Just wanted to join in on the "Hey Asshole" Chorus.
That guy was trying to get a better holistic picture of your organization. Maybe if you learned a bit about sales, you'd come to understand the types of features the customers want, or how to "sell" your suggestions to management.
*Shakes head sadly*. No wonder non-techies think techies are such assholes...
You know, I really, really, *really* hope you have an equity stake in the company. Your trust in the owners is scary, and I'd like to think you're getting something for all this nutbusting. Do you really think they're going to reward your loyalty? I can appreciate working hard because of the satisfaction you get from a job well done, but surely there are other work places out there that would offer you the same satisfaction AND fairly compensate you.
I'd hate to hear from you in 2-3 years when the company goes belly up (or the owners decide to "rip it apart" again) and you've got NOTHING to show for your work but an empty life (because you've been working 70 hour weeks) and empty nest egg (because you took a 60% paycut).
Heh Heh Heh! 2 points for you. I didn't think anyone would recognize it, so I didn't bother putting the name down. But it was RP.
I think the first pods to get over to Australia were system 4 (Tesla). The original systems (1-2) used amiga boards to drive the secondary displays. I remember taking apart the pods, and all of the boards were hand soldered. The insides of the pods were made of cut up pinball games (Adams Family, since Midway was so close the the VWE offices).
Most of the VWE programmers went to Fasa Interactive, which in turn got bought by MS. The last game that they released (that I know of) was Crimson Skies (http://www.microsoft.com/games/PC/crimsonskies.as p). VWE does still exist (http://www.virtualworld.com), but it's a sad shadow of its formerself. AFAIK (don't live in Chicago anymore), they've basically ported MW 4 over.
For a brief time a couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to be a tester on a game that I absolutely adored (it was, for lack of a better description, a space racing game). At the time I was testing the new version, I had been playing it for 2 years, and I knew the whole game like the back of my hand.
Or so I thought.
We spent *days* doing things like "bounce your ship into the channel walls repeatedly until you find a hole". Or, "Have all four of you boost off the starting line, and we'll take network load readings, and stop the game. Do it again. And again. And again. And again". We spent ~8 hours one day looking for an obscure bug by having us move each ship a tiny bit at a time, while the other 7 of us watched. 8 hours of sitting there for 20 mins, motionless (silent), and then moving a quarter inch. Goddamn, that was boring. I'm bored now just remembering it;)
The point is, for an experienced player, it was nothing like playing the game, because we weren't playing (IE, trying to achieve the goals of the game), we were testing (IE trying to achieve the goals of the QA Lead, which was test functionality). The entire time I was there, I think we ran one real race per day, and that was just to keep us from going batshit at the end of the day.
Certainly, for a short term it beat the hell out of working (I took a week off to go do it), but I could see how it would quickly become tedious and boring. You don't (or at least I didn't) get the thrill of nailing down bugs, or even finding them in open play. It was just tedious, tedious, tedious work recreating other people's problems.
It's interesting. I used to work in the intersection of biology education and computers. During my work day I would spend half a lot of time swearing to dubious professors that computers were an ideal method to teach students skills (everything from aid in memorization to surgery skills). And yet, at the same time, I was (and still am) in love with violent video games, and would absolutely scoff at the idea that there was anything wrong with games like Doom (human targets) or "lethal enforcers" (plastic guns and human targets).
I don't know what made me recognize the contradiction, but one day I realized that I couldn't have it both ways: If you believe that holding a "virtual" scalpel and doing a dissection can teach you how do perform a dissection, then it follows that holding a virtual gun and shooting someone can teach the SKILLS (not give you the desire to, mind you) to shoot real people. You can't have it both ways. Either virtual skills transfer, or they don't.
Before anyone starts yelling, I understand that there's a big difference between fantasy play and real life -- Clearly, people can imagine all sorts of things without acting on them and still be "healthy". Additionally, I understand that having the hand-eye coordination to shoot someone and the desire to shoot someone are two difference things. Nevertheless, as the parent post points out, surely the action/sight of violence must have an affect. If we're stimulating that part of the brain, and building up neural pathways, what is the outcome?
BTW, this doesn't mean I've turned against violent videogames (I own GTA3 and I love it). It just means I'm much more thoughtful about what we're learning and getting from video games, and much less quick to dismiss all criticisms of them.
My company matches 10% of my salary and uses it to buy shares in the ESOP. This is seperate from my 401(K) matching, and does not come out of my salary. I consider it a great benefit, but I wouldn't consider it a substitute for salary.
