In 99.9% of the apartments and condos around here, residents can get a landline [thus, DSL] and Comcast hookup right into their unit. A few apartment complexes offer high-speed Internet included, but it's typically something like a 768 kbps DSL shared by 200 residents--and provided by some third-rate company like MDU. Residents wind up just getting cable or DSL because of that.
There is one student-only apartment complex here with an interesting arrangement:
- It's physically off campus.
- It's managed by the university's housing department.
- The CATV drops go to the campus CATV headend, which just re-modulates all of Comcast's channels and adds several campus-only channels. So you can't get cable Internet.
- The phone drops go to the campus PBX, so no DSL.
- The Ethernet drops, instead of being connected to the holy-crap-fast campus network, are managed by Third Rate Internet, Inc. And the residents have zero alternatives.
The on-campus dorms have super-fast Ethernet through the campus network. Ironically, if dorm residents want landlines, they get a copper pair straight to Embarq, so on-campus dorm residents could get DSL if they wanted, but I'm not sure why they'd want to.
I used to be the sysadmin for a high school. The thoroughly incompetent Web design teacher had a very simple method of ordering computers: go to Dell's website, build-to-order the most expensive computer, and select the most expensive of every option.
I burst her bubble by telling her that the school district had standardized on one OptiPlex and one Latitude. She had a screaming fit because she couldn't get some overpriced Inspiron that lets you listen to CDs with the cover closed. The district purchasing director said she could have it if she could justify needing that for job. So she didn't get it.
This $16,000 WS2003 box sounds like something a trust-fund baby would get.
On a recent geocaching trip, I compared the coordinates on my TomTom [primarily for driving] against my friend's Garmin, which was exclusively for hiking.
At any given point, the two devices were off by, at most, 15 feet. There were a few geocaches we found online whose locations were impossible--for example, in the middle of a football stadium. The fact that our two GPSs only disagreed by about 15 feet meant that whoever planted the caches had the coordinates wrong. Or possibly Googled them.:-)
Perfect. Rig up a system of solenoids, one per key, to randomly press keys on the keyboard in rapid succession. The only problem: it would get kind of loud inside my house.:-)
- Set the boot order to C first to prevent booting from user media.
- Set a BIOS password.
- Padlock the chassis shut and, if necessary, cable the computer to the table.
- Kensington security cable locking each monitor to the table too, if necessary.
As with anything, it comes down to a matter of if your boss will help you with security policy, or if s/he will shoot you down in the name of keeping users "happy" and letting them do "whatever they want"?
Where I work now, it's simple. If you give out your password, change the OS on your workstation, circumvent group policies, steal RAM, etc...you're fired. Signing an agreement to not do this was a condition of my employment.
Where I used to work, one user stole a computer, then brought it back for me to "fix" it, and my Michael Scott-esque boss let this type of stuff happen, not wanting to ruffle any feathers or piss off the users. Care to guess why I don't work there anymore?
I was a Windows sysadmin for a school, and I used group policies for security AND for an enhanced user experience.
In student computer labs, I used Group Policy to have a startup script copy a.vbs file to "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Startup" that would add the lab's printer, make it the default, then display a dialog box noting that the printer has been added and made the default printer. The dialog box was my smart-ass addition after users complained that the printer-adding script "didn't tell them" the printer had been added.
Yes, I could have copied the file manually/with a script or just included it in the image, but I didn't want a custom image for that lab, and the group policy "just worked".
Where I live, pre-ATSC, I could pick up zero channels using an indoor antenna--I joked that Comcast jammed the airwaves. Mount an antenna on the roof, and you're in business--bonus points if you had an antenna rotator.
At home, I have cable TV, but no roof antenna. If Comcast fails because of an idiot with a backhoe, we're stuck with whatever is archives on the TiVo.
Now, if Comcast goes all-digital, forcing us to get a cable box, we might dump cable TV, get Internet-only, and put an antenna on the roof. We'd need two ATSC tuners.
True--an absentee ballot can be intercepted in the mail. The same vulnerability exists for Oregon's 100% mail-in voting. For that matter, your boss could tackle you at the polls as you walk from the privacy booth to the scanner. If I ever vote absentee, I'll be damn sure to put the ballot in a locked mail drop, not the mailbox in front of my house.
