Sure, I do this with web forms and the like, but come on, are you going to tell your mom that she should email you at mom@yourdomain.com? And that dad should mail you at dad@yourdomain.com? And that if Aunt Bea asks for your email address, they should tell her it's auntbea@yourdomain.com? That's unrealistic and if you tried to explain why you do it like this, your famaily is going to think you are nuts and/or be really insulted that you think they will give your address to some spammer.
Like it or not, your close friends and family have to have your correct address, and in my family's case they are clueless enough to a) include that address in the cc line of some dopey "pass it on" email that goes to a bunch of stupid lamers that don't trim the headers and then my email address goes all over AOL and onto the spammers' lists and b) they use all this dopey poll site where you have to enter the email address of your friends and family so they can go answer your poll about what your favorite flavor of ice cream is. Conveniently, the privacy policy of that site even says (if you read it closely) we can use the info you submit however we want, but does the family read or even care about the privacy policy? Noooooooooo, and when I point it out they call me paranoid. Yeah, that's right kids, there are people out there who have made this nifty little poll site just so you can have fun, it doesn't have anything to do with them selling ads or collecting email addresses... and Santa put all those nice presents under the tree last year.
There is NO way to protect your preferred email address, but thank TPTB for good filters. And if the occasional "This is funny" email from my sister in law ends up in the junk bin, unread... well, that's where it belongs anyway.
A few years back, I used to play a LOT of Realmz, available through Fantasoft, which is a role playing game with lots of plug in scenarios developed by the company and by independent game afficionados. It's not free, but it's not too pricey, and some of the scenarios were free if you were willing to be a Beta tester. You could get a good few hours out of the demos without paying anything.
Fantasoft used to be a Mac only developer, although they have ported to PCs now. They also have some other games with pretty extensive demos.
A friend of mine works for the US Patent and Trademark Office. They just found out that 1/3 of them are losing their jobs as of September 1. My friend doesn't know if he is getting the axe but is pretty nervous- heck, the #1 reason anyone works for the government is job security.
When guvmint lawyers are getting laid off in a Republican presidency, something is just not right.
More patents=more work for my friend and food for his children. So go, bureaucracy, go!!
Here's a better solution: Only open attachments that you are EXPECTING. If Accounting from the San Diego office sends you an earnings report every week, fine. But if someone sends you a screensaver from out of the blue saying "I expect you would like it," then guess what...it's a fucking virus!
But if you are a copywriter and someone sends you an email out of the blue with a Word attachment saying "Please send back comments by the end of the day."? You may work with a few different client companies marketing/PR firms and don't recognize the name. You can't tell if it's legit or not. You're not EXPECTING it but heck, you get 5-10 attachments per day that you don't expect and have to deal with as part of your job. If you had to call and leave a voice mail to check the validity (because no one evers answers the phone) of each attachment you'd never get your job done. And what if it's a virus that fakes the sender and it IS from someone you know? It's virus time, and please don't try to blame the user (or anyone except for the virus writer) in this situation.
2 ounces of commen sense, and, yes, as you mentioned, good, updated virus protection will solve a lot of the virus problems. But not all.
My point is only that it's impossible to make hard and fast "Don't open" rules when it comes to random emails and attachments. And it bugs the heck out of me when those types of rock solid edicts come out of the IT department with a "and if you open them even after we told you not to, it's all your fault, don't come crying to us!" closing. It just burns my butt and smacks of a cover-your-ass mentality. Life goes on- business goes on- and things happen. Mimimize the problems by working with the users and realizing what they have to do LEGITIMATELY with unsolicited emails and attachments to get their job done.
And string the rest of the dopey users who can't resist the screensaver, joke and bowling elves emails up on a wall as an example to all...
Sorry, but I'm tired of hearing this piece of crap "solution".
Anyone who works in an ourward-facing business capacity (read: not most IT people, but most everyone else at the company) generally receives email from people they don't know, and they don't have the luxury of simply trashing it. If you work in customer service, marketing, accounting, sales, you have to check out these emails and see if they are for real. Fine, not the ones that are obviously spam, but the spammers are getting smarter and disguising their spam as legitimate email. Just because the address is unfamiliar doesn't mean that it can be trashed.
