And that is stupid as hell. In the US you need credit to have a good credit score. In Belgium they start with your income and then start deducting your POSSIBLE monthly costs. Say you get 1500EUR. 500EUR will be deducted for cost of living, like food. You ay e.g. 500 for rent. That means you have 500 left to pay for credits and loans. If you open a credit card, the minimal amount you need to pay back is e.g. 100. For your car you need to pay back 300. You bought a TV on credit for 75 per month. That leaves you 25EUR to open a new credit. Want to buy a phone for 30EUR per month on credit? Bzzzzt. Declined.
Another example: You earn 1500 per month. You own your house and it is paid. You do not own a car. You have a TV that you bought on 75EUR per month, so you can easily get that 30EUR phone per month.
Now you did not pay for 3 month that 75EUR because you went on a holiday. You also got a promotion and now earn 10.000EUR per month You are now on the black list and can not buy that 30EUR per month for 3 months on credit phone.
After 1 year of paying the debt it will be removed.
So having LESS credits is better.
Many people who buy a house need to close their credit cards, so they can get the mortage. This because they potentially could use the card and then they potentially could be paying more than what is possible and that is a big no.
When asked how much I made in a previous job, my answer always was: That is irrelevant. What I am interested in is in if we are can get to an agreement to the job I am going to do here. Those that would find that an issue would not be companies I wanted to work for anyway. I sometimes also said no when the offer was not what I wanted. And once I asked for much more details as the pay would have been so high, it would be unrealistic. Asked them it was per month as it was more like I would be looking for per year. They said yes. I said no.
We already know that hacking is 95% social engineering (and still geeks can't social engineer girlfriends), but at least they could solve it like/. does where they show the password hidden like Login:houghi Pass:********
MS Office is used in the office. That is where it counts. At home people use email over a web interface to communicate if they don't use Facepalm or something else.
At the office, Word is sometimes used, but mostly so it can be converted to PDF to be send around. Word is not very important anymore and can easily be replaced.
The singele most important one is Excel. It is used (abused) in every company dor things it was not intended to so, but people use it. Some people in the company will use scripts that won't be possible to be used in any other program.
I have seen places that have Back Office and yet they still export the file to Excel, have it print out and enter it manually into Excel, so they have the numbers for the monthly report that they can stuff into their Powerpoint Presentation. I just made a new monthly report into an image with BO and save an hour per day.
People have no idea what could be possible and they are afraid to ask even if they would know. People also don not like to be told there are better ways, because that would make them look dumb and if they are, they might get fired (or so they think). Me? I am not lazy, I am efficient with my energy.
And of those two, only one needs to be new. For a gaming rig, you might want to have the latest and fastest hardware and that will come with a newer OS that uses it. For a desktop at work, it will most likely run some Excell, a browser, Outlook and then perhaps even a frew programs that get data from a server.
For that there is no need to have a high end PC, so a newer one can be bought later. Instead of doing the lease for 3 years, you can start looking for 4 years. A new PC will mean a new OS, so the volume is reduced by 25%.
I see it with my own hardware. I used to buy a new system every 2 years and I really, really noticed a difference in speed. Now I do not and my PC is 5 years old and still does everything that I need it to do in a normal time frame. Using an add blocker has more impact on my speed that buying a new high-end PC The bottleneck isn't the PC anymore. It isn't even the network connection. It is me. I can not type faster that I alsready do. I can not watch faster than I already do. I can not see faster than I already do.
If you are not a gamer, increase in speed means nothing. That means you do not need a new PC and that means you will not buy the OS that is included in said PC.
What MS did right was to see that the OS was on the PC. If you want to know how you could get the year of the Linux Desktop: pre-install. That is how Android became big. Because people will buy any OS i it is installed. The majority of people do not care.
For something like a year now we've heard nothing but accusations of "Russians! Russians! Russians! Russians! Russians!" spewed again and again by left wing politicians and the media, Slashdot included.
