Caller ID + voice mail means I can choose which calls to take at any time.
Cell phone profiles mean I can also choose which types of communication actually alert me and which ones are silent until I decide to check my phone.
Not having a Crackberry means that I check e-mail at a time of my choosing.
The "Later" button on my cell phone means that I can postpone reading that text until I have the time and/or inclination to do so.
Not having a smart phone means that I can be away from the internet and all that it distracts.
Not being logged onto a chat program means that I again have control over how people contact me.
It seems a lot of the problems being described are self-inflicted by our fascination with technology and being connected. It's a conscious decision to disconnect at my convenience and then to stick with it. Being 'always on' is the default state for so many people that they have no concept of not immediately picking up a call, answering a text, seeing an e-mail or doing any of the other things that distract from the task at hand. Multi-tasking is not easy nor do you get the same results as when you're concentrating on a single task unless it's all fluff.
First off, how can juries be in favor of something or not? Last time I checked juries are selected at the time of trials. So how can this be used as a point at all?
Second, aren't the police public servants performing their duty in circumstances not considered to be "private"? At least if it's happening on the street? That's in the public eye and therefore is allowed to be photographed/taped. I believe that's the same reason that releases aren't needed for photographs/videotapes taken when there is no reasonable expectation of privacy. Such as being pulled over by a police officer on a public street.
The second point is the most troubling to me. If I happen to be videotaping an event that has nothing to do with the police officers in the background does that make the entire process illegal? Or is it only when the police event is the main focus? Sounds like a slippery slope regarding what the intention of the person doing the recording was at the time.
Dash mounted cameras and their resulting video are in the possession of the very people who might be performing illegal actions and I believe those are admissible in court. Doesn't that indicate some sort of bias when it comes to trying to prosecute those people?
Hopefully someone with a better understanding of these issues and how they can be intertwined will come along and explain how it can work and be fair.
How is playing a song during a home made video any different than it being played on the radio? In both cases the song is put into the public arena. Actually the home made video is better since it's not paid for by advertising.
Unless the media companies have some kind of shady practice to get radio stations to play their songs they're being a bit two-faced. [/sarcasm]
Schools enforce any arbitrary rules that they want. I ran into 1st amendment problems in high school (freedom of the press). I was told "You can't do that.". I countered that with "The constitution says I can." They responded with "That doesn't matter, you're in our school, we say what the law is."
I'm so sick of this crap. The constitution applies to emancipated adults. Stop trying to invoke rights that you don't actually have. But you would know that if you actually, oh I don't know, studied or something instead of trying to find your way around the school's rules.
Why not offer them as PDF versions and the ebook reader format(s)? Makes perfect sense to get both distribution channels out there and they don't add any cost to toss them on the disk or for download.
If the state is looking to try to crack down on people who didn't pay the use tax (and who has on a personal return, seriously?) then a request for aggregate purchases by year might be considered as a reasonable request.
To try to find out EXACTLY what was purchased is wrong. No qualifiers - just wrong. How is this different from asking the book stores to do the same thing? Video rentals? Library usage? It all works out to the same thing if they want to know who purchased what.
I cannot think of any reason why the detailed purchase information would be of any legitimate use to a state government if they're talking tax revenue.
Note that I'm completely disregarding any discussion on the particular state's taxation practices, perception of their government, comparison to other states, and other things that are tangential to the subject, which seems to be the privacy of purchase information. Kudos to Amazon for fighting this rather than just rolling over and turning over the records. At least the state didn't try to invoke some kind of Patriot Act secrecy provisions.
No shit. I've never seen a person with an actual handicap or disability using those scooters. Every one of them had two arms and two legs and none of them were paraplegics or quadraplegics.
Oh, so my mother who was in end stage cancer and unable to walk more than a dozen yards doesn't qualify? She had two arms and two legs.
I agree that a fair number of the people using them might look like they would benefit from exercise but that doesn't mean that I have any right to judge whether or not they use a scooter. Ditto with the handicap cards. I'm not qualified to decide if they're handicapped or not so I don't bother worrying about it.
Exactly. Why anyone would use a debit card is beyond me. Get a credit card and learn to manage your finances and you'll never have a problem (or if you, federal law will be on your side).
Because my ex could never understand when I told him "Use it as a damn credit card. Sign your name! Get the protection of buying with a credit card!"
He just couldn't fathom that it was better to do the extra work of signing his name than to punch in a PIN. Then again he also couldn't seem to grasp the idea of "live within your income and don't spend more than is in your bank account" either. Yet another reason he's an ex.
