I thought most Slashdotters where talented enough to get a job.
(sarc) aside, the odds are that if you can hold one job, you can likely find another. Or are you so amazingly talented a job searching that you hit the perfect, most fulfilling, highest paying job of all time on your first hit?
This is the problem most people have when looking for jobs: They think they (themselves) have nothing to offer. They sell themselves short and go into interviews with their hat in their hand.
Well screw that. A company hires a person because they have a need for a skillset. People have skillsets. When you look for a job, negotiate with the power you have (that you have something the company wants.)
I agree with half of what people have said. He should look at leaving and should document everything.
But look at doing some stuff that's lower tech. (Most CPA's need to be taught where the power button is, and think you're talking about the car when you mention a firewall.) Send some nice color articles on laptop theft and network intrusion (with the important parts highlighted) to the color printer and post them in the public places in the office. (Yes, color. They love color. And large terrifying headlines.) Make a bi-weekly security newsletter and physically send it to peoples offices. No email, have you seen the state of these guys Outlook? They've got 5000 email in their in-box! Half unread!)
1) It's about 10 times faster and 50x more accurate to enter numbers on the number pad.
2) If you're familiar with the menu system you can shortcut it by just hitting 3-1-2 (or whatever).
3) They work in noisy areas.
4) Privacy and security. Keypad entry means not having to say things like credit card numbers, SSN, and other personal information out loud. Which I have often heard in cafés, etc. Good thing I don't feel like getting into credit card fraud.
You might get modded funny, but I'd give it a +1 informative.
After moving last month I navigated quite a number of these systems, ranging from Not Completely Infuriating to Horrible. (Yes, I enunciate clearly, you smart asses)
After the sixth time the electric company's system misunderstood me I said "Fuck you!" very clearly to which it responded with "I thought I heard you say you'd like to talk to an operator. Please wait while we connect you."
Subsequent use of that colorful phrase gave me an operator in about 3/4 of the voice menus I tried.
The only reason I lock my door is to keep the guys upstairs from coming in when they get to drunk to remember where they live. And to keep the maid from walking in while I'm masturbating.
As for keeping valuable things and thieves separate, the only thing that makes that happen is the knowledge that someone else in my building has left the door unlocked.
Most computers should work fine by sustaining themselves with their own heat, but I wouldn't power up a hard drive that I cared about if it was below freezing. I would try to find a tiered power-up system like hard core liquid cooled system use. These go between the power switch and the motherboard, so that powering on first pre-warms the components, and only when they got to an acceptable temperature does the system power on.
Wonder if peltier pumps would be handy since you can simply reverse the current to reverse the heat/cool direction...
I use it. If you use Windows I don't see how you can live without Windows-E and Windows-R and Windows - M (or D).
That "Windows Menu" key is a big waste of space though.
I say keep Caps-Lock, it's handy for accessibility reasons.
But can we please get rid of any key with "Scr Lk", "PtrSc" or "Sys Rq" on it? I mean for fuck's sake.
What about things that can't be taught?
on
The Expert Mind
·
· Score: 1, Flamebait
Question: If I learn the rules of baseball until I can chant them in my sleep, including the current stats on all current players and teams, what is my skill on the field?
Answer: Who the hell knows.
Or how about creative expression? How many years do I have to study Picasso to become a leading force in a revolutionary new art movement?
What about personality? How long do I have to intern with Bill Gates to become a billionaire?
Using chess is an awful example because it's a small closed system with a simple set of rules. Skills for chess are roughly in the same category as "factory worker" where if you push button A it does thing B.
Just because orange juice is good at slaking my thirst doesn't make it a good choice for engine coolant. Or blood.
Having too many people involved in decisions is the best way for a company to kill its self. When you say "There isn't any limit on how many people can be involved (the more the better, in fact)" you destroy yourself. The more people you have, the more input that needs to be processed, and you quickly reach the Productivity Event Horizon where no one can do any work because they're constantly thinking about someone else's job. The larger the company, the less likely any one has knowledge to make an informed decision in another part. Yet they'll feel the need to chip in anyway because it's still "their" project.
