I guess there are some of us who decided that not being an anonymous coward meant actually having the courage to have anything we post easily associated with our real life identity.
You are wrong. There's no relationship of any kind between bravery and anonymity or lack thereof.
I suspect that a company, given the choice between a famous engineer and a non-famous engineer who are equally qualified, may be biased to hire the famous engineer (in my company, we'd just hire both), so I suspect it's an informal edge, not an explicit expectation (most of the time)
Think most companies that could afford it are exactly the same, there are simply not enough good techies so if you really found two good ones you were having difficulty choosing between then hiring both would be a pretty easy sell.
Who signs up to social media and internet forums with their real name?
Apart from you, obviously.
Me as well. My real name is Ash Vincent. I guess there are some of us who decided that not being an anonymous coward meant actually having the courage to have anything we post easily associated with our real life identity.
I mean, these are the guys who, six years ago, when I fired up an IRC client, called me to tell me my PC was botted.
Was this work related? Otherwise you are damn lucky they did not go straight to your line manager and mention something about non-approved software on their network.
I had a situation a few years ago where someone in my office was running bittorrent to download music at work. I or my manager noticed excessive bandwidth use that was interfering with other people doing work related stuff and I had to investigate. Eventually I found out what was going on and quietly approached the guy in question to explain to him why it had to stop immediately. My manager was happy it was resolved and the problem went away. The sales guy finished his probation and all worked well.
If I went via my manager about it he would have immediately raised it with the guy in questions line manager (he worked in sales) who probably would have gone ape shit and fired him. My friendly talk was far more effective. I was a little vague about how much I knew about what he was using bittorrent for because it was easier than admitting I knew he was breaking the law from our offices.
For some reason some sysadmin think they're really special and no one should be able to reach them - go via helpdesk, etc.
I'd like to see those sysadmin having a problem with their checks and being told "no no, you can't talk to anyone in HR or the payroll department directly, are you crazy? Please open a ticket and wait for a reply, an intern will get back to you in 24 hours or less".
Actually, If I had a problem with my paycheck not arriving I would email the Accounts / HR department with my line manager copied in. I would WANT that in writing immediately and want it to be recorded. If I had to go via a web ticket thats fine, I would just make sure I also emailed my manager so he was aware of it.
That is why emailing a helpdesk is a good idea, it gets your query recorded and lets the helpdesk manager see what type of requests he gets to see where to prioritise resources. I know it means you have to actually try and sum the problem up in a descriptive manner and that takes time, but that is also a good thing since it forces you to think about the problem you are experiencing and whether it is of your own making.
I have been asked to break the law by a previous employer a few years ago. They asked me to build a back door into website that was work for hire for a directory services. My boss wanted to be able to do a data dump or their directory after the site went live. He tried various means of offering to host the site for them for free but they obviously refused as they did not trust him. Ultimately, I left, very quickly and very shortly after that. I had no notice period anyway so just found a different job and went to work elsewhere.
I would strongly advise anyone else put in the same position to do the same as a company that will do this sort of thing is NOT a long term job unless you include the unpaid time served:)
There is no real reason why Google can't do all of these things.
From the enterprise users POV, the problem isn't necessarily Google's ability to do these things. (Though that is a huge question mark.) It's trusting Google to do these things. Google's history is littered with half ass projects of one kind or another... Some cancelled half complete, other left lingering in limbo and half complete for years. Of the products that are more-or-less complete and functional, the vast majority of them languish for months between bizarre and incomprehensible "upgrades".
This history does not lead to confidence in the customer that they can build a business around Google's offerings.
Can you name one example of them doing this too an app thats was aimed at enterprise users? And please don't say Google Docs because in that case they just merged the same functionality (or very close to it) into Google Drive.
You obviously have never been a designated driver. Passengers are just passengers. They talk and yell and scream. It's the drivers job to filter it out and to drive with enough safety margin that distractions are not a safety issue.