Well, you are not wrong, but remember that the right wing politicians and media did the same. So perhaps they are BOTH right. Perhaps the Russians try to divide the people in the US. And as far as I can see, they are winning. Why? Because you think that this is about left vs right.
What business is it to an employer what my credit status is. You can go two times two ways OMG He has a credit, he will steal. OMG He has a credit, he will keep his job. OMG He has no credit, he has no reason to be loyal OMG He has no credit, he is no liability
That is why in Belgium only credit companies and banks have information to your credit status (as well as the person them selves) and the only info they see is current credits and loans without even the company name and if the person has been behind with payments for more than 3 months. Nobody else will have access to that data.
Not sure how long a bed is in feed. It is 2m and I have a 52" (weird how those are in inches) at the end of my bed and I can see the difference between 720 and 1080 if I pay real attention and they play next to each other. For TV 480 is what I watch and although not perfect is is almost always good enough.
The TV is 5 years old or so and still works perfectly. If I need to replace it, it will be probably either the same quality, if they are still available or something that is as cheap as possible.
I do have 2 27" 4K screens as monitor, but I run them at 2K. Not worth going to 4K. Those are at 50cm distance.
I do understand that if you where a gamer, you might want to have something better, but with the shows I see, quality is not really a need. It has been good enough for me since 1080p. All the rest is extra money, unless I start to have 100" or 200" screens and have the place for it; which I don't. 100" (4x50") would need to be 4K.
3 weeks delay is not really an issue. If all promisses by every company only would be 3 weeks late, that would be wonderful. Can you imagine that you are only 3 weeks late with every project you are involved in? (Yes, I know it wasn't your fault.)
It is a limitation to free speech. The moment you can not say what you want, it becomes a limitation to free speech. Is this good? Absolutely. It just depends from country to country where you draw the line. Free speech is that you are allowed to say anything anywhere without limitations. That said, there is a difference in what "Free Speech" means in a discussion or legally. e.g. you can have free speech by law that excluded certain things, like "Fire" if there is none. So then it just becomes "how do we define free speech from a legal point of view" and you can include everything and still hold up the term "free speech". Bit like "Democratic" in the official name of North Korea.
So saying if you are for or against tax is not free speech? Many political things will be about money. Be it for or against it. So suddenly that is not free speech anymore?
The fact that certain things are not allowed does not mean that they are not free speech anymore, just that they are a restriction on free speech, like yelling FIRE in a cinema.
Free speech does not even have to be true. e.g. if people deny the holocaust, it is still free speech, even if it is not true. The fact that commercial speech is under a different law is because it is a restriction on free speech. Otherwise we would not have to have it under any law. They could just say what they want and when they want.
Is this good? Well; the majority of people think it is.
Assume that it is true and they did not where used by the Russians (with or without their consent), why would the NSA say so?
Hold on to your tinfoil hats, here we go.
The NSA has hacked the persons PC. The NSA has given the person the files to put on his PC. The NSA has put a NSA version on the persons PC that looks hacked. The NSA now blames the Russians to have hacked it. People stop using said software and start using software that the NSA has actually hacked.
So now the NSA gets access to people who previously used software that was actually safe and did not have a backdoor. This so some senators and/or others that they want to have access to stop using it, putting the rest of the world in harms way.
With what the NSA already has pulled of in the past, it somehow does not eve look that weird of a plan and it wil actually work.
The real question is now: do you want the Chinese, the Russians or the Americans read your stuff. I go with the Russians, because the Chinese get the data over my phone (Huawei) and Americans already get data via several other means, like the transatlantic lines. I just don't want the Russians to be left outside the loop.
Also invested a lot in wind energy and solar energy i Schleswig-Holstein. They have the highest electricity bill of all and can't even export it to other places as the line to do so is still not in place.
They should also make them available for free via torrent. Torrent is a service, so people will have a real choice. Those who want to pay for it can and those who don't won't to pay for it won't have to.
This has been said since Adam and Eve or since Lucy, depending on what you believe.
