It has been a long time. I don't remember the name of the word processor, but I do remember it was distributed by Commodore for the C64. It had a 40-character screen with a display mode that scrolled back and forth to see the page layout. I thought it was called Commodore Write, but I can't find any reference to it. It always came in the blue folders that Commodore was so fond of using.
Now that I think about it, it was not the keys on the side, it was the number 3. The "Function" key that I am remembering was a small key in the lower left corner next to the shift key. I think it was called a commodore key. The correct sequence was CTL+Shift+Commodore+3.
I do remember that I was in a small store and one of the sales people loved to turn that on and play it all day long.
No, no, no, no.
Remember, he wants to INVOLVE the kids. I see three options.
1. Blow up the kids. They can't get more involved than that. Start with the trouble makers. Extra points for making it look like an accident or for making it look like one of the other kids tried to make it look like an accident.
2. ASSIGN the kids to blow things up. Make sure that the instructions on what to blow up cannot be traced back to you. Track their progress by the number and size of the explosions.
3. (Advanced class) Assign the kids to make big breakthroughs like energy blasters, working lightsabers, working anti-gravity generators, working fusion reactor and so on. Make sure that they sign all rights to you before they start. Again, track progress by number and size of explosions.
Not because of the tech or DRM or anything, but because this is not a new storage medium as most of the comments below seem to indicate, but because it is a new METHOD of creating storage.
From TA (Yes, I actually RTFA [sometimes, but I don't make it a habit]), it appears to be a new way to create semiconductors. This process would be used to create RAM, microprocessors, or other semiconductor manufacturing. Think of it as being able to create a 10 TerraByte RAM stick the same size as a 8 GigaByte ram stick now.
Furthermore, the heating process is not used for each set of RAM chips created. I heat up one huge crystal and then use it as a bed to create a large plate of semiconductor material which I can cut multiple RAM chips. I no longer have to use the expensive nano lithography to create chips. I only need one bed to make many, many plates. By changing the heating process, I can create one bed for RAM chips, another for microprocessors and another for a custom chip.
Why won't we see it soon, then? Because chip manufacturers already have tons of money invested in nano lithography and won't be willing to just drop it. The author seems to think that since it only replaces the nano lithography and harsh chemical processes that everyone will jump at it in order to make cheaper chips. I am not so optimistic, but would love to see it.
Yes and it was amazing how many 87 year old grandmas from Florida (according to their MySpace profile) were attending a junior high school in my home town in Arizona.
Don't get me wrong. I am not claiming that there were a lot of liars on MySpace. I was just amazed that the jr. high allowed so many out of town grandmas to sign up and attend.
I'll second Zabbix. It has gone through some growing pains, but I like it for its ease of use as well as its flexibility. Until this last version, it did not have good escalations or repeat notifications, which was a big problem. However, with 1.6, that has been corrected.
One of the things I like about Zabbix was the ability to write custom checks. If you could get any script or program to spit out data, you could very easily capture that data and run checks on it. The windows client could read Windows Performance Counters, so a TON of custom checks were easily written. In my last job I used it to monitor an incoming feed from another company. If I didn't receive info from the company for 20 minutes, I could send out alerts for someone to check the feed. I am sure that could be done with Nagios, but it was much, much easier with Zabbix.
Subtracting the techno-babble, it sounds like they want to attach a thermocouple or heat engine to their chips...
Almost. Reading between the lines, it appears that they want to attach thermocouples or heat engines *IN* their chips rather then to them. They appear to be talking about the heat in the individual transistors within chips, rather than the entire chip. From the article, it sounded like they were trying to reduce the heat from each individual transistor and use that heat in different ways.
Can it be done? I have no clue. Can 50,000 nano sized thermocouples be more more efficient than 1 small one? Again, no clue.
For example. I want a cell phone with a speaker because sometimes my wife and I want to hear and contribute to the conversation at the same time. (Usually it is to my extended family, but sometimes to friends.) Plus, I wanted one that would receive text messages (pages from work) that I could look at without opening the phone and jumping through hoops to shut the beeper off. However, when looking at phones, only a few have speakers. In order to get one with a decent battery and a speaker, I had to accept one with a camera (which I don't really need, but I have used it once or twice) and an MP3 player. Now why would I want the MP3 player as part of my phone? In order to use it, I have to pay extra for the connection package which includes a proprietary cable and bloatware. I don't really listen to all that much music, and I really don't want a phone that is a music player. But in order to get the features I do want, I had to settle for some extras that I don't care about and never use.
