One company I worked at, often they wouldn't OFFER you raises unless you threatened to leave. It was some sick part of the company's culture. Some of the highest payed people, and who worked there the longest (14, 15, 16 years) got where they were by entertaining outside offers every so often. It was a weird company anyway, true, but mentioning you had been offered X amount more by someone else sure didn't seem to be frowned upon.
I take issue with an item from that "list":
* Once the word gets out, the relationship that you now enjoy with your co-workers will never be the same. You will lose the personal satisfaction of peer group acceptance.
I have NEVER seen this to hold true. Usually, if you're in that position, your co-workers will understand where you're coming from, and no one treats you differently. If anything, they respect you for taking a stand. Especially in a low-morale corporate culture.
That's probably because they operate off of lists from other companies. Companies are always lying about those "Opt-in" options, and placing you on the "I love spam" list regardless of your wishes.
I've tested it, opening new accounts on non-public email servers (read: NOT on Hotmail or Yahoo), signing up at a few places, and making sure to specify that I DON'T want to recieve any mailings at all. Sure enough, give it a week or two, and the spam starts rolling in.
So, the poster's company is most likely spamming "opt-in" lists that they didn't collect, but there's no gaurentee that all, or even most, of the people on the list actually did opt-in.
...by a student who apparently trained by playing CS.
Hmmm... so, I'm assuming he was jumping down the hallways like some kind of rabbit on crack, shooting randomly? Because that's about the only thing that CS teaches you.
From the letter: It should be obvious from the preceding two paragraphs that the Bill does not harm free private enterprise, since the latter can always choose under what conditions it will produce software; some of these will be acceptable to the State, and others will not be since they contradict the guarantee of the basic principles listed above.
Interesting statement. Basically, they are saying that the government has the right to set restrictions as to what kinds of software they will buy and use, and Microsoft has the right to make software that meets their restrictions. It makes perfect sense, and is also quite fair.
If I decide I am NOT going to buy a car that has power windows (no pun intended) becuase I consider that feature to be a security risk, a car company cannot force me to buy their car with power windows when there are other manufacturers who make cars within the restricions I've set. That's my right as a consumer. The burden is on the car manufacturer to create a product that I would buy, or else lose me as a customer. That's all a part of free trade and consumer choice.
> I just haven't watched x-files in such a long time (the whole alien tease thing they did was too annoying for me) so I didn't think about when the story would hit on the west coast.
So, basically what you're saying is that, because you don't care about the X-Files, you didn't care enough to NOT post a SPOILER thread on the night the episode was out?
> Anyhow, it's 9pm on the west coast so no real point in changing titles
Yeah, except for the people who are just starting to watch it, and the people in Alaska, and Hawaii, and everywhere else in the world that doesn't run on east coast time.
> and a big overall apology to people further along the dateline who we probably regularly ruin shows for. (But it is just TV, after all)
Yeah, and Slashdot is just a big, overrated and overgrown news site.
CD: Oops, sorry about the spoiler, when I scheduled the post I miscalculated the timing. I know, I'm evil. I promise I won't ruin the next 4 episodes or however many they have left.
The ENTIRE THREAD, including the TITLE was designed to be a SPOILER. And you happily posted it right on the front page. Don't EVEN cry about mis-timing the posting of this thread. You did something incredibly stupid by even POSTING a spoiler story like this, regardless of the timing. What were you thinking?!
You ever hear of something called the west coast? See, there's this whole other world out there that doesn't get TV shows at the exact same time as YOU do.
Re:Search for "19102" on Google
on
Byte Wars
·
· Score: 2
It's such a simple formula to fix all those 19102 clocks, too.
For the Perl localtime function (which on my machines the year was coming up as 100), I simply had to do this on all my scripts:
$year = $year + 2000 - 100;
Hey, I actually found SmarterChild kind of useful. I added it to Trillian the other day, and it made it really easy and quick to find a movie time near me. This article, IMO, contains quite a bit of FUD. SmarterChild was pretty obviously an information tool, simliar to the old email listserv bots, except much quicker, and much easier.
Frankly, your kid has to be pretty dumb to get fooled into thinking it's a real person. But then again, the article makes at least one good point... if you've ever read a bunch of 14-year-olds' IM conversations, you'd be convinced the human race is doomed with this generation.
