1) suspended all promotions and raises except cost of living increases 2) Slashed COL increases, but promised us a bonus next year at the performance review. 3) Conducted a massive cost cutting project to trim wasteful practices. 4) Layed off a few people, not a lot, but enough to make a dent, and we are only about 300 people. 5) Increased insurance costs from $20 a month per person to $60, and from $40 a family to $160. 6) Stopped hiring altogether except by executive order.
This seems rather light, but its the reasons why that piss me off:
1) Our company had a great year 1999 and we had positioned ourself for growth in 2000. However, we hadn't been paying attention to the fact that the reason why we were doing so good was because people were buying early due to Y2k. I called this myself even and it came true (of course no one listened to me when I told them), 2000 was a disaster for us.
2) We threw tons of money into a new project, spending all this money and shrinking our margin drastically. Then when sales sour and our margin went negative, we had to "cut costs." DUH, but had you paid attention to your exceptional trends you would have not ended spending so much money on a project at the wrong time!
3) When we increased the insurance, it was spun off as "well we are below industry standards for employee insurance contribution, and to continue to afford this coverage we had to raise the contribution." Bullshit. I don't care that you can't afford it. Again YOU spent too much money to begin with. Also a 200-300% increase in employee contribution is as good as a pay cut and is way too much of a one time increase. You didn't give us a very good COLI to begin with and now you take it right back?
4) Any company should be constantly looking at wasteful spending. It wasn't until this that we started turning off lights we didn't need after 5:00 PM!!!!!! WTF??????? We leave the lights on all night? I was shocked, this being something I would have done for the entire 40 year life of the company, mostly because I am a bit of an enviromentalist. Seems silly but you should have seen some of the other things they suddenly became frugal on. This is the most frivolous example, and is due to LAZY THINKING.
Again this isn't as severe as the 50% pay cut, but its this kind of thing workers shouldn't stand for. The mistakes of the upper management need to be more severely felt by upper management.
"I can't cut my CEO level paycheck! I won't be able to afford my mortgage on my mansion or the payments on my Limo!"
"Suck it up and live in an apartment and drive a Volkswagon like the rest of us dorkboy."
No one will read this, but I had to say something.
The handle is on TOP of the iMac/eMac. You grasp the top of the iMac on the handle (which is CLEARLY visible to anyone willing to think differently about carrying a monitor;)) and place your other hand under the front of the monitor. Turn it about 45 degrees and its quite convenient I've felt for lugging those things around.
Would you mind explaining to me exactly why my Handspring needs a 2 ghz processor?
Biggest problem is NOT the processor. There are tons of market factors as to why Palms may not be selling. One that comes to mind is, oh, that the processor is perhaps good enough and no one's in a hurry to upgrade!!
PalmOS is intuitive, simple, and does EXACTLY what it was designed to do. It doesn't need any major programming and its very powerful and flexible. How much processing power do you need to call up a person's phone number when you tap their name???
We haven't bothered covering the recurring news of declining real-world violence (while video games just get more gruesome and explicit), mostly because it's the same story over and over.
If thats the case, then why do you let JonKatz continue submit his drivel over and over?:)
Here's a detailed account of when my IT department tried that. Note this is on a windows NT network.
When I was first here, everyone had admin rights to their machine. They could install anything. Then we got hit with a software audit and found too many installed versions of software. IT cracked down by downgrading everyone to a "power user". You couldn't install software.
Well, taking away admin rights took away a lot of things from EVERYONE in the company. My company does software development, but I'm a support person. My job relies on me being able to occasionally uninstalling and installing our OWN software, which of course I have license to use. It also requires us to have certain admin rights to aspects of the desktop machine, as per the installation instructions to complete it, such as windows services. Those were restricted from me now.
Well, the whole situation eventually backfired. I was the first to speak up, but since i was in support I shouldn't need all that to do my job, and upper management never listens to the hacks in a cost center. Then programming (a profit center;)) began to speak up, and demanded exceptions so people could develop properly and access things that you could only do as a desktop admin. Then other departments started asking for exceptions, because programming had them, why shouldn't they?!
One day, they just gave up and when a person asks for admin rights, or has a problem which could be solved with admin rights, IT just turns it back on without question, and all new logins go out with desktop admin rights.
