They learn to do their work on their desktop machines. It's not really that complicated.
They (or their direct manager) had to make a case for needing the laptop. It is explained to them that they are wholly responsible for that laptop. The fact of the matter is we're strict on the issuance of laptops because we know the truth about laptop use. Out of 122 laptops issued only 16 of those have EVER been utilized out of the office. The loss of laptops here in 2 years? Five. But only three of those count. The other 2 were lost to employees that resigned, or were fired while the laptop was not in reach (disgruntled employees).
Once it's made clear that they may be financially liable for their laptop, they take special care of them. None of those three had to pay anything because they had clearly been stolen.
The numbers show that people may think they *need* a laptop, but actually don't. (specific to this company)
I worked for the Department of Health Services. Obviously they have data that is ultra-sensitive since it involves classifications of all disorders (including HIV, AIDS, mental). When people "lost" laptops they weren't even given so much as a slap on the wrist. They had certain vaguely numbered forms to fill out (for insurance purposes), and then some requisitions for a new laptop to be ordered. What was obvious to me was ignored by them. These people hadn't lost anything at all. They simply got a free laptop out of the deal, and got an upgrade for work. After looking through the support system some people had lost, misplaced, or had stolen multiple laptops.
I don't work for the government now, I work in the private sector for a technology company. The difference here is that if you lose a laptop you don't get a new one "just like that." Every laptop has special tools that "phone home" if they're connected to the internet. If, and only if, after 6 months, they get no response from this laptop do you get a new laptop issued. The neat thing is these guys here have no idea that this "phone home" software is installed.
The consequences for this carelessness are pretty serious. If you lose a laptop, and it phones home from any of your login IPs, you'll find your desk cleared of all clutter, and your boxes out on the curb.
I believe my position at the Department of Health was a "make work" position -- i.e. it was established to satisfy some quota. I cared enough to resign because I don't want a fake job. I'm not happy just being there. I hear people say "man, that is the dream job. Get paid $50k/yr. to do absolutely nothing." I hear that all the time. I don't like that kind of job. It's boring, it's dull, and it leads to the very complacency that allows this lackey attitude about hardware.
I think the government is a magnet for people that want to do very little, and who don't really care about anyone else. To them, their job is an entitlement. It's like a cancer cluster. The people that cause this attitude are in denial and too busy justifying it all to care how much harm they're actually doing.
There is no end in sight; they just hired my brother in-law's wife -- she's never had a job longer than 3 weeks (literally). Yet, she's been working for the government for 6 weeks now. Go figure.
Why is this flamebait? Seems rather insightful to me.
I don't agree with this guy's view about the election being "stolen" at all. I'm on the side that thinks those complaining were indeed sore losers. However, I'm not going to mod this guy down because I don't agree with him. Which is precisely what happened here...
What I do agree with is his encouragement of debate, and questioning of "facts."
If you have mod points, try to be objective (look at #5). If you can't be objective, don't waste your moderator points on an agenda. You do us all a great disservice.
Quick, mod this post as flamebait and/or "Off Topic" -- Thanks.
I'm all for catching the distributors of child pornography. I hope they find all the freaks exploiting these children.
However, I know that they never stop there. If they have the information they won't use it for just investigating cases of child pornography. Furthermore, I don't trust their techniques of catching the predators.
Many years ago (1998, or 1999) there was a crackdown on the alt.binaries.erotica.* groups to catch distributors of child pornography. Instead, what they did is arrest hundreds of people victimized by the distributors. Sure, many of those hundreds were intentionally seeking pictures of children. But many others were falsely accused because they blindly downloaded "all new articles."
The way this happened was quite simple... Much like the spambots of today, these distributors taint many, many groups with their filth. It's a sort of scorched earth policy, perhaps. Regardless, I don't trust the government to know the difference between the incidental versus the intentional.
The primary reason being the weapon they would potentially wield against people that choose to speak out...
"Oh, look, in 2002 you downloaded DSC_1000.JPG from a newsgroup, and it was depicting an unclothed child... LOCK 'EM UP!"
It's a shame that only Circuit City is challenging the MPAA. Their offering is commercially viable. But I don't think Circuit City has the financial wherewithall to take this to its conclusion.
