I thought that Kepler thought there was another planet outside of Neptune's orbit based on gravitational wobble, and when Pluto was discovered in 1938, a lot of scientists went, "Nahh... that's too small. There's got to be another, much larger one to create that kind of wobble." And the debate continues.
I had this theory that a much larger planet is further out, but is very dark in color, and thus it hasn't been seen by albedo, and no one was looking in the right place to see it eclipse out other stars.
Of course, I haven't taken a course in astronomy since the 1980s, and I may be totally missing something obvious ("If that were true then the Hubble's Heisenburg Compensator would have found it, duh!"), but I have always thought if I wanted the *correct* answer to something I should post something obviously wrong on Slashdot.
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I had a Heisenberg-mobile, but every time I looked at the speedometer, I got lost.
Re:now if only people will read it...
on
Hacker Culture
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· Score: 4, Funny
Most hackers I've met here are script kiddies who couldn't hack a wet paper bag
This got me to think about how I would hack a wet paper bag.
Test Subject: Plain small paper bag from a plastic bag of paper bags labeled, simply, "Paper lunch bags." Then I soaked it in water for 2 minutes, shook off the excess water, and laid it down flat.
Software used: I used Red Hat Linux (6.3) and a variety of tools on Windows 2000 (with SP1).
My first attempt was to connect the paper bag to the network. Lacking any RJ11 port, I was forced to assume it was wireless. I placed it on my cable router, in hopes that it would try and boot to DHCP. I waited a long time, but it did not attempt to gain IP access. This would be harder than I thought.
Then I thought maybe it I wrapped the bag around the head of a Cat5 cable, maybe that would work. No luck. It just sat there, inert. I tested the Cat5 cable on a known working system, and found it did not work. I tried another, but while this worked, it did not work on the wet paper bag.
I searched google for "wet paper bag" and "2600 wet paper bag" and Usenet for "wet paper bag." It did not return any useable results, although it appears that quite a lot of people assume script kiddies cannot hack one, either. I checked the TCP/IP manual that came with my Cisco training, and did not find anything that might help. I had no idea what level of the OSI layer would work on a wet paper bag, but I assumed if it was hackable, it would have to at least get to layer 2. So I attached it to an old X.25 serial cable, and tried frame routing, but all I got were device timeouts. Wet paper bags are a LOT more secure than I thought!
After a day of this, I thought I had finally gotten a login prompt, but I found I accidentally was using the IP address of my other LINUX box.
I asked around, and found a script kiddie at the local comic book store. I asked him if he could hack a wet paper bag, but instead of answering, he became angry, and asked me what cable service I used. I didn't think it would help, but I told him everything I knew. Later when I got home, my ZoneAlarm had crashed in what I am guessing was a DOS attack.
So far, I have concluded I cannot hack a wet paper bag, either. I have shown my results to my boss, and soon, "WPB Protocol" will replace OpenBSD as the security standard in all our offices. That gives me only 3 weeks to learn how to program one. I hope there a gcc for it...
I used to work for a company that promised 2 weeks of "career training" annually, meaning you took courses related to your job, but they'd pay for certifications (like CCNA) for your "career path." The boss I got, however, was a poor people manager, and so she couldn't keep any of her programmers, and thus... was unwilling to let one of us go for a week at a time. This kind of made sense, because there were only two of us at any given time, and we had to be on call 24/7, and that sucks when the other person is out.
So she kept putting off the training, or cancelling your class right from under you (like the day before, she'd say, "That SQL class... ain't gonna happen. We have work to do...") Of course, the company still paid for it because you can't cancel right before and get your money back. So on my annual review it showed I didn't attend any classes my company paid for, which looked very bad. I finally left that department (for that and other reasons), but before I left, she decided that training was best accomplished by getting an old book (like "Learning NT 3.5.1" when NT4 was already a few years old), slapping it our desk with a post-it note that said, "Finish by Friday, then give it to [next programmer]." She also claimed this as "paid training," so she wouldn't lose us for a week.
Uh... yeah. Later, she quit *just* before she got fired.
