I was classified as a 'gifted student' back in grade school. This would have been in the mid 70's. As such we spent two afternoons a week out of normal classes and in the 'gifted program'. Given, I was in the first class they tried with this. So pretty much everything was trial and error. We did so more things that were along the lines of learning to learn rather than memorize and vomit back. So that's good.
And then it happened. One elementary school didn't have any gifted students. So they changed the school boundries so that four of us went to this particular grade school. We were prizes.
We still went to the gifted program classes but here's where the problem came up. Since the school administration considered us prizes we could get away with almost anything. Didn't do homework? No problem. We know they can do it so they don't have to do it. So much for study skills and work habits.
I spent the rest of my public school time unlearning the bad habits instilled in the three years they did this to us. Going from being so singled out in grade school to just being normal students in the junior high school was a blessed relief. A few teachers tried to expect us to be unofficial teaching assistants by helping out our fellow students but by then we'd had enough of it all and we refused.
Being smart is as much as a birth defect as being dumb. People don't realize that.
I do remember one teacher from junior high math class. He knew I was smarter than the class in general. But he was smarter than most teachers in general. He gave me extra work that actually challenged me. It wasn't required. He said he knew that I would finish first in class and I could do these exercises if I wanted. Things like "Make every number between 1 and 20 using 4 of the number 4". I still remember not getting three numbers but I learned some pretty advanced mathematical functions that year.
He was the only teacher I can remember who actually was able to keep me learning. And by tossing me challenges that had no bearing on my class grade. I learned how to learn from that. Sweet.
I've been typing on IBM model M keyboards for far longer than I'm going to admit. And I love the responsiveness of the keys.
If I try using one of those tactile beasts I lose about ten words per minute in my typing but gain them in cuss words per minute.
My guess is that since I learned to type on electric typewriters I'm more used to the way the keys respond than to the newer keyboards. They've never felt 'right' to me.
It's about how the union doesn't have the same agreements in place for voice over work done for video games that it does for other forms of voice over work.
What about the other voice over actors in games that make far less and the game sells well? They're using him because he's the voice of a well known character in a very well selling game. It's nothing more than a point about how this medium doesn't have the same terms as other voice over work.
There's nothing to stop developers from negotiating points on sales if they so choose. Or from forming unions that will do the same thing. So don't start the "Wah. What about everyone else?" This actor is part of a union and is looking for the same benefits as other voice over actors in the same union working on different projects.
Good voice actors really fill out the game. Consistent voice actors across versions keep continuity. People may not buy the game because a particular actor did the voice but they're going notice if every time they get a new version the characters sound different and it will affect the gaming experience.
In summary. He's stating the union should get better terms for voice actors in video games, equivalent to other types of performances. Doesn't sound that unreasonable.
C'mon now. He's just doing what news editors have been doing for decades. He wants to control the information and the way that it is interpreted.
Even 'Letters to the Editor' are tightly screened and edited so they meet the standards of the newspapers.
So his position on wanting to control the comments on his site aren't out of line, if you're looking backwards.
Let's look forwards, shall we?
He's not going to suddenly 'get' the ways of the internet. He's not going to understand that he can't screen every single post on his site. He's going to look at how people react and be dismayed that the comments are under the banner of his illustrious paper.
Unless he finds some manner of complete control over what gets posted on his site, he's not going to be happy. Expect more internal moderation prior to posting, etc.
Local papers have an easier time dealing with this because, well, they're local. They generally don't have the number of eyeballs on them so their comments can stay pretty on track. Something like this, no possible way.
The most logical possible outcome I see coming from this is two places for comment. The 'approved and moderated' ones that are attached to the stories and 'the riff-raff' ones that are delegated to some odd link off to the side. Kind of like burying a story on the inside of page 4. You can say it was there and it wasn't your fault people didn't read it.
I've worked on and run help desk for nine years. Of course, I've been out of that business for the last six years.
When I was in charge, I looked at the help desk as a way to get people the basic skills and familiarity so they could move up in the company. I aimed for twelve to eighteen months of having them on my team and then helping them move into the area of their choice. Less than twelve and I wasn't getting a return on my training, more than eighteen showed lack of initiative.