I would love it if some large corporations would gang up against the MPAA and RIAA. Power without challenge is a dangerous thing -- evidenced by DRM, and the litigious nature of these two agencies.
Many years ago Circuit City bravely (but foolishly) pursued the DivX versus DVD issue (the betamax vs. VHS of its time). That battle, which, if it had gone Circuit City's way, would have hurt the consumer. It's ironic now, because DivX was a kind of DRM back then. You bought a movie at a lower price but had to renew via a special player that connected to a site over a phoneline to renew your ability to watch that movie. Or, you could spend more and get "unlimited viewing" -- assuming, of course, the movie studio even offered it. From the initial releases there were only a handful of movies that could be had for "unlimited viewing."
There was a grass-roots effort to thwart this nonsense (DRM over the phone) and DVD as we know it now won the battle; only to be replaced by another DRM years later. A much more pervasive and restrictive DRM. The irony of Circuit City's current stand is thick.
This time, however, I'd back 'em up... Is someone up to the cause? Does the grass even have roots anymore? In spite of all of the podders out there, I don't think most of them have the mental fortitude to stand against the MPAA/RIAA. Are they even aware?
(objectively speaking: this could be a bad idea because you can bring in any number of iPods and copy a single movie to each of them. This, I believe, it's ethically reprehensible; it's also a major flaw behind this service.)
Pay-per-action [aka pay-per-conversion] is an even better model. You only pay if people perform the action that justifies the cost.
"Actions" and "Conversions" are subjective. For some companies this is a sale. For others, it's a reservation. Yet others view signing up for a mailing list, or forum as a conversion.
You can read up on Google Checkout here. However, in order for this to work you have to have a third party handling your conversions [transactions]... in this case, Google.
The primary concern about "click-fraud" is that you're being charged for clicks that were meant to intentionally drive your costs up. In essence this means wasting money, since you can't really track who meant to click and who didn't. This adds up to tens of thousands of dollars very quickly.
The irony is that many of the companies that are uncomfortable with this medium for advertising is that they're perfectly willing to spend millions on TV and print advertising where they can't even reliably track anything. And worse, they have to hope the people that actually give a damn about their product or service are even in the market. I don't know about you, but I get my drink, go to the bathroom, and pop popcorn during commercials. With online advertising -- especially on search engines -- people only see your commercials [ads] because they were looking for something related. (I could go on a tangent here about how a clothing company will bid on keywords related to automobiles... maybe later.)
Having worked in the online advertising/marketing industry (tech sector) for over 2 years now, this problem is not easily solved. The fraudsters know all about proxies, onion routing, and a host of other tricks to drive up the costs of competitors. Then, there are those that simply think it's clever to generate traffic (on IRC we called them spammers, floodbots, etc.).
We provide our clients with click-fraud reporting using our algorithms. They're pretty accurate. But, this accuracy is based on a model, which is based on 50% hard data, and 50% conjecture. What's missing with our reporting is that Google, Yahoo!, and MSN don't give it any weight, and frankly dismiss it.
I'm hopeful that this "coming together" will help client confidence so they can move away from [nearly] untrackable advertising on TV, print, and radio. It all starts with "the big 3" -- if they're willing to assist, it's much better than a 3rd party trying to decipher 3rd party results and then have to prove it to "the big 3."
Well. With DDR my family looked like a bunch of kids with Tourette's Syndrome. Now they'll appear violently epileptic.
I can only hope they're unaware when this is released.
The technical angle on this software is what redeemed CmdrTaco from the "oh-this-will-only-make-me-look-more-dumb dept." Pretty interesting stuff, especially since it seems this stuff matures more rapidly once it goes into a game. (i.e. Flight Sims).
...I won't get my $.50 back now when I flip off the soda machine every time it chomps my coins? Or, is the snack machine going to recognize my frustration, and shake the stuck bag of Cheetos loose for me?
They're using two different players. Doesn't that invalidate this test? At the end of the "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" review, he even states the cropping issue with blu-ray is "likely a player issue"...
Earlier adopters are the only ones that will see these shortcomings in either format.
