Paid Time Off is a system many employers use rather than distinguishing between vacations, sick days, personal days, and sometimes holidays. The way it works is that each employee is given X hours of PTO, and how they use that time is up to them. It's a nice bonus for employees who don't get sick (they can get the time off without having to fake illness), and it can be a blessing for employees with unexpected health problems that would exceed a typical "sick day" allotment and they didn't get prior "vacation" approval for. And it saves the HR office from some paperwork tracking all the different kinds of time off employees are entitled to.
This happens in NY a few times each winter. Public schools are closed (due to snow), but the faculty and staff are still required to show.
The rationale for this discrepancy is that children and teenagers are at greater risk than adults during bad weather. When conditions are bad enough that other employers are telling their people to stay home, schools usually do the same with theirs.
I'd generalise this advice beyond the alcohol issue: make sure your "team building" activities really do try to include the whole team. If someone's not interested in participating, that's one thing, but if it's something they (for whatever reason) can't participate in, it can backfire.
I've seen things like: going out for coffee together one morning a week (when one guy's shift starts at noon), doing a Christmas gift exchange of some kind (when one guy is a Jehovah's Witness), and having social events for couples (when one guy's divorced or widowed or closeted or a/.er who can't afford an escort). That can serve to drive a wedge between that person and the rest of the team.
Over 18 years, I've cleaned up behind enough "good enough" installs to know that you can always do the job right.
Over 20 years, I've seen that in the real world, sometimes you can't. Time and money are finite, and when there isn't enough to "do it right" (e.g. no time for training, no money to hire a consultant), and "don't do it" isn't an acceptible option, then "good enough" is necessary. I'm not talking about incompetence or apathy (which seems to be the problem you've been cleaning up after), but about when hack work is actually the best solution possible.
It's your job not only to run the systems but to educate the business about what the right solution is. If you don't push back when you get an absurd request you're just filling a chair.
And what (besides poor reading skills) leads you to believe that I don't understand - and do - that? The fact that I've sometimes lost that argument, and then did what the winning side wanted... that's not "just filling a chair", it's "doing my job". If I were to keep insisting that we do it right or not at all, I'd have to hit the highway (by their choice, not mine).
If you don't have time to do it right the first time, when are you going to have time to do it over?
Would you care to join me in this conversation? Who said anything about doing it over? I'm talking about situations in which you barely have a chance to do it once, and management (having been educated by me about the realities of what they're demanding) knows that you're not going to get a chance to go back and do it again, but that's what they decide to do because that's better for the company than not doing it at all. Maybe you've been lucky enough never to have been in that situation (which is why you seem to be superimposing events from your own history over what I'm describing), but that doesn't change the fact (and my original point) that some employers do value a techie who can pull off "good enough" work when there isn't time to "do it right", and despite the fact that this isn't the way you - or I - would want to work, it's how the world sometimes works. Remind me not to turn to you for help next time I'm in a situation like that.
Remind me to never take a job at a place you've just left.
Why, do you think I somehow infect my employers with this attitude before I leave? I don't like to settle for "good enough" and it's one of the reasons I'm not at that place any more. I was one of the guys pushing to "do it right" whenever possible. But if settling for "good enough" and saving some money in the short term is the only way to ensure that company exists two years from now, then it's a perfectly sound business strategy, and I'm adult enough to recognise that even if I don't like it.
If you're in charge of systems, you have a responsibility to do things right.
If you're in charge of systems, you have a responsibility to run them the way the owner of those systems wants them run. A techie who insists on "do it right" when there simply isn't time or money for that, and the boss simply wants "good enough", will be invited to leave... and appropriately so. It's like a neat freak being married to a slob: it's good for neither of them. So get out of there and find someone you're compatible with.
Following your advice leads to sloppiness and "good enough"-ness. Not exactly skills that will endear you to an employer.
Depends on the employer. For many, "good enough" is... good enough. After all, it's why one former employer of mine is (by now) switching to Exchange and IIS on Windows, instead of Postfix and Apache on Linux: they're "good enough" and have the advantage of being from the same software vendor and consultants they (now) buy everything else from. And (setting aside my perfectionist tendencies and principle for a moment) for some businesses, anything better than "good enough" is a luxury... one they can't afford.
