The worst part (of Conroy's statement)is not the "spams and scams through the portal". Although inept, it's understandable. The "up to 20,000 regularly getting infected" is the problem. Where did that number come from? What's the rate? Clearly he made it up and is lying to us. Shame on him.
If C-32 passes the CD levy will remain. It's simply to much free money to give up. I suggest contacting your member of Parliament and making it clear that if C-32 goes through he/she will be voted out of office. It is a free market for political office too.
C-32 allows you to copy what you bought onto other or duplicate media for personal use or backup. However, it seems it also makes breaking a copy protection (no matter how lame) punishable by 5 years in prison whether or not you bought the right to use the content and even if you do not sell it illegally or even if you break it accidentally as a result of a flaw in the CP. This is sounding like the long arms registration all over again. It cost 2 billion dollars, never worked, and made a large percentage of Canadians instant criminals.
Re: Re: Re: Why is our President giving graduation speeches?
BTW, was that an Eisenhower joke at the end? My mother met him once at an embassy function - nice guy but he played too much golf when he should have been engaging in diplomacy and helped set up that whole Cuban missile crisis. Too bad Khrushchev didn't have a nine handicap.
I searched "Bev Stayart" using several engines and there was no match to any drugs of any type nor any association with any other objectionable materials in the first several hundred links.
I did find in the search results a number of sites that could be associated, legitimately, with her in a number of ways. By simply ignoring some and focusing on others and using a very broad effort to perform guilt by association I can come up with all sorts of very real embarrassments.
First, apparently the links to accurate and factual reports of the lawsuits she has filed against search engines support the allegation that she has a quixotic, sociopathic, and possibly paranoid nature.
Secondly, she seems to have a fascination with right wing, Christian extremist war and weapons sites operating under the guise of military history groups as is apparent in her membership on sites such as "Arm Chair General":
with fellow members "hellspawn254683" and "psycko".
As Ms. Stayart should plainly see an internet search can be interpreted in any way you wish to see it and depends upon the subjectivity of the reader. Is she a right wing nut job that associates with war mongering freaks? Is she a paranoid, nut-job, gold digger looking to fleece big companies? No, of course not but it's easy to make it look that way.
Ms. Stayart: Facts and information are not the whole truth and search engine links are often never even close to the facts or anything resembling information.
No one would have logically associated her with Viagra and Cialis although now I do find that if I combine "Bev Stayart Viagra Cialis" into a search the internet "pharmacies" have now included her name into the search terms of their web pages.
As Quick Brown Fox pointed out: "Yet another example of the Streisand effect". If she stays quiet and behaves the internet will correct itself and ignore her. Listen to Eric Goldman Ms. Stayart or start selling Viagra and Cialis on the internet; you have a better than average association with the drugs now that you put so much effort into creating it.
I usually drink Wild Turkey or Gentleman Jack. Maker's Mark is a bit overpriced.
Back to the discussion topic... A wax seal seems a bit of a generic packaging gimmick. What's next, a judge ruling the gift wrapping counter at Sacks department store is the only one allowed to use blue ribbons?
3D will have a limited run as novelty item as it did in the late 1950s to early 1960s. The profit in the model is to get the cash out of the customers now and charge a premium as part of the appeal. Paying more convinces the customer they are getting more.
There is no long term plan just quick profit. There should be but there isn't. At least it's better than the early 1970s when films became so vulgar you felt you had to shower after the movie.
And remember, it's just entertainment. If thine eye offends thee, pluck it out. Just turn off the TV and stop patronizing movies and support local live theater and read books. Maybe we all should pay less attention to what is essentially a placating drug rather than an art form and do more political and volunteer work.
These are my thoughts exactly. 3D gimmicks were tried before when TV was taking over. It didn't work then and I doubt it will now. The story and acting and directing and cinematography and all of the other talented PEOPLE skills are what matter - not the gimmick. Has there ever been a movie studio executive that was a movie fan and a film school graduate?
Yes, the 3D televisions will drop the price of a 2D significantly in the coming months. I too will be shopping to replace my last CRT when the price falls.
Oh, and I did get head during a movie once and IT WAS THE GREATEST FILM EVER!. I can't recall what it was about though.
This reminds me of when James Randi was sued by Uri Geller. Randi was almost bankrupted by Geller's lawsuit. Uri Geller used false claims to make huge amounts of money and Randi challenged his claims of psychic abilities. It was public money that supported Randi. Time to kick in again boys and girls.
