cuz heaven knows NASA engineers couldn't possibly be trek fans...:> anybody wanna hazard a guess as to whether or not this is somehow a reverse-engineered date/time format?:> i mean, clearly, humans knew mars existed well before 1873, after all....
hate to say it, but that's more or less the reality and has been for some years in the NYC market. the way it's perceived here is that a positive reference introduces liability if the guy flakes out bigtime. and obviously a negative reference introduces liability from the former employee if he/she ever catches wind.
every single one of my previous employers (except the start-up that folded) made that their standard policy, including a very large financial services firm who was my previous employer. i'm actually surprised you got burned by this: i would think that recruiters and HR professionals would know this.
i used to do work w/ an israeli governmental entity who would send us large data files that were natively in hebrew. working for a financial services company at the time, i was obliged to find a translation service as we were using these files to populate a database. that particular entity was using office 97 hebrew edition to generate a large excel spreadsheet.
several characters didn't get displayed properly on my english edition PC and i went back & forth w/ the translation service and the file creators, until we learned that the issue was the file creators were using win NT hebrew edition as well, which represents certain characters incorrectly when those characters are then displayed on an english edition box. i think i lost a week getting that file straightened out.
at the risk of sounding like a mail server admin, this also cuts down on the amount of e-mails needed to communicate. if you can tell someone what app to use to open a given attachment (remember, some folks don't know what a PDF is, either), it saves you the time of having to tell them in a second e-mail, esp if the e-mail goes to a large distribution of non-techies, who will kick off a mail-storm asking what the appropriate app is.
well said. i just discovered that my local cable channel actually runs an indian film movie preview program. if you're not indian or a serious film buff, the likelihood of knowing of any indian films is somewhere very near 0.
but just b/c you don't know it doesn't mean it's noise, not signal.
in the fellowship of the ring extended edition ancillary materials, jackson explains that he and the co-writers had to determine what the basic story is, and that story was the destruction of the ring. the materials that did not support that were dropped. tom bombadil, done properly, would have added another 5-10 minutes of film time and ultimately, does not meet the criteria.
the absent shire scene in ROTK would be at least 10, possibly 15 minutes, done properly and honestly, it's already a pretty long movie w/ enough endings. for my part, it didn't really need yet another. but YMMV.
guys, nobody's gonna convince anybody of which sequence works best. for some people who are very good at visualizing while reading, the book first method works just fine. for those who have difficulty keeping the rather large number of characters straight, movies first makes more sense. i think that this really depends upon one's reading habits.
and FF: they were taller. there's a sequence b/n merry & pippin where that becomes clear.
while i'm of the movie first camp myself, i think it's a mistake to assume that process is best for everyone.
best movie of the year? i think that honor really ought to go to the extended edition of the two towers, actually.
the reputation merrill has on the street is that they train everybody else's employees. they go boom/bust every few years: in boom times, big hiring spikes and in bust times, loads of layoffs. this means that anybody who's been there more than 7-8 years is either godawful good or a very smooth operator.
"here's a question i always wish i could ask managers, whenever the topic of 'outsourcing' comes up: if dealing with programmers overseas is more appealing to the bottom line, why not let your programmers work from home for 50-80% of their current in-office pay?"
do you think that this would be a good idea, overall? think about where this winds up going if it becomes a trend in, say, 3-5 years time: it becomes a price war, and it's one that domestic employees cannot win. cost of living is just higher here than in a number of other countries.
i think this is a very, very bad idea, and one that's not just bad for you personally, but also for people in the industry overall. it would have the effect of dropping IT salaries across the board. in essence, you would be arguing that you're overpaid. not a good idea, IMHO.
that said: shame the PHBs were the ones making the decision. were there many others affected? this smells like a small bloodletting to help a business in a still underperforming industry cut some heads and increase profitability.
o, absolutely, but we're not quite there yet. for my part, it looks like we've got at least a year, maybe 2 until that finally does happen.
it's a compelling vision, isn't it? perhaps in 5-10 years, what we'll have is a handset that's got a GSM card in it but also connects via bluetooth to your landline. you can switch it to landline mode when you're at home/office. it bluetooths to your LAN. when you're on roaming mode, you can wirelessly check your e-mails or even go online. and while you're complaining about lag, you can listen to a MP3.
of course, the real problem i'm foreseeing is people forgetting [component] when they leave home or the office.
me personally, i think part of the reason people were holding off on buying MP3 players is b/c they were hoping this mythical appliance convergence happened, they could get their mobile phone, e-mail app, PDA and MP3 player in a single package. while that's possible now w/ some of the units, very few of us want to shell out for an app of that size that costs as much as some desktops right now. i think what's happening is that people realize that it'll still be a while until those things come together in a single, happy package at a significantly lower price point.
