I've worked at companies like that... what ends up happening is people come into work even when they are sick, coughing and sniffling and so on, because they are hoarding their combined days off for some vacation they have planned. So they come in and infect everybody else, and only stay away when it is serious enough for a doctor visit or they really are too ill to come in.
I'm really confused by the Slashdot ethics sometimes.
If the subject were copyright infringement of music, we'd all be in support (or at least sympathize with) the infringing party.
The magazine did the equivalent of: taking other music in violation of copyright, repackaged it in a convenient form, and passed it off as their own work. I haven't seen "slashdot" advocate that so I'm in turn puzzled by your confusion.
Sorry their small business went under, but you'd think somebody in the publication business would grasp the most basic concepts of copyright. Did this magazine think they could scrape newspaper websites for articles and republish those too?
First, there should not be one company deciding. We should harness the free market and build a system that takes inputs from whatever security feeds users subscribe to and weight those security feeds based upon the end user's preferences.
There isn't one company deciding, right? If you don't like vendor X, move to vendor Y. Free market behavior doesn't guarantee your issue is solved on the platform of your choice - maybe some other vendor is addressing your concern (if it is profitable and so on for them to do so, generally meaning your concern is valid to a large enough group the vendor may actually care) and deserves your business. Currently, people who don't care enough about this and proxy their decisions to the vendor (i.e. Apple), purchase the vendor's (i.e. Apple's) goods. People who do care settle for whatever else is out there that most fits their needs, or withhold their purchasing. The free market doesn't guarantee everybody is maximally satisfied with the available goods.
I'm convinced we could leverage the benefits of both an iPhone app store approach and a traditional package manager approach. I fear, however, that none of the companies in a position to actually make a good system and push it to end users is going to be motivated to do so.
Isn't this a valid manifestation of the free market? Free market behavior doesn't guarantee the outcome you want.
That other way of doing things you mention... like maybe, a controller with buttons? There are other things buttons do besides shoot game guns. The Ars Technica review of Kinect covered the driving game, where you can't accelerate or brake, only steer. Unless they release a controller that allows more interaction, the games for Kinect will be on-rails variants.
I had a chance to visit the UK a few years ago, and took the train out to Salisbury to see Stonehenge. I enjoyed it, since it is a famous landmark, but what blew me away that day was wandering the cathedral in Salisbury. The medieval clock on display, working since 1200 or whatever, was really cool, at least to me. And there was an original Magna Carta on display, one of the few (four?) surviving copies, fairly legible too. All in all I went out planning to see Stonehenge but wound up pleasantly surprised with unplanned discoveries at the nearby town.
I want a phone that will let me install whatever app I choose to install regardless of who made it or what store sold it. For me, Android and BlackBerry work best. For the not-so-techy or those who don't care if they're in a walled garden, an iOS device will suit them just fine.
Regards, Me
I doubt the majority of consumers care about walled gardens... they're getting Android or Blackberry or whatever because that's the smartphone offered by their provider and staying is the path of least resistance. They sure as hell aren't picking a smartphone based on variety of app install choices or esoterica concerning the steps needed to jailbreak their device.
We all trash Microsoft for making shitty products, but in the end we would all work for them given the chance.
Disclaimer: I worked there for 5 years, many years ago. I am also not a zealot; I currently run and use Win 7, Linux Mint, OSX (yes I have 3 notebooks).
I think Microsoft does have one nice advantage for aspiring software developers: career variety available. Where else can you work on enterprise class software (email, database), OS kernel stuff, graphics, games, office apps, compilers/languages, mobile OS, etc. I can't think of other companies that offer that range of variety. I think people at least owe themselves looking into working there, perhaps interviewing if possible. Then make a decision, don't just rule them out on a knee-jerk reaction. You don't have to stay forever if you really don't like it.
A lot of my friends who were going to get the iPhone chose an Android device simply because Apple doesn't let you have emulators on their phones.
Are your friends particularly tech-savvy? I mean seriously, going to Android because of available emulators? I think you are under the massively broken assumption your friends remotely approximate the total user population.
The National Cryptographic Museum is where an old motel used to be (Colony 7 motel) and is a pretty cool place to visit. The Enigma works and you can spin the rotors, type, and encrypt/decrypt messages.
Being a geek you might as well do the multi-stage geocache which starts at the NVP. The NVP and nearby "unclassified" parking lot have a view of NSA buildings, and typically NSA police are quite visible patrolling the area.