The judge should be commended. Someone had to stop the unending, invasive Giraffe coverage. Someone has to stand up to the needless damage that the gossip, innuendo, satire, irony, and even (gasp) sarcasm contained in the media's endless daily coverage has inflicted on poor Giraffe.
Oh, I meant Tiger.
The American culture that allows a human to be tortured by mainstream media but rules against satire of institutions and animals by a fringe comedy writers consists of very warped values.
Re: curation, does that mean eliminate the misinformation
I agree, any newspaper article I have read that I had first hand knowledge of as a participant had the facts mostly wrong. If a scientific or technical fact was used that I was knowledgeable of the information in the article was almost always completely wrong or was skewed to fit a political agenda.
Not really, one of the big mistakes with IT departments is to look at staff work capacity as 100% at all times. This would totally burn out a team (and often has). If, in the very rare case, an IT department has a person that has absolutely no function then your point may be valid. Although there is always an IT related improvement that an under-worked staff member can be assigned to either improve current operations or provide added value with a new service.
If the IT team is providing such good service that there are no internal or external customer complaints I would not mess with it even if I observed a great deal of solitaire and blogging during business hours. An IT team needs to be staffed at a level to ensure the ability to deal with a crisis situation and that means that when all is running well due to the IT work being well planned and well run, the atmosphere should be relaxed - but not so inactive as to be boring.
Personally, when I run a team and no one is taking a break ever, that's when I start worrying.
I am good at programming and like the job. I am also a good systems analyst and very good at properly documenting the requirements of a project in a clear and complete manner. My team management skills are decent and I try to keep everyone happy by treating them as competent professionals that know what to do and how to do it. My job as manager is to make sure they have the tools and resources required, project milestones are met, and no-one interferes with the teams function.
So, either assign me to a job and let me do it well or let me lead a team and let me let them do the job well. If this was how IT always worked everyone would be happy.
Information technology is an odd duck. Engineering and accounts are centuries old professions with agreed upon principles, methodologies, and standards - all well documented in an agreed upon, standardized rule book. IT is barely 60 years old and still changing literally daily. This creates an environment where all sorts of nonsense can occur. Generally, IT people are almost universally dissatisfied with the job, some of the time, for several reasons. These are not all my personal experiences. Some are, but most are those of others I know in the IT business or are common experiences of most IT people:
Being expected to do the impossible with nothing - On smaller jobs the lone IT person has to do all of the design work herself as well as the coding and testing. Typically, due to the job being an afterthought and not part of the projects initial requirements the project head provides the specification document in the form of a bad photocopy of a poor screen shot of a somewhat similar design with scribbled notes in Bulgarian explaining the missing 'stuff'.
Doing all of the work and getting little or no benefit - The sales guy promises a feature to a client that was only a brief mention in a previous design meeting about a future version he was invited to only as a courtesy. Now, the client will not sign without the feature and the VPs of sales and marketing pressure your boss to put the feature in place. You end up working to 3am for three straight weeks. The salesman gets a huge commission, and senior sales and marketing get a giant bonus. You get 14 extra pounds, eye, back and blood sugar problems, a wife that is alienated, and behavioral problems from your children.
You design something brilliant. Your boss gets the credit.
You fix a huge bug created by the indescribably bad design you pointed out a year ago to the so called system analyst/engineer making three times your salary. Your boss reprimands you for not following software development methodology protocols (he hired the fool).
Every day you attend a 'SCRUM' meeting because the IT department head attended a seminar on 'AGILE' software design methodologies and wants to be on the leading edge of software design. He, of course, has no clue what Agile is designed to achieve or how. Instead of listening to the teams' concerns and complaints and generating solutions he spends 20 minutes each morning explaining why his designs are so great and anyone that speaks up is punished in numerous ways. If the team does start communicating concerns and creates a dialog to determine solutions he abruptly stops it because you are not following his aggenda. You think of nothing but the silent humiliation you will suffer from 8:40am to 9:00am each morning while you are on the way to work and rear-end a police cruiser at that complicated intersection two blocks from work due to your introverted rage distraction.
Every time you get ahead the specifications change. The change is always what you recommended several months ago which was ignored at the time.
Every project started in the last five years failed and the people responsible for the failures get promoted. You get sent to a software course that you could teach and has no application to the current work you do.
Your boss is ten years younger than you, talks of nothing but his new BMW, has no clue how to manage people and can't analyze or document a project to save his life.
