I get the feeling that Google is the worst as far as pushing you to stay longer. Their perks are all kinda slanted towards eliminating any reason for you to leave. Microsoft seems a lot more willing to let you walk out the door when you feel that you're done for the day, whenever that may be.
I get the impression that Google doesn't value work/life balance as much as Microsoft. Not that they'll work you to exhaustion, but from everything I've read Google's philosophy is more, "work IS life", so they give you lots of perks that have the end result of you spending more time working. Microsoft may not do your drycleaning, but if you work there, work time is limited enough that you have time to go do it yourself (or go do whatever else you want).
It's about respecting you enough to let you use the free will He gave you.
First, you can't doubt something that's "slap you up the side of the head" obvious, even if you have the free will to do so. I have the free will to doubt that 2 + 2 = 4, but clearly it does. It's so ovious that it equals 4 I woudln't be able to use the doubt about it not equaling 4 as basis for my chosing to believe it doesn't equal 4. I'd simply be choosing to not believe it. So, if He just showed up to clear things up for us, it would hinder (maybe even effectively eliminate) free will.
This is exactly my point, though. For the people who were around at the beginning, it WAS "slap you up the side of the head" obvious. They SAW miracles. They saw the resurrection, or heard about it first or second hand, rather than 3000th hand like we do now. Do they deserve less free will than we do now? Frankly, it all feels like a justification without much basis in logic.
That aside, I don't understand how people can call Jesus a "great teacher" or "great moral person" or "realtively bright". Not that He wasn't that too, but the man walked around for 3+ years openly claiming to be God. Generally when you do that, you fall into one of three categories: liar, lunatic, or Lord. There have been others who have claimed to be God or Jesus in more recent times. No one's calling them anything positive like "great moral teacher".
I'm not even a Christian, and I know that Jesus never referred to himself as "God" or even "the son of God". He DID refer to himself as "the son of Man" many times, but that's an entirely different thing.
Then why come in the first place? It just seems kinda convenient that he showed up when people knew next to nothing of the world around them, and won't now that we've progressed farther.
The point was not that we are more or less worthy than people 2000 years ago, but that we are obviously better equipped to understand the message now. The fact that it was "revealed" during a time full of myth and superstition is a huge problem, because even if the message is real, it blends in with a bunch of other stuff that we're much more sure isn't.
That's true, but most of the branches/churches/people who claim to believe in the bible now are twisting it to mean things that are radically different from what it actually says. For one, there's a lot of context that's been lost in the 2000 years since the stuff was written, which leads to literal and wrong interpretations.
The question then becomes, when you see mankind embroiled in a battle over what you did or didn't say, why not drop by again and clear up a few things? Or, to put it another way, why are some stupid sheep herders who'd be impressed by a light bulb more worthy of direct physical contact and proof of God than we today, who understand enough of science to know something truly miraculous when we see it?
My own answer to that, of course, is that Jesus was at most a relatively bright human, God doesn't exist, no miracles occurred, and the entire thing that it's grown into is people taking some fun stories waaaaaay too seriously.
The problem with judging people as you pass them is that you don't really know their story. Sure there are people who have them simply because they see it as a status symbol. Maybe their even in the majority. But you can't usually tell by looking.
That's true, those impressions may not always be right. But I have to say, if you see a Lexus SUV in the middle of the morning commute, plastered with jesus fish and republican bumper stickers, and driven by an 85 pound woman chatting away on her cell phone, it seems like a pretty safe bet that it gets used for commuting a lot more than for offroading or hauling stuff. Ditto when you see it parked in the lot at a white-collar job. There's a certain personality type that still believes that part of being an American is driving a ridiculously oversized vehicle, and once you get into the city, the ones who do it as a status symbol greatly outnumber the ones who use such a vehicle to anywhere near its full potential.
I'm not saying we should draw a line and tell people when they can and can't drive SUVs. But I think the scorn/smugness/whatever serves a useful purpose, in that it maybe helps to moderate that "status symbol" appeal just a bit.
Now you show any actual scientific reference to little dicks and flashy/expensive cars. I mean other than bitchy whining from losers who can't afford to indulge a whim once in a while.
Um... maybe make that "concerned citizens who realize that moving a small sofa once every 3 years doesn't justify halving your MPG the rest of the time", and you'd have it closer to right...
The problem is not that SUV drivers can afford to indulge a whim; the problem is that the cost of the car and the gas doesn't truly reflect the fact that pollution is fucking up our environment, and gas is a non-renewable resource. They're paying part of the true cost in out-of-pocket cash, and part by taking it from shared resources that belong to the entire species. Both parts are larger than the equivalent cost of someone who drives a more reasonable car; I don't give a crap about the first, but I feel very justified in being concerned about the second.
Ah, but that's BEFORE the transaction. If you then follow through and GIVE me $100, you can't come back a week later and say, "Remember that $100 I gave you? Well, I didn't mean to, and I want it back now." Well, you can say it, but you have no legal recourse to demand it back. Once ownership is transferred, it's a done deal. In this case, Amazon went through the standard order process, and just happened to come up with a $0.00 charge on some orders. That's their mistake. They can ask nicely for the people involved to return the merchandise, but they have no legal grounds to do so. Your example explains perfectly why they can and do adjust pricing if they discover a mistake BEFORE an order is charged and shipped. But in this case they're trying to do it after the fact, and that's a completely different story.