I'm generally a much bigger fan of Motion Picture development style. Pay everyone really well to do what they do really well. Gaffers gaff, costumers costume, actors act, and when its done, everyone goes their own way. Cost effective, well trained and motivated people and high quality output. (technical quality. Very rarely seem boom mikes in shots any more.) It does take a leader with a vision to tell these people where to start though. And that's something your business model lacks.
Hiring a person into this environment who won't screw it up will be a bitch. And that's a bitch on top of regular hiring. How to bring someone in who's a restrained team player, highly self motivated (there's no promotions) skilled, and willing to work in your experiment.
When your only objection to "business as usual" is the "sole profit of a board of directors and merciless shareholders" you're probably better off just having a very liberal profit sharing program and that's it.
Sounds like you are focused enough to make enough money. Take some time and enjoy the other 143 hours in the week. What's the point in making more money if you're working too much to enjoy it?
I saw the coroner van in front of a $10 million house on Friday. See all the good that money did the dead guy.
As a contractor for 12 years I found that I get more down in my part-time hours than most people get done in their full time jobs. What's the lesson there? Double my rates.
On topic, you can stay focused by paying attention to your productive cycle. Do you work better in mornings? Evenings? Do you work better on a four or six day work week? My most productive times are 2-7PM and midnight to 5 am on a thirteen day work cycle (10 on, three off).
Also you should have a designated office space if you're working from home, something closed off from the rest of your home so you don't suddenly realize you need to do dishes or get the mail, etc.
If you don't have a lot of time specific events (calls, meetings, etc) throw away your alarm clock and find your natural sleep schedule. It will take around 6 weeks. Waking up and falling asleep naturally helps prevent fatigue and keeps you alert, and prevents burnout and mistakes.
Take time to eat proper meals, and don't eat sitting at your desk. Eating properly will help your concentration and leaving your desk will a) keep you from becoming a fat bastard, and b) induce more natural breaks from your work.
Of course some people just can't work in an unstructured environment. For them it's back to work.
It seems like the correct outcome has been reached in this case (Fired the guy who deleted his stuff and paid for data recovery.)
Everything about this guys sounds like a money grubbing loser. He had previously never made a penny on his screenplays (Or, apparently from any writing at all, ever.) and yet he claims that the lost screenplays were for "far better" movies than "Gladiator," "Schindler's List" and "Ben Hur."
Now comes the amount... $2.7 million dollars? It's been a while since I've been a professional writer, but $2.7 mil is a stupidly outrageous amount for unknown writer with unproven properties and a small movie company. Even being generous and accounting that it's for three screen plays, $900,000 per screenplay is still stupid money.
Also they didn't delete the guys brain. Screenplays don't really have that much text in them. They are usually around a hundred pages with a couple hundred words a page. If the writer is familiar with the characters, plot, etc, they should be able to rewrite a whole screenplay in under a week. At least good enough for a first draft. (And if I was interested enough to pay $900K for a screenplay, I'd happily wait a week or three for a screenplay.)
Thirdly, Who the hell is Aurora Media. I can't find any information on these guys. Seems nowadays if you have the ability to produce movie scripts you pay millions of dollars for, your company should have -one- hit on Google.
Seems that if there was actually $2.7 million worth of interest by Aurora Media then either: 1) There should be a printed contract somewhere. 2) (As many people pointed out) They should have a copy of the screenplays somewhere. 3) They should be the ones suing SBC (Or perhaps the schmo.)
Why this is modded +5 informative shows how bad the average person's logic is. Unless you pegged my sarcasm meter (which is possible) it seems more plausible that keeping the nations government stably powered is a more significant factor than the placement of the lines.
