Prediction: 90% of respondants will react to the concept of in-game ads as if someone was offering to attach live leeches to their eyeballs. Brave proclomations will be made about how respondant will never, ever, EVER pay for a game that has in-game advertising, no matter what.
Prediction: If the game is good, same people will buy it and play it, complaining bitterly the whole time. Until and unless the advertisments get so intrusive that they actually interfere with gameplay, people will put up with them to get their gaming fix.
The "I wouldn't have paid money for it, so it's not really a loss to the publishers" argument is fairly old, and I used to buy into it. However, it's flawed. The question isn't whether you would have paid money for the stuff you pirated, it's whether you would have spent money on *something* if you didn't have the pirated stuff.
Example: It's Tuesday night, and I'm bored. How about a couple of hours of computer gaming to pass the time? Excellent! Perhaps I'll make a quick run to the store and pick up Quake IV.
But wait... I noticed yesterday that my torrent of Postal 2 finally finished downloading. And then there's F.E.A.R, I figured if it's free why not? Not much point in paying money for Quake IV if I've got a couple of freebies on my hard drive waiting to be checked out.
So there you have it... a couple of games I wouldn't pay money for, but since I have them, I decide not to go out and pay money for something that, under different circumstances, I *would* consider buying.
Everyone seems to be assuming that you're single/unattached. Well, I guess this *is* Slashdot. If you have a spouse and/or kids, things get more complicated. They should come along on the initial scouting trip. If your spouse works, your company may or may not offer help in finding them a new position.
I'm going to assume that you have some leverage with your employer when you start negotiating the transfer. If they approached you with the idea of moving, you must have some skill or talent that they really value. Relocating an employee isn't cheap, and the number of formerly stable employees who quit their positions within six months of a relocation is surprising.
Much of what you'll experience will depend on the size and age of your employer. Larger, diversified companies that relocate employees as a matter of routine are likely to have a standard list of what they will and won't pay for, and that list usually varies according to your job description and pay grade. If you're working with a smaller company, or one that neglects its HR functions, you may have to negotiate some of this yourself. Here are some things to consider:
1) Preliminary visit: If you've never been out to that area of the country, they should pay for a preliminary visit of a week or so. Visit HQ, talk to the people you'll be working with, get a feel for the area. Basically see if that's an area you want to live in. My former employer used to relocate employees from Pennsylvania to Texas fairly frequently. We learned pretty quickly that employees who had lived in PA didn't like the 100+ degree weather that typifies Texas summmers. We also had one possible relo that suffered horrible allergy problems in Texas, something which had never bothered her in PA.
2) Packing/Moving: They should pay for a professional company to pack up all your stuff, move it, and unpack it. No, it's not cheap. On the other hand, calculate the productivity loss involved if you try to pack up, move yourself cross-country, then unpack in a strange city. There will probably be a limit on how much stuff they'll move for you. You'll get two or three rooms worth of stuff, but they're not going to move a mansion unless you're a senior-level VP.
3) Finding a new place: A lof of this depends on how tight the housing market is where you're going. You should have a reasonable amount of time to find a new abode. If the relo is urgent, they should put you up in a corporate motel type place, and put your possessions in storage, and give you a couple of weeks (or months) to find a new place. If it's less urgent, they should put you up before the move and let you find a place, then have your stuff moved straight in.
4) Cost of living change: Mentioned by others, but worth repeating.
5) Misc expenses: Add them up. The cost of driving cross-country if you keep your car, or the cost of flying otherwise. If you have a lease signed where you currently live, you may have to offer them some money to buy out of it. Maybe you have other long-term commitments (health club, storage room, whatever) that you'll be abandoning.
5) Waiver: Some companies will ask you to sign a waiver that you'll pay back part or all of the relo expenses if you don't spend at least six months (or a year) on the job after the move. Don't sign, especially if they're requesting the relocation. They probably won't try to nail you on it if you do quit, but who needs the headache?
Bottom line - They're asking you to move cross-country. They're not doing you a favor, you're doing them a huge favor. It's in their best interest, and yours, for them to try to make the move as smooth and stress-free as possible. That will enable you to return to productive work as soon as possible.
You're going to destroy my childlike faith in the essential goodness of human nature, and my trust that every post on Slashdot is truthful, accurate, and completely unbiased.
They're gonna get nailed on this one. Hard. And they deserve it.