Well since Apple isn't forcing anybody to buy their stuff, the bottom line is people like it. For various reasons: ease of use, simplicity, streamlined design & aesthetics, whatever else. Apple has passed Microsoft in market value, and had a string of successes over the last decade: iPod, iPod market, iPhone, iPad. Chalking that up to a few fashion seeking clueless posers is disingenuous.
What I can't figure out are people who keep thinking the rest of the population actually cares about the limits that Apple imposes. Apple has sold millions of devices. The market has spoken, the vast majority simply doesn't care, and if other companies had more of a clue and design skills, they'd compete. Maybe those other companies are staffed with people with their heads buried in the sand, refusing to consider "freedom to experiment and innovate" just isn't that high on the priority list of 90% of the customer base.
They're saying it on how much of the computer world has passed Microsoft up lately. Yes, profits went up from $5B to $18.7B. But how much of that could a monkey running the company on autopilot achieved, given a starting portfolio of Windows and Office?
It is doubtful that Microsoft's decision was primarily because of what it would actually cost them in payouts.
I agree... we can make fun of how much money this would cost Microsoft, but they can afford it. It is obvious they don't want to for. Some possible reasons:
1) Announcing a paying bug bounty, like Knuth had with TeX, implies the code is so high quality they are looking for the last few issues. But they have a very large attack surface area, and their code is constantly changing.
2) They've spent millions educating their developers and testers over secure coding and testing practices, and to be fair have made good progress. Announcing a paying bug bounty probably irriates the bean counters who are asking, aren't we already paying for people to work on security issues?
3) Cultural issue? Mozilla and Google are willing to do it, and they have extensive experience in free/open source software. Microsoft, not so much.
It is interesting they don't want to do it though.
They changed even faster than that. IIRC, it was Jim Allchin that said releasing the source code for a portion of Windows (the message queue), would have serious US national security implications. This was in 2002, during the post-DOJ lawsuit cleanup where some states filed a separate lawsuit.
>Seriously, half the people here seem to be in a weird sort of denial.
I wish I could mod you up... everytime some article appears along these lines, a ton of posters come out of the woodwork to prove it wrong by citing how *their* anecdotal evidence rules. You see, *they* have specific requirements which *the unwashed masses* cannot possibly fathom, and with further unexplained reasoning, any shift away from the status quo just won't happen.
It's just funny as hell. Do posters seriously think the *average* consumer has multiple large screen monitors, terabytes of disk space, etc??
Meanwhile in the real world, the market steamrollers on, not really caring about the passionately argued and exhaustively documented anecdotes on this site. Smartphones are selling well, the iPad is doing well, and so on.
As for me, I'm atypical as well - I have 3 notebook computers. A MacBook Pro, a System 76 Linux (Ubuntu) box, and a Sager Windows box. Yes, portability means *that* much too me, as well as fiddling with multiple OS'es (hobby and work stuff). And I have a netbook too, a Dell Mini9 running Ubuntu.
If I got the numbers right, Deepwater Horizon drilled at a depth of ~5000 feet to about ~18000 feet deep. Thus, a natural seismic event would have needed to split a canyon ~13000 feet deep, 2.5 miles deep, to cause this leak. I'm no geologist but that sounds like one hell of an earthquake. I'm sure natural leaks occur but at several order of magnitude smaller.
But when it's a large corporation, we somehow think they should be held to a higher standard? No, I don't think they should. They're holding themselves to the same standard the average person would.
Huh? All I've seen is a general sentiment they pay for the cleanup (already lots of finger pointing between BP, Halliburton, and Transocean), and be honest about the size of the leak (which the Senate had to force them to do). An average person would have to cooperate with an investigation or face charges (their cooperation is reluctant), and have their insurance cover expenses (and BP will fight that every step).
This is insanity! So the government of US, UK, Israel, China, etc. will get information on vulnerabilities before the general public?
That's all you're worried about? The heck with vulnerabilities, Microsoft already shared their source code with China, Russia, and some NATO members... all to open markets of course, not for virus/rootkit writers.;) http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2003/feb03/02-28gspchinapr.mspx
Sorry, you'd still need the government to enforce the rules here. Otherwise, BP would just take out an insurance policy to cap their liability you describe in #1 - so for your solution to have any teeth at all "somebody" would have to force BP to assume the risk/liability, and who would that "somebody" be?