The moral of the story? The developers ability to develop software outweighed the IT departments need to crack down on software, and ITs response was too restrictive.
The REAL solution they should have come up with in the first place that they later implemented: Auditing Software which records what programs are on the machine and return a report so IT knows how many licenses it needs for software, or to police when it has too many copies and check who doesn't need one.
The G4 is not 128. The G4 has a 128 bit vector processing unit which processes the "Altevec" commands that optimized applications can use to get a performance increase. The rest of the chip is still 32 bit.
For those who don't keep up with motorola or Apple, Altevec is the same idea as MMC was for the pentium pro, only slightly better (which isn't saying much considering MMC).
Damnit, all the esoteric geeks and nerds out there an none of you have ever listened to Firesign Theater??????? If you had you'd all know this guy and all his aliases... George LaRoy Tirebiter, Porgie Tirebiter, etc etc ad infinitum.:)
You must ALL go out and buy all the Firesign Theater tapes/CD you can find and listen to them now, and you'll never have this problem again!;)
I'm not a moderator but I might just become one to help you get a score of 5. You just provided the missing link to my article below.
Its all about PASTTIMES. How you spend your free time, your hobbies, pursuits, and how seriously you are involved in them. In Korea its online gaming. In Europe, its Soccer (Sorry I'm american;)). In Canada, its usually Hockey. In America, its american sports.
Online gaming is a SPORT in Korea. Now take it into that context and try to expand it. You'll understand whats going on. It probably hasn't caught on in places like Japan because Japan's obsession is baseball. In the US its usually football, basketball (GO SIXERS!!!!!!!!!!), hockey, or baseball (in that order, with hockey and basketball probably getting about the same attention nationally).
Now these are broad strokes, as the posting points out, but in any culture we have those of us who are just obsessed with our sports. Korea didn't have the same kind of national sports or national pasttime that unites people for no reason other than the hope that their home team wins.
You obviously didn't read the article, nor did you read my response below.
A 21 year old was being arrogant about a kill he made in Lineage, and therefore the Korean mob tracked him down and beat the crap out of him! These are ADULTS!!
I also find in all societies age has nothing to do with maturity. Also this phenomenon in korea has nothing to do with maturity. Its cultural.
See this is what I was talking about before. In the states games and behavior like this are dismissed as juvenile or geeky. In Korea, its far more serious, and Lineage probably isn't the only thing this is evident in.
Okay, I'm a 26 white american male, of irish descent and I probably am pulling this out of my ass. However, I'd like to think I pay attention, know a bit about sociology, and watch too much Asian Cinema!:)
Things like games, animation, comics, games, etc in the United States are considered only for a "minority" of people. Even though there are millions and millions of copies of Diablo 2 sold (a game I frequent) I know no one in real life who plays Diablo 2 online other than myself. I know a few who played it on their personal machines, and then put it away and went on with life. I myself feel "different" with this respect.
In general, going online in any form, especially gaming, is usually considered for Geeks in the US, at least from the vibes I get. If there are people playing this game with me, they aren't talking except on web boards and email.
However, this isn't the case in Asia. The common example is Animation and Japan. For some reason, they see Animation as a very important part of their culture. People hold parades to look like their favorite anime characters in Japan! Anime is for all ages, as you can see by the wide selection of everything from the super sappy to the hard core violent and sexual scenes one can only see in "adult" anime.
I don't think I can really explain it, but its something to do with games, gadgets, technology, etc. Its just that stuff that is considered "geeky kiddie stuff" in the states, is revered in Asian cultures for all Ages.
It just so happens that in this case, its not very healthy. (as opposed to Anime Tentacle Porn which is very healthy!:))
I wonder if something like Slashdot would be considered mainstream in Korea?:)
Okay lets stop drawing parallels with Linux and arguing that point and lets actually stick to the topic of TimeWarner using AOL email.
Its stupid, period. And your argument falls on its face because AOL is a consumer product. Its not a corporate product. Corporations by default need something relatively easy to use but they also need lots of features. Thats why lots of larger companies use Outlook and not outlook express. Outlook express is for HOME use, as is AOL.
And to go back to your linux parallel, if it was all about ease of use, companies would have switched to Macintoshes a long time ago. However thanks to "compatibility" and "features" Windows helped dominate because there were more choices to configure systems to do some of the really odd things corporations needed to get done.
