While working at a few companies, I noticed a similar rule between the two. Both only wanted each employee to only take 10 minutes for "bathroom" breaks a day. Sorry, but between, logging off, walking and coming back, thats almost one break - if your REALLY fast...
But yea, I've never been offered a conference. Businesses now days are more worried about profit than employee value. The company I currently work for has told people that if they don't like their job, quit and someone else will gladly step into their shoes.
I haven't had time to test this all, but I'm assuming that the spammers can just reply to the challenge just as quickly as they come in. There are operations that have thousands tied up in servers - with everything you can get (out of the dumpster in some areas), this seems rather trivial. Setup a script and forget... The only way this might work is to be a pain and change the challenge info on the fly so its harder to reply automagically.
I think it would be funny if someone would attempt (it may have already been attempted) to patent the patent system. Write something so obscure that it gets past them - that would be funny. Heck, you could even patent software for viewing patents - get both regular and software patents involved.
Yes, while its prior art, I'm sure if you tried enough, had enough money and where bored enough, you could get it approved. Immediately release what happened to the media and watch how the system squirms under pressure.
The system has really changed so that less people can invent stuff. In the past, a clock would have been something like "A weight at the end of an arm swings in two directions" - now days it would be something like "An object fixed at the end of a device or shaft that is omni-directional". The first one, its pretty obvious what it is - the second one, my dick could used as an example of prior art...
I can totally agree with this. In my office at the moment, I have a PII 466 and 2 PII 500's running different things on my network. Granted, they're not THAT old by my (poor) standards, but I don't mind keeping some of the old boxes around just to have network storage, a print server with a firewall, DNS, etc... Heck, one of the 500's was fished out of a dumpster a few weeks ago - a new powersupply got me a "new" computer for $20.
My parents required the same thing as the story parent and all I did was setup apache on a box they hardly ever touch, setup apache to startup and a PHP script to read a directory. Free, runs on windows, you can put in security if you want - I could go on, but we all know what you can do with it.
I have a few people that bank on the economy here, but Community Bank enables both Euro and Dollars. The shitty part about this whole thing is that they maintain 2 exchange rates. 1 for going to Dollars and the other going to Euro. Normally, the difference is about 4 cents, but it can be as bad as 8 cents. This doesn't sound like much, but when you're paid in Euro like me and bring home 1400 and have to convert that into dollars, the exchange rate can make a nice or nasty difference.
Even still, the same type of issue happens when monthly bills come in. My T-Mobil (cell phone) bill goes between $115 and $140 on any given month even though the two plans are the same and never go over their minutes. Here lately though, its been hanging around $140:-(
Well, see - there are problems with that. I'm currently in Germany and the only "American" bank that I can use is Community Bank aka: Bank of America... Makes me feel GREAT. The past 2 security stories listed in the last week have skirted around me, but its starting to creep up on me. Time to start using the "under the bed" savings method.
As someone that use to do design work, I second that. Many companies have several developers, but they only do simplistic things most of the time. I had a room mate that ended up working for a firm as a contractor and did a few templates for some high-profile companies. He ended up signing about 3 NDA's for various topics including not talking about the contract with anyone, not contacting the clients in anyway, not being able to use the work as his own, etc... While it sucked, he was paid about $18 an hour, spending about 1.5 hours on each template (taking a photoshop image and chopping it for web use).
Make sure you meet the team that is doing your work - in person is best. Outsourcing has hit many companies now days and while one company may put on a happy face, it may be contractors doing the actual work. Heck, I'm a contractor to a contractor that is contracted (umm...yea, thats right) - its a shitty, feeble existence, but it pays some of the bills.
The other thing that I would recommend is that your internal crew should start learning the languages that the website will be built in (or, preferably, already know it) and audit the code as much as possible so they can understand how it works. Its a pain in the ass later to be handed a full application and have someone say "this was just built - change this, this and this by tomorrow" when you have no clue what is what. They should be checking on security, comments, standardization, etc. Your internal people should also have 1 to 2 trips planned to the contractors location to meet with the designers if you plan on keeping this company around for awhile. If its a 1 time deal thats only going to last 2'ish months or so - its not needed, but 1 trip about 2-3 weeks in is recommended to check on progress and get developer thoughts . This also ensures that the contractor is not bait & switching their contractors somewhere else. If you do meet them, make sure to specifically ask if they where contracted for the job...