How would the radical free-market libertarians handle this situation: BP has an insurance contract and the insurer can't cover the costs and goes bankrupt? Or in general, a company offloads liability to another one? Force BP to pay - but wait, can't do that, I thought contracts were the highest form of law for libertarians? Wouldn't forcing limits on insurance be horrible government interference?
Would you a) disallow this situation (hmmm... sounds like government intervention), or b) force insurance companies to effectively bond this situation (hm... more government intervention), or c) shift liability back to the parent if insurance can't cover it (more intervention).
Basically, I'm completely skeptical the free market answer wouldn't just be: BP want to drill, spins off a subsidiary to insure parent (or starts a new company) - one that plans to die in bankruptcy should a disaster mean substantial payouts.
This does make a lot of sense if there was no real job, along the lines of what theBraindonor wrote... but as I replied to him, I left some info out. I did have a phone screen with the company so there was a job, unless that was staged.;)
Now I'm all curious about LON and reading the chapter on recruiters!
It's more likely that they didn't even have a contract with the hiring company and needed a few more candidates before they got everything signed.
I left some info out, so that's my fault. They did arrange a phone screen with two of the company's employees - not sure about the specifics of their arrangement but the recruiter mentioned they had placed people there, thought I'd be a good fit, setup the phone screen.
It all got murky when it came time to interview in person. The company said they were interested, I said I was interested and that my only concern was having to move for job and deal with real estate in a lousy market. At this point, two people from the recruiter called (one in my local market that saw my resume, one based in the target market where the company was) and focused entirely on whether or not I was willing to move, understand where I was with that, etc. I kept telling them I thought the best thing is to set the interview up and that might tip the balance; they responded that the client didn't want to take up the time interviewing unless a candidate would accept an offer.
It suddenly shifted from "hey you passed the phone screen and everybody is interested" to "hm we aren't going to setup the in-person interview unless you are serious about accepting the job if they offer".
The recruiter called back and kept asking what the company could do to smooth things out, and I told the recruiter a few ideas: let me work remotely for a bit, let me work a compressed schedule M-Th, give me a little temporary housing assistance, etc. Meanwhile, I was thinking this is the kind of stuff normally brought up in a negotiation directly with the company, instead of having the recruiter running messages to them.
It felt wrong or sleazy - they went from possibly connecting me to a job to being unwilling to schedule an interview. This could only somehow be out of concern for collecting their fee, so I reasoned.
Actually I'm interested in everything you added, sometimes I puzzle over the circumstances just for fun trying to imagine how/why it went down the way it did. What you said makes sense if they were still building a relationship with the company. I think that wasn't the case... but I suppose I can't really know, so maybe it was.
My best theory is that I mentioned the problem with moving, and the recruiter became concerned that if I interviewed but didn't accept a job, the company would be able to contact me at a later time, bypassing the recruiter and their fee. We did talk on the phone but I'm sure there are provisions for that during the placement process. But contacting someone after a certain amount of time passes might avoid any fee agreements.
Unless a recruiter is contacting you for a specific opportunity or company, it is very likely that they will just waste your time. Shady recruiters will use your resume to court companies with little or no notification/permission and they will do just about anything they can to find out where else you have applied--typically under the guise of not wanting to send in a duplicate copy of your resume. Combine that with the fun hard-sell techniques and it is very hard to feel anything but dirty and used.
This sounds exactly like two or three of the recruiters I dealt with!
I'm not down on recruiters, they are making a living as well and do have job leads, but I hit a few shady ones and I hope I never have to deal with any again.
Yeah but this was extreme - they wouldn't even arrange the interview unless I agreed to accept it if there was an offer. I understand they are a business paid for by fees from companies, but this was a step to the shady side. Pre-accept a job offer, if one was to be made, before arranging an interview? I'd never seen such a stark reminder their interests are all about their fee.
What they were clearly worried about was me interviewing, liking it but not being able to take the job until I could move (sold my house). With the right amount of time passing, the company could probably contact me without owing the recruiter. Which is entirely the ethics of the company.
I wrote a journal article add more info; here is what I wrote about recruiters:
Recruiters get paid by placement fees from companies, so that is who they really work for. Most probably want to do the least work for the most payoff - fill interviews at companies that pay them the highest fee, and deal with candidates most likely to get a job within a few interviews. My experience was literally "two and out" - you didn't hear from the recruiter again if two interviews didn't work out. When a recruiter talks about how many companies they work with and how many "opportunities" they have, none of that matters. You'll get two or three interviews, then you become too much effort to deal with.