Despite this problem, absentee ballots are, IMHO, a good thing. If I lived abroad, I'm not sure if I'd trust the nearest American embassy/consulate to be the official proctor of my absentee ballot and forward it on to my county. I'd want to mail it straight to my county myself--drop it in a public mail drop, or in a country with an unreliable mail system, send it via UPS or FDX.
Mail interception aside, I know of a major weakness in absentee ballots:
BOSS: "Every employee will request an absentee ballot from the county supervisor of elections, sign the affidavit, and turn the ballot, privacy envelope, affidavit, and outer envelope over to me. Failure to comply will result in termination."
Note that this is theoretical. If this boss doesn't wind up in federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison over this, he'll wind up with an empty workplace.
From the aspect of the actual elections office, there's a pretty strict procedure for absentee ballots:
- Ballots are mailed in. The mailing MUST be in this EXACT order: ballot, privacy envelope, affidavit, outer envelope. ANYTHING missing or in the wrong place will result in the whole package being shredded and a note made of the shred.
- The canvassing board opens the outer envelope and verifies the affidavit. If everything checks out, the affidavit is filed away, and the privacy envelope is thrown into a pile. Once the ballot hits the pile, goodbye link.
Not only should the President's weekly radio address be available as a YouTube-esque Flash video--so should the actual video files.
Better yet, hash the video files and post the hash values on whitehouse.org. This way, anyone who wanted could mirror or archive the videos, and anyone downloading it from anywhere could prove that it's the real thing.
The parking services at the university I attended would take photos of improperly parked vehicles to show to the offenders if they attempted to contest the tickets.
I still live in the same city: the university and city have pretty much stopped enforcing all parking, so this parking-ticket service would be kind of useless here. I once saw an abandoned car parked illegally go 5 months without a ticket.
I installed this with a user base of about 200 people, and it worked beautifully.
It uses ASP, but before pulling out the pitchforks on me, it was on an IIS server I already had in internal use, and it integrated with Active Directory beautifully. Users could go to http://servername/helpdesk and be at the helpdesk with no authenticating--only a one-time questionnaire for name, department, and room.
Yeah, I want to carry around some hydrogen with me. Heck, even if *I* were in charge of airport security, I wouldn't want hydrogen beyond my security checkpoints.
I've seen fuel-cell emergency power systems for datacenters and buildings. Sure--I want massive hydrogen tanks laying around. Can you say "terrorist target"?
"we can veto your resignation and require you to stay until such time as it's convenient for us"--sounds very open-ended and unenforceable. This contract sounds like they could pretty much force you to work there the rest of your life.
Did the contract mention that you had a right to be paid? That would be breach on their part.
I was once the sysadmin for a high school, and the principal had, in the past, made veiled threats to terminate me for applying for other jobs.
So I was applying for jobs to get out of that toxic workplace. I always listed "____ County Schools" as my employer, not "____ High School", even though I listed my principal as my supervisor [which he was].
This guy was a loose cannon like Michael in _The Office_. If someone called him asking about me, he might sing praises one second and breathe fire the next.
But great idea. I should have had a friend call him to ask about me, just for kicks. Maybe I should just have a friend call now to see what he says 1.5 years after the fact.:-)
I got a lot of that. Any effort I'd make at work to make something more efficient or faster, and I was accused of "you're just trying to make your job easier".
I currently am at a "great place to work": we all watch out for each other, we do our jobs, we cooperate, and there's very, very little infighting or office politics.
A few months ago, I asked my boss for a week of paid vacation, and he gave it to me. I wound up not getting paid for that week. Two things went wrong: I didn't fill out the official leave request, and my boss didn't tell HR; either one of those would have solved the problem. My boss told HR about it, and I received a supplemental paycheck and apology. We all learned our lesson, and life went on.
Yes, HR apologized for the minor inconvenience to me, but it wasn't their fault--it was mine/my boss's, and it was corrected so easily, no disciplinary action was taken. HR probably makes errors very, very seldom, especially considering the amount of automation they have around here.
Judging by the culture of my workplace, If we did have layoffs, there would probably be severance, and you can bet your ass that HR would not goof up the severance checks.