If AOL-timewarner really wanted to increase their consumer base (because someone with some importants HAS to know that their email program sucks compared to corporate powertools like Outlook) they would take the carrot approach as mentioned in the article, by giving incentives to employees to use it for their personal email service.
This is why I like working for companies that don't sell directly to consumers:)
1) What kind of CD-R maker stockpiles blank CDs to drive prices down and then allows stockpiles to run out? CD-Rs are not in limited supply or production and its a commodity market. If one supplier does this, the others will step up production and undercut him.
2) If ALL the manufacturers do this, its anti-competitive activity and its illegal. Memory chip companies had excuses when production materials were in short supply and their were problems abroad in chip making factories (didn't one major plant burn down in Southeast asia?). CD makers have no major disasters forcing them all to raise prices.
3) Someone mentioned oil. Yes we are facing some oil price increases which is used to make CDs, but then the article is short sighted in that anything that REMOTELY involves the purchase of oil will go up in cost. Many of our daily costs will go up and its not isolated to CD-Rs.
4) 35 cents???? Okay could someone recheck with this person and ask if he just badly worded this post? 35 cents as many people have noted is a deal. Does he mean 35 cost to produce? 35 to buy (if so where the hell is he buying them so cheap?)? An additional 35 cents in price? What what what?
5) Where the hell did he get his sources? Does he work for Verbatim?;)
6) I said he a lot because I'm lazy and neither checked if the poster mentioned their gender nor did I want to modify my post to be Politically correct. If this person is a she I apologize for being a lazy half assed american.
The fact is, as a Tech support rep, my CEO doesn't really directly care for me as a person, except by giving me a paycheck. He's a nice guy but we don't know each other. However, my direct manager does care about me. I respect her and I she always listens to me. She's not authorized to give me $2000 on the spot but she will buy treats for my group. She will help out in any way she can.
Part of it is just good management... CARE. However, you can't train caring into someone, you either care or you don't.
This is why the government has such problems with the little details of life. They can't treat everyone as an individual because that would take too much time.
But thats why we need more people in middle management who are intelligent and care. I got lucky:)
Re:computer nerds doesn't always = intelligent
on
Send out the Clones?
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· Score: 1
No do not filter this out... its important!:)
Okay Taco was being amusing, but if he were dead serious, he'd deserve having a man in full Plate Mail beating him with a rubber chicken.
Cloning is a dangerous subject. When you clone someone, you are cloning a human being. When do his rights as a being stop, and when he is suddenly subhuman? Now some would put this in line with abortion debates and some would simply be selfish and say I don't care... well its those people who dismiss this argument who such laws are designed to stop!!
Cloning needs serious debate. I think research must be pursued into cloning, and I think that one day cloning a limb or an organ is something we must do, but cloning an entire human and sticking him in a tank somewhere just in case you need a transplant suddenly destroys all our present day notions of who is human and who deserves human rights.
Sorry I'm no MS fan but I must refute you
on
Buried in email?
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· Score: 1
I long ago used to use Eudora. I now use Outlook 2001 at work and Entourage (an expanded outlook express for Mac) at home. Most of your comments are not correct, and in fact I'm performing those actions right now.
First of all yes, email should be text. HTML and formating is very bad in an email as outlook allows you to impose YOUR formatting on other people's email, which is extremely stupid. However, I can override this in the options set. I can also force during the install of outlook to have everyone's emails sent in plain text. Most shops don't do this but its what I would do if I ran an IT shop and wanted everyone to only see email they way THEY wanted it to be seen, not the way others did.
I can so control the reply to in Outlook and OE. The option simply doesn't exist in the header of the email window. You have to open another options window and there it is. Kind of annoying interface wise but the functionality is there.
You can so create copies of incoming emails to multiple folders and have the copies treated exactly the way you want. You simply specify a filter to move the email to a folder and you can specify as an additional option to copy it to another folder. You specify as many copies as you want.
As for archiving, if you right click on a folder and select properties, the first option you see is ARCHIVING. I for one use that frequently at work.
There are two reasons why I post this (not for some tech support lesson):
1) To teach you a lesson about knowing your opposition. I know several things about outlook that ARE annoying (like a crappy email search tool). But all of your statements are utterly FALSE and destroy your point.