The problem is, counterfiting is likely as easy as Visa/Debit fraud. So when you start paying cash for things, you're made to feel like a bloody criminal - they look at you a few times too often, scan the bills under UV light and yadd yada.
Fight back. Get yourself one of the pens they use to check money (they're legal) and whenever they hand you back money to the same thing to them. It's quite amusing to see their faces when you check the money. Honestly it's not just being a dick - you're on the hook if you get a counterfeit bill and you can't pass it along if you know it's counterfeit. *
* You're also supposed to turn it into Secret Service and then you can claim it on your taxes as a loss. Oo. Regardless you're out the money if someone passes you a dud bill.
I refused to pay and there is a $30 account charge just sitting on my credit report that they illegally renew every 8-9 months as they sell the debt to someone else...
If it's there on your credit report, then you need to report that to the creditors. All 3 credit bureaus have ways of dealing with incorrect/fraudulent entries on your record. If you present proof of cancellation and tell your whole story, they should remove it from your record and tell 1&1's collection agency to get fucked.
Contacting the credit bureaus is the fastest and best way to have an incorrect charge removed, in my opinion. The company itself might dink you around but once they get a report of an "error" they clean it up pretty quickly. I had the same thing with a debt that wasn't mine but stuck to my credit report. Filling out the form had that thing gone within 30 days.
Just take a thumbprint with the signature. That's good enough to cover 99% of the cases. (If someone is rich enough that someone else will make a thumbcap to match, then you're getting into real cloak-and-dagger. But most crooks are dumb.) Inkpads are cheap. Even though the bank likely can't verify the thumbprint immediately, it will be invaluable to the police when the fraud is investigated.
And how about a digital picture of the person getting the loan? Pretty darn easy to do, not an invasion of privacy, and clear proof of who actually performed the transaction. Simple, cheap and verifiable.
Oh wait. That would mean the institution could really be held accountable when it comes to a fraud investigation. That's why it won't work. Silly me.
I'd say any book people are still reading in significant numbers over 50 years after it was originally published is a classic, so, yes, Charlotte's Web is a classic.
I'd say any book people are still reading in significant numbers over 50 years after it was originally published is:
Required reading for a class
Currently in release as a motion picture (no comment on the quality of said motion picture)
Incorporated into some kind of viral video
Actually well written and enjoyable
Pick any one of those options.
Just because it's being read doesn't make it a classic. That's an arbitrary designation by people who's livelihoods depend on being able to do things like put out lists of classic books. Personally a number of the "best authors evar" don't do anything for me and I won't voluntarily read anything from them. There are authors who were their contemporaries but never made the classic hurdle that I read frequently.
Nasty divorce going on and the wife used the husband's work e-mail to sign up for all kinds of unsavory web sites. We ended up having to change his address and it didn't work out like the wife hoped.
People are complicated. It will be scary when they get bright AND complicated.
Unless you have a real shot at making any changes just let it go. The decision seems to have come down from the top and any time for your input (assuming it would be accepted) is long past. As has been said you need to pick your battles.
If you're involved in a project that can be better served by something out of the FOSS community then you have some kind of chance at making a change. Otherwise you're just being a pain in everyone's [insert anatomical reference of choice] by complaining about a done decision.
My favorite way of getting past this sort of thing is summed up by "I put exactly as much emotional involvement into a situation as I have chance of changing it." No chance to change? Don't care. It's kept me from ulcers and ill-timed outbursts. I suggest you consider it.
My company (over 10,000 employees, not in the computer industry) does the same thing, but the really annoying part..
..it must be EXACTLY 2 letters, followed by EXACTLY 4 digits.
So even allowing for upper case (which I am not sure that it differentiates), the total password space is only 2704000000.
Making the assumption that they're not storing it in plain text which would kind of negate the 'integer' part (alpha?) If they're that strict about password format then they're probably not doing much on the back end either.
Your resume tells a prospective employer about you. An AOL address on your resume could tell the hiring manager that you are either slow to change or perhaps uncaring about what others think about you
Or it could say that you've had an an e-mail address for a very long time and continue to use it because it's the one everyone knows. Yes, there's an institutional bias against AOL but I can't see where using the account that you've had for years should be any factor in whether or not someone looks at your resume.
I know that one of the new 'job seeking advice rules' is to get a professional address on one of the main mail hosts but someone else said that Hotmail is an address they toss. So maybe another company has a bias against Yahoo. Or Gmail. You can't please everyone so I say just use the account you actually check and go from there.