Having said this, I'd love to know the magnitude of the M$ errors/overpayment [not mentioned in TFA], and if M$ told their employees beforehand how much to expect in severance. Or if someone just said "Oh, we shouldn't have paid them that much! Recall it!"
Is Microsoft related to the RIAA in this matter? What's next? Am I going to get a letter demanding payment for having never worked for Microsoft?
Back when I had a landline, Sprint accidentally put me on the "Landline assistance for poor people" federally-subsidized landline program. From 2000 to 2005, I was paying about $20/mo, taxes included, for a landline with "everything": CID, 3-way, forward on busy or no answer, and 100 minutes of long distance. I never requested the assistance, then again, when I first got the landline, I was a college student making $7/hr, and when they found that out from my employer, they might have applied for it for me. I was up to $30k/yr when I finally fired Sprint in favor of a cellphone--still on it.
Where I used to be the sysadmin, CompUSA accidentally shipped me five 512 MB Sony Memory Sticks. I had ordered from them before, and chances are the person on the phone taking the order clicked on the wrong name. Nonetheless, UPS showed up at my workplace with the sticks. This was about two years before CompUSA went under.
I never heard from CompUSA again about the sticks--chances are they chalked it up as a loss due to clerical error.
I'd love to know what my legal rights would have been if CompUSA showed up demanding payment or the sticks back.
Let us not remember that Ahnold starred in quite a few extremely violent movies.
This isn't the first Ahnold irony I've found. While watching MSNBC's "lockup", an inmate said that Ahnold took away weights from prisons. Think about it.
This was in an episode of the 1960s spy comedy "Get Smart", where Max was shown their new, multimillion-dollar insect microphone, and he destroyed it by swatting it with a newspaper. Repeated in the 2008 movie when The Rock kills the bug with his hand.
I could never do that research in my house. "Look honey, this is my new remote controlled..." MEOW! *swat* *nom nom nom*
Slashdot Mirror
In 99.9% of the apartments and condos around here, residents can get a landline [thus, DSL] and Comcast hookup right into their unit. A few apartment complexes offer high-speed Internet included, but it's typically something like a 768 kbps DSL shared by 200 residents--and provided by some third-rate company like MDU. Residents wind up just getting cable or DSL because of that.
There is one student-only apartment complex here with an interesting arrangement:
- It's physically off campus.
- It's managed by the university's housing department.
- The CATV drops go to the campus CATV headend, which just re-modulates all of Comcast's channels and adds several campus-only channels. So you can't get cable Internet.
- The phone drops go to the campus PBX, so no DSL.
- The Ethernet drops, instead of being connected to the holy-crap-fast campus network, are managed by Third Rate Internet, Inc. And the residents have zero alternatives.
The on-campus dorms have super-fast Ethernet through the campus network. Ironically, if dorm residents want landlines, they get a copper pair straight to Embarq, so on-campus dorm residents could get DSL if they wanted, but I'm not sure why they'd want to.
I used to be the sysadmin for a high school. The thoroughly incompetent Web design teacher had a very simple method of ordering computers: go to Dell's website, build-to-order the most expensive computer, and select the most expensive of every option.
I burst her bubble by telling her that the school district had standardized on one OptiPlex and one Latitude. She had a screaming fit because she couldn't get some overpriced Inspiron that lets you listen to CDs with the cover closed. The district purchasing director said she could have it if she could justify needing that for job. So she didn't get it.
This $16,000 WS2003 box sounds like something a trust-fund baby would get.
On a recent geocaching trip, I compared the coordinates on my TomTom [primarily for driving] against my friend's Garmin, which was exclusively for hiking.
At any given point, the two devices were off by, at most, 15 feet. There were a few geocaches we found online whose locations were impossible--for example, in the middle of a football stadium. The fact that our two GPSs only disagreed by about 15 feet meant that whoever planted the caches had the coordinates wrong. Or possibly Googled them. :-)
Perfect. Rig up a system of solenoids, one per key, to randomly press keys on the keyboard in rapid succession. The only problem: it would get kind of loud inside my house. :-)
Simple solution: have a dummy PS/2 keyboard feeding something like 100 random keystrokes per second into /dev/null. Problem solved.
- Set the boot order to C first to prevent booting from user media.
- Set a BIOS password.
- Padlock the chassis shut and, if necessary, cable the computer to the table.