Because it is not reforming as ice. Over the last 100 years, pieces of the shelf would break off and then other ice would reform and take its place. But over the last few years, ice is breaking off and it is too warm for other ice to form into the shelf.
One of the effects is that fresh water environments were formed on the shelf. When the shelf breaks off, salt water rushes in and kills all the organisms that grew there. Some haven't been studied well, and the chance to study them has been lost.
Another affect is more political. If enough ice breaks off, there will be a NorthWest passage where ships can sail around the North of Canada.
On July 30 of this year, scientists predicted that a chuck of ice would break off. The chunk that actually broke off was 10 times the size predicted. Not sure why the big difference, but that is a bit scary to me. What is it that these scientists missed? Were temperatures warmer than expected? or did they just make a bad judgement with the info they had?
Sorry to abuse any notions you might have, but there is no expectation of privacy on email. Companies can and do set policy that an employee's email can be monitored and read without cause and at any time. The FBI might need a court order to read emails, but would not need a warrant. At another company that I worked at, it was quite common for our legal department to request email histories from different people to provide to someone that was suing us or that we were suing. (IT was never told which it was, just that there was a lawsuit and that we had to provide the archive.)
Futhermore, one of the other sysadmins at that company (there were 3) was told to monitor emails. The legality of emails being private or owned by the company came up (as I am sure that it has on./ before), and it was ruled that the emails were owned by the company and that there was no expectation of privacy. The policy stated that emails were monitored. If someone forgot that clause and "expected" privacy, that does not mean that they would get it.
I agree that reading the email was probably wrong. But illegal? No.
So why are CEO's entitled to more privacy than their employees?
Except that with half the country, racism is very strong. Not just with prejudiced rednecks, or stuck-up snobs, but with with the very people who claim to be affected by it.
Let me explain. I heard on the radio the other day, someone called in to say, "an insult to Barak Oboma is an insult to all blacks everywhere." This statement is a bit extreme, but I see it very commonly all over where I live. I have a good friend who is Mexican and takes it personally when someone says something bad about any Mexican.
The problem with this is that if an insult to one is an insult to all, then a compliment to one is a compliment to all, right? And if one does anything, all are judged good or bad by that individual's actions, correct?
In other words, I get to cry "foul" when people judge me by the actions of others in my group, and claim discrimination, but also get to feel insulted when they talk bad about anyone else in that group whether or not I know them or have anything to do with them.
What they don't realize is that they are promoting the very racism that they are complaining about.
I do admit that there are many who treat others unfairly because of the color of their skin. This is shameful, and I do not excuse it. There are also many that promote this behaviour without realizing it. Unfortunately, this means that racism is alive today and much stronger than we would like to believe. It will probably continue to be a strong factor in politics for many years to come.
When someone is laid of for no apparent reason, they often feel hurt and betrayed. A natural reaction is that the trust between them has already been destroyed.
At one company I was with, a sysadmin was on a conference call, and had his hands full when the call ended. The CEO never hung up the phone, and started talking to his assistant about people loosing their jobs and how much severance would be paid. The sysadmin, who probably should have hung up when he was first able to, couldn't resist listening for a short time. After a couple of minutes, the CEO finally realized that his phone was still on, and hung up the line. By that time, the sysadmin knew that several people would be laid off soon, but not how soon, or which people.
He informed a couple of his friends that the company was in worse shape than he had realized, and discretely began updating his resume. Within a month, the company was bought out and closed down by another company and everyone lost their jobs. He was asked to stay on as part of the transition team and that the new company would pay him, but after a couple of days, it was clear that he had been working for free and the new company was not going to honor the agreement.
At that time, he still had sysadmin access, and began to look through emails of the former employees. Some, including the CEO, were still getting and sending emails through web access through the old company server. He learned that although the board of directors did not want to spend the money to make sure that the fired employees could still have health insurance for a couple of months, they were willing to give the former CEO $25,000 for his efforts.
I have always said that a good sysadmin knows all the secrets of a company, but a great sysadmin knows when not to look. In this case, was the sysadmin justified in looking after he had been promised to be paid and then told he was not being paid? (Yes, his access should have been cut off, but he was the one who would have had to cut himself off and he was never told to do so.)