Using it at home is the approach I used, and I've been surprised by just how well it's served me. When I decided it was time for me to learn Linux, I picked up a mainstream Linux distro (Red Hat 6.0) and one of those thick guide books (SAMS Linux Unleashed) to give myself the maximum possible safety net... but nearly everything I know about it I picked up by solving real-life problems with it at home.
It's been almost spooky at times how often something has come up in my professional life which I'd just been dealing with at home (e.g. mail transport, firewalls, attachment filtering, Samba, mod_rewrite, cron), and once in a while something I'd learned how to do on the job would come in handy for the home network (e.g. floppy-based 386 print servers, spam blocking).
Some higher being must be really pissed off with Florida.
Remember the last presidential election? Methinks these are the supernatural equivalent of warning shots. Just wait and see what happens if Florida messes things up again this time.
In any case, it's not a good omen for George Bush. 12 years ago Florida got a severe pounding from the tropics and the other George Bush got a severe pounding from the voters.
is it possible to fly Space Shuttle easily and safely on earth? Like flying to another state?
Aerodynamically, the shuttles are essentially maneuverable bricks. During its return from orbit, the pilot can control the direction and angle of its descent, but that's about it. The wings cannot produce enough lift to gain altitude, certainly not from a standing start on the ground using the onboard engines (and with what fuel?).
This is why the shuttles have to be ferried atop a 747 back to Canaveral when (usually due to weather conditions) they instead land at Edwards AFB in California. So if NASA wanted to evacuate the orbiters, they'd probably need to, um, shuttle them out one at a time on the jumbo jet.
Two main factors: 1) If you angle your launches to the east, they will get a boost from the planet's eastward rotation. 2) The closer to the equator your launch site is, the bigger the boost. The Atlantic coast of Florida provided a wide open "crash" zone to the east, and (except for the southern horn of Texas) the biggest boost available in the continental U.S.
BTW, a nitpick - I doubt that "preventing nukes from wiping out every major city in my country" would be considered a "dubious" strategic value;)
But it is.
The nations that might be capable of launching such an attack have no motivation whatsoever for destroying a major ally and/or trade partner (e.g. Russia, China, France, UK, Israel, India), or even the few that might - on a really bad day - want to, know they would face horrible reprisals from the rest of the world (e.g. Pakistan, North Korea, Iran... all of whose capability is questionable, I might add).
The nations and factions that would seriously consider a nuclear attack on the United States would (need to) do so by means that a space-based anti-missile system would be powerless to counteract. They'd attack via boat or plane (a la Hiroshima and Nagasaki), or by assembling it in the U.S. and setting it off terrorist-style.
A program that would work against a threat that doesn't exist, and which wouldn't work against a threat that does exist... might have strategic value despite that, but it's definitely subject to doubt. So yeah: "dubious".
The money wasted on manned space missions should be spent on our missile defense system
So instead of spending money on a program with a proven track record of advancing practical science, we should spend it on something with dubious odds of succeeding at its primary mission (which is itself of dubious strategic value) and little potential for useful spin-off technology. I can be swayed by the bang-for-the-buck arguments for shifting the emphasis from manned to unmanned missions, but I'm not the least bit persuaded that it's more important to indulge the adolescent urge to make things go boom.
I guess having Apple hardware talking directly to a PC-compatible monitor still is too hard too bear
Not for our old G3 and G4 PowerMacs, which have standard 15-pin VGA ports. Or do you disqualify them because they came with a replaceable video card (rather than circuitry integrated into the motherboard)?
My crt monitor alone is bigger than the entire computer!
but to each his own I guess, I personally prefer driving a durango over some puny little electric car (no matter how cool it is)
That's OK, but some of us feel it necessary to "compensate" in the other direction. It's also why I drive a li'l Chevy Metro.
the screen cannot be adjusted and sits too high for most people,
If so it's because "most people" have gotten too used to looking down to see their flat-on-the-desktop CRTs or bound-to-the-keyboard laptop screens. Putting the bottom of the screen just a few inches above the keyboard would indicate a poor understanding of human anatomy. This looks like the top half of the screen will be at about eye level, which is better for someone who's going to be spending a lot of time in front of it.
The Powermac G5's are way to gargantuan for my desktop
Have you considered putting it next to the desk? That's what they were designed for (e.g. the optical media drive at the top).
Unfortunately, I think they've pretty much sold out the previous generation iMacs, so I doubt that getting one of them is much of an option.