It really depends on you passengers and whether they are twats or not.
If I am that drunk and being driven around I generally just fall asleep. Most of the time I am only moderately drunk and so don't quite lose full control of my faculties. I am fairly sure my reactions as such times would be pretty awful, but I am still able to make a judgment call as to when to keep the noise down and not distract the driver.
I am also always amenable to the driver asking me to keep quiet for a second, as should anyone be who does not want to suddenly find themselves hitchhiking:)
The number of copies paid for, or maybe something else altogether, needs to account for the cost of creating something.
Why is it fair though if I pay for something but you get it for free?
Back around last millenium, Baen Books established the Baen Free Library to distribute digital copies of books they published, free, and no strings attached, and found that it increased book sales considerably.
Probably because nobody had heard of them so doing this as a stunt got them free advertising to attract people to their product. If they were a household name beforehand though this probably would have had the opposite effect and resulted in less revenue.
Some bands put their music out for free as a form of advertising, hoping for better sales of T-shirts and the like, or more interest in seeing them live.
Bands make almost nothing from playing live. They make more money from selling merchandise at gigs and record sales. Most of the money from concerts goes to promoters and such.
Also, when you are young going to gigs is great. As you get older though most people start wanting to enjoy music in the comfort of their own living room or on headphones as they travel to work or wherever. Should those of us who have no interest in going to gigs get our enjoyment for free while you younguns pay for it? I think if you took record sales out of the equation then the cost of going to gigs would have to go up considerably.
Bands put music out for free in order to advertise to potential customers and get known. Then they hope to be able to sell you more music in future.
Also, music is not a great example as most people I know play in bands for fun but then have real day jobs to pay the bills. Some things like music this might work for but this is not applicable to other jobs as the pleasure is all in the consumption, not the production.
Would your music analogy extend to creating computer games or movies?
Actually, many (most?) states there are fewer hassles about a non-LEO citizen shooting someone than for LEOs. As long as the shooting is justified; like stopping an immediate threat of death or great bodily harm.
So, no cops can't legally shoot people that I am not also legally able to shoot.
As for LEO exemptions... The post you responded to was correct but that doesn't negate the point I think g0bshiTe was trying to make. If it is so dangerous, why are cops doing it.
Not sure about in the US but here in the UK we force our police to have a much higher standard of driving. This means doing something like the following as part of the on the job training: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_driving_test
Mind you, here in the UK we also still have two officers per police car in most patrols and the driver leaves using the onboard equipment to the co-driver.
The argument has always been that a copy costs nothing for nobody and nobody loses anything while everybody have the chance to gain something.
This is only true if you discount the fact that each copy has to contribute something towards the cost of creating the original.
The original was very expensive to produce so that cost has to be shared out somehow, why not share it out amongst all the people who want to gain access to copy, even temporarily just for their own viewing?
Unless you think some people should gain access to a copy for free while others should pay? That strikes me as inherently unfair.
Try to not get stuck up on individual cases (like move, song, computer game), try and come up with an economic model that allows things that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to produce but almost nothing to make but each subsequent copy can be made for free pay for their production. Make sure you take into account that each product has to be separable as some people work on one product but not others but still need to be paid a share of the revenue of products they help create.
I am not saying the movie studios, riaa or whatever are great. I think they suck and have screwed up many times, but in order to throw the current system in the bin we need to have a tangible replacement that still works within the confines of a capitalist society where people need to be paid for their efforts.
.. hire trolls to hit forums with anti-piracy posts...
Bear in mind that some us are not paid to think the piracy is not a good thing, we actually believe it and post our own honest opinions on the matter. Not everyone who disagrees with you and your chums is a paid troll.
Do you have a food replicator? If yes, your analogy would actually make sense.
Even with your amazing star trek style replicator it would still take energy. The real issue here though is that the original copy took hundreds of millions of dollars to produce, even if each subsequent copy takes less than 0.01 of a cent. They have to use the profit made from selling copies with are cheap to create to cover the cost of the original.
