Complaints of erroneous charges in NASA's communications bill have sparked a feud between the agency and industry giant TW/AOL. An inside source revealed that the controversy errupted when 200 Beds in a Bag ended up on NASA's doorstep. AOL would not comment on the incident, saying only that it is in talks with NASA to rectify the situation.
Reports that there is indeed snow in the Arctic, and that the sun still rises in the east were met with shock and disbelief.
"What next? Will huge market monopolies and conglomerates start abusing their strengths and taking advantage of the naivete of the average citizen?" said one surprised onlooker who refused to be identified.
I really can't believe people are surprised by this.. companies have been nailing users with 'hidden costs' and bills for services they never signed up with for years.
But lets face it.. AOL users have never been noted for their abundant intellects and computer-savvy, which is exactly why these are the perfect people to try silly marketing techniques on. How much of this is AOL's fault, and how much of it is the fault of the user himself? These users DO have the option of turning off these ads. And if they can't figure it out for themselves, then you have access to AOL's ever-so-helpful tech support (or the neighborhood computer geek).
As much as I dislike AOL and think this type of marketing scheme is completely ridiculous, the blame needs to be shared equally here. If the user can't be bothered to figure out how to turn off those invasive ads, who's to say they didn't click through a time or two?
I don't know what Canadian cities you've been visiting...but they're obviously different from where I've been! Have you ever been to Montreal? It's like a bit of Paris (the good bits.. not the seedy nasty non-showering bits) dropped down into the heart of the country. I'd take a walk down St. Denis or Sherbrooke over New York's Fifth avenue any day. Not to mention the world-class dining, shopping, and the fabulous nightlife..the party doesn't even get STARTED here til 1 AM.
And did I forget to mention the cheap cost of living (I rent a 4 1/2 - that's a two bedroom for the non-Quebecois - for $450 a month in a prime location), amazing public transportation system, and the caché of coming from one of the most recognized places in the world.
I won't even get into Vancouver, Ottawa, Toronto, St. John's (Party town!), and all the other great spots in this country.
Other than that, I must say I agree whole-heartedly! Canada rocks as a place to live.. though the taxes do suck (almost half my bonus went to taxes this year...whimper). But I think the public health care system and low costs of just about everything else more than make up for all that.. yes the salaries are lower, but then again, where in NYC or San Fran are you going to find a decent apartment for under $500 CDN?
Re:Google doesn't accept money, but accepts cheate
on
Search Engine Payola
·
· Score: 2, Funny
so YOU'RE the bastards that have been screwing up my porn searches(@*(@( um i mean... never mind.
They're Microsoft Execs. That in itself would indicate that these people have a level of masochism that boggles the mind.
If you really want to punish them, take away all their pretty windows apps and install freebsd on all their machines. Home AND office.
Take the job.
Yes we all hate spam. Spam == bad. But not being able to pay your creditors and putting yourself into debt because you're too proud to take a job is worse. Not to mention the blow your credit rating will take if you end up having to default on your mortgage.
We've all had to take less than glamourous jobs at one time or another... in this job market its just bound to get worse.
Swallow the pride, make sure the bills are paid and that your family's taken care of.
If you feel that badly about it afterwards, donate some money to charity once you're back on your feet.
I can hear the collective screams of the souls of all former iron chefs calling out from across the oceans. What a travesty.
I've been through the website, checked out the images, and read the bios of the chefs. Have you SEEN the nicknames they've given them? "the Italian Scallion". "Captain America". HELL0! I'll admit that 'The Prince of Pasta' is kinda cheesy, but not to THIS degree. they could have at least put some effort into coming up with something original.
The Ota replacement (with the unfortunate name of Sissy Biggers and no I'm NOT joking) is the flighty chick from "ready, set, cook!'. Frankly, anyone who can be described by the word 'effervescent' just BEGS to be smacked. Not to mention.. girl.. this is HOLLYWOOD. You CAN use a stage name. GAH!.
I won't even START on shatner. that's just too easy.. sigh.. hard to believe we have the same home town. I expect i'll spend most of the premiere waiting for him to launch into priceline.com songs. (ok, so i had to get one dig in).