I can confirm that the old iMacs are darn near impossible to get one's hands on. Our art gallery needed a couple of them for an upcoming show (the installation was designed around the iLamp configuration) and we ended up having to get a couple of open-box units shipped from a retailer on the other side of the country.
I think some people were put off by the iLamp being so obviously "designed". Sure, it looks cool in a well-decorated post-modern office, but in your average person's home, it sticks out a bit. This may look ordinary enough to fit in better.
Why did they make the screen so short? The bezel along the bottom edge looks 3" thick.
Apple's been pushing the "widescreen" aspect ratio for displays, so this is the shape they wanted, and designed around. It's the same shape as the 17" G4 iMac's.
If they made it a more traditional aspect ratio, there'd probably still be 3" along the bottom. They need that to fit some of the thicker components inside without making the whole enclosure more than 2" thick.
I find this design reminiscent of the original Macs, which had a similar screen-above-the-blank-area face.
Common sense goes a long ways. I've known people who brought gear to school which cost them thousands of dollars, and then tore their hair out over the chances of it getting broken, stolen, or whatever. Instead of trying to impress people with how big your stereo/gamebox/penis/wallet/heatsink is, aim to bring stuff that no one would bother stealing. It'll do fine.
I'll let you in on a little secret: you won't need to bring your own supercomputer to get your coursework done; the college will actually have equipment available for anything that requires major horsepower. You don't actually need anything bigger than a boombox to fill a dorm room with music. A junker bike is great for getting to classes across campus. An AlphaSmart, an old Pentium I laptop, or even a TRS-80 Model 100 will be all the portable you need for taking notes in class. The smaller fridge and microwave, the better. And I can assure you (I was working there at the time) that CmdrTaco didn't have a cluster of G5s in his dorm room when he invented/. If you need an alarm or other security to protect it... you've got too much.
Then just get in the habit of locking your door to prevent casual theft, and you're all set.
In terms of general advice for incoming freshmen: take as many classes outside your major as you can get away with. Your advisor will probably steer you into as many classes in his department as he can, but he's biased (it's his speciality) and he has an agenda (more students means more money for the dept), so you have to bring your own sense of perspective to it. If you're majoring in Geek, that stuff's important to getting you a job, but the arts, lit, philosophy, psych, soc, geology, languages, history, etc. classes are what's going to make you a more interesting - and interested - person in the long run. (It might even save you from a lifetime of celibacy, by giving you something else you can discuss intelligently.) I made the mistake of ignoring my interest in art the first time through college (focusing too much on the Comp Sci degree), and ended up going back to pick that up... but by them I was an "older student", which took a lot of the fun out of it.
That being said, I'd be more likely to pay 8.00 for a massive two-hour Halo deathmatch than a boring movie.
I'd be more likely to pay $8 for for a boring movie than sit and watch someone masturgame for two hours, even for free. Movies are designed to provide passive entertainment, and even the worst ones offer opportunities for entertainment criticising the acting, plot, dialog, etc. But games are designed to entertain only the player, which makes the rows and rows of seats in the theater pretty pointless. It seems like a simpler solution than projecting the image on a cinema screen would be to sit closer to the TV.
Slashdot Mirror
Paid Time Off is a system many employers use rather than distinguishing between vacations, sick days, personal days, and sometimes holidays. The way it works is that each employee is given X hours of PTO, and how they use that time is up to them. It's a nice bonus for employees who don't get sick (they can get the time off without having to fake illness), and it can be a blessing for employees with unexpected health problems that would exceed a typical "sick day" allotment and they didn't get prior "vacation" approval for. And it saves the HR office from some paperwork tracking all the different kinds of time off employees are entitled to.
The rationale for this discrepancy is that children and teenagers are at greater risk than adults during bad weather. When conditions are bad enough that other employers are telling their people to stay home, schools usually do the same with theirs.
I've seen things like: going out for coffee together one morning a week (when one guy's shift starts at noon), doing a Christmas gift exchange of some kind (when one guy is a Jehovah's Witness), and having social events for couples (when one guy's divorced or widowed or closeted or a /.er who can't afford an escort). That can serve to drive a wedge between that person and the rest of the team.
Over 20 years, I've seen that in the real world, sometimes you can't. Time and money are finite, and when there isn't enough to "do it right" (e.g. no time for training, no money to hire a consultant), and "don't do it" isn't an acceptible option, then "good enough" is necessary. I'm not talking about incompetence or apathy (which seems to be the problem you've been cleaning up after), but about when hack work is actually the best solution possible.
