As someone who has telecommuted for half of my working life at a variety of companies I would say that in my experience there are obvious pros and cons to working from home.
Ask yourself the following questions:
1) Do you have space for an office at home? Will it take up space currently being used for other purposes? Will your office be used for other purposes in your other 8 hours? You need to be able to close the door on your work at the end of your working day and keep it closed until the next morning.
2) Are you a workaholic or do you have tendencies towards that problem? If so, working from home is dangerous for you as you may not be able to put down what you are doing at the normal end of your working day and may return to your work outside of your core hours. The OP is talking about taking a pay cut. Are you willing to do more for less?
3) Are you disciplined enough to work consistently when your garden, laundry, kitchen, TV or games room are in need of attention or are a potential distraction? Will your spouse expect you to do more housework because you are "at home"?
4) Is your boss disciplined enough to work from home? If your boss would fail to be disciplined when working from home, he/she may assume that you are too. If your office does not have a telecommuting culture, being "different" may breed resentment or envy in your colleagues.
5) Is your office political or cut-throat? Does your job rely on working closely with the end user? Will not being in the office result in your being manoeuvred out of the door if cuts are made, as a result of you being "Out of Sight, Out of Mind"?
6) Not being in the office results in a huge drop in levels of human contact. Can you do without the social aspect of your workplace?
7) Is your company geared up for telecommuting? Will they pay for your home office equipment (printers, paper) and costs (heating, lighting, electricity, furniture, internet, coffee) in the same way that they would if you were in the office? Will they pay for your travel to the "Office" as it's now not your usual place of work?
Don't get me wrong, for the right person and personality, telecommuting is a fantastic opportunity. But I would never have taken a pay cut to work from home. You are saving your company on office space use, electricity, heating, lighting, furniture costs and in my experience you will be hugely more productive working from home where there are far fewer distractions than you would encounter working in an office. You will be fresher when you arrive at your desk having commuted down the stairs rather than down the motorway [freeway/turnpike/peage/autobahn]. Typically the coffee's better too!
But there are commercial applications, too. Suppose you're in a mall, and you want to know how to get from where you are now to the Old Navy store. A forward-thinking mall might provide an app for that.
A forward thinking mall would provide a map for that and not assume that everyone uses the why!?Phone.
That would surely result in a stand off between callers where neither party would answer calls from the other and return the call immediately? What do you do if someone makes an international call to you? What a bizarre state of affairs. I'm reminded of Dirk Gently's fridge.
With tolerances at the micron level and such a remote location (doubly so, given the forthcoming decommissioning of the Space Shuttles), they'd better get it right first time this time and build in far more redundancy than the Hubble Telescope has. I'm reminded of the opening chapter of Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams...
I've found Minefield (kudos to whoever came up with the name) and Fennec (Maemo beta) to be remarkably stable and bug free. The only real showstoppers most users are going to encounter are related to add-on support.
As someone who's suffered working with Beta software that crashed regularly, randomly and failed to have an upgrade path to the Alpha, let alone the released product (you know who you are, Lotus) it's sad to hear all the pathetic whining on here.
Here in the UK most of us are fed up to the back teeth with the nonsense spouted by so-called-expert Scottish Economists. Invisible hand? I don't see it, myself...
David Eddings suggested the ultimate version of this in the Tamuli series in the Second Chapter of 'The Shining Ones'
On the Tegan government:
'Our elected officials have no outside interests. As soon as they're elected, everything they own is sold, and the money's put into the national treasury. If the economy prospers during their term in office, their wealth earns them a profit. If the economy collapses, they lose everything' 'That's absurd. No government ever makes a profit. 'Ours does,' she said smugly, 'and it has to be a real profit. The tax rates are set and cannot be changed, so our officials can't generate a false profit by simply raising taxes.' 'Why would anyone want to be an official in a government like that?' 'Nobody wants to be, Prince Sparhawk. Most Tegans do everything they possibly can to avoid election. The fact that a man's own personal fortune's in the treasury forces him to work just as hard as he possibly can to make sure that the government prospers. Many have worked themselves to death looking after the interests of the Republic.'
What's slightly depressing is that the comment scored only 1. Of course, this was probably because it was (rightly) modded down by the spelling and grammar police.
Holocaust denial? Blasphemy? Race hatred? Incitement to murder? Incitement to commit sexual crimes? Incitement to commit sexual crimes against children? Speaking out against free speech?
We don't live in an existential world. There ARE universal moral laws which we have to abide by. Lack of anonymity actually protects us. The only real argument is over where we draw the line and at what point your "theoretical" anonymity is breached by the investigation of law enforcement officers.
Slashdot Mirror
As someone who has telecommuted for half of my working life at a variety of companies I would say that in my experience there are obvious pros and cons to working from home.
Ask yourself the following questions:
1) Do you have space for an office at home? Will it take up space currently being used for other purposes? Will your office be used for other purposes in your other 8 hours? You need to be able to close the door on your work at the end of your working day and keep it closed until the next morning.
2) Are you a workaholic or do you have tendencies towards that problem? If so, working from home is dangerous for you as you may not be able to put down what you are doing at the normal end of your working day and may return to your work outside of your core hours. The OP is talking about taking a pay cut. Are you willing to do more for less?