The company where I had this working the best had an informal procedure for moving help desk people onto project teams. One of the project managers would ask me out to lunch. Over Arby's we would discuss the need and who I had that would fill it.
Why Arby's? We liked it, it was close, and then it became tradition. Many a career was launched over a roast beef sammich.
What I've noticed over the years is that the managers aren't as interested in using the help desk as a way to bring people in. The help desk where I'm currently working is really nothing but phone jockeys. It's a little better now that remote control is more pervasive but I still can't see them moving up any more. Which is really a shame.
A year or two on a decent help desk will give you the troubleshooting skills you need, as well as get you familiar with a corporate environment.
We're in what they're calling a 'measles outbreak' here because there's four cases. Four. That's how rare the disease is because of vaccinations. Most doctors have never treated it because it just doesn't happen.
How did it come about? Three of the cases are from the same day care facility. The zero index patient was a child that did not have their measles vaccination. The other two were too young for the vaccination. The fourth is an adult and can be considered an outlier.
I surely hope that the parents of the zero index patient are sued to heck and gone for willful negligence and anything else they can make stick.
Legitimate sources have to pass all kinds of inspections, tests to make sure the parts being harvested are safe for use, etc.
The black market has no such controls. So the body parts being implanted in your favorite Aunt Florence could have come from a drug-addicted HIV-positive person with hepatitis C. The hospital has purchased the parts from a 'legitimate' source and now they can't figure out what happened to Aunt Florence over a simple hip replacement.
The morals of such a practice are one thing. The actual physical dangers are quite another.
I think the 'entitlement' that everyone refers to is the sense that these young shippersnappers are used to being able to do what they want, when they want, and darn the consequences. Schools no longer teach as units, they 'empower the individual'. [insert noise of exasperation here]
I've seen these kids come into the workplace, be given a standard workstation, and then spend half their first day customizing it all to heck. No one wants to hear your odd little noise when you get e-mail, even if all your friends think it is a riot. Animated menus vs standard menus? Does it really matter? And that's just the pieces they can modify.
I've honestly overheard conversations during work hours as the younger folks try to find ways around the various internal update programs that are installed. And these aren't just quick 'Do you know how to do it?' type things. These are hour long rants about how they can't get their slingbox to work over the corporate network so they can watch their shows and how they can't get their chat clients to work due to firewall settings.
At no time do I hear "They won't let me have Application X to do my job." All I hear is the goodies they want to use on the company computers.
And that, my friends, is what I mean by boundries and entitlement. They just don't realize that the company is there to make money and they're working to help the company make said money. The company really doesn't care about their social issues during work hours. Or on the company equipment, which is also in place to help the company make money.
Tell me why I should drop a lot of money on books and even more money monthly on this new version.
Oh! We're glad you asked! Really simple - we need a way to inflate our profits. And we knew if we made a new version it would do that for us.
We're also quite envious of all the money spent on online subscriptions to games so we figured that if we made some "Online Content" you would just blithely spend money on us too.
And a boot to the head to the RIAA. More reasonably, let the studio pay for RIAA out of their grossly inflated 4% since they're the ones to benefit from whatever the RIAA actually does these days.
I was involved with software licensing for about 10 years. Just this year I was able to pass along that responsibility to someone else. Of course I received no 'atta boy' at all for creating a system and researching the ever-lovin' daylights out of the licensing as well as hunting down all the stuff people bought but that's another story for another day.
We were as compliant as possible for a large-ish organization with one person doing the license management part time. That means we subscribed to the "It will all even out over the year" as we bought things. But bought them we did and I was quite insistent about making sure people submitted the signed paperwork before installing.
Back on point.
I never had the pleasure of having to deal with the BSA, thank goodness. I was diligent in my record keeping and made sure my software reps knew it. If anything we were over-licensed and that's the last thing they wanted us to figure out.
