Hilarious. I was actually curious if this was a real site (it is), and if it was a joke, or an actual scam (the latter), and if it was an actual scam, what sort (the sort where there's a hidden-in-fine-print 140$ charge to purchase the "system", and when you get it in the mail, the system is presumably a piece of paper that says "ha ha, sucker!")
It's only a problem with software that doesn't live in your butt if that software requires you to phone in, or has an auto-update feature that you can't disable. Otherwise, while sure you might not have complete control over its behavior, you *can* at least guarantee that it will always have the *same* behavior... why I don't like software that silently auto-updates, instead of at least prompting.
Who are they going to hire to replace her? Does it matter? Do you think a company that consistently allows high-level managers in another country who've probably never even talked to my girlfriend's boss directly, let alone to her, to set unreasonable deadlines and then make her do it, will care? It's not her boss insisting on a shorter deadline, it's her boss's boss's boss's boss, and the communication channel is basically unidirectional. Which means if she "slacks", her boss's boss's boss's boss could send down the channel, something must be done, you should fire your developer, and then that team is screwed, but the boss's boss's boss's boss wouldn't find that out until a couple months later, when he discovers no work has been done due to firing the team's only developer, which is a bit too late.
Is that a completely moronic system? Yes it is, which is why I've been telling her she should go find a company to work for that's less messed up.
She might live in America, though, but the company is Japanese. My understanding is, if she doesn't work harder to get the (completely unreasonable) amount of work they've given her done by the (equally completely unreasonable) deadline, they *still* won't necessarily hire enough additional people to get that work done by the deadline. Then they'll likely say, "this person isn't getting all her work done by our deadline, therefore she is slacking", and that's grounds for firing her. Which, honestly, I don't think would be the worst thing for her, but it's not my job.
I have. She likes having a job, though, I can't imagine why.:p
(When they've put upon her to work the completely ridiculous hours, she's thought about quitting, and they always appease her just long enough with promises of additional developers that she ends up not. I wouldn't have her patience.)
Demanding that employees use IE6 because it's necessary to run particular software, probably indicates that the company sucks royal balls, and has no budget for IT, because *damn* that's a piece of crap, and old, and they should have updated their crap by now to run in a more modern browser. I give them a pass if they're a Microsoft-based company and they have internal web components that only run in IE (ours is, and does, though generally I just use IETab in Firefox for it), but they should still run in *modern* IE browsers. Having to use IE 6 is not a "reasonable demand".
That does sound pretty exceptional. I'm quite happy to be hourly, because it means I will always have to do exactly 40 hours a week, not more. Meanwhile, my girlfriend is paid to do 40 hours a week, and rarely only does 40; usually more like 45, but sometimes 50 or 60, occasionally even more. I would very strongly not want to ever have her job. She doesn't even make that much more than me (a little bit, but within the same general range.)
I'd never participated, but I knew it was a coding contest site, and I was pretty sure they gave out prize money (wikipedia indicates I'm right). If they'd just been like, "we promised you money, but nope, we're not giving it", that would have been pretty news-like. But nope. Nothing like that.
This sounds pretty dumb. Like having headhunters bug you, only you're also giving them money.
I have met a grand total of exactly one real estate agent who actually knew what the crap he was talking about. My favorite was an agent who, because we didn't show up to see the unit we called him to see right on time (we were like 2 minutes late), decided he had misremembered, and drove all the way across town because he thought we wanted to see a unit all the way across town, and didn't answer his cell phone until he got there. But that kind of incompetence was rampant, that was just the funniest mistake. They were constantly calling us about the wrong unit, or letting us know about new available units that were completely nothing like what we told them we were interested in...
She says she's actually gotten some good work for cheap - for side projects she's thought about trying out as potential startups, but were still in the "I don't know if it'll even work" phase, so she didn't really want to spend that much money, or that much of her own time. I'm not sure I'd ever want to make them part of an established business, but they seem great for PoC work.
And as she pointed out - while a couple bucks an hour is awful in the US, not everyone lives in the US. There are places where getting a couple bucks an hour would be fantastic.
Incidentally, she also found a graphic designer on one of those sites - I've seen the guy's work, and *that* guy I would totally hire all the time for anything. He's more than a couple bucks an hour (I think she said he charges 15), but considering in the US you'd have a hard time finding a graphic designer that's halfway-competent for under like 50...
On one hand, I agree with you to an extent: there are a number of laws which are widely broken because they're dumb, like impossibly low speed limits on certain roads, or marijuana possession. On the other hand, I certainly wouldn't want what you're going for to be universally followed, either: think of the South up through the 50s, where it was widely accepted that the punishment for a black person kissing a white person was a painful death. The government should enforce that sort of thing.
