The most valuable information the GP gave you was that you are annoying by association before you even get to the meat of the matter (poll, not pitch). That is not a personal attack on you, it is simply a statement of fact. That fact alone should get you thinking about re-evaluating the efficacy of your methodology.
If you strongly believe that volunteering and data-gathering are important political ventures, then perhaps you should consider a different data-gathering method if association or perception are important to you. If they are not important to you then you understand that rude hang-ups are just a form of speech and don't take it personally. Behaving otherwise just means you are wearing blinders to the reality of the situation and/or do not have the thickness of skin needed for your job. It happens.
Um, I identify myself after I've confirmed that the person I meant to call is who I have on the line.
Polite. Courteous. Nice. And a telemarketing tactic. The longer a person is kept on the phone, the more "indebted" they feel to stay on the phone. It can be an evil use of give and take. I'm not saying you are evil. I am saying you're methodolgy has long legs in another industry that is virtually indistinguishable from yours. Know how you appear.
I asked a simple question: can you use MY tactic of identifying yourself first and still have success? My method is EVEN MORE POLITE. What prevents you from either trying it, or even intellectually assessing it here in this forum?
ALL PHONE CALLS ARE INTERRUPTIONS.
How very true. Now keep going with it. The interuption is generally allowed for friends, family, established business relationships, etc. Of course I can choose to not answer during dinner. Or at all. BUT IF I DO choose to answer, then you, the political caller, do not know WHY I chose to answer. Maybe I'm expecting a call about that ad I placed in the paper to give away free kittens. If I hang up on you, then you can be reasonably assured that my reason for answering the phone was NOT to talk to YOU. You can also be fairly sure that your kind of call is the LEAST welcome form of interruption based solely on how I handled your call.
You also don't know WHY I put my number on the register in the first place. Maybe it was because I thought I had to, to vote. Maybe I was just filling out the form like a diligent American without understanding the repercussions of my actions. Now I'm annoyed that it is there. Maybe I even LIKE political surveys... just not right now because my wife and I just had a fight and I thought you were her calling back to make up.
Eventually you will grow tired of being hung up on. Your spirit may call into question your methods. Perhaps you will find a more fulfilling way to be a part of the process and your spirit will be happier that you no longer have to use nefarious methods (as bespoken to you in a very democratic manner by all those who hung up on you).
Just because you CAN use the phone to interrupt, doesn't mean you SHOULD. Answer that question for yourself, and for those you are calling. If you don't agree, then revel in the diversity and let democracy reign.
(note: I said this deeper in the thread, but it seemed better placed right here)
she'd hung up on me. Who's the asshole, here?
Does your strong political activism, volunteerism, and involvement extend to protecting my right to hang up on you rudely and decide to whom I speak and how? Why not?
I don't want to talk to people who don't want to be talked to.
You keep using those words. I do not think it means what you think it means.
It's a long-established right to be able to contact people.
Prove it. I'll throw privacy backatcha.
Your argument strays from "please be polite to me, I'm only a volunteer," to "I have a right." Politeness cannot be demanded, it can only be requested though usually it is earned (hint: you didn't earn it simply by dialing my number). A right is something else entirely. You have yet to establish your right to make me listen to you AT ALL.
Your situation is voluntary (and within your rights). My handling of your call is voluntary (and within my rights). You made a choice of questionable politeness (here's where you'll try to counter proving again that you don't get the core point). I respond in kind. You had speech you wanted heard based on your powerful political convictions. I responded with speech (or not) as is my right and I definitely wanted you to receive MY message in whatever form I delivered it. We have communicated. Mine was probably more direct and effective than yours. You may have just pushed the "call again" button out of spite meaning you UNDERSTOOD the message and chose a hostile action rather than retaining your honor and doing the right thing and removing me from your list. Or maybe you DID do the right thing. Thank you!
If you want the voice of the people to satisfy your polling data, but you're getting hung up on a lot, then you probably aren't hearing the voice of the people saying what they REALLY want you to hear. How typically political.
Does your strong political activism, volunteerism, and involvement extend to protecting my right to hang up on you rudely and decide to whom I speak and how? Why not?
don't want to talk with people who don't want to be talked to (x3)
And yet here you are engaging in a conversation with someone who doesn't want to talk to you. Noting the problem, yet?
You can rattle on about what law means what to whom. Fact: You have NO RIGHT to make me listen to you. How I choose not to listen is my business. Suck it up.