I have to protest about your "bit of fun" comment. Assuming a large enough stake, ESOPs fundamentally change the power structure of a company. While that's fun on some level, it's not trivial.
At present I own a company. I know my employees will not like it when I decide to sell it. I can't guarantee that they will all come out ahead, but I'll try my best.
You might want to consider an ESOP. This was recently implemented at my company (They're aiming for 50% ownership over then next 5 years), and I think it's the greatest thing since slice bread.
In a nutshell: The employees buy shares of the company from the founders. The founders are then able to get equity out of the company w/out selling out to a bunch of outsiders who don't care about long term health of the place, and the employees get to become "stakeholders" in the place that they work. Everybody wins. You might want to consider it.
You know, I've always found that when ever you have one guy yelling "Everyone else is an ASSHOLE!!! THEY'RE SO FUCKING DUMB!!!", inevitably it turns out he's the only asshole in the room.
I want to second the suggestion of CI. I've always enjoyed their "scientific method" approach to cooking: Start with a theory, test the hell out of it, follow any logical paths it may lead you down.
According to IMDB the original stapler was just painted anyways:
The red Swingline stapler that Milton was so afraid of having taken away was never actually manufactured by the Swingline company; it was instead painted red by a crew member in the props department. However, following the movie's success on video as a cult film, the demand for red Swingline staplers (apparently as a symbol of quiet rebellion among cubicle-bound employees) was so great that the company began to sell the red Swingline stapler on its website..
---
So break out that red paint and make your own...;)
The problem with doing away with VHS isn't, "what format will I get my pre-recorded content on", since DVD seems to win over VHS in several categories (durability, quality, etc), but rather "when I want to tape Hardware Wars, how am I going to quickly and cheaply record it"?
Yes, there are DVD recorders available, but they're expensive. And Yes, digital recorders like Tivo and ReplayTV are available, but not widely (certainly compared to the installed base of VHSs).
Given this is the company that tried to cram DivX (the old version, not DivX;) Deux) down consumers throats, completely ignoring that this was NOT a convenient format for them, I suspect this has more to do with profit margins than a whole hearted embrace of new technology. VHS players are a ridiculously cheap commodity item, while DVD players are still considered (to the mass market) "new" items, and are therefore more expensive.
Okay, given this, and the recent spate of MS educational license nut cracking, it seems like there's a real need for a special linux distro designed for educational centers.
Having run a college lab, I know the major barrier to adoption was ease of use -- you don't want your lab CAs having to spend hours explaining a shell to drama majors (or professors, for that matter). But what about a very simple desktop (similar to Apple's old easyfinder (I can't remember what it was called) specially prepared for educational students?
I mean, throw together a dist that's user friendly, that has Star Office, some pre-canned ghost like functions (for labs) and a grading app for teachers, and I think educational instiutions big and small would be falling all over themselves to adopt it.
No, you misunderstand.
I wrote the article write up: The "scary precedent" isn't that an ISP was forced to remove libelous material. The scary precedent is that they were sued (and beaten) because they refused to promise that no more material like this would be published in the future.
This decision pushes ISPs into the role of "Content Cop", which is not acceptable to me. Do really want MS (and every other ISP) to be legally responsible for checking every website it hosts for "bad" things?
Re:the beauty of credit cards
on
Disconnecting
·
· Score: 1
Credit cards are very good at blocking individual charges, but unfortunately, you can't block all future transactions from single creditor -- or at least Citicards claims they can't.
I had similar problems with the DSL provider Flashcom (may they rot in hell). Even after the company declared bankruptcy and shutdown their call center, they still kept charging my credit card for a monthly fee. I am absolutely sure there's a circle of hell with this model.
So every month for 5 months, Flashcom would bill me and I would write a snail mail letter to Flashcom telling them to fuck off. I would always CC: the BBB and Citibank. Citibank would then happily refund my money, but when I told them "look, just block these guys in the future and we won't have this problem", they claimed they could only strike past charges, they couldn't do anything about future charges.
This went on for 5 months until I finally cancelled my card and got a new one. Thankfully that solved the problem.
Overall, despite the hassles I'm still glad I had automatic credit card billing -- I feel especially bad for the poor slobs who sent Flashcom a lump sum check for the year. I doubt they ever saw their money back.
I agree with some of the other posters: Everything gets dated.
