Make up your mind how badly you want to get out of debt. Make up your mind whether you mind a (roughly) 2 hour commute.
For my own part, in your place I'd love to go with the small, fun job, but I am the sole breadwinner for a family of 4, so money is unfortunately a big part of the decision process. Aside from that, I am deeply attached to my time with my children, so hacking 4 hours out of my day is pretty much unacceptable. I also want to get out from under some debt I worked up with the last "small fun" company I worked for.
4 years, no raise? Yah, I had to sell the house and go back to renting. That's been my experience with small companies. They'll tell you you're doing a great job, but the funds just aren't there to translate their appreciation into compensation. If you're really unfortunate, they'll actually ask you to wait a few weeks longer for your next paycheck. Try putting gas in your car with no paycheck. Never mind putting food in your mouth.
In your place, I'd go for the job with the familiar commute, better money, and if you're lucky enough (or better yet, good enough) to stand out and shine, you'll be much better off down the road.
Bottom line though, you have to make the choice on what you are willing to give up or not. Either way, I wish you luck.
Good points all around. I should've seen the ambiguity there.
Still, your last point probably only applies to the less ambitious perpetrator. And almost certainly does not apply to a great many of those willing to blow themselves to some imaginary heaven. I can see how it might reduce (maybe just a little) the "mosquito swarms" though.
True, but keep in mind that the Pentagon itself (meaning its existence) isn't exactly top secret. This "Intellipedia" was announced as A "top secret" Intellipedia system, not a system for managing "top secret" content. I mean really, next they'll have brightly colored uniforms with fancy frilled cloaks for the secret police.
Of course we don't know the contents of every document within the Pentagon. You probably don't (and never will) know the purpose, name, or regularity of a great many of these documents, never mind their existence. The Intellipedia is essentially a document that contains much (and will probably eventually contain a vast majority) of the intelligence data within the 16 agencies that use it. And all in an editable format. Now you know it exists, what it's called, and you have an idea what kind of data it contains.
My point is that anything of this nature is going to be an obvious target for the more tech savvy flavor of terrorist, foreign intelligence agency (don't forget the alleged hacks to government systems from China), and even domestic glory-seeking nerd with no sense of "don't touch, that's hot".
Now, I'm well aware that security through obscurity is no security at all, but when that obscurity includes a target's actual existence, well, that's something. It's a little more difficult to attack something you don't even know exists.
And isn't announcing "We have this shiny new top secret thingy that does this and that" a prime example of the oxymoronic "(Military|Governmenet) Intelligence" concept.
Of course, maybe I just tend to wax cynical when anything to do with (Military|Government) Intelligence comes up. Yah, that's probably it.
Well then, maybe we both have a streak of Luddism. I still prefer my 320 kbps VBR mp3 tracks.
In fact, I just re-ripped my whole hard copy library. Well, most of it.
Ok, some of it.
When I first got on the iTunes bandwagon, I didn't realize iTunes ripped everything in AAC by default, else I'd have changed it then.
Change is good, but choice is better, eh?
Besides, mp3s can burn to disks that play in a lot of places AACs won't. A good number of car stereos and most DVD players now play mp3 disks. In this respect, I suggest that mp3s are actually superior. Just my humble opinion.
Why I can't find the DRM removal tools that were supposedly available recently?
Can't really charge for something that anyone can download free, eh? Still, I guess I can't blame him for wanting to cash in on his work.
I know, it's trivial to convert it with the burn/import method, and I'm not gonna whine about the cost of a CD blank, but isn't the iTunes quality poor enough without tanking it even more with this method?
Now I'm kicking myself for not grabbing those tools the minute they were released.
What the hell is a "Congressional Initiative" anyway?
Isn't Congress supposed to pass "Laws"?
Seems to me they waste an obscene amount of time and money debating crap nobody is required to pay any mind to. While this in itself doesn't surprise me much - <sarcasm> my being such an open supporter of political waste </sarcasm>, I find myself surprised for the first time that something as stupid as a "suggestion" by a political body (one with all the technical savvy of a bag of hammers no less) showing up on/. - regardless of it's applicability to the technical realm.
It's like/. posting a suggestion by Paris Hilton that geeks wear glasses. Gimme a break.
I know, this will wind up rated as a troll - and I can deal with that, but the parent isn't any better IMO. This is a political waste, not a scientific or tecnhical event of any import.
A quick google for 'electrocuted dog' will show several stories over the last few years where people have watched their dogs electrocuted (sometimes fatally) simply because poor fido stepped on a metal access cover in Boston.
This has happened quite a lot in Boston, but has also happened in Chicago and Brooklyn.
While this isn't necessarily a "big dollar problem", it should be taken seriously because it's probably only a matter of time before it's a person getting hurt.
As a dog lover, this seems unfortunate, but as a realist, I can see how it goes. A family will demand $74K for the death of their dog and get laughed out of the courtroom, but when it's a person, the settlement will be several million at least. If it's a child, the midden will really hit the windmill.
Granted, it's not generally wise to wander around the city barefoot, but there are a lot of homeless people in the larger cities, and just because it's not wise, doesn't mean someone won't do it. Sometimes it's better to be realistic than practical.