True... though I seriously doubt that software companies would be as willing as porn companies to give their product away. I just can't see Microsoft giving away OfficeXP for reporting where you can download it. Heck, they don't do that now when you call their piracy-reporting 800 number.
"Oh yes, Mr. Bond. I do think it will exist. And I think it is going to be an O.R.A.C.L.E. database... and we're going to track everything. And then, my dear Mr. Bond, I shall rule the world!"
"The Gateway commercial is fun, but their Web site is nothing but a gateway to misinformation," Rosen said.
Wait... I thought the RIAA website was the gateway to misinformation. I mean, they were the ones that tried to claim that making backup copies of CDs you have purchased was illegal, and they were just being really nice by not prosecuting you for it... I'm so confused.
Yeah, the main speaker at those things always puts on like he's this multi-millionare. Well, maybe on paper he is, because he's got about $6,000,000 in mineral suppliments at home.
True, but that's the real scam with most MLMs. Unless you get in on the ground floor, or have a LOT of friends that have never been burned by an MLM before, you're wasting your time. The vast majority of people in poor-quality MLMs barely break even, because they quickly run out of people to sign up, or the people they did sign up quit. I forget what the actual statistics were, but I seem to recall something like 1 in 6 would stick with it past 6 months. It might have been less.
I went to a "recruiting" meeting for a company called Equinox a few years back. They set these things up like a revival from the turn of the century. They play upon emotions and excitement to get you to not think rationally, and just sign the paper. The ENTIRE lecture was about how much money you could make, how to sign up more people, and how the whole marketing structure works. There was almost nothing about the products themselves. All I remember was some vague talk about mineral suppliments.
My friend, who went to it too, got them all flustered when he proceded to point out that the diagram the gentleman was drawing on the board looked strangely similiar to a pyramid. They proceded to inform him that it was NOT a pyramid, because that would be illegal. He simply refered them to the diagram again, which was -- without question -- pyramid-shaped.
They didn't spend a whole lot of time trying to "convert" him after that.
There are good Multi-Level Marketing companies out there (or is it called Network Marketing now?). I used to work for a magazine that profiled and reviewed MLM companies. There's one key thing to look for to see of a MLM will actually work and last: What do they actually try to sell?
If an MLM focuses 98% on signing up more people, and completely ignores the product, or discourages ever actually selling the product to consumers, it generally won't last. The companies that actually focus on their product, and only use the multi-level aspect of it to really market and distrubute, those are the ones that tend to last, and people actually can make a business out of.
My instincts told me that the "lose weight" signs were also a scam, but I didn't have this negative reaction to Sal's Tacos sign. It was just as illegally placed, but there were two attributes that I liked about it. I trusted the information. "Sal's tacos, 3 blocks" with an arrow. I bet that was the truth. It identified the source. If this sign was attached to your fence, you could go tell Sal to remove it. Some of the signs I saw in West Sacramento also had web addresses on them. This is how I eventually linked the signs and the phone messages to a single corporation.
With about 15 new toll-free numbers, I went back to the pay phone and started calling around. I got a variety of new messages, but they all had elements of that first "ya know" message. I began transcribing the messages so I could keep track. Eventually I noted 10 "work from home" messages, and three "lose weight now" messages. Drizzly rain drove me inside to the warm, inviting internet. The internet sites advertised on the signs had names like homebiz4u.com and workforriches.com, and on the surface, they hid their corporate identity very well. Each site had photos of happy entrepreneurs basking in their riches. These "success stories" were their undoing.
Before I actually tracked down the source of this company, I began to suspect it was Herbalife. I did a search for "plastic signs" on google and found a site called MLM watch. An article on their site mentioned that 60% of "work from home" offers were from Herbalife. That jibed with my findings, except for that in Sacramento, it was 97%. I also found Causs.org, a nationwide organization against these signs, which they call "street spam". They have members in about 35 states, including at least one guy in Sacramento. The guy in Sac had photos of the signs he had torn down, and photos of a guy putting them up! I was impressed!
