You mean as opposed to most helpdesk techs? *grin*
This is part of the problem here in the U.S. - companies hire lots of barely- or non-technical staff to handle the helpdesk, and they end up simply being call routers to the real techs, freeing those people from having to answer the phone.
I've heard the helpdesk at one company I've worked with referred to as "Victoria's Secret".
i.e., they're there purely for show and don't really support anything at all.
$13-15US may be ok as a permanent employee, but for a contractor it's outrageous. I often see helpdesk contracting positions, even in small cities in the US, getting $20-25/hr or more.
$13/hr is only ~$26,000/yr. An adequate salary, though not exemplary by any means. And it certainly seems out of line for the sheer amount of experience the company seems to want.
A good company knows the value of what they're asking for and will pay for it willingly. A bad company will want as much as they can get as cheaply as possible. Stay away from bad companies.
You're not taking into account credibility, of which you may have some and the NYT has none. So your little communist paper might be more effective than the shit that passes for news nowadays.
Hmm, how about this: 'All the "news" that fits, we print.'
The problem occurs when you start mixing the people who are good motorcycle drivers with the people who are bad car drivers.
Unfortunately, the bad car drivers are more likely to survive.
A friend of my father, a skilled and conscientious motorcycle driver, was just killed by an asshole passenger vehicle driver who would not allow him to merge and maliciously (literally) forced him into oncoming traffic.
Believe you me, if there was a feasible way for them to do just that, they would. Remember the legislation they were trying to get passed which would allow them to legally hack into people's computers?
Don't ever underestimate greed as a motivating factor.
Which is what would happen if they just left it alone. Leave the censoring and content-filtering out of a basic security product. Don't forget Symantec is taking heat for some of their other actions lately, and are less likely to be given any slack as a result. This is the continuation of what seem to be a host of bad decisions.
I think you'll be surprised at how many will want to use your application. There are usually some surprising consistencies between business types which may not occur to those who haven't worked in each. So don't be surprised if your application which was made for an energy company becomes, with a tweak or two, very popular among, say, watch manufacturers.
One of my favorite ideas in marketing was always that you will almost always hit a larger market than your target, no matter how specialized your target. Like Avon's skin-so-soft, for instance. You know, the mosquito repellant?
Only if the consumer knows about this beforehand. We all know how much retailers and publishers like to take back opened software, and I can't imagine that saying something like, "it didn't give me enough choice in my advertising" will make it any easier.
The systems are created to ensure the largest amount of customer retention possible, and so are by design biased in favor of the publisher. Hiding behind the "they knew what they were getting into when they bought it" defense only works when they customer truly did, and in detail, otherwise it's just a cop-out. Symantic is making the choice on behalf of the consumer.
"It's not that I'm lazy, Bob, it's that I just don't care!"
Motivated people are productive people, whether motivated by fear, happiness, pride, jealousy, or a host of other causes. Don't confuse unhappy with motivated.
Happy people, when they are productive, i.e., when they are motivated, tend to be more productive than their unhappy counterparts. This is from whence the popular belief arose. But happiness alone does not cause or preclude productivity.
Make someone too fearful that they will lost their position, and they will be motivated, but the productivity spurred by that motivation will be tempered by the preoccupation and stress of that individual. Similarly, when happiness is stressed above motivation to work, productivity will suffer.
Be careful when working with people motivated by fear or negative emotion; they will be rash, thoughtless, and have a great tendency to catch "oops, I fucked it up" disease.
In fact, they were. My sister met someone who worked on the project. He said that if you actually look closely at the Disney footage, you can see the lemmings trying to swim back to the shore! They were apparently taking them and throwing them off by the bucketful...
The person's excuse was that he was a poor college student and needed the money. Makes one wonder what other atrocities have been committed by poor college students? *grin*
The fiction in 1984 was that it presented it with no subtlety or pretense, both of which are present in spades in our present society. Think there's no "newspeak"? Just try saying the words "nice ass" to a female coworker, even thought it may be true. Think there's no surveillance? Nothing is sacred when you're under investigation, and PATRIOT makes it worse.
Yes, 1984 has come and gone. And yes, we're already there.
It seems that the blocks are numbered by their exponential order. Block 6 obviously has the highest population on/. And since x^0=1, it follows that there is only one rational individual here.
There are only 3 or 4 liposoluble vitamins - A, K, D and some forms of E. All other vitamins are hydosoluble. The relative doses of these are taken into account with most products, and with the USRDA. You would have to be comatose in most cases not to use the amounts of liposoluble vitamins present in most multivitamins (at least in the US, don't know about elsewhere). It would take some work to overdose.
To say that multivitamins are useless based on the presence of these few fat-soluble ones is sort of like saying that the ocean in useless because there are sharks. Nonsense.
I have been taking Shaklee vitamins almost daily for 20+ years, and I can say with certainty that the benefits of taking them far outweigh any possible risks.
I know this is offtopic, but I actually got to touch an SR-71 Blackbird on Saturday! That was an experience I never thought I'd be able to have. It was amazing.