I'm not an EE, so I might be wrong about some of this, but this is how I understand things - please corroborate or correct as appropriate.
If the "hardware" is actually 4x faster than silicon, then that's a 4x increase for similarly scaled systems, right? The thing is that this technology can generate huge improvements in one of the primary focal points in chip design (aside from materials) over the last couple decades: smaller scale. There are several advantages to this: speed, heat, and power consumption, to name the top 3.
If you only have to send a signal 1/10th the distance to get it processed, that's a 10x increase in the throughput. If the processing also takes place in an area 1/10th the size, that's a full 10x increase in speed for the same construction material. (I pulled that 1/10th out of the air for ease of use, I realize nanowires could potentially construct circuits much smaller than this scale compared to current silicon architecture.)
Now, make that material 4x faster on top of the scaling improvements, and you have, not a 4x improvement, but a 40x improvement, right? Is there some glaring technical detail I'm missing?
Seriously, you say they informed you this contractor had your name and SSN on their computer (obviously an insecure computer)? The question I would ask of the loan provider is WHY did this contractor need your SSN?
And I would most certainly not settle for the canned response of "they required your information to carry out value added services available with your account". That's bull, they only need an account number, which should NOT be the same as your SSN. Even the Fed finally figured this one out - it is now prohibited by federal law for new driver licenses and renewals to be issued with the licensees' SSN on the license, as my wife just found out when she renewed.
This loan provider should have a very good reason for handing out your SSN to anyone. I suspect that if you checked, every phone support person at your loan provider - in fact, everyone with access to any records with SSNs - is bonded. If it turns out they unnecessarily handed out your personal info, I'm sure it would be of great interest to the agency that bonded their employees. If this contractor is not bonded, you're looking at an opportunity to make sure the midden hits the windmill. Look up this contractor at the Better Business Bureau, and see what else you can find out. Call them if you can and find out about their bonding status; ask what measures they take to secure personal data, etc.
This would also be of great interest to your states Attourney General.
Following up on this to that extent is probably a great deal of hassle on your part, but keep in mind, it will almost certainly affect your ability to buy a residence in the future, whether you get things corrected or not.
Ivan has hit the nail right square on the head here.
I worked for a startup that floundered in startup status far longer than any company has a right to - they're still there after nearly 8 years in operation. I was there long enough for my vesting schedule to be completed (and then some), and should have been able to cash in a very tidy sum. Vacations in Rio, private schools for the kids, and a new home with no mortgage kind of tidy.
Well, that's not the way things worked out. The company had some questionable financial practices - well the parent company did, anyway. The parent saw their stock rise from $20 through 4 splits, and end up at $142 right at the height of the dotcom crash. Of course our VC was no idiot, he sold as much as he could possibly sell - both his stock and ours, within a month of the crash. That crash saw the parent stock fall back through 2 or 3 reverse splits back down to penny stock status, and was finally delisted because they failed to file some financial report with the SEC.
Funny thing, though. When stock was back near the bottom - under $20 if I remember right, the parent company announced a massive stock repurchase. Total net: Over $800 million. Of course, it was all through his own company stock, which had been overpriced based on our expected performance, which never happened due to a "lack of available funding".
During all this, our company was pushed through a 100,000 to 1 reverse split. There had been so much watering down of the stock at this point, that people who initially had options on a measurable portion of the company now had less than one share. And anyone who had purchased vested stock when they left had nothing - to the tune of several thousand dollars in some cases. Those that had a vesting schedule found that they had to wait 5 years for roughly 1 share - though most came out to roughly 1/100th of 1 share. No new option plans were forthcoming, though they were promised at the time.
This was (hopefully) an extremely uncommon chain of events, but I have to reiterate the 3 points presented by the parent. A few other posters have made suggestions to the effect of "make sure one of the golden cuffs are on your employer". In otherwords, get a severance contract, and make it as sweet as you can.
Another thing to remember, as stated by a former coworker:
"It's all about the BS"
BS = Base Salary. (Thanks Captain Boiko!)
Look at this as a paraphrase of the 3 points above. The options are nice, but that's just lottery tickets.
Still, in a case where you're employee #1, and you have such a critical role in getting the company successful, it is often better to negotiate a percentage of the company, rather than a number of stock shares. The VC can always add more stock, but if you negotiate even 0.10% of the company value in the event of a sale, that will always be 0.10% of the company value, regardless of how they water down the company stock.
Better luck next time. Personally, I'm avoiding startups like the plague these days.
As far as duty goes, the entire operant clause is:
"I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same"
Note the clause about "domestic" in there. Make of that what you wish.
Oh, I noted that. Who do you think this domestic threat is? This may be a great place to live, and it may be one of, if not the safest place to live, but that doesn't mean it will always stay that way. The only way American citizens can preserve their own safety, security, and freedom is to pay very close attention to what happens here and hold their elected leaders accountable when the screw it up. This hasn't been happening much in the last 6 years, given the load of propaganda fed to the public to get them to agree. Of course, now that we've agreed, too many people are taking the "stand the course" attitude, rather than re-evaluating a changing situation on a regular basis.