The training I have received has been a mixed bag. I break down trainers like this:
Interesting + Knowledgeable = Good class Interesting + Not Knowledgeable = Mediocre class Boring + Knowledgeable = Bad class Boring + Not Knowledgeable = Very bad class
The first one is someone who is great getting ideas across and knows their stuff. These trainers are rare, but I have been blessed to come across many of them. The second is people who can keep your attention, but can't waver much from their training books, and tend not to give you very good real-world answers. I find many college-students-made-trainers fall into this category, and a majority of trainers I have come across are like this. The third class states that there are some trainers who really know their stuff, but are totally unable to get their knowledge across to students. I find many "geeks for geeks" fall into this category (but certainly not all of them). Just because you know something doesn't mean you can teach it to others, and I hate it when some trainer has this smarmy-ass attitude of "Look what I know and you don't." The fourth I have come across only twice, thank God, and I actually blew off one class because the boredom was so excruciating, I though I was going to slit my wrists just to see color. Luckily, the workbooks were much more interesting and actually taught me what I needed.
But there is another, very important variable: students. More classes than I care to admit have been partially ruined by certain people. Some students are just plain dumber than a bag of hair, but boy, are they loud about it. Some are these "attention getters," who seem only to speak to look good, usually by repeating what the teacher said or reading ahead in the book and then giving a "looking ahead" type of answer. Some have cell phones and beepers that go off constantly. If the computers have network access, IM chimes keep going off, and distract you.
A good example is I went to one software class at a great expense. It was a proprietary software that (at the time) was gaining considerable ground. The prerequisite was thorough knowledge of NT Server, SQL, and call center voice switching systems (Rockwell, Aspect, etc.). The class was an intense, five 12hr day course, with a test and certification at the end. Our class consisted of 4 students who met the prerequisites, about 10 who didn't (most by a long shot), and 5 trainers who were just there to learn how to be the next set of trainers to teach the course. Among those 10 students, most had never seen an NT box, didn't know anything about their call center switches, and after the second day, just gave up, chatted among themselves, wandered in and out of class, and gabbed via IM, pagers, and cell phones. This was very distracting, and the teacher had to ask them to be quiet about once an hour. On top of that, halfway through, the teacher got sick, and his replacement was one of the "trainers-in-training." By Friday evening, when I had to leave for my flight back home, we had only gotten through 70% of the course and the certification test was canceled. Later, we got apologies in the mail with certificates to take the course again for free, but my work wouldn't let me fly out a second time.
Some courses (especially management courses, I find) are just excuses some people use to "get out of work," too. The government sector is filled with this kind of abuse.
So it can be a mixed bag, and unless you know the teacher, you could get just about any experience, even with the same training company.
I did not have one until I was 15. My father only allowed it because soon it was the only way for him to claim me as a dependant. There was a saying in the 1980s that when SSN became a requirement for a dependant, the US "lost" 7.5 million children that year.
But having a number also allowed me to get a job and have my own bank account. You SSN is linked to so many things, that's how detective agencies find you. Your SSN is linked to your finances, your driving record, address, and so on.
I recall how one of my friend's parent's old video cameras with a date function rolled over to January 1st, 1984 for some reason. It still worked and everything, it just only allowed you to chose the year between 1984-1999 in the clock. I had some non-Y2K FTP software (WinFTP_LE, I think), and it listed dates over 1999 as 19100, which messed up the formatting in the window, but still worked everwhere else (I got more modern software soon afterwards). I wish my XT wasn't destroyed by a 5-year old with a screwdriver in 1995. I would have loved to see how that handled the Y2K. Of course, us old XT users always knew that January 1st of 1981 was a Thursday.
Reading these posts are funny and make me miss the old days a little (just a little, no LINUX or OpenBSD in 1985, and a TRS-80 cost several grand). There were some pretty crappy proprietary dating systems back then. Hard to believe that someone forgot to program a year field at one bank, and then just made an extra byte for it, putting off the problem for another 7 years. Towards the end, when the posts broke down arguing about Gregorian math and the year 2400, I liked how someone piped up, "Folks, there is a REAL WORLD out there, this is a serious problem!"
When working with computers in the early 1980s (I was a teen), I recall how on one field trip, we visited our county recordkeeping system, and those rows and rows of hanging shelving with magnetic tape reels in them. I wonder if they ever backed those up in a more convenient and durable format? They probably had to before 2000.