Once it matures, who's going to know the difference. After reading all three of these fluffy articles, I still have no idea which format is "better" because there was no control.
...if all ISPs simultaneously switched SMTP to another port... At least the existing "bugs" (as in malicious code) would break immediately.
Sadly, any trick (even as drastic as I've suggested) would only be temporary. People still click on random.exe files (and scripts) as fast as they come in. Any Dilbert, South Park, or Pokemon screensaver will be clicked on my some nitwit. I see the forum posts about how certain screensavers don't work. Well, of course they don't -- they're not screensavers, they're little servers designed to relay spam.
Given the vast numbers of idiots, and amateurs online here in the U.S., of course we're in the lead. (I have two teens -- both of them have clicked on evil.exe's -- firing off malicious code warnings on the Windows machines).
Educating the gajillion newly techno-blessed is the only way to get this under control.
How hard is it to understand, "If a stranger gives you an apple -- DON'T EAT IT!"
Ever since we began using CSS for handling the visuals on our reporting platform we've had a much easier time making a big splash with clients. In the past just giving a new look and feel was all that was needed to appease the vast majority of clients; in spite of the data shown being exactly the same. Sure CSS requires effort, and as I read through the W3C's documentation I don't see them make the claim that CSS is necessarily easy on its own. Instead, the combination of tools (HTML and CSS) make presentation easier to update and shape.
DPSS (Designer Perceptive Style Sheets) should be ready in the next 50 to 100 years though. So, Mr. Dvorak, hold out just a bit longer and you can just think it, and it will be done.
Instead, Mr. D, rant about how the different browsers (IE6 rules!) failed to follow a published standard. The largest obstacles in web development are not the individual elements, but the containers. Having to do the same thing 3 different ways is obscene. On that, we agree.
On cable connections, you're sharing the connection -- is it so shocking that you're not getting what's advertised?
Then there's the whole issue of the internet in general. We've seen sites that are probably paying for OC3s and DS3s for their sites and you go visit their site and there's bad latency.
Then I click on my Slashdot bookmark -- voila! The explanation, darn Slashdotters hogging up all the bandwidth.
The point being there's a lot of noise in between the last hop out of your ISP and the destination address. Get over it. It's not false advertising, it's the unpredictability of the internet. Trying doing speed tests to many destinations.
There you go. Hack. If your grasp on the english language was as good as your grasp on weak attacks, you would have noticed the difference between "disinterested" (an adjective) and "disinterest" (a noun). At least parse the correct word. That aside, "disinterested" still works since "indifference" was the context.
For the hackish little text parser that you are, did you catch any misspellings?
Seriously, if you're going to stoop to parsing my grammar, don't leave out the misspellings. Don't do anything half-assed... Be a full ass.
I don't think of Yahoo! as a technology company having worked with their "development team". They're a second-rate hack, at best. We have submitted YSS feeds to them and had them rejected with various problems. We would then wait 2 hours, and resubmit the feed, unchanged...
The feed is then accepted.
We also manage keyword buys. We'll submit a list of keywords, for example, "baby jump suits" -- to have it rejected (without notifying us -- we have to discover it after-the-fact). The word that actually goes in is "baby jump suit". The next time we submit, "baby jump suits" goes in... Clearly subjective, depending on which hack approved the submission.
One can deduce that their approval process is manual. That means they probably have a bunch of $10/hr. hacks doing the grunt work. It's inconsistant.
I digress...
My point is that if you have people instead of systems, algorithms, and/or applications to do the tedious work, you have:
Human error.
Human cheating.
Disinterest.
I don't think Yahoo! the corporate entity is aware of these goings-on. But given the clear inconsistancies that make Yahoo! difficult to work with, I think they're accountable nonetheless.
At the same time, if someone on a boat isn't helping keep it affloat, you don't sink the boat. So, in spite of Yahoo! needing to be slapped -- I'd rather see them slapped with a dose of "hey your products suck" than a bunch of lawsuits by money-grubbing lawyers.
Slashdot Mirror
They learn to do their work on their desktop machines. It's not really that complicated.
