That and the "Give it to IT" jobs that aren't IT. When I was in that line, we'd get called in to help with our postage machines, packing/stuffing machines, etc. We got tasked with bar-coding everything in the building and entering it into a database for "tax purposes". Why? Because a hand-held scanner and bar-code printer was obviously "IT Stuff".
Add stupid shit like that to all we've said, and you end up with pretty poor IT performance.
This is seriously stupid, and perhaps even more than you imagine.
I own a game company, and make an in-game currency. That's treated as normal money. I then make myself a trillion dollars, and retire.
Sure, that currency market will crash pretty quickly, but if you can do any sort of transaction at the same speed as regular currency, it wouldn't be hard to buy a lot of stuff from a lot of different people before that came to light. And would that be illegal? If it is, then suddenly the government has to start monitoring in-game money, money markets, auction houses, etc. If it's not illegal, then it's even worse.
What's next? Imaginary money can be used as real money? I'm going to start imagining piles of money now, I'll be RICH!
I think you hit the nail on the head. From my experience, it's like this:
Sales start to pick up, so you hire a few more salesmen/account executives. Then because of the sales, customer service calls go up, so you hire some more CS reps. Then, after a year or two, sales decline. You let go some of the people you hired.
With IT, you can't do this. There is no metric for "how much" IT is needed. IT isn't a job that's either "done" or "not done". It's not a "average time on hold" sort of position.
The amount of time it takes to resolve problems can be nebulous. The quality of your backup software, and the ability of IT to back up and restore isn't anywhere NEAR as quantifiable as "average time on hold" in Customer Service is. Your account executives have 20 major accounts each. That's a solid, set-in-stone fact. If you get 40 more major accounts, you need two more of those people.
It's so easy for a manager to look at IT and say, "I bet we can do that with less", because little IT doesn't tie directly into the "business", at least from a managerial standpoint. IT doesn't quantify well, because sales $ are sales $, time-on-hold is time-on-hold is, and the number of accounts are the number of accounts. Managers just can't quantify IT like that. So to them, it doesn't have a set-in-stone value.
Move to Madison, WI. The city has a bike lane on just about every major road, plus several bike paths that cut through the city. It's 10 degrees out, and there are still a fair number of bikes on the road. The people here are HARDCORE about biking...
The other issue is that there is some inherent risk in data encryption. It's another thing that can break. If my data gets a bit corrupted, I can probably recover most of it. If my encrypted data gets a bit corrupted, I don't have such confidence. It depends on the way it was encrypted, and the decryption tool.
I'd agree - most of what really, really needs to be encrypted already is. And there is definitely a diminishing return as we encrypt more things.
I really don't get this attitude. I spent 7 years living in rolling hills, out in the country. There was pretty much no cell service. I was a land-line at home and at work then, and that was it.
I've moved to the city, and dropped $15 on a cell phone, and put $100 into my account. That lasted me 6 months. I just refilled, and figure I'll probably hit about $225 this year, with my current amount of use. Compared to my $20 per month land line, it's pretty much the same.
This is like asking what is your preferred way of being tortured.
My cell plan isn't torture. Then again, I don't try to do anything more with it than use it as a portable land-line. Used as such, it costs the same amount. If you want a portable internet connection, then you need to be prepared to pay for it.
Quit yer bitchin! Either use your phone like a phone, or pay to use it like a roaming internet connection. This isn't some evil plot to suck money from you!
And where you want to do it. The question is so vague that it's not possible to answer here. Where are you going to be living? Are you just making calls, need 3G, surfing...?
I could easily recommend AT&T, should you be living in my city and using a phone as little as I do. A handful of calls a month, a dozen or so texts, and I'm very, very happy with a prepaid, $15 phone. It sure beats out my landline - slightly less money, and portable. But take it back to where I *used* to live, and it's garbage. I went home over christmas, shut it off after I got out of the airport, and didn't turn it on again until I landed back here. Why? Because I have no service in those areas.
The question is too vague to answer here. It'll just be a sea of noise.