Where I work, we use a lot of data files on hundreds of rack-mounted systems. Sometimes, one of the LAN cards in a system goes wonky, and the floppy is the only way to:
- Get data off the machine (if less than 1.4MB) - Load a DiskImage LAN boot (if it's a LAN software/driver issue) to re-image the system
Bootable CDs would be nice, but floppies are quicker, and most of our machines cannot contain CDs for space considerations. It's all LAN/Floppy. Of course, we have a rather unique situation.
At home, I don't use floppies that much anymore, and my ZIP use has also deteriorated once I got a fast CDRW. But I only use CDs for things I want to last a little longer. I have the same 5 zip disks I got with a multipack when I bought my external drive several years ago, and swap them for multiple systems at home and work. ZIP and floppies are copy and zoooom... CDs take a little longer, and you get a lot of duds over time. Once in a while, you get a file you can't burn for some reason, like a file with a long filename, or has some formatting issues (my CDRW at work can't copy some non-Windows files, it will copy a.gz file, but then *nix cannot gunzip it... but only once in a while, so it's a gamble).
So until CDs become fast pop,copy, and go... I will still rely on floppies and ZIPs.
I recall an essay (maybe on Salon?) a few years ago when popup ads were just not leading the click-throughs they wanted, and the online ad market began to bottom out.
The author said something like, "For the first time, advertisers began to realize that maybe no one has been paying attention to their ads. Before, there was no real way to tell if an ad worked or not, and now, it's beginning to dawn on them that nothing they have ever advertised has ever worked as well as always thought. Did spending money on all those billboards really increase use of their brand of gasoline? Did all those Superbowl ads actually increase beer consumption any? This fear of proof of consumer blocking caused many to pull out of the popup game, in fear that it would eventually cost them their jobs in other areas."
Maybe true, maybe not. But personally, rarely has an ad worked on me. They are just noise. I usually go by word of mouth or what's available (only Coke products, waitress? Okay, Diet Coke instead of Diet Pepsi... whatever). The ads may get so ridiculous that people may just tune out, and the whole ad market may suddenly collapse, or realize all their glitz and schmaltz was just the Emperor's New Clothes: invisible.
Ads are a game where the scores go by the whim of the populace. It's a crapshoot at best, and at worst, you can fudge anything to make it look effective. "Look, I placed these million-dollar ads for holiday candy in November, and in December, sales for candy canes went way up, more that 200% over the last six months of sales combined!" Uh... yeah.
I can't believe this. You all are making light of a very serious question involving mathematics of orbits, and what kind of long term solar system damage would occur should the moon (I assume we are talking about our moon, here), crash into the Earth. And all some of you do to answer this serious question is make jokes about things they learned from "Thundarr the Barbarian" or something. Well, not me.
I want to know the media angle.
This would be a godsend to Fox News and the New CNN. Ratings aplenty. All kinds of pundits speculating everything as the large death-ball looms closer. You heard me right: "death-ball." And people would be glued to their TVs, and advertising revenues would soar.
"Pepsi presents: Armageddon. The choice of a lost generation."
CNNfn would want to know how this would affect stock prices. There would be the usual gang of idiots all pointing their financial fingers in 20 different directions. Some would see the stock market plummet as people cashed out. Or leveled as people just gave up hope, because you can't take it with you. Maybe it would even increase, says a man who just bought 20billion shares of PepsiCo, because of all the ad revenue.
CSPAN, with both of their cameras on 24/7, would show the last senators and representatives discussing how THEY should get more disaster relief to their state. Senator Gramm has taken the floor, demanding more disaster relief since the DFW corridor has taken a beating as it is in the dying IT market and with their citizens appearing on every other episode of "C.O.P.S." And now this! Probably a liberal plot to move the tech corridor to Virginia, he says.