Power has gone out at least once a year for the past five years to my (Downtown San Francisco) neighborhood. Due to underground power lines. A couple months ago an underground substation exploded and burned the hell out of a woman walking on the sidewalk. A couple years ago directly in front of my apartment a short underground ignited flammable (sewer) gases which blew the manhole covers 40 feet in the air (And the power out for the whole day). No one was hurt, but one of the covers did go most of the way through a car.
If that's the ad mock up, I'll pass. It looks like something I'd see taped to a phone pole above a undecipherable Xerox of someone's lost cat.
I like OO and all (Especially when my $2500 computer came with a trial version of Office.......) but could they find one capable designer to donate 30 minutes of their time somewhere--anywhere in the project?
I might support a real ad in a real publication, but paying good money to distribute this visual hernia in the back of a disposable rag isn't going to bring credibility to anyone.
You're right, the economy is simply money in motion. However you're dead wrong thinking that people who make serious money are likely to sit on it. (If you can point to even a made up number that indicates that I would be quite surprised.)
If I make $10,000 in a year and I spend all I have, I put $10,000 into the economy, that's the minimum and maximum I can put in.
On the other hand lets say I make $10 million, and I spend meagerly. I only spend $1 mil on stuff, mere 10% of my income on stuff. Hardly miss it. I've still put $1 million into the economy, paying 100 of the first guy's salaries.
And if I did make that much I certainly wouldn't "sit on" the other $9mil. (No one ever makes that much monkey by sitting on it.) I put virtually all of it into investments. At least a third of it into high risk investments (this is how I made that $10 million this year). Where do investments go? One typical path is Investment -> Corporation -> Company Expansion -> New Jobs, materials, markets, etc. Even if the investment fails, all of that money is in motion, strengthening the economy.
You got as far as "more complicated" but forget that the rich people create most of those middle class jobs. Taking money from the rich (as taxes) means fewer jobs and/or lower pay, which equals a smaller tax base. And it goes on from there...
Or to get back on topic: If Warren Buffet had been taxed to the point where he was unable to amass this, he never would have been able to give tens of billions of dollars to charity.
It's easier to take money from the poor and dead than the rich because the rich have the resources to defend it.
Sure, 5,000 is a lot to listen to at one setting, but compare that to the potential back catalog that's nothing. Records have been produced for a hundred years, even counting the ones that are out of copyright there must be hundreds of thousands of recordings setting on shelves somewhere... I'd guess Sony's out of print Jazz catalog would be tens of thousands of albums...
Every place I go to buy games (eb games/gamestop, circuit city, compusa) the PC games are the retarded stepchild of the joint, mishandled boxes thrown in a remainder bin, while the console games line every visible surface of the place.
Sure, if console games aren't selling, push them harder. But if PC games are selling well, shouldn't a store have at least have some kind of selection? Maybe one game released in the last 6 months? Nope. I can't remember the last time I found a game I was looking for, and I live downtown in a major metro. Guess if I lived in BFE I'd have access to Wal-Mart and I could stop crying, but until then... WTF?
Re:When will managers realize that you laptops ==e
on
Telecommuting Backlash
·
· Score: 1
Sounds like the problem isn't laptops, it's your continued employment under a shitty manager.
If there's a "global catastrophe" big enough to wipe out a significant portion of plant species on the planet, wouldn't either:
A) Human be pretty freaking dead also?
B) If there were survivors, wouldn't they starve to death by the time they: 1) Went to the north pole and back, 2) found arable land to plant these seeds in the middle of a worldwide catastrophe, 3) Raised a successful crop?
Besides, what do zombies need with seeds? They eat brains.
Slashdot Mirror
And I'm sure a vast increase on post-it notes with cryptic characters stuck on monitors and backs of keyboards.
Is it about educating students or is it about putting asses in seats?
If it's the first, just post the things. Especially useful to students with learning (and other) disabilities.
If it's the latter, why post them? Because someone heard that podcasts were popular with kids these days?
I thought most Slashdotters where talented enough to get a job.
(sarc) aside, the odds are that if you can hold one job, you can likely find another. Or are you so amazingly talented a job searching that you hit the perfect, most fulfilling, highest paying job of all time on your first hit?