There is a scathing chapter on recruiters. While certain good qualities of recruiters are mentioned, it seems the authors generally believe that recruiters are uncaring commission-hounds that just want to place a candidate and don't care about individuals. The brutal honesty was refreshing, and I'd be curious whether a majority of Slashdot readers would agree or disagree with the authors.
I found recruiters to be entirely self-serving. Last year when I was looking for a job, the ones I dealt with seemed to have a strict "two and out" policy: they present you to two companies MAX, and if those interviews don't go well, it'll be months if you ever hear from them again - i.e. you got dropped, they stopped trying to market you. One recruiter totally shoehorned me into an interview for a job I had no background for. Another set an interview up and the phone screen didn't go well. In both cases, I didn't hear from those recruiters again.
Yet another tried to convince me to move for an opportunity (I balked due to various expenses that weren't covered, plus the loss on selling my home) and the next interview they lined up was a 2 month scripting contract at a game company, and after that... never heard from them again. The way they handled the first job (that required the move) was totally fishy - they wanted me to agree that I'd accept the job and move IF there was a job offer, while I pushed back I can't pre-accept what doesn't exist especially without even meeting or talking to the group first. They wouldn't even set the interview up so I had more info for the decision. I figure there must have been something weird about their finder's fee and what sequence of steps or how far along things were before payments were exchanged or refunds made, etc. I think they were afraid if the company and I contacted each other (i.e. I interviewed) without an agreement in place for the recruiter, the company would somehow be able to duck their fee.
I always find it amusing to see PK and PvP and twitch fans scream that their genre's are OH SO POPULAR and yet not a single game that gives them what they want is a success. Odd that
No kidding... you'd think, if PvP was so hugely popular, there would be more games catering specifically to it. Instead we have what, Darkfall? Shadowbane (now defunct)? EVE Online? Maybe Warhammer? Guild Wars itself has the "fairest" PvP system, but it is only in controlled environments, not world.
Only a small minority thinks it is fun to kill people in uncontrolled world PvP.
I've never understood world PvP (uncontrolled) in an MMORPG. You have level imbalances (one side might be significantly higher level than the other), class imbalances (always an issue in one-on-one or small groups), gear/equipment imbalances (a staple of these games is the loot), and numbers imbalances (one side significantly outnumbers the other side). Mix this in a cauldron and you get crap stew for gameplay.
I can see controlled PvP, along the lines of WoW's battlegrounds, or GW's alliance battles. At least there you have some attempt at throttling levels and numbers. GW goes further and basically makes a flat level and gear/equipment playing field as well.
If I want fun in uncontrolled PvP I'd play a different type of game altogether, a FPS or MMOFPS. At least there gear/weapon upgrades are available on the field of battle, levels go away, classes go away, and number imbalances could be part of the challenge/fun - defending a chokehold or fort against an onslaught.
But in an RPG? It has sucked in every game I've played, I think it just fundamentally appeals to a different (minority) audience altogether. With the imbalances listed above, many fights are effectively impossible for one side to win.
This is all anecdotal, but cable goes for about ~$80 in my area, and I can easily see it costing $100 with just a few extras. And that's with nothing extra, no internet, no phone, just TV channels.
The $80 is for "regular" cable - broadcast channels, typical cable channels (but no premium ones), plus an HDTV package of many of the typical cable channels. Not sure if a decoder is extra, if you don't have one. The cost prompted me to drop my cable TV subscription when I moved into this area. Instead I bought a TiVo HD, an antenna, and just deal with whatever I can pull in OTA. Netflix supplies me a steady stream of recent TV shows coming out a season at a time.
My cable is just under $65 a month, for 6 Mbit. There is a discount if you get TV and internet, so my total would be a little less if I got both. But I just can't wrap my mind around a TV + internet bill of $135 a month. I stepped off the pay TV merry-go-round and don't miss it enough to get back on.;)
Slashdot Mirror
I've worked at companies like that... what ends up happening is people come into work even when they are sick, coughing and sniffling and so on, because they are hoarding their combined days off for some vacation they have planned. So they come in and infect everybody else, and only stay away when it is serious enough for a doctor visit or they really are too ill to come in.