Fox news gets a poll:
- Thinks the world is going to end: 55% - Thinks the world is going to recover: 22% - Thinks the moon is made of a stinky green cheese: 62% - Hopes it doesn't crash into their state: 95% - Knows it doesn't matter where it crashes, the world will blow up anyway:.05% - Thinks Senator Gramm is made of a stinky green cheese: 12% - Blames the Democrats: - 45% - Blames the Republicans: - 45% - Blames Senator Gramm: - 62% - Blames the reduction of "Pro-gravity" initiatives: - 5% - Said, "What moon?" - 10% - Said, "No foolin'? Crashin' into the Earth? Damn!" - 10% - Said, "I don't care, as long as I don't have to clean it up!" - 10% - Thinks this will postpone the Oscars - 42% - Thinks the polls are calculated incorrectly: - 129%
Nickelodeon will have a Linda Ellerbee special called, "You didn't eat enough vegetables, and now we're all gonna die, you brats!" Sesame Street will have a very special episode where Dr. Philip Morrison explains gravity wells to Elmo. Parents petition books stores to remove the "inappropriate and disturbing" book, "Good Night Moon."
Howard Stern will admit it was all an act to detract from his effeminate curly hair. Then he tells fart jokes until the studio or the moon's crash cuts him off the air.
Evangelical Christians will be smug, say the bible predicted this with a lot of vague interpretations, and eventually blame gay people. Gay people will blame stereotypes. Stereotypes will blame the press, who will blame each other on the next 20/20. Jack Chick will suddenly admit his campaign and tracts were all a joke started by a bet with the late Anton LaVey on who could repel the most people from Christianity in the shortest time possible. He won.
In the end, the media will finally get what it wants, and while the moon and the Earth smash into each other like melons in a mosh pit, people will still be arguing about whether this is all just hype.
I see two major sides of each issue: what should happen in theory and what happens in reality. It reminds me of those who buy things in (proper) auctions. All of these opinions are based on experience.
For example, one theory in auction buying is that the reseller will never sell an item below what he or she paid for it. That seems reasonable, right? You only want to sell at a profit, or you are a pretty dumb business owner. Okay... suppose you are buying from a dumb business owner who would have sold at below cost because he or she can't keep accounting straight? What if he/she doesn't even sell at an enormous profit because you remind them of their grandmother who always bossed them around when they were 10? Well, now it's a whole new ballgame.
So back on topic. Suppose you don't accept a counteroffer because you are afraid of all of those points people made? I think some of the points are valid, and if I was a manager who got hijacked to pay a guy more, I would intelligently wait for someone else to come along, and lay them off at the next "restructuring" sweep, and then hire a new guy to do the same job for low pay, but give them a different title. If I was smart. Now, what if I was some boss hired through nepotism and hadn't a CLUE about this sort of thing? Maybe I am intimidated because I would only think, "Oooh! Can't lose Mr. Guru, my team will be sunk!" Then accepting my counteroffer WOULD be a good idea.
I think before leaving a job, try and list basic reasons why you are even considering the jump. Is it really the pay or are there other reasons?
Then list who actually makes the decisions for the counteroffer. Like my boss? Pffft. Not even HIS boss decides my pay. My company, for instance, has NEVER made a counteroffer. They just state, "You know you can't come back for at least two years, are you sure?" and you decide from there. But my company is a large corporation, and while I know I do a good job, the monkey in HR doesn't know me from a pile of 1mb RAM chips, and I get the same raises as everyone else. But say you are from a small company? Then you have to guess how smart they really are. Or how valuable you are.
Value is based on individual value. Like data entry people are a dime a dozen, and you could be replaced if you just sneezed wrong. But if your present job is head of security at a small company...you may have a LOT more value. Especially if you just changed the database password. Then you have to ask, "Do they know my individual value?" Who are "they?" Do "they" regulate department budget, or even state what your pay rate is? In a big corporation, unless you are Steve Ballmer or something, don't count on it. A friend of mine worked for a company that fired their bug finding team because they "always complained about flaws in the product, and are not team players." Uh... yeah. You can bet that they never got a counteroffer. But I worked for a company that did counteroffer to stay by promoting me to a different department and offer more training instead of pay... and I stayed. That was a good move (until my department got outsourced, but that's another story).
I guess all this long-winded string of words is concluding to one point: it depends on the situation, but you should think about it.
- Why would I accept another offer in the first place? - Who decides my pay and do they know what I really do? - Are they smart enough to understand how this whole game works?