Back to my own research, I pored over the homebiz4NE1.com site, looking for a hint about what the product was. Eventually I found it. About halfway down on the "success stories" page, there was a happy couple identified as Kevin & Amy L. Their testimonial showed that they "aren't a slave to company relocations", and that they are now able to "enjoy the outdoors year-round". They also had a photo of their four kids with Santa hats playing in a pool with an inflatable Orca. The photo was named "lausen_kids.jpg". This was just the kind of information an internet detective needs.
I searched Google for "Kevin Lausen" and voila! The first result was on the official Herbalife website. Kevin Lausen and his four kids were an Herbalife success story. I had found the link!
Herbalife is the company. Their stock is traded on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange, and they have been in business for about 20 years. They sell health and diet products, as well as material to start and maintain your own business. They sell their products across the nation and the world through a network of "independent distributors". These are the people who put up the signs. These are the people trying to make US$1500-US$5000 a month. At the time, I hated their guts, but as I learned more about what Herbalife had promised them, the hatred subsided.
I try to be nice to telemarketers, because I did some telemarketing myself (not to residential homes, only to businesses) and I know how thankless of a job that is. It's horrible. The places are like sweatshops, with hundreds of people in some cases in a big room, being forced to produce, produce, produce. So, generally, I'm nice to them. I say one line, and it usually works: "I'm really not interested, but I appreciate your call." They almost always say, "Ok, thank you for your time," and hang up, with no further question.
Telemarketers get turned down 235456 times a day, and when someone shows a little bit of kindness, even when turning you down, it goes a long way. It makes me feel good, too, because I know how refreshing that can be to a telemarketer.
However, lately, I've had the most rude, pushy telemarketers calling me. They try to argue with me when I say I don't want 4 magazines a month, even when I turn them down nicely. THOSE people I have no respect for, and I'll be as rude as I like with them.
If they get pushy, I'll tell them to hold on a second, and then I'll load up the Arnold soundboard... then at least I get some fun out of it.
Slashdot Mirror
Not bad for someone who could be replaced with an animatronic puppet with a tape recorder.
"Blah blah blah blah, piracy, blah blah welcome to the Hall of Presidents."
One company I worked at, often they wouldn't OFFER you raises unless you threatened to leave. It was some sick part of the company's culture. Some of the highest payed people, and who worked there the longest (14, 15, 16 years) got where they were by entertaining outside offers every so often. It was a weird company anyway, true, but mentioning you had been offered X amount more by someone else sure didn't seem to be frowned upon.
I take issue with an item from that "list":
* Once the word gets out, the relationship that you now enjoy with your co-workers will never be the same. You will lose the personal satisfaction of peer group acceptance.
I have NEVER seen this to hold true. Usually, if you're in that position, your co-workers will understand where you're coming from, and no one treats you differently. If anything, they respect you for taking a stand. Especially in a low-morale corporate culture.
I think that the fact that they filmed part of it in Canada might have something to do with the evils of globalization. So, we'll just call it Alaska.
That's probably because they operate off of lists from other companies. Companies are always lying about those "Opt-in" options, and placing you on the "I love spam" list regardless of your wishes.
I've tested it, opening new accounts on non-public email servers (read: NOT on Hotmail or Yahoo), signing up at a few places, and making sure to specify that I DON'T want to recieve any mailings at all. Sure enough, give it a week or two, and the spam starts rolling in.
So, the poster's company is most likely spamming "opt-in" lists that they didn't collect, but there's no gaurentee that all, or even most, of the people on the list actually did opt-in.
Movie reviews attempting to be funny while bashing everything in sight, just for the sake of being "cool", is sooo 2001.
...by a student who apparently trained by playing CS.
Hmmm... so, I'm assuming he was jumping down the hallways like some kind of rabbit on crack, shooting randomly? Because that's about the only thing that CS teaches you.
But unfortunatly, Microsoft countered by denying their Product Activation Code at the time of the demo! D'oh!
From the letter:
It should be obvious from the preceding two paragraphs that the Bill does not harm free private enterprise, since the latter can always choose under what conditions it will produce software; some of these will be acceptable to the State, and others will not be since they contradict the guarantee of the basic principles listed above.
Interesting statement. Basically, they are saying that the government has the right to set restrictions as to what kinds of software they will buy and use, and Microsoft has the right to make software that meets their restrictions. It makes perfect sense, and is also quite fair.