I did get a call from MS's legal area telling me that they thought we weren't buying enough Exchange and that they wanted me to submit an audit, etc. First question from me was asking which company they were asking about, since we purchased licenses under a number of them. No answer. I informed them we didn't use Exchange for our mail system and that they better get their facts straight before wasting my time. Never heard from them again.
More on point.
One thing you never hear is that some of the worst offenders for unlicensed software are the very companies that make up the BSA. As in Microsoft not paying for Adobe, etc. They never publicize that kind of thing.
Make my favorite grocery store no longer accept internet coupons.
Thanks buddy. Hope it was worth it to you.
Recollections of yet another 'gifted' student
on
Failing Our Geniuses
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· Score: 1
Oh, the horrors of being one of the smart ones.
And no, that wasn't sarcastic. Looking back I think we made the teachers feel threatened because we were bright and for the most part wanted to learn. We didn't want to be educated. Big difference there.
The gifted program was in its first year when I was enrolled. Afternoons, two days a week. I'll give them credit, they tried to expose us to different things but overall I got the impression they really didn't know what to do with us.
Teachers expected us to help out our 'non-gifted' fellow students, trying to turn us into teacher's aides to keep us from being bored and making trouble. Oh yes, and making their lives easier in the process.
I had several grade school teachers do me a very large injustice. Since I was one of only four identified gifted students in the school they didn't want to aggravate us or (more likely) our parents. So they didn't push me to actually do the work. The response was "We know she can do it. She doesn't have to complete the projects." My mom, to give her credit, tried to get them to make me do the work or suffer the consequences. I sometimes wonder what kind of instructions the prinicpal gave them about us.
Where is this all going? From my distant experiences I would agree that smart students are less of a money magnet than the other end of the spectrum. How would it sound to the general public if they said "We're going to invest a bunch of money into this lab so the smart kids can get smarter." Not quite as selfless as "We're going to invest a bunch of money in programs for disabled children so they can function to their highest level." No matter that 'their highest level' may be third grade, keep tossing out the money so we can funnel it there.
I've got nothing against programs for the disabled - mental, physical or other. But if they're going to play one end they should invest an equal amount in the other.
Yes, I know the arguement that public education in this country was an offshoot of the industrial revolution and is still designed to keep the working class in check. Kind of hard to dispute some times, isn't it?
They didn't like the price they were being quoted so they decided to pay nothing.
Are they going to do the same with other imports? What incentive does any country have now to do business in Brazil? "We're offering $X." "We only want to pay $Y." "OK. We won't sell to you." "No, we'll just make the exact same thing and not pay you anything."
I understand that they're going to get a sympathetic vote because this is a drug for AIDS. Substitute 'Viagra' for the drug in question and then see if you're outraged or not.
Disney isn't saying that no one can tell the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs because it is their story. They're saying, quite properly, that their visual representation can't be used without compensation. The images they created are their property.
So now their visual images are the ones embedded in the public mind as the ONLY images. That doesn't mean that they belong in the public domain. Disney still owns the images!
If the park in question was using completely different images of the characters then no one would have raised an eyebrow. But using the images created by Disney means they're infringing as long as Disney holds a valid copyright.
Yes, Disney used folk tales for their storylines. Good hook, that. Good business decision. But not evil by any means and they're not claiming all rights to the folk tales now. They took familiar stores from the public domain and used them.
Ok, the more recent stuff is bad. Very bad. If it is proven that they stole from others copyrighted works then they should be penalized. But lumping that in with blatant infringement is just confusing the issue.
As Neal Stephenson predicted, the Metaverse isn't that far away. Avatar kits on the shelves of Wallyworld, programmers making bucks creating custom avatars, etc.
For some reason I seem to remember from the last time this came up that MySapce has some text blurb about not making plans to meet up in real life, be careful, etc.
So they already took steps to warn/protect their users.
I really can't see where the website can be held responsible for people's actions in real life. Unless they try to use that 'attractive nuisance' type of prosecution. As in "They knew that their social network would be a virtual playground for sexual predators." Why do I see that exact sentence in the lawsuit somewhere or in the eventual case?