It is like driving a car. Everybody says they are a great driver and that others are the problem (Except in my case, I am actually a great driver. Really, I am.)
So I am sure that there are plenty of people who will say you are doing it wrong and should have stuck to masturbation. I have no idea if they are wrong or you are wrong, but wars have been fought over less.
In Europe you generally don't see headlines about how some big corporation just reported its largest profit in its entire history and is also laying off thousands of workers.
Does not mean it doesn't happen. It is already not done to shout about profits anyway.
And if these things happen, laws change in favour of the people. e.g. when Renault in Brussels closed and several thousand workers where thrown out on the street, they where building a new factory in Spain with help from subsidies. Not only did they lose their subsidies, the law was changed in Belgium, so that you can't just say "we close" that easy. There have to be certain steps to be followed. If you want to fire a certain percentage and/or certain amount of people at the same time, it will take around 6 months to do as you now need to inform people in advance and look for alternatives.
In general people in Europe are more interested in time than in money. Many people will work 4/5 times as they then have more time to spend with friends and family. They could work 5/5 and buy a new car sooner and a new phone and a larger tv and... but why?
Of the 10 direct co-workers I have 7 do 4/5 work. And yes, that means living in a smaller house than what is standard in the US. And yes, exceptions exist on both sides.
This is how it is in Belgium and my hours: 10-14 and 15-18:30 Those are mu working hours and what the company pays. The hour lunch, they do not pay and I leave and do nothing for the company. Some people will have 30 minutes lunch (minimal amount by law) and a few more. So lunch is never company time.
We sometimes have a lunch meeting (2 times a year) and I could officially still take my hour break, but I do not want to be an asshole and the sandwiches they bring are nice. As long as it is an exception, nobody has an issue with it.
The 15 minute break in the morning and 15 minutes in the afternoon are paid by the company and you can do what you want. Many will vape or some or just stand outside or do some personal surfing. This is paid company time.
My travel time is also 2 hours per day. That is about average, yet some will go to 4+ hours. I have plenty of time to go out with friends during the week and go to a nice restaurant or have a few beers. Weekends are free. But most of the time it is: coming home, prepare some food and do some online stuff or reading.
However I do not do that 52 weeks per year, 40 years in a row. I have 35 paid holidays and that makes a HUGE difference. That is 7 weeks per year or more than 1 week per 2 months. I HAD to take some holidays, otherwise I would lose them and pay so much taxes on top of taxes that I would be working for free. So going to Spain for 10 days in November.
What happens if 2 people can't do their job in 40 hours, but it should be 60? That is 120/40=3 people doing their job.
Disadvantage is that the CEO does not earn 300x as much as I do. Terrible, I know. He gets perhaps only 10 times as much. Poor guy.
And here I am in communist Belgium with their stupid Unions. Where I work the IT SCRUM meeting is at 10 and you need to be there. Some start a lot earlier, so they can go home earlier. Some start at 10, and they walk right into the meeting.
Other departments will have flexible hours as well from 7:30-10 to start. Depends a bit on the department how flexible they can be. Some are extremely flexible, others are not flexible at all. e.g. call center is not flexible as there needs t be a predictable amount of persons available. Legal wants to start early and leave early, so they start at 8. I prefer to work late, so my hours are: 10-14 15-18:30, yes an hour lunch, so I can go and eat in peace and quiet. During my 15 minute break in the morning and the afternoon I do a bit of/.
Downside is that I have no idea what to do with my 35 paid holidays. I am also forced to use metric and can't take a gun to work.
Traffic? Company pais my public transport, so I am 50 minutes door to door of wich 30 minutes is a train that is not full at all (because I start later) and the rest is walking to/from the train.
Slashdot Mirror
And that is stupid as hell. In the US you need credit to have a good credit score. In Belgium they start with your income and then start deducting your POSSIBLE monthly costs.