Any IT person who thinks they can issue the "Don't open emails from people you don't know" edict and then just crawl back into their cubicle with a smug little CYA attitude is living in a fantasy world. Stop making such an unrealistic demand of your "lusers" (who, BTW generate the business needed to pay your paycheck, process the invoices needed to get you your latest gadgets and do all those things you hate so that you can stay happily employed.)
Instead; treat with them with either a) respect or b) a grade school mentality. In either case, please assume that they are really not sitting at their cubicles trying to think up the best way to make your life hell. Assume that they just want to do their job, and the computer is one of the tools they need to do it. Just as most of them don't know how to program their speed dial or change the copier's toner, they don't know or care about the inner workings of the computer. That's YOUR job. Make it fool proof if needed. Explain as necessary. Give them a reason to trust that you are not simply trying to make THEIR job more difficult. That distrust works both ways; if a "luser" thinks you are just making unrealistic demands that make them unble to do their job, they're going to ignore you and do what they need to do to get their job done, and you're left with cleanup duty when something goes wrong.
And above all, work with them. Understand what their needs are (do they receive unsolicited business mail? does it have attachments that they have to read? so what are they supposed to do?) and then help them understand the consequences that viruses can have and minimize their risk of catching and spreading one. Yeah, sure, that means actually pulling yourself away from Slashdot and Doom tournaments for a while, but that's the way it goes when the company pays you money to do your job.
Rosalinda, one of the callers to the NPR interview with Adam Cohen (and evidently one of eBay's better known critics), mentioned sellyouritem.com and ioffer.com as two of the "thousands" of eBay alternatives. I took a look at both and there is some activity going on, although nothing like eBay.
The way I see it, the problem with any competitors is that anyone who wants to use an alternate site out of principle is probably going to have to settle for a lower price because there is no site that gets the sheer volume of people that eBay gets. Less people=less bids, less bids=lower price.
Yeah, I just don't get it when people are so blindly devoted to the Star Wars franchise that they can't see the problems with it. And people who must resort to nasty name calling when they encounter people who disagree with them, well, I just don't understand those folks. If you've got a coherent position, state it and respect that some may agree, some may not. I'm a fan but as with any part of my life, I take an objective stance and
I went into the movie on Thursday intending to like it. Wanting to like it. And I'm sad (as I was after TPM) that I can't like it (although I can thankfully like parts of it, like the jedi battle and Yoda going all mofo.)
Ah well, as I said, I am totally looking forward to Episode III.
Episode II (as your oh so well worded defense above shows) was a movie that was directed solely towards the fanboy base.
Why is there no villain? Because "Palpatine is hatching a plan". Well, big whoop. That's essential to the overall arc of the saga but weakens the storyline of this one because there is no payoff in this movie. It's all positioning and conniving that ultimately fits into its place in the big puzzle but, as a standalone effort, makes this movie seems directionless.
Why does Anakin fall in love with and marry Padme? Because (as you say so coherently above) it's "VERY VERY importent to the entire saga....how else is Luke and Leia supose to be born?" Again, the love story is a plot point that makes the saga makes sense, but as a one off event, makes no sense whatsoever. Fine, Anakin still has a schoolboy crush on Padme, I'll buy that. But why the hell does she fall in love with him? Seriously, give me one good reason any mature, self respecting woman would be attracted to this dolt. He's a whiny, brooding child whose favorite phrase is "It's not fair." There is absolutely no chemistry between these two characters. I watched a bit of Empire Strikes Back this weekend- and THERE is some chemistry. Han and Leia are a joy to watch... none of that is evident in Anakin and Padme's relationship. It happens because it has to. The end. Again, it makes for a good saga but a lousy movie.
I think Episode III is going to kick ass simply because there is absolutely no way it can't. Every single detail of the plot has been set up, so no wasting time on trying to make it make sense. We know where it's going, so the suprise is not going to be what happens, but how it happens. If there is a shred of writing talent on Lucas's team, they can't screw it up.
Whether this is a multi-movie plot or not, a good writer could have made every individual episode stand alone as its own separate drama, and not leave its fanboys having to defend it (as you do) by saying "well of course it's no good by itself... it only makes sense as part of a multi-movie plot." Ok, yeah, whatever.
Well, I think that everyone who saw Episode 1 also saw Episode II. I think the price hike is factored in so that shouldn't affect comparing revenues.
I think it's the fact that Episode II was shown on regular and digital screens, so for that reason alone, people (well, fanboys) were more likely to see it twice. And although I don't agree, most people seem to think II was better than I, so thus were also more likely to see it twice.