I haven't had a discussion on this book in a very long while!
The element of having the engineer make a pirate copy for his daughter is in keeping with the entire concept of sedition being attemped by the Finkle-McGraw. The Mouse Army is the unintended result of that sedition.
The true, desired recipient of the Primer turns out to be a wanderer who turns her back on her people.
The first pirate copy ends up in the hands of Nell, pure accident and the best soil for the seed as it were.
The second pirate copy does go to the engineer's daughter and she gets lost in a fantasy world.
And the Mouse Army becomes a hybrid.
The Fists are more than just something for the Mouse Army to battle. It is the rise of the deep-seated traditional values of that culture. Once you get past the fine edge of violence at the fringes you find the well-ordered society.
So trying to change the order in which the Primers were created and presented to their owners takes a lot of the intertwining plot structure away.
I know that until we see this we won't really know what Neal is going to do with the story. But I think of what happened to Dune and I weep.
When a prominent member of society concludes that the futuristic civilization in which he lives is stifling creativity, he commissions an interactive book for his daughter that serves as a guide through a surreal alternate world.
The book has the Primer being commissioned for a granddaughter and the engineer pirates a copy for his own daughter. And then there's the quarter million of them for the other girls. I wonder what else is going to be left out? The Fists? Harv and Tequila? This is why I so dread them 'adapting' the books I like.
Here's a rather undeveloped character (let's leave out the stupidity in the prequels, shall we?) who already has a good following. A kick-butt bounty hunter. Sounds like a great action franchise to me.
Why do companies not test for computer literacy when the job is going to entail significant computer use? Do they think it is something that can be 'picked up' in a matter of days?
I so want to rant here but I'll be good. I can see long-time employees who have to learn to use the systems as they come into the business environment but if you're bringing in fresh blood and they have to spend 75% of their day reconciling invoices in the enterprise financial system, doesn't it make sense to give them a test to make sure they know how to do the basic functions?
If you're going to be maintaining Excel spreadsheets maybe, just maybe, it would make sense to see if you can work in Excel instead of just saying 'It's easy and our training department can help you out.' Or worse, taking your word for it.
So I don't really blame programmers all that much for users not knowing what to do. If the UI is decent for the job at hand and help is accessible then they've done their part.
Sorry but I had to let that one out. "Code that matches my passion." is priceless.
When you start looking at a mortgage payment, car payment, grocery bill, doctor bill, etc. you'll realize that you work on something you can do well. Save your passion for your hobbies. Code on the bleeding edge at home.
Do you honestly expect business to conform to what you want to do instead of what works for them? Answer truly. And if you don't come up with "Heck no!" you need to rethink how it works.
Sure COBOL may not be for you. Good deal. Don't learn it. But if you're applying for a job and they need LegacySystem 5.7 and you tell them you don't know it, won't learn it, but would consider writing in BleedingEdgeSystem 0.54 you can pretty much figure out what the answer is going to be.
I've been coding since 1976. Yes, 1976. I've learned many languages. Some I've liked, some I haven't. But if the business needs it I learn it. Sometimes I learn it just because I want to. I missed out on COBOL (don't ask) but may just add it to my list of things I want to investigate.
I'm not being a troll or at least I'm not trying to be one. Some people will probably read that first exclamation and not go any farther. But sometimes you really do have to wake up and smell yesterday's coffee burning in the pot.
Are they aware that the call logs are one of the few objective measures of productivity for your department?
If not, make them aware. Charts hanging on the wall will reinforce that a bit in the beginning.
You're always going to get the "I can either fix it or log it. Choose." kind of attitude. The answer is "You're going to do both."
However, there are some exceptions.
Is there actual value in the detailed logging? Is anyone going back to use the old resolutions or report on stuff? Perhaps the answer is a streamlined logging process that gets the basics you need without making your people jump through hoops.
So the question to me is whether you have a call tracking system (pure counts) or a problem tracking system (historical data, etc.) and what value you're getting out of the time spent.