Slashdot Mirror
I had this theory that a much larger planet is further out, but is very dark in color, and thus it hasn't been seen by albedo, and no one was looking in the right place to see it eclipse out other stars.
Of course, I haven't taken a course in astronomy since the 1980s, and I may be totally missing something obvious ("If that were true then the Hubble's Heisenburg Compensator would have found it, duh!"), but I have always thought if I wanted the *correct* answer to something I should post something obviously wrong on Slashdot.
____________________
I had a Heisenberg-mobile, but every time I looked at the speedometer, I got lost.
This got me to think about how I would hack a wet paper bag.
Test Subject: Plain small paper bag from a plastic bag of paper bags labeled, simply, "Paper lunch bags." Then I soaked it in water for 2 minutes, shook off the excess water, and laid it down flat.
Software used: I used Red Hat Linux (6.3) and a variety of tools on Windows 2000 (with SP1).
My first attempt was to connect the paper bag to the network. Lacking any RJ11 port, I was forced to assume it was wireless. I placed it on my cable router, in hopes that it would try and boot to DHCP. I waited a long time, but it did not attempt to gain IP access. This would be harder than I thought.
Then I thought maybe it I wrapped the bag around the head of a Cat5 cable, maybe that would work. No luck. It just sat there, inert. I tested the Cat5 cable on a known working system, and found it did not work. I tried another, but while this worked, it did not work on the wet paper bag.
I searched google for "wet paper bag" and "2600 wet paper bag" and Usenet for "wet paper bag." It did not return any useable results, although it appears that quite a lot of people assume script kiddies cannot hack one, either. I checked the TCP/IP manual that came with my Cisco training, and did not find anything that might help. I had no idea what level of the OSI layer would work on a wet paper bag, but I assumed if it was hackable, it would have to at least get to layer 2. So I attached it to an old X.25 serial cable, and tried frame routing, but all I got were device timeouts. Wet paper bags are a LOT more secure than I thought!
After a day of this, I thought I had finally gotten a login prompt, but I found I accidentally was using the IP address of my other LINUX box.
I asked around, and found a script kiddie at the local comic book store. I asked him if he could hack a wet paper bag, but instead of answering, he became angry, and asked me what cable service I used. I didn't think it would help, but I told him everything I knew. Later when I got home, my ZoneAlarm had crashed in what I am guessing was a DOS attack.
So far, I have concluded I cannot hack a wet paper bag, either. I have shown my results to my boss, and soon, "WPB Protocol" will replace OpenBSD as the security standard in all our offices. That gives me only 3 weeks to learn how to program one. I hope there a gcc for it...
I used to work for a company that promised 2 weeks of "career training" annually, meaning you took courses related to your job, but they'd pay for certifications (like CCNA) for your "career path." The boss I got, however, was a poor people manager, and so she couldn't keep any of her programmers, and thus... was unwilling to let one of us go for a week at a time. This kind of made sense, because there were only two of us at any given time, and we had to be on call 24/7, and that sucks when the other person is out.
So she kept putting off the training, or cancelling your class right from under you (like the day before, she'd say, "That SQL class... ain't gonna happen. We have work to do...") Of course, the company still paid for it because you can't cancel right before and get your money back. So on my annual review it showed I didn't attend any classes my company paid for, which looked very bad. I finally left that department (for that and other reasons), but before I left, she decided that training was best accomplished by getting an old book (like "Learning NT 3.5.1" when NT4 was already a few years old), slapping it our desk with a post-it note that said, "Finish by Friday, then give it to [next programmer]." She also claimed this as "paid training," so she wouldn't lose us for a week.
Uh... yeah. Later, she quit *just* before she got fired.