2) To refute your position because its NOT necessarily the technology any more when it comes to email.
It is our reliance on a technology for communication that has some huge advantages and huge disadvantages over verbal speech, but is drastically different and which people have no idea how to use on so many different levels.
I'll write something on that later... cuz I think the experts referenced in the article have no idea how to use email properly.
The one thing that prevents me from running SETI@home constantly is that its not free for me or the environment to run SET@home. It takes electricity for me to run that all day. I have to pay for that electricity and if I run that 24/7, thats at least 4 times the normally amount that I run my computer (Assuming I'm on the computer 6 solid hours after work and the rest of the time I'm working, commuting or sleeping.) It may not seem like much but every little scrap counts when you have huge student loans to pay off.
Now maybe I'm being a little selfish but being paid to run a program like that would help me get over spending a little extra on electricity.
It may sound selfish, but just ask Joe Americana if he feels the same way.
The is part of software I work with every day. If I walk into a store and buy goods, tax is based on the location of the store. If call a store from PA (6%) to place an order at a store in DE (no tax) and go to pick up the order I'm not charged tax. If I had said previous order delivered to PA its 6%.
Its a little different if I go into the store and pay for goods and then have them delivered. I essentially have bought the goods and ownership is mine. Usually delivery involves an extra fee so I'm paying for an extra service. Tax will be where I pay for the goods.
Its a bit low but I wanted everyone to consider Information Science and Technology. This is all about CS vs CE, but IST is a very viable option and is all too often considered a "BS major" as someone on this list put it.
IST is a very very important field of study, and we need more IST majors or IST thinking people working on Linux. If we do I think we can really give linux a push.
Of course I'm probably giving into a Troll, but it needs to be said.
See, in high school, most people think that Information Science/Technology is where CS majors go when they can't cut it. Unfortunately thats a myth spread by those who are narrow minded.
IST (as we called it in my college) is really a natural growth of of computers. There is more to computers than just hardware and software. Thats what most people break it down into. In truth there is a third component people keep forgetting... the HUMAN.
IST is about information. Information is what humans need. IST majors concentrate on getting information from the computer, to the human being wanting the information.
The problem is with many CS curriculums these days is that they concentrate on theory and mathematics and coding, but they rarely deal with the practicality of creating an interface, designing a database which strong relational integrity, and dealing with humans to figure out what they need.
IST majors deal with this directly. Technically, IST is not as intensive as CS or engineering, but there are other kinds of knowledge other than coding a good recurrive algorythm in C or cracking a code or fixing a bug.
Now these things can be learned by anyone, and usually are learned after college if you don't learn them before. However, its a huge advantage to anyone who comes out of college with that information. Without that information, biases about what makes a good interface or system for the masses usually ends up screwing up your work because no one wants to use it.
Gee... isn't that one of the main problems with Linux now? There isn't an interface easy enough for everyone to use yet so no one wants to use it, BECAUSE YOU CAN'T GET INFORMATION FROM IT IF YOU DON'T KNOW HOW TO USE IT!
There are a lot of good responses to why older people have a tendency to have better social and political experience (not always, I've known some people older than me who still didn't know what they were doing at all).
However, I'd like to play devil's advocate for a second.
Age does not always come with wisdom. Sometimes older people are arrogant in their age. They think that because they are older they do know more. They also become set in their ways, and don't recognize that their might be a better way.
How do I broach with a manager the subject of looking at the Extreme Programming at my present job? The present programming process sucks, and lots of people would tell you the same thing. But the managers aren't aware of XP, and if I even attempt to broach it with them, they'd be insulted. I know something they don't? How dare I suggest we don't already have the best method we can possibly use!
Thanks to this stigma of age and experience (which is also tied to the life one is at a job as well as how old someone is) its not always easy at some jobs to broach someone with a new thing or a new idea because you are a young person, or a new person. Well hell, sometimes I just have a better idea! And the idea should be accepted at face value, not based on my age or how long I've worked somewhere.
All too often there is no moderation between youthful idealism and older complacancy (sp?).
Slashdot Mirror
You had me up until you claimed that JonKatz writes real Journalism. WHATS WRONG WITH YOU MAN?
That parents are buying the games for their children in the first place WITHOUT heeding the ratings?