I gotta disagree here. I get WAY more spam on my Yahoo account (5-10 per day) than I do on my Hotmail account, and I don't really use either for anything at all. I have throwaway addresses at my domain that I use for web regs, etc., so I'm not really giving out those addresses for much at all any more. So who knows where the spammers are getting my address from? I guess my address at Yahoo is a bit more guessable than my address at Hotmail, but not that much more so. I can only guess that Yahoo is selling my address, although I have always opted out where they let me.
When I was working at a place where I couldn't check my POP mail, I configured both my Hotmail and my Yahoo accounts to check POP mail. Yahoo consistently did a horrible job of it, always re-retrieving the same mails. I haven't used either for that finction in about a year or so, so don't know how bad/good they are now.
But now you can't check POP mail through Yahoo without paying extra. Screw that.
But you know, I don't spend a lot of time raging and complaining about any of it. It's free. You get what you pay for.
1st and 3rd for me as well, on an account I set up about 4 or 5 years ago, very rarely use and is currently not collecting any significant spam. (1-5 spam per week, compared to my Yahoo account, which I also don't really use, which must get about 5-10 per day.) It'll be interesting to see if my spam level increases.
I'd agree with that. I don't use my Hotmail account much (set it up so I could check POP mail while at work.) My address is kind of random, certainly not one you'd find by going through a dictionary search. I get maybe 1 or 2 pieces of spam per week, tops.
I contrast this to my main email account which is my name@my domain.com, and I get a ton of mail with cc:s to tons of other domains with my name before the @.
I think this must be the way spammers are going at it these days. Also we had a catchall account for whatever@ourdomainname.com, and we have been getting a lot of mails lately to randomshit@mail.ourdomainname.com. The spammers are either getting much smarter, or, worse, they've converted some real geeks who actually know what they are doing over to the dark side.
Thank TPTB for server side filters, which we plan to beef up this weekend.
Exactly. They know they'll lose staff and that is obviously a major part of the intent here.
I used to have a boss who prided himself on having very low unemployment insurance because he never had to fire anybody. What he would do was subtly make you so unhappy with your job that you would decide to quit rather than stay there and deal with the crap. It was never anything blatantly obvious, but you could tell when someone made his "phantom layoff" list because he would start to be a real asshole about stupid things like being there at 8:30 on the dot (no matter if you left work late every night) and taking too many personal calls.
Yeah, you've hit the nail on the head here, at least in the case of this company. The memo mentioned above is quite obviously trying to get people to quit without acutally having to lay them off and deal with severance pay, lawsuits and unemploymnent benefits:
Accordingly, we are requiring each employee at or above a certain level ($60,000 annual salary) within the Company to take an immediate 3.85% reduction in your annual salary. This reduction will be reflected in the compensation paid to you on the May 31, 2002 and the June 14, 2002 paydays. If your position falls within the affected levels, we are informing you with this communication that your gross bi-weekly salary to be paid to you on the regular May 31, 2002 and June 14, 2002 paydays, will be reduced by 50%.
Continuing in your employment on or after May 20, 2002, will be deemed acceptance of the above-described pay reduction terms. In the event you do not wish to accept the reduction, you must advise the Human Resources Department immediately. The Company will then take the appropriate action, which may include the elimination of your position or the termination of your employment."
Which reads, pretty much "we are screwing you out of your pay. If you don't like it, then leave."
Now, if their goal was to keep employees despite this unfortunate needs for pay cuts, the second half of the memo would read something like this:
"We sincerely regret the need to have to take this action. As you are well aware, our company is going through a very difficult time financially. We are initiating this action in order to spread the financial burden out across our employees rather than take the more drastic measure of having to eliminate some positions altogether.
Our goal in this action is to increase the profitability of the company and maintain employment for each and every one of our employees. It's going to be a difficult road, but we are confident that with the support of all members of our team, we can get through this difficult time. Once we are in a better financial position, we plan to return everyone's salary to the previous level. Again, thank you for your understanding and support."
This says "we're screwing you out of your pay but we'd really rather not. We know it's a crummy thing to do but it's better than the alternative, and we hope to be able to make it up to you someday."