Although this situation may be unique, I think that many sysadmins may feel the same way. Once they are betrayed, they no longer feel the need to stay loyal to those that betray them.
How about: when you tell that guy your password, he types it on the computer, which compares it to a hashed (and salted, please!) value in the database. There we go. It wasn't that hard, was it?
Let's just see how well that will work, shall we?
Operator: Can I get your password, please? Custormer: Sure. Lloyds is pants.
O: Is that Sure, Llyods is pants, or just Lloyds is pants? C: Just Lloyds is pants.
O: I am sorry, that is not working. Did you capitalize all of Lloyds, or just the first letter? C: *I* didn't capitalize anything. My password is Lloyds is pants, just like I said.
O: I am sorry, sir, that password is not working. C: Did you guys change my password on me again? I swear, every time I talk to you, my password gets changed on me or someone screws up my password. The last time I called I spent a half hour on the phone before I realized that your stupid rep typed in p-a-n-c-e instead of p-a-n-t-s for my password.
O:P-a-n-t-s? There we go. Your password is working now. I am sorry for the inconvenience. Welcome to Lloyds. How can we handle your money for you today?
Because money does not equal happiness, nor does money lead to happiness, and many companies know this. Some of them also know that happiness often leads to money.
If you are happy at work, you will work harder, be more productive and more loyal. How many times have people left large paying jobs that made them miserable and took a pay cut to do work that makes them happy?
Money does not lead to happiness. Money only leads to wanting more money. Most people that say they would be happier with more money are really only fooling themselves. Yes, they would be happier for a short time. For a little while, they will say, "Well, now that I am getting more money, I will put up with this lousy situation." But it doesn't last! Within a couple of months that extra money is being spent, people come to expect that they should be getting that "extra" money without having to put up with the bad situation, and the complaining starts all over again.
Many companies also realize that they cannot make you happy. No one but you can make you happy. What they can do is try to remove obstacles to happiness, and create an environment where people want to work. One way to do that is to try to create ways for employees to have fun together. but everyone's idea of fun is different, and what is fun for you may be misery for someone else.
I am not saying that money is not important. On the contrary, money is very important. Money will cover up a few bad situations, and your basic needs must be met or all the morale games in the world will not help. But there has to be a balance between pay, work done and happiness. Lots of companies struggle with with this balance, some paying salaries so high that they run into financial trouble.
I may not agree with the actual games that are played, but I understand the reason for them. My solution? Suggest things that you would find fun. That may be anything from lunch time FPS games, to more holiday parties at work to having a TV in the break room. Whatever it is, suggest positive ideas rather than complaining that they are trying to have fun at work.
I remember a couple of episodes of Star Trek DS9 that are relevant. (not sure how many DS9 fans there are left, so bear with me.) During the Dominion War a couple of shape shifters were found on Earth. Everyone started panicking, and even Sisko was afraid his father had been replaced by a Changeling. In order to "protect" Earth, a high StarFleet official arranged for a group of cadets to "attack" Earth in order to "raise awareness" of the Changeling threat. It turns out that there were only a couple of Changelings on Earth, and they were sitting back watching what Earth was doing to itself.
One of the things that struck me was that Sisko's father refused to give in to fear. Yes, there was a threat, but there was little he could do, and he refused to live in fear.
I didn't like all of DS9, and there were a few episodes with crappy writing (I will leave it to you to figure out the number), but I was impressed with these episodes. Shortly after 9/11 I thought, and still do think, that many people, especially in government, should have a look at these couple of episodes before panicking and imposing some of the security restrictions we have had to, and will continue to endure.
For example, if I was born in Boston, and they ask for my birth city, Did I answer New York, Atlanta, or Tampa? Or did I put in something completely different like Tatooine, Emrald City, or Ceti Alpha 5(6)? Or did I put in nonsense answers like phaser, light sabre, laptop, or even lkuso1iga133662?
Which lie did I tell on this web site, and it is the same lie I told on my banking web site?
Not so sure about that. A kid at work claims to have a copy of that on his phone. He claims that there are counterfeit apps available so you can have the "I am rich" gem on your phone for free.
(of course, his parents are filthy rich, so he might actually be one of the ones that bought the real thing.)
That is because the article and the summary are hard to match up. The summary talks about low cost, printable optics on silk, but does not give much detail of some of the applications. So I went to the article to get a better idea, and read about "edible optics."