The stage (which looks like someone gave liberace an unlimited budget and let him indulge his wildest fantasies) completely lacks the tasteful opulance of the original kitchen stadium. The "Judges" barely rate a glance in the hollywood echelon. I mean really.. in Japan they get House Members. Japanese leaders. Culinary and cultural icons. in the US, you get a playboy bunny and the star of a short-lived teen drama.
Frankly, I'm going to tape the opening show (so i can go out and watch Harry Potter, which has much more promise), and watch it on sunday afternoon when there's NOTHING on. But I don't hold out much hope.
heh. i love living in Canada.
I saw it last night (just happened to be flipping through the channel listings and spotted it...) and well...
I must admit the vulcan character is much too Seven of Nine for my liking (right down to the moulded breasts in the skintight spacesuit). But I think it has potential.
It was a pilot episode after all, and it's going to take some time to mesh properly. But once it does, i can see it being quite enjoyable. I even like scott's captain (i know.. he's not a favourite, but he IS the regular army type guy that might pilot the first space missions).
Although I wasn't totally enraptured by the first episode, I do have hope that it'll eventually become a great series.
There were six books in the original.
To quote timpthy's article:
"The Perl Bookshelf 2.0 is O'Reilly's updated version of its popular Perl Bookshelf. It includes five books rather than the six of the previous edition, and removes the Learning Perl and Learning Perl on Win32 Systems in favor of Perl for System Administration."
I ordered v2 of the perl cd bookshelf as soon as it became available in Canada. It's been the best addition to my library of perl resources to date. Combine the CD bookshelf with my copy of "Programming the Perl DBI", and I have pretty much everything I could ever want to know about perl right at my fingertips. The CD rarely leaves my drive. I use it every day.
The search engine is a little clumsy, and I hate the look of the interface. One thing I'd change in the set would be to include search engines for windows, linux, etc systems in seperate folders. Suppose I could always write one myself on my next slow workday (as if i ever get any of those).
The other real drawback i see to the CD is that is IS a CD. There's just something about the feel of a real book in your hands that a computer screen can't match. I've found myself printing off reams of information just so I could have something in my hands, rather than staring at the screen. I like that they include a copy of 'perl in a nutshell'... I find myself referring to it quite often.
But I guess I can't have it both ways. Not like I'm going to be able to search actual books anytime soon, nor would I get it for the price of the CD.
Having said all that.. I'd recommend it to any perl programmer. It gives you an incredible amount of information that's (relatively speaking) inexpensive.
"The problem with this stems from the fact that not everyone assigns the same value to content."
I don't see this as the problem at all.
I've seen this happen in communities other than online ones, where people are unwilling to pay for the efforts of others. Why? Their argument goes as follows:
"You love doing this. Why should you get paid for it? You should do this for the good of the community and give it away for free."
Now, as lovely as this idealism is, you'll find that the very same ones protesting this idea of "getting paid for what you love", are the last ones to actually volunteer their time and energy to give back to the community themselves.
What really sets my blood to boiling is that these are also the same people that will gladly pay for outside services (cell phones, clothing, etc) from anyone else, or services provided TO the community by an external source, but as soon as it's someone FROM the community, they expect them to give it all away for free.
If I seem like I'm on a rant here, it's because I am. I'm involved in an offline community revolving around a common interest. Myself and my boyfriend spend a good 30 - 40 hours a week together planning events (lunches, discussion groups, club nights, etc), which we charge admission for.
Even though our events cost less than half of what some other, non-community organizers charge, we're still fingered out as being evil for charging people for doing what we love.
Trust me, if we didn't love it, we wouldn't do it. It's too much hard work, stress, and sleepless nights for that. And not only that, but without some revenue to pay for our expenditures (advertising, DJs, webhosting, etc), the whole thing wouldn't last long.
How does this apply to the online scene? I see the same arguments from the same type of people when it comes to free content/software on the web.
What it all boils down to is this: Unless you're willing to go out, put in the time, effort, and money to provide a similar or better service for free, don't expect anyone else to do it for you just because they're "part of the community".