Then again if your address is IFeelPretty@AOL.com and your name is Frank then maybe, just maybe, you might want to consider getting another address for job seeking. There are some things the hiring manager doesn't need to infer. Really, they don't.
It's easier to build a bigger bomb than better armor.
It's impossible to make things idiot-proof because they keep making better idiots.
I can see the point here. Cover the 80% you can and deal with the other 20% as the exceptions that they are. You don't lay down the procedures for that 20% - you put them in place for the 80% you can control. Constant review of what's working and what isn't and then you're really in the process improvement business. I'm not seeing that review - I'm seeing reactions to exceptions that cause nothing but headaches and don't solve anything.
Wow. Went on a bit of a rant there. I think the core idea is solid tho. Plan for what you can, realize you can't plan for everything, and learn from what isn't in the plan.
We've had no training budget for the last 2 years and I don't know that we're getting one this year. That means no real technical training, no certifications, nothing to keep current and improve our skills.
Talk about short sighted. I expect an exodus of the top talent in the near future if there's nothing in the budget this year. They managed tiny raises for us this year and I'm not complaining about that at all. But a third year without any investment in training is going to be hard to overcome.
If you're not sure to stop or go, the answer is "stop". I can understand if it's dark and you don't see the traffic lights because they're covered with snow, but if the lights at the intersection aren't working, that doesn't mean the light is green. It means stop and go when it's safe to.
The problem was not that the lights weren't working because they were covered with snow. The problem was that the light was diffused through the snow. So a green arrow appeared as a solid green light. This is much different from 'not working'.
I agree that any intersection with malfunctioning traffic lights should be treated as a full 4 way stop but here's where it gets tricky. Snow is generally directional. So maybe only 1 or 2 of the 4 traffic lights have degraded functionality. How should that be handled? Also, I may decide to treat the intersection as a 4 way stop but the 3 cars behind me don't do that. I stop, they don't. Well, not right away.
I'm not surprised that the heat issue wasn't addressed in the decision to replace incandescent with LED. It's one of those things that you don't think of - heat from the lamp melts snow. It always "just worked" before. It's now a known issue and they're looking for a reasonable solution. Same thing as any change - you never find all the problems on the first time around.
How often does this have to be said? Yes, there are more men than women in IT. Why is that? Um, because?
Disclaimer - I'm a woman and I've worked in the IT field for almost 20 years.
Yes, I've found that in general IT is a boy's club. I'm used to being the only woman in the group. And I'm used to the crap that I have to put up with being the only woman. I've been ignored, talked over, dismissed (well, they tried that), and generally excluded. It happens. Grow a pair.
No one is going to go out of their way to make women feel all warm and cozy. So you can't use traditional female tactics to carve out your place. And unfortunately that's what most women fall back on when faced with a difficult situation.
My way of making things tolerable is to take my place on the totem pole relatively early on. I watch the personalities and, sad to say, make the weakest one my bitch. Once I do that then I'm on my way to acceptance. It's how they play, it's how I have to play. YMMV
I've mentored women in IT and it isn't pretty. But if they learn a few tricks they can at least stay long enough to find out if they like the work and can work in the environment.
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By removing the option/temptation it's much easier to not even worry about it. It's a shiny - you can't help but look at some point.
Caller ID + voice mail means I can choose which calls to take at any time.
Cell phone profiles mean I can also choose which types of communication actually alert me and which ones are silent until I decide to check my phone.
Not having a Crackberry means that I check e-mail at a time of my choosing.
The "Later" button on my cell phone means that I can postpone reading that text until I have the time and/or inclination to do so.
Not having a smart phone means that I can be away from the internet and all that it distracts.
Not being logged onto a chat program means that I again have control over how people contact me.
It seems a lot of the problems being described are self-inflicted by our fascination with technology and being connected. It's a conscious decision to disconnect at my convenience and then to stick with it. Being 'always on' is the default state for so many people that they have no concept of not immediately picking up a call, answering a text, seeing an e-mail or doing any of the other things that distract from the task at hand. Multi-tasking is not easy nor do you get the same results as when you're concentrating on a single task unless it's all fluff.
First off, how can juries be in favor of something or not? Last time I checked juries are selected at the time of trials. So how can this be used as a point at all?
Second, aren't the police public servants performing their duty in circumstances not considered to be "private"? At least if it's happening on the street? That's in the public eye and therefore is allowed to be photographed/taped. I believe that's the same reason that releases aren't needed for photographs/videotapes taken when there is no reasonable expectation of privacy. Such as being pulled over by a police officer on a public street.