If I worked here, even if I wasn't being affected by the pay cut, I'd be outraged by the very thinly veiled message being given, namely that they don't care about their employees at all. it would serve them right if they lost most of their employees and then couldn't recruit new ones because people were so outraged at the way people were treated.
Hm, OK, next company on my list of places I would never want to work is now Divine.
How many of the theaters at Framingham are equipped with the digital projection equipment? The AMC site doesn't mention anything about the premium theaters having the digital equipment in particular.
I imagine the reason that there aren't many theaters equipped is because it's pricey.
So if Framingham only has one theater with the equipment, I'd wonder if they'd keep it for the premium one, meaning that the non-pricey ticket folks (and young under 21 whippersnappers) are relegated to seeing it in the same old boring format.
Hmmm, part of me wants to cry out against elitism but the other part of me is strangely drawn to the martinis, wide seats and concierge.
What does it say about our society today that the Sims games are so popular? Video games were always a pretty antisocial pursuit, but at least we didn't fool ourselves into thinking they weren't. The Sims becomes a replacement for living our own lives, and we don't even mind it.
It's amazing how the Sims can suck people into this alternate reality where the game play consists of managing characters who, for the most part, are just living their lives. And all of a sudden you look up and it's six hours later, and you haven't taken out your own trash, or called one of your friends, or worked out, and are eating cold leftover pizza. And instead of being bothered by the irony of that, you tell yourself, "just a few minutes more, I almost have these two characters ready to get married."
It's way creepy. And even creepier that I'm thinking "gee, it's been a while since I fired the game up, I think maybe I'll go see where I left off." And I should be going to the gym, cleaning the house, making dinner or spending more time trying to find a job!
I'm not saying that Netflix is selling my email address to spammers. (but i wouldn't put it past them)
I can attest that Netflix doesn't sell addresses- well, at least they haven't sold mine. We've been members for about 2 years, using an address netflix@ourdomain.com and I have never received any spam at that address, only netflix mail.
And I am also a very satisfied customer, and every one of my friends that I've recommended Netflix to loves it as well. I hope they stay in business for years to come. But it does sound like they need to make some changes to their marketing practices.
Even worse is when the spam masquerades as a job lead with a subject like "So-and-so, I found your resume".
Yeah, I open it. And it makes me feel cheap and used. It's just cruel. They are usually trying to sell me a resume blast, or listing or whatever. Why on earth would they think I want to do business with a company that led me on like that?!
"Techie" is not the only form of skill set
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The Laid-off Techie
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· Score: 2, Interesting
They are all just fairly unskilled jobs that happen to be in a technical company.
Sigh. I know it's very popular here on Slashdot to denigrate any career that doesn't involve all-night coding sessions propped up only by acid rock and Mountain Dew, but just because you don't have the skills to get an MBA, write a marketing plan, generate publicity for a product, write a script, or plan and maange a timeline for a new product release doesn't mean that the folks doing those jobs are unskilled.
Yes, I am (well, was, until recent layoffs) in marketing. I chose to develop my communication skills rather than my programming skills when I went to college (despite getting a 5 on the AP Pascal exam, and having received high marks in my high school career programming in BASIC and FORTRAN.) I have worked with a lot of IT people who didn't know their ass from their elbow, so just having the job doesn't mean you are skilled.
Just like those ineffectual IT people, sure, I have worked with incompetent marketing people. But please stop assuming that just because someone isn't coding in their job that they are unskilled. I dare you to write a halfway decent press release, or brochure, or anything else that makes your market want to pay money to your company to buy the wonderful software that you just coded. It's not as easy as it looks. And the company won't be successful if either one of us isn't doing our job well.
All the fluff in the world can't create and sustain a market for a piece of crap product, and the best product in the world won't find its way to the masses without some sales and marketing efforts. Try to respect my work, as I respect yours.
Re:get your terms correct
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CPU Wars
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· Score: 1
Whoops-- I meant that no one ever uses MICROMETER.
I knew I should have previewed...
Re:get your terms correct
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CPU Wars
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· Score: 1
Except that no one that I know ever uses micron. The only time that I ever had a problem with the micron/micrometer bit is when I wrote a scientific paper that had to be reviewed by NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology).
Now, Angstrom is definitely on its way out... unless it isn't.
The Space Child' s Mother Goose- $16
on
Geek Gift Ideas 2001
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Slashdot Mirror
Thats too bad, because Just Born [marshmallowpeeps.com], the makers of Marshmallow Peeps have a great web page.