So you volunteer. Pat yourself on the back. Now consider the impact of your volunteerism. Do you annoy people on the phone to gather data for your candidate affiliation? Or do you set up an information table near the courthouse and gather data from volunteers (ones not bothered in their homes) in a less intrusive manner? You made a choice. You chose the one that annoyed people so much, a law was passed to give them Opt-In access to a system to reduce annoyances. I know, I know. You'll point out the political exception to that. Pointing out that exception repeatedly just proves you are not interested in the spirit of the law. People don't like to be called randomly. Amazing, really, that you tout the DNC legislation as your modus operandi when most people would, if the law allowed, opt out of getting calls from people like you. Poll on that. Or not. Simply use your hang up/rude comment data to make a shiny graph.
Interesting that you use a standard marketing tactic of not identifying yourself until the 2nd exchange. You could have said:
Hi, this is Marcus with the blah blah. May I please speak with Carl?
You KNOW why you don't do that. You would be hung up on much sooner and more frequently.
Plus, the simple arrogance of expecting courtesy when YOU interrupted ME. Astounding. My hanging up, or swearing at you, is my replying to your uninvited interruption with the same level of care you used when interrupting me.
You pulled my number out of a list or a system. You know nothing about me except how I registered. You don't know if you are interrupting my dinner and you have no family or friendship context to feel remorse if you are. You can actually DO nothing for me. You cannot make my life any easier. You are offering me nothing in exchange for my time except for the joy of being a faceless data point (I'll use my data point when it counts... by voting). I knew all of this about you by the 3rd syllable in the word Democratic.
A friend or family member has earned the right to interrupt me. You have not. Take your lumps.
America and American democracy was founded on the notion that people should be engaged in their government.
Careful. You're confusing "engaged in their governemnt" with "engaged in their political party." You are calling based on a single party or candidate affiliation. Perhaps I am already well-versed in your candidate because I am quite "engaged" and that is why I am hostile to your "affiliation" using me as a statistic to further his or her own cause.
Similarly they have a right to not answer their phone...
Differentiate for me, if you will, the right to not answer my phone vs the right to hang up my phone because I don't wish to speak to you and/or speak into it anyway I like.
We can do audio through the phone, but good video is a problem.
BONUS QUESTION: I have a nice firewire capable digital video camera with a good lens or two (and nice audio, too). I would love to use THAT as the video source for the video client instead of a webcam. The video camera is just so much easier to use (PTZ (pan, tilt, zoom), etc.) and has good macro. The problem is finding a way to get that nice high res firewire video feed INTO a video-conference. Any thoughts?
My point was to illustrate that no matter which direction the advertiser is peering at the puzzle, from the "cost" side or from the "value" side, it is the advertiser relying on someone else's valuation.
Your competitor causes you to pay more by engaging in click fraud = you don't really know what your ad was worth using that metric.
Nielsen numbers are used to charge you, but you don't really know how many people took a whiz while watching your commercial = you don't know what your ad was worth using that metric.
Since you don't know in both cases, you make a further value judgement and decide to pay or play later.
With Nielsen, you are banking on hope and a reasonable percentage because you can't really know how many eyeballs consumed your ad. Nielsen will tell you that UP TO 4 million may have, and give you guidelines about how many probably did. You say "Okay, I guess."
With click-through you don't want hope. You want the computer to tell you when the views were real or fraudulent. Again, you don't know how many eyeballs actually consumed your ad, and the click-through counter can tell you that UP TO 4 million may have, but you want the probability guidelines to be more exacting. Why the difference?
Click-fraud sure sounds like it might be addressable, but is it really any different than relying on any other advertising medium? If a TV station tells you they reach 4 million homes, but they only hit 3.89 million, are they engaging in fraud?
If a big car company buys an ad during the prime-time news, they pay for a "value" based on some calculations and some voodoo (little Nielsen's Ratings dolls are boku powerful!). A competitor buys an ad in the spot right after. They pay for a certain voodoo value based on "getting the last word." The 1st ad's value is diminished.... but they already paid.
Unmeasurable clicks (some are fraud based on a witty competitor) are voodoo, too. A "click" measurer contains no more real value than a Nielsen rating (perceived value is something else entirely). Is it fruad if you went to the bathroom during the ad? No, but the ad was paid for based on some wacky theoretical eyeball math. Both types of ratings have a theoretical max number of eyeballs that don't reflect the real total.