This is the problem most people have when looking for jobs: They think they (themselves) have nothing to offer. They sell themselves short and go into interviews with their hat in their hand.
Well screw that. A company hires a person because they have a need for a skillset. People have skillsets. When you look for a job, negotiate with the power you have (that you have something the company wants.)
I agree with half of what people have said. He should look at leaving and should document everything.
But look at doing some stuff that's lower tech. (Most CPA's need to be taught where the power button is, and think you're talking about the car when you mention a firewall.) Send some nice color articles on laptop theft and network intrusion (with the important parts highlighted) to the color printer and post them in the public places in the office. (Yes, color. They love color. And large terrifying headlines.) Make a bi-weekly security newsletter and physically send it to peoples offices. No email, have you seen the state of these guys Outlook? They've got 5000 email in their in-box! Half unread!)
As for the file size, the rest of the download is in C:/Program Files/Internet Explorer/
It requires MSIE 5.5+, I have a pretty good idea what Acid will report.
"It also boasts a search engine, which the company will use to generate income."
Why do I have a feeling that you'll leave "footprints" on its search engine.
(And they sure need some way to create revenue since there's no reason to use their browser.)
1) It's about 10 times faster and 50x more accurate to enter numbers on the number pad.
2) If you're familiar with the menu system you can shortcut it by just hitting 3-1-2 (or whatever).
3) They work in noisy areas.
4) Privacy and security. Keypad entry means not having to say things like credit card numbers, SSN, and other personal information out loud. Which I have often heard in cafés, etc. Good thing I don't feel like getting into credit card fraud.
You might get modded funny, but I'd give it a +1 informative.
After moving last month I navigated quite a number of these systems, ranging from Not Completely Infuriating to Horrible. (Yes, I enunciate clearly, you smart asses)
After the sixth time the electric company's system misunderstood me I said "Fuck you!" very clearly to which it responded with "I thought I heard you say you'd like to talk to an operator. Please wait while we connect you."
Subsequent use of that colorful phrase gave me an operator in about 3/4 of the voice menus I tried.
Isn't HD content... broadcast... wirelessly... already?
(Just busted by elipsis quota for the year.)
The only reason I lock my door is to keep the guys upstairs from coming in when they get to drunk to remember where they live. And to keep the maid from walking in while I'm masturbating.
As for keeping valuable things and thieves separate, the only thing that makes that happen is the knowledge that someone else in my building has left the door unlocked.
Most computers should work fine by sustaining themselves with their own heat, but I wouldn't power up a hard drive that I cared about if it was below freezing. I would try to find a tiered power-up system like hard core liquid cooled system use. These go between the power switch and the motherboard, so that powering on first pre-warms the components, and only when they got to an acceptable temperature does the system power on.
Wonder if peltier pumps would be handy since you can simply reverse the current to reverse the heat/cool direction...
I use it. If you use Windows I don't see how you can live without Windows-E and Windows-R and Windows - M (or D).
That "Windows Menu" key is a big waste of space though.
I say keep Caps-Lock, it's handy for accessibility reasons.
But can we please get rid of any key with "Scr Lk", "PtrSc" or "Sys Rq" on it? I mean for fuck's sake.
Question: If I learn the rules of baseball until I can chant them in my sleep, including the current stats on all current players and teams, what is my skill on the field?
Answer: Who the hell knows.
Or how about creative expression? How many years do I have to study Picasso to become a leading force in a revolutionary new art movement?
What about personality? How long do I have to intern with Bill Gates to become a billionaire?
Using chess is an awful example because it's a small closed system with a simple set of rules. Skills for chess are roughly in the same category as "factory worker" where if you push button A it does thing B.
Just because orange juice is good at slaking my thirst doesn't make it a good choice for engine coolant. Or blood.