The project is run by proxy by a lower level team leader who is a brilliant technical worker with ambitions for management but has the personality of a kettle, people skills of a cod fish, and system analysis and design abilities of an exceptionally obtuse duck. Also, he, the proxy, is a control freak and has a dysfunctional interpersonal relationship with women. You spend half your time trying to avoid him interacting with the women on your team.
When you design a new way to save time, coordinate teams, monitor progress accurately, update information using a real time multiple user interface, and create effective inter-departmental communications regarding the project your boss says he does not like the software you are using (code for not understanding it or that he can not control the information which is code that it does not allow him to lie about the development progress) and demands you go back to creating Excel spreadsheets and emailing them only to him.
You finally get the software to work after two years of effort and the head office cancels the project giving the reason as it is an unworkable design. For those two years you have been saying the design is unworkable and they were responding that you should make it work.
Another software team 'forgets' to build a part of the system assigned to them three months ago. They, when confronted with the deadline, complain about the technical complexities, issues with other components of the system, and a need to further study the issue and whatever other obfuscating BS they can invent. You get ambushed by a frantic project manager and, thinking you are speaking off-the-record, quip that this is a two day job at the most. You get assigned the job, do it in two days, and for the rest of your time there the other team makes sure they cause as much trouble for you as they can get away with.
Your boss makes a mistake with the dates at a head office IT project progress meeting and, too proud (or insecure) to correct himself, makes the IT team work 16 hours a day 7 days a week to meet the impossible deadline. Somehow, you and your co-workers make it. He gets a letter of commendation from the president of the company and a bonus for finishing so soon. You miss your kid's softball tournament and your wife wants to go to couples counseling.
You have not had the time to eat lunch at a restaurant during a work day - ever.
You have not finished your work in an eight hour period - ever.
You have not been able to take your vacation at a time of your choosing - ever.
You are classified as management so you can't be part of the union staff but you get no management authority, privileges, or benefits. This is so that during a strike, the essential IT functions can be kept operational. Union staff get pensions and medical coverage. Management get medical and stock options and golden parachutes. You make less than a fork lift operator in shipping with ten years seniority. You get fired when the company's third quarter profit misses the street by 10% and it is determined that costs need to be cut. They have three vice presidents which are directly responsible for IT and a CIO. None of these are fired and all get a performance bonus. You get the night shift at a Chevron.
You are so good at your job that you are the go-to person for any and all technical and project management, user support, documentation, and design issues. You have not had a raise in two years and have not been promoted - ever.
You resign and they replace you with five people. Productivity still drops.
On the post: Australian Censorship Boss Has His 'Series Of Tubes' Moment
On the post: Canadian DMCA Introduced; Digital Lock Provision Trumps Any And All User Rights
Re: It's still a free market
On the post: Canadian DMCA Introduced; Digital Lock Provision Trumps Any And All User Rights
Re: Copying
On the post: Obama Complains About iPads And Xboxes As Diversions
Re: Re: Re: Why is our President giving graduation speeches?
On the post: Obama Complains About iPads And Xboxes As Diversions
Re: Re: Re: Why is our President giving graduation speeches?
On the post: Obama Complains About iPads And Xboxes As Diversions
Re: Why is our President giving graduation speeches?
On the post: Students Who Caught Gym Teacher Stealing Money From Lockers May Get Punished
Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Bev Stayart Strikes Again: Sues Google Over The Infamous 'Levitra' Connection
What's in a Name Association?
I did find in the search results a number of sites that could be associated, legitimately, with her in a number of ways. By simply ignoring some and focusing on others and using a very broad effort to perform guilt by association I can come up with all sorts of very real embarrassments.
First, apparently the links to accurate and factual reports of the lawsuits she has filed against search engines support the allegation that she has a quixotic, sociopathic, and possibly paranoid nature.
Secondly, she seems to have a fascination with right wing, Christian extremist war and weapons sites operating under the guise of military history groups as is apparent in her membership on sites such as "Arm Chair General":
http://www.armchairgeneral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14238
a hawkish, rightwing site where members discuss military history and includes one named "HiredGoon".
and "The Patriot Files" featuring topics like "Jane Fonda committed treason, and that's NOT a myth":
http://www.patriotfiles.com/forum/member.php?u=11670
with fellow members "hellspawn254683" and "psycko".
