Once a space elevator gets biult, it's the people of color who would control access to it, and they would be able to impose their own worldview on space access.
Yeah. 'cause that worked out just that way for that whole Panama Canal thing, right?
There are few workers less useful than the worker who has been up for 36 hours.
I try to steer clear of cultures which value either volume of hours or which insist on strict 8-5. I value results from my people, and I expect that results will be enough for the people over me.
There's nothing worse than listening to some idiot crow about how he works 80 hours a week when you *know* that he doesn't get anything done.
Yeah, I just got done supporting that same large CM product a few months ago.
In my experience, the problem with our organization (I'm in California) is that it was viewed by the company as just tech support, when in reality they actually have a bunch of CM Administrators with people skills. I dunno about Europe, but the west coast operation has a hard time keeping people (at least, non-HB1 workers) once they realize they (a) can get 30% more someplace else thanks to the training they've gotten, and (b) don't have much of a meaningful future within the support organization.
It is unfortunate that support of interesting and somewhat difficult products (like the aforementioned CM tool) tends to get grouped together with the guys answering the phones at AOL.
Okay, so you're getting something for free that everyone else has to pay for, and which you should have paid for in order to enjoy, and it's not stealing?
You should have been around to defend me that time I and a buddy got caught theatre hopping (while cutting classes, none the less). I'm sure that once you explained that we were only infringing on the IP of the theatre rather than not paying our $6 like everyone else, and as such not stealing, my parents wouldn't have grounded me for a week.
(sarcasm off) That's such bull, and you know it. If Seseme Street taught me anything, getting something for free when you're supposed to be paying is stealing. No matter how much you try to justify it to yourself, you can't dispute the basic common sense.
Argue it's a victimless crime, or that you're rebelling against the corporate monoliths, ir that you don't care if you're stealing, and I'll accept it. Arguing that you're in the right just makes you look silly.
"Boy, I just can't wait for the opportunity to pay Napster a monthly fee to share my music with other people. And have them censor me for my trouble, too."
Yeah, it's getting so stealing other people's copyrighted material is hardly worth it anymore. Why, just the other day, I almost had to *buy* a CD, like back in the dark ages.
Oh wait, I forget. The record companies have it coming because they charge too much and put out crap and rip off the artists and drag their feet in new technology and pay off politicians for favorable legislation. I also forgot that all Slashdotters only use Napster in a way consistant with fair use to get digital copies of music they already own. Silly me.
The thing about banner ads is that I'll occassionally see one for something I'm interested in or for a company I didn't realize had a web presence, but usually I'll just make a mental note and surf there myself when I'm in the mood to shop.
I wonder what would happen if companies started offering mild incentives to use the banners -- maybe I could get free shipping on my next DVD order at Reel.com if I clicked on the banner at Ebert's site or something.
Of course, since so many online retailers operate so close to the bottom line already, this may not be feasible.
Could someone please explain to me what the deal is with User Friendly? IMHO, it's rarely funny, hasn't been original since the birth of the Dust Puppy... I mean, it's a geek-oriented cartoon that focuses on geek issues, but it's still not really that funny.
Hey, why not kill two birds with one stone here? Install a complete faraday cage around the exterior of the house. So long as you remember not to leave any doors open and you don't have any windows (a true Slashdotter shouldn't have Windows), you should be immune from either wireless or van eck.
My desktop and my Linux server are wired together with 100bT connections, and my laptops -- both I and my girlfriend have one -- can either plug into a network port for 100bT (which you can do if you're sitting on the couch, which is near a hub) or they can use wireless. I've got a 3com Home Wireless Network hub ($300-some-odd) and a couple of PCMCIA wireless cards.
I've found this to be ideal. We've ended up primarily using our laptops with the wireless net (even when we're on the couch and could easily plug in). My poor desktop rarely sees non-Quake action anymore. Since our primary applications involve internet access, and since the wireless is faster than our DSL, we simply almost never need the 100bT speeds.