Besides, wouldn't you rather see your own members benefit from your support, rather than a bunch of faceless strangers? Isn't that what a community is supposed to be about?
Having worked for an online casino (I know i know... bad me), I can see this legislation hitting them hard (not that i'll be shedding tears for them...)
Australia has one of the biggest gambling populations (percentage and spending wise) around, and a lot of money was spent advertising specifically to them. Note: the kangaroo and koala type ads did not go over well. gee, wonder why.
Now, they'll have to funnel that same money (or even more) into fraud protection and system changes, to keep Australian players out. And they do spend a surprising amount of money trying to prevent players who shouldn't be in the system from getting in (mainly because if those players DO get in, they can't keep the money they lose. It all has to be credited back).
Of course, anyone with a bit of tech savvy can get around these measures, but lets face it.. the majority of these players aren't the brightest. Otherwise, they wouldn't be spending huge amounts at online casinos in the first place.
It varies so greatly from place to place.
Case in point:
at my current job, my IT director places a huge focus on training, and he's managed to convince the upper management that it's necessary to survive. How he did it I'll never know, but they've allocated $3000 per Development worker for training (of our own choice, with the IT director's approval). However far we can make that stretch is our own business. I've been taking french courses with part of it (we work with a lot of people who speak french better than english). On top of that, there are regular training courses for the whole department that don't come out of your personal training budget.
All in all, it's pretty great.
At my last job, I waited over a year for a single course, and when it did come along, it was because the manager of our department was on vacation and we managed to sneak it past the boss for approval. When he DID come back, he freaked.I saw other people who wanted courses offered an hour and a half outside of town, who were told to find them locally, or they couldn't take them. Any course found was analyzed several times over for price cuts: hotels were severely budgeted (the place i stayed in for my one perl course was infested with centipedes), and any cost-cutting measure that could be taken, were.
God am I ever glad I got out of there. They completely did not understand that training their workers was to their benefit. That and they were (rightfully) scared that anyone who had decent training would look for a job that paid them what they were worth. Which is pretty funny because the place I'm at now (with the huge training budgets) has a much happier, more commited workforce and a much lower employee turnover.
Moral of the story: treat your employees well, and they'll reward you with more than your money's worth.
Personally, I'd rather have a $3000 training budget than a $3000 raise, of which half would go to taxes and the rest would end up being a piddly few extra dollars per cheque.
Begging to differ... Champ de Mars is a historical district in old Montreal, straight off from (surprise surprise) Champ de Mars metro station, on the orange line.
(anyone wanna guess where I live?)
Several public universities in Canada have been requiring laptops from as far back as 1996. Entire campuses have been fitted out with places for students to plug in, view class notes, homework assignments, and email in completed assignments.
A prime example would be Acadia University. The laptops have become an integral part of how the university operates.
All laptops are fully insured in case they get stolen, and the cost (a leasing fee, with option to buy out after graduation and NOT a full-cost upfront buy) is tax-deductible because its included with the tuition. In addition, there are many bursery programs for students who need financial aid.
All in all, the results for Acadia have been incredible. It went from being just a 'party school' to having some of the top undergraduate programs in the country within a few years of introducing the laptop requirements.
If the universities in the States follow the example set by Acadia, the laptops will be a serious edge for their students. And god knows that in today's economy, we can use any edge we can get.
I've been using the MS natural keyboard for over a year and a half, and while it hasn't fixed my wrist problems, it certainly helps a lot. I used a straight keyboard for years, typing nonstop day and night, resulting in that wonderful repetitive stress disorder, Carpel Tunnel Syndrome. Unfortunately, I dont have the option to just not type. Instead, while typing, every hour or so i take a break and exercise my hands and fingers. I also use wrist braces whenever i start feeling hot tingles in my fingers. So far it's kept me away from surgery and painkillers.
I recently got over a bout of CTS.. yes it can and does heal itself without surgery.. and it does require relearning how to type.. personally, i found using wrist splits, those ugly, metal plates that strap to your wrists, work like charms, you CAN'T move your hands much with them on, and it totally retrains you on the kb. it's a pain in the ass to get used to them at first, but it pays off in the end. Natural kb and trackball mouse also helped.