They (or their direct manager) had to make a case for needing the laptop. It is explained to them that they are wholly responsible for that laptop. The fact of the matter is we're strict on the issuance of laptops because we know the truth about laptop use. Out of 122 laptops issued only 16 of those have EVER been utilized out of the office. The loss of laptops here in 2 years? Five. But only three of those count. The other 2 were lost to employees that resigned, or were fired while the laptop was not in reach (disgruntled employees).
Once it's made clear that they may be financially liable for their laptop, they take special care of them. None of those three had to pay anything because they had clearly been stolen.
The numbers show that people may think they *need* a laptop, but actually don't. (specific to this company)
I worked for the Department of Health Services. Obviously they have data that is ultra-sensitive since it involves classifications of all disorders (including HIV, AIDS, mental). When people "lost" laptops they weren't even given so much as a slap on the wrist. They had certain vaguely numbered forms to fill out (for insurance purposes), and then some requisitions for a new laptop to be ordered. What was obvious to me was ignored by them. These people hadn't lost anything at all. They simply got a free laptop out of the deal, and got an upgrade for work. After looking through the support system some people had lost, misplaced, or had stolen multiple laptops.
I don't work for the government now, I work in the private sector for a technology company. The difference here is that if you lose a laptop you don't get a new one "just like that." Every laptop has special tools that "phone home" if they're connected to the internet. If, and only if, after 6 months, they get no response from this laptop do you get a new laptop issued. The neat thing is these guys here have no idea that this "phone home" software is installed.
The consequences for this carelessness are pretty serious. If you lose a laptop, and it phones home from any of your login IPs, you'll find your desk cleared of all clutter, and your boxes out on the curb.
I believe my position at the Department of Health was a "make work" position -- i.e. it was established to satisfy some quota. I cared enough to resign because I don't want a fake job. I'm not happy just being there. I hear people say "man, that is the dream job. Get paid $50k/yr. to do absolutely nothing." I hear that all the time. I don't like that kind of job. It's boring, it's dull, and it leads to the very complacency that allows this lackey attitude about hardware.
I think the government is a magnet for people that want to do very little, and who don't really care about anyone else. To them, their job is an entitlement. It's like a cancer cluster. The people that cause this attitude are in denial and too busy justifying it all to care how much harm they're actually doing.
There is no end in sight; they just hired my brother in-law's wife -- she's never had a job longer than 3 weeks (literally). Yet, she's been working for the government for 6 weeks now. Go figure.
She'll have that laptop pawned in no time.
Why is this flamebait? Seems rather insightful to me.
I don't agree with this guy's view about the election being "stolen" at all. I'm on the side that thinks those complaining were indeed sore losers. However, I'm not going to mod this guy down because I don't agree with him. Which is precisely what happened here...
What I do agree with is his encouragement of debate, and questioning of "facts."
If you have mod points, try to be objective (look at #5). If you can't be objective, don't waste your moderator points on an agenda. You do us all a great disservice.
Quick, mod this post as flamebait and/or "Off Topic" -- Thanks.
I'm all for catching the distributors of child pornography. I hope they find all the freaks exploiting these children.
However, I know that they never stop there. If they have the information they won't use it for just investigating cases of child pornography. Furthermore, I don't trust their techniques of catching the predators.
Many years ago (1998, or 1999) there was a crackdown on the alt.binaries.erotica.* groups to catch distributors of child pornography. Instead, what they did is arrest hundreds of people victimized by the distributors. Sure, many of those hundreds were intentionally seeking pictures of children. But many others were falsely accused because they blindly downloaded "all new articles."
The way this happened was quite simple... Much like the spambots of today, these distributors taint many, many groups with their filth. It's a sort of scorched earth policy, perhaps. Regardless, I don't trust the government to know the difference between the incidental versus the intentional.
The primary reason being the weapon they would potentially wield against people that choose to speak out...
"Oh, look, in 2002 you downloaded DSC_1000.JPG from a newsgroup, and it was depicting an unclothed child... LOCK 'EM UP!"
Privacy protects the innocent too, you know...
Isn't it amazing how the side you're on is always right?
The other side is always lying, deceiving, manipulating... aka propagandizing. But, certainly not YOUR side.
