As a non-police ex-public servant, I was actually happy about being monitored during the 10+ years I was on the taxpayer dime.
In the office, every access to restricted databases was logged. In some cases, every keystroke was logged. We had cameras in a lot of the back office rooms and I considered it a damn good thing, because it meant that if anything went down (we had a couple of members of the public have running fistfights through there on occasion, plus assorted other violence which ended up with police or ambulance services on the premises), there would be evidence.
Not to mention that there was running evidence that I was actually doing my damn job instead of sitting around on my keister burning my own and everyone else's tax dollars.
And by "task for United Nations" we mean "no-one will do anything, but when the next US Republican president is elected they will declare a War On Spam, say that they have found spam in some location near someone they don't like, and deploy the US military to slaughter millions of people in the general vicinity.
Actual spammers won't notice any of this."
Interesting. Do the letters have to be on physical paper? Is there a limit (harassment etc) to the number you can send? Are there particular types or styles of letters which would cost the client more to process than others?
Alternative: POSIX compliance. Runs on free OSen; many modern versions of Windows; likely to be able to easily migrate to updated POSIX-compliant platform in 2024.
- someone in Google is thinking about cool things which could be done with a global contact network of some of the most creative and intelligent minds on the planet.
I mean, if they're being forced to build it anyway...
Re:Not very "Family Friendly" either
on
Watchmen Watched
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· Score: 1
If only it could have been rated "For images of a dog's head smashed open BY a big blue wang", it might *possibly* have deterred some of the complainers. Or at least made them look even more ridiculous when they complained.
In an age where most computers are known to undergo plagues of internet-bourne infections which have all kinds of weird side effects, why not just say "No, I never saw any EULA or any buttons at installation time. The install looked like it was frozen so I hit random keys on the keyboard until it continued"?
Ideas are cheap. What you need to pay for is the idea *and* the drive to get it implemented.
If ideas which save/profit the company a million bucks are so cheap, surely the company would have already had them by now?
Drive is cheap. Hand the full idea spec to a project team, tell them their bonuses are linked to how well it goes. It may turn out that the person who submitted the idea either doesn't have the spare time to be a part of that project team, or alternatively may be able to be released to work on in - in which case, they should also share in the project bonus as well as the original idea bonus.
If a group has an idea, let them submit it as a group. However, having worked in large organisations which have implemented idea-harvesting schemes, I've found the vast majority of submissions to come from individuals. Groups tend to suffer from the committee problem - they'll bitch about an issue for years, but will never bother actually formulating a method to address it.
About the only advantage of team rewards is that the team members may not immediately fall prey to jealousy at the idea-submitter's success - a poor reason for handing out freebies. It might be better to allow the manager of the relevant area to choose something for their team. Maybe a break room upgrade, or better furniture, or some such.
The educational simile is broken - students aren't hired to make money for the schools. Although working in isolation is pretty much standard educational fare anyway, barring the rare 'group project', so I'm not quite sure where you're coming from there.
I can understand that team rewards may work well in Japanese settings. I'm just not entirely convinced that it would translate effectively to other countries and cultures.
While I obviously can't speak for every other Slashdotter or tech out there, my own personal preference would certainly be for individual submissions and rewards. Why should I give a darn if the dude next to me got a million-dollar reward, unless he's gonna be bragging about it for the next ten years? All the more incentive for me to come up with something equally awesome!
Testing... OK. Opera doesn't block DHTML popups, but AFAICT they're contained within the original page and simply count as "Website is screwing up access to its own content, leave and don't come back." FF3 with ABP kills the DHTML popups dead.
Regarding ads in general, my personal approach is that I'm never, ever going to buy anything off the internet as the result of an ad, so there's no good reason to clog my limited bandwidth with them.
Anyone demanding I read their ads is going to be ignored. Anyone attempting to use various tech to force me to read their ads will either have it quietly subverted or else I simply won't be reading or recommending anything at all from that site. Maybe they can build a business when they're deliberately turning people away, maybe they can't. Either way, not my problem - I'm already off reading what their competitors' sites have to say instead.