Thankfully, the police were very understanding when the silent alarm called them...
Agreed. From the original post: Even if these numbers are too large, this still makes you think about how inefficient our cars are.
This is a misleading statement; obviously our cars are not directly burning 4 tons per mile! As the AC above states, the 'inefficiency' in this article is really with mother nature, which is what turns that 4 tons of organic matter into fossil fuels. Even then, we refine it even further - what we use in our gas tanks is actually very efficient even compared to raw crude, much less the original decomposing matter!
So to say that our machines are inefficient by this deduction is absolutely incorrect. It's sort of like saying that a candle burns inefficiently because it took so many "bee hours" of labor to create the candle: the creation of the wax has nothing whatsoever to do with the burn rate of the candle. (I can add or remove things from the wax which can raise or lower the burn efficiency independently of how many bees it took to create the wax.)
Umm... I think you're thinking of Harvard Law School there. This is not a *technical* issue, it's a *legal* one, and AFAIK they don't teach law at MIT...
Yeah, but how are you going to get caught? Nearly any infrared emitter can be made swallowable-size or smaller, meaning that you could put one in your grill, rear-view mirror, visor, or whatever, and no one would be the wiser without a thorough inspection of your vehicle.
Without active monitoring (i.e., video recording)of the intersections at the times when the signals were changed with the IR device, there would be almost no way to link a user with such a device. It's completely clandestine.
Incidentally, in a town where I lived, the emergency vehicles simply used $10 strobe lights to do the same thing. They were highly visible, inexpensive, and easy to use. The wording of some of the statutes even prohibited their use by non-emergency vehicles without needing a change in the law. A less "advanced" solution, perhaps, but equally (if not more) effective in most circumstances.
Slashdot Mirror
Next up... figure out how to employ sheeps' bladders to prevent earthquakes.
Kids learn early on how to be little fakes. ...and then they grow up to be big bullies and fakes, right?
...SCO...RIAA...MPAA...Diebold...Lexmark...MicroSo ft...when I saw the headline, "The Rise of Cyber Bullying", I that's what this article was about!
A good translator has real skills.
You mean as opposed to most helpdesk techs? *grin*
This is part of the problem here in the U.S. - companies hire lots of barely- or non-technical staff to handle the helpdesk, and they end up simply being call routers to the real techs, freeing those people from having to answer the phone.
I've heard the helpdesk at one company I've worked with referred to as "Victoria's Secret".
i.e., they're there purely for show and don't really support anything at all.
$13-15US may be ok as a permanent employee, but for a contractor it's outrageous. I often see helpdesk contracting positions, even in small cities in the US, getting $20-25/hr or more.
$13/hr is only ~$26,000/yr. An adequate salary, though not exemplary by any means. And it certainly seems out of line for the sheer amount of experience the company seems to want.
A good company knows the value of what they're asking for and will pay for it willingly. A bad company will want as much as they can get as cheaply as possible. Stay away from bad companies.
You're not taking into account credibility, of which you may have some and the NYT has none. So your little communist paper might be more effective than the shit that passes for news nowadays.
Hmm, how about this: 'All the "news" that fits, we print.'
Oh, and that Bill guy? No relation.
The problem occurs when you start mixing the people who are good motorcycle drivers with the people who are bad car drivers.
Unfortunately, the bad car drivers are more likely to survive.
A friend of my father, a skilled and conscientious motorcycle driver, was just killed by an asshole passenger vehicle driver who would not allow him to merge and maliciously (literally) forced him into oncoming traffic.
Believe you me, if there was a feasible way for them to do just that, they would. Remember the legislation they were trying to get passed which would allow them to legally hack into people's computers?
Don't ever underestimate greed as a motivating factor.
Which is what would happen if they just left it alone. Leave the censoring and content-filtering out of a basic security product. Don't forget Symantec is taking heat for some of their other actions lately, and are less likely to be given any slack as a result. This is the continuation of what seem to be a host of bad decisions.
Just my $.02.
I think you'll be surprised at how many will want to use your application. There are usually some surprising consistencies between business types which may not occur to those who haven't worked in each. So don't be surprised if your application which was made for an energy company becomes, with a tweak or two, very popular among, say, watch manufacturers.
One of my favorite ideas in marketing was always that you will almost always hit a larger market than your target, no matter how specialized your target. Like Avon's skin-so-soft, for instance. You know, the mosquito repellant?
Only if the consumer knows about this beforehand. We all know how much retailers and publishers like to take back opened software, and I can't imagine that saying something like, "it didn't give me enough choice in my advertising" will make it any easier.
The systems are created to ensure the largest amount of customer retention possible, and so are by design biased in favor of the publisher. Hiding behind the "they knew what they were getting into when they bought it" defense only works when they customer truly did, and in detail, otherwise it's just a cop-out. Symantic is making the choice on behalf of the consumer.
"It's not that I'm lazy, Bob, it's that I just don't care!"