1) suspended all promotions and raises except cost of living increases
2) Slashed COL increases, but promised us a bonus next year at the performance review.
3) Conducted a massive cost cutting project to trim wasteful practices.
4) Layed off a few people, not a lot, but enough to make a dent, and we are only about 300 people.
5) Increased insurance costs from $20 a month per person to $60, and from $40 a family to $160.
6) Stopped hiring altogether except by executive order.
This seems rather light, but its the reasons why that piss me off:
1) Our company had a great year 1999 and we had positioned ourself for growth in 2000. However, we hadn't been paying attention to the fact that the reason why we were doing so good was because people were buying early due to Y2k. I called this myself even and it came true (of course no one listened to me when I told them), 2000 was a disaster for us.
2) We threw tons of money into a new project, spending all this money and shrinking our margin drastically. Then when sales sour and our margin went negative, we had to "cut costs." DUH, but had you paid attention to your exceptional trends you would have not ended spending so much money on a project at the wrong time!
3) When we increased the insurance, it was spun off as "well we are below industry standards for employee insurance contribution, and to continue to afford this coverage we had to raise the contribution." Bullshit. I don't care that you can't afford it. Again YOU spent too much money to begin with. Also a 200-300% increase in employee contribution is as good as a pay cut and is way too much of a one time increase. You didn't give us a very good COLI to begin with and now you take it right back?
4) Any company should be constantly looking at wasteful spending. It wasn't until this that we started turning off lights we didn't need after 5:00 PM!!!!!! WTF??????? We leave the lights on all night? I was shocked, this being something I would have done for the entire 40 year life of the company, mostly because I am a bit of an enviromentalist. Seems silly but you should have seen some of the other things they suddenly became frugal on. This is the most frivolous example, and is due to LAZY THINKING.
Again this isn't as severe as the 50% pay cut, but its this kind of thing workers shouldn't stand for. The mistakes of the upper management need to be more severely felt by upper management.
"I can't cut my CEO level paycheck! I won't be able to afford my mortgage on my mansion or the payments on my Limo!"
"Suck it up and live in an apartment and drive a Volkswagon like the rest of us dorkboy."
No one will read this, but I had to say something.
;)) and place your other hand under the front of the monitor. Turn it about 45 degrees and its quite convenient I've felt for lugging those things around.
The handle is on TOP of the iMac/eMac. You grasp the top of the iMac on the handle (which is CLEARLY visible to anyone willing to think differently about carrying a monitor
Now someone mod this up so people will know.
Would you mind explaining to me exactly why my Handspring needs a 2 ghz processor?
Biggest problem is NOT the processor. There are tons of market factors as to why Palms may not be selling. One that comes to mind is, oh, that the processor is perhaps good enough and no one's in a hurry to upgrade!!
PalmOS is intuitive, simple, and does EXACTLY what it was designed to do. It doesn't need any major programming and its very powerful and flexible. How much processing power do you need to call up a person's phone number when you tap their name???
We haven't bothered covering the recurring news of declining real-world violence (while video games just get more gruesome and explicit), mostly because it's the same story over and over.
:)
If thats the case, then why do you let JonKatz continue submit his drivel over and over?
He just choses, correctly, not to use it :)
Here's a detailed account of when my IT department tried that. Note this is on a windows NT network.
;)) began to speak up, and demanded exceptions so people could develop properly and access things that you could only do as a desktop admin. Then other departments started asking for exceptions, because programming had them, why shouldn't they?!
When I was first here, everyone had admin rights to their machine. They could install anything. Then we got hit with a software audit and found too many installed versions of software. IT cracked down by downgrading everyone to a "power user". You couldn't install software.
Well, taking away admin rights took away a lot of things from EVERYONE in the company. My company does software development, but I'm a support person. My job relies on me being able to occasionally uninstalling and installing our OWN software, which of course I have license to use. It also requires us to have certain admin rights to aspects of the desktop machine, as per the installation instructions to complete it, such as windows services. Those were restricted from me now.
Well, the whole situation eventually backfired. I was the first to speak up, but since i was in support I shouldn't need all that to do my job, and upper management never listens to the hacks in a cost center. Then programming (a profit center
One day, they just gave up and when a person asks for admin rights, or has a problem which could be solved with admin rights, IT just turns it back on without question, and all new logins go out with desktop admin rights.