Not as great as the fine folks at Peepresearch.org. Science and marshmallow animals- a winning combination!
BlueDVD.com is good. Or, er, at least that's what I hear.
Sure, I do this with web forms and the like, but come on, are you going to tell your mom that she should email you at mom@yourdomain.com? And that dad should mail you at dad@yourdomain.com? And that if Aunt Bea asks for your email address, they should tell her it's auntbea@yourdomain.com? That's unrealistic and if you tried to explain why you do it like this, your famaily is going to think you are nuts and/or be really insulted that you think they will give your address to some spammer.
Like it or not, your close friends and family have to have your correct address, and in my family's case they are clueless enough to a) include that address in the cc line of some dopey "pass it on" email that goes to a bunch of stupid lamers that don't trim the headers and then my email address goes all over AOL and onto the spammers' lists and b) they use all this dopey poll site where you have to enter the email address of your friends and family so they can go answer your poll about what your favorite flavor of ice cream is. Conveniently, the privacy policy of that site even says (if you read it closely) we can use the info you submit however we want, but does the family read or even care about the privacy policy? Noooooooooo, and when I point it out they call me paranoid. Yeah, that's right kids, there are people out there who have made this nifty little poll site just so you can have fun, it doesn't have anything to do with them selling ads or collecting email addresses... and Santa put all those nice presents under the tree last year.
There is NO way to protect your preferred email address, but thank TPTB for good filters. And if the occasional "This is funny" email from my sister in law ends up in the junk bin, unread... well, that's where it belongs anyway.
A few years back, I used to play a LOT of Realmz, available through Fantasoft, which is a role playing game with lots of plug in scenarios developed by the company and by independent game afficionados. It's not free, but it's not too pricey, and some of the scenarios were free if you were willing to be a Beta tester. You could get a good few hours out of the demos without paying anything.
Fantasoft used to be a Mac only developer, although they have ported to PCs now. They also have some other games with pretty extensive demos.
A friend of mine works for the US Patent and Trademark Office. They just found out that 1/3 of them are losing their jobs as of September 1. My friend doesn't know if he is getting the axe but is pretty nervous- heck, the #1 reason anyone works for the government is job security.
When guvmint lawyers are getting laid off in a Republican presidency, something is just not right.
More patents=more work for my friend and food for his children. So go, bureaucracy, go!!
Here's a better solution: Only open attachments that you are EXPECTING. If Accounting from the San Diego office sends you an earnings report every week, fine. But if someone sends you a screensaver from out of the blue saying "I expect you would like it," then guess what...it's a fucking virus!
But if you are a copywriter and someone sends you an email out of the blue with a Word attachment saying "Please send back comments by the end of the day."? You may work with a few different client companies marketing/PR firms and don't recognize the name. You can't tell if it's legit or not. You're not EXPECTING it but heck, you get 5-10 attachments per day that you don't expect and have to deal with as part of your job. If you had to call and leave a voice mail to check the validity (because no one evers answers the phone) of each attachment you'd never get your job done. And what if it's a virus that fakes the sender and it IS from someone you know? It's virus time, and please don't try to blame the user (or anyone except for the virus writer) in this situation.
2 ounces of commen sense, and, yes, as you mentioned, good, updated virus protection will solve a lot of the virus problems. But not all.
My point is only that it's impossible to make hard and fast "Don't open" rules when it comes to random emails and attachments. And it bugs the heck out of me when those types of rock solid edicts come out of the IT department with a "and if you open them even after we told you not to, it's all your fault, don't come crying to us!" closing. It just burns my butt and smacks of a cover-your-ass mentality. Life goes on- business goes on- and things happen. Mimimize the problems by working with the users and realizing what they have to do LEGITIMATELY with unsolicited emails and attachments to get their job done.
And string the rest of the dopey users who can't resist the screensaver, joke and bowling elves emails up on a wall as an example to all...
Sorry, but I'm tired of hearing this piece of crap "solution".
Anyone who works in an ourward-facing business capacity (read: not most IT people, but most everyone else at the company) generally receives email from people they don't know, and they don't have the luxury of simply trashing it. If you work in customer service, marketing, accounting, sales, you have to check out these emails and see if they are for real. Fine, not the ones that are obviously spam, but the spammers are getting smarter and disguising their spam as legitimate email. Just because the address is unfamiliar doesn't mean that it can be trashed.