I'm on a pre-paid plan, since I'm not interested in being raped with a contract. Since I don't text much, I pay per-text. The no-plan rate is $0.20 per text sent or received. Since I only go through 0-20 texts per month, I suck it up, despite the fact that I know damn well that it doesn't cost more than a cent to send those characters.
When I was teaching physics, I'd always assign a project to research the feasibility of building a space elevator to my students. I told them it was a 2 day project, then I'd usually cut them off after a week or so. The problems are so staggering, it's truly amazing that anyone seriously talks about space elevators.
Outside the material the cable is made of, there's the issue of making enough of it. GSO is a long way away. I usually pointed my students towards steel output as a mass-industry comparison, and the amount of telecommunications lines in countries for cable length comparisons. It turns out, those aren't out-of-the-ballpark comparisons. And people are actually suggesting a project on those sorts of scales involving a material we don't have yet.
The other fun part is trying to figure out how to get even a thin cable to GSO which will reach to the ground. It turns out that that much cable is bulky and heavy, on the scale of years to decades of dedicated rocket launches at current rates to get into orbit.
The last two upgrades left me without sound until I purged pulseaudio with fire.
I understand what it's supposed to do. If it would do that, I'd absolutely love it. I'm psyched about the possibilities. But at the moment, I can't get it to function.
I have ALSA, and it works. I need to be able to "sudo apt-get install pulseaudio", reboot, and have that work. I've spent years of my life fucking around with audio under linux. I'm at the point where if it works, I'm not going to spend a half day breaking it to try to get something else working. I have much better things to do.
What the fuck is the problem with functional audio by default?
Even if it's that bad, how many times do you enter someone's number in your cell phone?
For most people, it's once. They you sync your address/contact list, and you're done. Honestly, how is that WORSE than inputting in a name, IM handle, email address, home phone, work phone, cell phone, twitter name, facebook name, home address, etc?
While I understand the security/spam issues with tying everything to one number, a hangup based on the data entry is stupid. We tend to enter far more data for an average contact than that.
That and it's pretty easy to figure out which ones you see all over that are problematic. My "untrusted" list is growing slowly, but steadily. It's nice to have that log of the scripts you know aren't needed for content, and are only there to serve ads or do other obnoxious stuff.
It's been a slow process, but my browsing is getting less and less hindered by NoScript as I've built my web of trusted and untrusted scripts.
It's interesting how transparent NoScript is on the pages I visit often, and how much it complains about sites I don't visit often. It's an extra irritation, definitely. But when you watch someone browsing without it, you get a damn good refresher on why you use it.
I'm blown away by the amount of abuse that most people put up with from scripts. It's mind-boggling to me. I put up with exactly one bit of abuse - sometimes I have to reload a page a time or two as I selectively enable scripts to get to the content I want. I'd rather not do that, but it sure beats the alternative.
Agreed. On all my systems the Caps Lock key resides in the desk drawer. While it leaves a gaping hole, filled with crumbs and filth, it's far better than having it there. Yeah, I could remap it, but a bent paperclip fixes it in far less time, with far less effort.
Probably using flash. It's amazing how it can destroy a browser, and sometimes a whole system. It is truly the most garbage program I have ever used. I was ignorant of what SysRq did, which is why I recently had to hard reboot my system after flash ate it. I'm actually going to try to remember this for the next time flash destroys my desktop. (Most of the time, I just need to kill firefox. However once in awhile, the flash/firefox death combo manages to lock X up as well. It shouldn't be able to, but it does. If the internet didn't have boatloads of it, I'd be far happier. Here's looking forward to HTML-5.)
What the hell are you talking about? I have a mug of coffee in front of me. It is mine. It has a couple of unique physical qualities that make it "property":
a) I can put my hands on it, and fight anyone who tries to take it. b) It can't be duplicated easily.
Imaginary property has neither of those qualities. There is no physical thing to hold on. It's either in your mind, or it's in the world. Once an *idea* gets out, it's nearly effortless to reproduce it, copy it, and spread it around.