Granted, we certainly do have responsibilities abroad, and hefty responsibilities at that, but only as a member of the world community, not as a unilateral global police force.
The complete Franklin quote is about exchanging ESSENTIAL liberty for a LITTLE TEMPORARY safety. Why did you leave those very important qualifiers out?
Please get that part right -- you relay your bias and ignorance quite effectively by selectively and deliberately misquoting Franklin.
Well, good point, but I didn't actually quote Franklin, I paraphrased, though I should have been clearer. Even so, tell me what can be considered nonessential liberty?
And as for temporary safety, I suspect it's not terribly relevant in light of the tack the current administration is taking. They claimed the Patriot Act (now that name is pure propaganda) would be temporary, but now they want to tag another 10 years on the more invasive provisions? And they want to make them even more restricting? Not a good development.
In the last 6 years, they have taken much of the power away from the Hill and claimed it for the presidency. Cheney has actually bragged this point on the air, and actually managed to sound like that was a good thing. It most certainly is not. In a group branch, one idiot doesn't totally ruin the whole match. In the Executive branch, one idiot is all it takes. Note that the word "idiot" can be interchanged with "maniac", "tyrant" or "zealot" in this context.
Disucssing military service and Iraq with you and your fixed assumptions and self-limited reasoning would be as productive as arguing choice abortion with Pat Robertson, or legaliozation of recreational drugs with John Ashcroft.
Oh, you cut me to the quick man! Talk about getting personal. I am most appalled to be compared to either one of these people - I sincerely hope I have nothing whatsoever in common with either of them other than (evolved) species and gender. As for military service in Iraq, I do applaude those men and women serving there, but keep in mind, while they are doing better than most (especially the leadership), they are serving on the foundation of a lie. It is not their service I take exception to, or even their service in Iraq. It's the lie that put them in danger I take exception to. Nobody will ever be held accountable for that. And now that we've gone to Iraq, we cannot rightfully leave until the mess there is cleaned up. This would be a much smaller problem had the UN course of action been followed - and even if that were not the case, certainly the rest of the world would still be sharing the burden.
You've made you mind up, selected points to support it (but have not apparently researched the truth of those points), ignored facts that dont support your positon, made unjust and possibly unreasonable assumptions. In efect, you have cemented yoruself in place and try to bait others into arguing
What I served was the American People, through their elected Commander in Chief, and the primary focus of the Oath I and others swear is:
to Uphold and Defend the Constitution of the United States
Excellent distinction. Kudos to you for pointing this out - and for serving.
The problem I have is that the current administration is bastardizing this exact issue to the point that the administration is beginning to claim powers it is (or was) explicitly denied in the Constitution our servicemen and women are dying to protect.
The sacrifices made by those that serve are being directed away from the true intent their service is supposed to have. The Constitution does not mention anything about influencing other nations, peoples, leadership, etc. in any way shape or form. We are not supposed to be practicing a viral form of government that requires all nations to be governed as we are.
It is an undeniable fact that Iraq needed a change, but there is nothing in the Constitution that gave the US Government the right or responsibility to initiate the change on their terms - by that I mean the administrations terms, not the poeples. The administration lied to the people to quail them into agreeing. They used methods last employed by the McCarthy regime to bring about a mentality that we had to be "patriotic".
Bertram Russells definition of patriotism as the current US administration would use it is pure and simple: The willingness to fight, kill, and die for trivial causes.
Well, my opinion is that a true patriot is one that protects their countrys people and their freedoms, NOT the governments stranglehold on power. This is what our servicemen and women are supposed to be fighting for, and very likely what they intended to be fighting for. The issues, however have been so twisted, the meaning of words so violated, that nobody can see the forest for the trees anymore. So good men and women go to the other side of the planet to "liberate" people who, in some cases, don't want to be liberated - even if they think they do. While they're there, we have daily reports of incidents here that require us to give up a little more of our freedom in the name of security.
You know what Benjamin Franklin said about people willing to surrender some of their freedom in exchange for security. They will neither have, nor will they deserve either one.
So what is the militarys duty if the Commander in Chief is the one destroying the Constitution they are sworn to defend?
Just curious.
After this, how could one have faith enough to serve an inept institution?
So, surely you've seen some of the great moments of the Commander in Chief that currently runs policy for the US military?
And this was the first clue in 6 years that it was an inept institution?
Oh, I get it now. Welcome back. How was Mars?
While you were away, Earth has been on the verge of total chaos in the absence of any remotely intelligent leadership, mostly thanks to the fundamentalist sheep that seem to make up the highly vocal minority of the human population.
Just to bring you up to speed, the most powerful man in the world has trouble stringing two coherent sentences together when a camera is pointed at him (which is almost constantly, unfortunately), and the runner up is widely regarded as being his poodle. This pretty much implies that the two most powerful military forces on the planet are pretty much running on empty in the IQ dept. As you will have guessed, this means nobody on the front lines is safe from any angle. Many of those on the "Home Front" are pretty much in the same boat.
So, while these idealistic, brave young men and women are trying to protect us in the "free" world, we're all losing the freedom they're dying to protect. You ever hear any of the stories where someone sets of a major alarm at one end of the city, then robs a gold repository at the other end when all the cops are away? That's what's happening here, only the gold being carted off is our freedom and privacy, and the soldiers are off dying in the wrong place for the wrong reason. Given the apparent incompetence of the world leadership, it's more likely being misplaced than stolen.