I'm really confused by the Slashdot ethics sometimes.
If the subject were copyright infringement of music, we'd all be in support (or at least sympathize with) the infringing party.
The magazine did the equivalent of: taking other music in violation of copyright, repackaged it in a convenient form, and passed it off as their own work. I haven't seen "slashdot" advocate that so I'm in turn puzzled by your confusion.
Sorry their small business went under, but you'd think somebody in the publication business would grasp the most basic concepts of copyright. Did this magazine think they could scrape newspaper websites for articles and republish those too?
First, there should not be one company deciding. We should harness the free market and build a system that takes inputs from whatever security feeds users subscribe to and weight those security feeds based upon the end user's preferences.
There isn't one company deciding, right? If you don't like vendor X, move to vendor Y. Free market behavior doesn't guarantee your issue is solved on the platform of your choice - maybe some other vendor is addressing your concern (if it is profitable and so on for them to do so, generally meaning your concern is valid to a large enough group the vendor may actually care) and deserves your business. Currently, people who don't care enough about this and proxy their decisions to the vendor (i.e. Apple), purchase the vendor's (i.e. Apple's) goods. People who do care settle for whatever else is out there that most fits their needs, or withhold their purchasing. The free market doesn't guarantee everybody is maximally satisfied with the available goods.
I'm convinced we could leverage the benefits of both an iPhone app store approach and a traditional package manager approach. I fear, however, that none of the companies in a position to actually make a good system and push it to end users is going to be motivated to do so.
Isn't this a valid manifestation of the free market? Free market behavior doesn't guarantee the outcome you want.
That other way of doing things you mention... like maybe, a controller with buttons? There are other things buttons do besides shoot game guns. The Ars Technica review of Kinect covered the driving game, where you can't accelerate or brake, only steer. Unless they release a controller that allows more interaction, the games for Kinect will be on-rails variants.
Or you could just drive past.
I had a chance to visit the UK a few years ago, and took the train out to Salisbury to see Stonehenge. I enjoyed it, since it is a famous landmark, but what blew me away that day was wandering the cathedral in Salisbury. The medieval clock on display, working since 1200 or whatever, was really cool, at least to me. And there was an original Magna Carta on display, one of the few (four?) surviving copies, fairly legible too. All in all I went out planning to see Stonehenge but wound up pleasantly surprised with unplanned discoveries at the nearby town.
I want a phone that will let me install whatever app I choose to install regardless of who made it or what store sold it. For me, Android and BlackBerry work best. For the not-so-techy or those who don't care if they're in a walled garden, an iOS device will suit them just fine.
Regards,
Me
I doubt the majority of consumers care about walled gardens... they're getting Android or Blackberry or whatever because that's the smartphone offered by their provider and staying is the path of least resistance. They sure as hell aren't picking a smartphone based on variety of app install choices or esoterica concerning the steps needed to jailbreak their device.
We all trash Microsoft for making shitty products, but in the end we would all work for them given the chance.
Disclaimer: I worked there for 5 years, many years ago. I am also not a zealot; I currently run and use Win 7, Linux Mint, OSX (yes I have 3 notebooks).
I think Microsoft does have one nice advantage for aspiring software developers: career variety available. Where else can you work on enterprise class software (email, database), OS kernel stuff, graphics, games, office apps, compilers/languages, mobile OS, etc. I can't think of other companies that offer that range of variety. I think people at least owe themselves looking into working there, perhaps interviewing if possible. Then make a decision, don't just rule them out on a knee-jerk reaction. You don't have to stay forever if you really don't like it.
A lot of my friends who were going to get the iPhone chose an Android device simply because Apple doesn't let you have emulators on their phones.
Are your friends particularly tech-savvy? I mean seriously, going to Android because of available emulators? I think you are under the massively broken assumption your friends remotely approximate the total user population.
The National Cryptographic Museum is where an old motel used to be (Colony 7 motel) and is a pretty cool place to visit. The Enigma works and you can spin the rotors, type, and encrypt/decrypt messages.
Nearby is the National Vigilance Park, which has some cold war recon aircraft on display.
Being a geek you might as well do the multi-stage geocache which starts at the NVP. The NVP and nearby "unclassified" parking lot have a view of NSA buildings, and typically NSA police are quite visible patrolling the area.
