At work, they moved my group into a new building a couple months ago. We're a lot more crowded than we used to be (better communication, dontcha know), but at least there's one improvement. The "Close Door" buttons in the elevators actually work!
Harassment
on
Beyond Pay?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
A few comments:
Examples of this include the company forcing employees to put in extra (unpaid) hours, with the implicit/explicit threat of loosing the job if they don't
In some states this is illegal. At my last job it was well-known that layoffs were in the works, and the CEO told me that unless I committed to working 60 hour weeks I'd probably be on the list. I agreed and promptly started job-hunting. I quit about a month later, coincidentally right when the 10% pay cut they had announced kicked in. It was very satisfying..
At the post-layoff meeting I was talking with our company lawyer and the CEO, and he she jokingly asked him "So, did you do anything illegal this week?" When he said "No", I mentioned the conversation we'd had and the lawyer's jaw dropped. She admits that employment law isn't her specialty (she mostly does licensing and contracts) but she's pretty sure that what he said was illegal in California.
My experience is that even in cases where the employee is completely right, it is impossible for her to win the case, given current employment law.
I used to be a manager, so I've been through lots of training on this. If you're talking about sexual harassment, there are basically two kinds: "climate" and "quid pro quo". The first is where the harassment makes the company an unpleasant or intolerable place to work. Quid pro quo harassment is an explicit bargain or threat: have sex with me or you won't get the promotion. Both of them are grounds for a lawsuit, but quid pro quo harassment cases are easier to win (juries are more sympathetic). I think they're also worse in a legal sense, like being eligible for punitive damages in addition to actual damages.
I believe professors should have the right to make their reviews be private. A professor will have the ability to hide all reviews from public view.
and
Response from Professor. I don't know how I can verify that somebody is really the professor before I let them post a response on the web site.
Er, then how can he very that somebody really is the professor before letting them remove reviews. Unless he wants to surf (or spider) university web sites and look up all the professors' email addresses, I'm not sure how he can solve this.
If it's at all possible to use schemas instead of DTDs in an application, I'd recommend doing so. Schemas are much more powerful and expressive. DTDs are an abomination.
In June, 2002, Patriot announced that it has received a $1 million investment from a group of investors led by Lincoln Ventures.
I swear the first time I read that I thought it said Lincoln Vultures.
More on-topic, what gives these guys the right to sue Intel's customers even if Intel is infringing their patent? They should be suing Intel itself. It's sort of like SCO threatening to sue Linux users. I can't believe the judge hasn't just thrown Patriot's case out.
Utah folks are nice overall, but it's true that polygamy was practiced there up to 100 years ago mainly to populate Utah as quickly as possible from the small band of initial settlers.
This being slashdot and all, I'm surprised nobody has asked yet: What's wrong with polygamy? As long as everyone's a consenting adult, what's the problem?
Dell, lately, has been shipping lots of FP monitors and video cards with DVI connectors.
Definitely. I have two of their 20" LCD monitors on my desk at work. They're pretty nice displays: bright and crisp. I like the Samsung I have at home a little bit more because it has slightly better contrast, but the Dells are quite nice. The ones we have at work have 4 (!) inputs: DVI, D-Sub, S-video, and composite. It looks great with the DVI input but is a bit fuzzy if you use the D-Sub input, even at the same resolution.
have you ever felt guilty over using Mac OS X instead of Linux?
Guilty? I don't even feel guilty for using Windows instead of Linux at home. It does what I need, (mostly Eclipse, Photoshop, and Dreamweaver), and that's what's matters. (And don't try to convert me to Gimp and Mozilla Composer; they just won't do what I need.) It also still has a more polished (if less pretty) UI than any Linux desktop I've seen, though the gap is closing. I've actually been tempted to move to Mac OS X for its even better UI and nice hardware, but I don't want to re-purchase my software and I don't want the single-vendor hardware lockin.
9. Defendants' actions allowing the release of GE ornamental fish and other animal varieties into the environment also ensures that individuals serving on CTA's board of directors are, and will be, aesthetically, physically and recreationally injured.
Huh? Did SCO's lawyers branch out into environmental lawsuits when I wasn't looking?