The right to harass you daily and nightly, send you constant spam, threaten to send you to court, threaten to take all your stuff, possibly actually show up and *attempt* to take all your stuff, and basically make your life a living hell unless you either pay or sue them? That's how the legal system is supposed to work, right?
Penny Arcade recently put it well: we *know* banks are, on the whole, evil, scumsucking parasites that would murder their own mothers for pocket change. Same is true about oil companies, private mercenary militias, etc. We're not surprised when companies like that do horrific things - in fact, we're surprised any time they *don't*. But a company that sells video games... we don't expect it from them. So it's far more shocking.
This is not actually a real solution, I'm just amused every time I see document management show up in a slashdot thread - being it's not a very *exciting* field. I work for a company that provides document management solutions for much larger organizations, with costs (I think) starting in the tens of thousands of dollars, and going up to way more than that. Of course, since I work here, I have my own personal test repositories for testing things, and when I was buying a house and started getting crazy amounts of paper documents I had to sign, scan and send back, I was like, why not scan them with QuickFields and keep them in a Laserfiche repository? So I did.:D
That solution doesn't work for most people, though. (Also it's totally not open source. Source is only open to those who are development at this company, which I am, so I suppose in a twisted way...)
In the old days, uni mainframes were designed specifically to be multi-user, with all kinds of precautions that would get in the way if you just wanted to use it as a single-user system (except of course, nobody ever would have wanted that, because those machines were enormous and cost a jillion dollars.) I don't feel like going back to those days, personally.
And personally, I probably *would* let guests I trusted to be competent and responsible use my computer while I wasn't watching them. But I wouldn't let guests I barely know do that, and I *certainly* wouldn't let guests that had already shown a prior history of sketchiness, which is what the thread creator was discussing.
No, I'm not claiming that a laptop for a child is a necessity, that's why I also said they could use their parents'. Heck, if you're talking about a kid young enough that they shouldn't be responsible for a full function laptop, sure, they could use a "limited function tablet", too. Or nothing, does a kid that young even need the internet? Probably not. By high school, though, I would totally buy my kid a laptop if I had a kid, and a kid in high school is still too young to be working, or at least, certainly too young to be working full time at a job that would allow said kid to buy his own laptop with his own money. I'd probably do what my parents did: if my kid was the sort of person who really wanted computer access all the time (likely: he'd be my kid), I'd buy him a junk laptop off craigslist or something in 7th grade, and a proper laptop in 9th if he didn't lose or destroy the junk one. Otherwise he'd keep getting junk ones.
And nobody was talking about school before (then again, nobody was talking about kids before, either....) Maybe I'd find a school that wasn't as dumb about computers. Or maybe, since I'd be driving the kid to this friend's house anyway, most likely, I'd just bring the kid his laptop when I dropped him off?
They didn't specify kids. But in that case, presumably, they would use their parents', or their parents would buy them one. (I did actually get my own personal laptop when I was in junior high. It was a total PoS, but it was a laptop, and it was mine. And I did indeed totally ruin it a couple times with malware, being a dumb kid.)
I certainly wouldn't expect that if I was staying over at a friend's house, I could have ubiquitous unsupervised access to using their home computer - why would I? I might expect that they would let me log in to print something or to check my email while they were there, but hang out on it and install sketchy software while my friend wasn't around? Why would you let your friends do that? Put a password on it, don't tell them the password, let them use their own computer. (Alternatively, if you're worried that they're going to install sketchy things while you *are* watching them, then you're as much of an idiot as they are if you just sit and watch them do it.)
Yeah, I suppose one should avoid talking about different types of text files, and whether they contain BOMs, too. Or for that matter, about how to make your own balm.
Because my bank account's web site -totally- has a su command. Would be neat if it did, but I'm not holding my breath. (My mom has access to one of the locations where some of my money is, because she does things for me on that account sometimes. My girlfriend has access to a credit card account in my name, because now it's in her name, too. Honestly, it'd simplify things if I could just give my girlfriend -all- my passwords. I certainly wouldn't give anyone -else- all my passwords, though, certainly not my boss.)
Funny, I was thinking it would have printed, "yo dawg, I heard you like 3d printing, so I 3d printed you a 3d printer so you can 3d print while you 3d print."
We have a a semi-old Roku box. It generally works great, but I've noticed half the time their "updates" break things horribly and we have to wait for another "update" to fix whatever they broke.
Still, if it works, I'll be happy enough. It is a pretty mediocre UI at the moment.
Slashdot Mirror
Hilarious. I was actually curious if this was a real site (it is), and if it was a joke, or an actual scam (the latter), and if it was an actual scam, what sort (the sort where there's a hidden-in-fine-print 140$ charge to purchase the "system", and when you get it in the mail, the system is presumably a piece of paper that says "ha ha, sucker!")