Now, if only Tessla were alive to advise me about wireless juice, I'd be golden.
Having it all laid out there in front of me, I realized the direction in which Hollywood takes "the hacker" over time is alarming.
I mean, we go from David Lightman and Martin Bishop -- intelligent, well adjusted people who use their brains (although I don't think Redford ever touched a computer in Sneakers, which is interesting) -- to that "I am inwincible!" moron from Goldeneye and Sandra Bullock (the best-looking girl I can't stand to watch in a movie).
I think I liked it better when hackers and other generally smart people were portrayed as people and not as shallow stereotypes; we came off better then.
As a transplant out of Wisconsin to the Bay Area, I can't listen to or watch my favorite football team without:
1. Paying an ungodly sum for satellite TV, then another ungodly sum for Season Ticket,
2. Flying to Green Bay for all of the games, or
3. Getting my dad to tape the games and send them to me, which loses something despite getting to fast-forward the commercials.
Of course, I can also wait for them to play the Niners once every few years, or to play on Monday night. Still, that's pretty lousy. So hey, I'd pay $10 a year to hear all the games.
I think you're probably right about the "small group of well-placed people" having most of the inter-office sex.
The thing that gets me is that the author of the article tries to pass it off as if it's (1) somehow unique to WOC and (2) a good thing. I've worked at or been around enough startups to see how godawful it is when people start hiring lovers (or ex-lovers) -- these tend to be people who would otherwise never have the position they get put into (they never just end up as secretaries anymore), and it's the other employees who suffer first.
NASA's basically saying that space is only for Certified Space Guys (and Gals), that somehow only the people they pick out from the military are smart and fit enough to train to go into space.
Hogwash.
Consider: You and NASA decide to rent an apartment, for which you split the rent. Then, as your moving in, NASA says that you can't have a friend overnight, even though you're taking care of them, feeding them, and they'll stay in your spare bedroom. Moreover, NASA doesn't even have a good reason for keeping your friend out. NASA is the roommate from Hell.
In any event, NASA won't have the final say on this one. When the guy flies up (on a Russian spacecraft), a Russian will be commanding the station. NASA ground control will have about as much to say about Tito boarding the station as the Japanese government had to say about the US Navy's Amature Submarine Captain Program.
Isn't it nice when someone comes out and proves your point, like mine about what arrogant pricks we can be, right after you make it?
It's a fact of life that people get pushed into bankrupcy -- they might lose their job, have a kid unexpectedly, have a spouse die, get injured and miss work, or a thousand other possibilities unrelated to just overextending themselves.
The new bill on just passed by the House puts credit card companies at the front of the line -- right after child support (although that's an amendment, originally child support was second) -- in a bankrupcy. People will lose their homes, their primary modes of transportation, health care, and even *go hungry* because the credit companies will, by law, have to come first; before paying the heating bill, before buying groceries.
These huge credit companies do just fine, and they have existing ways to protect themselves -- credit reports and credit ratings, reposessions, and they *do* get some reimbusement in the case of a bankrupcy. They make huge profits now, and this will just make those profits even bigger and do so at the expense of hurting real live people.
I can't decide if you're a troll, an inexperienced kid whose never known someone fallen on hard times, or just some asshole who thinks that MBNA and Citibank need additional protection at the cost of human misery. Whichever you are, you make me sick.
Hey, if we allow these Evil Debt-Carrying Slugs to get away with, say, paying child support before paying back the credit companies, how can Honest Good Corporate Citizens hope to pursue their God Given Right to Unnecessarily Huge Profit Margins at the Expense of Little People? How can they continue to blatently buy off politicians with huge campaign donations (MBNA gave the single largest campaign contribution to George W. and raised my interest rate the same week)?
Damn; maybe this downturn will be a good thing. The second people see the economy going south and threatening them, we'll finally see them paying attention to some of the more outragous abuses by large corporations -- maybe we'll even see an end to the arrogence that we see around (including, and especially, here) that says poor people deserve it for being lazy, or any of the other BS that's easy to say 'cause you don't know anyone in a bad spot.