It's your job not only to run the systems but to educate the business about what the right solution is. If you don't push back when you get an absurd request you're just filling a chair.
And what (besides poor reading skills) leads you to believe that I don't understand - and do - that? The fact that I've sometimes lost that argument, and then did what the winning side wanted... that's not "just filling a chair", it's "doing my job". If I were to keep insisting that we do it right or not at all, I'd have to hit the highway (by their choice, not mine).
If you don't have time to do it right the first time, when are you going to have time to do it over?
Would you care to join me in this conversation? Who said anything about doing it over? I'm talking about situations in which you barely have a chance to do it once, and management (having been educated by me about the realities of what they're demanding) knows that you're not going to get a chance to go back and do it again, but that's what they decide to do because that's better for the company than not doing it at all. Maybe you've been lucky enough never to have been in that situation (which is why you seem to be superimposing events from your own history over what I'm describing), but that doesn't change the fact (and my original point) that some employers do value a techie who can pull off "good enough" work when there isn't time to "do it right", and despite the fact that this isn't the way you - or I - would want to work, it's how the world sometimes works. Remind me not to turn to you for help next time I'm in a situation like that.
Why, do you think I somehow infect my employers with this attitude before I leave? I don't like to settle for "good enough" and it's one of the reasons I'm not at that place any more. I was one of the guys pushing to "do it right" whenever possible. But if settling for "good enough" and saving some money in the short term is the only way to ensure that company exists two years from now, then it's a perfectly sound business strategy, and I'm adult enough to recognise that even if I don't like it.
If you're in charge of systems, you have a responsibility to do things right.
If you're in charge of systems, you have a responsibility to run them the way the owner of those systems wants them run. A techie who insists on "do it right" when there simply isn't time or money for that, and the boss simply wants "good enough", will be invited to leave... and appropriately so. It's like a neat freak being married to a slob: it's good for neither of them. So get out of there and find someone you're compatible with.
Depends on the employer. For many, "good enough" is... good enough. After all, it's why one former employer of mine is (by now) switching to Exchange and IIS on Windows, instead of Postfix and Apache on Linux: they're "good enough" and have the advantage of being from the same software vendor and consultants they (now) buy everything else from. And (setting aside my perfectionist tendencies and principle for a moment) for some businesses, anything better than "good enough" is a luxury... one they can't afford.
And if you're looking for something more social, try this link :)
It's been almost spooky at times how often something has come up in my professional life which I'd just been dealing with at home (e.g. mail transport, firewalls, attachment filtering, Samba, mod_rewrite, cron), and once in a while something I'd learned how to do on the job would come in handy for the home network (e.g. floppy-based 386 print servers, spam blocking).
Don't be silly. They're merely referring to the well-concealed fact that Admiral Shepherd was a woman.
Remember the last presidential election? Methinks these are the supernatural equivalent of warning shots. Just wait and see what happens if Florida messes things up again this time.
In any case, it's not a good omen for George Bush. 12 years ago Florida got a severe pounding from the tropics and the other George Bush got a severe pounding from the voters.
Aerodynamically, the shuttles are essentially maneuverable bricks. During its return from orbit, the pilot can control the direction and angle of its descent, but that's about it. The wings cannot produce enough lift to gain altitude, certainly not from a standing start on the ground using the onboard engines (and with what fuel?).
This is why the shuttles have to be ferried atop a 747 back to Canaveral when (usually due to weather conditions) they instead land at Edwards AFB in California. So if NASA wanted to evacuate the orbiters, they'd probably need to, um, shuttle them out one at a time on the jumbo jet.
Two main factors: 1) If you angle your launches to the east, they will get a boost from the planet's eastward rotation. 2) The closer to the equator your launch site is, the bigger the boost. The Atlantic coast of Florida provided a wide open "crash" zone to the east, and (except for the southern horn of Texas) the biggest boost available in the continental U.S.
But it is.
The nations that might be capable of launching such an attack have no motivation whatsoever for destroying a major ally and/or trade partner (e.g. Russia, China, France, UK, Israel, India), or even the few that might - on a really bad day - want to, know they would face horrible reprisals from the rest of the world (e.g. Pakistan, North Korea, Iran... all of whose capability is questionable, I might add).
The nations and factions that would seriously consider a nuclear attack on the United States would (need to) do so by means that a space-based anti-missile system would be powerless to counteract. They'd attack via boat or plane (a la Hiroshima and Nagasaki), or by assembling it in the U.S. and setting it off terrorist-style.