At first glance they seem to be talking about two different things. I do not know about you, but I am not in the habit of eating silk on a regular basis. And silk with sensors on it? How would I get the info from the sensors after eating it? If it is implantable, does part of it stick out so I can see the results? Or is there some sort of tricorder that can read the info from the sensors inside me?
After reading a bit more, it seems like they could be talking about the same thing, but the sample applications still do not fit the summary.
My only conclusion is that the concept is way over my head, not to mention the applications. Time to turn in the geek card.
Anti-matter rays are real, and they are being used on people today!! It really is an apathy ray that is used on people to make them lose foc... What was I saying? Never mind, it doesn't matter.
I know that PHB's will try to cut costs, and that unnecessary hardware is the first to be cut, but is there ANYONE who believes that a UPS is not needed? Are there really people out there that think, "We don't need the UPS right now. We can wait until we have more money."
It boggles my mind that there is even a need for such an article
Re:Can Oscar's be given posthumously?
on
Batman Discussion
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
I haven't seen Dark Night, so I can't comment on Ledger's performance. However, I am a casual reader of the comics, and a casual observer of the cartoons. I realize that the Joker has gone through a huge change over the years, going from chaos to crazy and back again. However, to me, the very name of Joker implies a certain maniacal quality. He should be brilliant, unpredictable, chaotic, but with a sick humour twist.
I did not care for Nicholson's joker. Although he did a decent job, he did not have the flare for the maniacal that the Joker should have. In my mind the perfect Joker was actually played by Jim Carey. I know, Carey played Riddler, not Joker. But if you switched costumes and left out some of the riddles, you had exactly what the Joker should be.
I understand that Ledger's performance was superb. I also understand that this Joker was more of chaos personified. But I have difficulty linking chaos personified to the name Joker.
Slashdot Mirror
It has been a long time. I don't remember the name of the word processor, but I do remember it was distributed by Commodore for the C64. It had a 40-character screen with a display mode that scrolled back and forth to see the page layout. I thought it was called Commodore Write, but I can't find any reference to it. It always came in the blue folders that Commodore was so fond of using.
Now that I think about it, it was not the keys on the side, it was the number 3. The "Function" key that I am remembering was a small key in the lower left corner next to the shift key. I think it was called a commodore key. The correct sequence was CTL+Shift+Commodore+3. I do remember that I was in a small store and one of the sales people loved to turn that on and play it all day long.
And what about the Commodore 64's Word processor? If you hit CTL+Function+F3, it would start playing "Stars and Stripes Forever"
No, no, no, no.
Remember, he wants to INVOLVE the kids. I see three options.
1. Blow up the kids. They can't get more involved than that. Start with the trouble makers. Extra points for making it look like an accident or for making it look like one of the other kids tried to make it look like an accident.
2. ASSIGN the kids to blow things up. Make sure that the instructions on what to blow up cannot be traced back to you. Track their progress by the number and size of the explosions.
3. (Advanced class) Assign the kids to make big breakthroughs like energy blasters, working lightsabers, working anti-gravity generators, working fusion reactor and so on. Make sure that they sign all rights to you before they start. Again, track progress by number and size of explosions.
Sorry, probably not any time soon.
Not because of the tech or DRM or anything, but because this is not a new storage medium as most of the comments below seem to indicate, but because it is a new METHOD of creating storage.
From TA (Yes, I actually RTFA [sometimes, but I don't make it a habit]), it appears to be a new way to create semiconductors. This process would be used to create RAM, microprocessors, or other semiconductor manufacturing. Think of it as being able to create a 10 TerraByte RAM stick the same size as a 8 GigaByte ram stick now.
Furthermore, the heating process is not used for each set of RAM chips created. I heat up one huge crystal and then use it as a bed to create a large plate of semiconductor material which I can cut multiple RAM chips. I no longer have to use the expensive nano lithography to create chips. I only need one bed to make many, many plates. By changing the heating process, I can create one bed for RAM chips, another for microprocessors and another for a custom chip.
Why won't we see it soon, then? Because chip manufacturers already have tons of money invested in nano lithography and won't be willing to just drop it. The author seems to think that since it only replaces the nano lithography and harsh chemical processes that everyone will jump at it in order to make cheaper chips. I am not so optimistic, but would love to see it.
If a volcano erupts, is it considered part of global warming?
