(Note: I work in the US. Other countries may differ).
For some occupations (e.g. top-secret department of defense stuff), they do credit checks on you to determine if there's a risk you'll be bribed to disclose things.
In similar occupations, declaring bankruptcy is a reason for losing your clearance. Lose your clearance, you lose your job.
In other occupations, such as the Financial Industry (I work for a mutual fund company), I was told that they would need to run background checks, credit checks, FBI checks, state checks, local checks, and every other check they could think of as a condition of my working there. I don't know if there is an SEC requirement to do this, or if it's just the company covering their ass, but it's a blanket policy, with no exceptions.
This was discussed with me during the final interview, so I knew what I was getting into. Every employee who works for this company has to be bonded, fingerprinted, researched, yaddah-yaddah-yaddah. Every contractor goes through similar stuff, plus NDA's, etc.
Unless you work in an industry where these types of checks are common (and it doesn't sound like it), I would tell them to stuff it since they didn't talk to you about it in the interview. If they want to push, call the ACLU, get a lawyer, and go kick some corporate ass for wrongful termination, discrimination, and stupidity.
Think about it. What would you do if they asked you to sign a paper stating that you were no longer a member of the communist party? That you were no longer homosexual? That you let your membership in the KKK expire?
Step 1: Be sure you are doing it because you like it, not for the "money", "publicity", or something else.
Step 2: Get hired in that field, somewhere, anywhere. You might need to get a degree of some kind, so find somebody who will help with your tuition and other costs.
Since USPS employees usually go door-to-door, they would probably have no need/use of a segway, except perhaps as a "hold the mail I haven't delivered yet" hitching post.
Why? Because if Microsoft doesn't control the OS, they can't very well force the hardware vendors to include certain things (e.g. network cards) as part fo their "standard" platform, could they?
M$ is way to anal about the money, and nowhere near enough anal about the innovation.
Microsoft has never been concerned about being seen as a hypocrite. For examples, see the DOJ documents, the fact that Windows is a copy of the Apple windowing system (which is based on the Xerox PARC system), the DR-DOS lawsuits, the recent DOJ stuff, and the rest, the rest, the rest.
In order to prevent complete chaos, these things are usually done through a grandfather clause. Congress could shorten the lengh of copyright to (oh, let's say) 10 years, but it wouldn't apply to anything that's already been through the copyright office. What they would do is say something like "anything after december 31st, 2010 is only copyrightable for 10 years, anything before january 1st, 2011 uses the old rules".
The animals don't know what to make of the Roomba.
The dog stares at it like a deer in the headlights; the cats can't seem to decide if it's chasing them, they should be chasing it, or if they should ignore it.
The Roomba doesn't have bags, it has a bin a little larger then a pack of cigarettes. After you use it, you just pop it out, empty it, and put it back in.
There's a battery indicator on the top of the unit. When it turns yellow (getting low on power), or red (low on power), just plug it back into the charger for 12 hours.
It covers the floor extremely well, from what I've seen. It seems to measure the distance between objects as it wanders around, and makes sure it hits everything it can. The Roomba is specifically designed to be able to get under beds, chairs, and the like, and it has a brush so it can get under the "lip" between the floor and the cabinet doors and things.
It should do one of three things: Not be able to move them, so it will treat it like a wall; Move it out of the way and clean under it (it might not pick up dirt behind it then, but you never know), or push it around for a bit, getting all the dirt. I think it would depend on exactly where in the cleaning cycle it was.
I got a Roomba for my boyfriend and my Mother for Christmas. They think it's the neatest thing since sliced bread.
The only problems we've found so far are that if you have small (e.g. 6"ish) gaps in your wall, say a bookcase, gap, CD tower, gap, bookcase, the Roomba may get confused and not realize there's a wall there. That's what the virtual wall is for. The other issue is animals. They don't know what to think of it.
What the admins need to do is let the system fail, fix it, then include a "Nagios, a *free*, *no cost*, software product began detecting/predecting/correcting/whatever this in version foo, which was on released on bar" in theeir status reports.
U.S. Postal spam pisses me off more than email by far. In addition to "standard" envelope wrapped junk mail, I get on average two to five mail order catalogs EVERY DAY. This is almost assuredly a side effect of eBay and other online orders that originate from my home address.
I would love to be able to filter U.S. Postal mail by sender and/or class. An uphill battle I'm sure. I think that past efforts to stop mass junk mailings were unsuccessful; something about it being illegal or unconstitutional to prevent senders from using the mail for legal purposes came to play.
Go down to the post office, and ask them form 2150, "Prohibitory order against sender". Fill it out (they want your name and address, plus the sender's name and address", and attach the OPENED junk mail they sent you, and turn it in.
See http://www.junkbusters.com/dmlaws.html#form for more information.
It's very unlikely (well, maybe not, given the idiots running around nowadays) that somebody might confuse the city of Pheonix with a piece of computer hardware. It's more likely that somebody might confuse a piece of computer hardware with computer software.
IANAL, of course, but I think you'd be laughed out of court.
The fact that this once again shows that US trademark law is fscked up royally is just a bonus.
Slashdot Mirror
(Note: I work in the US. Other countries may differ).
For some occupations (e.g. top-secret department of defense stuff), they do credit checks on you to determine if there's a risk you'll be bribed to disclose things.
In similar occupations, declaring bankruptcy is a reason for losing your clearance. Lose your clearance, you lose your job.