Well, AMD is certainly gonna try. And I wonder what the hell Intel is up to. From the outside, it appears that they handed AMD some massive smoking-gun evidence for their lawsuit, in exchange for a piece of nebulous marketing fluff that 99.9% of their potential customers won't care about. I don't see any way that Intel could come out ahead on this sort of thing, so... why the hell did they do it?
It's not an advertisement, it's a press release. Advertisements are paid for. Press releases are spammed out in hopes that some news outlet with a hole to fill will print it out of desperation. Of course, if your press release somehow winds up on the front page of Slashdot as actual "news", thats an extra bonus.
Lets check out some quotes from the press release
"When we announced the Notebook Initiative last September, we pledged that our students would receive high quality, business-grade laptops worthy of the investment they and their parents are making in an ISU education," said C. Jack Maynard, ISU provost and vice president for academic affairs. "The selection of the Lenovo ThinkPad fulfills that pledge."
Of course, Mr Maynard said no such thing. If he did, he certainly didn't originate it. Some ad agency person wrote that up and put it in the press release, and a string of uncritical and/or uncaring editors repeated it.
Again, from the article:
"The notebook initiative gives us an opportunity to use technology to support learner-centered, knowledge-centered, assessment-centered and community-centered learning environments. It is a window of opportunity for true innovation. Lenovo ThinkPad will be an excellent partner in our strategies to expand the learning environment of ISU," Powers said.
That's Susan Powers, professor of curriculum, instruction and media technology and chairwoman of ISU's notebook implementation committee. Did she *actually* say that, say in answer to some enterprising reporters searching question? Not a chance in hell. She probably agreed that Lenovos ad agency could make up some quotes and put her name to them.
So we have a new business model:
1. Get worshipful press release published in small-town newspaper. 2. Send anonymous submission to lazy, uncaring Slashdot editors. 3. Profit!!!
First computer I ever messed with was some minicomputer that they set up at my school to show all the science classes. It had Lunar Lander, text version. I didn't get to actually *touch* it, of course, but I remember thinking it was really cool. That would be circa 1974.
In 1977 a friend in high school had dial-in access to the school district computer system. 300 baud acoustic, thermal printer. Then we discovered that UTD had video terminals set up and we could sneak in and dial the school district from there.
In college, the Micro Club had a couple of Commodore Pets, 8K, chiclet keyboard, built in tape drive. I wasted way too much time playing with those.
First computer I bought myself was a Commodore Pet, 32K. Full sized keyboard, outboard cassette drive. $1350 + tax.
Sold that a couple of years later, bought an Apple ][... not a +, a ][ with an Applesoft card. 48K! Dual floppy drives! Woah! Of course, floppy discs cost $30 or $40 for a box of 10. Better notch 'em and use both sides.
Then came the ][e, then a cheap NEC-20 IBM clone (20 meg hard drive!), IBM PS-2 Model 60 with a 286-12, then a 386sx, a 486/33... after that I was working as a tech, and upgraded pretty much every time something new came out.
True, but golf as most weekenders play it isn't much of a sport either. Drive around in a cart drinking beer, get out every couple of minutes to swing a stick and cuss, then get back in the cart and drive off to find your ball.
I joined a WoW guild a few months ago, and in the process of getting to know my fellow guildies, I realized that one of them was a real live actual female. Her character name was feminine, and in guild chat she'd casually talk about waking her kids up, getting dinner ready because her husband was going to be home soon, that sort of thing.
After a couple of weeks, I finally "met" her to swap some gear, and found out she was playing a male character. It was oddly disconcerting. I'm used to assuming that female characters are being played by males, unless proven otherwise. Having someone I knew was female show up as a male character was something I wasn't ready for.
Even better yet still... Voter makes thier decisions on the screen of voting machine #1. Machine #1 prints out a ballot with votes in plain text and scannable barcode. Voter reads the ballot to confirm selections then takes this ballot and feeds it into Machine #2.
Now you've got 3 voting records... machine #1, machine #2, and the paper ballots. Machine #1 can be networked and programmable, #2 can be standalone and pretty darn simple. If the two machines are made by different companies, you've got a system that's not too complicated and should be much more difficult to hack then any single machine solution.
Obviously, there are plenty of holes in this plan. Personally, I seriously doubt that these cameras will be able to read plate numbers anywhere near as accurately as the authorities will have you believe. Especially at night, in foul weather, etc.
But this is a start. In a year or two, they'll trumpet how well the plan is working, trot out a story or two of criminals caught because of the system, (count on a heartwarming story of a kidnapped child saved because the kidnappers plates were spotted), and then tell everyone that by golly, if we had GPS units embedded in every vehicle on the roadways instead of having to rely on CCTV, we could *really* shut down those crooks.