3) Are you disciplined enough to work consistently when your garden, laundry, kitchen, TV or games room are in need of attention or are a potential distraction? Will your spouse expect you to do more housework because you are "at home"?
4) Is your boss disciplined enough to work from home? If your boss would fail to be disciplined when working from home, he/she may assume that you are too. If your office does not have a telecommuting culture, being "different" may breed resentment or envy in your colleagues.
5) Is your office political or cut-throat? Does your job rely on working closely with the end user? Will not being in the office result in your being manoeuvred out of the door if cuts are made, as a result of you being "Out of Sight, Out of Mind"?
6) Not being in the office results in a huge drop in levels of human contact. Can you do without the social aspect of your workplace?
7) Is your company geared up for telecommuting? Will they pay for your home office equipment (printers, paper) and costs (heating, lighting, electricity, furniture, internet, coffee) in the same way that they would if you were in the office? Will they pay for your travel to the "Office" as it's now not your usual place of work?
Don't get me wrong, for the right person and personality, telecommuting is a fantastic opportunity. But I would never have taken a pay cut to work from home. You are saving your company on office space use, electricity, heating, lighting, furniture costs and in my experience you will be hugely more productive working from home where there are far fewer distractions than you would encounter working in an office. You will be fresher when you arrive at your desk having commuted down the stairs rather than down the motorway [freeway/turnpike/peage/autobahn]. Typically the coffee's better too!
60/60/24/7/52/10/10
52 and one seventh, or two sevenths in a leap year, please.
I've always hated the phrase 24/7/365.
24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 weeks a what? Approximately 7 year period?
Please, just stick to 24/7.
...bad news about the chips in your computer, which were probably developed in Israel. Switch it off now and send it back.
Say you're happy now, once more, with feeling.
Where do we go from here?
That's too Beautiful and too Dangerous.
...will not be televised. Or streamed over the internet for that matter.
...but does it work for the most famous of Belgian Beers? - Smurfing Beer! --> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zff5LVkDzHA
Thank you for that snippet. Nice feature. Mod parent up - informative.
Numbers 6x07
Possibly the worst description of leetspeak and IRC ever. I cringed:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2rGTXHvPCQ
The boot is on the other foot now.
But there are commercial applications, too. Suppose you're in a mall, and you want to know how to get from where you are now to the Old Navy store. A forward-thinking mall might provide an app for that.
A forward thinking mall would provide a map for that and not assume that everyone uses the why!?Phone.
That would surely result in a stand off between callers where neither party would answer calls from the other and return the call immediately? What do you do if someone makes an international call to you? What a bizarre state of affairs. I'm reminded of Dirk Gently's fridge.
As Joshua said:
"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."
How about a nice game of chess? (I'll be using Deep Rybka and Deep Fritz)
Either delete your account, or better still take my approach and don't sign up in the first place.
After all, what's wrong with being a hermit?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope#Flawed_mirror
With tolerances at the micron level and such a remote location (doubly so, given the forthcoming decommissioning of the Space Shuttles), they'd better get it right first time this time and build in far more redundancy than the Hubble Telescope has. I'm reminded of the opening chapter of Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams...
I've found Minefield (kudos to whoever came up with the name) and Fennec (Maemo beta) to be remarkably stable and bug free. The only real showstoppers most users are going to encounter are related to add-on support. As someone who's suffered working with Beta software that crashed regularly, randomly and failed to have an upgrade path to the Alpha, let alone the released product (you know who you are, Lotus) it's sad to hear all the pathetic whining on here.
China.
Wrong. It's now half-empty. Spam levels have dropped 50% since Christmas.
Spam volumes shrink over festive season
Or Status.net even?
Here in the UK most of us are fed up to the back teeth with the nonsense spouted by so-called-expert Scottish Economists. Invisible hand? I don't see it, myself...
David Eddings suggested the ultimate version of this in the Tamuli series in the Second Chapter of 'The Shining Ones'
On the Tegan government:
'Our elected officials have no outside interests. As soon as they're elected, everything they own is sold, and the money's put into the national treasury. If the economy prospers during their term in office, their wealth earns them a profit. If the economy collapses, they lose everything'
'That's absurd. No government ever makes a profit.
'Ours does,' she said smugly, 'and it has to be a real profit. The tax rates are set and cannot be changed, so our officials can't generate a false profit by simply raising taxes.'
'Why would anyone want to be an official in a government like that?'
'Nobody wants to be, Prince Sparhawk. Most Tegans do everything they possibly can to avoid election. The fact that a man's own personal fortune's in the treasury forces him to work just as hard as he possibly can to make sure that the government prospers. Many have worked themselves to death looking after
the interests of the Republic.'
What's slightly depressing is that the comment scored only 1. Of course, this was probably because it was (rightly) modded down by the spelling and grammar police.
Where do you draw the line?
Holocaust denial? Blasphemy? Race hatred? Incitement to murder? Incitement to commit sexual crimes? Incitement to commit sexual crimes against children? Speaking out against free speech?
We don't live in an existential world. There ARE universal moral laws which we have to abide by. Lack of anonymity actually protects us. The only real argument is over where we draw the line and at what point your "theoretical" anonymity is breached by the investigation of law enforcement officers.
You could just stick to the good old Muppet threat level by embedding http://www.geekandproud.net/terror/terror.jpg into your site.