Netflix must have to pay a fortune to the studios for their licence to resell their content. That deal may also include a small amount extra per user they have or even per viewing. Large companies generally trust other large companies to accurately report this data for some reason.
I work in the elearning industry and it is common place for people producing online courses to charge big companies based on how many people they way to give access to the courses. Even though it costs the producing nothing extra for each user they still demand an extra fee for each person who benefits from their original investment. This is simply how lots of things work in the capitalist world we inhabit.
I tried to turn myself in at the local police station. I told the officer there that I had borrowed a book from someone else. I had not paid for it. My friend has also read it. So, that's three people, in three different households, that have all read this book for the price of one!
The officer threatened to give me a fine for wasting his time, then sent me home.
The difference with a book is that when you bought it there was not a long set of terms and conditions of server for you to read and agree to as part of the purchase. With HBO / Netflix / Whatever there is so you have the choice of agreeing to them, or walking away from the deal and not buying the service. Wanting some third option of paying for the service then refusing to honour your part of the deal is simply not on the table. You might say it should be, but our democratically elected government does not so it isn't.
The fact that these services do not offer the option you want to buy is shit, but that is the people providing the services choice not yours. If you choose to be a criminal rather than put up with the restriction they want you to then you take your chances with how the judge sentences you same as anyone else who breaks laws, even the unjust ones.
All you can really do is hope that sooner or later his boss puts two and two together. In fact, they may have done in order to bring you on board with the remit you say you have been given. In light of that I supposed you could go through a document each mistake that has caused a project to overrun and hope that he is the common thread that unites all the projects.
Alternatively you could try getting the department to run within it's budget and force the necessary cuts be made to staff provisioning. This will force the IT manager to actually go round firing people. Since this is a very tough part of the job to do he might balk at it or at the very least screw it up in a way he can't blame on anyone else.
To be honest though this doesn't sound like you are entirely being truthful. If you were really in the position you are in you probably would have been given the right to fire the IT manager and recruit a decent replacement as part of the deal. This gives you the option to force him to raise his game and also help in with any additional training he needs to become a better manager.
When it come to firing managers you generally just pay them off and then give them gardening leave for the duration of their contract along with a cast iron reference they can take to another employer. This gives them a reason to go quietly without you proving they were shit at all.
If you do not have that and are effectively working under him or alongside him then you are on road to nowhere and might as well just concentrate on helping the department underneath him run well as best you can. Even an incredibly shit IT manager can look amazing if the department all know there stuff and do what they need to.
If projects are all necessarily complex that is not just the fault of the IT manager, that is also the fault of the person or people delivering them. Try working on them directly to get them to deliver better work, one possible way to do this is to subtly make them realise who is for the chop if the costs don't come down. Obviously you have to be very careful how you do this, it might help to pick one person who is on side already but also has a good working relationship with his colleagues and then drop a few hints.
If you are doing all this already and the IT manager is blocking you then you might end up in a situation where all you can do is take your consultancy fee and make a few suggestions around the edges.
What? You're comparing hacking into someone's home PC to people who, without any input or involvement from the 'creator', make certain data freely available for download? Somehow your analogy seems odd.
He made a big thing about it was only copying data, I was trying to illustrate that sometimes just making a copy of something is not desired by the person who owns it. I should realise I am just wasting my breath though, slashdot is mostly full of students and young people who have not realised that people earning a living is far more important than being able to watch whatever you like the name of some data wants to be free crusade.
When you grow up you will realise that some form of copyright law needs to exist. You will only see this though when you have a work of your own that is worth other people wanting to copy it and have a need to buy a house and feed your children. This sort of work will only come about though if you invest thousands of (or maybe even a million) hours in its creation.
The capitalist world we live in at present is simply not ready to abandon copyright yet, there are many reasons why but if all you are crying out for is a way of justifying bit torrent use on some bullshit moral stretch of logic you will never see them.