Oh, and the kid was in the wrong only if he was somehow on notice that the network wasn't intended to be public. Otherwise my right to run an open network would be compromised
If you've complained that you don't want someone using your network and they continue to do so, is that their right as well?
I agree, the article doesn't have enough detail to make any kinds of assumption on what happened before the arrest. I would hope it went something like:
Leech
Complain
Leech
Complain
Leech
Arrest
An unsecured wireless network is just irresponsible these days unless you're implicitly breaking your TOA with your internet carrier (most of them don't let you open it up like that) but it's not an open invitiation to use the service. At least, to law-abiding people it isn't. The arguement of "If they didn't want me to use it they should have kept it out of my reach" is juvenile and whiny. Try that at any retail store when you walk out without paying.
Something we found long ago was that anything larger than 19 inches causes you to have to turn your head to read full lines of text (scanning). On 19 inches and below you can take in the full width of the screen in one angle of view.
The only people we found who got a gain from the larger monitors were those with multiple windows they needed to monitor. Those people loved them.
One of our developers has the dual LCD monitor setup. It seems to work for him. But I would much rather focus on a distinct area where I'm working than have hugely wide windows where I can't quite see everything I need.
Slashdot Mirror
And yes, I realize these don't make 'data'.
I was classified as a 'gifted student' back in grade school. This would have been in the mid 70's. As such we spent two afternoons a week out of normal classes and in the 'gifted program'. Given, I was in the first class they tried with this. So pretty much everything was trial and error. We did so more things that were along the lines of learning to learn rather than memorize and vomit back. So that's good.
And then it happened. One elementary school didn't have any gifted students. So they changed the school boundries so that four of us went to this particular grade school. We were prizes.
We still went to the gifted program classes but here's where the problem came up. Since the school administration considered us prizes we could get away with almost anything. Didn't do homework? No problem. We know they can do it so they don't have to do it. So much for study skills and work habits.
I spent the rest of my public school time unlearning the bad habits instilled in the three years they did this to us. Going from being so singled out in grade school to just being normal students in the junior high school was a blessed relief. A few teachers tried to expect us to be unofficial teaching assistants by helping out our fellow students but by then we'd had enough of it all and we refused.
Being smart is as much as a birth defect as being dumb. People don't realize that.
I do remember one teacher from junior high math class. He knew I was smarter than the class in general. But he was smarter than most teachers in general. He gave me extra work that actually challenged me. It wasn't required. He said he knew that I would finish first in class and I could do these exercises if I wanted. Things like "Make every number between 1 and 20 using 4 of the number 4". I still remember not getting three numbers but I learned some pretty advanced mathematical functions that year.
He was the only teacher I can remember who actually was able to keep me learning. And by tossing me challenges that had no bearing on my class grade. I learned how to learn from that. Sweet.
If I try using one of those tactile beasts I lose about ten words per minute in my typing but gain them in cuss words per minute.
My guess is that since I learned to type on electric typewriters I'm more used to the way the keys respond than to the newer keyboards. They've never felt 'right' to me.
What about the other voice over actors in games that make far less and the game sells well? They're using him because he's the voice of a well known character in a very well selling game. It's nothing more than a point about how this medium doesn't have the same terms as other voice over work.
There's nothing to stop developers from negotiating points on sales if they so choose. Or from forming unions that will do the same thing. So don't start the "Wah. What about everyone else?" This actor is part of a union and is looking for the same benefits as other voice over actors in the same union working on different projects.
Good voice actors really fill out the game. Consistent voice actors across versions keep continuity. People may not buy the game because a particular actor did the voice but they're going notice if every time they get a new version the characters sound different and it will affect the gaming experience.
In summary. He's stating the union should get better terms for voice actors in video games, equivalent to other types of performances. Doesn't sound that unreasonable.
Even 'Letters to the Editor' are tightly screened and edited so they meet the standards of the newspapers.
So his position on wanting to control the comments on his site aren't out of line, if you're looking backwards.
Let's look forwards, shall we?