You pay to play, and judge how you'll pay or play next time on your perceived value of the success of the gamble.
Your date's a little early. A few years later he DID change the way words were spelled with one of the reasons being he wanted an American dictionary - more precisely, differentiation from England for no other reason than nationalism.
Since when is it the patent holder's responsibility to warn others that they are infringing on their patents?
Um, all the time?
You need to actively defend your patents. No one more than you can tell if someone is infringing. Do you expect the overburdened patent office to review every new competing product for you -- you know, all those ones that AREN'T trying to compete on patents (they've filed for ZERO) but instead are beating you up on price using your patented methodology? Do I sound bitter from experience? Hmm...
The first thing you do is notify them, usually through a lawyer. That is you and not the gub'mint doing the notifying. When they are non-responsive you up the ante legally. It is still you pushing the issue. Remember, a lawyer is your agent and their job is to THREATEN legal action initially. Lawyers don't actually enforce, you know. That's cops (or feds) and they need a pointy stick (big ticket obvious infringement in the million$) before they'll move on your behalf. Do I sound bitter from experience? Hmm...
If you never noticed the infringement happening... well, there is no USPTO infringement fairy that will bless you with +5 protections, send out the federal Mafia to "collect," and present you with a fat check all Ed-McMahon-ny. It's all you. You are the driving force. You decide how much you want to spend defending the patent, or you walk away and lose it. Walk away ONCE and you can never really go after anyone else for that patent ever again.
Is this the ultimate correct legal path? I don't know. Is it the way things usually work? Yup. It is cheaper and faster to negotiate outside of a real legal battle. Why go expensive and nuclear if you can get licensing first? The whole point of the patent is to make money off it, and not lose all your ability to do business by defending it, after all.
Totally dated myself right there! What was I thinking! I couldn't even reference a console or PC game, oh no! I had to use an ARCADE game that didn't even have joysticks! And then reference a movie that qualifies for Antique license plates!
(sigh)
Why can't/.'s lameness filter catch REAL lameness?
I read this article and all I could think about was trying to play Track & Field -- forehead sweating, eyeballs and veins popping, face turning red all from mentally trying to whack those two buttons as fast as you can... then your head does the whole Scanners thing.
I might check if I still have access and then tell them to revoke it. Then if something happens, I'm not a "disgruntled ex-employee with root access"
Bad idea. Really bad.
A company that has the "buh-bye" SOP (and from the posts thus far, it seems like 70% do, 30% don't), they have it is a risk/liability mitigating factor. Don't get yourself a little star on the risk/liability chart.
If you attempt access again EVER (and tell them about it!) and something happens to their systems EVER they simply MUST include your name as someone who was a risk. You made yourself one by attempting unauthorized access when you knew you weren't supposed to. Admitting to it, even with the motivation to help them remain secure, might seem like the ethical thing to do, but then again terrorists fess up to claim responsibility, too. Just... don't do it.
You attempt access and the passwords were changed? Logged as an unauthorized access attempt. You get in 'cause the new guy's an idjit? Logged as a successful unauthorized remote access. The logs don't record motive. Your phone call isn't conclusive proof of motive.
That 2 week window is mucho dangerouso. When is something most likely to go terribly wrong? When a change occurs. When is a change nearly guaranteed to occur? When the new guy implements a few of his favorite things or isn't up to speed. It is dead simple for him to blame you if you were flexing remote access muscle. He's the new guy, after all, and he doesn't want to be canned during week two.
As everyone else has said so far, do your "walking away" weeks before you actually go. When you are gone, be GONE. Obviously take polite consulting calls and stuff, but try REALLY hard to do what needs to be done without actually connecting to their systems -- heck, except for email I would consider anything with a keyboard a bad idea. Talk the new guy through it on the phone. Hey, you're now a consultant! Talking takes longer, ergo you earn more! Everyone wins.
The person who held my IT position before me was a great example of this. When he resigned, he made it very clear that he had no company assets or malicious intent. He tidied up his desk but made sure to leave everything, even pens, paperclips, and little doodads he got at tradeshows on company time, to show that he was not in any way interested in retaining even the smallest of assets. It was a bitch to clean out his desk. Even though he left because he was unhappy, most everyone felt the WAY he left was just impeccable (even those that weren't fans of his work). And we are in the 30%.