As you get old you might realise that enjoying a movie you can't be arsed to pay for is just like stealing from the supermarket if you ever get the chance to get away with it. I know that that copying is not not depriving the copyright owner of a physical product, but it is depriving them of the revenue you SHOULD have paid them in order to watch the film. If the film was so shit it wasn't worth anything, then just don't watch it. You can sugar coat it any way you like saying you buy loads of movies and what ever, but for every film you watch illegally for free is depriving someone of the pittance you would have paid to join Netflix or buy it on DVD. if you watch it legally for free you are probably paying in some way you just can't see.
Final point, the lack of copyright law will render the GPL worthless and us evil capitalists (I am joking, see below) will be able to shit all over every bit of open source software by ignoring the GPL completely.
BTW, I am actually a socialist at heart I just think that while capitalism exists then copyright law also has to so artists can earn a living from producing content. Just performing live simply doesn't pay the bills enough as most of the revenue goes to the people who own the venue.
I don't know why they don't just release the shows themselves over a tracker and have the ads spliced into the shows. Just like normal TV. They can put some superseeders behind it on 100mbits and everyone gets what they want.
Its the fact that they're still clinging to traditional media that's killing them. Its like they don't even realize there is a cheaper, better way.
Some kind soul would download it then edit out the adverts and reupload it. Everyone would choose the ad free version and that would be the one with more seeders in no time.
Also, they would attract loads of high paying satellite and cable customers to bit torrent which currently they probably haven't heard of.
Then other companies would make nice, easy to use Tivo boxes that sourced from torrents instead of tv signals.
Instant bankruptcy and they are not quite that stupid.
Specially it's the parliament, which is elected by the people.
I wonder what percentage of the British population believes that Parliament is representing their interests well and voting with those concerns in mind?
In my experience (I am a lowly brit) a very small minority, especially at the moment as those on the left moan about the tories being in power and those on the right moan about the liberals being in coalition with them.
That doesn't mean everyone wants to repeal copyright law though, they just think the police should be out making sure no squaddies get attacked by Muslim nutters again.
No, my scorn should be directed at everyone involved in this process. It's rather disgusting that they're seriously wasting tax dollars trying to stop people from copying certain data.
Would you agree if I hacked your home PC and copied all the data I found on there?
Just because something can be copied without incurring a cost does not make it any less valuable.
Fuck them and the horse they rode in on, get with the times or die you old bastards.
Unfortunately the old generation are not dieing quick enough to make changing the law to cope with new technologies possible yet. They will most likely carry on voting for parties to get in and strengthen copyright law for many decades to come, however futile you may think it is.
The simple fact that they are using taxpayer money on silly victim-less crimes like this instead of more serious ones such as rape/murder. That fact says that they are "putting overt effort into enforcing one law and neglecting others".
But let's face it... They aren't really putting overt effort. They're just focusing on what they think is low-hanging fruit, like traffic offenses.
These are not victimless crimes. The victims are just huge multinational conglomerates that you do not give a crap about (I am not sure I do either to be honest). In this case though the the victims have lots of money and are constantly whining to the police and politicians about the crimes perpetrated against them. The police need to be seen to be doing something.
Also, it is worth remembering that the UK record industry does have a lot of employees and is one of the few things we actually export nowadays so it is no surprise that politicians wish to protect it from any perceived harm.
Finally, you need to remember that the vast majority of the UK voting population do not necessarily give a crap about repealing copyright law or whatever. The care more about our economy. I actually think if we had a referendum tomorrow about copyright law it would come out as a majority in favour of strengthening it thanks to all the old people voting, even though you and all your friends would disagree.
Slashdot Mirror
You are wrong. There's no relationship of any kind between bravery and anonymity or lack thereof.
Yes anonymous coward, I agree.