And if you have time, cruise up to the BWI area and visit the National Electronics Museum.
Well since Apple isn't forcing anybody to buy their stuff, the bottom line is people like it. For various reasons: ease of use, simplicity, streamlined design & aesthetics, whatever else. Apple has passed Microsoft in market value, and had a string of successes over the last decade: iPod, iPod market, iPhone, iPad. Chalking that up to a few fashion seeking clueless posers is disingenuous.
What I can't figure out are people who keep thinking the rest of the population actually cares about the limits that Apple imposes. Apple has sold millions of devices. The market has spoken, the vast majority simply doesn't care, and if other companies had more of a clue and design skills, they'd compete. Maybe those other companies are staffed with people with their heads buried in the sand, refusing to consider "freedom to experiment and innovate" just isn't that high on the priority list of 90% of the customer base.
They're saying it on how much of the computer world has passed Microsoft up lately. Yes, profits went up from $5B to $18.7B. But how much of that could a monkey running the company on autopilot achieved, given a starting portfolio of Windows and Office?
It is doubtful that Microsoft's decision was primarily because of what it would actually cost them in payouts.
I agree... we can make fun of how much money this would cost Microsoft, but they can afford it. It is obvious they don't want to for. Some possible reasons:
1) Announcing a paying bug bounty, like Knuth had with TeX, implies the code is so high quality they are looking for the last few issues. But they have a very large attack surface area, and their code is constantly changing.
2) They've spent millions educating their developers and testers over secure coding and testing practices, and to be fair have made good progress. Announcing a paying bug bounty probably irriates the bean counters who are asking, aren't we already paying for people to work on security issues?
3) Cultural issue? Mozilla and Google are willing to do it, and they have extensive experience in free/open source software. Microsoft, not so much.
It is interesting they don't want to do it though.
They changed even faster than that. IIRC, it was Jim Allchin that said releasing the source code for a portion of Windows (the message queue), would have serious US national security implications. This was in 2002, during the post-DOJ lawsuit cleanup where some states filed a separate lawsuit.
Less that a year later in early 2003, Microsoft entered into a broad source code sharing arrangement, with Russia, China, and many NATO members.
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2003/feb03/02-28GSPChinaPR.mspx
From "serious US national security issues" to "here you go Russia and China" in less than a year.
>Seriously, half the people here seem to be in a weird sort of denial.
I wish I could mod you up... everytime some article appears along these lines, a ton of posters come out of the woodwork to prove it wrong by citing how *their* anecdotal evidence rules. You see, *they* have specific requirements which *the unwashed masses* cannot possibly fathom, and with further unexplained reasoning, any shift away from the status quo just won't happen.
It's just funny as hell. Do posters seriously think the *average* consumer has multiple large screen monitors, terabytes of disk space, etc??
Meanwhile in the real world, the market steamrollers on, not really caring about the passionately argued and exhaustively documented anecdotes on this site. Smartphones are selling well, the iPad is doing well, and so on.
As for me, I'm atypical as well - I have 3 notebook computers. A MacBook Pro, a System 76 Linux (Ubuntu) box, and a Sager Windows box. Yes, portability means *that* much too me, as well as fiddling with multiple OS'es (hobby and work stuff). And I have a netbook too, a Dell Mini9 running Ubuntu.
If I got the numbers right, Deepwater Horizon drilled at a depth of ~5000 feet to about ~18000 feet deep. Thus, a natural seismic event would have needed to split a canyon ~13000 feet deep, 2.5 miles deep, to cause this leak. I'm no geologist but that sounds like one hell of an earthquake. I'm sure natural leaks occur but at several order of magnitude smaller.
But when it's a large corporation, we somehow think they should be held to a higher standard? No, I don't think they should. They're holding themselves to the same standard the average person would.
Huh? All I've seen is a general sentiment they pay for the cleanup (already lots of finger pointing between BP, Halliburton, and Transocean), and be honest about the size of the leak (which the Senate had to force them to do). An average person would have to cooperate with an investigation or face charges (their cooperation is reluctant), and have their insurance cover expenses (and BP will fight that every step).
This is insanity! So the government of US, UK, Israel, China, etc. will get information on vulnerabilities before the general public?