As Ms. Stayart should plainly see an internet search can be interpreted in any way you wish to see it and depends upon the subjectivity of the reader. Is she a right wing nut job that associates with war mongering freaks? Is she a paranoid, nut-job, gold digger looking to fleece big companies? No, of course not but it's easy to make it look that way.
Ms. Stayart: Facts and information are not the whole truth and search engine links are often never even close to the facts or anything resembling information.
No one would have logically associated her with Viagra and Cialis although now I do find that if I combine "Bev Stayart Viagra Cialis" into a search the internet "pharmacies" have now included her name into the search terms of their web pages.
As Quick Brown Fox pointed out: "Yet another example of the Streisand effect". If she stays quiet and behaves the internet will correct itself and ignore her. Listen to Eric Goldman Ms. Stayart or start selling Viagra and Cialis on the internet; you have a better than average association with the drugs now that you put so much effort into creating it.
On the post: Judge Rules: Drunk Moron In A Hurry Wouldn't Know Tequila From Maker's Mark
Re: Re: Drunken rage.
Back to the discussion topic... A wax seal seems a bit of a generic packaging gimmick. What's next, a judge ruling the gift wrapping counter at Sacks department store is the only one allowed to use blue ribbons?
On the post: Could Copyright Hold Back iPad Sales In Canada And Elsewhere?
Not in Canada you say? Pity!
On the post: Hollywood Seeks To Kill Off 3D Golden Goose With Much Higher Prices
I Have to Disagree
There is no long term plan just quick profit. There should be but there isn't. At least it's better than the early 1970s when films became so vulgar you felt you had to shower after the movie.
And remember, it's just entertainment. If thine eye offends thee, pluck it out. Just turn off the TV and stop patronizing movies and support local live theater and read books. Maybe we all should pay less attention to what is essentially a placating drug rather than an art form and do more political and volunteer work.
On the post: Hollywood Seeks To Kill Off 3D Golden Goose With Much Higher Prices
You Read My Mind
Yes, the 3D televisions will drop the price of a 2D significantly in the coming months. I too will be shopping to replace my last CRT when the price falls.
Oh, and I did get head during a movie once and IT WAS THE GREATEST FILM EVER!. I can't recall what it was about though.
On the post: Simon Singh Stops Writing His Column To Focus On Fighting 'Bogus' Libel Suit
Geller v. Randi
On the post: Murdoch's NY Post Continues To Source Articles From Bloggers With No Credit
Cause and Effect
On the post: Judge Orders Satirical Site To Remove Joke Story About Fictional Giraffe Attack
Re: giraffe attack
Oh, I meant Tiger.
The American culture that allows a human to be tortured by mainstream media but rules against satire of institutions and animals by a fringe comedy writers consists of very warped values.
On the post: The Role Of Curation In Journalism
Re: curation, does that mean eliminate the misinformation
On the post: Could Looking At London's 2012 Olympics Logo Land People In Prison?
Rude or Ugly?
Even the completely nothing to do with Vancouver Vancouver 2010 upside down skate boarding bunny logo is better than that pink thing.
On the post: Do IT People Hate Their Jobs?
Re: over-staffed
If the IT team is providing such good service that there are no internal or external customer complaints I would not mess with it even if I observed a great deal of solitaire and blogging during business hours. An IT team needs to be staffed at a level to ensure the ability to deal with a crisis situation and that means that when all is running well due to the IT work being well planned and well run, the atmosphere should be relaxed - but not so inactive as to be boring.
Personally, when I run a team and no one is taking a break ever, that's when I start worrying.
On the post: Do IT People Hate Their Jobs?
Why I (sometimes) Hate my IT Career
So, either assign me to a job and let me do it well or let me lead a team and let me let them do the job well. If this was how IT always worked everyone would be happy.
Information technology is an odd duck. Engineering and accounts are centuries old professions with agreed upon principles, methodologies, and standards - all well documented in an agreed upon, standardized rule book. IT is barely 60 years old and still changing literally daily. This creates an environment where all sorts of nonsense can occur. Generally, IT people are almost universally dissatisfied with the job, some of the time, for several reasons. These are not all my personal experiences. Some are, but most are those of others I know in the IT business or are common experiences of most IT people:
Being expected to do the impossible with nothing - On smaller jobs the lone IT person has to do all of the design work herself as well as the coding and testing. Typically, due to the job being an afterthought and not part of the projects initial requirements the project head provides the specification document in the form of a bad photocopy of a poor screen shot of a somewhat similar design with scribbled notes in Bulgarian explaining the missing 'stuff'.