If I decide I am NOT going to buy a car that has power windows (no pun intended) becuase I consider that feature to be a security risk, a car company cannot force me to buy their car with power windows when there are other manufacturers who make cars within the restricions I've set. That's my right as a consumer. The burden is on the car manufacturer to create a product that I would buy, or else lose me as a customer. That's all a part of free trade and consumer choice.
Sarcasm: Get to know it.
> I just haven't watched x-files in such a long time (the whole alien tease thing they did was too annoying for me) so I didn't think about when the story would hit on the west coast.
So, basically what you're saying is that, because you don't care about the X-Files, you didn't care enough to NOT post a SPOILER thread on the night the episode was out?
> Anyhow, it's 9pm on the west coast so no real point in changing titles
Yeah, except for the people who are just starting to watch it, and the people in Alaska, and Hawaii, and everywhere else in the world that doesn't run on east coast time.
> and a big overall apology to people further along the dateline who we probably regularly ruin shows for. (But it is just TV, after all)
Yeah, and Slashdot is just a big, overrated and overgrown news site.
CD: Oops, sorry about the spoiler, when I scheduled the post I miscalculated the timing. I know, I'm evil. I promise I won't ruin the next 4 episodes or however many they have left.
The ENTIRE THREAD, including the TITLE was designed to be a SPOILER. And you happily posted it right on the front page. Don't EVEN cry about mis-timing the posting of this thread. You did something incredibly stupid by even POSTING a spoiler story like this, regardless of the timing. What were you thinking?!
You ever hear of something called the west coast? See, there's this whole other world out there that doesn't get TV shows at the exact same time as YOU do.
It's such a simple formula to fix all those 19102 clocks, too. For the Perl localtime function (which on my machines the year was coming up as 100), I simply had to do this on all my scripts: $year = $year + 2000 - 100;
Hey, I actually found SmarterChild kind of useful. I added it to Trillian the other day, and it made it really easy and quick to find a movie time near me. This article, IMO, contains quite a bit of FUD. SmarterChild was pretty obviously an information tool, simliar to the old email listserv bots, except much quicker, and much easier.
Frankly, your kid has to be pretty dumb to get fooled into thinking it's a real person. But then again, the article makes at least one good point... if you've ever read a bunch of 14-year-olds' IM conversations, you'd be convinced the human race is doomed with this generation.
True... though I seriously doubt that software companies would be as willing as porn companies to give their product away. I just can't see Microsoft giving away OfficeXP for reporting where you can download it. Heck, they don't do that now when you call their piracy-reporting 800 number.
Do they really think there's gonna be that many people willing to be a narc, without any compensation?
"Oh yes, Mr. Bond. I do think it will exist. And I think it is going to be an O.R.A.C.L.E. database... and we're going to track everything. And then, my dear Mr. Bond, I shall rule the world!"
Pot... Kettle... Dark colors... no, I must not say it.
"The Gateway commercial is fun, but their Web site is nothing but a gateway to misinformation," Rosen said.
Wait... I thought the RIAA website was the gateway to misinformation. I mean, they were the ones that tried to claim that making backup copies of CDs you have purchased was illegal, and they were just being really nice by not prosecuting you for it... I'm so confused.
Yeah, the main speaker at those things always puts on like he's this multi-millionare. Well, maybe on paper he is, because he's got about $6,000,000 in mineral suppliments at home.
True, but that's the real scam with most MLMs. Unless you get in on the ground floor, or have a LOT of friends that have never been burned by an MLM before, you're wasting your time. The vast majority of people in poor-quality MLMs barely break even, because they quickly run out of people to sign up, or the people they did sign up quit. I forget what the actual statistics were, but I seem to recall something like 1 in 6 would stick with it past 6 months. It might have been less.
I went to a "recruiting" meeting for a company called Equinox a few years back. They set these things up like a revival from the turn of the century. They play upon emotions and excitement to get you to not think rationally, and just sign the paper. The ENTIRE lecture was about how much money you could make, how to sign up more people, and how the whole marketing structure works. There was almost nothing about the products themselves. All I remember was some vague talk about mineral suppliments.
My friend, who went to it too, got them all flustered when he proceded to point out that the diagram the gentleman was drawing on the board looked strangely similiar to a pyramid. They proceded to inform him that it was NOT a pyramid, because that would be illegal. He simply refered them to the diagram again, which was -- without question -- pyramid-shaped.