The moral of the story? The developers ability to develop software outweighed the IT departments need to crack down on software, and ITs response was too restrictive.
The REAL solution they should have come up with in the first place that they later implemented: Auditing Software which records what programs are on the machine and return a report so IT knows how many licenses it needs for software, or to police when it has too many copies and check who doesn't need one.
Because after reading this article, he sounds suspiciously like JonKatz with his random inane geek rhetoric.
The G4 is not 128. The G4 has a 128 bit vector processing unit which processes the "Altevec" commands that optimized applications can use to get a performance increase. The rest of the chip is still 32 bit.
For those who don't keep up with motorola or Apple, Altevec is the same idea as MMC was for the pentium pro, only slightly better (which isn't saying much considering MMC).
Damnit, all the esoteric geeks and nerds out there an none of you have ever listened to Firesign Theater??????? If you had you'd all know this guy and all his aliases... George LaRoy Tirebiter, Porgie Tirebiter, etc etc ad infinitum. :)
;)
You must ALL go out and buy all the Firesign Theater tapes/CD you can find and listen to them now, and you'll never have this problem again!
I'm not a moderator but I might just become one to help you get a score of 5. You just provided the missing link to my article below.
;)). In Canada, its usually Hockey. In America, its american sports.
Its all about PASTTIMES. How you spend your free time, your hobbies, pursuits, and how seriously you are involved in them. In Korea its online gaming. In Europe, its Soccer (Sorry I'm american
Online gaming is a SPORT in Korea. Now take it into that context and try to expand it. You'll understand whats going on. It probably hasn't caught on in places like Japan because Japan's obsession is baseball. In the US its usually football, basketball (GO SIXERS!!!!!!!!!!), hockey, or baseball (in that order, with hockey and basketball probably getting about the same attention nationally).
Now these are broad strokes, as the posting points out, but in any culture we have those of us who are just obsessed with our sports. Korea didn't have the same kind of national sports or national pasttime that unites people for no reason other than the hope that their home team wins.
Now they have something... online gaming.
You obviously didn't read the article, nor did you read my response below.
A 21 year old was being arrogant about a kill he made in Lineage, and therefore the Korean mob tracked him down and beat the crap out of him! These are ADULTS!!
I also find in all societies age has nothing to do with maturity. Also this phenomenon in korea has nothing to do with maturity. Its cultural.
See this is what I was talking about before. In the states games and behavior like this are dismissed as juvenile or geeky. In Korea, its far more serious, and Lineage probably isn't the only thing this is evident in.
Okay, I'm a 26 white american male, of irish descent and I probably am pulling this out of my ass. However, I'd like to think I pay attention, know a bit about sociology, and watch too much Asian Cinema! :)
:))
:)
Things like games, animation, comics, games, etc in the United States are considered only for a "minority" of people. Even though there are millions and millions of copies of Diablo 2 sold (a game I frequent) I know no one in real life who plays Diablo 2 online other than myself. I know a few who played it on their personal machines, and then put it away and went on with life. I myself feel "different" with this respect.
In general, going online in any form, especially gaming, is usually considered for Geeks in the US, at least from the vibes I get. If there are people playing this game with me, they aren't talking except on web boards and email.
However, this isn't the case in Asia. The common example is Animation and Japan. For some reason, they see Animation as a very important part of their culture. People hold parades to look like their favorite anime characters in Japan! Anime is for all ages, as you can see by the wide selection of everything from the super sappy to the hard core violent and sexual scenes one can only see in "adult" anime.
I don't think I can really explain it, but its something to do with games, gadgets, technology, etc. Its just that stuff that is considered "geeky kiddie stuff" in the states, is revered in Asian cultures for all Ages.
It just so happens that in this case, its not very healthy. (as opposed to Anime Tentacle Porn which is very healthy!
I wonder if something like Slashdot would be considered mainstream in Korea?
Okay lets stop drawing parallels with Linux and arguing that point and lets actually stick to the topic of TimeWarner using AOL email.
:)
Its stupid, period. And your argument falls on its face because AOL is a consumer product. Its not a corporate product. Corporations by default need something relatively easy to use but they also need lots of features. Thats why lots of larger companies use Outlook and not outlook express. Outlook express is for HOME use, as is AOL.