The second point is the most troubling to me. If I happen to be videotaping an event that has nothing to do with the police officers in the background does that make the entire process illegal? Or is it only when the police event is the main focus? Sounds like a slippery slope regarding what the intention of the person doing the recording was at the time.
Dash mounted cameras and their resulting video are in the possession of the very people who might be performing illegal actions and I believe those are admissible in court. Doesn't that indicate some sort of bias when it comes to trying to prosecute those people?
Hopefully someone with a better understanding of these issues and how they can be intertwined will come along and explain how it can work and be fair.
How is playing a song during a home made video any different than it being played on the radio? In both cases the song is put into the public arena. Actually the home made video is better since it's not paid for by advertising.
Unless the media companies have some kind of shady practice to get radio stations to play their songs they're being a bit two-faced. [/sarcasm]
I'm so sick of this crap. The constitution applies to emancipated adults. Stop trying to invoke rights that you don't actually have. But you would know that if you actually, oh I don't know, studied or something instead of trying to find your way around the school's rules.
So you've just called all of Saturday morning and Nickelodeon programming "unethical".
Oh wait. That's not actually far off the mark...
I read that as "Autopilots aren't inflatable." Anyone else make that mistake? Anyone?
Double tap. Ammo is cheap.
Then again it sounds like whoever is advising them needs a double tap too. Not a zombie? Works anyway.
Why not offer them as PDF versions and the ebook reader format(s)? Makes perfect sense to get both distribution channels out there and they don't add any cost to toss them on the disk or for download.
If the state is looking to try to crack down on people who didn't pay the use tax (and who has on a personal return, seriously?) then a request for aggregate purchases by year might be considered as a reasonable request.
To try to find out EXACTLY what was purchased is wrong. No qualifiers - just wrong. How is this different from asking the book stores to do the same thing? Video rentals? Library usage? It all works out to the same thing if they want to know who purchased what.
I cannot think of any reason why the detailed purchase information would be of any legitimate use to a state government if they're talking tax revenue.
Note that I'm completely disregarding any discussion on the particular state's taxation practices, perception of their government, comparison to other states, and other things that are tangential to the subject, which seems to be the privacy of purchase information. Kudos to Amazon for fighting this rather than just rolling over and turning over the records. At least the state didn't try to invoke some kind of Patriot Act secrecy provisions.
Oh, so my mother who was in end stage cancer and unable to walk more than a dozen yards doesn't qualify? She had two arms and two legs.
I agree that a fair number of the people using them might look like they would benefit from exercise but that doesn't mean that I have any right to judge whether or not they use a scooter. Ditto with the handicap cards. I'm not qualified to decide if they're handicapped or not so I don't bother worrying about it.
Because my ex could never understand when I told him "Use it as a damn credit card. Sign your name! Get the protection of buying with a credit card!"
He just couldn't fathom that it was better to do the extra work of signing his name than to punch in a PIN. Then again he also couldn't seem to grasp the idea of "live within your income and don't spend more than is in your bank account" either. Yet another reason he's an ex.
Fight back. Get yourself one of the pens they use to check money (they're legal) and whenever they hand you back money to the same thing to them. It's quite amusing to see their faces when you check the money. Honestly it's not just being a dick - you're on the hook if you get a counterfeit bill and you can't pass it along if you know it's counterfeit. *
* You're also supposed to turn it into Secret Service and then you can claim it on your taxes as a loss. Oo. Regardless you're out the money if someone passes you a dud bill.
Contacting the credit bureaus is the fastest and best way to have an incorrect charge removed, in my opinion. The company itself might dink you around but once they get a report of an "error" they clean it up pretty quickly. I had the same thing with a debt that wasn't mine but stuck to my credit report. Filling out the form had that thing gone within 30 days.
And how about a digital picture of the person getting the loan? Pretty darn easy to do, not an invasion of privacy, and clear proof of who actually performed the transaction. Simple, cheap and verifiable.
Oh wait. That would mean the institution could really be held accountable when it comes to a fraud investigation. That's why it won't work. Silly me.
I'd say any book people are still reading in significant numbers over 50 years after it was originally published is:
Pick any one of those options.
Just because it's being read doesn't make it a classic. That's an arbitrary designation by people who's livelihoods depend on being able to do things like put out lists of classic books. Personally a number of the "best authors evar" don't do anything for me and I won't voluntarily read anything from them. There are authors who were their contemporaries but never made the classic hurdle that I read frequently.