As far as I know it requires a fan, but you can use a slow and quiet one. If the case had good internal airflow from a case fan or from good convection, then maybe you could get away without one. Tell me what happens if you try it!:-)
In the 70s shuttle prototypes weighing nearly 200,000 pounds were launched into landing test flights off the back of 747s
Landing tests and escape velocity are orders of magnitude different, because the work required is proportional to the force (or weight) multiplied by the distance. The shuttles were only flown up a few miles before being launched (or dropped, really). The first stage of a Saturn V got upper stages to around 40 miles up before separating, if I remember right.
Does that Thermalright include a fan, or is it all-heatsink?
It's all heatsink -- a big, heavy, copper monster. The fins are quite thin, so there's a lot of surface area for radiating heat. You can use normal 80mm fans with it (maybe even 90mm?) rather than the smaller, faster, louder 60mm fans that many other heatsinks use.
A quiet PC is great, but $1,400 is a bit extreme. Last summer I decided my PC was too lound and made it a lot quieter. The parts I used were:
Evercase 4252 case: $37. About as un-cool looking as you can get, but it has good airflow and the openings on the front are baffled a bit to keep it quiet.
Fortron 300W PS: $24 A no-name brand. But it uses a 12cm fan instead of the usual 8cm ones, so it can turn more slowly (and quietly) and still move enough air.
Thermalright Heatsink: $39. Huge and a pain to install, but great heat transfer. Just make sure its weight doesn't rip the CPU socket off your motherboard.
"Stealth" fans: 2 x $8. These are reasonably quiet and easy to find. The Panaflo fans are quieter but more expensive and hard to find.
Fan speed control: $19. Ugly, but it works. I actually used two small, single-fan controls that dangle inside my case, but I can't find them online.
Vibration absorption mats: $15. Dampens vibrations and covers annoying ventilation holes in the side of the case
That's what, $150? You can send the extra $1250 to me.
The links are to Newegg just because I like them and it's easy to find things on their site. I'm not affiliated with them, ymmv, void where not prohibited, etc.
This is only slightly related, but maybe someone here can answer. Does anyone know why the back and forward buttons on my mouse don't function correctly in linux?
I managed to make this work on my RedHat 9.0 box last week, after a great deal of googling and lots of trial and error. The best page I found on the subject was probably this one, and there were also some forum posts here and here.
[off-topic, but what the hell...]
-- Laura, disappointed that RedHat's mouse-configuration tool didn't handle this automagically
So what happened to MySQL 4.1? Last time I looked, it was still in alpha too. Did they decide to skip it and go straight to 5.0? Or did they decide that twice the alphas means twice the testing?
Have you seen the source code to DB2 or Notes lately?
No, thank goodness. If the Notes source code is anything like the Notes UI, I'd have to gouge my eyes out after seeing it. That is, if it didn't make me go blind on its own.
You're right: those results aren't great -- and I don't even have any idea who Suzy Orman is.:-) When you see bad results like this, please take a minute to click the "Help us improve." link down at the bottom of the page and say what was wrong with the results, (e.g. in this case they were all links to other "search" sites or shopping sites rather than to a definitive source.) Google does read the feedback from that form and use it to tune the search criteria over time.
For instance I buy a machine for 200,000$ the IRS says it depreciates at 40,000$ a year. Whichi means that for five years I have to right off a depreciation of 40,000 dollars, keeps my taxes down, but to the bottom line it looks like a cost, I didn't actually spend 40,000 dollars
No, you didn't actually spend $40,000. You spent $200,000. Of real money. It's just that the IRS doesn't let you write it off as an expense all at once. Instead, you have to depreciate it over its useful lifetime, which was 5 years (absurdly long) for computers last time I checked. That means a $40,000 deduction for each of 5 years, as you noted. But it's not a "free" way of lowering your taxes.
What is a free way of lowering your taxes is writing off nonsense losses like reduced "goodwill". Accountants have tried to tell me why this is supposed to be real, but it always sets off my bullshit alarms.
Try what the Cheapass Games people did. Make the board out of big pieces of paper, swipe pieces from other games, print the cards on a laser printer using card stock, and so on. As long as the game itself is entertaining, the looks won't matter thatmuch. Once you're sure it's a good game and people want to play it, then you can think about getting fancy.
I agree. I also have a 4U22ATX400 case that I got at a local discount/surplus store. I'm using it mostly as a fileserver (it has a bunch of 120 Gb disks on a RAID controller). At the moment it also has my CVS server, small web and MySQL servers for testing, and so on. I can't remember exactly what I paid, but given what a good 400W power supply costs the price of the case with power supply was pretty good.