And to go back to your linux parallel, if it was all about ease of use, companies would have switched to Macintoshes a long time ago. However thanks to "compatibility" and "features" Windows helped dominate because there were more choices to configure systems to do some of the really odd things corporations needed to get done.
If AOL-timewarner really wanted to increase their consumer base (because someone with some importants HAS to know that their email program sucks compared to corporate powertools like Outlook) they would take the carrot approach as mentioned in the article, by giving incentives to employees to use it for their personal email service.
This is why I like working for companies that don't sell directly to consumers
This submission wasn't very well thought out.
;)
1) What kind of CD-R maker stockpiles blank CDs to drive prices down and then allows stockpiles to run out? CD-Rs are not in limited supply or production and its a commodity market. If one supplier does this, the others will step up production and undercut him.
2) If ALL the manufacturers do this, its anti-competitive activity and its illegal. Memory chip companies had excuses when production materials were in short supply and their were problems abroad in chip making factories (didn't one major plant burn down in Southeast asia?). CD makers have no major disasters forcing them all to raise prices.
3) Someone mentioned oil. Yes we are facing some oil price increases which is used to make CDs, but then the article is short sighted in that anything that REMOTELY involves the purchase of oil will go up in cost. Many of our daily costs will go up and its not isolated to CD-Rs.
4) 35 cents???? Okay could someone recheck with this person and ask if he just badly worded this post? 35 cents as many people have noted is a deal. Does he mean 35 cost to produce? 35 to buy (if so where the hell is he buying them so cheap?)? An additional 35 cents in price? What what what?
5) Where the hell did he get his sources? Does he work for Verbatim?
6) I said he a lot because I'm lazy and neither checked if the poster mentioned their gender nor did I want to modify my post to be Politically correct. If this person is a she I apologize for being a lazy half assed american.
The fact is, as a Tech support rep, my CEO doesn't really directly care for me as a person, except by giving me a paycheck. He's a nice guy but we don't know each other. However, my direct manager does care about me. I respect her and I she always listens to me. She's not authorized to give me $2000 on the spot but she will buy treats for my group. She will help out in any way she can.
:)
Part of it is just good management... CARE. However, you can't train caring into someone, you either care or you don't.
This is why the government has such problems with the little details of life. They can't treat everyone as an individual because that would take too much time.
But thats why we need more people in middle management who are intelligent and care. I got lucky
No do not filter this out... its important! :)
Okay Taco was being amusing, but if he were dead serious, he'd deserve having a man in full Plate Mail beating him with a rubber chicken.
Cloning is a dangerous subject. When you clone someone, you are cloning a human being. When do his rights as a being stop, and when he is suddenly subhuman? Now some would put this in line with abortion debates and some would simply be selfish and say I don't care... well its those people who dismiss this argument who such laws are designed to stop!!
Cloning needs serious debate. I think research must be pursued into cloning, and I think that one day cloning a limb or an organ is something we must do, but cloning an entire human and sticking him in a tank somewhere just in case you need a transplant suddenly destroys all our present day notions of who is human and who deserves human rights.
I long ago used to use Eudora. I now use Outlook 2001 at work and Entourage (an expanded outlook express for Mac) at home. Most of your comments are not correct, and in fact I'm performing those actions right now.
First of all yes, email should be text. HTML and formating is very bad in an email as outlook allows you to impose YOUR formatting on other people's email, which is extremely stupid. However, I can override this in the options set. I can also force during the install of outlook to have everyone's emails sent in plain text. Most shops don't do this but its what I would do if I ran an IT shop and wanted everyone to only see email they way THEY wanted it to be seen, not the way others did.
I can so control the reply to in Outlook and OE. The option simply doesn't exist in the header of the email window. You have to open another options window and there it is. Kind of annoying interface wise but the functionality is there.
You can so create copies of incoming emails to multiple folders and have the copies treated exactly the way you want. You simply specify a filter to move the email to a folder and you can specify as an additional option to copy it to another folder. You specify as many copies as you want.
As for archiving, if you right click on a folder and select properties, the first option you see is ARCHIVING. I for one use that frequently at work.
There are two reasons why I post this (not for some tech support lesson):
1) To teach you a lesson about knowing your opposition. I know several things about outlook that ARE annoying (like a crappy email search tool). But all of your statements are utterly FALSE and destroy your point.