The death of all these.coms is actually a good thing, long term, for the tech industry.
Consider: 98% of all the.com businesses were either terminally bad ideas (delivering pet food) or way overfunded. Since there is only a finite amount of venture capital out there, the fact that donkeyhumper.com was getting 10 million in funding meant that some other business was not. Hopefully, this downturn and the death of most.com businesses will mean that VCs will start investing money in relistic (as opposed to trendy) businesses.
This goes hand-in-hand with the need for the VCs to be a little more careful with their money -- even deserving tech startups have spent the last few years flushing money down the toilet in a way that would make any other industry blush; do we really need on-site wine tastings?
Anyhow, this downturn will hopefully bring the tech boom a bit closer to earth and, in doing so, ensure that the economic good times stay with us a bit longer.
I'd be really shocked if the people writing the web site were ultimately responsible for this. Instead, I see this sort of conversation:
Geek> Okay, the site is progressing nicely. We're almost ready to roll out, all we have to do is pay our contractor for another two hours of work to add in the price verifi...
Suit> What? Another hour?! But we're paying her almost $70 an hour! That's $140 for something we can go live without, right?
Geek> Well, theoretically, but...
Suit> Do it! Wait until the CEO hears that I'm taking proactive steps to save money on our mission-critical project!
I've sat in enough meetings that went like this to have no problem picturing an exchange of this nature.
Slashdot Mirror
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Yeah. 'cause that worked out just that way for that whole Panama Canal thing, right?
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Why hijack a commercial jet liner when you can send an orbiting base flying out of the solar system?
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There is such a device; I call it "The Cat 'o Nine Tails". Works wonders in the arena of employee relations.
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In my experience, the problem with our organization (I'm in California) is that it was viewed by the company as just tech support, when in reality they actually have a bunch of CM Administrators with people skills. I dunno about Europe, but the west coast operation has a hard time keeping people (at least, non-HB1 workers) once they realize they (a) can get 30% more someplace else thanks to the training they've gotten, and (b) don't have much of a meaningful future within the support organization.
It is unfortunate that support of interesting and somewhat difficult products (like the aforementioned CM tool) tends to get grouped together with the guys answering the phones at AOL.
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Yeah, it's getting so stealing other people's copyrighted material is hardly worth it anymore. Why, just the other day, I almost had to *buy* a CD, like back in the dark ages.
Oh wait, I forget. The record companies have it coming because they charge too much and put out crap and rip off the artists and drag their feet in new technology and pay off politicians for favorable legislation. I also forgot that all Slashdotters only use Napster in a way consistant with fair use to get digital copies of music they already own. Silly me.
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I wonder what would happen if companies started offering mild incentives to use the banners -- maybe I could get free shipping on my next DVD order at Reel.com if I clicked on the banner at Ebert's site or something.
Of course, since so many online retailers operate so close to the bottom line already, this may not be feasible.
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Give me Sluggy Freelance.
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I've found this to be ideal. We've ended up primarily using our laptops with the wireless net (even when we're on the couch and could easily plug in). My poor desktop rarely sees non-Quake action anymore. Since our primary applications involve internet access, and since the wireless is faster than our DSL, we simply almost never need the 100bT speeds.
Now, if only Tessla were alive to advise me about wireless juice, I'd be golden.
----
I mean, we go from David Lightman and Martin Bishop -- intelligent, well adjusted people who use their brains (although I don't think Redford ever touched a computer in Sneakers, which is interesting) -- to that "I am inwincible!" moron from Goldeneye and Sandra Bullock (the best-looking girl I can't stand to watch in a movie).
I think I liked it better when hackers and other generally smart people were portrayed as people and not as shallow stereotypes; we came off better then.