A program that would work against a threat that doesn't exist, and which wouldn't work against a threat that does exist... might have strategic value despite that, but it's definitely subject to doubt. So yeah: "dubious".
So instead of spending money on a program with a proven track record of advancing practical science, we should spend it on something with dubious odds of succeeding at its primary mission (which is itself of dubious strategic value) and little potential for useful spin-off technology. I can be swayed by the bang-for-the-buck arguments for shifting the emphasis from manned to unmanned missions, but I'm not the least bit persuaded that it's more important to indulge the adolescent urge to make things go boom.
Not for our old G3 and G4 PowerMacs, which have standard 15-pin VGA ports. Or do you disqualify them because they came with a replaceable video card (rather than circuitry integrated into the motherboard)?
That's OK, but some of us feel it necessary to "compensate" in the other direction. It's also why I drive a li'l Chevy Metro.
If so it's because "most people" have gotten too used to looking down to see their flat-on-the-desktop CRTs or bound-to-the-keyboard laptop screens. Putting the bottom of the screen just a few inches above the keyboard would indicate a poor understanding of human anatomy. This looks like the top half of the screen will be at about eye level, which is better for someone who's going to be spending a lot of time in front of it.
The Powermac G5's are way to gargantuan for my desktop
Have you considered putting it next to the desk? That's what they were designed for (e.g. the optical media drive at the top).
I should have specified "new". Of course the market for second-hand iLamps is still there, as it is for most Macs.
I can confirm that the old iMacs are darn near impossible to get one's hands on. Our art gallery needed a couple of them for an upcoming show (the installation was designed around the iLamp configuration) and we ended up having to get a couple of open-box units shipped from a retailer on the other side of the country.
I think some people were put off by the iLamp being so obviously "designed". Sure, it looks cool in a well-decorated post-modern office, but in your average person's home, it sticks out a bit. This may look ordinary enough to fit in better.
Apple's been pushing the "widescreen" aspect ratio for displays, so this is the shape they wanted, and designed around. It's the same shape as the 17" G4 iMac's.
If they made it a more traditional aspect ratio, there'd probably still be 3" along the bottom. They need that to fit some of the thicker components inside without making the whole enclosure more than 2" thick.
I find this design reminiscent of the original Macs, which had a similar screen-above-the-blank-area face.
I'll let you in on a little secret: you won't need to bring your own supercomputer to get your coursework done; the college will actually have equipment available for anything that requires major horsepower. You don't actually need anything bigger than a boombox to fill a dorm room with music. A junker bike is great for getting to classes across campus. An AlphaSmart, an old Pentium I laptop, or even a TRS-80 Model 100 will be all the portable you need for taking notes in class. The smaller fridge and microwave, the better. And I can assure you (I was working there at the time) that CmdrTaco didn't have a cluster of G5s in his dorm room when he invented /. If you need an alarm or other security to protect it... you've got too much.
Then just get in the habit of locking your door to prevent casual theft, and you're all set.
In terms of general advice for incoming freshmen: take as many classes outside your major as you can get away with. Your advisor will probably steer you into as many classes in his department as he can, but he's biased (it's his speciality) and he has an agenda (more students means more money for the dept), so you have to bring your own sense of perspective to it. If you're majoring in Geek, that stuff's important to getting you a job, but the arts, lit, philosophy, psych, soc, geology, languages, history, etc. classes are what's going to make you a more interesting - and interested - person in the long run. (It might even save you from a lifetime of celibacy, by giving you something else you can discuss intelligently.) I made the mistake of ignoring my interest in art the first time through college (focusing too much on the Comp Sci degree), and ended up going back to pick that up... but by them I was an "older student", which took a lot of the fun out of it.
I'd be more likely to pay $8 for for a boring movie than sit and watch someone masturgame for two hours, even for free. Movies are designed to provide passive entertainment, and even the worst ones offer opportunities for entertainment criticising the acting, plot, dialog, etc. But games are designed to entertain only the player, which makes the rows and rows of seats in the theater pretty pointless. It seems like a simpler solution than projecting the image on a cinema screen would be to sit closer to the TV.
This isn't necessarily a good idea
<irony>No, but losing that bet just means he's due to win! Don't you know anything about how gambling statistics work?</irony>
It's showing up over and over and over and over.