What dates movies for me isn't special effects, but bad haircuts. Even "period pieces" set in the 1700s but shot in the 1970s look dated to me. Hell, even the choice of lead actress' body type (is "thin" in (1970s)? Or bullet-shaped boobs (1950s) or Hyper athletic-yet-still-having-big-knockers (200x)) starts to look "odd" after a while.
The problem with Enron was that it matched 401(k) contributions in stock instead of cash, and they made it extremely difficult to get that money out of Enron stock. Additionally, because the stock was doing so well, people didn't diversify their 401(k)s, so when the Enron stock took a header, it took all their networth with it. ESOPs don't have to be a replacement for a 401(k) (and in my company, it's not), and they're emphatically *not* an excuse for having an undiversified portfolio.
The problem with Enron wasn't that the employees owned stock, it was that the people at the top were lying thieving scum sucking bastards. Don't tar the idea of employee ownership with the Enron brush just because one company was full of bastards.
Employee ownership isn't a panacea to all the problems the poster mentions, but it's certainly a step towards feeling invested in what you're doing.
An employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) is a type of tax-qualified employee benefit plan in which most or all of the assets are invested in stock of the employer. Like profit sharing and 401(k) plans, which are governed by many of the same laws, an ESOP generally must include at least all full-time employees meeting certain age and service requirements. Employees do not actually buy shares in an ESOP. Instead, the company contributes its own shares to the plan, contributes cash to buy its own stock (often from an existing owner), or, most commonly, has the plan borrow money to buy stock, with the company repaying the loan. All of these uses have significant tax benefits for the company, the employees, and the sellers. Employees gradually vest in their accounts and receive their benefits when they leave the company (although there may be distributions prior to that). Over 8 million employees in over 11,000 companies, mostly closely held, participate in ESOPs. (From : http://www.nceo.org/library/how_to_choose.html)
The employees benefit through the growth of their company, the founders can leave without having to sell the whole thing at once to a large company, and the company itself gets a sizable tax break -- everyone wins.
Slashdot Mirror
Just wanted to join in on the "Hey Asshole" Chorus.
That guy was trying to get a better holistic picture of your organization. Maybe if you learned a bit about sales, you'd come to understand the types of features the customers want, or how to "sell" your suggestions to management.
*Shakes head sadly*. No wonder non-techies think techies are such assholes...
You know, I really, really, *really* hope you have an equity stake in the company. Your trust in the owners is scary, and I'd like to think you're getting something for all this nutbusting. Do you really think they're going to reward your loyalty? I can appreciate working hard because of the satisfaction you get from a job well done, but surely there are other work places out there that would offer you the same satisfaction AND fairly compensate you.
I'd hate to hear from you in 2-3 years when the company goes belly up (or the owners decide to "rip it apart" again) and you've got NOTHING to show for your work but an empty life (because you've been working 70 hour weeks) and empty nest egg (because you took a 60% paycut).
Heh Heh Heh! 2 points for you. I didn't think anyone would recognize it, so I didn't bother putting the name down. But it was RP.
s p). VWE does still exist (http://www.virtualworld.com), but it's a sad shadow of its formerself. AFAIK (don't live in Chicago anymore), they've basically ported MW 4 over.
;) .
I think the first pods to get over to Australia were system 4 (Tesla). The original systems (1-2) used amiga boards to drive the secondary displays. I remember taking apart the pods, and all of the boards were hand soldered. The insides of the pods were made of cut up pinball games (Adams Family, since Midway was so close the the VWE offices).
Most of the VWE programmers went to Fasa Interactive, which in turn got bought by MS. The last game that they released (that I know of) was Crimson Skies (http://www.microsoft.com/games/PC/crimsonskies.a
Thanks for the trip memory lane
For a brief time a couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to be a tester on a game that I absolutely adored (it was, for lack of a better description, a space racing game). At the time I was testing the new version, I had been playing it for 2 years, and I knew the whole game like the back of my hand.
;)
Or so I thought.
We spent *days* doing things like "bounce your ship into the channel walls repeatedly until you find a hole". Or, "Have all four of you boost off the starting line, and we'll take network load readings, and stop the game. Do it again. And again. And again. And again". We spent ~8 hours one day looking for an obscure bug by having us move each ship a tiny bit at a time, while the other 7 of us watched. 8 hours of sitting there for 20 mins, motionless (silent), and then moving a quarter inch. Goddamn, that was boring. I'm bored now just remembering it
The point is, for an experienced player, it was nothing like playing the game, because we weren't playing (IE, trying to achieve the goals of the game), we were testing (IE trying to achieve the goals of the QA Lead, which was test functionality). The entire time I was there, I think we ran one real race per day, and that was just to keep us from going batshit at the end of the day.