Don't do it. Curiosity killed the cat 9.5 times out of 10. It is mentally hard to do nothing, but the more time passes from the moment of resignation, the better you'll feel about it. If you were really a Good Samaritan you would be happy just calling the new guy, telling him your password, and reminding him to disable remote access (maybe tell his boss, too), but NEVER actually attempt it yourself.
Because loading happens so often...yeah, right
on
OpenOffice Bloated?
·
· Score: 1
A real test would involve 2 different clean installs of Windows: one with Office (and nothing else), and one with OO.o (and no Office having ever been installed) and maybe JVM. Respectively, have Word or Writer auto-launch on boot. Begin typing. Now show me the time from power up to printing a standard business letter that you compose yourself. And total system memory usage (not application only) as a percentage of total available.
What, boot time isn't fair to include? Eliminates the "pre-load" camp's arguments quite handily. Even better, have the system auto-load the specific file for the "file-viewer" benchmark this blogger is doing.
How often do you load a word processor every day? If you are an infrequent user, the overhead is ultimately small because usage is low. If you are a power-user of the office suite than the impact is greatly reduced because it only gets loaded once. Then it gets USED. Where are the usage benchmarks?
Show the numbers for load time as a percentage of your day. Value that time in cash. Weigh that cash against the cost of the two systems. That is assuming you have no OSS or anti-Microsoft agenda = Priceless. THAT's a better benchmark.
This blogger learned about ProcessExplorer. Yippee. He should also learn that a real Office benchmark includes actual usage and creation of content. His benchmark shows the efficacy of the two programs as file viewers only.
Have you tried flipping through a magazine lately?
Many ads are on different heavier paper than the content. The magazine falls open to ads, not content, when you thumb through it. Trying to flip to content pages is slowed as you navigate the stiff paper ads that are constantly stopping your thumbing -- pop-ups by any other name are still pop-ups.
Page numbers are often obfuscated/left out to slow down your thumbing and get, you guessed it, more ad views as you search for content.
The subscription cards falling from the magazine force you to pay attention to them, and not the content. Clever, really, and even though it is the subject of lampoon and ridicule in many movies, mags STILL use this arcane practice. Another pop-up.
The ads are more and more trying to look like content so you stop and view them instead of actual content. Evilness from both sides.
Actual obscuring is occuring. A new ad trend I've seen is the "post-it" note ad. Literally a post-it note over prime content. All you have to do is peel it off, but that means you are now responsible for disposing of the ad -- again taking your attention away from the content. A pop-up yet again.
Tables of contents are often buried several ad pages in. Thats right, even the treasure map to the actual content is hard to find.
National Geographic has it right. I don't subscribe, but over the decades I have always been able to pick up an issue and know that the table of contents will be within the first 2 or 3 pages, the ads will follow, and the entire remainder of the publication will be content (except the back cover). I can skip ads if I want, or peruse them at my convenience, not the advertisers.
Having had to deal with RAR and SIT a lot lately, I decided to go with http://www.stuffit.com/win/deluxe/. I had purchased a WinZip license, but I just got sick of trying to deal with MAC folk who couldn't zip to save their lives.
I don't work for them. I had to find a solution recently and this was just the ticket.
(Why oh why is a news source for geeks sensationalising a headline so inaccurately. Making it hot, I get that. Making it just plain wrong for a community that is intensely interested in how it REALLY works... I'm at a loss)
The cell phone is a data collecting tool. That's like saying that a wind gauge is predicting the weather. No, it is just logging it right now. Something else is handling the predictions, and that's what's interesting.
And they aren't really predictions of the future, now are they. They are clever pattern analysis of situations driven by schedules. Big deal. They used cell phone GPS to make a schedule like you could get from the registrar. The other items are victims of the schedule (you can't make calls during class, you pee around the same times each day, blah blah blah.) The algorithm may be interesting, but I could figure the same things out about you in the same amount of time, and be just as accurate, using a class schedule, phone records, and simple observation. Figuring out the social networking would take longer.
The real headline shoud be "Cell Phone Data can be used to track your networking patterns." Which is, of course, dead obvious. Why is this under "Privacy" when all the participants are volunteers?
Here's a question. Was the cell phone data accurate when the users stopped using the cell phones or stopped participating in the program? This is a social experiment after all, so you need data from when folk aren't knowingly under the microscope.
Slashdot Mirror
The most valuable information the GP gave you was that you are annoying by association before you even get to the meat of the matter (poll, not pitch). That is not a personal attack on you, it is simply a statement of fact. That fact alone should get you thinking about re-evaluating the efficacy of your methodology.