I see what you're saying, but 3000 dead from 9/11 was a lot less significant than several million dead from a disease would be. If we're sustaining major casualties around the world, there's a danger of panic, and of critical infrastructure shutting down. Such was never the case during 9/11... that was much more of an emotional reaction than a physical/logical impediment.
Honestly, though, if we have a pandemic AND the economy shuts down, there are going to be a lot more people dead than just from the flu. And if a lot of our economy is based on net access, and a flu will cause usage patterns to change and damage that access... it's not a case of "oh, I can't see the latest sports scores", it's a case of "oh, I have to work from home but I can't get the important information I need to do so, and neither can 3 billion other people".
Is walking out of the question? I've noticed a much greater willingness to walk long distances to reach public transport in European cities, and even some of the larger cities in the US. But in smaller cities, and certain areas of the country, suggesting to someone that they walk 3/4 of a mile to reach a public transport stop would result only in laughter.
No offense, but get back to us when you leave the minor leagues and work on real corporate web sites for the Fortune 50. You're smoking crack if you think they don't spend tens of thousands per month on bandwidth.
Fair enough. I put that caveat in specifically because I don't know your exact situation. As someone up the tree said, though, in Wikipedia's case their expenses are hardware, staff, bandwidth, in that order.
No offense, but if your bandwidth is costing you tens of thousands of dollars, you're doing something wrong. The majority of your content should be cachable, unless you have an ungodly amount of custom pages AND custom images. And floating your static/semi-static content through an edge caching system like Akamai or Savvis really is dirt-cheap.
Now, Wikipedia has such a breadth of pages that caching isn't going to help quite as much, but as someone posted earlier, they spend about 24k on bandwidth per quarter. Which means that even one of the most popular sites on the planet isn't breaking 10k per month, let alone tens of thousands.
I didn't say I thought it was right:-) Just that from a legal standpoint, this probably isn't gonna save anybody's ass. And as I pointed out, if lots of clients start screwing with the protocol by running non-sharing clients or feeding media companies fake peer addresses, this would gain a whole lot more credibility.
I don't know about that... unless a significant number of people start using this essentially broken client, it's a pretty reasonable assumption that if you're connected to a bittorrent swarm, you're participating in the data flow. I mean, it IS the only function the software is made to perform. And remember, in civil cases like this, reasonable doubt isn't enough to get you off the hook.
From what I've seen, this does not just apply to multiple installations. You really are not allowed to install a basic version on a VM, even if you buy a unique copy and only use it for that purpose.
Of course no encryption is going to protect you from physical attacks. If they can videotape you, install a key logger on your machine, or beat the passcode out of you, PGP/GPG aren't going to do you a bit of good. I would say if that applies to you, though, then you're already in a fair bit of trouble whether they get access to your files or not. If you're in a situation that really calls for it, I'd think you'd do something like routinely scanning for bugs, packing an emergency thermite charge around your drives, or installing a hidden degausing loop around the door through which they'll have to carry the system out, etc.
Bull. There's a ton of customers out there who can't get it through their heads that they just aren't going to get their way, so they keep yelling and demanding to speak to someone higher up who will give them their way. Letting her know that this was as high as she was going to get, and her request was not going to be filled, is in no way like your overblown example.
His statement wasn't rude. He wasn't bending over like the customer wanted him to, but he wasn't insulting. He was just stating the facts without sugar coating them.
Possibly because you're not legally allowed to say anything bad about a former employee when acting as a reference. You can either say something good, or refuse to comment.
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I get the feeling that Google is the worst as far as pushing you to stay longer. Their perks are all kinda slanted towards eliminating any reason for you to leave. Microsoft seems a lot more willing to let you walk out the door when you feel that you're done for the day, whenever that may be.
I get the impression that Google doesn't value work/life balance as much as Microsoft. Not that they'll work you to exhaustion, but from everything I've read Google's philosophy is more, "work IS life", so they give you lots of perks that have the end result of you spending more time working. Microsoft may not do your drycleaning, but if you work there, work time is limited enough that you have time to go do it yourself (or go do whatever else you want).
Then why come in the first place? It just seems kinda convenient that he showed up when people knew next to nothing of the world around them, and won't now that we've progressed farther.
The point was not that we are more or less worthy than people 2000 years ago, but that we are obviously better equipped to understand the message now. The fact that it was "revealed" during a time full of myth and superstition is a huge problem, because even if the message is real, it blends in with a bunch of other stuff that we're much more sure isn't.
That's true, but most of the branches/churches/people who claim to believe in the bible now are twisting it to mean things that are radically different from what it actually says. For one, there's a lot of context that's been lost in the 2000 years since the stuff was written, which leads to literal and wrong interpretations.