That's all you're worried about? The heck with vulnerabilities, Microsoft already shared their source code with China, Russia, and some NATO members... all to open markets of course, not for virus/rootkit writers. ;)
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2003/feb03/02-28gspchinapr.mspx
Sorry, you'd still need the government to enforce the rules here. Otherwise, BP would just take out an insurance policy to cap their liability you describe in #1 - so for your solution to have any teeth at all "somebody" would have to force BP to assume the risk/liability, and who would that "somebody" be?
How would the radical free-market libertarians handle this situation: BP has an insurance contract and the insurer can't cover the costs and goes bankrupt? Or in general, a company offloads liability to another one? Force BP to pay - but wait, can't do that, I thought contracts were the highest form of law for libertarians? Wouldn't forcing limits on insurance be horrible government interference?
Would you a) disallow this situation (hmmm... sounds like government intervention), or b) force insurance companies to effectively bond this situation (hm... more government intervention), or c) shift liability back to the parent if insurance can't cover it (more intervention).
Basically, I'm completely skeptical the free market answer wouldn't just be: BP want to drill, spins off a subsidiary to insure parent (or starts a new company) - one that plans to die in bankruptcy should a disaster mean substantial payouts.
This does make a lot of sense if there was no real job, along the lines of what theBraindonor wrote... but as I replied to him, I left some info out. I did have a phone screen with the company so there was a job, unless that was staged. ;)
Now I'm all curious about LON and reading the chapter on recruiters!
It's more likely that they didn't even have a contract with the hiring company and needed a few more candidates before they got everything signed.
I left some info out, so that's my fault. They did arrange a phone screen with two of the company's employees - not sure about the specifics of their arrangement but the recruiter mentioned they had placed people there, thought I'd be a good fit, setup the phone screen.
It all got murky when it came time to interview in person. The company said they were interested, I said I was interested and that my only concern was having to move for job and deal with real estate in a lousy market. At this point, two people from the recruiter called (one in my local market that saw my resume, one based in the target market where the company was) and focused entirely on whether or not I was willing to move, understand where I was with that, etc. I kept telling them I thought the best thing is to set the interview up and that might tip the balance; they responded that the client didn't want to take up the time interviewing unless a candidate would accept an offer.
It suddenly shifted from "hey you passed the phone screen and everybody is interested" to "hm we aren't going to setup the in-person interview unless you are serious about accepting the job if they offer".
The recruiter called back and kept asking what the company could do to smooth things out, and I told the recruiter a few ideas: let me work remotely for a bit, let me work a compressed schedule M-Th, give me a little temporary housing assistance, etc. Meanwhile, I was thinking this is the kind of stuff normally brought up in a negotiation directly with the company, instead of having the recruiter running messages to them.
It felt wrong or sleazy - they went from possibly connecting me to a job to being unwilling to schedule an interview. This could only somehow be out of concern for collecting their fee, so I reasoned.
Actually I'm interested in everything you added, sometimes I puzzle over the circumstances just for fun trying to imagine how/why it went down the way it did. What you said makes sense if they were still building a relationship with the company. I think that wasn't the case... but I suppose I can't really know, so maybe it was.
My best theory is that I mentioned the problem with moving, and the recruiter became concerned that if I interviewed but didn't accept a job, the company would be able to contact me at a later time, bypassing the recruiter and their fee. We did talk on the phone but I'm sure there are provisions for that during the placement process. But contacting someone after a certain amount of time passes might avoid any fee agreements.
Unless a recruiter is contacting you for a specific opportunity or company, it is very likely that they will just waste your time. Shady recruiters will use your resume to court companies with little or no notification/permission and they will do just about anything they can to find out where else you have applied--typically under the guise of not wanting to send in a duplicate copy of your resume. Combine that with the fun hard-sell techniques and it is very hard to feel anything but dirty and used.
This sounds exactly like two or three of the recruiters I dealt with!
I'm not down on recruiters, they are making a living as well and do have job leads, but I hit a few shady ones and I hope I never have to deal with any again.
Yeah but this was extreme - they wouldn't even arrange the interview unless I agreed to accept it if there was an offer. I understand they are a business paid for by fees from companies, but this was a step to the shady side. Pre-accept a job offer, if one was to be made, before arranging an interview? I'd never seen such a stark reminder their interests are all about their fee.
What they were clearly worried about was me interviewing, liking it but not being able to take the job until I could move (sold my house). With the right amount of time passing, the company could probably contact me without owing the recruiter. Which is entirely the ethics of the company.