Doing all of the work and getting little or no benefit - The sales guy promises a feature to a client that was only a brief mention in a previous design meeting about a future version he was invited to only as a courtesy. Now, the client will not sign without the feature and the VPs of sales and marketing pressure your boss to put the feature in place. You end up working to 3am for three straight weeks. The salesman gets a huge commission, and senior sales and marketing get a giant bonus. You get 14 extra pounds, eye, back and blood sugar problems, a wife that is alienated, and behavioral problems from your children.
You design something brilliant. Your boss gets the credit.
You fix a huge bug created by the indescribably bad design you pointed out a year ago to the so called system analyst/engineer making three times your salary. Your boss reprimands you for not following software development methodology protocols (he hired the fool).
Every day you attend a 'SCRUM' meeting because the IT department head attended a seminar on 'AGILE' software design methodologies and wants to be on the leading edge of software design. He, of course, has no clue what Agile is designed to achieve or how. Instead of listening to the teams' concerns and complaints and generating solutions he spends 20 minutes each morning explaining why his designs are so great and anyone that speaks up is punished in numerous ways. If the team does start communicating concerns and creates a dialog to determine solutions he abruptly stops it because you are not following his aggenda. You think of nothing but the silent humiliation you will suffer from 8:40am to 9:00am each morning while you are on the way to work and rear-end a police cruiser at that complicated intersection two blocks from work due to your introverted rage distraction.
Every time you get ahead the specifications change. The change is always what you recommended several months ago which was ignored at the time.
Every project started in the last five years failed and the people responsible for the failures get promoted. You get sent to a software course that you could teach and has no application to the current work you do.
Your boss is ten years younger than you, talks of nothing but his new BMW, has no clue how to manage people and can't analyze or document a project to save his life.
The project is run by proxy by a lower level team leader who is a brilliant technical worker with ambitions for management but has the personality of a kettle, people skills of a cod fish, and system analysis and design abilities of an exceptionally obtuse duck. Also, he, the proxy, is a control freak and has a dysfunctional interpersonal relationship with women. You spend half your time trying to avoid him interacting with the women on your team.
When you design a new way to save time, coordinate teams, monitor progress accurately, update information using a real time multiple user interface, and create effective inter-departmental communications regarding the project your boss says he does not like the software you are using (code for not understanding it or that he can not control the information which is code that it does not allow him to lie about the development progress) and demands you go back to creating Excel spreadsheets and emailing them only to him.
You finally get the software to work after two years of effort and the head office cancels the project giving the reason as it is an unworkable design. For those two years you have been saying the design is unworkable and they were responding that you should make it work.
Another software team 'forgets' to build a part of the system assigned to them three months ago. They, when confronted with the deadline, complain about the technical complexities, issues with other components of the system, and a need to further study the issue and whatever other obfuscating BS they can invent. You get ambushed by a frantic project manager and, thinking you are speaking off-the-record, quip that this is a two day job at the most. You get assigned the job, do it in two days, and for the rest of your time there the other team makes sure they cause as much trouble for you as they can get away with.
Your boss makes a mistake with the dates at a head office IT project progress meeting and, too proud (or insecure) to correct himself, makes the IT team work 16 hours a day 7 days a week to meet the impossible deadline. Somehow, you and your co-workers make it. He gets a letter of commendation from the president of the company and a bonus for finishing so soon. You miss your kid's softball tournament and your wife wants to go to couples counseling.
You have not had the time to eat lunch at a restaurant during a work day - ever.
You have not finished your work in an eight hour period - ever.
You have not been able to take your vacation at a time of your choosing - ever.
You are classified as management so you can't be part of the union staff but you get no management authority, privileges, or benefits. This is so that during a strike, the essential IT functions can be kept operational. Union staff get pensions and medical coverage. Management get medical and stock options and golden parachutes. You make less than a fork lift operator in shipping with ten years seniority. You get fired when the company's third quarter profit misses the street by 10% and it is determined that costs need to be cut. They have three vice presidents which are directly responsible for IT and a CIO. None of these are fired and all get a performance bonus. You get the night shift at a Chevron.
You are so good at your job that you are the go-to person for any and all technical and project management, user support, documentation, and design issues. You have not had a raise in two years and have not been promoted - ever.
You resign and they replace you with five people. Productivity still drops.
On the post: Could Looking At London's 2012 Olympics Logo Land People In Prison?
Re: OGC
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