It's only a problem with software that doesn't live in your butt if that software requires you to phone in, or has an auto-update feature that you can't disable. Otherwise, while sure you might not have complete control over its behavior, you *can* at least guarantee that it will always have the *same* behavior... why I don't like software that silently auto-updates, instead of at least prompting.
Who are they going to hire to replace her? Does it matter? Do you think a company that consistently allows high-level managers in another country who've probably never even talked to my girlfriend's boss directly, let alone to her, to set unreasonable deadlines and then make her do it, will care? It's not her boss insisting on a shorter deadline, it's her boss's boss's boss's boss, and the communication channel is basically unidirectional. Which means if she "slacks", her boss's boss's boss's boss could send down the channel, something must be done, you should fire your developer, and then that team is screwed, but the boss's boss's boss's boss wouldn't find that out until a couple months later, when he discovers no work has been done due to firing the team's only developer, which is a bit too late.
Is that a completely moronic system? Yes it is, which is why I've been telling her she should go find a company to work for that's less messed up.
She might live in America, though, but the company is Japanese. My understanding is, if she doesn't work harder to get the (completely unreasonable) amount of work they've given her done by the (equally completely unreasonable) deadline, they *still* won't necessarily hire enough additional people to get that work done by the deadline. Then they'll likely say, "this person isn't getting all her work done by our deadline, therefore she is slacking", and that's grounds for firing her. Which, honestly, I don't think would be the worst thing for her, but it's not my job.
I like my job.
I have. She likes having a job, though, I can't imagine why. :p
(When they've put upon her to work the completely ridiculous hours, she's thought about quitting, and they always appease her just long enough with promises of additional developers that she ends up not. I wouldn't have her patience.)
Demanding that employees use IE6 because it's necessary to run particular software, probably indicates that the company sucks royal balls, and has no budget for IT, because *damn* that's a piece of crap, and old, and they should have updated their crap by now to run in a more modern browser. I give them a pass if they're a Microsoft-based company and they have internal web components that only run in IE (ours is, and does, though generally I just use IETab in Firefox for it), but they should still run in *modern* IE browsers. Having to use IE 6 is not a "reasonable demand".
That does sound pretty exceptional. I'm quite happy to be hourly, because it means I will always have to do exactly 40 hours a week, not more. Meanwhile, my girlfriend is paid to do 40 hours a week, and rarely only does 40; usually more like 45, but sometimes 50 or 60, occasionally even more. I would very strongly not want to ever have her job. She doesn't even make that much more than me (a little bit, but within the same general range.)
I'd never participated, but I knew it was a coding contest site, and I was pretty sure they gave out prize money (wikipedia indicates I'm right). If they'd just been like, "we promised you money, but nope, we're not giving it", that would have been pretty news-like. But nope. Nothing like that.
This sounds pretty dumb. Like having headhunters bug you, only you're also giving them money.
Luls.
I have met a grand total of exactly one real estate agent who actually knew what the crap he was talking about. My favorite was an agent who, because we didn't show up to see the unit we called him to see right on time (we were like 2 minutes late), decided he had misremembered, and drove all the way across town because he thought we wanted to see a unit all the way across town, and didn't answer his cell phone until he got there. But that kind of incompetence was rampant, that was just the funniest mistake. They were constantly calling us about the wrong unit, or letting us know about new available units that were completely nothing like what we told them we were interested in...
She says she's actually gotten some good work for cheap - for side projects she's thought about trying out as potential startups, but were still in the "I don't know if it'll even work" phase, so she didn't really want to spend that much money, or that much of her own time. I'm not sure I'd ever want to make them part of an established business, but they seem great for PoC work.
And as she pointed out - while a couple bucks an hour is awful in the US, not everyone lives in the US. There are places where getting a couple bucks an hour would be fantastic.
Incidentally, she also found a graphic designer on one of those sites - I've seen the guy's work, and *that* guy I would totally hire all the time for anything. He's more than a couple bucks an hour (I think she said he charges 15), but considering in the US you'd have a hard time finding a graphic designer that's halfway-competent for under like 50...
On one hand, I agree with you to an extent: there are a number of laws which are widely broken because they're dumb, like impossibly low speed limits on certain roads, or marijuana possession. On the other hand, I certainly wouldn't want what you're going for to be universally followed, either: think of the South up through the 50s, where it was widely accepted that the punishment for a black person kissing a white person was a painful death. The government should enforce that sort of thing.
The right to harass you daily and nightly, send you constant spam, threaten to send you to court, threaten to take all your stuff, possibly actually show up and *attempt* to take all your stuff, and basically make your life a living hell unless you either pay or sue them? That's how the legal system is supposed to work, right?