The training I have received has been a mixed bag. I break down trainers like this:
Interesting + Knowledgeable = Good class
Interesting + Not Knowledgeable = Mediocre class
Boring + Knowledgeable = Bad class
Boring + Not Knowledgeable = Very bad class
The first one is someone who is great getting ideas across and knows their stuff. These trainers are rare, but I have been blessed to come across many of them. The second is people who can keep your attention, but can't waver much from their training books, and tend not to give you very good real-world answers. I find many college-students-made-trainers fall into this category, and a majority of trainers I have come across are like this. The third class states that there are some trainers who really know their stuff, but are totally unable to get their knowledge across to students. I find many "geeks for geeks" fall into this category (but certainly not all of them). Just because you know something doesn't mean you can teach it to others, and I hate it when some trainer has this smarmy-ass attitude of "Look what I know and you don't." The fourth I have come across only twice, thank God, and I actually blew off one class because the boredom was so excruciating, I though I was going to slit my wrists just to see color. Luckily, the workbooks were much more interesting and actually taught me what I needed.
But there is another, very important variable: students. More classes than I care to admit have been partially ruined by certain people. Some students are just plain dumber than a bag of hair, but boy, are they loud about it. Some are these "attention getters," who seem only to speak to look good, usually by repeating what the teacher said or reading ahead in the book and then giving a "looking ahead" type of answer. Some have cell phones and beepers that go off constantly. If the computers have network access, IM chimes keep going off, and distract you.
A good example is I went to one software class at a great expense. It was a proprietary software that (at the time) was gaining considerable ground. The prerequisite was thorough knowledge of NT Server, SQL, and call center voice switching systems (Rockwell, Aspect, etc.). The class was an intense, five 12hr day course, with a test and certification at the end. Our class consisted of 4 students who met the prerequisites, about 10 who didn't (most by a long shot), and 5 trainers who were just there to learn how to be the next set of trainers to teach the course. Among those 10 students, most had never seen an NT box, didn't know anything about their call center switches, and after the second day, just gave up, chatted among themselves, wandered in and out of class, and gabbed via IM, pagers, and cell phones. This was very distracting, and the teacher had to ask them to be quiet about once an hour. On top of that, halfway through, the teacher got sick, and his replacement was one of the "trainers-in-training." By Friday evening, when I had to leave for my flight back home, we had only gotten through 70% of the course and the certification test was canceled. Later, we got apologies in the mail with certificates to take the course again for free, but my work wouldn't let me fly out a second time.
Some courses (especially management courses, I find) are just excuses some people use to "get out of work," too. The government sector is filled with this kind of abuse.
So it can be a mixed bag, and unless you know the teacher, you could get just about any experience, even with the same training company.
That's what I was thinking...
"Tom Clancy has gotten lazy..."
[Yes, I know, Tom is not a science fiction author, but I wanted to reduce my nerd quotient just a tad]
I did not have one until I was 15. My father only allowed it because soon it was the only way for him to claim me as a dependant. There was a saying in the 1980s that when SSN became a requirement for a dependant, the US "lost" 7.5 million children that year.
But having a number also allowed me to get a job and have my own bank account. You SSN is linked to so many things, that's how detective agencies find you. Your SSN is linked to your finances, your driving record, address, and so on.
You are a number, like it or not.
I recall how one of my friend's parent's old video cameras with a date function rolled over to January 1st, 1984 for some reason. It still worked and everything, it just only allowed you to chose the year between 1984-1999 in the clock. I had some non-Y2K FTP software (WinFTP_LE, I think), and it listed dates over 1999 as 19100, which messed up the formatting in the window, but still worked everwhere else (I got more modern software soon afterwards). I wish my XT wasn't destroyed by a 5-year old with a screwdriver in 1995. I would have loved to see how that handled the Y2K. Of course, us old XT users always knew that January 1st of 1981 was a Thursday.
Reading these posts are funny and make me miss the old days a little (just a little, no LINUX or OpenBSD in 1985, and a TRS-80 cost several grand). There were some pretty crappy proprietary dating systems back then. Hard to believe that someone forgot to program a year field at one bank, and then just made an extra byte for it, putting off the problem for another 7 years. Towards the end, when the posts broke down arguing about Gregorian math and the year 2400, I liked how someone piped up, "Folks, there is a REAL WORLD out there, this is a serious problem!"
When working with computers in the early 1980s (I was a teen), I recall how on one field trip, we visited our county recordkeeping system, and those rows and rows of hanging shelving with magnetic tape reels in them. I wonder if they ever backed those up in a more convenient and durable format? They probably had to before 2000.