----
"They're rebroadcasting Major League Baseball with only implied, oral consent, or so the story goes" - Homer Simpson
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1. Paying an ungodly sum for satellite TV, then another ungodly sum for Season Ticket,
2. Flying to Green Bay for all of the games, or
3. Getting my dad to tape the games and send them to me, which loses something despite getting to fast-forward the commercials.
Of course, I can also wait for them to play the Niners once every few years, or to play on Monday night. Still, that's pretty lousy. So hey, I'd pay $10 a year to hear all the games.
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Yowie.
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The thing that gets me is that the author of the article tries to pass it off as if it's (1) somehow unique to WOC and (2) a good thing. I've worked at or been around enough startups to see how godawful it is when people start hiring lovers (or ex-lovers) -- these tend to be people who would otherwise never have the position they get put into (they never just end up as secretaries anymore), and it's the other employees who suffer first.
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I'm the most aggressive driver you've ever ridden with.
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Hogwash.
Consider: You and NASA decide to rent an apartment, for which you split the rent. Then, as your moving in, NASA says that you can't have a friend overnight, even though you're taking care of them, feeding them, and they'll stay in your spare bedroom. Moreover, NASA doesn't even have a good reason for keeping your friend out. NASA is the roommate from Hell.
In any event, NASA won't have the final say on this one. When the guy flies up (on a Russian spacecraft), a Russian will be commanding the station. NASA ground control will have about as much to say about Tito boarding the station as the Japanese government had to say about the US Navy's Amature Submarine Captain Program.
----
It's a fact of life that people get pushed into bankrupcy -- they might lose their job, have a kid unexpectedly, have a spouse die, get injured and miss work, or a thousand other possibilities unrelated to just overextending themselves.
The new bill on just passed by the House puts credit card companies at the front of the line -- right after child support (although that's an amendment, originally child support was second) -- in a bankrupcy. People will lose their homes, their primary modes of transportation, health care, and even *go hungry* because the credit companies will, by law, have to come first; before paying the heating bill, before buying groceries.
These huge credit companies do just fine, and they have existing ways to protect themselves -- credit reports and credit ratings, reposessions, and they *do* get some reimbusement in the case of a bankrupcy. They make huge profits now, and this will just make those profits even bigger and do so at the expense of hurting real live people.
I can't decide if you're a troll, an inexperienced kid whose never known someone fallen on hard times, or just some asshole who thinks that MBNA and Citibank need additional protection at the cost of human misery. Whichever you are, you make me sick.
----
Damn; maybe this downturn will be a good thing. The second people see the economy going south and threatening them, we'll finally see them paying attention to some of the more outragous abuses by large corporations -- maybe we'll even see an end to the arrogence that we see around (including, and especially, here) that says poor people deserve it for being lazy, or any of the other BS that's easy to say 'cause you don't know anyone in a bad spot.
----
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Consider: 98% of all the .com businesses were either terminally bad ideas (delivering pet food) or way overfunded. Since there is only a finite amount of venture capital out there, the fact that donkeyhumper.com was getting 10 million in funding meant that some other business was not. Hopefully, this downturn and the death of most .com businesses will mean that VCs will start investing money in relistic (as opposed to trendy) businesses.
This goes hand-in-hand with the need for the VCs to be a little more careful with their money -- even deserving tech startups have spent the last few years flushing money down the toilet in a way that would make any other industry blush; do we really need on-site wine tastings?
Anyhow, this downturn will hopefully bring the tech boom a bit closer to earth and, in doing so, ensure that the economic good times stay with us a bit longer.
----
Still, I'd rather play Tetris.
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Geek> Okay, the site is progressing nicely. We're almost ready to roll out, all we have to do is pay our contractor for another two hours of work to add in the price verifi...
Suit> What? Another hour?! But we're paying her almost $70 an hour! That's $140 for something we can go live without, right?
Geek> Well, theoretically, but...
Suit> Do it! Wait until the CEO hears that I'm taking proactive steps to save money on our mission-critical project!
I've sat in enough meetings that went like this to have no problem picturing an exchange of this nature.
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