Penny Arcade recently put it well: we *know* banks are, on the whole, evil, scumsucking parasites that would murder their own mothers for pocket change. Same is true about oil companies, private mercenary militias, etc. We're not surprised when companies like that do horrific things - in fact, we're surprised any time they *don't*. But a company that sells video games... we don't expect it from them. So it's far more shocking.
This is not actually a real solution, I'm just amused every time I see document management show up in a slashdot thread - being it's not a very *exciting* field. I work for a company that provides document management solutions for much larger organizations, with costs (I think) starting in the tens of thousands of dollars, and going up to way more than that. Of course, since I work here, I have my own personal test repositories for testing things, and when I was buying a house and started getting crazy amounts of paper documents I had to sign, scan and send back, I was like, why not scan them with QuickFields and keep them in a Laserfiche repository? So I did. :D
That solution doesn't work for most people, though. (Also it's totally not open source. Source is only open to those who are development at this company, which I am, so I suppose in a twisted way...)
In the old days, uni mainframes were designed specifically to be multi-user, with all kinds of precautions that would get in the way if you just wanted to use it as a single-user system (except of course, nobody ever would have wanted that, because those machines were enormous and cost a jillion dollars.) I don't feel like going back to those days, personally.
And personally, I probably *would* let guests I trusted to be competent and responsible use my computer while I wasn't watching them. But I wouldn't let guests I barely know do that, and I *certainly* wouldn't let guests that had already shown a prior history of sketchiness, which is what the thread creator was discussing.
No, I'm not claiming that a laptop for a child is a necessity, that's why I also said they could use their parents'. Heck, if you're talking about a kid young enough that they shouldn't be responsible for a full function laptop, sure, they could use a "limited function tablet", too. Or nothing, does a kid that young even need the internet? Probably not. By high school, though, I would totally buy my kid a laptop if I had a kid, and a kid in high school is still too young to be working, or at least, certainly too young to be working full time at a job that would allow said kid to buy his own laptop with his own money. I'd probably do what my parents did: if my kid was the sort of person who really wanted computer access all the time (likely: he'd be my kid), I'd buy him a junk laptop off craigslist or something in 7th grade, and a proper laptop in 9th if he didn't lose or destroy the junk one. Otherwise he'd keep getting junk ones.
And nobody was talking about school before (then again, nobody was talking about kids before, either....) Maybe I'd find a school that wasn't as dumb about computers. Or maybe, since I'd be driving the kid to this friend's house anyway, most likely, I'd just bring the kid his laptop when I dropped him off?
They didn't specify kids. But in that case, presumably, they would use their parents', or their parents would buy them one. (I did actually get my own personal laptop when I was in junior high. It was a total PoS, but it was a laptop, and it was mine. And I did indeed totally ruin it a couple times with malware, being a dumb kid.)
I certainly wouldn't expect that if I was staying over at a friend's house, I could have ubiquitous unsupervised access to using their home computer - why would I? I might expect that they would let me log in to print something or to check my email while they were there, but hang out on it and install sketchy software while my friend wasn't around? Why would you let your friends do that? Put a password on it, don't tell them the password, let them use their own computer. (Alternatively, if you're worried that they're going to install sketchy things while you *are* watching them, then you're as much of an idiot as they are if you just sit and watch them do it.)
Yeah, I suppose one should avoid talking about different types of text files, and whether they contain BOMs, too. Or for that matter, about how to make your own balm.
Because my bank account's web site -totally- has a su command. Would be neat if it did, but I'm not holding my breath. (My mom has access to one of the locations where some of my money is, because she does things for me on that account sometimes. My girlfriend has access to a credit card account in my name, because now it's in her name, too. Honestly, it'd simplify things if I could just give my girlfriend -all- my passwords. I certainly wouldn't give anyone -else- all my passwords, though, certainly not my boss.)
I disagree, and so (to a certain extent, when done right) does tvtropes: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OverlyLongGag
See also: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AntiHumor
On the other hand, telling 25 *different* jokes, none of which are very funny, is way worse.
Funny, I was thinking it would have printed, "yo dawg, I heard you like 3d printing, so I 3d printed you a 3d printer so you can 3d print while you 3d print."
Nah, I'm pretty sure it's just Welsh.
You know, that would actually be pretty cool. Make the walls and ceilings transparent, too, while you were at it. People would totally buy that.
We have a a semi-old Roku box. It generally works great, but I've noticed half the time their "updates" break things horribly and we have to wait for another "update" to fix whatever they broke.
Still, if it works, I'll be happy enough. It is a pretty mediocre UI at the moment.