Where I work, we use a lot of data files on hundreds of rack-mounted systems. Sometimes, one of the LAN cards in a system goes wonky, and the floppy is the only way to:
.gz file, but then *nix cannot gunzip it... but only once in a while, so it's a gamble).
- Get data off the machine (if less than 1.4MB)
- Load a DiskImage LAN boot (if it's a LAN software/driver issue) to re-image the system
Bootable CDs would be nice, but floppies are quicker, and most of our machines cannot contain CDs for space considerations. It's all LAN/Floppy. Of course, we have a rather unique situation.
At home, I don't use floppies that much anymore, and my ZIP use has also deteriorated once I got a fast CDRW. But I only use CDs for things I want to last a little longer. I have the same 5 zip disks I got with a multipack when I bought my external drive several years ago, and swap them for multiple systems at home and work. ZIP and floppies are copy and zoooom... CDs take a little longer, and you get a lot of duds over time. Once in a while, you get a file you can't burn for some reason, like a file with a long filename, or has some formatting issues (my CDRW at work can't copy some non-Windows files, it will copy a
So until CDs become fast pop,copy, and go... I will still rely on floppies and ZIPs.
I recall an essay (maybe on Salon?) a few years ago when popup ads were just not leading the click-throughs they wanted, and the online ad market began to bottom out.
... whatever). The ads may get so ridiculous that people may just tune out, and the whole ad market may suddenly collapse, or realize all their glitz and schmaltz was just the Emperor's New Clothes: invisible.
The author said something like, "For the first time, advertisers began to realize that maybe no one has been paying attention to their ads. Before, there was no real way to tell if an ad worked or not, and now, it's beginning to dawn on them that nothing they have ever advertised has ever worked as well as always thought. Did spending money on all those billboards really increase use of their brand of gasoline? Did all those Superbowl ads actually increase beer consumption any? This fear of proof of consumer blocking caused many to pull out of the popup game, in fear that it would eventually cost them their jobs in other areas."
Maybe true, maybe not. But personally, rarely has an ad worked on me. They are just noise. I usually go by word of mouth or what's available (only Coke products, waitress? Okay, Diet Coke instead of Diet Pepsi
Ads are a game where the scores go by the whim of the populace. It's a crapshoot at best, and at worst, you can fudge anything to make it look effective. "Look, I placed these million-dollar ads for holiday candy in November, and in December, sales for candy canes went way up, more that 200% over the last six months of sales combined!" Uh... yeah.
I can't believe this. You all are making light of a very serious question involving mathematics of orbits, and what kind of long term solar system damage would occur should the moon (I assume we are talking about our moon, here), crash into the Earth. And all some of you do to answer this serious question is make jokes about things they learned from "Thundarr the Barbarian" or something. Well, not me.
.05%
I want to know the media angle.
This would be a godsend to Fox News and the New CNN. Ratings aplenty. All kinds of pundits speculating everything as the large death-ball looms closer. You heard me right: "death-ball." And people would be glued to their TVs, and advertising revenues would soar.
"Pepsi presents: Armageddon. The choice of a lost generation."
CNNfn would want to know how this would affect stock prices. There would be the usual gang of idiots all pointing their financial fingers in 20 different directions. Some would see the stock market plummet as people cashed out. Or leveled as people just gave up hope, because you can't take it with you. Maybe it would even increase, says a man who just bought 20billion shares of PepsiCo, because of all the ad revenue.
CSPAN, with both of their cameras on 24/7, would show the last senators and representatives discussing how THEY should get more disaster relief to their state. Senator Gramm has taken the floor, demanding more disaster relief since the DFW corridor has taken a beating as it is in the dying IT market and with their citizens appearing on every other episode of "C.O.P.S." And now this! Probably a liberal plot to move the tech corridor to Virginia, he says.