Having too many people involved in decisions is the best way for a company to kill its self. When you say "There isn't any limit on how many people can be involved (the more the better, in fact)" you destroy yourself. The more people you have, the more input that needs to be processed, and you quickly reach the Productivity Event Horizon where no one can do any work because they're constantly thinking about someone else's job. The larger the company, the less likely any one has knowledge to make an informed decision in another part. Yet they'll feel the need to chip in anyway because it's still "their" project.
I'm generally a much bigger fan of Motion Picture development style. Pay everyone really well to do what they do really well. Gaffers gaff, costumers costume, actors act, and when its done, everyone goes their own way. Cost effective, well trained and motivated people and high quality output. (technical quality. Very rarely seem boom mikes in shots any more.) It does take a leader with a vision to tell these people where to start though. And that's something your business model lacks.
Hiring a person into this environment who won't screw it up will be a bitch. And that's a bitch on top of regular hiring. How to bring someone in who's a restrained team player, highly self motivated (there's no promotions) skilled, and willing to work in your experiment.
When your only objection to "business as usual" is the "sole profit of a board of directors and merciless shareholders" you're probably better off just having a very liberal profit sharing program and that's it.
But hey, please prove me wrong, I like surprises.
Funny, I always thought that when things used to cost money and now they're giving them away, that's called market failure.
Water falls from the sky and we still pay for it. How badly is virtualization tanking that they need to charge less than water?
Sounds like you are focused enough to make enough money. Take some time and enjoy the other 143 hours in the week. What's the point in making more money if you're working too much to enjoy it?
I saw the coroner van in front of a $10 million house on Friday. See all the good that money did the dead guy.
As a contractor for 12 years I found that I get more down in my part-time hours than most people get done in their full time jobs. What's the lesson there? Double my rates.
On topic, you can stay focused by paying attention to your productive cycle. Do you work better in mornings? Evenings? Do you work better on a four or six day work week? My most productive times are 2-7PM and midnight to 5 am on a thirteen day work cycle (10 on, three off).
Also you should have a designated office space if you're working from home, something closed off from the rest of your home so you don't suddenly realize you need to do dishes or get the mail, etc.
If you don't have a lot of time specific events (calls, meetings, etc) throw away your alarm clock and find your natural sleep schedule. It will take around 6 weeks. Waking up and falling asleep naturally helps prevent fatigue and keeps you alert, and prevents burnout and mistakes.
Take time to eat proper meals, and don't eat sitting at your desk. Eating properly will help your concentration and leaving your desk will a) keep you from becoming a fat bastard, and b) induce more natural breaks from your work.
Of course some people just can't work in an unstructured environment. For them it's back to work.
The one new Windows feature of that last 10 years that I was interested in, and it lasts all of a week.
Maybe I need to look closer at Vista Home. At this rate it will have better privacy than the Professional version.
It seems like the correct outcome has been reached in this case (Fired the guy who deleted his stuff and paid for data recovery.)
Everything about this guys sounds like a money grubbing loser. He had previously never made a penny on his screenplays (Or, apparently from any writing at all, ever.) and yet he claims that the lost screenplays were for "far better" movies than "Gladiator," "Schindler's List" and "Ben Hur."
Now comes the amount... $2.7 million dollars? It's been a while since I've been a professional writer, but $2.7 mil is a stupidly outrageous amount for unknown writer with unproven properties and a small movie company. Even being generous and accounting that it's for three screen plays, $900,000 per screenplay is still stupid money.
Also they didn't delete the guys brain. Screenplays don't really have that much text in them. They are usually around a hundred pages with a couple hundred words a page. If the writer is familiar with the characters, plot, etc, they should be able to rewrite a whole screenplay in under a week. At least good enough for a first draft. (And if I was interested enough to pay $900K for a screenplay, I'd happily wait a week or three for a screenplay.)
Thirdly, Who the hell is Aurora Media. I can't find any information on these guys. Seems nowadays if you have the ability to produce movie scripts you pay millions of dollars for, your company should have -one- hit on Google.