I wrote a journal article add more info; here is what I wrote about recruiters:
Recruiters get paid by placement fees from companies, so that is who they really work for. Most probably want to do the least work for the most payoff - fill interviews at companies that pay them the highest fee, and deal with candidates most likely to get a job within a few interviews. My experience was literally "two and out" - you didn't hear from the recruiter again if two interviews didn't work out. When a recruiter talks about how many companies they work with and how many "opportunities" they have, none of that matters. You'll get two or three interviews, then you become too much effort to deal with.
There is a scathing chapter on recruiters. While certain good qualities of recruiters are mentioned, it seems the authors generally believe that recruiters are uncaring commission-hounds that just want to place a candidate and don't care about individuals. The brutal honesty was refreshing, and I'd be curious whether a majority of Slashdot readers would agree or disagree with the authors.
I found recruiters to be entirely self-serving. Last year when I was looking for a job, the ones I dealt with seemed to have a strict "two and out" policy: they present you to two companies MAX, and if those interviews don't go well, it'll be months if you ever hear from them again - i.e. you got dropped, they stopped trying to market you. One recruiter totally shoehorned me into an interview for a job I had no background for. Another set an interview up and the phone screen didn't go well. In both cases, I didn't hear from those recruiters again.
Yet another tried to convince me to move for an opportunity (I balked due to various expenses that weren't covered, plus the loss on selling my home) and the next interview they lined up was a 2 month scripting contract at a game company, and after that... never heard from them again. The way they handled the first job (that required the move) was totally fishy - they wanted me to agree that I'd accept the job and move IF there was a job offer, while I pushed back I can't pre-accept what doesn't exist especially without even meeting or talking to the group first. They wouldn't even set the interview up so I had more info for the decision. I figure there must have been something weird about their finder's fee and what sequence of steps or how far along things were before payments were exchanged or refunds made, etc. I think they were afraid if the company and I contacted each other (i.e. I interviewed) without an agreement in place for the recruiter, the company would somehow be able to duck their fee.
I always find it amusing to see PK and PvP and twitch fans scream that their genre's are OH SO POPULAR and yet not a single game that gives them what they want is a success. Odd that
No kidding... you'd think, if PvP was so hugely popular, there would be more games catering specifically to it. Instead we have what, Darkfall? Shadowbane (now defunct)? EVE Online? Maybe Warhammer? Guild Wars itself has the "fairest" PvP system, but it is only in controlled environments, not world.
Only a small minority thinks it is fun to kill people in uncontrolled world PvP.
I've never understood world PvP (uncontrolled) in an MMORPG. You have level imbalances (one side might be significantly higher level than the other), class imbalances (always an issue in one-on-one or small groups), gear/equipment imbalances (a staple of these games is the loot), and numbers imbalances (one side significantly outnumbers the other side). Mix this in a cauldron and you get crap stew for gameplay.
I can see controlled PvP, along the lines of WoW's battlegrounds, or GW's alliance battles. At least there you have some attempt at throttling levels and numbers. GW goes further and basically makes a flat level and gear/equipment playing field as well.
If I want fun in uncontrolled PvP I'd play a different type of game altogether, a FPS or MMOFPS. At least there gear/weapon upgrades are available on the field of battle, levels go away, classes go away, and number imbalances could be part of the challenge/fun - defending a chokehold or fort against an onslaught.
But in an RPG? It has sucked in every game I've played, I think it just fundamentally appeals to a different (minority) audience altogether. With the imbalances listed above, many fights are effectively impossible for one side to win.
This is all anecdotal, but cable goes for about ~$80 in my area, and I can easily see it costing $100 with just a few extras. And that's with nothing extra, no internet, no phone, just TV channels.
The $80 is for "regular" cable - broadcast channels, typical cable channels (but no premium ones), plus an HDTV package of many of the typical cable channels. Not sure if a decoder is extra, if you don't have one. The cost prompted me to drop my cable TV subscription when I moved into this area. Instead I bought a TiVo HD, an antenna, and just deal with whatever I can pull in OTA. Netflix supplies me a steady stream of recent TV shows coming out a season at a time.
My cable is just under $65 a month, for 6 Mbit. There is a discount if you get TV and internet, so my total would be a little less if I got both. But I just can't wrap my mind around a TV + internet bill of $135 a month. I stepped off the pay TV merry-go-round and don't miss it enough to get back on. ;)