Sorry, but you really don't know what you're talking about in this situation.
The milnet has limited bandwidth for a whole lot of uses. One of the things thats transferred is real time audio/video from drones and other planes/helicopters doing recon and search and destroy work. Theres always the communications chatter going on between all the teams out and about, etc. All of this also gets looped back to the Pentagon.
For the folks that run the satellites for milnet, they get about 15 minutes of "free time" online a day and the most bandwidth intensive thing they can use is AIM.
Ok, I need to shut my mouth at this point and pay attention to OPSEC even though all that info is freely available on AFN...
Sorry I've gone half tilt Amish on the idiots of the internet. If you can't get your message over to me using plain old HTML and static images you can stick your message up your arse.
I agree with this mentality. While I haven't killed flash for my browsing experience, I can't stand the sites that use MonsterTemplate.com or something like them with their repeating flash toppers that are just like the html blink tag. If I'm reading a page, the last thing I want to catch my attention is the topper that is just whisps our blinking blocks.
On a very rare occasion, I may design something in Flash, but I ALWAYS export it as a GIF movie and never let it repeat. While flashy (no pun intended) are neat, they are not always needed.
I completely agree with this. I also think that the Patent think tanks that just think up stuff and wait for people to violate their patent should be illegal.
Actually, LCD's don't really have issues like that at the moment. Check out the Pioneer AVIC-N1. Its a DVD player that hooks into the vehicle and will display the gauges, just like the story parent wants. Its possible, just a matter of making it work from scratch.
I actually use to help people train for call control for a call center. One thing I always mentioned was that it was good practice to attempt to take over a telemarketers call. Once you could do it on a normal basis, not only ould they stop calling, but you had what it took to calm almost anyone down and get them back on task.
That worked until I found a trainee that use to do telemarketting. One call, he actually finished the script the telemarketer was reading off and specifically said what page the person was reading from. Lets just say the telemarketer was literally speechless.
This has always annoyed me. When schools spend more time and money on their sports program than any other aspect of the school, there is something wrong. They all strive to be the best at sports...gag.
I went to a high school that spent several million on thier sports program each year, but would have run of the mill computers around and not keep them up to date. They ran the very first version of Windows 95 (the one where you could close the start button) until late 1998 when I graduated. 2 years later, I visited the school and found they where using the same OS - couldn't believe it. But oh my, the parents would scream if they let the football program slip a little...
Re:I searched for keywords britney spears and ...
on
Inspecting MSN Search
·
· Score: 1
Figures - I had to back up all the way to the main page before I got anything before... BLAH!
Re:I searched for keywords britney spears and ...
on
Inspecting MSN Search
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I HAD mod points and was going to use them, but does anyone else see the irony of a "Linux" website designed in a very bad FrontPage theme?
In the US, we have businesses that will blow insulation or wood chips almost anywhere. I'm sure it he talked to someone like that, they'd be more than interested in helping.
Even though this is from an AC, I'll reply anyway just for the hell of it.
I never discredited the people on the front lines in any way. I kept saying to take care of them. I have a programmer I want to hire, but haven't been able to due to funding issues. I've kept him in the loop on projects and have given updates to him on a normal basis. When he's too busy to talk, I respect that and let him do what he needs. I'm more of a relationship type of person and thats how my business runs.
This may be a cliche, but my business honestly works as a family. All my employees are very open with me and have NO problem telling me how it is when I have something wrong. When they can show me that I'm wrong, I have no reason to implement what they're saying and admit to the issue.
While customers can be a pain, no business would be in operation without them, so I figured this would be an issue I wouldn't even need to touch on.
Like I said before, the people in the trenches must be kept happy. Part of keeping them happy is telling them they're doing a good job, sharing info, keeping an open door policy and honestly sticking to it. One other thing my employees like the company is because I've specifically told them and our customers that I will not outsource any part of our business.
I reacted as you did at first, then I thought about current trends.
If they pick an outsourcing company that just, sucks - then the company can say that they can't communicate with the workers... Of course, this still boils down to managaers by choosing a bad outsourcing company - or just choosing to outsource.
Just to add to this, while leadership is mostly to blame, the Government can be a very bad client as well.