I don't have a rack yet. Right now the case is sitting on its side out in my laundry room next to the dryer, which is also where the patch panel for all of the Cat5 jacks in the house terminate and where the DSL box, NAT/firewall, hub, etc. live. I'd kind of like to put all of it in a rack, and there's just enough space there for one. I'd been thinking of building a 24U rack by buying a full-height one at Fry's, then sawing each rail in half and using one half for the front and one for the back. But the rackframe.com link someone posted earlier looks pretty tempting. Right now all of this is waiting on getting the house re-plumbed so I can put up drywall in that room first.
When I left my last job, most of the developers were still using NT because there was no money for upgrades to 2000 or XP. Scary! I insisted on a Win2K box because I wanted to run Eclipse. They eventually gave me one after the layoffs when there were extra licenses to go around.
In order to transmit the same amount of information on paper, they would have to arrange for a 747 cargo freighter packed with telephone books and encyclopedias to power dive into their unit every couple of minutes, forever.
(describing the bandwidth the protagonist has available in the storage unit where he lives)
Slashdot Mirror
At work, they moved my group into a new building a couple months ago. We're a lot more crowded than we used to be (better communication, dontcha know), but at least there's one improvement. The "Close Door" buttons in the elevators actually work!
Examples of this include the company forcing employees to put in extra (unpaid) hours, with the implicit/explicit threat of loosing the job if they don't
In some states this is illegal. At my last job it was well-known that layoffs were in the works, and the CEO told me that unless I committed to working 60 hour weeks I'd probably be on the list. I agreed and promptly started job-hunting. I quit about a month later, coincidentally right when the 10% pay cut they had announced kicked in. It was very satisfying..
At the post-layoff meeting I was talking with our company lawyer and the CEO, and he she jokingly asked him "So, did you do anything illegal this week?" When he said "No", I mentioned the conversation we'd had and the lawyer's jaw dropped. She admits that employment law isn't her specialty (she mostly does licensing and contracts) but she's pretty sure that what he said was illegal in California.
My experience is that even in cases where the employee is completely right, it is impossible for her to win the case, given current employment law.
I used to be a manager, so I've been through lots of training on this. If you're talking about sexual harassment, there are basically two kinds: "climate" and "quid pro quo". The first is where the harassment makes the company an unpleasant or intolerable place to work. Quid pro quo harassment is an explicit bargain or threat: have sex with me or you won't get the promotion. Both of them are grounds for a lawsuit, but quid pro quo harassment cases are easier to win (juries are more sympathetic). I think they're also worse in a legal sense, like being eligible for punitive damages in addition to actual damages.
Laura, who INAL and all that.
Er, then how can he very that somebody really is the professor before letting them remove reviews. Unless he wants to surf (or spider) university web sites and look up all the professors' email addresses, I'm not sure how he can solve this.
If it's at all possible to use schemas instead of DTDs in an application, I'd recommend doing so. Schemas are much more powerful and expressive. DTDs are an abomination.
More on-topic, what gives these guys the right to sue Intel's customers even if Intel is infringing their patent? They should be suing Intel itself. It's sort of like SCO threatening to sue Linux users. I can't believe the judge hasn't just thrown Patriot's case out.
This being slashdot and all, I'm surprised nobody has asked yet: What's wrong with polygamy? As long as everyone's a consenting adult, what's the problem?
Definitely. I have two of their 20" LCD monitors on my desk at work. They're pretty nice displays: bright and crisp. I like the Samsung I have at home a little bit more because it has slightly better contrast, but the Dells are quite nice. The ones we have at work have 4 (!) inputs: DVI, D-Sub, S-video, and composite. It looks great with the DVI input but is a bit fuzzy if you use the D-Sub input, even at the same resolution.
Step 1: Sneeze
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit!
Sorry, but I couldn't resist.
Guilty? I don't even feel guilty for using Windows instead of Linux at home. It does what I need, (mostly Eclipse, Photoshop, and Dreamweaver), and that's what's matters. (And don't try to convert me to Gimp and Mozilla Composer; they just won't do what I need.) It also still has a more polished (if less pretty) UI than any Linux desktop I've seen, though the gap is closing. I've actually been tempted to move to Mac OS X for its even better UI and nice hardware, but I don't want to re-purchase my software and I don't want the single-vendor hardware lockin.