Say you get 1500EUR. 500EUR will be deducted for cost of living, like food. You ay e.g. 500 for rent. That means you have 500 left to pay for credits and loans. If you open a credit card, the minimal amount you need to pay back is e.g. 100. For your car you need to pay back 300. You bought a TV on credit for 75 per month. That leaves you 25EUR to open a new credit. Want to buy a phone for 30EUR per month on credit? Bzzzzt. Declined.
Another example: You earn 1500 per month. You own your house and it is paid. You do not own a car. You have a TV that you bought on 75EUR per month, so you can easily get that 30EUR phone per month.
Now you did not pay for 3 month that 75EUR because you went on a holiday. You also got a promotion and now earn 10.000EUR per month You are now on the black list and can not buy that 30EUR per month for 3 months on credit phone.
After 1 year of paying the debt it will be removed.
So having LESS credits is better.
Many people who buy a house need to close their credit cards, so they can get the mortage. This because they potentially could use the card and then they potentially could be paying more than what is possible and that is a big no.
So not having a credit is better than having one.
When asked how much I made in a previous job, my answer always was: That is irrelevant. What I am interested in is in if we are can get to an agreement to the job I am going to do here.
Those that would find that an issue would not be companies I wanted to work for anyway.
I sometimes also said no when the offer was not what I wanted. And once I asked for much more details as the pay would have been so high, it would be unrealistic. Asked them it was per month as it was more like I would be looking for per year. They said yes. I said no.
We already know that hacking is 95% social engineering (and still geeks can't social engineer girlfriends), but at least they could solve it like /. does where they show the password hidden like
Login:houghi
Pass:********
I have a search box on my site that adds filetype:torrent to each search and I use it all the time. So where is my billion?
MS Office is used in the office. That is where it counts. At home people use email over a web interface to communicate if they don't use Facepalm or something else.
At the office, Word is sometimes used, but mostly so it can be converted to PDF to be send around. Word is not very important anymore and can easily be replaced.
The singele most important one is Excel. It is used (abused) in every company dor things it was not intended to so, but people use it. Some people in the company will use scripts that won't be possible to be used in any other program.
I have seen places that have Back Office and yet they still export the file to Excel, have it print out and enter it manually into Excel, so they have the numbers for the monthly report that they can stuff into their Powerpoint Presentation. I just made a new monthly report into an image with BO and save an hour per day.
People have no idea what could be possible and they are afraid to ask even if they would know. People also don not like to be told there are better ways, because that would make them look dumb and if they are, they might get fired (or so they think).
Me? I am not lazy, I am efficient with my energy.
And of those two, only one needs to be new. For a gaming rig, you might want to have the latest and fastest hardware and that will come with a newer OS that uses it. For a desktop at work, it will most likely run some Excell, a browser, Outlook and then perhaps even a frew programs that get data from a server.
For that there is no need to have a high end PC, so a newer one can be bought later. Instead of doing the lease for 3 years, you can start looking for 4 years. A new PC will mean a new OS, so the volume is reduced by 25%.
I see it with my own hardware. I used to buy a new system every 2 years and I really, really noticed a difference in speed. Now I do not and my PC is 5 years old and still does everything that I need it to do in a normal time frame. Using an add blocker has more impact on my speed that buying a new high-end PC The bottleneck isn't the PC anymore. It isn't even the network connection. It is me. I can not type faster that I alsready do. I can not watch faster than I already do. I can not see faster than I already do.
If you are not a gamer, increase in speed means nothing. That means you do not need a new PC and that means you will not buy the OS that is included in said PC.
What MS did right was to see that the OS was on the PC. If you want to know how you could get the year of the Linux Desktop: pre-install. That is how Android became big. Because people will buy any OS i it is installed. The majority of people do not care.
Well, you are not wrong, but remember that the right wing politicians and media did the same.
So perhaps they are BOTH right. Perhaps the Russians try to divide the people in the US. And as far as I can see, they are winning. Why? Because you think that this is about left vs right.