Resignations aren't always planned out beforehand, with the employee carefully weighing their options and having their next job secured before they quit. Oftentimes they're done on the spur of the moment, or at least with no more foresight then "I don't like this job any more". Sometimes it's an attempt by the employee to strongarm the employer into a promotion/raise.
At any rate, the employee submits their resignation. Manager expresses a modicum of regret, tells the employee they'll notify HR, and starts making plans to transition the employees responsibilities to other individuals. Then the employee goes back to their desk, and *then* they realize that in two weeks they'll be out of a job and they don't even have their resume up to date. And they also realize that their current employer doesn't seem to value their contribution nearly as much as the employee thought they did.
So there you have our soon to be ex-employee, feeling a little worried about the future, and thoroughly unloved and unappreciated. Thats a recipe for mischief.
You're probably right, though it's beyond me how Sony could include this product without doing at least a *little* checking. The recording industry has been shooting themselves in the foot over and over again with this whole copy protection/DRM thing. You'd think at some point they'd get a clue and hire a few savvy software engineers. Then before they buy some copy protection scheme and press it onto 20 million CD's, they could give it to their own engineers and ask "Does this work? Can it be beaten if the user holds down the shift key? Can it be beaten with a 49 cent black marker? Does it work with most equipment, or are we going to have half of the buyers bringing them back? ARE WE BREAKING ANY LAWS?"
"As they score points for each crime committed, the CSIs must discover what consists of getting to the next level in the game in order to stop the culprits before they strike again.'"
So essentially, the CSI team needs an expert in video games! In fact, with all the video game inspired violence we're seeing these days, I think just about every big city police department will need a Video Game expert. I think I've found my new career!
How will the police or the FBI know that some heinous crime was inspired by Serious Sam II unless they have an expert like me to tell them?
Yeah, that was my first thought. Even if the kid did jump, how do we know it was something inspired by WoW, and not just a plain 'ol suicide?
I can understand why the parents would sue... not for the money, but in an attempt to fix the blame on something/someone other then themselves. We're not bad parents, this video game is what caused our child to jump!
I worked security at this place while I was going to school. Think mid '80s
They had won a contract from a major hotel firm to design and run their reservation system. The whole system was written by one guy, who by all accounts did an absolutely superhuman job. Of course, the company had to choose whether they wanted the job documented well, or completed by deadline. You can guess what they chose.
Our hero stays busy for a few years, maintaining code and writing new modules, but there are still a long row of empty loose-leaf binders where the documentation should be.
Company gets bought out. After a couple of months, the new owners announce that they're going to rewrite the whole reservation system from scratch, and retire the old system. Our hero comes in next day and demands a large raise. Management declines, hero gives his two weeks, and management cuts him his check and escorts him out the door.
Management then brings in a team of consultants to keep the old system up and running until the new system is ready. Problem is, the team can't get anywhere. Nothings documented, calling the code "spaghetti" would be a compliment, etc etc etc. Meanwhile, they're getting requests from the customer for changes and updates which they can't process. In addition, system crashes now take hours to solve instead of minutes, which is bad because part of the companies revenue is based on system uptime.
After a few weeks, management finally throws in the towel, and realizes they'll have to bring the guy back and pay him what he wants. Except... they can't find him. He's moved, and left no forwarding address. Nobody knows where he is.
Management had to hire a private detective to track the guy down, and they finally found him up in the mountains in Colorado, doing whatever. They convinced him to come back, but I wouldn't want to be managements negotiator in that meeting.
Most people think "What's the big deal?" the first couple of times they get spam in their Email. Just right-click, delete, and it's gone, right? Then you start getting 50 or 60 or 600 a day and it's no longer amusing.
If AOL keeps a leash on the whole bots thing like they claim they will, then it's indeed no big deal. If you log on to AIM five months from now and a dozen bots auto-add themselves and immediatly start sending you ads to refinance your home or buys some herbal V| A GR @, then it might be more of a concern.
Slashdot Mirror
Prediction: 90% of respondants will react to the concept of in-game ads as if someone was offering to attach live leeches to their eyeballs. Brave proclomations will be made about how respondant will never, ever, EVER pay for a game that has in-game advertising, no matter what.
Prediction: If the game is good, same people will buy it and play it, complaining bitterly the whole time. Until and unless the advertisments get so intrusive that they actually interfere with gameplay, people will put up with them to get their gaming fix.