After an initial project is agreed upon, the Government is notorious for changing features, designs, due dates as well as budgets. While leadership should just put their foot down and either say "no" or renegotiate, they would rather keep on the good side of the "G" and kill the project than lose contracts later.
You know, I used to be like you - saying that the people in the trenches are the ones that make things happen, but I found I was wrong after starting a business. I bet you're currently in the trenches and have never been in upper management...
Without leadership, the people in the trenches would do whatever they wanted, anytime. They wouldn't have the right tools, they wouldn't conform to proper coding standards, they wouldn't be able to effectively meet with clients (think carefully on this one... Most groups will elect someone, aka: Leadership, to talk to the client.), there would also be budget issues, etc.
Trust me, I believe that the trench people (haha..) deserve a lot more credit than they usually get. The leadership though, needs to take care of the people in the trenches and thats what most businesses are missing these days. Hell, I worked for a company that provides a service to the government and I made enough to qualify for food stamps while management was driving around in BMW's and Porches - a classic Pointy Haired Boss company.
Its all about how you treat your employees. I've been fortunate enough (or unfortunate, depending on how you look at it) to work for a company that spoiled me when I was in the trenches. They made all of us at the bottom feel like we where the only ones that mattered and they where right. That company went profitable so fast and made so much money, it wasn't funny. Imagine being 19 years old and trying to figure out where you where going to park your Hummer H1 in 6 months while others are buying $200,000 houses with cash!
I've also worked on the other side of the fence for companies that are deeply rooted in the "Don't trust your employees" mentality - they happened to be an investment firm. They prided themselves on hiring the best of the best (top 1% that applied) but had an employee turnover ratio of over 26% a year... Oddly enough, they where very open about it in the interview and liked the fact that I brought it up. They felt it showed that I was truly interested in the long term... I bailed on them after 6 months for something better even though I was well paid.
Again, it IS about leadership. If leadership isn't doing their job, you don't like your job (or you just don't like working). Most geeks want to work for a cool company that works - lets use Google here... Why is Google so popular? Leadership.
Slashdot Mirror
While working at a few companies, I noticed a similar rule between the two. Both only wanted each employee to only take 10 minutes for "bathroom" breaks a day. Sorry, but between, logging off, walking and coming back, thats almost one break - if your REALLY fast...
But yea, I've never been offered a conference. Businesses now days are more worried about profit than employee value. The company I currently work for has told people that if they don't like their job, quit and someone else will gladly step into their shoes.
Life sucks at the moment.
I haven't had time to test this all, but I'm assuming that the spammers can just reply to the challenge just as quickly as they come in. There are operations that have thousands tied up in servers - with everything you can get (out of the dumpster in some areas), this seems rather trivial. Setup a script and forget... The only way this might work is to be a pain and change the challenge info on the fly so its harder to reply automagically.
Then again, this may have already been addressed.
I think it would be funny if someone would attempt (it may have already been attempted) to patent the patent system. Write something so obscure that it gets past them - that would be funny. Heck, you could even patent software for viewing patents - get both regular and software patents involved.
Yes, while its prior art, I'm sure if you tried enough, had enough money and where bored enough, you could get it approved. Immediately release what happened to the media and watch how the system squirms under pressure.
The system has really changed so that less people can invent stuff. In the past, a clock would have been something like "A weight at the end of an arm swings in two directions" - now days it would be something like "An object fixed at the end of a device or shaft that is omni-directional". The first one, its pretty obvious what it is - the second one, my dick could used as an example of prior art...
I can totally agree with this. In my office at the moment, I have a PII 466 and 2 PII 500's running different things on my network. Granted, they're not THAT old by my (poor) standards, but I don't mind keeping some of the old boxes around just to have network storage, a print server with a firewall, DNS, etc... Heck, one of the 500's was fished out of a dumpster a few weeks ago - a new powersupply got me a "new" computer for $20.
I was reading your post and I figured some idiot would do that... I understood the reasoning behind it and I would have done the same.
My parents required the same thing as the story parent and all I did was setup apache on a box they hardly ever touch, setup apache to startup and a PHP script to read a directory. Free, runs on windows, you can put in security if you want - I could go on, but we all know what you can do with it.