I suspect that a company, given the choice between a famous engineer and a non-famous engineer who are equally qualified, may be biased to hire the famous engineer (in my company, we'd just hire both), so I suspect it's an informal edge, not an explicit expectation (most of the time)
Think most companies that could afford it are exactly the same, there are simply not enough good techies so if you really found two good ones you were having difficulty choosing between then hiring both would be a pretty easy sell.
Who signs up to social media and internet forums with their real name?
Apart from you, obviously.
Me as well. My real name is Ash Vincent.
I guess there are some of us who decided that not being an anonymous coward meant actually having the courage to have anything we post easily associated with our real life identity.
I mean, these are the guys who, six years ago, when I fired up an IRC client, called me to tell me my PC was botted.
Was this work related? Otherwise you are damn lucky they did not go straight to your line manager and mention something about non-approved software on their network.
I had a situation a few years ago where someone in my office was running bittorrent to download music at work. I or my manager noticed excessive bandwidth use that was interfering with other people doing work related stuff and I had to investigate. Eventually I found out what was going on and quietly approached the guy in question to explain to him why it had to stop immediately. My manager was happy it was resolved and the problem went away. The sales guy finished his probation and all worked well.
If I went via my manager about it he would have immediately raised it with the guy in questions line manager (he worked in sales) who probably would have gone ape shit and fired him. My friendly talk was far more effective. I was a little vague about how much I knew about what he was using bittorrent for because it was easier than admitting I knew he was breaking the law from our offices.
For some reason some sysadmin think they're really special and no one should be able to reach them - go via helpdesk, etc.
I'd like to see those sysadmin having a problem with their checks and being told "no no, you can't talk to anyone in HR or the payroll department directly, are you crazy? Please open a ticket and wait for a reply, an intern will get back to you in 24 hours or less".
Actually, If I had a problem with my paycheck not arriving I would email the Accounts / HR department with my line manager copied in. I would WANT that in writing immediately and want it to be recorded. If I had to go via a web ticket thats fine, I would just make sure I also emailed my manager so he was aware of it.
That is why emailing a helpdesk is a good idea, it gets your query recorded and lets the helpdesk manager see what type of requests he gets to see where to prioritise resources. I know it means you have to actually try and sum the problem up in a descriptive manner and that takes time, but that is also a good thing since it forces you to think about the problem you are experiencing and whether it is of your own making.
I am not paid to break the law, neither are you.
YES! Exactly.
I have been asked to break the law by a previous employer a few years ago. They asked me to build a back door into website that was work for hire for a directory services. My boss wanted to be able to do a data dump or their directory after the site went live. He tried various means of offering to host the site for them for free but they obviously refused as they did not trust him. Ultimately, I left, very quickly and very shortly after that. I had no notice period anyway so just found a different job and went to work elsewhere.
I would strongly advise anyone else put in the same position to do the same as a company that will do this sort of thing is NOT a long term job unless you include the unpaid time served :)
From the enterprise users POV, the problem isn't necessarily Google's ability to do these things. (Though that is a huge question mark.) It's trusting Google to do these things. Google's history is littered with half ass projects of one kind or another... Some cancelled half complete, other left lingering in limbo and half complete for years. Of the products that are more-or-less complete and functional, the vast majority of them languish for months between bizarre and incomprehensible "upgrades".
This history does not lead to confidence in the customer that they can build a business around Google's offerings.
Can you name one example of them doing this too an app thats was aimed at enterprise users? And please don't say Google Docs because in that case they just merged the same functionality (or very close to it) into Google Drive.
Except closing down projects that don't meet arbitrary internal goals without warning.
Actually having a realistic number of users is not an arbitrary goal is it? They mostly seem to close down crap projects that nobody cared about.
You obviously have never been a designated driver. Passengers are just passengers. They talk and yell and scream. It's the drivers job to filter it out and to drive with enough safety margin that distractions are not a safety issue.
It really depends on you passengers and whether they are twats or not.