Motivated people are productive people, whether motivated by fear, happiness, pride, jealousy, or a host of other causes. Don't confuse unhappy with motivated.
Happy people, when they are productive, i.e., when they are motivated, tend to be more productive than their unhappy counterparts. This is from whence the popular belief arose. But happiness alone does not cause or preclude productivity.
Make someone too fearful that they will lost their position, and they will be motivated, but the productivity spurred by that motivation will be tempered by the preoccupation and stress of that individual. Similarly, when happiness is stressed above motivation to work, productivity will suffer.
Be careful when working with people motivated by fear or negative emotion; they will be rash, thoughtless, and have a great tendency to catch "oops, I fucked it up" disease.
hmm, I don't know about injuries, per se, but I think this girl might have some good insight for you!
In fact, they were. My sister met someone who worked on the project. He said that if you actually look closely at the Disney footage, you can see the lemmings trying to swim back to the shore! They were apparently taking them and throwing them off by the bucketful...
The person's excuse was that he was a poor college student and needed the money. Makes one wonder what other atrocities have been committed by poor college students? *grin*
You have no idea how right you are.
The fiction in 1984 was that it presented it with no subtlety or pretense, both of which are present in spades in our present society. Think there's no "newspeak"? Just try saying the words "nice ass" to a female coworker, even thought it may be true. Think there's no surveillance? Nothing is sacred when you're under investigation, and PATRIOT makes it worse.
Yes, 1984 has come and gone. And yes, we're already there.
Well, though you are correct in your assumptiong based on what I wrote. However, even though I did't cite these in the original post, yes, yes, I can.
So...
/. And since x^0=1, it follows that there is only one rational individual here.
Block 0 - "Rational Individual"
Block 1 - "MS bad"
Block 2 - "Linux/OSS rulez!"
Block 3 - "Capitalist/government Conspiracy!"
Block 4 - "Patents/copyrights bad"
Block 5 - "redundant jokes" (soviet russia, beowulf cluster, etc)
Block 6 - "contrarians" (they automatically believe the opposite of the other 5 blocks)
It seems that the blocks are numbered by their exponential order. Block 6 obviously has the highest population on
Mathematical proof! I knew it!
There are only 3 or 4 liposoluble vitamins - A, K, D and some forms of E. All other vitamins are hydosoluble. The relative doses of these are taken into account with most products, and with the USRDA. You would have to be comatose in most cases not to use the amounts of liposoluble vitamins present in most multivitamins (at least in the US, don't know about elsewhere). It would take some work to overdose.
To say that multivitamins are useless based on the presence of these few fat-soluble ones is sort of like saying that the ocean in useless because there are sharks. Nonsense.
I have been taking Shaklee vitamins almost daily for 20+ years, and I can say with certainty that the benefits of taking them far outweigh any possible risks.
and I'd hate like hell for anyone to be misinformed.
/.!
Then you'd be better off encouraging them to get their information somewhere other than
I know this is offtopic, but I actually got to touch an SR-71 Blackbird on Saturday! That was an experience I never thought I'd be able to have. It was amazing.
Thankfully, the police were very understanding when the silent alarm called them...
No, his is primitive!
Excellent reference. I was waiting for someone to say it.
Hmm, that's funny, 'cause all the /.'ers are UP, UP, UP!
Agreed. From the original post: Even if these numbers are too large, this still makes you think about how inefficient our cars are.
This is a misleading statement; obviously our cars are not directly burning 4 tons per mile! As the AC above states, the 'inefficiency' in this article is really with mother nature, which is what turns that 4 tons of organic matter into fossil fuels. Even then, we refine it even further - what we use in our gas tanks is actually very efficient even compared to raw crude, much less the original decomposing matter!
So to say that our machines are inefficient by this deduction is absolutely incorrect. It's sort of like saying that a candle burns inefficiently because it took so many "bee hours" of labor to create the candle: the creation of the wax has nothing whatsoever to do with the burn rate of the candle. (I can add or remove things from the wax which can raise or lower the burn efficiency independently of how many bees it took to create the wax.)
Umm... I think you're thinking of Harvard Law School there. This is not a *technical* issue, it's a *legal* one, and AFAIK they don't teach law at MIT...
Yeah, but how are you going to get caught? Nearly any infrared emitter can be made swallowable-size or smaller, meaning that you could put one in your grill, rear-view mirror, visor, or whatever, and no one would be the wiser without a thorough inspection of your vehicle.
Without active monitoring (i.e., video recording)of the intersections at the times when the signals were changed with the IR device, there would be almost no way to link a user with such a device. It's completely clandestine.
Incidentally, in a town where I lived, the emergency vehicles simply used $10 strobe lights to do the same thing. They were highly visible, inexpensive, and easy to use. The wording of some of the statutes even prohibited their use by non-emergency vehicles without needing a change in the law. A less "advanced" solution, perhaps, but equally (if not more) effective in most circumstances.
Well it would seem that it was better than the one Disney made to the Senator from SC - this one might actually get to quit his day job!