The "I wouldn't have paid money for it, so it's not really a loss to the publishers" argument is fairly old, and I used to buy into it. However, it's flawed. The question isn't whether you would have paid money for the stuff you pirated, it's whether you would have spent money on *something* if you didn't have the pirated stuff.
Example: It's Tuesday night, and I'm bored. How about a couple of hours of computer gaming to pass the time? Excellent! Perhaps I'll make a quick run to the store and pick up Quake IV.
But wait... I noticed yesterday that my torrent of Postal 2 finally finished downloading. And then there's F.E.A.R, I figured if it's free why not? Not much point in paying money for Quake IV if I've got a couple of freebies on my hard drive waiting to be checked out.
So there you have it... a couple of games I wouldn't pay money for, but since I have them, I decide not to go out and pay money for something that, under different circumstances, I *would* consider buying.
Everyone seems to be assuming that you're single/unattached. Well, I guess this *is* Slashdot. If you have a spouse and/or kids, things get more complicated. They should come along on the initial scouting trip. If your spouse works, your company may or may not offer help in finding them a new position.
Anyway, good luck and send us a postcard.
I'm going to assume that you have some leverage with your employer when you start negotiating the transfer. If they approached you with the idea of moving, you must have some skill or talent that they really value. Relocating an employee isn't cheap, and the number of formerly stable employees who quit their positions within six months of a relocation is surprising.
Much of what you'll experience will depend on the size and age of your employer. Larger, diversified companies that relocate employees as a matter of routine are likely to have a standard list of what they will and won't pay for, and that list usually varies according to your job description and pay grade. If you're working with a smaller company, or one that neglects its HR functions, you may have to negotiate some of this yourself. Here are some things to consider:
1) Preliminary visit: If you've never been out to that area of the country, they should pay for a preliminary visit of a week or so. Visit HQ, talk to the people you'll be working with, get a feel for the area. Basically see if that's an area you want to live in. My former employer used to relocate employees from Pennsylvania to Texas fairly frequently. We learned pretty quickly that employees who had lived in PA didn't like the 100+ degree weather that typifies Texas summmers. We also had one possible relo that suffered horrible allergy problems in Texas, something which had never bothered her in PA.
2) Packing/Moving: They should pay for a professional company to pack up all your stuff, move it, and unpack it. No, it's not cheap. On the other hand, calculate the productivity loss involved if you try to pack up, move yourself cross-country, then unpack in a strange city. There will probably be a limit on how much stuff they'll move for you. You'll get two or three rooms worth of stuff, but they're not going to move a mansion unless you're a senior-level VP.
3) Finding a new place: A lof of this depends on how tight the housing market is where you're going. You should have a reasonable amount of time to find a new abode. If the relo is urgent, they should put you up in a corporate motel type place, and put your possessions in storage, and give you a couple of weeks (or months) to find a new place. If it's less urgent, they should put you up before the move and let you find a place, then have your stuff moved straight in.
4) Cost of living change: Mentioned by others, but worth repeating.
5) Misc expenses: Add them up. The cost of driving cross-country if you keep your car, or the cost of flying otherwise. If you have a lease signed where you currently live, you may have to offer them some money to buy out of it. Maybe you have other long-term commitments (health club, storage room, whatever) that you'll be abandoning.
5) Waiver: Some companies will ask you to sign a waiver that you'll pay back part or all of the relo expenses if you don't spend at least six months (or a year) on the job after the move. Don't sign, especially if they're requesting the relocation. They probably won't try to nail you on it if you do quit, but who needs the headache?
Bottom line - They're asking you to move cross-country. They're not doing you a favor, you're doing them a huge favor. It's in their best interest, and yours, for them to try to make the move as smooth and stress-free as possible. That will enable you to return to productive work as soon as possible.
That statistic looks suspicious to me. Are you using some tricky definition of the word "people"?
Shut up! SHUT UP!!
You're going to destroy my childlike faith in the essential goodness of human nature, and my trust that every post on Slashdot is truthful, accurate, and completely unbiased.
Boogerhead.
They're gonna get nailed on this one. Hard. And they deserve it.
Well, AMD is certainly gonna try. And I wonder what the hell Intel is up to. From the outside, it appears that they handed AMD some massive smoking-gun evidence for their lawsuit, in exchange for a piece of nebulous marketing fluff that 99.9% of their potential customers won't care about. I don't see any way that Intel could come out ahead on this sort of thing, so... why the hell did they do it?
What we have here are two different functions. 1) Dancing or other phsical activity to relieve stress. 2) Deleting spam.