I have a few people that bank on the economy here, but Community Bank enables both Euro and Dollars. The shitty part about this whole thing is that they maintain 2 exchange rates. 1 for going to Dollars and the other going to Euro. Normally, the difference is about 4 cents, but it can be as bad as 8 cents. This doesn't sound like much, but when you're paid in Euro like me and bring home 1400 and have to convert that into dollars, the exchange rate can make a nice or nasty difference.
:-(
Even still, the same type of issue happens when monthly bills come in. My T-Mobil (cell phone) bill goes between $115 and $140 on any given month even though the two plans are the same and never go over their minutes. Here lately though, its been hanging around $140
Well, see - there are problems with that. I'm currently in Germany and the only "American" bank that I can use is Community Bank aka: Bank of America... Makes me feel GREAT. The past 2 security stories listed in the last week have skirted around me, but its starting to creep up on me. Time to start using the "under the bed" savings method.
As someone that use to do design work, I second that. Many companies have several developers, but they only do simplistic things most of the time. I had a room mate that ended up working for a firm as a contractor and did a few templates for some high-profile companies. He ended up signing about 3 NDA's for various topics including not talking about the contract with anyone, not contacting the clients in anyway, not being able to use the work as his own, etc... While it sucked, he was paid about $18 an hour, spending about 1.5 hours on each template (taking a photoshop image and chopping it for web use).
Make sure you meet the team that is doing your work - in person is best. Outsourcing has hit many companies now days and while one company may put on a happy face, it may be contractors doing the actual work. Heck, I'm a contractor to a contractor that is contracted (umm...yea, thats right) - its a shitty, feeble existence, but it pays some of the bills.
The other thing that I would recommend is that your internal crew should start learning the languages that the website will be built in (or, preferably, already know it) and audit the code as much as possible so they can understand how it works. Its a pain in the ass later to be handed a full application and have someone say "this was just built - change this, this and this by tomorrow" when you have no clue what is what. They should be checking on security, comments, standardization, etc. Your internal people should also have 1 to 2 trips planned to the contractors location to meet with the designers if you plan on keeping this company around for awhile. If its a 1 time deal thats only going to last 2'ish months or so - its not needed, but 1 trip about 2-3 weeks in is recommended to check on progress and get developer thoughts . This also ensures that the contractor is not bait & switching their contractors somewhere else. If you do meet them, make sure to specifically ask if they where contracted for the job...
Best laugh I've had all weekend (sorry for those that don't get a 3 day)... Thinking of getting my dad some of these for his cube!
Its what amatures call the Military Network. NIPR wouldn't really work in this case because its mainly for internal sharing between 2 trusted sources.
But yea, kinda sorta - some people don't know the levels of the Military Networks, so they assume everything is all 1 huge internal network.
Sorry, but you really don't know what you're talking about in this situation.
The milnet has limited bandwidth for a whole lot of uses. One of the things thats transferred is real time audio/video from drones and other planes/helicopters doing recon and search and destroy work. Theres always the communications chatter going on between all the teams out and about, etc. All of this also gets looped back to the Pentagon.
For the folks that run the satellites for milnet, they get about 15 minutes of "free time" online a day and the most bandwidth intensive thing they can use is AIM.
Ok, I need to shut my mouth at this point and pay attention to OPSEC even though all that info is freely available on AFN...
I agree with this mentality. While I haven't killed flash for my browsing experience, I can't stand the sites that use MonsterTemplate.com or something like them with their repeating flash toppers that are just like the html blink tag. If I'm reading a page, the last thing I want to catch my attention is the topper that is just whisps our blinking blocks.
On a very rare occasion, I may design something in Flash, but I ALWAYS export it as a GIF movie and never let it repeat. While flashy (no pun intended) are neat, they are not always needed.
I completely agree with this. I also think that the Patent think tanks that just think up stuff and wait for people to violate their patent should be illegal.
I had the same issue with my parents and wife...
My parents now call for non-computer type stuff like "where can I buy another one of those 6 foot long blue cords?"
My wife - she now has a user account instead of an admin account on her XP box - ahhh... life is so much nicer now.
Actually, LCD's don't really have issues like that at the moment. Check out the Pioneer AVIC-N1. Its a DVD player that hooks into the vehicle and will display the gauges, just like the story parent wants. Its possible, just a matter of making it work from scratch.