Slashdot Mirror
Complaints of erroneous charges in NASA's communications bill have sparked a feud between the agency and industry giant TW/AOL.
An inside source revealed that the controversy errupted when 200 Beds in a Bag ended up on NASA's doorstep.
AOL would not comment on the incident, saying only that it is in talks with NASA to rectify the situation.
Reports that there is indeed snow in the Arctic, and that the sun still rises in the east were met with shock and disbelief.
"What next? Will huge market monopolies and conglomerates start abusing their strengths and taking advantage of the naivete of the average citizen?" said one surprised onlooker who refused to be identified.
I really can't believe people are surprised by this.. companies have been nailing users with 'hidden costs' and bills for services they never signed up with for years.
But lets face it.. AOL users have never been noted for their abundant intellects and computer-savvy, which is exactly why these are the perfect people to try silly marketing techniques on. How much of this is AOL's fault, and how much of it is the fault of the user himself? These users DO have the option of turning off these ads. And if they can't figure it out for themselves, then you have access to AOL's ever-so-helpful tech support (or the neighborhood computer geek).
As much as I dislike AOL and think this type of marketing scheme is completely ridiculous, the blame needs to be shared equally here. If the user can't be bothered to figure out how to turn off those invasive ads, who's to say they didn't click through a time or two?
lack of world class cities and attractions
I don't know what Canadian cities you've been visiting...but they're obviously different from where I've been! Have you ever been to Montreal? It's like a bit of Paris (the good bits.. not the seedy nasty non-showering bits) dropped down into the heart of the country. I'd take a walk down St. Denis or Sherbrooke over New York's Fifth avenue any day. Not to mention the world-class dining, shopping, and the fabulous nightlife..the party doesn't even get STARTED here til 1 AM.
And did I forget to mention the cheap cost of living (I rent a 4 1/2 - that's a two bedroom for the non-Quebecois - for $450 a month in a prime location), amazing public transportation system, and the caché of coming from one of the most recognized places in the world.
I won't even get into Vancouver, Ottawa, Toronto, St. John's (Party town!), and all the other great spots in this country.
Other than that, I must say I agree whole-heartedly! Canada rocks as a place to live.. though the taxes do suck (almost half my bonus went to taxes this year...whimper). But I think the public health care system and low costs of just about everything else more than make up for all that.. yes the salaries are lower, but then again, where in NYC or San Fran are you going to find a decent apartment for under $500 CDN?
so YOU'RE the bastards that have been screwing up my porn searches(@*(@(
um
i mean...
never mind.
They're Microsoft Execs. That in itself would indicate that these people have a level of masochism that boggles the mind.
If you really want to punish them, take away all their pretty windows apps and install freebsd on all their machines. Home AND office.
Take the job.
Yes we all hate spam. Spam == bad. But not being able to pay your creditors and putting yourself into debt because you're too proud to take a job is worse. Not to mention the blow your credit rating will take if you end up having to default on your mortgage.
We've all had to take less than glamourous jobs at one time or another... in this job market its just bound to get worse.
Swallow the pride, make sure the bills are paid and that your family's taken care of.
If you feel that badly about it afterwards, donate some money to charity once you're back on your feet.
I can hear the collective screams of the souls of all former iron chefs calling out from across the oceans. What a travesty.
I've been through the website, checked out the images, and read the bios of the chefs. Have you SEEN the nicknames they've given them? "the Italian Scallion". "Captain America". HELL0! I'll admit that 'The Prince of Pasta' is kinda cheesy, but not to THIS degree. they could have at least put some effort into coming up with something original.
The Ota replacement (with the unfortunate name of Sissy Biggers and no I'm NOT joking) is the flighty chick from "ready, set, cook!'. Frankly, anyone who can be described by the word 'effervescent' just BEGS to be smacked. Not to mention.. girl.. this is HOLLYWOOD. You CAN use a stage name. GAH!.
I won't even START on shatner. that's just too easy.. sigh.. hard to believe we have the same home town. I expect i'll spend most of the premiere waiting for him to launch into priceline.com songs. (ok, so i had to get one dig in).