The term "Imaginary Property" was coined for just such a reason - we have constructed a legal framework to give *ideas* the same two properties that real, tangible, solid items have. It's stupid, because in reality, ideas don't have those properties, thus the derogatory usage of the term.
I wonder what the additional visibility and hearing does for a non-helmet wearer, and if they might be more cautious as well.
However, accidents aren't the big issue - what percent died or had brain damage with helmets on than without them? If you're 10% less likely to get into an accident, but 50% more likely to die, it's probably worth the helmet.:)
If you drive your car on an icy road you might die too. If you don't cook your meats all the way, you might die. If you reach for your wallet to give a cop your ID, you might die.
The question of the grandparent was "where do you draw the line when it comes to protecting kids?" It seems pretty clear that we're way too far over that line now. I used to walk the railroad tracks 3 miles home when I was in high school sometimes. Just for the hell of it. I'd have to guess where the 3 mile mark was, then cut through thick woods, skirt a swamp, and go through a mining operation. I rode a bike with no helmet, was given guns to shoot, had a pocket knife at age 6-7, (and scars on my left hand to prove it...) and drove a farm truck around a field when I was 13.
But you look at most parents today, and very, very few would let their kids do any of that. The paranoia that "oh my god, something will happen to them!" is so huge, that they end up sheltered, fragile, with all sorts of mental issues. (The topic of this article, actually.)
My point was that kids bounce. Yes, some of them break physically. But which is worse? A generation of them broken mentally, or a handful broken physically?
Very few of the kids I grew up with have massive depression, anxiety disorders, ADHD, etc. I attribute that to the fact that we were allowed the freedom to be rough and tumble and hurt ourselves in a small, rural community. None of us were treated like porcelain dishes and locked away safe.
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That and the "Give it to IT" jobs that aren't IT. When I was in that line, we'd get called in to help with our postage machines, packing/stuffing machines, etc. We got tasked with bar-coding everything in the building and entering it into a database for "tax purposes". Why? Because a hand-held scanner and bar-code printer was obviously "IT Stuff".
Add stupid shit like that to all we've said, and you end up with pretty poor IT performance.
Naw, she'd get twice as much, now that your sorry ass is dead...
This is seriously stupid, and perhaps even more than you imagine.
I own a game company, and make an in-game currency. That's treated as normal money. I then make myself a trillion dollars, and retire.
Sure, that currency market will crash pretty quickly, but if you can do any sort of transaction at the same speed as regular currency, it wouldn't be hard to buy a lot of stuff from a lot of different people before that came to light. And would that be illegal? If it is, then suddenly the government has to start monitoring in-game money, money markets, auction houses, etc. If it's not illegal, then it's even worse.
What's next? Imaginary money can be used as real money? I'm going to start imagining piles of money now, I'll be RICH!
I think you hit the nail on the head. From my experience, it's like this:
Sales start to pick up, so you hire a few more salesmen/account executives. Then because of the sales, customer service calls go up, so you hire some more CS reps. Then, after a year or two, sales decline. You let go some of the people you hired.
With IT, you can't do this. There is no metric for "how much" IT is needed. IT isn't a job that's either "done" or "not done". It's not a "average time on hold" sort of position.
The amount of time it takes to resolve problems can be nebulous. The quality of your backup software, and the ability of IT to back up and restore isn't anywhere NEAR as quantifiable as "average time on hold" in Customer Service is. Your account executives have 20 major accounts each. That's a solid, set-in-stone fact. If you get 40 more major accounts, you need two more of those people.
It's so easy for a manager to look at IT and say, "I bet we can do that with less", because little IT doesn't tie directly into the "business", at least from a managerial standpoint. IT doesn't quantify well, because sales $ are sales $, time-on-hold is time-on-hold is, and the number of accounts are the number of accounts. Managers just can't quantify IT like that. So to them, it doesn't have a set-in-stone value.
Move to Madison, WI. The city has a bike lane on just about every major road, plus several bike paths that cut through the city. It's 10 degrees out, and there are still a fair number of bikes on the road. The people here are HARDCORE about biking...