The basic expectation of the internet is that publically accessible data will be free, easy to access, and not buried in crap. This is because billions of sites have already learned that if they don't conform to this expectation, they're automatically cutting their own throats unless they have something that no other site on the web can offer and that no other site will ever spring up to supply.
That's a VERY limited set of possibilities.
Personally, I'm all for the existence of DHTML ads, in the same way that I have no problem with stores selling seven-foot spoilers to n00b street racers. Sometimes, people just have to make their own dumb, costly decisions for a while before they cotton on to the whole "basic logic" thing.
I'd add: ask the owner what value he sees the company - and therefore your shares - becoming worth in those five years. It's unlikely he'll give you a figure lower than a realistic projection.
Then ask for that in cash. Quarterly. In advance. With the first payment at the end of the week. Nonrefundable under any circumstances.
I'd modify this - use memorable names for those machines there are only a handful of. If there are more than about seven or so with similar functions, switch to informational names.
Having dealt with a multi-thousand-server organisation, it's good to instantly know that MELBFS1 is the primary file server in Melbourne, but that JUPITER2 and JUPITER3 are the corporate mail gateways.
I had near-zero social interaction until I discovered BBS newsgroups and then IRC in the late 80s. My career path drifted towards government admin and IT, where all the interaction could be codified on paper or a computer screen.
It wasn't until I hit 23 that I forced myself to start talking to people socially, and it was possibly the most gruellingly embarrasing three months of my life until I started learning the most basic social interactions that everyone else had taken for granted since childhood.
Even since then, I've been more comfortable in jobs with minimal social components, and the majority of my friends are people I type to, not shake hands with or get a beer with.
Every couple of years, I'll sit down and make myself join some local clubs or attend various events so I won't turn into a complete hermit. I can sort of slip that one past my psychological defenses by pretending it's just for learning a new technical skill (even if it's a sport).
I still mentally recharge better by sitting alone in a quiet room than by partying all night, and as far as I can tell that's never going to change.
I do recommend pushing onself into at least the semi-social scene every so often, though. You may not learn to freestyle through it, but you can probably at least get to the level of dog-paddling rather than drowning, and it helps grease the wheels of almost anything when you can smile, flirt, or crack a joke on cue.
Slashdot Mirror
In the office, every access to restricted databases was logged. In some cases, every keystroke was logged. We had cameras in a lot of the back office rooms and I considered it a damn good thing, because it meant that if anything went down (we had a couple of members of the public have running fistfights through there on occasion, plus assorted other violence which ended up with police or ambulance services on the premises), there would be evidence.
Not to mention that there was running evidence that I was actually doing my damn job instead of sitting around on my keister burning my own and everyone else's tax dollars.
And by "task for United Nations" we mean "no-one will do anything, but when the next US Republican president is elected they will declare a War On Spam, say that they have found spam in some location near someone they don't like, and deploy the US military to slaughter millions of people in the general vicinity. Actual spammers won't notice any of this."
I'm gonna buy the TLDs "yaho" and "mircosoft"!
Interesting. Do the letters have to be on physical paper? Is there a limit (harassment etc) to the number you can send? Are there particular types or styles of letters which would cost the client more to process than others?
Alternative: POSIX compliance. Runs on free OSen; many modern versions of Windows; likely to be able to easily migrate to updated POSIX-compliant platform in 2024.
Obviously, Americans are coming to the UK and stealing all their guns.
HUGE SUCCESS.
I mean, if they're being forced to build it anyway...
If only it could have been rated "For images of a dog's head smashed open BY a big blue wang", it might *possibly* have deterred some of the complainers. Or at least made them look even more ridiculous when they complained.
In an age where most computers are known to undergo plagues of internet-bourne infections which have all kinds of weird side effects, why not just say "No, I never saw any EULA or any buttons at installation time. The install looked like it was frozen so I hit random keys on the keyboard until it continued"?
If ideas which save/profit the company a million bucks are so cheap, surely the company would have already had them by now?
Drive is cheap. Hand the full idea spec to a project team, tell them their bonuses are linked to how well it goes. It may turn out that the person who submitted the idea either doesn't have the spare time to be a part of that project team, or alternatively may be able to be released to work on in - in which case, they should also share in the project bonus as well as the original idea bonus.
