will have a loss; they calculate the risk. Insurance companies have huge tables (known as actuarial tables) that contain nothing but demographic data and histories of loss; using those tables, they can calculate roughly how likely it is for an individual to suffer a loss. The premiums charged to that individual then reflect the amount of risk that the insured represents. This is why, for instance, a person who receives a speeding ticket will see his/her auto insurance go up; it demonstrates that the individual is more of a risk for the insurance company.
The advantage of this for the insurance company is that they have a broad pool of insureds, some of whom are in high-risk brackets, some of whom are not. The people who are higher-risk will indeed get charged more, but the people who are at a lower risk will be charged at such a rate that they are partially financing the high-risk insureds. In such a manner is the financial liability to the insurance company spread out over the entire pool of insureds. Fred Smith from Sheboygan, who has never had an insurance claim in his life, drives slowly, only goes to the grocery store on Fridays, etc, etc, is partially financing the insurance company's ability to assume the risk for Jane Doe, who drives everywhere at 90 miles an hour and has had her license suspended six times for careless driving.
Major corporations, however, find the process of partially subsidizing other companies' insurance distasteful. Looking at workers' comp, it's easy to see that an automobile factory would have a much higher assessment of risk than a sedate law office. To this end, companies are permitted to self-insure as long as certain conditions are met. In my example, let's say that the law firm of Dewey, Cheatem and Howe chooses to self-insure for their workers' compensation coverage. The amount of money that they need to set aside for potential claims would likely be much, much less than they would need to pay an insurance company for the same coverage, because they would likely have a smaller range of possible losses, and thusly less risk.
So basically, I'm just nitpicking your assertation that a company self-insures because of the number of claims; it's usually because of the nature of the claims involved.
In the UPS case, it appears that it might indeed have been detrimental to the consumer. In most of the cases where self-insurance is permittable, it is on an internal basis; the company is insuring itself against certain risks incurred by the company. In the UPS case, it appears that self-insurance was a roundabout way of saving the company money and evading US tax and insurance laws. The clouding issue is the fact that UPS was not directly insuring itself, however; it was using reinsurance.
Reinsurance is another mechanism that the insurance companies use to reduce their own potential liability. The example that my insurance instructor gave me was a basketball player insuring his hands for $20 million. That is a very large risk for the insurance company, and a claim on such a policy could cause the company immediate financial distress. In order to protect itself, the company will often purchase insurance for itself with other insurance companies, thus diversifying the risk -- XYZ Insurance, who has written that $20 million policy, would then go to ABC Insurance and take out a policy for $1 million, to DEF Insurance and take out another policy for $1 million, etc. That way a sudden claim will not cause a catastrophic drop in the original company's general fund, the account out of which claims are paid.
Reinsurance is a very common practice in the insurance industry, particularly in the property and casualty insurance market (auto, home, liability), because of the possibility of natural disasters that affect an entire area. For instance, a company that insures large blocks of Florida, say, might purchase reinsurance for itself in a company that doesn't have much business written in Florida at all. That way, a natural disaster in Florida wouldn't bankrupt the company. The company I work for was heavily involved in the area that was hit by the Oklahoma tornado a while back, and the only thing that saved our P&C department was the fact that we had a great deal of reinsurance and therefore did not need to pay all the claims ourselves.
In this case, UPS appears to have purchased its insurance with a standard insurance company, and then that company purchased reinsurance with the company UPS owned. This is going to make things a little stickier.
Disclaimer: I am an insurance agent, but this is not insurance advice. See your local insurance agent who is familiar with your state laws for any specific insurance questions.
> One of the things I found most interesting in that article was the note about
/not/ going to let that slip away from us -- and besides, most of us were rabid free-speech advocates.
/not/ say anything about it. We did a three-month series on personal freedoms and liberties in American high schools, highlighting just how many of your rights you sign away when you set foot on their property.
:)
/touch/ a personal and non-school-related web site, I would have been screaming /bloody murder/. My sympathy and support goes to the individual involved.
> how many of the schools are creating their own problem by too-aggressive
> control of school newspapers.
I actually ran into that problem when I was in high school -- nearly seven years ago -- and editing the school newspaper. We sold ads to offset the cost of printing (the school board didn't give us nearly enough funding) and had accepted an ad from Planned Parenthood that was, in my opinion, very tasteful and emphasized PP as a last resort -- that one should visit teachers, clergy, parents, etc. first. The school board tried to get us to pull it. Now, PP had been one of our staunchest advertisers for years, and they had a very expensive half-page ad contract for the full year, and we were
It took four phone calls to the Student Press Law Center, one to the ACLU, and a *lot* of conversations with the school board before they would back down. And for the rest of the year, they made it a point of trying to censor the paper whenever they could. We had an entire print run confiscated and burned one month.