If I am that drunk and being driven around I generally just fall asleep. Most of the time I am only moderately drunk and so don't quite lose full control of my faculties. I am fairly sure my reactions as such times would be pretty awful, but I am still able to make a judgment call as to when to keep the noise down and not distract the driver.
I am also always amenable to the driver asking me to keep quiet for a second, as should anyone be who does not want to suddenly find themselves hitchhiking :)
The number of copies paid for, or maybe something else altogether, needs to account for the cost of creating something.
Why is it fair though if I pay for something but you get it for free?
Back around last millenium, Baen Books established the Baen Free Library to distribute digital copies of books they published, free, and no strings attached, and found that it increased book sales considerably.
Probably because nobody had heard of them so doing this as a stunt got them free advertising to attract people to their product. If they were a household name beforehand though this probably would have had the opposite effect and resulted in less revenue.
Some bands put their music out for free as a form of advertising, hoping for better sales of T-shirts and the like, or more interest in seeing them live.
Bands make almost nothing from playing live. They make more money from selling merchandise at gigs and record sales. Most of the money from concerts goes to promoters and such.
Also, when you are young going to gigs is great. As you get older though most people start wanting to enjoy music in the comfort of their own living room or on headphones as they travel to work or wherever. Should those of us who have no interest in going to gigs get our enjoyment for free while you younguns pay for it? I think if you took record sales out of the equation then the cost of going to gigs would have to go up considerably.
Bands put music out for free in order to advertise to potential customers and get known. Then they hope to be able to sell you more music in future.
Also, music is not a great example as most people I know play in bands for fun but then have real day jobs to pay the bills. Some things like music this might work for but this is not applicable to other jobs as the pleasure is all in the consumption, not the production.
Would your music analogy extend to creating computer games or movies?
Actually, many (most?) states there are fewer hassles about a non-LEO citizen shooting someone than for LEOs. As long as the shooting is justified; like stopping an immediate threat of death or great bodily harm.
So, no cops can't legally shoot people that I am not also legally able to shoot.
As for LEO exemptions... The post you responded to was correct but that doesn't negate the point I think g0bshiTe was trying to make. If it is so dangerous, why are cops doing it.
Not sure about in the US but here in the UK we force our police to have a much higher standard of driving. This means doing something like the following as part of the on the job training: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_driving_test
Mind you, here in the UK we also still have two officers per police car in most patrols and the driver leaves using the onboard equipment to the co-driver.
The argument has always been that a copy costs nothing for nobody and nobody loses anything while everybody have the chance to gain something.
This is only true if you discount the fact that each copy has to contribute something towards the cost of creating the original.
The original was very expensive to produce so that cost has to be shared out somehow, why not share it out amongst all the people who want to gain access to copy, even temporarily just for their own viewing?
Unless you think some people should gain access to a copy for free while others should pay? That strikes me as inherently unfair.
Try to not get stuck up on individual cases (like move, song, computer game), try and come up with an economic model that allows things that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to produce but almost nothing to make but each subsequent copy can be made for free pay for their production. Make sure you take into account that each product has to be separable as some people work on one product but not others but still need to be paid a share of the revenue of products they help create.
I am not saying the movie studios, riaa or whatever are great. I think they suck and have screwed up many times, but in order to throw the current system in the bin we need to have a tangible replacement that still works within the confines of a capitalist society where people need to be paid for their efforts.
.. hire trolls to hit forums with anti-piracy posts ...
Bear in mind that some us are not paid to think the piracy is not a good thing, we actually believe it and post our own honest opinions on the matter. Not everyone who disagrees with you and your chums is a paid troll.
This is a surprise to anyone?
No. The UK has been a police state for years. I can't believe anyone would want to live there or visit the damn country.
Yup, The US approach of not blocking the sites or proxies but then allowing shyster lawyers to sue the users to bankruptcy is much better.
Do you have a food replicator? If yes, your analogy would actually make sense.