They didn't spend a whole lot of time trying to "convert" him after that.
There are good Multi-Level Marketing companies out there (or is it called Network Marketing now?). I used to work for a magazine that profiled and reviewed MLM companies. There's one key thing to look for to see of a MLM will actually work and last: What do they actually try to sell? If an MLM focuses 98% on signing up more people, and completely ignores the product, or discourages ever actually selling the product to consumers, it generally won't last. The companies that actually focus on their product, and only use the multi-level aspect of it to really market and distrubute, those are the ones that tend to last, and people actually can make a business out of.
My instincts told me that the "lose weight" signs were also a scam, but I didn't have this negative reaction to Sal's Tacos sign. It was just as illegally placed, but there were two attributes that I liked about it.
I trusted the information. "Sal's tacos, 3 blocks" with an arrow. I bet that was the truth.
It identified the source. If this sign was attached to your fence, you could go tell Sal to remove it.
Some of the signs I saw in West Sacramento also had web addresses on them. This is how I eventually linked the signs and the phone messages to a single corporation.
With about 15 new toll-free numbers, I went back to the pay phone and started calling around. I got a variety of new messages, but they all had elements of that first "ya know" message. I began transcribing the messages so I could keep track. Eventually I noted 10 "work from home" messages, and three "lose weight now" messages.
Drizzly rain drove me inside to the warm, inviting internet. The internet sites advertised on the signs had names like homebiz4u.com and workforriches.com, and on the surface, they hid their corporate identity very well. Each site had photos of happy entrepreneurs basking in their riches. These "success stories" were their undoing.
Before I actually tracked down the source of this company, I began to suspect it was Herbalife. I did a search for "plastic signs" on google and found a site called MLM watch. An article on their site mentioned that 60% of "work from home" offers were from Herbalife. That jibed with my findings, except for that in Sacramento, it was 97%.
I also found Causs.org, a nationwide organization against these signs, which they call "street spam". They have members in about 35 states, including at least one guy in Sacramento. The guy in Sac had photos of the signs he had torn down, and photos of a guy putting them up! I was impressed!
Back to my own research, I pored over the homebiz4NE1.com site, looking for a hint about what the product was.
Eventually I found it. About halfway down on the "success stories" page, there was a happy couple identified as Kevin & Amy L. Their testimonial showed that they "aren't a slave to company relocations", and that they are now able to "enjoy the outdoors year-round". They also had a photo of their four kids with Santa hats playing in a pool with an inflatable Orca. The photo was named "lausen_kids.jpg". This was just the kind of information an internet detective needs.
I searched Google for "Kevin Lausen" and voila! The first result was on the official Herbalife website. Kevin Lausen and his four kids were an Herbalife success story. I had found the link!
Herbalife is the company. Their stock is traded on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange, and they have been in business for about 20 years. They sell health and diet products, as well as material to start and maintain your own business. They sell their products across the nation and the world through a network of "independent distributors".
These are the people who put up the signs. These are the people trying to make US$1500-US$5000 a month. At the time, I hated their guts, but as I learned more about what Herbalife had promised them, the hatred subsided.
I was only 3 minutes behind the story being posted, and it's already dead. I would love to comment on it, but, well... you know.
I try to be nice to telemarketers, because I did some telemarketing myself (not to residential homes, only to businesses) and I know how thankless of a job that is. It's horrible. The places are like sweatshops, with hundreds of people in some cases in a big room, being forced to produce, produce, produce. So, generally, I'm nice to them. I say one line, and it usually works: "I'm really not interested, but I appreciate your call." They almost always say, "Ok, thank you for your time," and hang up, with no further question.
Telemarketers get turned down 235456 times a day, and when someone shows a little bit of kindness, even when turning you down, it goes a long way. It makes me feel good, too, because I know how refreshing that can be to a telemarketer.
However, lately, I've had the most rude, pushy telemarketers calling me. They try to argue with me when I say I don't want 4 magazines a month, even when I turn them down nicely. THOSE people I have no respect for, and I'll be as rude as I like with them.
If they get pushy, I'll tell them to hold on a second, and then I'll load up the Arnold soundboard... then at least I get some fun out of it.