And of course, since the entire editorial staff at that point was a bunch of hopeless liberals, myself included, that made us mad. And we started pushing the line as much as we could, purposely offending the administration in such a way that they could
By the end of the year, we were on first-name terms with one of the lawyers at the SPLC.
Looking back at it, we had a lot of fun that year. It was stressful, and annoying, and very aggrivating, but it taught us a lot of important lessons -- namely, that until you stand up for your rights, those rights can be slowly bled away from you. It was a very valuable experience for me -- but in the ideal world, it wouldn't have been necessary.
And if anyone had tried to
> But they can sure as anything verify the blocks they've sent, and if they get
/negatives/ -- either malicious (someone doesn't want the project to succeed, and therefore returns all false blocks) or self-serving (someone wants to bump his/her score up more and in order to do so, returns blocks marked as processed that have not been touched).
> a report of a hit, they can verify it themselves using a reference
> implementation, or quietly submit it to someone else and see if they get the
> same results.
If I were the designers of the SETI@Home project, I wouldn't be worried about false positives; those are easily verified by running the data on their own machines -- which they do anyway, IIRC, upon finding something that a client marked 'interesting'. I would be worried about false
As much as I like the idea of open source, in a situation like this, I don't think it's advised.
pen wrote:
> Now, the question: Which do you think is more likely, Microsoft settling or appealing?
And in addition to that, which do you think would be more beneficial, both in the legal sense and for the consumer -- a settlement or an appeal?
If Microsoft decides to settle, to make the best of a bad situation and avoid dragging the case out, they would have more control over the punitive damages applied. However, if they think that they have a chance of the FoF being overturned (which relates to questions elsewhere in the thread as to the likeliness/legality of such), they might choose to gamble it all, and risk heavier damages in exchange for the chance of a clear victory.
Which do you think would be the better of the two?
> I left the Usenet for this reason, a while later I found slashdot. Now I'm happy.
Have you looked at all into Usenet II? It's an attempt to Do It Right this time.
> I really hate telephone spam because I sleep wierd hours and they wake me up.
Ugh, I remember dealing with that when I was working graveyard. There *is* a lot more of a precedent for getting rid of "telephone spam", or telemarketing (TM) calls, though. For instance:
1). Federal law prohibits TM calls made outside of a certain "window" (which I believe is 8AM to 9PM, but I am not certain). This doesn't much help those of us who work graveyard, but there *is* legislation.
2). Federal law has also mandated that each company that performs TM calls must maintain a "do not call" list of people who do not wish to be solicited. This can be done proactively -- ie, you do NOT need to wait for the company to call *you* before you ask to be placed on that list. I would recommend calling the various long distance companies, your insurance carrier, any insurance carrier you no longer use but had business with in the past, your credit card company, your bank, etc. and being placed on their DNC list ahead of time; then, when you receive a TM call, ask to be placed on their DNC list immediately and ask for written confirmation to be sent to you. Get names and specific times, write them down, and hold on to that written confirmation. If they call you again, the fine is paid directly to you. Easy money. ^_~
3). There are 10 states that have a state-wide opt-out list, and even more states with such legislation pending. Check in your state to see if you live in one of them, and then add your phone number (you do not need to supply an address or a name in most states; just the phone # will suffice).
For more information, see Putting an End to Telephone Solicitations. Personally, now that I'm off graveyard, I like playing with the telemarketers when I get them on the line. A bunch of my friends have written up a whole set of rules and points values for what we call the Telemarketer Game (5 points if the TM puts his/her supervisor on the line without you having to ask, 10 points if the TM hangs up on *you*, 1 point every time you can clearly force the TM to diverge from his/her script, etc, etc). It's time-consuming, but it's *fun*. And you can always ask to be placed on the DNC list after you're done.
> We spent several days hunting down any email address we could find
> for these assholes and sending them a threatening sounding
> letter our company lawyer had crafted for us.
It's been stated before, but I think it bears repeating:
Do *not* reply to people who spam you! That merely confirms to them that they have hit a "live" address -- ie, one that is read by a human. Instead, complain to the appropriate abuse@ or postmaster@ addresses, if the mail comes from a legitimate ISP, or the upstream provider, if it is an ISP that has proven to be unresponsive to spam complaints. Otherwise, you'll *never* get off the lists... and even when you do with that spammer, he'll sell your address to 10 others.
> Since neither the ISP's nor the gov't is likely to force DMA
> and its members to bear the true cost of their activities, perhaps
> the more technologically savvy among DMA's victim/recipients
> should do so (without violating any laws, of course).
I still like the idea that a friend of mine came up with (hi, Joe, if you're reading!)
Find out who the spammers are. Find out their addresses. Then get together a bunch of scary sysadmin types (and most of the sysadmin types I know are pretty scary). Dress up in all black. Wear leather. And dark sunglasses. And never, ever smile. Show up at the spammer's door -- preferably at home but if that's not possible, at their offices. Maintain a perfectly pleasant, professional demeanor, but drop some very, very not-so-subtle hints that you *really* don't like spam. Let them know why you don't like spam. Cite specific cases. Give then numbers on how much of YOUR time it wastes. DO NOT in any way, shape, or form do or say anything that could be construed as a threat in a court of law -- the objective is not to get *your* butt thrown in jail. Meanwhile, your scary sysadmin associates should just stand behind you and loom.