for my part i've given up and have finally decided to get myself a MP3 player just cuz i need something to dull the pain of my 1 hour train commute.
my high school buddy used to refer to this as the millitroy scale. unfortunately, in this age of airbrushing the dickens out of stuff before putting it up on a site, perhaps it ought to be re-scaled to nanotroy...
stupid question perhaps but doesn't this in essence require something like a database in order to store, arrange and recall the desired results? am i missing something here?
b/c if that's true, then does this mean some day in a few decadees, someone's gonna introduce a relational--
sony appears to think that by making it more convenient they'll avoid backlash. while it's probably a matter of days before someone cracks it, this seems a lot less stupid than some of the previous efforts the record labels have taken.
OK, i've been seeing posters for this on NJ transit trains for the past month. i'll be watching, esp since food network no longer runs iron chef on fridays.
20 3-minute episodes works out to 1 hour of content. and just think: too short for commercial breaks!
i'm curious to see just how long it takes cartoon network to air all 20 episodes. if they space 'em out from tonight all the way through until ep3 debuts, i'm gonna be cranky.
the theoden thing actually makes sense in the context of dramatically reducing the amount of time it takes for the audience to go from seeing theoden as a bad guy to seeing him as a good guy, if you ask me.
and personally, i have no objection to reduced ent time. i mean, when tolkien's leisurely paced text describes anything as being slow/plodding like the ents, is that something you really want translated to the screen?:>
Slashdot Mirror
cuz heaven knows NASA engineers couldn't possibly be trek fans... :> anybody wanna hazard a guess as to whether or not this is somehow a reverse-engineered date/time format? :> i mean, clearly, humans knew mars existed well before 1873, after all....
ed
hate to say it, but that's more or less the reality and has been for some years in the NYC market. the way it's perceived here is that a positive reference introduces liability if the guy flakes out bigtime. and obviously a negative reference introduces liability from the former employee if he/she ever catches wind.
every single one of my previous employers (except the start-up that folded) made that their standard policy, including a very large financial services firm who was my previous employer. i'm actually surprised you got burned by this: i would think that recruiters and HR professionals would know this.
ed
i used to do work w/ an israeli governmental entity who would send us large data files that were natively in hebrew. working for a financial services company at the time, i was obliged to find a translation service as we were using these files to populate a database. that particular entity was using office 97 hebrew edition to generate a large excel spreadsheet.
several characters didn't get displayed properly on my english edition PC and i went back & forth w/ the translation service and the file creators, until we learned that the issue was the file creators were using win NT hebrew edition as well, which represents certain characters incorrectly when those characters are then displayed on an english edition box. i think i lost a week getting that file straightened out.
ed
at the risk of sounding like a mail server admin, this also cuts down on the amount of e-mails needed to communicate. if you can tell someone what app to use to open a given attachment (remember, some folks don't know what a PDF is, either), it saves you the time of having to tell them in a second e-mail, esp if the e-mail goes to a large distribution of non-techies, who will kick off a mail-storm asking what the appropriate app is.
ed
i want one of these in the worst way as i said relatively recently here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=88765&cid=7679 795
that's an awful lot of room. the article doesn't mention battery life, which one would hope would support the storage capacity.
ed
i know i'll get modded off-topic, but i think i do remember gnip gnops. darned if i can remember why but weren't they like romper stompers?
ed
obligatory battletech comment...
will future iterations be named "gauss rifle" or "MRMs"?
ed
well said. i just discovered that my local cable channel actually runs an indian film movie preview program. if you're not indian or a serious film buff, the likelihood of knowing of any indian films is somewhere very near 0.
but just b/c you don't know it doesn't mean it's noise, not signal.
ed
in the fellowship of the ring extended edition ancillary materials, jackson explains that he and the co-writers had to determine what the basic story is, and that story was the destruction of the ring. the materials that did not support that were dropped. tom bombadil, done properly, would have added another 5-10 minutes of film time and ultimately, does not meet the criteria.
the absent shire scene in ROTK would be at least 10, possibly 15 minutes, done properly and honestly, it's already a pretty long movie w/ enough endings. for my part, it didn't really need yet another. but YMMV.
ed
guys, nobody's gonna convince anybody of which sequence works best. for some people who are very good at visualizing while reading, the book first method works just fine. for those who have difficulty keeping the rather large number of characters straight, movies first makes more sense. i think that this really depends upon one's reading habits.
and FF: they were taller. there's a sequence b/n merry & pippin where that becomes clear.
while i'm of the movie first camp myself, i think it's a mistake to assume that process is best for everyone.
best movie of the year? i think that honor really ought to go to the extended edition of the two towers, actually.