He's not going to suddenly 'get' the ways of the internet. He's not going to understand that he can't screen every single post on his site. He's going to look at how people react and be dismayed that the comments are under the banner of his illustrious paper.
Unless he finds some manner of complete control over what gets posted on his site, he's not going to be happy. Expect more internal moderation prior to posting, etc.
Local papers have an easier time dealing with this because, well, they're local. They generally don't have the number of eyeballs on them so their comments can stay pretty on track. Something like this, no possible way.
The most logical possible outcome I see coming from this is two places for comment. The 'approved and moderated' ones that are attached to the stories and 'the riff-raff' ones that are delegated to some odd link off to the side. Kind of like burying a story on the inside of page 4. You can say it was there and it wasn't your fault people didn't read it.
When I was in charge, I looked at the help desk as a way to get people the basic skills and familiarity so they could move up in the company. I aimed for twelve to eighteen months of having them on my team and then helping them move into the area of their choice. Less than twelve and I wasn't getting a return on my training, more than eighteen showed lack of initiative.
The company where I had this working the best had an informal procedure for moving help desk people onto project teams. One of the project managers would ask me out to lunch. Over Arby's we would discuss the need and who I had that would fill it.
Why Arby's? We liked it, it was close, and then it became tradition. Many a career was launched over a roast beef sammich.
What I've noticed over the years is that the managers aren't as interested in using the help desk as a way to bring people in. The help desk where I'm currently working is really nothing but phone jockeys. It's a little better now that remote control is more pervasive but I still can't see them moving up any more. Which is really a shame.
A year or two on a decent help desk will give you the troubleshooting skills you need, as well as get you familiar with a corporate environment.
How did it come about? Three of the cases are from the same day care facility. The zero index patient was a child that did not have their measles vaccination. The other two were too young for the vaccination. The fourth is an adult and can be considered an outlier.
I surely hope that the parents of the zero index patient are sued to heck and gone for willful negligence and anything else they can make stick.
Sad thing is there isn't a cure.
The black market has no such controls. So the body parts being implanted in your favorite Aunt Florence could have come from a drug-addicted HIV-positive person with hepatitis C. The hospital has purchased the parts from a 'legitimate' source and now they can't figure out what happened to Aunt Florence over a simple hip replacement.
The morals of such a practice are one thing. The actual physical dangers are quite another.
I've seen these kids come into the workplace, be given a standard workstation, and then spend half their first day customizing it all to heck. No one wants to hear your odd little noise when you get e-mail, even if all your friends think it is a riot. Animated menus vs standard menus? Does it really matter? And that's just the pieces they can modify.
I've honestly overheard conversations during work hours as the younger folks try to find ways around the various internal update programs that are installed. And these aren't just quick 'Do you know how to do it?' type things. These are hour long rants about how they can't get their slingbox to work over the corporate network so they can watch their shows and how they can't get their chat clients to work due to firewall settings.
At no time do I hear "They won't let me have Application X to do my job." All I hear is the goodies they want to use on the company computers.
And that, my friends, is what I mean by boundries and entitlement. They just don't realize that the company is there to make money and they're working to help the company make said money. The company really doesn't care about their social issues during work hours. Or on the company equipment, which is also in place to help the company make money.
Tell me why I should drop a lot of money on books and even more money monthly on this new version.
Oh! We're glad you asked! Really simple - we need a way to inflate our profits. And we knew if we made a new version it would do that for us.
We're also quite envious of all the money spent on online subscriptions to games so we figured that if we made some "Online Content" you would just blithely spend money on us too.
48% to the artist
4% to the studio that 'promotes' them
And a boot to the head to the RIAA. More reasonably, let the studio pay for RIAA out of their grossly inflated 4% since they're the ones to benefit from whatever the RIAA actually does these days.
We were as compliant as possible for a large-ish organization with one person doing the license management part time. That means we subscribed to the "It will all even out over the year" as we bought things. But bought them we did and I was quite insistent about making sure people submitted the signed paperwork before installing.
Back on point.
I never had the pleasure of having to deal with the BSA, thank goodness. I was diligent in my record keeping and made sure my software reps knew it. If anything we were over-licensed and that's the last thing they wanted us to figure out.