The other issue is that there is some inherent risk in data encryption. It's another thing that can break. If my data gets a bit corrupted, I can probably recover most of it. If my encrypted data gets a bit corrupted, I don't have such confidence. It depends on the way it was encrypted, and the decryption tool.
I'd agree - most of what really, really needs to be encrypted already is. And there is definitely a diminishing return as we encrypt more things.
I really don't get this attitude. I spent 7 years living in rolling hills, out in the country. There was pretty much no cell service. I was a land-line at home and at work then, and that was it.
I've moved to the city, and dropped $15 on a cell phone, and put $100 into my account. That lasted me 6 months. I just refilled, and figure I'll probably hit about $225 this year, with my current amount of use. Compared to my $20 per month land line, it's pretty much the same.
This is like asking what is your preferred way of being tortured.
My cell plan isn't torture. Then again, I don't try to do anything more with it than use it as a portable land-line. Used as such, it costs the same amount. If you want a portable internet connection, then you need to be prepared to pay for it.
Quit yer bitchin! Either use your phone like a phone, or pay to use it like a roaming internet connection. This isn't some evil plot to suck money from you!
It all depends on what you want to do
And where you want to do it. The question is so vague that it's not possible to answer here. Where are you going to be living? Are you just making calls, need 3G, surfing...?
I could easily recommend AT&T, should you be living in my city and using a phone as little as I do. A handful of calls a month, a dozen or so texts, and I'm very, very happy with a prepaid, $15 phone. It sure beats out my landline - slightly less money, and portable. But take it back to where I *used* to live, and it's garbage. I went home over christmas, shut it off after I got out of the airport, and didn't turn it on again until I landed back here. Why? Because I have no service in those areas.
The question is too vague to answer here. It'll just be a sea of noise.
A data point for that:
I'm on a pre-paid plan, since I'm not interested in being raped with a contract. Since I don't text much, I pay per-text. The no-plan rate is $0.20 per text sent or received. Since I only go through 0-20 texts per month, I suck it up, despite the fact that I know damn well that it doesn't cost more than a cent to send those characters.
When I was teaching physics, I'd always assign a project to research the feasibility of building a space elevator to my students. I told them it was a 2 day project, then I'd usually cut them off after a week or so. The problems are so staggering, it's truly amazing that anyone seriously talks about space elevators.
Outside the material the cable is made of, there's the issue of making enough of it. GSO is a long way away. I usually pointed my students towards steel output as a mass-industry comparison, and the amount of telecommunications lines in countries for cable length comparisons. It turns out, those aren't out-of-the-ballpark comparisons. And people are actually suggesting a project on those sorts of scales involving a material we don't have yet.
The other fun part is trying to figure out how to get even a thin cable to GSO which will reach to the ground. It turns out that that much cable is bulky and heavy, on the scale of years to decades of dedicated rocket launches at current rates to get into orbit.
Also, because god hates shrimp.
I concur.
The last two upgrades left me without sound until I purged pulseaudio with fire.
I understand what it's supposed to do. If it would do that, I'd absolutely love it. I'm psyched about the possibilities. But at the moment, I can't get it to function.
I have ALSA, and it works. I need to be able to "sudo apt-get install pulseaudio", reboot, and have that work. I've spent years of my life fucking around with audio under linux. I'm at the point where if it works, I'm not going to spend a half day breaking it to try to get something else working. I have much better things to do.
What the fuck is the problem with functional audio by default?
You'll have a lot of company with all the people who forgot their unique number....
Even if it's that bad, how many times do you enter someone's number in your cell phone?
For most people, it's once. They you sync your address/contact list, and you're done. Honestly, how is that WORSE than inputting in a name, IM handle, email address, home phone, work phone, cell phone, twitter name, facebook name, home address, etc?
While I understand the security/spam issues with tying everything to one number, a hangup based on the data entry is stupid. We tend to enter far more data for an average contact than that.
What color is the swine flu alert level now?