Any IT person who thinks they can issue the "Don't open emails from people you don't know" edict and then just crawl back into their cubicle with a smug little CYA attitude is living in a fantasy world. Stop making such an unrealistic demand of your "lusers" (who, BTW generate the business needed to pay your paycheck, process the invoices needed to get you your latest gadgets and do all those things you hate so that you can stay happily employed.)
Instead; treat with them with either a) respect or b) a grade school mentality. In either case, please assume that they are really not sitting at their cubicles trying to think up the best way to make your life hell. Assume that they just want to do their job, and the computer is one of the tools they need to do it. Just as most of them don't know how to program their speed dial or change the copier's toner, they don't know or care about the inner workings of the computer. That's YOUR job. Make it fool proof if needed. Explain as necessary. Give them a reason to trust that you are not simply trying to make THEIR job more difficult. That distrust works both ways; if a "luser" thinks you are just making unrealistic demands that make them unble to do their job, they're going to ignore you and do what they need to do to get their job done, and you're left with cleanup duty when something goes wrong.
And above all, work with them. Understand what their needs are (do they receive unsolicited business mail? does it have attachments that they have to read? so what are they supposed to do?) and then help them understand the consequences that viruses can have and minimize their risk of catching and spreading one. Yeah, sure, that means actually pulling yourself away from Slashdot and Doom tournaments for a while, but that's the way it goes when the company pays you money to do your job.
Rosalinda, one of the callers to the NPR interview with Adam Cohen (and evidently one of eBay's better known critics), mentioned sellyouritem.com and ioffer.com as two of the "thousands" of eBay alternatives. I took a look at both and there is some activity going on, although nothing like eBay.
The way I see it, the problem with any competitors is that anyone who wants to use an alternate site out of principle is probably going to have to settle for a lower price because there is no site that gets the sheer volume of people that eBay gets. Less people=less bids, less bids=lower price.
Yeah, I just don't get it when people are so blindly devoted to the Star Wars franchise that they can't see the problems with it. And people who must resort to nasty name calling when they encounter people who disagree with them, well, I just don't understand those folks. If you've got a coherent position, state it and respect that some may agree, some may not. I'm a fan but as with any part of my life, I take an objective stance and
I went into the movie on Thursday intending to like it. Wanting to like it. And I'm sad (as I was after TPM) that I can't like it (although I can thankfully like parts of it, like the jedi battle and Yoda going all mofo.)
Ah well, as I said, I am totally looking forward to Episode III.
Episode II (as your oh so well worded defense above shows) was a movie that was directed solely towards the fanboy base.
Why is there no villain? Because "Palpatine is hatching a plan". Well, big whoop. That's essential to the overall arc of the saga but weakens the storyline of this one because there is no payoff in this movie. It's all positioning and conniving that ultimately fits into its place in the big puzzle but, as a standalone effort, makes this movie seems directionless.
Why does Anakin fall in love with and marry Padme? Because (as you say so coherently above) it's "VERY VERY importent to the entire saga....how else is Luke and Leia supose to be born?" Again, the love story is a plot point that makes the saga makes sense, but as a one off event, makes no sense whatsoever. Fine, Anakin still has a schoolboy crush on Padme, I'll buy that. But why the hell does she fall in love with him? Seriously, give me one good reason any mature, self respecting woman would be attracted to this dolt. He's a whiny, brooding child whose favorite phrase is "It's not fair." There is absolutely no chemistry between these two characters. I watched a bit of Empire Strikes Back this weekend- and THERE is some chemistry. Han and Leia are a joy to watch... none of that is evident in Anakin and Padme's relationship. It happens because it has to. The end. Again, it makes for a good saga but a lousy movie.
I think Episode III is going to kick ass simply because there is absolutely no way it can't. Every single detail of the plot has been set up, so no wasting time on trying to make it make sense. We know where it's going, so the suprise is not going to be what happens, but how it happens. If there is a shred of writing talent on Lucas's team, they can't screw it up.
Whether this is a multi-movie plot or not, a good writer could have made every individual episode stand alone as its own separate drama, and not leave its fanboys having to defend it (as you do) by saying "well of course it's no good by itself... it only makes sense as part of a multi-movie plot." Ok, yeah, whatever.