Even with your amazing star trek style replicator it would still take energy. The real issue here though is that the original copy took hundreds of millions of dollars to produce, even if each subsequent copy takes less than 0.01 of a cent. They have to use the profit made from selling copies with are cheap to create to cover the cost of the original.
Netflix must have to pay a fortune to the studios for their licence to resell their content. That deal may also include a small amount extra per user they have or even per viewing. Large companies generally trust other large companies to accurately report this data for some reason.
I work in the elearning industry and it is common place for people producing online courses to charge big companies based on how many people they way to give access to the courses. Even though it costs the producing nothing extra for each user they still demand an extra fee for each person who benefits from their original investment. This is simply how lots of things work in the capitalist world we inhabit.
I tried to turn myself in at the local police station. I told the officer there that I had borrowed a book from someone else. I had not paid for it. My friend has also read it. So, that's three people, in three different households, that have all read this book for the price of one!
The officer threatened to give me a fine for wasting his time, then sent me home.
The difference with a book is that when you bought it there was not a long set of terms and conditions of server for you to read and agree to as part of the purchase. With HBO / Netflix / Whatever there is so you have the choice of agreeing to them, or walking away from the deal and not buying the service. Wanting some third option of paying for the service then refusing to honour your part of the deal is simply not on the table. You might say it should be, but our democratically elected government does not so it isn't.
The fact that these services do not offer the option you want to buy is shit, but that is the people providing the services choice not yours. If you choose to be a criminal rather than put up with the restriction they want you to then you take your chances with how the judge sentences you same as anyone else who breaks laws, even the unjust ones.
All you can really do is hope that sooner or later his boss puts two and two together. In fact, they may have done in order to bring you on board with the remit you say you have been given. In light of that I supposed you could go through a document each mistake that has caused a project to overrun and hope that he is the common thread that unites all the projects.
Alternatively you could try getting the department to run within it's budget and force the necessary cuts be made to staff provisioning. This will force the IT manager to actually go round firing people. Since this is a very tough part of the job to do he might balk at it or at the very least screw it up in a way he can't blame on anyone else.
To be honest though this doesn't sound like you are entirely being truthful. If you were really in the position you are in you probably would have been given the right to fire the IT manager and recruit a decent replacement as part of the deal. This gives you the option to force him to raise his game and also help in with any additional training he needs to become a better manager.
When it come to firing managers you generally just pay them off and then give them gardening leave for the duration of their contract along with a cast iron reference they can take to another employer. This gives them a reason to go quietly without you proving they were shit at all.
If you do not have that and are effectively working under him or alongside him then you are on road to nowhere and might as well just concentrate on helping the department underneath him run well as best you can. Even an incredibly shit IT manager can look amazing if the department all know there stuff and do what they need to.
If projects are all necessarily complex that is not just the fault of the IT manager, that is also the fault of the person or people delivering them. Try working on them directly to get them to deliver better work, one possible way to do this is to subtly make them realise who is for the chop if the costs don't come down. Obviously you have to be very careful how you do this, it might help to pick one person who is on side already but also has a good working relationship with his colleagues and then drop a few hints.
If you are doing all this already and the IT manager is blocking you then you might end up in a situation where all you can do is take your consultancy fee and make a few suggestions around the edges.
Wish I hadn't spent my mod points on trolls now...
I guess you pay attention to the guideline about concentrating on modding up rather than down :)
What? You're comparing hacking into someone's home PC to people who, without any input or involvement from the 'creator', make certain data freely available for download? Somehow your analogy seems odd.
He made a big thing about it was only copying data, I was trying to illustrate that sometimes just making a copy of something is not desired by the person who owns it. I should realise I am just wasting my breath though, slashdot is mostly full of students and young people who have not realised that people earning a living is far more important than being able to watch whatever you like the name of some data wants to be free crusade.
When you grow up you will realise that some form of copyright law needs to exist. You will only see this though when you have a work of your own that is worth other people wanting to copy it and have a need to buy a house and feed your children. This sort of work will only come about though if you invest thousands of (or maybe even a million) hours in its creation.