(I wish I was less than half kidding.....)
That and it's pretty easy to figure out which ones you see all over that are problematic. My "untrusted" list is growing slowly, but steadily. It's nice to have that log of the scripts you know aren't needed for content, and are only there to serve ads or do other obnoxious stuff.
It's been a slow process, but my browsing is getting less and less hindered by NoScript as I've built my web of trusted and untrusted scripts.
It's interesting how transparent NoScript is on the pages I visit often, and how much it complains about sites I don't visit often. It's an extra irritation, definitely. But when you watch someone browsing without it, you get a damn good refresher on why you use it.
I'm blown away by the amount of abuse that most people put up with from scripts. It's mind-boggling to me. I put up with exactly one bit of abuse - sometimes I have to reload a page a time or two as I selectively enable scripts to get to the content I want. I'd rather not do that, but it sure beats the alternative.
Agreed. On all my systems the Caps Lock key resides in the desk drawer. While it leaves a gaping hole, filled with crumbs and filth, it's far better than having it there. Yeah, I could remap it, but a bent paperclip fixes it in far less time, with far less effort.
Probably using flash. It's amazing how it can destroy a browser, and sometimes a whole system. It is truly the most garbage program I have ever used. I was ignorant of what SysRq did, which is why I recently had to hard reboot my system after flash ate it. I'm actually going to try to remember this for the next time flash destroys my desktop. (Most of the time, I just need to kill firefox. However once in awhile, the flash/firefox death combo manages to lock X up as well. It shouldn't be able to, but it does. If the internet didn't have boatloads of it, I'd be far happier. Here's looking forward to HTML-5.)
May the coffee gods grace you in the future then. You've paid for your lack of caffeination. :)
Eh, screw radiating it all over - I want to focus it out of my eyes, or perhaps a finger. That'd rock!
Previous and future presidents, I hope not! But this one....he's dreamy....
What the hell are you talking about? I have a mug of coffee in front of me. It is mine. It has a couple of unique physical qualities that make it "property":
a) I can put my hands on it, and fight anyone who tries to take it.
b) It can't be duplicated easily.
Imaginary property has neither of those qualities. There is no physical thing to hold on. It's either in your mind, or it's in the world. Once an *idea* gets out, it's nearly effortless to reproduce it, copy it, and spread it around.
The term "Imaginary Property" was coined for just such a reason - we have constructed a legal framework to give *ideas* the same two properties that real, tangible, solid items have. It's stupid, because in reality, ideas don't have those properties, thus the derogatory usage of the term.
I wonder what the additional visibility and hearing does for a non-helmet wearer, and if they might be more cautious as well.
:)
However, accidents aren't the big issue - what percent died or had brain damage with helmets on than without them? If you're 10% less likely to get into an accident, but 50% more likely to die, it's probably worth the helmet.
If you drive your car on an icy road you might die too. If you don't cook your meats all the way, you might die. If you reach for your wallet to give a cop your ID, you might die.
The question of the grandparent was "where do you draw the line when it comes to protecting kids?" It seems pretty clear that we're way too far over that line now. I used to walk the railroad tracks 3 miles home when I was in high school sometimes. Just for the hell of it. I'd have to guess where the 3 mile mark was, then cut through thick woods, skirt a swamp, and go through a mining operation. I rode a bike with no helmet, was given guns to shoot, had a pocket knife at age 6-7, (and scars on my left hand to prove it...) and drove a farm truck around a field when I was 13.
But you look at most parents today, and very, very few would let their kids do any of that. The paranoia that "oh my god, something will happen to them!" is so huge, that they end up sheltered, fragile, with all sorts of mental issues. (The topic of this article, actually.)
My point was that kids bounce. Yes, some of them break physically. But which is worse? A generation of them broken mentally, or a handful broken physically?
Very few of the kids I grew up with have massive depression, anxiety disorders, ADHD, etc. I attribute that to the fact that we were allowed the freedom to be rough and tumble and hurt ourselves in a small, rural community. None of us were treated like porcelain dishes and locked away safe.