In other occupations, such as the Financial Industry (I work for a mutual fund company), I was told that they would need to run background checks, credit checks, FBI checks, state checks, local checks, and every other check they could think of as a condition of my working there. I don't know if there is an SEC requirement to do this, or if it's just the company covering their ass, but it's a blanket policy, with no exceptions.
This was discussed with me during the final interview, so I knew what I was getting into. Every employee who works for this company has to be bonded, fingerprinted, researched, yaddah-yaddah-yaddah. Every contractor goes through similar stuff, plus NDA's, etc.
Unless you work in an industry where these types of checks are common (and it doesn't sound like it), I would tell them to stuff it since they didn't talk to you about it in the interview. If they want to push, call the ACLU, get a lawyer, and go kick some corporate ass for wrongful termination, discrimination, and stupidity.
Think about it. What would you do if they asked you to sign a paper stating that you were no longer a member of the communist party? That you were no longer homosexual? That you let your membership in the KKK expire?
Um, you should always have your emergency backup boot media created and tested BEFORE the disaster happens.
If you buy used machines, Microsoft doesn't get any money for them.
The same thing applies to used books and whatnot.
Or, they might be pissed off at them, and are working on the "accidental" slashdot effect.
Go ahead, mod me offtopic.
To quote the original poster:
Which is why no "consultant" should be allowed to work. Ever. Anywhere.
Step 1: Be sure you are doing it because you like it, not for the "money", "publicity", or something else.
Step 2: Get hired in that field, somewhere, anywhere. You might need to get a degree of some kind, so find somebody who will help with your tuition and other costs.
Step 3: Profit!
Why I like football (the american kind, not the real stuff):
1) Tight pants.
2) Ex-players as commentators.
Now if they would just set it up so I could control the camera amgles...
Since USPS employees usually go door-to-door, they would probably have no need/use of a segway, except perhaps as a "hold the mail I haven't delivered yet" hitching post.
Why? Because if Microsoft doesn't control the OS, they can't very well force the hardware vendors to include certain things (e.g. network cards) as part fo their "standard" platform, could they?
M$ is way to anal about the money, and nowhere near enough anal about the innovation.
Microsoft has never been concerned about being seen as a hypocrite. For examples, see the DOJ documents, the fact that Windows is a copy of the Apple windowing system (which is based on the Xerox PARC system), the DR-DOS lawsuits, the recent DOJ stuff, and the rest, the rest, the rest.
In order to prevent complete chaos, these things are usually done through a grandfather clause. Congress could shorten the lengh of copyright to (oh, let's say) 10 years, but it wouldn't apply to anything that's already been through the copyright office. What they would do is say something like "anything after december 31st, 2010 is only copyrightable for 10 years, anything before january 1st, 2011 uses the old rules".
You meant to spell "a lot", I'm sure.
mmm[tm]. They could then call it AiBo...
For those who insist on pendanticism, I purchased two Roomba's. One I gave to my boyfriend, the other I game to my Mother.
The animals don't know what to make of the Roomba.
The dog stares at it like a deer in the headlights; the cats can't seem to decide if it's chasing them, they should be chasing it, or if they should ignore it.
It gives us more time for (ahem) other things.
Also, he lives 600 miles away from me at the moment...
The Roomba doesn't have bags, it has a bin a little larger then a pack of cigarettes. After you use it, you just pop it out, empty it, and put it back in.
There's a battery indicator on the top of the unit. When it turns yellow (getting low on power), or red (low on power), just plug it back into the charger for 12 hours.
It covers the floor extremely well, from what I've seen. It seems to measure the distance between objects as it wanders around, and makes sure it hits everything it can. The Roomba is specifically designed to be able to get under beds, chairs, and the like, and it has a brush so it can get under the "lip" between the floor and the cabinet doors and things.
It should do one of three things: Not be able to move them, so it will treat it like a wall; Move it out of the way and clean under it (it might not pick up dirt behind it then, but you never know), or push it around for a bit, getting all the dirt. I think it would depend on exactly where in the cleaning cycle it was.
I got a Roomba for my boyfriend and my Mother for Christmas. They think it's the neatest thing since sliced bread.
The only problems we've found so far are that if you have small (e.g. 6"ish) gaps in your wall, say a bookcase, gap, CD tower, gap, bookcase, the Roomba may get confused and not realize there's a wall there. That's what the virtual wall is for. The other issue is animals. They don't know what to think of it.
What the admins need to do is let the system fail, fix it, then include a "Nagios, a *free*, *no cost*, software product began detecting/predecting/correcting/whatever this in version foo, which was on released on bar" in theeir status reports.
Acknowleding your problem is the first step on the road to recovery.
To blockquote the previous posters:
Those of who are Kinsey 6's might disagree.
Go down to the post office, and ask them form 2150, "Prohibitory order against sender". Fill it out (they want your name and address, plus the sender's name and address", and attach the OPENED junk mail they sent you, and turn it in.
See http://www.junkbusters.com/dmlaws.html#form for more information.
RedHat, SuSe, etc are all commercial entities.
It's very unlikely (well, maybe not, given the idiots running around nowadays) that somebody might confuse the city of Pheonix with a piece of computer hardware. It's more likely that somebody might confuse a piece of computer hardware with computer software.
IANAL, of course, but I think you'd be laughed out of court.
The fact that this once again shows that US trademark law is fscked up royally is just a bonus.