The stage (which looks like someone gave liberace an unlimited budget and let him indulge his wildest fantasies) completely lacks the tasteful opulance of the original kitchen stadium. The "Judges" barely rate a glance in the hollywood echelon. I mean really.. in Japan they get House Members. Japanese leaders. Culinary and cultural icons. in the US, you get a playboy bunny and the star of a short-lived teen drama.
Frankly, I'm going to tape the opening show (so i can go out and watch Harry Potter, which has much more promise), and watch it on sunday afternoon when there's NOTHING on. But I don't hold out much hope.
heh. i love living in Canada.
I saw it last night (just happened to be flipping through the channel listings and spotted it...) and well...
I must admit the vulcan character is much too Seven of Nine for my liking (right down to the moulded breasts in the skintight spacesuit). But I think it has potential.
It was a pilot episode after all, and it's going to take some time to mesh properly. But once it does, i can see it being quite enjoyable. I even like scott's captain (i know.. he's not a favourite, but he IS the regular army type guy that might pilot the first space missions).
Although I wasn't totally enraptured by the first episode, I do have hope that it'll eventually become a great series.
There were six books in the original.
To quote timpthy's article:
"The Perl Bookshelf 2.0 is O'Reilly's updated version of its popular Perl Bookshelf. It includes five books rather than the six of the previous edition, and removes the Learning Perl and Learning Perl on Win32 Systems in favor of Perl for System Administration."
I ordered v2 of the perl cd bookshelf as soon as it became available in Canada. It's been the best addition to my library of perl resources to date. Combine the CD bookshelf with my copy of "Programming the Perl DBI", and I have pretty much everything I could ever want to know about perl right at my fingertips. The CD rarely leaves my drive. I use it every day.
The search engine is a little clumsy, and I hate the look of the interface. One thing I'd change in the set would be to include search engines for windows, linux, etc systems in seperate folders. Suppose I could always write one myself on my next slow workday (as if i ever get any of those).
The other real drawback i see to the CD is that is IS a CD. There's just something about the feel of a real book in your hands that a computer screen can't match. I've found myself printing off reams of information just so I could have something in my hands, rather than staring at the screen. I like that they include a copy of 'perl in a nutshell'... I find myself referring to it quite often.
But I guess I can't have it both ways. Not like I'm going to be able to search actual books anytime soon, nor would I get it for the price of the CD.
Having said all that.. I'd recommend it to any perl programmer. It gives you an incredible amount of information that's (relatively speaking) inexpensive.
--
"The problem with this stems from the fact that not everyone assigns the same value to content."
I don't see this as the problem at all.
I've seen this happen in communities other than online ones, where people are unwilling to pay for the efforts of others. Why? Their argument goes as follows:
"You love doing this. Why should you get paid for it? You should do this for the good of the community and give it away for free."
Now, as lovely as this idealism is, you'll find that the very same ones protesting this idea of "getting paid for what you love", are the last ones to actually volunteer their time and energy to give back to the community themselves.
What really sets my blood to boiling is that these are also the same people that will gladly pay for outside services (cell phones, clothing, etc) from anyone else, or services provided TO the community by an external source, but as soon as it's someone FROM the community, they expect them to give it all away for free.
If I seem like I'm on a rant here, it's because I am. I'm involved in an offline community revolving around a common interest. Myself and my boyfriend spend a good 30 - 40 hours a week together planning events (lunches, discussion groups, club nights, etc), which we charge admission for.
Even though our events cost less than half of what some other, non-community organizers charge, we're still fingered out as being evil for charging people for doing what we love.
Trust me, if we didn't love it, we wouldn't do it. It's too much hard work, stress, and sleepless nights for that. And not only that, but without some revenue to pay for our expenditures (advertising, DJs, webhosting, etc), the whole thing wouldn't last long.
How does this apply to the online scene? I see the same arguments from the same type of people when it comes to free content/software on the web.
What it all boils down to is this: Unless you're willing to go out, put in the time, effort, and money to provide a similar or better service for free, don't expect anyone else to do it for you just because they're "part of the community".
Besides, wouldn't you rather see your own members benefit from your support, rather than a bunch of faceless strangers? Isn't that what a community is supposed to be about?
end rant.
