Sure Elon. That's going to make up for losing 75% of your ad revenue because you allowed fascists back on Twitter.
Muskrat is the poster child for rich guys with no one around them who says "No. That's a stupid idea. Don't do that."
43 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Jul 2007
I was living in Boston when DEC and Wang were dying in the late 80s and early 90s.
Wang's huge headquarters (five or six buildings), in Lowell (built there to spur business in an old mill town that had seen. better days) ended up selling for $525,000. It had cost $60M to build.
They just couldn't catch a break.
I was once the IT manager of a now defunct taxi company in New Orleans, USA.
One day I got a call from a police detective on a Monday afternoon, enquiring if he could look at the tape of our outside security cameras on the side street. Someone had been murdered a block away the previous Saturday night.
I said "sure," and arranged for him to come down. When he arrived, I pulled up the footage, only to discover that the cameras did NOT HAVE INFRARED. So about 10 cameras were taking video all night. Of nothing. The previous IT manager was apparently a total idiot.
I had to replace all of the outdoor cameras, which involved climbing a 20' ladder. Did I mention that I REALLY don't like heights. Yeah. It was a fun job.
I really hope he charged them a LOT of money to fix that. I would've charged £25,000 to fix it. Just because it wasn't my problem anymore. I've done a lot of these in my day.
My favorite was the one where I started as IT manger in 2005 of a video production company which had never had one before. Just part time contractors who dropped in now and then. During the second week I was setting up a new email server for them. I had gone to run an errand at lunch and got a panicked phone call saying email was down. I got back to the office a few minutes later and it was the exact same problem. Disk was full. I cleared years of old logs and rebooted it and it was fine.
For my trouble I was fired the next day. They told the unemployment people that I "crashed the email server on purpose." I told the woman "why on earth would I create more work for myself?" Which made her laugh, and I got my benefits. I later found out that the people who ran the company were nuts. One of them had fired an entire department of people over the intercom once before.
When men see behavior such as that alleged in the complaint (and women's public airing of their experiences) and they do nothing, they are complicit.
One of the allegations involved the head of the WoW franchise having to be physically pulled off female subordinates (more than one!!!!!) that he was hitting on at a conference.
"During a company event (an annual convention called Blizz Con) Afrasiabi would hit on female employees, telling them he wanted to marry them, attempting to kiss them, and putting his arms around them. This was in plain view of other male employees, including supervisors, who had to intervene and pull him off female employees."
This isn't "frat boy behavior," this is sexual assault IN FRONT OF A BUNCH OF PEOPLE. And nothing happened to the guy, but he eventually left the company.
https://kotaku.com/blizzard-harasser-from-lawsuit-is-still-all-over-world-1847345457
If you see a woman being harassed by her boss or you hear men making disparaging comments about female co-workers and you do nothing then you're part of the problem. Why is this difficult for men to understand?
Whether it's legally allowed and whether the company SHOULD do something are two very different things. Sure sounds like a way to discourage your sales reps from pursuing big deals.
Why would a sales person go out of their way to land the big sale if the company's going to nickel and dime them on the commission? It's penny wise and pound foolish.
Oh Jack. You really are a douchebag. You could've stopped this years ago, but you chose not to. Because you're greedy. Donald Trump was violating your TOS before he became President, but he drove traffic to you so you didn't care.
So spare me your crocodile tears, whining and pearl clutching. It's disgusting.
Wait. What? Apple wants to continue to make oodles of money by selling computers and phones?
<GASP> HOW! DARE! THEY!?
I use Apple products because I like them. They're well made and they last a long time (although Windows is better at this now) so they tend to be a good use of my limited money. I'm not an apologist for them and they sometimes do silly things. But expecting a well established, phenomenally profitable company to change its business model is also incredibly silly. In 1997, no one expected Apple to survive, let alone become the largest corporation in history. They're apparently doing something right.
Wow. StichFix must be really hard up for IT talent if they're willing to keep on a person who plead guilty to sabotage. Remind me never to use their services for anything.
I spent years as a freelance IT consultant and several times after I parted ways (occasionally unpleasantly) with a company I noticed that I was still getting important emails for them or had access to one of their systems. I informed them right away and deleted the saved password.
Why? Because I'm not an unethical douchebag.
Because the people who lived there at the time had no say in the matter. They were being used as pawns by the great powers and by Mauritius.
And because the fruits of colonialism are always a mess. The British have found this over and over again but they still can't learn the lessons they should (Brexit is ultimately about Britain not being able to come to terms with the fact that it's a medium sized country with limited power). The lesson should be, don't blunder into someone else's home, "claim" it for your Queen and then control the place by evicting the people who live there. Is that really so complicated? Just because you can doesn't mean it's right or legal. You would most certainly not like it if someone did that to you. Because these people lived in a remote area and were poor and brown doesn't make it right.
I can't believe that 90% of NHS Trusts have some app they cannot move off of Windows XP. This is sheer laziness on the part of IT staff. Yes, doing a huge migration project is a pain in the as, but now you're really in the fire. I'll bet you their backups suck as well.
This is silly.
California is full of incredibly bright people. This has been though of before (in face a large desalination plan went on line this year in San Diego and Santa Barbara brought its 1980s vintage plant out of mothballs this year). Others have been talked about.
But what exactly would you plan to do with all of that salt? And whatever other impurities might be pulled out? It's generally mixed back with some water and put back into the ocean which is not without its impact on wildlife and ocean ecosystems.
Desalination makes some sense in places like Israel or Saudi Arabia where water is quite scarce, and California will probably have to use it more in the future, but implying that Californians are dense and stupid because they haven't considered this is insulting and just plain wrong. It's complicated and very expensive to run destination plants. Of course if the energy is produced by solar in some way that reduces the environmental impact, but there is no such thing as a free lunch.
British people don't always have all of the best engineering ideas in the world. Trust me, I've owned a British car (a 1969 Morris Mini Minor).
I feel for you in terms of how you were dealt with. No one likes to be treated like crap by any company, especially when you've put a lot of money into something you depend on every day. It really does sound like you got a lemon (and I've seen those from every manufacturer there is, and support is often just as bad).
But I have to chide you for not making backups. With 500 GB USB drives available for $100 (in the US) there's no excuse whatsoever for being without a daily backup.