If you strongly believe that volunteering and data-gathering are important political ventures, then perhaps you should consider a different data-gathering method if association or perception are important to you. If they are not important to you then you understand that rude hang-ups are just a form of speech and don't take it personally. Behaving otherwise just means you are wearing blinders to the reality of the situation and/or do not have the thickness of skin needed for your job. It happens.
Um, I identify myself after I've confirmed that the person I meant to call is who I have on the line.
... just not right now because my wife and I just had a fight and I thought you were her calling back to make up.
Polite. Courteous. Nice. And a telemarketing tactic. The longer a person is kept on the phone, the more "indebted" they feel to stay on the phone. It can be an evil use of give and take. I'm not saying you are evil. I am saying you're methodolgy has long legs in another industry that is virtually indistinguishable from yours. Know how you appear.
I asked a simple question: can you use MY tactic of identifying yourself first and still have success? My method is EVEN MORE POLITE. What prevents you from either trying it, or even intellectually assessing it here in this forum?
ALL PHONE CALLS ARE INTERRUPTIONS.
How very true. Now keep going with it. The interuption is generally allowed for friends, family, established business relationships, etc. Of course I can choose to not answer during dinner. Or at all. BUT IF I DO choose to answer, then you, the political caller, do not know WHY I chose to answer. Maybe I'm expecting a call about that ad I placed in the paper to give away free kittens. If I hang up on you, then you can be reasonably assured that my reason for answering the phone was NOT to talk to YOU. You can also be fairly sure that your kind of call is the LEAST welcome form of interruption based solely on how I handled your call.
You also don't know WHY I put my number on the register in the first place. Maybe it was because I thought I had to, to vote. Maybe I was just filling out the form like a diligent American without understanding the repercussions of my actions. Now I'm annoyed that it is there. Maybe I even LIKE political surveys
Eventually you will grow tired of being hung up on. Your spirit may call into question your methods. Perhaps you will find a more fulfilling way to be a part of the process and your spirit will be happier that you no longer have to use nefarious methods (as bespoken to you in a very democratic manner by all those who hung up on you).
Just because you CAN use the phone to interrupt, doesn't mean you SHOULD. Answer that question for yourself, and for those you are calling. If you don't agree, then revel in the diversity and let democracy reign.
(note: I said this deeper in the thread, but it seemed better placed right here)
she'd hung up on me. Who's the asshole, here?
Does your strong political activism, volunteerism, and involvement extend to protecting my right to hang up on you rudely and decide to whom I speak and how? Why not?
I don't want to talk to people who don't want to be talked to.
You keep using those words. I do not think it means what you think it means.
It's a long-established right to be able to contact people.
Prove it. I'll throw privacy backatcha.
Your argument strays from "please be polite to me, I'm only a volunteer," to "I have a right." Politeness cannot be demanded, it can only be requested though usually it is earned (hint: you didn't earn it simply by dialing my number). A right is something else entirely. You have yet to establish your right to make me listen to you AT ALL.
Your situation is voluntary (and within your rights). My handling of your call is voluntary (and within my rights). You made a choice of questionable politeness (here's where you'll try to counter proving again that you don't get the core point). I respond in kind. You had speech you wanted heard based on your powerful political convictions. I responded with speech (or not) as is my right and I definitely wanted you to receive MY message in whatever form I delivered it. We have communicated. Mine was probably more direct and effective than yours. You may have just pushed the "call again" button out of spite meaning you UNDERSTOOD the message and chose a hostile action rather than retaining your honor and doing the right thing and removing me from your list. Or maybe you DID do the right thing. Thank you!
If you want the voice of the people to satisfy your polling data, but you're getting hung up on a lot, then you probably aren't hearing the voice of the people saying what they REALLY want you to hear. How typically political.
Does your strong political activism, volunteerism, and involvement extend to protecting my right to hang up on you rudely and decide to whom I speak and how? Why not?
don't want to talk with people who don't want to be talked to (x3)
And yet here you are engaging in a conversation with someone who doesn't want to talk to you. Noting the problem, yet?
You can rattle on about what law means what to whom. Fact: You have NO RIGHT to make me listen to you. How I choose not to listen is my business. Suck it up.