The question then becomes, when you see mankind embroiled in a battle over what you did or didn't say, why not drop by again and clear up a few things? Or, to put it another way, why are some stupid sheep herders who'd be impressed by a light bulb more worthy of direct physical contact and proof of God than we today, who understand enough of science to know something truly miraculous when we see it?
My own answer to that, of course, is that Jesus was at most a relatively bright human, God doesn't exist, no miracles occurred, and the entire thing that it's grown into is people taking some fun stories waaaaaay too seriously.
I'm not saying we should draw a line and tell people when they can and can't drive SUVs. But I think the scorn/smugness/whatever serves a useful purpose, in that it maybe helps to moderate that "status symbol" appeal just a bit.
The problem is not that SUV drivers can afford to indulge a whim; the problem is that the cost of the car and the gas doesn't truly reflect the fact that pollution is fucking up our environment, and gas is a non-renewable resource. They're paying part of the true cost in out-of-pocket cash, and part by taking it from shared resources that belong to the entire species. Both parts are larger than the equivalent cost of someone who drives a more reasonable car; I don't give a crap about the first, but I feel very justified in being concerned about the second.
Washington is heavily, heavily Democrat, and we have no state taxes either. Not to mention that the federal senate reps don't set state policy...
Ah, but that's BEFORE the transaction. If you then follow through and GIVE me $100, you can't come back a week later and say, "Remember that $100 I gave you? Well, I didn't mean to, and I want it back now." Well, you can say it, but you have no legal recourse to demand it back. Once ownership is transferred, it's a done deal. In this case, Amazon went through the standard order process, and just happened to come up with a $0.00 charge on some orders. That's their mistake. They can ask nicely for the people involved to return the merchandise, but they have no legal grounds to do so. Your example explains perfectly why they can and do adjust pricing if they discover a mistake BEFORE an order is charged and shipped. But in this case they're trying to do it after the fact, and that's a completely different story.
I see what you're saying, but 3000 dead from 9/11 was a lot less significant than several million dead from a disease would be. If we're sustaining major casualties around the world, there's a danger of panic, and of critical infrastructure shutting down. Such was never the case during 9/11... that was much more of an emotional reaction than a physical/logical impediment.
Honestly, though, if we have a pandemic AND the economy shuts down, there are going to be a lot more people dead than just from the flu. And if a lot of our economy is based on net access, and a flu will cause usage patterns to change and damage that access... it's not a case of "oh, I can't see the latest sports scores", it's a case of "oh, I have to work from home but I can't get the important information I need to do so, and neither can 3 billion other people".
Is walking out of the question? I've noticed a much greater willingness to walk long distances to reach public transport in European cities, and even some of the larger cities in the US. But in smaller cities, and certain areas of the country, suggesting to someone that they walk 3/4 of a mile to reach a public transport stop would result only in laughter.
Fair enough. I put that caveat in specifically because I don't know your exact situation. As someone up the tree said, though, in Wikipedia's case their expenses are hardware, staff, bandwidth, in that order.
No offense, but if your bandwidth is costing you tens of thousands of dollars, you're doing something wrong. The majority of your content should be cachable, unless you have an ungodly amount of custom pages AND custom images. And floating your static/semi-static content through an edge caching system like Akamai or Savvis really is dirt-cheap.
Now, Wikipedia has such a breadth of pages that caching isn't going to help quite as much, but as someone posted earlier, they spend about 24k on bandwidth per quarter. Which means that even one of the most popular sites on the planet isn't breaking 10k per month, let alone tens of thousands.
I didn't say I thought it was right :-) Just that from a legal standpoint, this probably isn't gonna save anybody's ass. And as I pointed out, if lots of clients start screwing with the protocol by running non-sharing clients or feeding media companies fake peer addresses, this would gain a whole lot more credibility.
I don't know about that... unless a significant number of people start using this essentially broken client, it's a pretty reasonable assumption that if you're connected to a bittorrent swarm, you're participating in the data flow. I mean, it IS the only function the software is made to perform. And remember, in civil cases like this, reasonable doubt isn't enough to get you off the hook.
From what I've seen, this does not just apply to multiple installations. You really are not allowed to install a basic version on a VM, even if you buy a unique copy and only use it for that purpose.
Of course no encryption is going to protect you from physical attacks. If they can videotape you, install a key logger on your machine, or beat the passcode out of you, PGP/GPG aren't going to do you a bit of good. I would say if that applies to you, though, then you're already in a fair bit of trouble whether they get access to your files or not. If you're in a situation that really calls for it, I'd think you'd do something like routinely scanning for bugs, packing an emergency thermite charge around your drives, or installing a hidden degausing loop around the door through which they'll have to carry the system out, etc.
Bull. There's a ton of customers out there who can't get it through their heads that they just aren't going to get their way, so they keep yelling and demanding to speak to someone higher up who will give them their way. Letting her know that this was as high as she was going to get, and her request was not going to be filled, is in no way like your overblown example.
His statement wasn't rude. He wasn't bending over like the customer wanted him to, but he wasn't insulting. He was just stating the facts without sugar coating them.
Possibly because you're not legally allowed to say anything bad about a former employee when acting as a reference. You can either say something good, or refuse to comment.