Seriously though, I'm not surprised. It's not just financial spreadsheets that are going to cause these kinds of problems. All manner of financial data can introduce problems, and even things not normally thought of as financial data, like technical specs for the implementation of transactions and accounts in any revenue generating business. If the transaction has an obscure flaw that gets by testing, no amount of accuracy will overcome it.
The fact is, these data are ultimately generated and transcribed by human beings, and that's one thing humans always have and always will do very well - screw up. So you handle it the way any successful person, place or thing would. You double check, make a second person jointly responsible for accuracy and have them double check, and change the transcription process on a regular basis so that it stays intellectually engaging but not too challenging - after all, boredom with a process and complexity of a process will introduce far more errors than "bad information".
There are a lot of people that have a use for computers and software that wouldn't have been able to imagine such a need back in the 1990s. Mostly these are older folks that have no life experience with technology, and are struggling to keep up. Thing is, these people are often retired, and therefore have more time for recreational use. This means they want to spend more time using their computer, and less time managing it.
Now, sure maybe they make up a small part of the tech supported economy, but any time now, there are a whole lot of baby boomers retiring in the US. That's gonna shift things a little.
As a developer that used to work on internally managed software (providing a service sold to internet content providers, not off the shelf software sold to customers), I didn't want monkeys monitoring or managing my software - it wasn't intended for idiots to run, it was intended to provide performance oriented content delivery. It required highly technical monitors to analyze any potential problems and provide feedback to development. That's not the case with the ordinary home computer. It's intended to be used by whoever wants to shell out the money for it, not those that can pass a tech savvy quiz.
This is why Microsoft has been so difficult to catch for the Linux/*BSD crowd. There are so many flavors with no standardization to the setup, that just getting off the ground can make an otherwise intelligent person feel like (s)he needs to be tested for Alzhiemers.
What's needed is a truly intuitive interface, and accessibility (don't forget those with disabilities, they're a pretty important slice of the pie too). I have yet to hear of a distribution that lets you drop the CD in and be surfing the web an hour or so later without having to know all the details of your hardware. Hell, some of them require you to know every technical detail of your hardware but the bloody serial numbers.
Now, I've played with Linux quite a lot in the past, and over the last 5 or 6 years, I've used FreeBSD almost exclusively at home. I've also installed more Windows systems than I care to remember, and as much as I hate to say it, the installation and setup is one place where the FOSS community is just nowhere near up to competing with MS.
When that changes, you can bet I'll be getting my Mom to install it just so I can help her figure out what's wrong without having to travel 1500 miles for tech support or buy some expensive software to do it remotely, or try to figure out what "that thingy at the bottom of the screen" really means.
Now, this isn't to knock the FOSS developers. They're a bunch of very dedicated folks that work very hard, often with no fungible compensation for their efforts. Often they are missing out on things they'd rather be doing to make their systems better. They aren't getting paid to make it monkeyproof. They're trying to make a better OS or a better peice of software. Not a better installation or recovery process.
Does anyone know of a project that really focuses on the installation and configuration of their distribution? I don't. There are some, obviously that go above and beyond other distributions, but not one can yet compete with Windows or MacOS X.
There are other issues, like support availability - which is more a percieved issue (FUD) than a real issue, but those are minor.
The overall image of FOSS amongst the technically unsavvy is one of technical incomprehensibility, which can be managed, but there aren't many PR departments in the FOSS community.
I'm sure there are people still more in touch with the current situation than I am that understand these issues better than I, and are probably aware of more hurdles than I am, but these folks aren't PR people or venture capitalists, so they can't fix the problems any better than I can. What can be done is for those familiar with interface accessibility, installation, and configuration to step up and push harder in those areas. It's not as glorious as kernel development or GUI develpoment, but it's just as important.
management should be held responsible to the outcome of their decisions, good and bad
I think that's the way things generally work (with exceptions, of course) in non-unionized industries. When you put a union in place, it's impossible to fire anyone, and everyone gets a job based on their union membership, not their ability to produce a decent outcome or make coherent decisions.
In some industries, the unions earned bad names because the workers didn't always have to show up for work to get paid. The saying was, "if you're with the union, just stay home, we'll mail your check." There was always the guy doing nothing because he didn't have a clue, but made the same pay as the guy busting his ass.
The unions liked to talk about the times they got the contract because they were known for quality work. That's true. This is because they'd hire 20% more people than were really needed and hope no more than 1 out of 5 was a total moron.
Slashdot Mirror
Make up your mind how badly you want to get out of debt. Make up your mind whether you mind a (roughly) 2 hour commute.
For my own part, in your place I'd love to go with the small, fun job, but I am the sole breadwinner for a family of 4, so money is unfortunately a big part of the decision process. Aside from that, I am deeply attached to my time with my children, so hacking 4 hours out of my day is pretty much unacceptable. I also want to get out from under some debt I worked up with the last "small fun" company I worked for.