I just don't see how combining the two adds anything to either activity.
It's not an advertisement, it's a press release. Advertisements are paid for. Press releases are spammed out in hopes that some news outlet with a hole to fill will print it out of desperation. Of course, if your press release somehow winds up on the front page of Slashdot as actual "news", thats an extra bonus.
Lets check out some quotes from the press release
"When we announced the Notebook Initiative last September, we pledged that our students would receive high quality, business-grade laptops worthy of the investment they and their parents are making in an ISU education," said C. Jack Maynard, ISU provost and vice president for academic affairs. "The selection of the Lenovo ThinkPad fulfills that pledge."
Of course, Mr Maynard said no such thing. If he did, he certainly didn't originate it. Some ad agency person wrote that up and put it in the press release, and a string of uncritical and/or uncaring editors repeated it.
Again, from the article:
"The notebook initiative gives us an opportunity to use technology to support learner-centered, knowledge-centered, assessment-centered and community-centered learning environments. It is a window of opportunity for true innovation. Lenovo ThinkPad will be an excellent partner in our strategies to expand the learning environment of ISU," Powers said.
That's Susan Powers, professor of curriculum, instruction and media technology and chairwoman of ISU's notebook implementation committee. Did she *actually* say that, say in answer to some enterprising reporters searching question? Not a chance in hell. She probably agreed that Lenovos ad agency could make up some quotes and put her name to them.
So we have a new business model:
1. Get worshipful press release published in small-town newspaper.
2. Send anonymous submission to lazy, uncaring Slashdot editors.
3. Profit!!!
"Of course I'm sterile, baby. I own a Dell laptop!"
First computer I ever messed with was some minicomputer that they set up at my school to show all the science classes. It had Lunar Lander, text version. I didn't get to actually *touch* it, of course, but I remember thinking it was really cool. That would be circa 1974.
In 1977 a friend in high school had dial-in access to the school district computer system. 300 baud acoustic, thermal printer. Then we discovered that UTD had video terminals set up and we could sneak in and dial the school district from there.
In college, the Micro Club had a couple of Commodore Pets, 8K, chiclet keyboard, built in tape drive. I wasted way too much time playing with those.
First computer I bought myself was a Commodore Pet, 32K. Full sized keyboard, outboard cassette drive. $1350 + tax.
Sold that a couple of years later, bought an Apple ][... not a +, a ][ with an Applesoft card. 48K! Dual floppy drives! Woah! Of course, floppy discs cost $30 or $40 for a box of 10. Better notch 'em and use both sides.
Then came the ][e, then a cheap NEC-20 IBM clone (20 meg hard drive!), IBM PS-2 Model 60 with a 286-12, then a 386sx, a 486/33... after that I was working as a tech, and upgraded pretty much every time something new came out.
True, but golf as most weekenders play it isn't much of a sport either. Drive around in a cart drinking beer, get out every couple of minutes to swing a stick and cuss, then get back in the cart and drive off to find your ball.
I get more exercise taking the elevator at work.
I would think that shooting things would not be nearly as stressful as having things shoot back at you.
I joined a WoW guild a few months ago, and in the process of getting to know my fellow guildies, I realized that one of them was a real live actual female. Her character name was feminine, and in guild chat she'd casually talk about waking her kids up, getting dinner ready because her husband was going to be home soon, that sort of thing.
After a couple of weeks, I finally "met" her to swap some gear, and found out she was playing a male character. It was oddly disconcerting. I'm used to assuming that female characters are being played by males, unless proven otherwise. Having someone I knew was female show up as a male character was something I wasn't ready for.
Even better yet still... Voter makes thier decisions on the screen of voting machine #1. Machine #1 prints out a ballot with votes in plain text and scannable barcode. Voter reads the ballot to confirm selections then takes this ballot and feeds it into Machine #2.
Now you've got 3 voting records... machine #1, machine #2, and the paper ballots. Machine #1 can be networked and programmable, #2 can be standalone and pretty darn simple. If the two machines are made by different companies, you've got a system that's not too complicated and should be much more difficult to hack then any single machine solution.
Get yourself a totally hot Hispanic girlfriend who doesn't speak a word of English.
Well, that's what *I'd* do.
Obviously, there are plenty of holes in this plan. Personally, I seriously doubt that these cameras will be able to read plate numbers anywhere near as accurately as the authorities will have you believe. Especially at night, in foul weather, etc.