Yes and it was amazing how many 87 year old grandmas from Florida (according to their MySpace profile) were attending a junior high school in my home town in Arizona.
Don't get me wrong. I am not claiming that there were a lot of liars on MySpace. I was just amazed that the jr. high allowed so many out of town grandmas to sign up and attend.
I'll second Zabbix. It has gone through some growing pains, but I like it for its ease of use as well as its flexibility. Until this last version, it did not have good escalations or repeat notifications, which was a big problem. However, with 1.6, that has been corrected.
One of the things I like about Zabbix was the ability to write custom checks. If you could get any script or program to spit out data, you could very easily capture that data and run checks on it. The windows client could read Windows Performance Counters, so a TON of custom checks were easily written. In my last job I used it to monitor an incoming feed from another company. If I didn't receive info from the company for 20 minutes, I could send out alerts for someone to check the feed. I am sure that could be done with Nagios, but it was much, much easier with Zabbix.
Subtracting the techno-babble, it sounds like they want to attach a thermocouple or heat engine to their chips...
Almost. Reading between the lines, it appears that they want to attach thermocouples or heat engines *IN* their chips rather then to them. They appear to be talking about the heat in the individual transistors within chips, rather than the entire chip. From the article, it sounded like they were trying to reduce the heat from each individual transistor and use that heat in different ways.
Can it be done? I have no clue. Can 50,000 nano sized thermocouples be more more efficient than 1 small one? Again, no clue.
Not always an option.
For example. I want a cell phone with a speaker because sometimes my wife and I want to hear and contribute to the conversation at the same time. (Usually it is to my extended family, but sometimes to friends.) Plus, I wanted one that would receive text messages (pages from work) that I could look at without opening the phone and jumping through hoops to shut the beeper off. However, when looking at phones, only a few have speakers. In order to get one with a decent battery and a speaker, I had to accept one with a camera (which I don't really need, but I have used it once or twice) and an MP3 player.
Now why would I want the MP3 player as part of my phone? In order to use it, I have to pay extra for the connection package which includes a proprietary cable and bloatware. I don't really listen to all that much music, and I really don't want a phone that is a music player. But in order to get the features I do want, I had to settle for some extras that I don't care about and never use.
What they need to do is to build a plug-in hybrid with the internal combustion engine powered by diesel. Unfortunately, it would be expensive.
From the reactions, I would say that most people here are against unions. I say, let us all take a stand together against unions.
Unite against Unification!
We'll form the Anti-union Union!
All those that don't wish to be part of a Union are now part of the Anti-union Union. Union dues are payable to me.
Because it is not reforming as ice. Over the last 100 years, pieces of the shelf would break off and then other ice would reform and take its place. But over the last few years, ice is breaking off and it is too warm for other ice to form into the shelf.
One of the effects is that fresh water environments were formed on the shelf. When the shelf breaks off, salt water rushes in and kills all the organisms that grew there. Some haven't been studied well, and the chance to study them has been lost.
Another affect is more political. If enough ice breaks off, there will be a NorthWest passage where ships can sail around the North of Canada.
On July 30 of this year, scientists predicted that a chuck of ice would break off. The chunk that actually broke off was 10 times the size predicted. Not sure why the big difference, but that is a bit scary to me. What is it that these scientists missed? Were temperatures warmer than expected? or did they just make a bad judgement with the info they had?
Sorry to abuse any notions you might have, but there is no expectation of privacy on email. Companies can and do set policy that an employee's email can be monitored and read without cause and at any time. The FBI might need a court order to read emails, but would not need a warrant. At another company that I worked at, it was quite common for our legal department to request email histories from different people to provide to someone that was suing us or that we were suing. (IT was never told which it was, just that there was a lawsuit and that we had to provide the archive.)
Futhermore, one of the other sysadmins at that company (there were 3) was told to monitor emails. The legality of emails being private or owned by the company came up (as I am sure that it has on ./ before), and it was ruled that the emails were owned by the company and that there was no expectation of privacy. The policy stated that emails were monitored. If someone forgot that clause and "expected" privacy, that does not mean that they would get it.
I agree that reading the email was probably wrong. But illegal? No.
So why are CEO's entitled to more privacy than their employees?
The software sound sweet. But there are a few details missing.
1. Is it available for public use?
2. When will it be available?
3. What does it cost?
4. What platform(s) does it run on?
5. Where can I get it?
Or was this just bragging rights to say, "Look! We did something really, really cool, but you can't have it."