4 years, no raise? Yah, I had to sell the house and go back to renting. That's been my experience with small companies. They'll tell you you're doing a great job, but the funds just aren't there to translate their appreciation into compensation. If you're really unfortunate, they'll actually ask you to wait a few weeks longer for your next paycheck. Try putting gas in your car with no paycheck. Never mind putting food in your mouth.
In your place, I'd go for the job with the familiar commute, better money, and if you're lucky enough (or better yet, good enough) to stand out and shine, you'll be much better off down the road.
Bottom line though, you have to make the choice on what you are willing to give up or not. Either way, I wish you luck.
Well, Rummy's runnin'
...
Now to get Shrubby to skedaddle
Presumably, by "someone good" you mean someone who doesn't subscribe beyond all common sense to the old ideology "The best defense is a good offense"?
Good points all around. I should've seen the ambiguity there.
Still, your last point probably only applies to the less ambitious perpetrator. And almost certainly does not apply to a great many of those willing to blow themselves to some imaginary heaven. I can see how it might reduce (maybe just a little) the "mosquito swarms" though.
Now you mention it, so am I ...
I wonder why that is?
True, but keep in mind that the Pentagon itself (meaning its existence) isn't exactly top secret. This "Intellipedia" was announced as A "top secret" Intellipedia system, not a system for managing "top secret" content. I mean really, next they'll have brightly colored uniforms with fancy frilled cloaks for the secret police.
Of course we don't know the contents of every document within the Pentagon. You probably don't (and never will) know the purpose, name, or regularity of a great many of these documents, never mind their existence. The Intellipedia is essentially a document that contains much (and will probably eventually contain a vast majority) of the intelligence data within the 16 agencies that use it. And all in an editable format. Now you know it exists, what it's called, and you have an idea what kind of data it contains.
My point is that anything of this nature is going to be an obvious target for the more tech savvy flavor of terrorist, foreign intelligence agency (don't forget the alleged hacks to government systems from China), and even domestic glory-seeking nerd with no sense of "don't touch, that's hot".
Now, I'm well aware that security through obscurity is no security at all, but when that obscurity includes a target's actual existence, well, that's something. It's a little more difficult to attack something you don't even know exists.
And isn't announcing "We have this shiny new top secret thingy that does this and that" a prime example of the oxymoronic "(Military|Governmenet) Intelligence" concept.
Of course, maybe I just tend to wax cynical when anything to do with (Military|Government) Intelligence comes up. Yah, that's probably it.
In order to log on, you must be situated at a specially designed workstation equipped with a Cone of Silence ...
But really, if it's so top secret, how come the whole world knows about it?
Geez, now, everybody's going to want one. I can see it now, there'll be an Al' Qaedapedia next.
Well then, maybe we both have a streak of Luddism. I still prefer my 320 kbps VBR mp3 tracks.
In fact, I just re-ripped my whole hard copy library.
Well, most of it.
Ok, some of it.
When I first got on the iTunes bandwagon, I didn't realize iTunes ripped everything in AAC by default, else I'd have changed it then. Change is good, but choice is better, eh?
Besides, mp3s can burn to disks that play in a lot of places AACs won't. A good number of car stereos and most DVD players now play mp3 disks. In this respect, I suggest that mp3s are actually superior. Just my humble opinion.
Hmm. I couldn't understand the apologetic tone of your response until I went there. Still, like you said, it works.
Many thanks!
Why I can't find the DRM removal tools that were supposedly available recently?
Can't really charge for something that anyone can download free, eh? Still, I guess I can't blame him for wanting to cash in on his work.
I know, it's trivial to convert it with the burn/import method, and I'm not gonna whine about the cost of a CD blank, but isn't the iTunes quality poor enough without tanking it even more with this method?
Now I'm kicking myself for not grabbing those tools the minute they were released.
You've obviously never been to Arkansas ...
Yah. If I were still Catholic, I'd consider my 7 years purgatory already served.
What the hell is a "Congressional Initiative" anyway?
/. - regardless of it's applicability to the technical realm.
/. posting a suggestion by Paris Hilton that geeks wear glasses. Gimme a break.
Isn't Congress supposed to pass "Laws"?
Seems to me they waste an obscene amount of time and money debating crap nobody is required to pay any mind to. While this in itself doesn't surprise me much - <sarcasm> my being such an open supporter of political waste </sarcasm>, I find myself surprised for the first time that something as stupid as a "suggestion" by a political body (one with all the technical savvy of a bag of hammers no less) showing up on
It's like
I know, this will wind up rated as a troll - and I can deal with that, but the parent isn't any better IMO. This is a political waste, not a scientific or tecnhical event of any import.
A quick google for 'electrocuted dog' will show several stories over the last few years where people have watched their dogs electrocuted (sometimes fatally) simply because poor fido stepped on a metal access cover in Boston.
This has happened quite a lot in Boston, but has also happened in Chicago and Brooklyn.
While this isn't necessarily a "big dollar problem", it should be taken seriously because it's probably only a matter of time before it's a person getting hurt.
As a dog lover, this seems unfortunate, but as a realist, I can see how it goes. A family will demand $74K for the death of their dog and get laughed out of the courtroom, but when it's a person, the settlement will be several million at least. If it's a child, the midden will really hit the windmill.