But this is a start. In a year or two, they'll trumpet how well the plan is working, trot out a story or two of criminals caught because of the system, (count on a heartwarming story of a kidnapped child saved because the kidnappers plates were spotted), and then tell everyone that by golly, if we had GPS units embedded in every vehicle on the roadways instead of having to rely on CCTV, we could *really* shut down those crooks.
And they'll probably get it.
Most criminals who get caught are stupid.
There's really no telling how many criminals have managed to avoid these little roadside traps, now is there?
I misread the article title as "UAC Wins Contract to Run Los Alamos", and my first thought was "So this is how it all begins..."
You're being too naive again.
Resignations aren't always planned out beforehand, with the employee carefully weighing their options and having their next job secured before they quit. Oftentimes they're done on the spur of the moment, or at least with no more foresight then "I don't like this job any more". Sometimes it's an attempt by the employee to strongarm the employer into a promotion/raise.
At any rate, the employee submits their resignation. Manager expresses a modicum of regret, tells the employee they'll notify HR, and starts making plans to transition the employees responsibilities to other individuals. Then the employee goes back to their desk, and *then* they realize that in two weeks they'll be out of a job and they don't even have their resume up to date. And they also realize that their current employer doesn't seem to value their contribution nearly as much as the employee thought they did.
So there you have our soon to be ex-employee, feeling a little worried about the future, and thoroughly unloved and unappreciated. Thats a recipe for mischief.
You're probably right, though it's beyond me how Sony could include this product without doing at least a *little* checking. The recording industry has been shooting themselves in the foot over and over again with this whole copy protection/DRM thing. You'd think at some point they'd get a clue and hire a few savvy software engineers. Then before they buy some copy protection scheme and press it onto 20 million CD's, they could give it to their own engineers and ask "Does this work? Can it be beaten if the user holds down the shift key? Can it be beaten with a 49 cent black marker? Does it work with most equipment, or are we going to have half of the buyers bringing them back? ARE WE BREAKING ANY LAWS?"
Evidently this hasn't happened yet.
"As they score points for each crime committed, the CSIs must discover what consists of getting to the next level in the game in order to stop the culprits before they strike again.'"
So essentially, the CSI team needs an expert in video games! In fact, with all the video game inspired violence we're seeing these days, I think just about every big city police department will need a Video Game expert. I think I've found my new career!
How will the police or the FBI know that some heinous crime was inspired by Serious Sam II unless they have an expert like me to tell them?
Yeah, that was my first thought. Even if the kid did jump, how do we know it was something inspired by WoW, and not just a plain 'ol suicide?
I can understand why the parents would sue... not for the money, but in an attempt to fix the blame on something/someone other then themselves. We're not bad parents, this video game is what caused our child to jump!
I worked security at this place while I was going to school. Think mid '80s
They had won a contract from a major hotel firm to design and run their reservation system. The whole system was written by one guy, who by all accounts did an absolutely superhuman job. Of course, the company had to choose whether they wanted the job documented well, or completed by deadline. You can guess what they chose.
Our hero stays busy for a few years, maintaining code and writing new modules, but there are still a long row of empty loose-leaf binders where the documentation should be.
Company gets bought out. After a couple of months, the new owners announce that they're going to rewrite the whole reservation system from scratch, and retire the old system. Our hero comes in next day and demands a large raise. Management declines, hero gives his two weeks, and management cuts him his check and escorts him out the door.
Management then brings in a team of consultants to keep the old system up and running until the new system is ready. Problem is, the team can't get anywhere. Nothings documented, calling the code "spaghetti" would be a compliment, etc etc etc. Meanwhile, they're getting requests from the customer for changes and updates which they can't process. In addition, system crashes now take hours to solve instead of minutes, which is bad because part of the companies revenue is based on system uptime.
After a few weeks, management finally throws in the towel, and realizes they'll have to bring the guy back and pay him what he wants. Except... they can't find him. He's moved, and left no forwarding address. Nobody knows where he is.
Management had to hire a private detective to track the guy down, and they finally found him up in the mountains in Colorado, doing whatever. They convinced him to come back, but I wouldn't want to be managements negotiator in that meeting.
Most people think "What's the big deal?" the first couple of times they get spam in their Email. Just right-click, delete, and it's gone, right? Then you start getting 50 or 60 or 600 a day and it's no longer amusing.
If AOL keeps a leash on the whole bots thing like they claim they will, then it's indeed no big deal. If you log on to AIM five months from now and a dozen bots auto-add themselves and immediatly start sending you ads to refinance your home or buys some herbal V| A GR @, then it might be more of a concern.