What business is it to an employer what my credit status is. You can go two times two ways
OMG He has a credit, he will steal.
OMG He has a credit, he will keep his job.
OMG He has no credit, he has no reason to be loyal
OMG He has no credit, he is no liability
That is why in Belgium only credit companies and banks have information to your credit status (as well as the person them selves) and the only info they see is current credits and loans without even the company name and if the person has been behind with payments for more than 3 months. Nobody else will have access to that data.
Not sure how long a bed is in feed. It is 2m and I have a 52" (weird how those are in inches) at the end of my bed and I can see the difference between 720 and 1080 if I pay real attention and they play next to each other. For TV 480 is what I watch and although not perfect is is almost always good enough.
The TV is 5 years old or so and still works perfectly. If I need to replace it, it will be probably either the same quality, if they are still available or something that is as cheap as possible.
I do have 2 27" 4K screens as monitor, but I run them at 2K. Not worth going to 4K. Those are at 50cm distance.
I do understand that if you where a gamer, you might want to have something better, but with the shows I see, quality is not really a need. It has been good enough for me since 1080p. All the rest is extra money, unless I start to have 100" or 200" screens and have the place for it; which I don't. 100" (4x50") would need to be 4K.
3 weeks delay is not really an issue. If all promisses by every company only would be 3 weeks late, that would be wonderful.
Can you imagine that you are only 3 weeks late with every project you are involved in? (Yes, I know it wasn't your fault.)
It is a limitation to free speech. The moment you can not say what you want, it becomes a limitation to free speech. Is this good? Absolutely.
It just depends from country to country where you draw the line.
Free speech is that you are allowed to say anything anywhere without limitations.
That said, there is a difference in what "Free Speech" means in a discussion or legally. e.g. you can have free speech by law that excluded certain things, like "Fire" if there is none. So then it just becomes "how do we define free speech from a legal point of view" and you can include everything and still hold up the term "free speech". Bit like "Democratic" in the official name of North Korea.
So saying if you are for or against tax is not free speech? Many political things will be about money. Be it for or against it. So suddenly that is not free speech anymore?
The fact that certain things are not allowed does not mean that they are not free speech anymore, just that they are a restriction on free speech, like yelling FIRE in a cinema.
Free speech does not even have to be true. e.g. if people deny the holocaust, it is still free speech, even if it is not true.
The fact that commercial speech is under a different law is because it is a restriction on free speech. Otherwise we would not have to have it under any law. They could just say what they want and when they want.
Is this good? Well; the majority of people think it is.
Assume that it is true and they did not where used by the Russians (with or without their consent), why would the NSA say so?
Hold on to your tinfoil hats, here we go.
The NSA has hacked the persons PC. The NSA has given the person the files to put on his PC. The NSA has put a NSA version on the persons PC that looks hacked. The NSA now blames the Russians to have hacked it. People stop using said software and start using software that the NSA has actually hacked.
So now the NSA gets access to people who previously used software that was actually safe and did not have a backdoor.
This so some senators and/or others that they want to have access to stop using it, putting the rest of the world in harms way.
With what the NSA already has pulled of in the past, it somehow does not eve look that weird of a plan and it wil actually work.
The real question is now: do you want the Chinese, the Russians or the Americans read your stuff. I go with the Russians, because the Chinese get the data over my phone (Huawei) and Americans already get data via several other means, like the transatlantic lines. I just don't want the Russians to be left outside the loop.
I pay max 200EUR for my phone. The hink that make it not possible is to know what you mean with "reasonable". This one is reasonable for me.
Also invested a lot in wind energy and solar energy i Schleswig-Holstein. They have the highest electricity bill of all and can't even export it to other places as the line to do so is still not in place.
The thing is that now the NSA can say that you not should Kapersky, but rather use one that THEY can use to access your information.
You know when Trump gave intel to Putin? That was fun.
And don't forget that Elon Musk is an African-American. (Both continents, not countries)
Used to be true for phones as well for a while. Now it is thinner.