Granted, it's not generally wise to wander around the city barefoot, but there are a lot of homeless people in the larger cities, and just because it's not wise, doesn't mean someone won't do it. Sometimes it's better to be realistic than practical.
Oh, you're be right. My bad.
Well, cut me some slack, it's a Friday afternoon after a long week <GR>.
I can just see Linus' avatar now
I hope we see some mention of this illustrious event in a future slashback posting ...
I'm not an EE, so I might be wrong about some of this, but this is how I understand things - please corroborate or correct as appropriate.
If the "hardware" is actually 4x faster than silicon, then that's a 4x increase for similarly scaled systems, right? The thing is that this technology can generate huge improvements in one of the primary focal points in chip design (aside from materials) over the last couple decades: smaller scale. There are several advantages to this: speed, heat, and power consumption, to name the top 3.
If you only have to send a signal 1/10th the distance to get it processed, that's a 10x increase in the throughput. If the processing also takes place in an area 1/10th the size, that's a full 10x increase in speed for the same construction material. (I pulled that 1/10th out of the air for ease of use, I realize nanowires could potentially construct circuits much smaller than this scale compared to current silicon architecture.)
Now, make that material 4x faster on top of the scaling improvements, and you have, not a 4x improvement, but a 40x improvement, right? Is there some glaring technical detail I'm missing?
Seriously, you say they informed you this contractor had your name and SSN on their computer (obviously an insecure computer)? The question I would ask of the loan provider is WHY did this contractor need your SSN?
And I would most certainly not settle for the canned response of "they required your information to carry out value added services available with your account". That's bull, they only need an account number, which should NOT be the same as your SSN. Even the Fed finally figured this one out - it is now prohibited by federal law for new driver licenses and renewals to be issued with the licensees' SSN on the license, as my wife just found out when she renewed.
This loan provider should have a very good reason for handing out your SSN to anyone. I suspect that if you checked, every phone support person at your loan provider - in fact, everyone with access to any records with SSNs - is bonded. If it turns out they unnecessarily handed out your personal info, I'm sure it would be of great interest to the agency that bonded their employees. If this contractor is not bonded, you're looking at an opportunity to make sure the midden hits the windmill. Look up this contractor at the Better Business Bureau, and see what else you can find out. Call them if you can and find out about their bonding status; ask what measures they take to secure personal data, etc.
This would also be of great interest to your states Attourney General.
Following up on this to that extent is probably a great deal of hassle on your part, but keep in mind, it will almost certainly affect your ability to buy a residence in the future, whether you get things corrected or not.
Good luck with that.
Ivan has hit the nail right square on the head here.
I worked for a startup that floundered in startup status far longer than any company has a right to - they're still there after nearly 8 years in operation. I was there long enough for my vesting schedule to be completed (and then some), and should have been able to cash in a very tidy sum. Vacations in Rio, private schools for the kids, and a new home with no mortgage kind of tidy.
Well, that's not the way things worked out. The company had some questionable financial practices - well the parent company did, anyway. The parent saw their stock rise from $20 through 4 splits, and end up at $142 right at the height of the dotcom crash. Of course our VC was no idiot, he sold as much as he could possibly sell - both his stock and ours, within a month of the crash. That crash saw the parent stock fall back through 2 or 3 reverse splits back down to penny stock status, and was finally delisted because they failed to file some financial report with the SEC.
Funny thing, though. When stock was back near the bottom - under $20 if I remember right, the parent company announced a massive stock repurchase. Total net: Over $800 million. Of course, it was all through his own company stock, which had been overpriced based on our expected performance, which never happened due to a "lack of available funding".
During all this, our company was pushed through a 100,000 to 1 reverse split. There had been so much watering down of the stock at this point, that people who initially had options on a measurable portion of the company now had less than one share. And anyone who had purchased vested stock when they left had nothing - to the tune of several thousand dollars in some cases. Those that had a vesting schedule found that they had to wait 5 years for roughly 1 share - though most came out to roughly 1/100th of 1 share. No new option plans were forthcoming, though they were promised at the time.
This was (hopefully) an extremely uncommon chain of events, but I have to reiterate the 3 points presented by the parent. A few other posters have made suggestions to the effect of "make sure one of the golden cuffs are on your employer". In otherwords, get a severance contract, and make it as sweet as you can.
Another thing to remember, as stated by a former coworker:
"It's all about the BS"
BS = Base Salary. (Thanks Captain Boiko!)
Look at this as a paraphrase of the 3 points above. The options are nice, but that's just lottery tickets.
Still, in a case where you're employee #1, and you have such a critical role in getting the company successful, it is often better to negotiate a percentage of the company, rather than a number of stock shares. The VC can always add more stock, but if you negotiate even 0.10% of the company value in the event of a sale, that will always be 0.10% of the company value, regardless of how they water down the company stock.
Better luck next time. Personally, I'm avoiding startups like the plague these days.
As far as duty goes, the entire operant clause is:
"I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same"
Note the clause about "domestic" in there. Make of that what you wish.