ed
the reputation merrill has on the street is that they train everybody else's employees. they go boom/bust every few years: in boom times, big hiring spikes and in bust times, loads of layoffs. this means that anybody who's been there more than 7-8 years is either godawful good or a very smooth operator.
ed
"here's a question i always wish i could ask managers, whenever the topic of 'outsourcing' comes up: if dealing with programmers overseas is more appealing to the bottom line, why not let your programmers work from home for 50-80% of their current in-office pay?"
do you think that this would be a good idea, overall? think about where this winds up going if it becomes a trend in, say, 3-5 years time: it becomes a price war, and it's one that domestic employees cannot win. cost of living is just higher here than in a number of other countries.
i think this is a very, very bad idea, and one that's not just bad for you personally, but also for people in the industry overall. it would have the effect of dropping IT salaries across the board. in essence, you would be arguing that you're overpaid. not a good idea, IMHO.
that said: shame the PHBs were the ones making the decision. were there many others affected? this smells like a small bloodletting to help a business in a still underperforming industry cut some heads and increase profitability.
ed
o, absolutely, but we're not quite there yet. for my part, it looks like we've got at least a year, maybe 2 until that finally does happen.
it's a compelling vision, isn't it? perhaps in 5-10 years, what we'll have is a handset that's got a GSM card in it but also connects via bluetooth to your landline. you can switch it to landline mode when you're at home/office. it bluetooths to your LAN. when you're on roaming mode, you can wirelessly check your e-mails or even go online. and while you're complaining about lag, you can listen to a MP3.
of course, the real problem i'm foreseeing is people forgetting [component] when they leave home or the office.
ed
wish i had mod points right now...
me personally, i think part of the reason people were holding off on buying MP3 players is b/c they were hoping this mythical appliance convergence happened, they could get their mobile phone, e-mail app, PDA and MP3 player in a single package. while that's possible now w/ some of the units, very few of us want to shell out for an app of that size that costs as much as some desktops right now. i think what's happening is that people realize that it'll still be a while until those things come together in a single, happy package at a significantly lower price point.
for my part i've given up and have finally decided to get myself a MP3 player just cuz i need something to dull the pain of my 1 hour train commute.
ed
my high school buddy used to refer to this as the millitroy scale. unfortunately, in this age of airbrushing the dickens out of stuff before putting it up on a site, perhaps it ought to be re-scaled to nanotroy...
ed
isn't patent barratry a patented business process held by SCO? if so, i believe you're infringing upon their IP rights... :>
seriously though: this is an inducement for people to use other file systems. is NTFS similarly protected? if not, is this the objective of this move?
ed
perhaps you've noticed just how few posts there are to this thread so far as of this date/time stamp, compared to the date/time stamp of the story?
ed
at the risk of appearing to minimize the justice of niemoeller's famous saying, does this mean that under godwin's law, this discussion is now over? :D
ed
you know, at first, i thought the article was talking about street gangs. i was thinking that the resulting l337 graffiti would be kinda funny...
ed
stupid question perhaps but doesn't this in essence require something like a database in order to store, arrange and recall the desired results? am i missing something here?
b/c if that's true, then does this mean some day in a few decadees, someone's gonna introduce a relational--
[gets killed by angry mob of unemployed DBAs]
ed
sony appears to think that by making it more convenient they'll avoid backlash. while it's probably a matter of days before someone cracks it, this seems a lot less stupid than some of the previous efforts the record labels have taken.
ed
OK, i've been seeing posters for this on NJ transit trains for the past month. i'll be watching, esp since food network no longer runs iron chef on fridays.
20 3-minute episodes works out to 1 hour of content. and just think: too short for commercial breaks!
i'm curious to see just how long it takes cartoon network to air all 20 episodes. if they space 'em out from tonight all the way through until ep3 debuts, i'm gonna be cranky.
ed
the theoden thing actually makes sense in the context of dramatically reducing the amount of time it takes for the audience to go from seeing theoden as a bad guy to seeing him as a good guy, if you ask me.
:>
and personally, i have no objection to reduced ent time. i mean, when tolkien's leisurely paced text describes anything as being slow/plodding like the ents, is that something you really want translated to the screen?
ed
heh...i believe you'd have to call that flash mapping, wouldn't you?
in all seriousness though: great idea, this.
ed
cantina thug: "i have the death sentence in 12 systems"
virus writer: "ah, but microsoft is offering a US $250,000 bounty for me!"
cantina thug: "..."
virus writer: "and i shut down millions of PCs on my home planet!"
cantina thug: "..."
virus writer: "and in a little while, i'll finally be able to move out of my parents' basement!"
cantina thug: "that does it."
[blaster fire]
ed