If a group has an idea, let them submit it as a group. However, having worked in large organisations which have implemented idea-harvesting schemes, I've found the vast majority of submissions to come from individuals. Groups tend to suffer from the committee problem - they'll bitch about an issue for years, but will never bother actually formulating a method to address it.
About the only advantage of team rewards is that the team members may not immediately fall prey to jealousy at the idea-submitter's success - a poor reason for handing out freebies. It might be better to allow the manager of the relevant area to choose something for their team. Maybe a break room upgrade, or better furniture, or some such.
The educational simile is broken - students aren't hired to make money for the schools. Although working in isolation is pretty much standard educational fare anyway, barring the rare 'group project', so I'm not quite sure where you're coming from there.
I can understand that team rewards may work well in Japanese settings. I'm just not entirely convinced that it would translate effectively to other countries and cultures.
While I obviously can't speak for every other Slashdotter or tech out there, my own personal preference would certainly be for individual submissions and rewards. Why should I give a darn if the dude next to me got a million-dollar reward, unless he's gonna be bragging about it for the next ten years? All the more incentive for me to come up with something equally awesome!
Dance, puppets, dance!
Give me six trillion dollars and some tanks and I'll see what I can arrange. No guarantees, mind you.
Apparently, print is dead.
Regarding ads in general, my personal approach is that I'm never, ever going to buy anything off the internet as the result of an ad, so there's no good reason to clog my limited bandwidth with them.
Anyone demanding I read their ads is going to be ignored. Anyone attempting to use various tech to force me to read their ads will either have it quietly subverted or else I simply won't be reading or recommending anything at all from that site. Maybe they can build a business when they're deliberately turning people away, maybe they can't. Either way, not my problem - I'm already off reading what their competitors' sites have to say instead.
The basic expectation of the internet is that publically accessible data will be free, easy to access, and not buried in crap. This is because billions of sites have already learned that if they don't conform to this expectation, they're automatically cutting their own throats unless they have something that no other site on the web can offer and that no other site will ever spring up to supply.
That's a VERY limited set of possibilities.
Personally, I'm all for the existence of DHTML ads, in the same way that I have no problem with stores selling seven-foot spoilers to n00b street racers. Sometimes, people just have to make their own dumb, costly decisions for a while before they cotton on to the whole "basic logic" thing.
How about 'push' advertising in general?
Then ask for that in cash. Quarterly. In advance. With the first payment at the end of the week. Nonrefundable under any circumstances.
Having dealt with a multi-thousand-server organisation, it's good to instantly know that MELBFS1 is the primary file server in Melbourne, but that JUPITER2 and JUPITER3 are the corporate mail gateways.
Insert joke about dwarf stars...
Call them 'gravity' and 'reality' for even more fun!
Is that the simplest solution?
So to really screw your company up, I need some creativity, a binder, a sharpie, the key to your server room, and a car...
That would suck.
Aliases spring up. The email gateway may be officially known as NM23UX4, but the techs will always refer to it as STARBUG1.
I had near-zero social interaction until I discovered BBS newsgroups and then IRC in the late 80s. My career path drifted towards government admin and IT, where all the interaction could be codified on paper or a computer screen.
It wasn't until I hit 23 that I forced myself to start talking to people socially, and it was possibly the most gruellingly embarrasing three months of my life until I started learning the most basic social interactions that everyone else had taken for granted since childhood.
Even since then, I've been more comfortable in jobs with minimal social components, and the majority of my friends are people I type to, not shake hands with or get a beer with.
Every couple of years, I'll sit down and make myself join some local clubs or attend various events so I won't turn into a complete hermit. I can sort of slip that one past my psychological defenses by pretending it's just for learning a new technical skill (even if it's a sport).
I still mentally recharge better by sitting alone in a quiet room than by partying all night, and as far as I can tell that's never going to change.
I do recommend pushing onself into at least the semi-social scene every so often, though. You may not learn to freestyle through it, but you can probably at least get to the level of dog-paddling rather than drowning, and it helps grease the wheels of almost anything when you can smile, flirt, or crack a joke on cue.