Oh, I noted that. Who do you think this domestic threat is? This may be a great place to live, and it may be one of, if not the safest place to live, but that doesn't mean it will always stay that way. The only way American citizens can preserve their own safety, security, and freedom is to pay very close attention to what happens here and hold their elected leaders accountable when the screw it up. This hasn't been happening much in the last 6 years, given the load of propaganda fed to the public to get them to agree. Of course, now that we've agreed, too many people are taking the "stand the course" attitude, rather than re-evaluating a changing situation on a regular basis.
Granted, we certainly do have responsibilities abroad, and hefty responsibilities at that, but only as a member of the world community, not as a unilateral global police force.
The complete Franklin quote is about exchanging ESSENTIAL liberty for a LITTLE TEMPORARY safety. Why did you leave those very important qualifiers out? Please get that part right -- you relay your bias and ignorance quite effectively by selectively and deliberately misquoting Franklin.
Well, good point, but I didn't actually quote Franklin, I paraphrased, though I should have been clearer. Even so, tell me what can be considered nonessential liberty?
And as for temporary safety, I suspect it's not terribly relevant in light of the tack the current administration is taking. They claimed the Patriot Act (now that name is pure propaganda) would be temporary, but now they want to tag another 10 years on the more invasive provisions? And they want to make them even more restricting? Not a good development.
In the last 6 years, they have taken much of the power away from the Hill and claimed it for the presidency. Cheney has actually bragged this point on the air, and actually managed to sound like that was a good thing. It most certainly is not. In a group branch, one idiot doesn't totally ruin the whole match. In the Executive branch, one idiot is all it takes. Note that the word "idiot" can be interchanged with "maniac", "tyrant" or "zealot" in this context.
Disucssing military service and Iraq with you and your fixed assumptions and self-limited reasoning would be as productive as arguing choice abortion with Pat Robertson, or legaliozation of recreational drugs with John Ashcroft.
Oh, you cut me to the quick man! Talk about getting personal. I am most appalled to be compared to either one of these people - I sincerely hope I have nothing whatsoever in common with either of them other than (evolved) species and gender. As for military service in Iraq, I do applaude those men and women serving there, but keep in mind, while they are doing better than most (especially the leadership), they are serving on the foundation of a lie. It is not their service I take exception to, or even their service in Iraq. It's the lie that put them in danger I take exception to. Nobody will ever be held accountable for that. And now that we've gone to Iraq, we cannot rightfully leave until the mess there is cleaned up. This would be a much smaller problem had the UN course of action been followed - and even if that were not the case, certainly the rest of the world would still be sharing the burden.
You've made you mind up, selected points to support it (but have not apparently researched the truth of those points), ignored facts that dont support your positon, made unjust and possibly unreasonable assumptions. In efect, you have cemented yoruself in place and try to bait others into arguing
I didnt serve the Army - I served *IN* the Army.
What I served was the American People, through their elected Commander in Chief, and the primary focus of the Oath I and others swear is:
to Uphold and Defend the Constitution of the United States
Excellent distinction. Kudos to you for pointing this out - and for serving.
The problem I have is that the current administration is bastardizing this exact issue to the point that the administration is beginning to claim powers it is (or was) explicitly denied in the Constitution our servicemen and women are dying to protect.
The sacrifices made by those that serve are being directed away from the true intent their service is supposed to have. The Constitution does not mention anything about influencing other nations, peoples, leadership, etc. in any way shape or form. We are not supposed to be practicing a viral form of government that requires all nations to be governed as we are.
It is an undeniable fact that Iraq needed a change, but there is nothing in the Constitution that gave the US Government the right or responsibility to initiate the change on their terms - by that I mean the administrations terms, not the poeples. The administration lied to the people to quail them into agreeing. They used methods last employed by the McCarthy regime to bring about a mentality that we had to be "patriotic".
Bertram Russells definition of patriotism as the current US administration would use it is pure and simple: The willingness to fight, kill, and die for trivial causes.
Well, my opinion is that a true patriot is one that protects their countrys people and their freedoms, NOT the governments stranglehold on power. This is what our servicemen and women are supposed to be fighting for, and very likely what they intended to be fighting for. The issues, however have been so twisted, the meaning of words so violated, that nobody can see the forest for the trees anymore. So good men and women go to the other side of the planet to "liberate" people who, in some cases, don't want to be liberated - even if they think they do. While they're there, we have daily reports of incidents here that require us to give up a little more of our freedom in the name of security.
You know what Benjamin Franklin said about people willing to surrender some of their freedom in exchange for security. They will neither have, nor will they deserve either one.
So what is the militarys duty if the Commander in Chief is the one destroying the Constitution they are sworn to defend?
Just curious.
After this, how could one have faith enough to serve an inept institution?
So, surely you've seen some of the great moments of the Commander in Chief that currently runs policy for the US military?
And this was the first clue in 6 years that it was an inept institution?
Oh, I get it now. Welcome back. How was Mars?
While you were away, Earth has been on the verge of total chaos in the absence of any remotely intelligent leadership, mostly thanks to the fundamentalist sheep that seem to make up the highly vocal minority of the human population.