Having worked for an online casino (I know i know... bad me), I can see this legislation hitting them hard (not that i'll be shedding tears for them...)
Australia has one of the biggest gambling populations (percentage and spending wise) around, and a lot of money was spent advertising specifically to them. Note: the kangaroo and koala type ads did not go over well. gee, wonder why.
Now, they'll have to funnel that same money (or even more) into fraud protection and system changes, to keep Australian players out. And they do spend a surprising amount of money trying to prevent players who shouldn't be in the system from getting in (mainly because if those players DO get in, they can't keep the money they lose. It all has to be credited back).
Of course, anyone with a bit of tech savvy can get around these measures, but lets face it.. the majority of these players aren't the brightest. Otherwise, they wouldn't be spending huge amounts at online casinos in the first place.
It varies so greatly from place to place.
Case in point:
at my current job, my IT director places a huge focus on training, and he's managed to convince the upper management that it's necessary to survive. How he did it I'll never know, but they've allocated $3000 per Development worker for training (of our own choice, with the IT director's approval). However far we can make that stretch is our own business. I've been taking french courses with part of it (we work with a lot of people who speak french better than english). On top of that, there are regular training courses for the whole department that don't come out of your personal training budget.
All in all, it's pretty great.
At my last job, I waited over a year for a single course, and when it did come along, it was because the manager of our department was on vacation and we managed to sneak it past the boss for approval. When he DID come back, he freaked.I saw other people who wanted courses offered an hour and a half outside of town, who were told to find them locally, or they couldn't take them. Any course found was analyzed several times over for price cuts: hotels were severely budgeted (the place i stayed in for my one perl course was infested with centipedes), and any cost-cutting measure that could be taken, were.
God am I ever glad I got out of there. They completely did not understand that training their workers was to their benefit. That and they were (rightfully) scared that anyone who had decent training would look for a job that paid them what they were worth. Which is pretty funny because the place I'm at now (with the huge training budgets) has a much happier, more commited workforce and a much lower employee turnover.
Moral of the story: treat your employees well, and they'll reward you with more than your money's worth.
Personally, I'd rather have a $3000 training budget than a $3000 raise, of which half would go to taxes and the rest would end up being a piddly few extra dollars per cheque.
Begging to differ... Champ de Mars is a historical district in old Montreal, straight off from (surprise surprise) Champ de Mars metro station, on the orange line.
(anyone wanna guess where I live?)
Several public universities in Canada have been requiring laptops from as far back as 1996. Entire campuses have been fitted out with places for students to plug in, view class notes, homework assignments, and email in completed assignments.
A prime example would be Acadia University. The laptops have become an integral part of how the university operates.
All laptops are fully insured in case they get stolen, and the cost (a leasing fee, with option to buy out after graduation and NOT a full-cost upfront buy) is tax-deductible because its included with the tuition. In addition, there are many bursery programs for students who need financial aid.
All in all, the results for Acadia have been incredible. It went from being just a 'party school' to having some of the top undergraduate programs in the country within a few years of introducing the laptop requirements.
For more information, check out the Acadia Advantage site.
If the universities in the States follow the example set by Acadia, the laptops will be a serious edge for their students. And god knows that in today's economy, we can use any edge we can get.
I've been using the MS natural keyboard for over a year and a half, and while it hasn't fixed my wrist problems, it certainly helps a lot. I used a straight keyboard for years, typing nonstop day and night, resulting in that wonderful repetitive stress disorder, Carpel Tunnel Syndrome. Unfortunately, I dont have the option to just not type. Instead, while typing, every hour or so i take a break and exercise my hands and fingers. I also use wrist braces whenever i start feeling hot tingles in my fingers. So far it's kept me away from surgery and painkillers.
I recently got over a bout of CTS.. yes it can and does heal itself without surgery.. and it does require relearning how to type.. personally, i found using wrist splits, those ugly, metal plates that strap to your wrists, work like charms, you CAN'T move your hands much with them on, and it totally retrains you on the kb. it's a pain in the ass to get used to them at first, but it pays off in the end. Natural kb and trackball mouse also helped.