Well, I think that everyone who saw Episode 1 also saw Episode II. I think the price hike is factored in so that shouldn't affect comparing revenues.
I think it's the fact that Episode II was shown on regular and digital screens, so for that reason alone, people (well, fanboys) were more likely to see it twice. And although I don't agree, most people seem to think II was better than I, so thus were also more likely to see it twice.
I gotta disagree here. I get WAY more spam on my Yahoo account (5-10 per day) than I do on my Hotmail account, and I don't really use either for anything at all. I have throwaway addresses at my domain that I use for web regs, etc., so I'm not really giving out those addresses for much at all any more. So who knows where the spammers are getting my address from? I guess my address at Yahoo is a bit more guessable than my address at Hotmail, but not that much more so. I can only guess that Yahoo is selling my address, although I have always opted out where they let me.
When I was working at a place where I couldn't check my POP mail, I configured both my Hotmail and my Yahoo accounts to check POP mail. Yahoo consistently did a horrible job of it, always re-retrieving the same mails. I haven't used either for that finction in about a year or so, so don't know how bad/good they are now.
But now you can't check POP mail through Yahoo without paying extra. Screw that.
But you know, I don't spend a lot of time raging and complaining about any of it. It's free. You get what you pay for.
1st and 3rd for me as well, on an account I set up about 4 or 5 years ago, very rarely use and is currently not collecting any significant spam. (1-5 spam per week, compared to my Yahoo account, which I also don't really use, which must get about 5-10 per day.) It'll be interesting to see if my spam level increases.
I'd agree with that. I don't use my Hotmail account much (set it up so I could check POP mail while at work.) My address is kind of random, certainly not one you'd find by going through a dictionary search. I get maybe 1 or 2 pieces of spam per week, tops.
I contrast this to my main email account which is my name@my domain.com, and I get a ton of mail with cc:s to tons of other domains with my name before the @.
I think this must be the way spammers are going at it these days. Also we had a catchall account for whatever@ourdomainname.com, and we have been getting a lot of mails lately to randomshit@mail.ourdomainname.com. The spammers are either getting much smarter, or, worse, they've converted some real geeks who actually know what they are doing over to the dark side.
Thank TPTB for server side filters, which we plan to beef up this weekend.
Exactly. They know they'll lose staff and that is obviously a major part of the intent here.
I used to have a boss who prided himself on having very low unemployment insurance because he never had to fire anybody. What he would do was subtly make you so unhappy with your job that you would decide to quit rather than stay there and deal with the crap. It was never anything blatantly obvious, but you could tell when someone made his "phantom layoff" list because he would start to be a real asshole about stupid things like being there at 8:30 on the dot (no matter if you left work late every night) and taking too many personal calls.
Yeah, you've hit the nail on the head here, at least in the case of this company. The memo mentioned above is quite obviously trying to get people to quit without acutally having to lay them off and deal with severance pay, lawsuits and unemploymnent benefits:
Accordingly, we are requiring each employee at or above a certain level ($60,000 annual salary) within the Company to take an immediate 3.85% reduction in your annual salary. This reduction will be reflected in the compensation paid to you on the May 31, 2002 and the June 14, 2002 paydays.
If your position falls within the affected levels, we are informing you with this communication that your gross bi-weekly salary to be paid to you on the regular May 31, 2002 and June 14, 2002 paydays, will be reduced by 50%.
Continuing in your employment on or after May 20, 2002, will be deemed acceptance of the above-described pay reduction terms. In the event you do not wish to accept the reduction, you must advise the Human Resources Department immediately. The Company will then take the appropriate action, which may include the elimination of your position or the termination of your employment."
Which reads, pretty much "we are screwing you out of your pay. If you don't like it, then leave."
Now, if their goal was to keep employees despite this unfortunate needs for pay cuts, the second half of the memo would read something like this:
"We sincerely regret the need to have to take this action. As you are well aware, our company is going through a very difficult time financially. We are initiating this action in order to spread the financial burden out across our employees rather than take the more drastic measure of having to eliminate some positions altogether.
Our goal in this action is to increase the profitability of the company and maintain employment for each and every one of our employees. It's going to be a difficult road, but we are confident that with the support of all members of our team, we can get through this difficult time. Once we are in a better financial position, we plan to return everyone's salary to the previous level. Again, thank you for your understanding and support."