I did get a call from MS's legal area telling me that they thought we weren't buying enough Exchange and that they wanted me to submit an audit, etc. First question from me was asking which company they were asking about, since we purchased licenses under a number of them. No answer. I informed them we didn't use Exchange for our mail system and that they better get their facts straight before wasting my time. Never heard from them again.
More on point.
One thing you never hear is that some of the worst offenders for unlicensed software are the very companies that make up the BSA. As in Microsoft not paying for Adobe, etc. They never publicize that kind of thing.
Thanks buddy. Hope it was worth it to you.
And no, that wasn't sarcastic. Looking back I think we made the teachers feel threatened because we were bright and for the most part wanted to learn. We didn't want to be educated. Big difference there.
The gifted program was in its first year when I was enrolled. Afternoons, two days a week. I'll give them credit, they tried to expose us to different things but overall I got the impression they really didn't know what to do with us.
Teachers expected us to help out our 'non-gifted' fellow students, trying to turn us into teacher's aides to keep us from being bored and making trouble. Oh yes, and making their lives easier in the process.
I had several grade school teachers do me a very large injustice. Since I was one of only four identified gifted students in the school they didn't want to aggravate us or (more likely) our parents. So they didn't push me to actually do the work. The response was "We know she can do it. She doesn't have to complete the projects." My mom, to give her credit, tried to get them to make me do the work or suffer the consequences. I sometimes wonder what kind of instructions the prinicpal gave them about us.
Where is this all going? From my distant experiences I would agree that smart students are less of a money magnet than the other end of the spectrum. How would it sound to the general public if they said "We're going to invest a bunch of money into this lab so the smart kids can get smarter." Not quite as selfless as "We're going to invest a bunch of money in programs for disabled children so they can function to their highest level." No matter that 'their highest level' may be third grade, keep tossing out the money so we can funnel it there.
I've got nothing against programs for the disabled - mental, physical or other. But if they're going to play one end they should invest an equal amount in the other.
Yes, I know the arguement that public education in this country was an offshoot of the industrial revolution and is still designed to keep the working class in check. Kind of hard to dispute some times, isn't it?
Are they going to do the same with other imports? What incentive does any country have now to do business in Brazil? "We're offering $X." "We only want to pay $Y." "OK. We won't sell to you." "No, we'll just make the exact same thing and not pay you anything."
I understand that they're going to get a sympathetic vote because this is a drug for AIDS. Substitute 'Viagra' for the drug in question and then see if you're outraged or not.
Sorry, not siding with Brazil on this one.
So now their visual images are the ones embedded in the public mind as the ONLY images. That doesn't mean that they belong in the public domain. Disney still owns the images!
If the park in question was using completely different images of the characters then no one would have raised an eyebrow. But using the images created by Disney means they're infringing as long as Disney holds a valid copyright.
Yes, Disney used folk tales for their storylines. Good hook, that. Good business decision. But not evil by any means and they're not claiming all rights to the folk tales now. They took familiar stores from the public domain and used them.
Ok, the more recent stuff is bad. Very bad. If it is proven that they stole from others copyrighted works then they should be penalized. But lumping that in with blatant infringement is just confusing the issue.
Bad China! No biscuit!
Still a rather creepy idea to me tho.
So they already took steps to warn/protect their users.
I really can't see where the website can be held responsible for people's actions in real life. Unless they try to use that 'attractive nuisance' type of prosecution. As in "They knew that their social network would be a virtual playground for sexual predators." Why do I see that exact sentence in the lawsuit somewhere or in the eventual case?
The element of having the engineer make a pirate copy for his daughter is in keeping with the entire concept of sedition being attemped by the Finkle-McGraw. The Mouse Army is the unintended result of that sedition.
The true, desired recipient of the Primer turns out to be a wanderer who turns her back on her people.
The first pirate copy ends up in the hands of Nell, pure accident and the best soil for the seed as it were.