Just to bring you up to speed, the most powerful man in the world has trouble stringing two coherent sentences together when a camera is pointed at him (which is almost constantly, unfortunately), and the runner up is widely regarded as being his poodle. This pretty much implies that the two most powerful military forces on the planet are pretty much running on empty in the IQ dept. As you will have guessed, this means nobody on the front lines is safe from any angle. Many of those on the "Home Front" are pretty much in the same boat.
So, while these idealistic, brave young men and women are trying to protect us in the "free" world, we're all losing the freedom they're dying to protect. You ever hear any of the stories where someone sets of a major alarm at one end of the city, then robs a gold repository at the other end when all the cops are away? That's what's happening here, only the gold being carted off is our freedom and privacy, and the soldiers are off dying in the wrong place for the wrong reason. Given the apparent incompetence of the world leadership, it's more likely being misplaced than stolen.
> rm *.xls
Seriously though, I'm not surprised. It's not just financial spreadsheets that are going to cause these kinds of problems. All manner of financial data can introduce problems, and even things not normally thought of as financial data, like technical specs for the implementation of transactions and accounts in any revenue generating business. If the transaction has an obscure flaw that gets by testing, no amount of accuracy will overcome it.
The fact is, these data are ultimately generated and transcribed by human beings, and that's one thing humans always have and always will do very well - screw up. So you handle it the way any successful person, place or thing would. You double check, make a second person jointly responsible for accuracy and have them double check, and change the transcription process on a regular basis so that it stays intellectually engaging but not too challenging - after all, boredom with a process and complexity of a process will introduce far more errors than "bad information".
There are a lot of people that have a use for computers and software that wouldn't have been able to imagine such a need back in the 1990s. Mostly these are older folks that have no life experience with technology, and are struggling to keep up. Thing is, these people are often retired, and therefore have more time for recreational use. This means they want to spend more time using their computer, and less time managing it.
Now, sure maybe they make up a small part of the tech supported economy, but any time now, there are a whole lot of baby boomers retiring in the US. That's gonna shift things a little.
As a developer that used to work on internally managed software (providing a service sold to internet content providers, not off the shelf software sold to customers), I didn't want monkeys monitoring or managing my software - it wasn't intended for idiots to run, it was intended to provide performance oriented content delivery. It required highly technical monitors to analyze any potential problems and provide feedback to development. That's not the case with the ordinary home computer. It's intended to be used by whoever wants to shell out the money for it, not those that can pass a tech savvy quiz.
This is why Microsoft has been so difficult to catch for the Linux/*BSD crowd. There are so many flavors with no standardization to the setup, that just getting off the ground can make an otherwise intelligent person feel like (s)he needs to be tested for Alzhiemers.
What's needed is a truly intuitive interface, and accessibility (don't forget those with disabilities, they're a pretty important slice of the pie too). I have yet to hear of a distribution that lets you drop the CD in and be surfing the web an hour or so later without having to know all the details of your hardware. Hell, some of them require you to know every technical detail of your hardware but the bloody serial numbers.
Now, I've played with Linux quite a lot in the past, and over the last 5 or 6 years, I've used FreeBSD almost exclusively at home. I've also installed more Windows systems than I care to remember, and as much as I hate to say it, the installation and setup is one place where the FOSS community is just nowhere near up to competing with MS.
When that changes, you can bet I'll be getting my Mom to install it just so I can help her figure out what's wrong without having to travel 1500 miles for tech support or buy some expensive software to do it remotely, or try to figure out what "that thingy at the bottom of the screen" really means.
Now, this isn't to knock the FOSS developers. They're a bunch of very dedicated folks that work very hard, often with no fungible compensation for their efforts. Often they are missing out on things they'd rather be doing to make their systems better. They aren't getting paid to make it monkeyproof. They're trying to make a better OS or a better peice of software. Not a better installation or recovery process.
Does anyone know of a project that really focuses on the installation and configuration of their distribution? I don't. There are some, obviously that go above and beyond other distributions, but not one can yet compete with Windows or MacOS X.
There are other issues, like support availability - which is more a percieved issue (FUD) than a real issue, but those are minor.
The overall image of FOSS amongst the technically unsavvy is one of technical incomprehensibility, which can be managed, but there aren't many PR departments in the FOSS community.
I'm sure there are people still more in touch with the current situation than I am that understand these issues better than I, and are probably aware of more hurdles than I am, but these folks aren't PR people or venture capitalists, so they can't fix the problems any better than I can. What can be done is for those familiar with interface accessibility, installation, and configuration to step up and push harder in those areas. It's not as glorious as kernel development or GUI develpoment, but it's just as important.
management should be held responsible to the outcome of their decisions, good and bad
I think that's the way things generally work (with exceptions, of course) in non-unionized industries. When you put a union in place, it's impossible to fire anyone, and everyone gets a job based on their union membership, not their ability to produce a decent outcome or make coherent decisions.
In some industries, the unions earned bad names because the workers didn't always have to show up for work to get paid. The saying was, "if you're with the union, just stay home, we'll mail your check." There was always the guy doing nothing because he didn't have a clue, but made the same pay as the guy busting his ass.
The unions liked to talk about the times they got the contract because they were known for quality work. That's true. This is because they'd hire 20% more people than were really needed and hope no more than 1 out of 5 was a total moron.