2) To refute your position because its NOT necessarily the technology any more when it comes to email.
It is our reliance on a technology for communication that has some huge advantages and huge disadvantages over verbal speech, but is drastically different and which people have no idea how to use on so many different levels.
I'll write something on that later... cuz I think the experts referenced in the article have no idea how to use email properly.
I just thought I'd ask because I thought I finally filtered all thethe Drivel from my Slashdot.
The one thing that prevents me from running SETI@home constantly is that its not free for me or the environment to run SET@home. It takes electricity for me to run that all day. I have to pay for that electricity and if I run that 24/7, thats at least 4 times the normally amount that I run my computer (Assuming I'm on the computer 6 solid hours after work and the rest of the time I'm working, commuting or sleeping.) It may not seem like much but every little scrap counts when you have huge student loans to pay off.
Now maybe I'm being a little selfish but being paid to run a program like that would help me get over spending a little extra on electricity.
It may sound selfish, but just ask Joe Americana if he feels the same way.
The is part of software I work with every day. If I walk into a store and buy goods, tax is based on the location of the store. If call a store from PA (6%) to place an order at a store in DE (no tax) and go to pick up the order I'm not charged tax. If I had said previous order delivered to PA its 6%.
Its a little different if I go into the store and pay for goods and then have them delivered. I essentially have bought the goods and ownership is mine. Usually delivery involves an extra fee so I'm paying for an extra service. Tax will be where I pay for the goods.
Its a bit low but I wanted everyone to consider Information Science and Technology. This is all about CS vs CE, but IST is a very viable option and is all too often considered a "BS major" as someone on this list put it.
IST is a very very important field of study, and we need more IST majors or IST thinking people working on Linux. If we do I think we can really give linux a push.
For more read my post about 36 lines down.
Of course I'm probably giving into a Troll, but it needs to be said.
:)
See, in high school, most people think that Information Science/Technology is where CS majors go when they can't cut it. Unfortunately thats a myth spread by those who are narrow minded.
IST (as we called it in my college) is really a natural growth of of computers. There is more to computers than just hardware and software. Thats what most people break it down into. In truth there is a third component people keep forgetting... the HUMAN.
IST is about information. Information is what humans need. IST majors concentrate on getting information from the computer, to the human being wanting the information.
The problem is with many CS curriculums these days is that they concentrate on theory and mathematics and coding, but they rarely deal with the practicality of creating an interface, designing a database which strong relational integrity, and dealing with humans to figure out what they need.
IST majors deal with this directly. Technically, IST is not as intensive as CS or engineering, but there are other kinds of knowledge other than coding a good recurrive algorythm in C or cracking a code or fixing a bug.
Now these things can be learned by anyone, and usually are learned after college if you don't learn them before. However, its a huge advantage to anyone who comes out of college with that information. Without that information, biases about what makes a good interface or system for the masses usually ends up screwing up your work because no one wants to use it.
Gee... isn't that one of the main problems with Linux now? There isn't an interface easy enough for everyone to use yet so no one wants to use it, BECAUSE YOU CAN'T GET INFORMATION FROM IT IF YOU DON'T KNOW HOW TO USE IT!
Okay, I'm off my high horse
There are a lot of good responses to why older people have a tendency to have better social and political experience (not always, I've known some people older than me who still didn't know what they were doing at all).
However, I'd like to play devil's advocate for a second.
Age does not always come with wisdom. Sometimes older people are arrogant in their age. They think that because they are older they do know more. They also become set in their ways, and don't recognize that their might be a better way.
How do I broach with a manager the subject of looking at the Extreme Programming at my present job? The present programming process sucks, and lots of people would tell you the same thing. But the managers aren't aware of XP, and if I even attempt to broach it with them, they'd be insulted. I know something they don't? How dare I suggest we don't already have the best method we can possibly use!
Thanks to this stigma of age and experience (which is also tied to the life one is at a job as well as how old someone is) its not always easy at some jobs to broach someone with a new thing or a new idea because you are a young person, or a new person. Well hell, sometimes I just have a better idea! And the idea should be accepted at face value, not based on my age or how long I've worked somewhere.
All too often there is no moderation between youthful idealism and older complacancy (sp?).