Certainly, for a short term it beat the hell out of working (I took a week off to go do it), but I could see how it would quickly become tedious and boring. You don't (or at least I didn't) get the thrill of nailing down bugs, or even finding them in open play. It was just tedious, tedious, tedious work recreating other people's problems.
Well, Thank God.
It really pisses me off when they put all those chemicals and pesticides in my LEDs.
I don't know what made me recognize the contradiction, but one day I realized that I couldn't have it both ways: If you believe that holding a "virtual" scalpel and doing a dissection can teach you how do perform a dissection, then it follows that holding a virtual gun and shooting someone can teach the SKILLS (not give you the desire to, mind you) to shoot real people. You can't have it both ways. Either virtual skills transfer, or they don't.
Before anyone starts yelling, I understand that there's a big difference between fantasy play and real life -- Clearly, people can imagine all sorts of things without acting on them and still be "healthy". Additionally, I understand that having the hand-eye coordination to shoot someone and the desire to shoot someone are two difference things. Nevertheless, as the parent post points out, surely the action/sight of violence must have an affect. If we're stimulating that part of the brain, and building up neural pathways, what is the outcome?
BTW, this doesn't mean I've turned against violent videogames (I own GTA3 and I love it). It just means I'm much more thoughtful about what we're learning and getting from video games, and much less quick to dismiss all criticisms of them.
Well, sorry to hear about the shafting.
My company matches 10% of my salary and uses it to buy shares in the ESOP. This is seperate from my 401(K) matching, and does not come out of my salary. I consider it a great benefit, but I wouldn't consider it a substitute for salary.
I have to protest about your "bit of fun" comment. Assuming a large enough stake, ESOPs fundamentally change the power structure of a company. While that's fun on some level, it's not trivial.
You might want to consider an ESOP. This was recently implemented at my company (They're aiming for 50% ownership over then next 5 years), and I think it's the greatest thing since slice bread.
In a nutshell: The employees buy shares of the company from the founders. The founders are then able to get equity out of the company w/out selling out to a bunch of outsiders who don't care about long term health of the place, and the employees get to become "stakeholders" in the place that they work. Everybody wins. You might want to consider it.
You know, I've always found that when ever you have one guy yelling "Everyone else is an ASSHOLE!!! THEY'RE SO FUCKING DUMB!!!", inevitably it turns out he's the only asshole in the room.
Sad, but true.
I thought this guy's claim to cooking fame was that he used a scientific approach? What's wrong with this picture?
/.'ers respect this guy, but I'm not too impressed with this answer.
Scientist 1: I have a phenomenon I don't understand and I want your opinion on it.
Scientist 2: Your data doesn't match up with mine. Therefore I will discredit you by suggesting you take drugs.
Scientist 1: But I have reproducible results!
Scientist 2: Nope, sorry. Talk to the hand, crack smoker.
I understand a lot of
Well, if you'd just said "which site has the largest number of zombies clicking on all the links", I'd would have to have given it to Slashdot.
But when you throw in that tricky "reading" thing...
I wonder if this is Salon's attempt to /. Slashdot for all the times Slashdot has hammered Salon? ;)
I want to second the suggestion of CI. I've always enjoyed their "scientific method" approach to cooking: Start with a theory, test the hell out of it, follow any logical paths it may lead you down.
It's a great magazine.
According to IMDB the original stapler was just painted anyways:
;)
The red Swingline stapler that Milton was so afraid of having taken away was never actually manufactured by the Swingline company; it was instead painted red by a crew member in the props department. However, following the movie's success on video as a cult film, the demand for red Swingline staplers (apparently as a symbol of quiet rebellion among cubicle-bound employees) was so great that the company began to sell the red Swingline stapler on its website..
---
So break out that red paint and make your own...
"You'll put your eye out with that thing!"
Mmmm...Lasers in things that go next to your head. A sudden boom in designer eye patches?
Huhn.
;) Deux) down consumers throats, completely ignoring that this was NOT a convenient format for them, I suspect this has more to do with profit margins than a whole hearted embrace of new technology. VHS players are a ridiculously cheap commodity item, while DVD players are still considered (to the mass market) "new" items, and are therefore more expensive.
The problem with doing away with VHS isn't, "what format will I get my pre-recorded content on", since DVD seems to win over VHS in several categories (durability, quality, etc), but rather "when I want to tape Hardware Wars, how am I going to quickly and cheaply record it"?