The point that you're trying to get across here is, basically, that Spam Gets You Visited By Scary People.
Imagine how much fun that would be. "Mr. Wallace, my associates and I would like a moment of your time to discuss something with you..."
> How many women out there use male names in
/lot/ more annoying solicitations when I switch to an obviously female nick. I hang out on MOOs a lot, and it's /amazing/ what some of these people will page you with when you're obviously a woman; on LambdaMOO, most of the women I know switch their gender to plural or neuter. It's sad that such deception is necessary, but that's been the case for as long as I've been into MOOs.
> public forums to avoid unwanted attention?
Personally, I tend to go for a gender-neutral logon, and I notice a
But thank you, Chip, for being a gentleman. ^_^
> He's right however. Good coverage, with exactly the right level of bias ;)
/. proactively reaching out and doing some pieces about the impact of the news that gets reported, rather than linking to work done by others. While there is nothing wrong with the latter, and it is certainly how /. got its reputation, that reputation has now brought /. to a place where it is an excellent repository for original content such as this.
"She", actually. ^_~ And I'm serious. It's nice to see
Thanks Robin, this is a great analysis for those of us who haven't been able to get to any of the mirrors yet -- this discussion promises to be valuable as hell. Top-notch journalism!
> They're more than capable of FUD'ing an economy without a
/threat/ of panic M$ could use to prevent some of the more drastic proposals.
> full-strength Microsoft to Congress.
This is part of what worries me about MSFT having just been included in the Dow. While yes, there were three other new companies included, and yes, there is a corrective factor, if MSFT takes a plunge, who knows what sort of panic it could incite -- or what sort of
Then again, I'd been considering shorting MSFT for a while, and would have if I'd had any spare cash. ^_~
> My question to you guys is, what punishments, if any, should be layed upon Microsoft?
I believe that Microsoft should be forced to open-source Windows, or at least the crucial parts like the APIs. Part of the allegations, as I'm sure you all know, include the fact that M$ is holding back on crucial information that prevents competitors from utilizing the advantages that Microsoft has itself in creating applications for the Windows platform.
The problem, I feel, is going to be that the government -- despite Judge Jackson's obvious grasp of matters technological -- is still in a non-technological mindframe. Remedies like the breakup of AT&T or Standard Oil will not suffice in a case such as this; breaking Microsoft into, say, an OS company, a server company, and a software company will do nothing to alleviate the more gross abuses of power that they've demonstrated in the past. (And it will just line BillG's pockets more.)
I'm not a rabid open-source supporter; I have no problem using closed-source products if they'll get the job done. But I think that in this case, Microsoft has demonstrated such abuses that open-source is just about the only way to level the playing field.
> I fully expect Microsoft's stock to take a serious dive sometime
> in the next year or two based on decreased earnings growth and
> declining margins, and some of these additional factors could certainly
> add to the downward momentum when the tide turns.
I'm not necessarily agreeing or disagreeing with you, but did anyone else notice the news that the Dow Jones average now includes Microsoft -- the first time a NASDAQ-traded stock has been included in that index -- along with Home Depot, Intel, and another company I don't rememeber at the moment? This makes me very nervous. The DJ is already hyper-inflated; adding two tech stocks is just going to make things worse.
> Does LZW expire anytime soon?
As I recall from the last time we saw this, it expires in 2003, which is why UniSys wants to crack down on things now -- to get the last drops of blood out of the stone.
> But anecdotal evidence is not useful- what's the stats: alta or google?
/off/.
> Or are they each better for different sorts of searches?
More anecdotal evidence, really, but I've found that Google is much better for "popular" subjects and pages, and Altavista is better for the more obscure ones. Google is my primary search engine -- I love the nice clean interface, and hope they never change it -- but if Google doesn't find anything, I go to Altavista -- with images
> Apparently the concept illustrator for Final Fantasy (?), and this features
> stuff from Final Fantasy Anthology?
Amano-sama had been the character designer and illustrator for the Final Fantasy series up through and including FF6 (FF3US). For Final Fantasy 7, he designed the city of Midgar (which was an excellent creepy postmodern metropolis) and I believe that his work on recently-released FF8 included the Gardens, a sort of academy for soldiers and mercenaries. Amano-sama has done artwork for other video game titles, including Kartia and SaGa Frontier (unfortunately, his artwork was the only redeeming quality in the latter), and is also a highly respected artist outside of the video game design field.
I would *love* to go see the exhibit running in NYC of his work, dammit! I've been a fan of Squaresoft and their Final Fantasy titles for ages.