Except that with half the country, racism is very strong. Not just with prejudiced rednecks, or stuck-up snobs, but with with the very people who claim to be affected by it.
Let me explain. I heard on the radio the other day, someone called in to say, "an insult to Barak Oboma is an insult to all blacks everywhere." This statement is a bit extreme, but I see it very commonly all over where I live. I have a good friend who is Mexican and takes it personally when someone says something bad about any Mexican.
The problem with this is that if an insult to one is an insult to all, then a compliment to one is a compliment to all, right? And if one does anything, all are judged good or bad by that individual's actions, correct?
In other words, I get to cry "foul" when people judge me by the actions of others in my group, and claim discrimination, but also get to feel insulted when they talk bad about anyone else in that group whether or not I know them or have anything to do with them.
What they don't realize is that they are promoting the very racism that they are complaining about.
I do admit that there are many who treat others unfairly because of the color of their skin. This is shameful, and I do not excuse it. There are also many that promote this behaviour without realizing it. Unfortunately, this means that racism is alive today and much stronger than we would like to believe. It will probably continue to be a strong factor in politics for many years to come.
When someone is laid of for no apparent reason, they often feel hurt and betrayed. A natural reaction is that the trust between them has already been destroyed.
At one company I was with, a sysadmin was on a conference call, and had his hands full when the call ended. The CEO never hung up the phone, and started talking to his assistant about people loosing their jobs and how much severance would be paid. The sysadmin, who probably should have hung up when he was first able to, couldn't resist listening for a short time. After a couple of minutes, the CEO finally realized that his phone was still on, and hung up the line. By that time, the sysadmin knew that several people would be laid off soon, but not how soon, or which people.
He informed a couple of his friends that the company was in worse shape than he had realized, and discretely began updating his resume. Within a month, the company was bought out and closed down by another company and everyone lost their jobs. He was asked to stay on as part of the transition team and that the new company would pay him, but after a couple of days, it was clear that he had been working for free and the new company was not going to honor the agreement.
At that time, he still had sysadmin access, and began to look through emails of the former employees. Some, including the CEO, were still getting and sending emails through web access through the old company server. He learned that although the board of directors did not want to spend the money to make sure that the fired employees could still have health insurance for a couple of months, they were willing to give the former CEO $25,000 for his efforts.
I have always said that a good sysadmin knows all the secrets of a company, but a great sysadmin knows when not to look. In this case, was the sysadmin justified in looking after he had been promised to be paid and then told he was not being paid? (Yes, his access should have been cut off, but he was the one who would have had to cut himself off and he was never told to do so.)
Although this situation may be unique, I think that many sysadmins may feel the same way. Once they are betrayed, they no longer feel the need to stay loyal to those that betray them.
How about: when you tell that guy your password, he types it on the computer, which compares it to a hashed (and salted, please!) value in the database. There we go. It wasn't that hard, was it?
Let's just see how well that will work, shall we?
Operator: Can I get your password, please?
Custormer: Sure. Lloyds is pants.
O: Is that Sure, Llyods is pants, or just Lloyds is pants?
C: Just Lloyds is pants.
O: I am sorry, that is not working. Did you capitalize all of Lloyds, or just the first letter?
C: *I* didn't capitalize anything. My password is Lloyds is pants, just like I said.
O: I am sorry, sir, that password is not working.
C: Did you guys change my password on me again? I swear, every time I talk to you, my password gets changed on me or someone screws up my password. The last time I called I spent a half hour on the phone before I realized that your stupid rep typed in p-a-n-c-e instead of p-a-n-t-s for my password.
O:P-a-n-t-s? There we go. Your password is working now. I am sorry for the inconvenience. Welcome to Lloyds. How can we handle your money for you today?
Because money does not equal happiness, nor does money lead to happiness, and many companies know this. Some of them also know that happiness often leads to money.
If you are happy at work, you will work harder, be more productive and more loyal. How many times have people left large paying jobs that made them miserable and took a pay cut to do work that makes them happy?
Money does not lead to happiness. Money only leads to wanting more money. Most people that say they would be happier with more money are really only fooling themselves. Yes, they would be happier for a short time. For a little while, they will say, "Well, now that I am getting more money, I will put up with this lousy situation." But it doesn't last! Within a couple of months that extra money is being spent, people come to expect that they should be getting that "extra" money without having to put up with the bad situation, and the complaining starts all over again.