Nasty divorce going on and the wife used the husband's work e-mail to sign up for all kinds of unsavory web sites. We ended up having to change his address and it didn't work out like the wife hoped.
People are complicated. It will be scary when they get bright AND complicated.
Unless you have a real shot at making any changes just let it go. The decision seems to have come down from the top and any time for your input (assuming it would be accepted) is long past. As has been said you need to pick your battles.
If you're involved in a project that can be better served by something out of the FOSS community then you have some kind of chance at making a change. Otherwise you're just being a pain in everyone's [insert anatomical reference of choice] by complaining about a done decision.
My favorite way of getting past this sort of thing is summed up by "I put exactly as much emotional involvement into a situation as I have chance of changing it." No chance to change? Don't care. It's kept me from ulcers and ill-timed outbursts. I suggest you consider it.
Making the assumption that they're not storing it in plain text which would kind of negate the 'integer' part (alpha?) If they're that strict about password format then they're probably not doing much on the back end either.
Reboot means a chance to make all new merchandise for the masses! Forget anything you already have - this new stuff is going to be SO cool!
Um, yeah. Kinda in a cynical mood today.
Or it could say that you've had an an e-mail address for a very long time and continue to use it because it's the one everyone knows. Yes, there's an institutional bias against AOL but I can't see where using the account that you've had for years should be any factor in whether or not someone looks at your resume.
I know that one of the new 'job seeking advice rules' is to get a professional address on one of the main mail hosts but someone else said that Hotmail is an address they toss. So maybe another company has a bias against Yahoo. Or Gmail. You can't please everyone so I say just use the account you actually check and go from there.
Then again if your address is IFeelPretty@AOL.com and your name is Frank then maybe, just maybe, you might want to consider getting another address for job seeking. There are some things the hiring manager doesn't need to infer. Really, they don't.
It's easier to build a bigger bomb than better armor.
It's impossible to make things idiot-proof because they keep making better idiots.
I can see the point here. Cover the 80% you can and deal with the other 20% as the exceptions that they are. You don't lay down the procedures for that 20% - you put them in place for the 80% you can control. Constant review of what's working and what isn't and then you're really in the process improvement business. I'm not seeing that review - I'm seeing reactions to exceptions that cause nothing but headaches and don't solve anything.
Wow. Went on a bit of a rant there. I think the core idea is solid tho. Plan for what you can, realize you can't plan for everything, and learn from what isn't in the plan.
We've had no training budget for the last 2 years and I don't know that we're getting one this year. That means no real technical training, no certifications, nothing to keep current and improve our skills.
Talk about short sighted. I expect an exodus of the top talent in the near future if there's nothing in the budget this year. They managed tiny raises for us this year and I'm not complaining about that at all. But a third year without any investment in training is going to be hard to overcome.
The problem was not that the lights weren't working because they were covered with snow. The problem was that the light was diffused through the snow. So a green arrow appeared as a solid green light. This is much different from 'not working'.
I agree that any intersection with malfunctioning traffic lights should be treated as a full 4 way stop but here's where it gets tricky. Snow is generally directional. So maybe only 1 or 2 of the 4 traffic lights have degraded functionality. How should that be handled? Also, I may decide to treat the intersection as a 4 way stop but the 3 cars behind me don't do that. I stop, they don't. Well, not right away.
I'm not surprised that the heat issue wasn't addressed in the decision to replace incandescent with LED. It's one of those things that you don't think of - heat from the lamp melts snow. It always "just worked" before. It's now a known issue and they're looking for a reasonable solution. Same thing as any change - you never find all the problems on the first time around.
How often does this have to be said? Yes, there are more men than women in IT. Why is that? Um, because?
Disclaimer - I'm a woman and I've worked in the IT field for almost 20 years.
Yes, I've found that in general IT is a boy's club. I'm used to being the only woman in the group. And I'm used to the crap that I have to put up with being the only woman. I've been ignored, talked over, dismissed (well, they tried that), and generally excluded. It happens. Grow a pair.
No one is going to go out of their way to make women feel all warm and cozy. So you can't use traditional female tactics to carve out your place. And unfortunately that's what most women fall back on when faced with a difficult situation.
My way of making things tolerable is to take my place on the totem pole relatively early on. I watch the personalities and, sad to say, make the weakest one my bitch. Once I do that then I'm on my way to acceptance. It's how they play, it's how I have to play. YMMV
I've mentored women in IT and it isn't pretty. But if they learn a few tricks they can at least stay long enough to find out if they like the work and can work in the environment.