The capitalist world we live in at present is simply not ready to abandon copyright yet, there are many reasons why but if all you are crying out for is a way of justifying bit torrent use on some bullshit moral stretch of logic you will never see them.
As you get old you might realise that enjoying a movie you can't be arsed to pay for is just like stealing from the supermarket if you ever get the chance to get away with it. I know that that copying is not not depriving the copyright owner of a physical product, but it is depriving them of the revenue you SHOULD have paid them in order to watch the film. If the film was so shit it wasn't worth anything, then just don't watch it. You can sugar coat it any way you like saying you buy loads of movies and what ever, but for every film you watch illegally for free is depriving someone of the pittance you would have paid to join Netflix or buy it on DVD. if you watch it legally for free you are probably paying in some way you just can't see.
Final point, the lack of copyright law will render the GPL worthless and us evil capitalists (I am joking, see below) will be able to shit all over every bit of open source software by ignoring the GPL completely.
BTW, I am actually a socialist at heart I just think that while capitalism exists then copyright law also has to so artists can earn a living from producing content. Just performing live simply doesn't pay the bills enough as most of the revenue goes to the people who own the venue.
I don't know why they don't just release the shows themselves over a tracker and have the ads spliced into the shows. Just like normal TV. They can put some superseeders behind it on 100mbits and everyone gets what they want.
Its the fact that they're still clinging to traditional media that's killing them. Its like they don't even realize there is a cheaper, better way.
Some kind soul would download it then edit out the adverts and reupload it. Everyone would choose the ad free version and that would be the one with more seeders in no time.
Also, they would attract loads of high paying satellite and cable customers to bit torrent which currently they probably haven't heard of.
Then other companies would make nice, easy to use Tivo boxes that sourced from torrents instead of tv signals.
Instant bankruptcy and they are not quite that stupid.
Specially it's the parliament, which is elected by the people.
I wonder what percentage of the British population believes that Parliament is representing their interests well and voting with those concerns in mind?
In my experience (I am a lowly brit) a very small minority, especially at the moment as those on the left moan about the tories being in power and those on the right moan about the liberals being in coalition with them.
That doesn't mean everyone wants to repeal copyright law though, they just think the police should be out making sure no squaddies get attacked by Muslim nutters again.
Wow. You seem quite angry. Maybe you'll calm down a bit when grow up start getting laid.
No, my scorn should be directed at everyone involved in this process. It's rather disgusting that they're seriously wasting tax dollars trying to stop people from copying certain data.
Would you agree if I hacked your home PC and copied all the data I found on there?
Just because something can be copied without incurring a cost does not make it any less valuable.
Fuck them and the horse they rode in on, get with the times or die you old bastards.
Unfortunately the old generation are not dieing quick enough to make changing the law to cope with new technologies possible yet. They will most likely carry on voting for parties to get in and strengthen copyright law for many decades to come, however futile you may think it is.
The simple fact that they are using taxpayer money on silly victim-less crimes like this instead of more serious ones such as rape/murder. That fact says that they are "putting overt effort into enforcing one law and neglecting others".
But let's face it... They aren't really putting overt effort. They're just focusing on what they think is low-hanging fruit, like traffic offenses.
These are not victimless crimes. The victims are just huge multinational conglomerates that you do not give a crap about (I am not sure I do either to be honest). In this case though the the victims have lots of money and are constantly whining to the police and politicians about the crimes perpetrated against them. The police need to be seen to be doing something.
Also, it is worth remembering that the UK record industry does have a lot of employees and is one of the few things we actually export nowadays so it is no surprise that politicians wish to protect it from any perceived harm.
Finally, you need to remember that the vast majority of the UK voting population do not necessarily give a crap about repealing copyright law or whatever. The care more about our economy. I actually think if we had a referendum tomorrow about copyright law it would come out as a majority in favour of strengthening it thanks to all the old people voting, even though you and all your friends would disagree.