Many companies also realize that they cannot make you happy. No one but you can make you happy. What they can do is try to remove obstacles to happiness, and create an environment where people want to work. One way to do that is to try to create ways for employees to have fun together. but everyone's idea of fun is different, and what is fun for you may be misery for someone else.
I am not saying that money is not important. On the contrary, money is very important. Money will cover up a few bad situations, and your basic needs must be met or all the morale games in the world will not help. But there has to be a balance between pay, work done and happiness. Lots of companies struggle with with this balance, some paying salaries so high that they run into financial trouble.
I may not agree with the actual games that are played, but I understand the reason for them. My solution? Suggest things that you would find fun. That may be anything from lunch time FPS games, to more holiday parties at work to having a TV in the break room. Whatever it is, suggest positive ideas rather than complaining that they are trying to have fun at work.
I remember a couple of episodes of Star Trek DS9 that are relevant. (not sure how many DS9 fans there are left, so bear with me.) During the Dominion War a couple of shape shifters were found on Earth. Everyone started panicking, and even Sisko was afraid his father had been replaced by a Changeling. In order to "protect" Earth, a high StarFleet official arranged for a group of cadets to "attack" Earth in order to "raise awareness" of the Changeling threat. It turns out that there were only a couple of Changelings on Earth, and they were sitting back watching what Earth was doing to itself.
One of the things that struck me was that Sisko's father refused to give in to fear. Yes, there was a threat, but there was little he could do, and he refused to live in fear.
I didn't like all of DS9, and there were a few episodes with crappy writing (I will leave it to you to figure out the number), but I was impressed with these episodes. Shortly after 9/11 I thought, and still do think, that many people, especially in government, should have a look at these couple of episodes before panicking and imposing some of the security restrictions we have had to, and will continue to endure.
But then you have to remember the lie.
For example, if I was born in Boston, and they ask for my birth city, Did I answer New York, Atlanta, or Tampa? Or did I put in something completely different like Tatooine, Emrald City, or Ceti Alpha 5(6)? Or did I put in nonsense answers like phaser, light sabre, laptop, or even lkuso1iga133662?
Which lie did I tell on this web site, and it is the same lie I told on my banking web site?
Not so sure about that. A kid at work claims to have a copy of that on his phone. He claims that there are counterfeit apps available so you can have the "I am rich" gem on your phone for free.
(of course, his parents are filthy rich, so he might actually be one of the ones that bought the real thing.)
That is because the article and the summary are hard to match up. The summary talks about low cost, printable optics on silk, but does not give much detail of some of the applications. So I went to the article to get a better idea, and read about "edible optics."
At first glance they seem to be talking about two different things. I do not know about you, but I am not in the habit of eating silk on a regular basis. And silk with sensors on it? How would I get the info from the sensors after eating it? If it is implantable, does part of it stick out so I can see the results? Or is there some sort of tricorder that can read the info from the sensors inside me?
After reading a bit more, it seems like they could be talking about the same thing, but the sample applications still do not fit the summary.
My only conclusion is that the concept is way over my head, not to mention the applications. Time to turn in the geek card.
Anti-matter rays are real, and they are being used on people today!! It really is an apathy ray that is used on people to make them lose foc...
What was I saying? Never mind, it doesn't matter.
I know that PHB's will try to cut costs, and that unnecessary hardware is the first to be cut, but is there ANYONE who believes that a UPS is not needed? Are there really people out there that think, "We don't need the UPS right now. We can wait until we have more money."
It boggles my mind that there is even a need for such an article
I haven't seen Dark Night, so I can't comment on Ledger's performance. However, I am a casual reader of the comics, and a casual observer of the cartoons. I realize that the Joker has gone through a huge change over the years, going from chaos to crazy and back again. However, to me, the very name of Joker implies a certain maniacal quality. He should be brilliant, unpredictable, chaotic, but with a sick humour twist.
I did not care for Nicholson's joker. Although he did a decent job, he did not have the flare for the maniacal that the Joker should have. In my mind the perfect Joker was actually played by Jim Carey. I know, Carey played Riddler, not Joker. But if you switched costumes and left out some of the riddles, you had exactly what the Joker should be.
I understand that Ledger's performance was superb. I also understand that this Joker was more of chaos personified. But I have difficulty linking chaos personified to the name Joker.
Just my $.02