As far as I know it requires a fan, but you can use a slow and quiet one. If the case had good internal airflow from a case fan or from good convection, then maybe you could get away without one. Tell me what happens if you try it! :-)
Landing tests and escape velocity are orders of magnitude different, because the work required is proportional to the force (or weight) multiplied by the distance. The shuttles were only flown up a few miles before being launched (or dropped, really). The first stage of a Saturn V got upper stages to around 40 miles up before separating, if I remember right.
It's all heatsink -- a big, heavy, copper monster. The fins are quite thin, so there's a lot of surface area for radiating heat. You can use normal 80mm fans with it (maybe even 90mm?) rather than the smaller, faster, louder 60mm fans that many other heatsinks use.
- Evercase 4252 case: $37. About as un-cool looking as you can get, but it has good airflow and the openings on the front are baffled a bit to keep it quiet.
- Fortron 300W PS: $24 A no-name brand. But it uses a 12cm fan instead of the usual 8cm ones, so it can turn more slowly (and quietly) and still move enough air.
- Thermalright Heatsink: $39. Huge and a pain to install, but great heat transfer. Just make sure its weight doesn't rip the CPU socket off your motherboard.
- "Stealth" fans: 2 x $8. These are reasonably quiet and easy to find. The Panaflo fans are quieter but more expensive and hard to find.
- Fan speed control: $19. Ugly, but it works. I actually used two small, single-fan controls that dangle inside my case, but I can't find them online.
- Vibration absorption mats: $15. Dampens vibrations and covers annoying ventilation holes in the side of the case
That's what, $150? You can send the extra $1250 to me.The links are to Newegg just because I like them and it's easy to find things on their site. I'm not affiliated with them, ymmv, void where not prohibited, etc.
I managed to make this work on my RedHat 9.0 box last week, after a great deal of googling and lots of trial and error. The best page I found on the subject was probably this one, and there were also some forum posts here and here.
[off-topic, but what the hell...]
-- Laura, disappointed that RedHat's mouse-configuration tool didn't handle this automagically
So what happened to MySQL 4.1? Last time I looked, it was still in alpha too. Did they decide to skip it and go straight to 5.0? Or did they decide that twice the alphas means twice the testing?
No, thank goodness. If the Notes source code is anything like the Notes UI, I'd have to gouge my eyes out after seeing it. That is, if it didn't make me go blind on its own.
You're right: those results aren't great -- and I don't even have any idea who Suzy Orman is. :-) When you see bad results like this, please take a minute to click the "Help us improve." link down at the bottom of the page and say what was wrong with the results, (e.g. in this case they were all links to other "search" sites or shopping sites rather than to a definitive source.) Google does read the feedback from that form and use it to tune the search criteria over time.
No, you didn't actually spend $40,000. You spent $200,000. Of real money. It's just that the IRS doesn't let you write it off as an expense all at once. Instead, you have to depreciate it over its useful lifetime, which was 5 years (absurdly long) for computers last time I checked. That means a $40,000 deduction for each of 5 years, as you noted. But it's not a "free" way of lowering your taxes.
What is a free way of lowering your taxes is writing off nonsense losses like reduced "goodwill". Accountants have tried to tell me why this is supposed to be real, but it always sets off my bullshit alarms.
Kill Doctor Lucky is definitely a good one. I haven't tried Falling yet. I'll have to get it now.
Try what the Cheapass Games people did. Make the board out of big pieces of paper, swipe pieces from other games, print the cards on a laser printer using card stock, and so on. As long as the game itself is entertaining, the looks won't matter thatmuch. Once you're sure it's a good game and people want to play it, then you can think about getting fancy.
We have this poster from Tufte posted outside some of the conference rooms at work.
I don't have a rack yet. Right now the case is sitting on its side out in my laundry room next to the dryer, which is also where the patch panel for all of the Cat5 jacks in the house terminate and where the DSL box, NAT/firewall, hub, etc. live. I'd kind of like to put all of it in a rack, and there's just enough space there for one. I'd been thinking of building a 24U rack by buying a full-height one at Fry's, then sawing each rail in half and using one half for the front and one for the back. But the rackframe.com link someone posted earlier looks pretty tempting. Right now all of this is waiting on getting the house re-plumbed so I can put up drywall in that room first.
When I left my last job, most of the developers were still using NT because there was no money for upgrades to 2000 or XP. Scary! I insisted on a Win2K box because I wanted to run Eclipse. They eventually gave me one after the layoffs when there were extra licenses to go around.