- Kensington security cable locking each monitor to the table too, if necessary.
As with anything, it comes down to a matter of if your boss will help you with security policy, or if s/he will shoot you down in the name of keeping users "happy" and letting them do "whatever they want"?
Where I work now, it's simple. If you give out your password, change the OS on your workstation, circumvent group policies, steal RAM, etc...you're fired. Signing an agreement to not do this was a condition of my employment.
Where I used to work, one user stole a computer, then brought it back for me to "fix" it, and my Michael Scott-esque boss let this type of stuff happen, not wanting to ruffle any feathers or piss off the users. Care to guess why I don't work there anymore?
I was a Windows sysadmin for a school, and I used group policies for security AND for an enhanced user experience.
In student computer labs, I used Group Policy to have a startup script copy a .vbs file to "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Startup" that would add the lab's printer, make it the default, then display a dialog box noting that the printer has been added and made the default printer. The dialog box was my smart-ass addition after users complained that the printer-adding script "didn't tell them" the printer had been added.
Yes, I could have copied the file manually/with a script or just included it in the image, but I didn't want a custom image for that lab, and the group policy "just worked".
Where I live, pre-ATSC, I could pick up zero channels using an indoor antenna--I joked that Comcast jammed the airwaves. Mount an antenna on the roof, and you're in business--bonus points if you had an antenna rotator.
At home, I have cable TV, but no roof antenna. If Comcast fails because of an idiot with a backhoe, we're stuck with whatever is archives on the TiVo.
Now, if Comcast goes all-digital, forcing us to get a cable box, we might dump cable TV, get Internet-only, and put an antenna on the roof. We'd need two ATSC tuners.
True--an absentee ballot can be intercepted in the mail. The same vulnerability exists for Oregon's 100% mail-in voting. For that matter, your boss could tackle you at the polls as you walk from the privacy booth to the scanner. If I ever vote absentee, I'll be damn sure to put the ballot in a locked mail drop, not the mailbox in front of my house.
Despite this problem, absentee ballots are, IMHO, a good thing. If I lived abroad, I'm not sure if I'd trust the nearest American embassy/consulate to be the official proctor of my absentee ballot and forward it on to my county. I'd want to mail it straight to my county myself--drop it in a public mail drop, or in a country with an unreliable mail system, send it via UPS or FDX.
Mail interception aside, I know of a major weakness in absentee ballots:
BOSS: "Every employee will request an absentee ballot from the county supervisor of elections, sign the affidavit, and turn the ballot, privacy envelope, affidavit, and outer envelope over to me. Failure to comply will result in termination."
Note that this is theoretical. If this boss doesn't wind up in federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison over this, he'll wind up with an empty workplace.
From the aspect of the actual elections office, there's a pretty strict procedure for absentee ballots:
- Ballots are mailed in. The mailing MUST be in this EXACT order: ballot, privacy envelope, affidavit, outer envelope. ANYTHING missing or in the wrong place will result in the whole package being shredded and a note made of the shred.
- The canvassing board opens the outer envelope and verifies the affidavit. If everything checks out, the affidavit is filed away, and the privacy envelope is thrown into a pile. Once the ballot hits the pile, goodbye link.
Not only should the President's weekly radio address be available as a YouTube-esque Flash video--so should the actual video files.
Better yet, hash the video files and post the hash values on whitehouse.org. This way, anyone who wanted could mirror or archive the videos, and anyone downloading it from anywhere could prove that it's the real thing.
The parking services at the university I attended would take photos of improperly parked vehicles to show to the offenders if they attempted to contest the tickets.
I still live in the same city: the university and city have pretty much stopped enforcing all parking, so this parking-ticket service would be kind of useless here. I once saw an abandoned car parked illegally go 5 months without a ticket.
http://liberum.org/
I installed this with a user base of about 200 people, and it worked beautifully.
It uses ASP, but before pulling out the pitchforks on me, it was on an IIS server I already had in internal use, and it integrated with Active Directory beautifully. Users could go to http://servername/helpdesk and be at the helpdesk with no authenticating--only a one-time questionnaire for name, department, and room.
I've gotten it from playing golf. I almost got it from lawn care (handling a shovel, rake, axe, etc), but a pair of work gloves put and end to that.