Fox news gets a poll:
- Thinks the world is going to end: 55%
- Thinks the world is going to recover: 22%
- Thinks the moon is made of a stinky green cheese: 62%
- Hopes it doesn't crash into their state: 95%
- Knows it doesn't matter where it crashes, the world will blow up anyway:
- Thinks Senator Gramm is made of a stinky green cheese: 12%
- Blames the Democrats: - 45%
- Blames the Republicans: - 45%
- Blames Senator Gramm: - 62%
- Blames the reduction of "Pro-gravity" initiatives: - 5%
- Said, "What moon?" - 10%
- Said, "No foolin'? Crashin' into the Earth? Damn!" - 10%
- Said, "I don't care, as long as I don't have to clean it up!" - 10%
- Thinks this will postpone the Oscars - 42%
- Thinks the polls are calculated incorrectly: - 129%
Nickelodeon will have a Linda Ellerbee special called, "You didn't eat enough vegetables, and now we're all gonna die, you brats!" Sesame Street will have a very special episode where Dr. Philip Morrison explains gravity wells to Elmo. Parents petition books stores to remove the "inappropriate and disturbing" book, "Good Night Moon."
Howard Stern will admit it was all an act to detract from his effeminate curly hair. Then he tells fart jokes until the studio or the moon's crash cuts him off the air.
Evangelical Christians will be smug, say the bible predicted this with a lot of vague interpretations, and eventually blame gay people. Gay people will blame stereotypes. Stereotypes will blame the press, who will blame each other on the next 20/20. Jack Chick will suddenly admit his campaign and tracts were all a joke started by a bet with the late Anton LaVey on who could repel the most people from Christianity in the shortest time possible. He won.
In the end, the media will finally get what it wants, and while the moon and the Earth smash into each other like melons in a mosh pit, people will still be arguing about whether this is all just hype.
I see two major sides of each issue: what should happen in theory and what happens in reality. It reminds me of those who buy things in (proper) auctions. All of these opinions are based on experience.
... suppose you are buying from a dumb business owner who would have sold at below cost because he or she can't keep accounting straight? What if he/she doesn't even sell at an enormous profit because you remind them of their grandmother who always bossed them around when they were 10? Well, now it's a whole new ballgame.
For example, one theory in auction buying is that the reseller will never sell an item below what he or she paid for it. That seems reasonable, right? You only want to sell at a profit, or you are a pretty dumb business owner. Okay
So back on topic. Suppose you don't accept a counteroffer because you are afraid of all of those points people made? I think some of the points are valid, and if I was a manager who got hijacked to pay a guy more, I would intelligently wait for someone else to come along, and lay them off at the next "restructuring" sweep, and then hire a new guy to do the same job for low pay, but give them a different title. If I was smart. Now, what if I was some boss hired through nepotism and hadn't a CLUE about this sort of thing? Maybe I am intimidated because I would only think, "Oooh! Can't lose Mr. Guru, my team will be sunk!" Then accepting my counteroffer WOULD be a good idea.
I think before leaving a job, try and list basic reasons why you are even considering the jump. Is it really the pay or are there other reasons?
Then list who actually makes the decisions for the counteroffer. Like my boss? Pffft. Not even HIS boss decides my pay. My company, for instance, has NEVER made a counteroffer. They just state, "You know you can't come back for at least two years, are you sure?" and you decide from there. But my company is a large corporation, and while I know I do a good job, the monkey in HR doesn't know me from a pile of 1mb RAM chips, and I get the same raises as everyone else. But say you are from a small company? Then you have to guess how smart they really are. Or how valuable you are.
Value is based on individual value. Like data entry people are a dime a dozen, and you could be replaced if you just sneezed wrong. But if your present job is head of security at a small company...you may have a LOT more value. Especially if you just changed the database password. Then you have to ask, "Do they know my individual value?" Who are "they?" Do "they" regulate department budget, or even state what your pay rate is? In a big corporation, unless you are Steve Ballmer or something, don't count on it. A friend of mine worked for a company that fired their bug finding team because they "always complained about flaws in the product, and are not team players." Uh... yeah. You can bet that they never got a counteroffer. But I worked for a company that did counteroffer to stay by promoting me to a different department and offer more training instead of pay... and I stayed. That was a good move (until my department got outsourced, but that's another story).
I guess all this long-winded string of words is concluding to one point: it depends on the situation, but you should think about it.
- Why would I accept another offer in the first place?
- Who decides my pay and do they know what I really do?
- Are they smart enough to understand how this whole game works?