So you volunteer. Pat yourself on the back. Now consider the impact of your volunteerism. Do you annoy people on the phone to gather data for your candidate affiliation? Or do you set up an information table near the courthouse and gather data from volunteers (ones not bothered in their homes) in a less intrusive manner? You made a choice. You chose the one that annoyed people so much, a law was passed to give them Opt-In access to a system to reduce annoyances. I know, I know. You'll point out the political exception to that. Pointing out that exception repeatedly just proves you are not interested in the spirit of the law. People don't like to be called randomly. Amazing, really, that you tout the DNC legislation as your modus operandi when most people would, if the law allowed, opt out of getting calls from people like you. Poll on that. Or not. Simply use your hang up/rude comment data to make a shiny graph.
Interesting that you use a standard marketing tactic of not identifying yourself until the 2nd exchange. You could have said:
... by voting). I knew all of this about you by the 3rd syllable in the word Democratic.
Hi, this is Marcus with the blah blah. May I please speak with Carl?
You KNOW why you don't do that. You would be hung up on much sooner and more frequently.
Plus, the simple arrogance of expecting courtesy when YOU interrupted ME. Astounding. My hanging up, or swearing at you, is my replying to your uninvited interruption with the same level of care you used when interrupting me.
You pulled my number out of a list or a system. You know nothing about me except how I registered. You don't know if you are interrupting my dinner and you have no family or friendship context to feel remorse if you are. You can actually DO nothing for me. You cannot make my life any easier. You are offering me nothing in exchange for my time except for the joy of being a faceless data point (I'll use my data point when it counts
A friend or family member has earned the right to interrupt me. You have not. Take your lumps.
America and American democracy was founded on the notion that people should be engaged in their government.
Careful. You're confusing "engaged in their governemnt" with "engaged in their political party." You are calling based on a single party or candidate affiliation. Perhaps I am already well-versed in your candidate because I am quite "engaged" and that is why I am hostile to your "affiliation" using me as a statistic to further his or her own cause.
Similarly they have a right to not answer their phone...
Differentiate for me, if you will, the right to not answer my phone vs the right to hang up my phone because I don't wish to speak to you and/or speak into it anyway I like.
I'll wait...
Get out the mini trebouchet and carpet bomb the hell out of him
Screw that!
Yes! I, too, want an answer to this question!
We can do audio through the phone, but good video is a problem.
BONUS QUESTION: I have a nice firewire capable digital video camera with a good lens or two (and nice audio, too). I would love to use THAT as the video source for the video client instead of a webcam. The video camera is just so much easier to use (PTZ (pan, tilt, zoom), etc.) and has good macro. The problem is finding a way to get that nice high res firewire video feed INTO a video-conference. Any thoughts?
My point was to illustrate that no matter which direction the advertiser is peering at the puzzle, from the "cost" side or from the "value" side, it is the advertiser relying on someone else's valuation.
Your competitor causes you to pay more by engaging in click fraud = you don't really know what your ad was worth using that metric.
Nielsen numbers are used to charge you, but you don't really know how many people took a whiz while watching your commercial = you don't know what your ad was worth using that metric.
Since you don't know in both cases, you make a further value judgement and decide to pay or play later.
With Nielsen, you are banking on hope and a reasonable percentage because you can't really know how many eyeballs consumed your ad. Nielsen will tell you that UP TO 4 million may have, and give you guidelines about how many probably did. You say "Okay, I guess."
With click-through you don't want hope. You want the computer to tell you when the views were real or fraudulent. Again, you don't know how many eyeballs actually consumed your ad, and the click-through counter can tell you that UP TO 4 million may have, but you want the probability guidelines to be more exacting. Why the difference?
Click-fraud sure sounds like it might be addressable, but is it really any different than relying on any other advertising medium? If a TV station tells you they reach 4 million homes, but they only hit 3.89 million, are they engaging in fraud?
If a big car company buys an ad during the prime-time news, they pay for a "value" based on some calculations and some voodoo (little Nielsen's Ratings dolls are boku powerful!). A competitor buys an ad in the spot right after. They pay for a certain voodoo value based on "getting the last word." The 1st ad's value is diminished .... but they already paid.
Unmeasurable clicks (some are fraud based on a witty competitor) are voodoo, too. A "click" measurer contains no more real value than a Nielsen rating (perceived value is something else entirely). Is it fruad if you went to the bathroom during the ad? No, but the ad was paid for based on some wacky theoretical eyeball math. Both types of ratings have a theoretical max number of eyeballs that don't reflect the real total.
You pay to play, and judge how you'll pay or play next time on your perceived value of the success of the gamble.
Gesundheit!