(pardon my completely unbiased interjection)
Duh!
"Proofreading is your friend." - fragmentate, circa 2006.
187
I'm not the least bit impressed. I did 5Gs in a fighter jet in New Mexico.
4G, feh.
I know your SSN.
It's 000-00-0966!
Yeah, that process worked great for Windows Vista...
Can't wait...
I love this idea... Seriously.
Gonna try it today. Seriously.
It's a shame that only Circuit City is challenging the MPAA. Their offering is commercially viable. But I don't think Circuit City has the financial wherewithall to take this to its conclusion.
I would love it if some large corporations would gang up against the MPAA and RIAA. Power without challenge is a dangerous thing -- evidenced by DRM, and the litigious nature of these two agencies.
Many years ago Circuit City bravely (but foolishly) pursued the DivX versus DVD issue (the betamax vs. VHS of its time). That battle, which, if it had gone Circuit City's way, would have hurt the consumer. It's ironic now, because DivX was a kind of DRM back then. You bought a movie at a lower price but had to renew via a special player that connected to a site over a phoneline to renew your ability to watch that movie. Or, you could spend more and get "unlimited viewing" -- assuming, of course, the movie studio even offered it. From the initial releases there were only a handful of movies that could be had for "unlimited viewing."
There was a grass-roots effort to thwart this nonsense (DRM over the phone) and DVD as we know it now won the battle; only to be replaced by another DRM years later. A much more pervasive and restrictive DRM. The irony of Circuit City's current stand is thick.
This time, however, I'd back 'em up... Is someone up to the cause? Does the grass even have roots anymore? In spite of all of the podders out there, I don't think most of them have the mental fortitude to stand against the MPAA/RIAA. Are they even aware?
(objectively speaking: this could be a bad idea because you can bring in any number of iPods and copy a single movie to each of them. This, I believe, it's ethically reprehensible; it's also a major flaw behind this service.)
Pay-per-action [aka pay-per-conversion] is an even better model. You only pay if people perform the action that justifies the cost.
"Actions" and "Conversions" are subjective. For some companies this is a sale. For others, it's a reservation. Yet others view signing up for a mailing list, or forum as a conversion.
You can read up on Google Checkout here. However, in order for this to work you have to have a third party handling your conversions [transactions]... in this case, Google.
The primary concern about "click-fraud" is that you're being charged for clicks that were meant to intentionally drive your costs up. In essence this means wasting money, since you can't really track who meant to click and who didn't. This adds up to tens of thousands of dollars very quickly.
The irony is that many of the companies that are uncomfortable with this medium for advertising is that they're perfectly willing to spend millions on TV and print advertising where they can't even reliably track anything. And worse, they have to hope the people that actually give a damn about their product or service are even in the market. I don't know about you, but I get my drink, go to the bathroom, and pop popcorn during commercials. With online advertising -- especially on search engines -- people only see your commercials [ads] because they were looking for something related. (I could go on a tangent here about how a clothing company will bid on keywords related to automobiles... maybe later.)
Having worked in the online advertising/marketing industry (tech sector) for over 2 years now, this problem is not easily solved. The fraudsters know all about proxies, onion routing, and a host of other tricks to drive up the costs of competitors. Then, there are those that simply think it's clever to generate traffic (on IRC we called them spammers, floodbots, etc.).
We provide our clients with click-fraud reporting using our algorithms. They're pretty accurate. But, this accuracy is based on a model, which is based on 50% hard data, and 50% conjecture. What's missing with our reporting is that Google, Yahoo!, and MSN don't give it any weight, and frankly dismiss it.
I'm hopeful that this "coming together" will help client confidence so they can move away from [nearly] untrackable advertising on TV, print, and radio. It all starts with "the big 3" -- if they're willing to assist, it's much better than a 3rd party trying to decipher 3rd party results and then have to prove it to "the big 3."
Well. With DDR my family looked like a bunch of kids with Tourette's Syndrome. Now they'll appear violently epileptic.
I can only hope they're unaware when this is released.
The technical angle on this software is what redeemed CmdrTaco from the "oh-this-will-only-make-me-look-more-dumb dept." Pretty interesting stuff, especially since it seems this stuff matures more rapidly once it goes into a game. (i.e. Flight Sims).