Yeah, I want to carry around some hydrogen with me. Heck, even if *I* were in charge of airport security, I wouldn't want hydrogen beyond my security checkpoints.
I've seen fuel-cell emergency power systems for datacenters and buildings. Sure--I want massive hydrogen tanks laying around. Can you say "terrorist target"?
Looking at the pdf, it looks like Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, Mapquest, et al. are infringing on Microsoft's patent too.
When does Ford sue GM for making vehicles?
"we can veto your resignation and require you to stay until such time as it's convenient for us"--sounds very open-ended and unenforceable. This contract sounds like they could pretty much force you to work there the rest of your life.
Did the contract mention that you had a right to be paid? That would be breach on their part.
You might not take your former employee for speaking high praise of you, but your next employer might.
"His former employer said he was an excellent employee, but we caught him clubbing baby seals his first day on the job and had to fire him!"
I was once the sysadmin for a high school, and the principal had, in the past, made veiled threats to terminate me for applying for other jobs.
So I was applying for jobs to get out of that toxic workplace. I always listed "____ County Schools" as my employer, not "____ High School", even though I listed my principal as my supervisor [which he was].
This guy was a loose cannon like Michael in _The Office_. If someone called him asking about me, he might sing praises one second and breathe fire the next.
But great idea. I should have had a friend call him to ask about me, just for kicks. Maybe I should just have a friend call now to see what he says 1.5 years after the fact. :-)
I got a lot of that. Any effort I'd make at work to make something more efficient or faster, and I was accused of "you're just trying to make your job easier".
server installs you!
I currently am at a "great place to work": we all watch out for each other, we do our jobs, we cooperate, and there's very, very little infighting or office politics.
A few months ago, I asked my boss for a week of paid vacation, and he gave it to me. I wound up not getting paid for that week. Two things went wrong: I didn't fill out the official leave request, and my boss didn't tell HR; either one of those would have solved the problem. My boss told HR about it, and I received a supplemental paycheck and apology. We all learned our lesson, and life went on.
Yes, HR apologized for the minor inconvenience to me, but it wasn't their fault--it was mine/my boss's, and it was corrected so easily, no disciplinary action was taken. HR probably makes errors very, very seldom, especially considering the amount of automation they have around here.
Judging by the culture of my workplace, If we did have layoffs, there would probably be severance, and you can bet your ass that HR would not goof up the severance checks.
Having said this, I'd love to know the magnitude of the M$ errors/overpayment [not mentioned in TFA], and if M$ told their employees beforehand how much to expect in severance. Or if someone just said "Oh, we shouldn't have paid them that much! Recall it!"
Is Microsoft related to the RIAA in this matter? What's next? Am I going to get a letter demanding payment for having never worked for Microsoft?
Back when I had a landline, Sprint accidentally put me on the "Landline assistance for poor people" federally-subsidized landline program. From 2000 to 2005, I was paying about $20/mo, taxes included, for a landline with "everything": CID, 3-way, forward on busy or no answer, and 100 minutes of long distance. I never requested the assistance, then again, when I first got the landline, I was a college student making $7/hr, and when they found that out from my employer, they might have applied for it for me. I was up to $30k/yr when I finally fired Sprint in favor of a cellphone--still on it.
Where I used to be the sysadmin, CompUSA accidentally shipped me five 512 MB Sony Memory Sticks. I had ordered from them before, and chances are the person on the phone taking the order clicked on the wrong name. Nonetheless, UPS showed up at my workplace with the sticks. This was about two years before CompUSA went under.
I never heard from CompUSA again about the sticks--chances are they chalked it up as a loss due to clerical error.
I'd love to know what my legal rights would have been if CompUSA showed up demanding payment or the sticks back.
Let us not remember that Ahnold starred in quite a few extremely violent movies.
This isn't the first Ahnold irony I've found. While watching MSNBC's "lockup", an inmate said that Ahnold took away weights from prisons. Think about it.
This was in an episode of the 1960s spy comedy "Get Smart", where Max was shown their new, multimillion-dollar insect microphone, and he destroyed it by swatting it with a newspaper. Repeated in the 2008 movie when The Rock kills the bug with his hand.
I could never do that research in my house. "Look honey, this is my new remote controlled..." MEOW! *swat* *nom nom nom*