Seems that if there was actually $2.7 million worth of interest by Aurora Media then either:
1) There should be a printed contract somewhere.
2) (As many people pointed out) They should have a copy of the screenplays somewhere.
3) They should be the ones suing SBC (Or perhaps the schmo.)
Why this is modded +5 informative shows how bad the average person's logic is. Unless you pegged my sarcasm meter (which is possible) it seems more plausible that keeping the nations government stably powered is a more significant factor than the placement of the lines.
Power has gone out at least once a year for the past five years to my (Downtown San Francisco) neighborhood. Due to underground power lines. A couple months ago an underground substation exploded and burned the hell out of a woman walking on the sidewalk. A couple years ago directly in front of my apartment a short underground ignited flammable (sewer) gases which blew the manhole covers 40 feet in the air (And the power out for the whole day). No one was hurt, but one of the covers did go most of the way through a car.
My UPS gets a good work out.
If that's the ad mock up, I'll pass. It looks like something I'd see taped to a phone pole above a undecipherable Xerox of someone's lost cat.
I like OO and all (Especially when my $2500 computer came with a trial version of Office.......) but could they find one capable designer to donate 30 minutes of their time somewhere--anywhere in the project?
I might support a real ad in a real publication, but paying good money to distribute this visual hernia in the back of a disposable rag isn't going to bring credibility to anyone.
You're right, the economy is simply money in motion. However you're dead wrong thinking that people who make serious money are likely to sit on it. (If you can point to even a made up number that indicates that I would be quite surprised.)
If I make $10,000 in a year and I spend all I have, I put $10,000 into the economy, that's the minimum and maximum I can put in.
On the other hand lets say I make $10 million, and I spend meagerly. I only spend $1 mil on stuff, mere 10% of my income on stuff. Hardly miss it. I've still put $1 million into the economy, paying 100 of the first guy's salaries.
And if I did make that much I certainly wouldn't "sit on" the other $9mil. (No one ever makes that much monkey by sitting on it.) I put virtually all of it into investments. At least a third of it into high risk investments (this is how I made that $10 million this year). Where do investments go? One typical path is Investment -> Corporation -> Company Expansion -> New Jobs, materials, markets, etc. Even if the investment fails, all of that money is in motion, strengthening the economy.
You got as far as "more complicated" but forget that the rich people create most of those middle class jobs. Taking money from the rich (as taxes) means fewer jobs and/or lower pay, which equals a smaller tax base. And it goes on from there...
Or to get back on topic: If Warren Buffet had been taxed to the point where he was unable to amass this, he never would have been able to give tens of billions of dollars to charity.
It's easier to take money from the poor and dead than the rich because the rich have the resources to defend it.
Sure, 5,000 is a lot to listen to at one setting, but compare that to the potential back catalog that's nothing. Records have been produced for a hundred years, even counting the ones that are out of copyright there must be hundreds of thousands of recordings setting on shelves somewhere... I'd guess Sony's out of print Jazz catalog would be tens of thousands of albums...
Every place I go to buy games (eb games/gamestop, circuit city, compusa) the PC games are the retarded stepchild of the joint, mishandled boxes thrown in a remainder bin, while the console games line every visible surface of the place. Sure, if console games aren't selling, push them harder. But if PC games are selling well, shouldn't a store have at least have some kind of selection? Maybe one game released in the last 6 months? Nope. I can't remember the last time I found a game I was looking for, and I live downtown in a major metro. Guess if I lived in BFE I'd have access to Wal-Mart and I could stop crying, but until then... WTF?
Sounds like the problem isn't laptops, it's your continued employment under a shitty manager.
If there's a "global catastrophe" big enough to wipe out a significant portion of plant species on the planet, wouldn't either:
A) Human be pretty freaking dead also?
B) If there were survivors, wouldn't they starve to death by the time they: 1) Went to the north pole and back, 2) found arable land to plant these seeds in the middle of a worldwide catastrophe, 3) Raised a successful crop?
Besides, what do zombies need with seeds? They eat brains.