The second pirate copy does go to the engineer's daughter and she gets lost in a fantasy world.
And the Mouse Army becomes a hybrid.
The Fists are more than just something for the Mouse Army to battle. It is the rise of the deep-seated traditional values of that culture. Once you get past the fine edge of violence at the fringes you find the well-ordered society.
So trying to change the order in which the Primers were created and presented to their owners takes a lot of the intertwining plot structure away.
I know that until we see this we won't really know what Neal is going to do with the story. But I think of what happened to Dune and I weep.
The book has the Primer being commissioned for a granddaughter and the engineer pirates a copy for his own daughter. And then there's the quarter million of them for the other girls. I wonder what else is going to be left out? The Fists? Harv and Tequila? This is why I so dread them 'adapting' the books I like.
Here's a rather undeveloped character (let's leave out the stupidity in the prequels, shall we?) who already has a good following. A kick-butt bounty hunter. Sounds like a great action franchise to me.
I so want to rant here but I'll be good. I can see long-time employees who have to learn to use the systems as they come into the business environment but if you're bringing in fresh blood and they have to spend 75% of their day reconciling invoices in the enterprise financial system, doesn't it make sense to give them a test to make sure they know how to do the basic functions?
If you're going to be maintaining Excel spreadsheets maybe, just maybe, it would make sense to see if you can work in Excel instead of just saying 'It's easy and our training department can help you out.' Or worse, taking your word for it.
So I don't really blame programmers all that much for users not knowing what to do. If the UI is decent for the job at hand and help is accessible then they've done their part.
Sorry but I had to let that one out. "Code that matches my passion." is priceless.
When you start looking at a mortgage payment, car payment, grocery bill, doctor bill, etc. you'll realize that you work on something you can do well. Save your passion for your hobbies. Code on the bleeding edge at home.
Do you honestly expect business to conform to what you want to do instead of what works for them? Answer truly. And if you don't come up with "Heck no!" you need to rethink how it works.
Sure COBOL may not be for you. Good deal. Don't learn it. But if you're applying for a job and they need LegacySystem 5.7 and you tell them you don't know it, won't learn it, but would consider writing in BleedingEdgeSystem 0.54 you can pretty much figure out what the answer is going to be.
I've been coding since 1976. Yes, 1976. I've learned many languages. Some I've liked, some I haven't. But if the business needs it I learn it. Sometimes I learn it just because I want to. I missed out on COBOL (don't ask) but may just add it to my list of things I want to investigate.
I'm not being a troll or at least I'm not trying to be one. Some people will probably read that first exclamation and not go any farther. But sometimes you really do have to wake up and smell yesterday's coffee burning in the pot.
If not, make them aware. Charts hanging on the wall will reinforce that a bit in the beginning.
You're always going to get the "I can either fix it or log it. Choose." kind of attitude. The answer is "You're going to do both."
However, there are some exceptions.
Is there actual value in the detailed logging? Is anyone going back to use the old resolutions or report on stuff? Perhaps the answer is a streamlined logging process that gets the basics you need without making your people jump through hoops.
So the question to me is whether you have a call tracking system (pure counts) or a problem tracking system (historical data, etc.) and what value you're getting out of the time spent.
If you've complained that you don't want someone using your network and they continue to do so, is that their right as well?
I agree, the article doesn't have enough detail to make any kinds of assumption on what happened before the arrest. I would hope it went something like:
Leech
Complain
Leech
Complain
Leech Arrest
An unsecured wireless network is just irresponsible these days unless you're implicitly breaking your TOA with your internet carrier (most of them don't let you open it up like that) but it's not an open invitiation to use the service. At least, to law-abiding people it isn't. The arguement of "If they didn't want me to use it they should have kept it out of my reach" is juvenile and whiny. Try that at any retail store when you walk out without paying.
The only people we found who got a gain from the larger monitors were those with multiple windows they needed to monitor. Those people loved them.
One of our developers has the dual LCD monitor setup. It seems to work for him. But I would much rather focus on a distinct area where I'm working than have hugely wide windows where I can't quite see everything I need.