This says "we're screwing you out of your pay but we'd really rather not. We know it's a crummy thing to do but it's better than the alternative, and we hope to be able to make it up to you someday."
If I worked here, even if I wasn't being affected by the pay cut, I'd be outraged by the very thinly veiled message being given, namely that they don't care about their employees at all. it would serve them right if they lost most of their employees and then couldn't recruit new ones because people were so outraged at the way people were treated.
Hm, OK, next company on my list of places I would never want to work is now Divine.
How many of the theaters at Framingham are equipped with the digital projection equipment? The AMC site doesn't mention anything about the premium theaters having the digital equipment in particular.
I imagine the reason that there aren't many theaters equipped is because it's pricey.
So if Framingham only has one theater with the equipment, I'd wonder if they'd keep it for the premium one, meaning that the non-pricey ticket folks (and young under 21 whippersnappers) are relegated to seeing it in the same old boring format.
Hmmm, part of me wants to cry out against elitism but the other part of me is strangely drawn to the martinis, wide seats and concierge.
The letters from the Church of Scientology are on chillingeffects.org
What a bunch of goobers...
What does it say about our society today that the Sims games are so popular? Video games were always a pretty antisocial pursuit, but at least we didn't fool ourselves into thinking they weren't. The Sims becomes a replacement for living our own lives, and we don't even mind it.
It's amazing how the Sims can suck people into this alternate reality where the game play consists of managing characters who, for the most part, are just living their lives. And all of a sudden you look up and it's six hours later, and you haven't taken out your own trash, or called one of your friends, or worked out, and are eating cold leftover pizza. And instead of being bothered by the irony of that, you tell yourself, "just a few minutes more, I almost have these two characters ready to get married."
It's way creepy. And even creepier that I'm thinking "gee, it's been a while since I fired the game up, I think maybe I'll go see where I left off." And I should be going to the gym, cleaning the house, making dinner or spending more time trying to find a job!
I'm not saying that Netflix is selling my email address to spammers. (but i wouldn't put it past them)
I can attest that Netflix doesn't sell addresses- well, at least they haven't sold mine. We've been members for about 2 years, using an address netflix@ourdomain.com and I have never received any spam at that address, only netflix mail.
And I am also a very satisfied customer, and every one of my friends that I've recommended Netflix to loves it as well. I hope they stay in business for years to come. But it does sound like they need to make some changes to their marketing practices.
Even worse is when the spam masquerades as a job lead with a subject like "So-and-so, I found your resume".
Yeah, I open it. And it makes me feel cheap and used. It's just cruel. They are usually trying to sell me a resume blast, or listing or whatever. Why on earth would they think I want to do business with a company that led me on like that?!
They are all just fairly unskilled jobs that happen to be in a technical company.
Sigh. I know it's very popular here on Slashdot to denigrate any career that doesn't involve all-night coding sessions propped up only by acid rock and Mountain Dew, but just because you don't have the skills to get an MBA, write a marketing plan, generate publicity for a product, write a script, or plan and maange a timeline for a new product release doesn't mean that the folks doing those jobs are unskilled.
Yes, I am (well, was, until recent layoffs) in marketing. I chose to develop my communication skills rather than my programming skills when I went to college (despite getting a 5 on the AP Pascal exam, and having received high marks in my high school career programming in BASIC and FORTRAN.) I have worked with a lot of IT people who didn't know their ass from their elbow, so just having the job doesn't mean you are skilled.
Just like those ineffectual IT people, sure, I have worked with incompetent marketing people. But please stop assuming that just because someone isn't coding in their job that they are unskilled. I dare you to write a halfway decent press release, or brochure, or anything else that makes your market want to pay money to your company to buy the wonderful software that you just coded. It's not as easy as it looks. And the company won't be successful if either one of us isn't doing our job well.
All the fluff in the world can't create and sustain a market for a piece of crap product, and the best product in the world won't find its way to the masses without some sales and marketing efforts. Try to respect my work, as I respect yours.
Whoops-- I meant that no one ever uses MICROMETER.
I knew I should have previewed...
Except that no one that I know ever uses micron. The only time that I ever had a problem with the micron/micrometer bit is when I wrote a scientific paper that had to be reviewed by NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology).
Now, Angstrom is definitely on its way out... unless it isn't.
Basically, nursery rhymes for geeks. With math and science and all that.
It's on my husband's list and he's an ubergeek so it must be good.