They should also make them available for free via torrent. Torrent is a service, so people will have a real choice. Those who want to pay for it can and those who don't won't to pay for it won't have to.
This has been said since Adam and Eve or since Lucy, depending on what you believe.
It is like driving a car. Everybody says they are a great driver and that others are the problem (Except in my case, I am actually a great driver. Really, I am.)
So I am sure that there are plenty of people who will say you are doing it wrong and should have stuck to masturbation. I have no idea if they are wrong or you are wrong, but wars have been fought over less.
Does not mean it doesn't happen. It is already not done to shout about profits anyway.
And if these things happen, laws change in favour of the people. e.g. when Renault in Brussels closed and several thousand workers where thrown out on the street, they where building a new factory in Spain with help from subsidies. Not only did they lose their subsidies, the law was changed in Belgium, so that you can't just say "we close" that easy. There have to be certain steps to be followed.
If you want to fire a certain percentage and/or certain amount of people at the same time, it will take around 6 months to do as you now need to inform people in advance and look for alternatives.
In general people in Europe are more interested in time than in money. Many people will work 4/5 times as they then have more time to spend with friends and family. They could work 5/5 and buy a new car sooner and a new phone and a larger tv and ... but why?
Of the 10 direct co-workers I have 7 do 4/5 work. And yes, that means living in a smaller house than what is standard in the US. And yes, exceptions exist on both sides.
This is how it is in Belgium and my hours:
10-14 and 15-18:30
Those are mu working hours and what the company pays. The hour lunch, they do not pay and I leave and do nothing for the company. Some people will have 30 minutes lunch (minimal amount by law) and a few more. So lunch is never company time.
We sometimes have a lunch meeting (2 times a year) and I could officially still take my hour break, but I do not want to be an asshole and the sandwiches they bring are nice. As long as it is an exception, nobody has an issue with it.
The 15 minute break in the morning and 15 minutes in the afternoon are paid by the company and you can do what you want. Many will vape or some or just stand outside or do some personal surfing. This is paid company time.
My travel time is also 2 hours per day. That is about average, yet some will go to 4+ hours. I have plenty of time to go out with friends during the week and go to a nice restaurant or have a few beers. Weekends are free. But most of the time it is: coming home, prepare some food and do some online stuff or reading.
However I do not do that 52 weeks per year, 40 years in a row. I have 35 paid holidays and that makes a HUGE difference. That is 7 weeks per year or more than 1 week per 2 months. I HAD to take some holidays, otherwise I would lose them and pay so much taxes on top of taxes that I would be working for free. So going to Spain for 10 days in November.
What happens if 2 people can't do their job in 40 hours, but it should be 60? That is 120/40=3 people doing their job.
Disadvantage is that the CEO does not earn 300x as much as I do. Terrible, I know. He gets perhaps only 10 times as much. Poor guy.
And here I am in communist Belgium with their stupid Unions. Where I work the IT SCRUM meeting is at 10 and you need to be there. Some start a lot earlier, so they can go home earlier. Some start at 10, and they walk right into the meeting.
Other departments will have flexible hours as well from 7:30-10 to start. Depends a bit on the department how flexible they can be. Some are extremely flexible, others are not flexible at all. e.g. call center is not flexible as there needs t be a predictable amount of persons available. Legal wants to start early and leave early, so they start at 8. I prefer to work late, so my hours are: /.
10-14 15-18:30, yes an hour lunch, so I can go and eat in peace and quiet. During my 15 minute break in the morning and the afternoon I do a bit of
Downside is that I have no idea what to do with my 35 paid holidays. I am also forced to use metric and can't take a gun to work.
Traffic? Company pais my public transport, so I am 50 minutes door to door of wich 30 minutes is a train that is not full at all (because I start later) and the rest is walking to/from the train.
Rather them than the NSA.
It's not a toy, it's an Action Figure. (Smaller scale and perhaps more relatable to the /. crowd, yet identical in the comparison.)