Your date's a little early. A few years later he DID change the way words were spelled with one of the reasons being he wanted an American dictionary - more precisely, differentiation from England for no other reason than nationalism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webster's_Dictionary
It can, and has, happened within the last 200 years.
Since when is it the patent holder's responsibility to warn others that they are infringing on their patents?
...
...
... well, there is no USPTO infringement fairy that will bless you with +5 protections, send out the federal Mafia to "collect," and present you with a fat check all Ed-McMahon-ny. It's all you. You are the driving force. You decide how much you want to spend defending the patent, or you walk away and lose it. Walk away ONCE and you can never really go after anyone else for that patent ever again.
Um, all the time?
You need to actively defend your patents. No one more than you can tell if someone is infringing. Do you expect the overburdened patent office to review every new competing product for you -- you know, all those ones that AREN'T trying to compete on patents (they've filed for ZERO) but instead are beating you up on price using your patented methodology? Do I sound bitter from experience? Hmm
The first thing you do is notify them, usually through a lawyer. That is you and not the gub'mint doing the notifying. When they are non-responsive you up the ante legally. It is still you pushing the issue. Remember, a lawyer is your agent and their job is to THREATEN legal action initially. Lawyers don't actually enforce, you know. That's cops (or feds) and they need a pointy stick (big ticket obvious infringement in the million$) before they'll move on your behalf. Do I sound bitter from experience? Hmm
If you never noticed the infringement happening
Is this the ultimate correct legal path? I don't know. Is it the way things usually work? Yup. It is cheaper and faster to negotiate outside of a real legal battle. Why go expensive and nuclear if you can get licensing first? The whole point of the patent is to make money off it, and not lose all your ability to do business by defending it, after all.
Do you mean people who exercise?
Totally dated myself right there! What was I thinking! I couldn't even reference a console or PC game, oh no! I had to use an ARCADE game that didn't even have joysticks! And then reference a movie that qualifies for Antique license plates!
/.'s lameness filter catch REAL lameness?
(sigh)
Why can't
(sigh)
I read this article and all I could think about was trying to play Track & Field -- forehead sweating, eyeballs and veins popping, face turning red all from mentally trying to whack those two buttons as fast as you can ... then your head does the whole Scanners thing.
I might check if I still have access and then tell them to revoke it. Then if something happens, I'm not a "disgruntled ex-employee with root access"
... don't do it.
Bad idea. Really bad.
A company that has the "buh-bye" SOP (and from the posts thus far, it seems like 70% do, 30% don't), they have it is a risk/liability mitigating factor. Don't get yourself a little star on the risk/liability chart.
If you attempt access again EVER (and tell them about it!) and something happens to their systems EVER they simply MUST include your name as someone who was a risk. You made yourself one by attempting unauthorized access when you knew you weren't supposed to. Admitting to it, even with the motivation to help them remain secure, might seem like the ethical thing to do, but then again terrorists fess up to claim responsibility, too. Just
You attempt access and the passwords were changed? Logged as an unauthorized access attempt. You get in 'cause the new guy's an idjit? Logged as a successful unauthorized remote access. The logs don't record motive. Your phone call isn't conclusive proof of motive.
That 2 week window is mucho dangerouso. When is something most likely to go terribly wrong? When a change occurs. When is a change nearly guaranteed to occur? When the new guy implements a few of his favorite things or isn't up to speed. It is dead simple for him to blame you if you were flexing remote access muscle. He's the new guy, after all, and he doesn't want to be canned during week two.
As everyone else has said so far, do your "walking away" weeks before you actually go. When you are gone, be GONE. Obviously take polite consulting calls and stuff, but try REALLY hard to do what needs to be done without actually connecting to their systems -- heck, except for email I would consider anything with a keyboard a bad idea. Talk the new guy through it on the phone. Hey, you're now a consultant! Talking takes longer, ergo you earn more! Everyone wins.
The person who held my IT position before me was a great example of this. When he resigned, he made it very clear that he had no company assets or malicious intent. He tidied up his desk but made sure to leave everything, even pens, paperclips, and little doodads he got at tradeshows on company time, to show that he was not in any way interested in retaining even the smallest of assets. It was a bitch to clean out his desk. Even though he left because he was unhappy, most everyone felt the WAY he left was just impeccable (even those that weren't fans of his work). And we are in the 30%.