I actually use to help people train for call control for a call center. One thing I always mentioned was that it was good practice to attempt to take over a telemarketers call. Once you could do it on a normal basis, not only ould they stop calling, but you had what it took to calm almost anyone down and get them back on task.
That worked until I found a trainee that use to do telemarketting. One call, he actually finished the script the telemarketer was reading off and specifically said what page the person was reading from. Lets just say the telemarketer was literally speechless.
This has always annoyed me. When schools spend more time and money on their sports program than any other aspect of the school, there is something wrong. They all strive to be the best at sports...gag.
I went to a high school that spent several million on thier sports program each year, but would have run of the mill computers around and not keep them up to date. They ran the very first version of Windows 95 (the one where you could close the start button) until late 1998 when I graduated. 2 years later, I visited the school and found they where using the same OS - couldn't believe it. But oh my, the parents would scream if they let the football program slip a little...
Figures - I had to back up all the way to the main page before I got anything before... BLAH!
In the US, we have businesses that will blow insulation or wood chips almost anywhere. I'm sure it he talked to someone like that, they'd be more than interested in helping.
Even though this is from an AC, I'll reply anyway just for the hell of it.
I never discredited the people on the front lines in any way. I kept saying to take care of them. I have a programmer I want to hire, but haven't been able to due to funding issues. I've kept him in the loop on projects and have given updates to him on a normal basis. When he's too busy to talk, I respect that and let him do what he needs. I'm more of a relationship type of person and thats how my business runs.
This may be a cliche, but my business honestly works as a family. All my employees are very open with me and have NO problem telling me how it is when I have something wrong. When they can show me that I'm wrong, I have no reason to implement what they're saying and admit to the issue.
While customers can be a pain, no business would be in operation without them, so I figured this would be an issue I wouldn't even need to touch on.
Like I said before, the people in the trenches must be kept happy. Part of keeping them happy is telling them they're doing a good job, sharing info, keeping an open door policy and honestly sticking to it. One other thing my employees like the company is because I've specifically told them and our customers that I will not outsource any part of our business.
I reacted as you did at first, then I thought about current trends.
If they pick an outsourcing company that just, sucks - then the company can say that they can't communicate with the workers... Of course, this still boils down to managaers by choosing a bad outsourcing company - or just choosing to outsource.
Just to add to this, while leadership is mostly to blame, the Government can be a very bad client as well.
After an initial project is agreed upon, the Government is notorious for changing features, designs, due dates as well as budgets. While leadership should just put their foot down and either say "no" or renegotiate, they would rather keep on the good side of the "G" and kill the project than lose contracts later.
You know, I used to be like you - saying that the people in the trenches are the ones that make things happen, but I found I was wrong after starting a business. I bet you're currently in the trenches and have never been in upper management...
Without leadership, the people in the trenches would do whatever they wanted, anytime. They wouldn't have the right tools, they wouldn't conform to proper coding standards, they wouldn't be able to effectively meet with clients (think carefully on this one... Most groups will elect someone, aka: Leadership, to talk to the client.), there would also be budget issues, etc.
Trust me, I believe that the trench people (haha..) deserve a lot more credit than they usually get. The leadership though, needs to take care of the people in the trenches and thats what most businesses are missing these days. Hell, I worked for a company that provides a service to the government and I made enough to qualify for food stamps while management was driving around in BMW's and Porches - a classic Pointy Haired Boss company.
Its all about how you treat your employees. I've been fortunate enough (or unfortunate, depending on how you look at it) to work for a company that spoiled me when I was in the trenches. They made all of us at the bottom feel like we where the only ones that mattered and they where right. That company went profitable so fast and made so much money, it wasn't funny. Imagine being 19 years old and trying to figure out where you where going to park your Hummer H1 in 6 months while others are buying $200,000 houses with cash!
I've also worked on the other side of the fence for companies that are deeply rooted in the "Don't trust your employees" mentality - they happened to be an investment firm. They prided themselves on hiring the best of the best (top 1% that applied) but had an employee turnover ratio of over 26% a year... Oddly enough, they where very open about it in the interview and liked the fact that I brought it up. They felt it showed that I was truly interested in the long term... I bailed on them after 6 months for something better even though I was well paid.
Again, it IS about leadership. If leadership isn't doing their job, you don't like your job (or you just don't like working). Most geeks want to work for a cool company that works - lets use Google here... Why is Google so popular? Leadership.