People sure have a lot of time on their hands!
Earlier adopters are the only ones that will see these shortcomings in either format.
Once it matures, who's going to know the difference. After reading all three of these fluffy articles, I still have no idea which format is "better" because there was no control.
I choose Betamax.
Sadly, any trick (even as drastic as I've suggested) would only be temporary. People still click on random .exe files (and scripts) as fast as they come in. Any Dilbert, South Park, or Pokemon screensaver will be clicked on my some nitwit. I see the forum posts about how certain screensavers don't work. Well, of course they don't -- they're not screensavers, they're little servers designed to relay spam.
Given the vast numbers of idiots, and amateurs online here in the U.S., of course we're in the lead. (I have two teens -- both of them have clicked on evil .exe's -- firing off malicious code warnings on the Windows machines).
Educating the gajillion newly techno-blessed is the only way to get this under control.
How hard is it to understand, "If a stranger gives you an apple -- DON'T EAT IT!"
Dvorak is waiting for DPSS.
Ever since we began using CSS for handling the visuals on our reporting platform we've had a much easier time making a big splash with clients. In the past just giving a new look and feel was all that was needed to appease the vast majority of clients; in spite of the data shown being exactly the same. Sure CSS requires effort, and as I read through the W3C's documentation I don't see them make the claim that CSS is necessarily easy on its own. Instead, the combination of tools (HTML and CSS) make presentation easier to update and shape.
DPSS (Designer Perceptive Style Sheets) should be ready in the next 50 to 100 years though. So, Mr. Dvorak, hold out just a bit longer and you can just think it, and it will be done.
Instead, Mr. D, rant about how the different browsers (IE6 rules!) failed to follow a published standard. The largest obstacles in web development are not the individual elements, but the containers. Having to do the same thing 3 different ways is obscene. On that, we agree.
Unless you're being fecetious...
Then there's the whole issue of the internet in general. We've seen sites that are probably paying for OC3s and DS3s for their sites and you go visit their site and there's bad latency.
Then I click on my Slashdot bookmark -- voila! The explanation, darn Slashdotters hogging up all the bandwidth.
The point being there's a lot of noise in between the last hop out of your ISP and the destination address. Get over it. It's not false advertising, it's the unpredictability of the internet. Trying doing speed tests to many destinations.
What does gramma need with 3Mbps anyway?!
There you go. Hack. If your grasp on the english language was as good as your grasp on weak attacks, you would have noticed the difference between "disinterested" (an adjective) and "disinterest" (a noun). At least parse the correct word. That aside, "disinterested" still works since "indifference" was the context.
For the hackish little text parser that you are, did you catch any misspellings?
Seriously, if you're going to stoop to parsing my grammar, don't leave out the misspellings. Don't do anything half-assed... Be a full ass.
I'm pretty sure it costed someone, somewhere some coin... it just wasn't me.
If after 15 cups of a beverage (non-alcoholic) in one hour I don't have the shakes, there's not enough caffeine.
Cost: $0 .02%
Research time: 1 hour.
Damage to Camels and Llamas: less than
The feed is then accepted.
We also manage keyword buys. We'll submit a list of keywords, for example, "baby jump suits" -- to have it rejected (without notifying us -- we have to discover it after-the-fact). The word that actually goes in is "baby jump suit". The next time we submit, "baby jump suits" goes in... Clearly subjective, depending on which hack approved the submission.
One can deduce that their approval process is manual. That means they probably have a bunch of $10/hr. hacks doing the grunt work. It's inconsistant.
I digress...
My point is that if you have people instead of systems, algorithms, and/or applications to do the tedious work, you have:
I don't think Yahoo! the corporate entity is aware of these goings-on. But given the clear inconsistancies that make Yahoo! difficult to work with, I think they're accountable nonetheless.
At the same time, if someone on a boat isn't helping keep it affloat, you don't sink the boat. So, in spite of Yahoo! needing to be slapped -- I'd rather see them slapped with a dose of "hey your products suck" than a bunch of lawsuits by money-grubbing lawyers.