Don't do it. Curiosity killed the cat 9.5 times out of 10. It is mentally hard to do nothing, but the more time passes from the moment of resignation, the better you'll feel about it. If you were really a Good Samaritan you would be happy just calling the new guy, telling him your password, and reminding him to disable remote access (maybe tell his boss, too), but NEVER actually attempt it yourself.
A real test would involve 2 different clean installs of Windows: one with Office (and nothing else), and one with OO.o (and no Office having ever been installed) and maybe JVM. Respectively, have Word or Writer auto-launch on boot. Begin typing. Now show me the time from power up to printing a standard business letter that you compose yourself. And total system memory usage (not application only) as a percentage of total available.
What, boot time isn't fair to include? Eliminates the "pre-load" camp's arguments quite handily. Even better, have the system auto-load the specific file for the "file-viewer" benchmark this blogger is doing.
How often do you load a word processor every day? If you are an infrequent user, the overhead is ultimately small because usage is low. If you are a power-user of the office suite than the impact is greatly reduced because it only gets loaded once. Then it gets USED. Where are the usage benchmarks?
Show the numbers for load time as a percentage of your day. Value that time in cash. Weigh that cash against the cost of the two systems. That is assuming you have no OSS or anti-Microsoft agenda = Priceless. THAT's a better benchmark.
This blogger learned about ProcessExplorer. Yippee. He should also learn that a real Office benchmark includes actual usage and creation of content. His benchmark shows the efficacy of the two programs as file viewers only.
Have you tried flipping through a magazine lately?
Many ads are on different heavier paper than the content. The magazine falls open to ads, not content, when you thumb through it. Trying to flip to content pages is slowed as you navigate the stiff paper ads that are constantly stopping your thumbing -- pop-ups by any other name are still pop-ups.
Page numbers are often obfuscated/left out to slow down your thumbing and get, you guessed it, more ad views as you search for content.
The subscription cards falling from the magazine force you to pay attention to them, and not the content. Clever, really, and even though it is the subject of lampoon and ridicule in many movies, mags STILL use this arcane practice. Another pop-up.
The ads are more and more trying to look like content so you stop and view them instead of actual content. Evilness from both sides.
Actual obscuring is occuring. A new ad trend I've seen is the "post-it" note ad. Literally a post-it note over prime content. All you have to do is peel it off, but that means you are now responsible for disposing of the ad -- again taking your attention away from the content. A pop-up yet again.
Tables of contents are often buried several ad pages in. Thats right, even the treasure map to the actual content is hard to find.
National Geographic has it right. I don't subscribe, but over the decades I have always been able to pick up an issue and know that the table of contents will be within the first 2 or 3 pages, the ads will follow, and the entire remainder of the publication will be content (except the back cover). I can skip ads if I want, or peruse them at my convenience, not the advertisers.
Having had to deal with RAR and SIT a lot lately, I decided to go with http://www.stuffit.com/win/deluxe/. I had purchased a WinZip license, but I just got sick of trying to deal with MAC folk who couldn't zip to save their lives.
I don't work for them. I had to find a solution recently and this was just the ticket.
All of my users have definitely gone to the Dark Side.
Especially when 4 gb Compact Flash is cheaper (~$350). Slower, absolutely, but requires no battery and is therefore more non-volatile.
"More non-volatile" just doesn't sound right...
No they don't, but a funky program sort of does.
... I'm at a loss)
(Why oh why is a news source for geeks sensationalising a headline so inaccurately. Making it hot, I get that. Making it just plain wrong for a community that is intensely interested in how it REALLY works
The cell phone is a data collecting tool. That's like saying that a wind gauge is predicting the weather. No, it is just logging it right now. Something else is handling the predictions, and that's what's interesting.
And they aren't really predictions of the future, now are they. They are clever pattern analysis of situations driven by schedules. Big deal. They used cell phone GPS to make a schedule like you could get from the registrar. The other items are victims of the schedule (you can't make calls during class, you pee around the same times each day, blah blah blah.) The algorithm may be interesting, but I could figure the same things out about you in the same amount of time, and be just as accurate, using a class schedule, phone records, and simple observation. Figuring out the social networking would take longer.
The real headline shoud be "Cell Phone Data can be used to track your networking patterns." Which is, of course, dead obvious. Why is this under "Privacy" when all the participants are volunteers?
Here's a question. Was the cell phone data accurate when the users stopped using the cell phones or stopped participating in the program? This is a social experiment after all, so you need data from when folk aren't knowingly under the microscope.