Yes, there are DVD recorders available, but they're expensive. And Yes, digital recorders like Tivo and ReplayTV are available, but not widely (certainly compared to the installed base of VHSs).
Given this is the company that tried to cram DivX (the old version, not DivX
Having run a college lab, I know the major barrier to adoption was ease of use -- you don't want your lab CAs having to spend hours explaining a shell to drama majors (or professors, for that matter). But what about a very simple desktop (similar to Apple's old easyfinder (I can't remember what it was called) specially prepared for educational students?
I mean, throw together a dist that's user friendly, that has Star Office, some pre-canned ghost like functions (for labs) and a grading app for teachers, and I think educational instiutions big and small would be falling all over themselves to adopt it.
The importance (as I hope the last line indicated) is for the precedence it sets for all ISPs in the future.
This decision pushes ISPs into the role of "Content Cop", which is not acceptable to me. Do really want MS (and every other ISP) to be legally responsible for checking every website it hosts for "bad" things?
Credit cards are very good at blocking individual charges, but unfortunately, you can't block all future transactions from single creditor -- or at least Citicards claims they can't.
I had similar problems with the DSL provider Flashcom (may they rot in hell). Even after the company declared bankruptcy and shutdown their call center, they still kept charging my credit card for a monthly fee. I am absolutely sure there's a circle of hell with this model.
So every month for 5 months, Flashcom would bill me and I would write a snail mail letter to Flashcom telling them to fuck off. I would always CC: the BBB and Citibank. Citibank would then happily refund my money, but when I told them "look, just block these guys in the future and we won't have this problem", they claimed they could only strike past charges, they couldn't do anything about future charges.
This went on for 5 months until I finally cancelled my card and got a new one. Thankfully that solved the problem.
Overall, despite the hassles I'm still glad I had automatic credit card billing -- I feel especially bad for the poor slobs who sent Flashcom a lump sum check for the year. I doubt they ever saw their money back.
I agree with some of the other posters: Everything gets dated.
What dates movies for me isn't special effects, but bad haircuts. Even "period pieces" set in the 1700s but shot in the 1970s look dated to me. Hell, even the choice of lead actress' body type (is "thin" in (1970s)? Or bullet-shaped boobs (1950s) or Hyper athletic-yet-still-having-big-knockers (200x)) starts to look "odd" after a while.
Better call Pat Sajak...I think someone needs to buy a vowel.
In other news, Boutros Boutros-Gahli will be running Red Hat....
(or perhaps just a spell check?
Is it just me, or does the lead guy (Hayden Christensen) look like one of the backstreet boys?
No wonder they nixed letting the boys be in the movie...Everyone would have confused them with the lead, and it'd have been a really big mess...
The problem with Enron was that it matched 401(k) contributions in stock instead of cash, and they made it extremely difficult to get that money out of Enron stock. Additionally, because the stock was doing so well, people didn't diversify their 401(k)s, so when the Enron stock took a header, it took all their networth with it. ESOPs don't have to be a replacement for a 401(k) (and in my company, it's not), and they're emphatically *not* an excuse for having an undiversified portfolio.
The problem with Enron wasn't that the employees owned stock, it was that the people at the top were lying thieving scum sucking bastards. Don't tar the idea of employee ownership with the Enron brush just because one company was full of bastards.
Employee ownership isn't a panacea to all the problems the poster mentions, but it's certainly a step towards feeling invested in what you're doing.
I've become a big fan lately of Employee Stock Option Programs (ESOP). To quote:
An employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) is a type of tax-qualified employee benefit plan in which most or all of the assets are invested in stock of the employer. Like profit sharing and 401(k) plans, which are governed by many of the same laws, an ESOP generally must include at least all full-time employees meeting certain age and service requirements. Employees do not actually buy shares in an ESOP. Instead, the company contributes its own shares to the plan, contributes cash to buy its own stock (often from an existing owner), or, most commonly, has the plan borrow money to buy stock, with the company repaying the loan. All of these uses have significant tax benefits for the company, the employees, and the sellers. Employees gradually vest in their accounts and receive their benefits when they leave the company (although there may be distributions prior to that). Over 8 million employees in over 11,000 companies, mostly closely held, participate in ESOPs.
(From : http://www.nceo.org/library/how_to_choose.html)
The employees benefit through the growth of their company, the founders can leave without having to sell the whole thing at once to a large company, and the company itself gets a sizable tax break -- everyone wins.