Terms of a person's firing are almost always non-public. A company as large as Staples can't publish to ALL it's employees that they fired Bob over $5.00 misappropriated on an expense report. That's malicious. It's appropriate to say we will (and have) terminated over expense reports being wrong without giving the offenders name.

I can't think of any company I've worked at that's attached names to memos like that. Even companies that actually call the cops on somebody don't typically inform the employees of the person's name, or particular details of the infraction beyond the company "rule book" for just this reason.

Um, the easy solution would be to list the reason for every firing on the corporate website as a matter of store policy. See the thing isn't if you think something's right or not. It's that a policy exists and is followed. If they don't have a policy, then opps. Now, if they go outside their normal policy, opps. Now, if they change their policy to say everyone being fired is going to have their final evaluation posted and the reason that they were fired, it becomes magically o.k.

Never say that a large company can't do something like this. It'd actually be easier for a large company to post it on their web site under their employee terminations section and reasons. Usually at small businesses, or single stores, it's pretty much known amongst everyone within 5 seconds if some one had the cops called on them for something. It's only larger stores with multiple shifts and enough people that everyone didn't get the gossip within 5 seconds and it was taking the gossip more like 5 weeks and wasn't as accurate. That's when it's understandable that someone would like to set the record straight per se. Now if they just had a simple form to fill out that basically has the employee's name and dates of employment and reason for separation from the company they could just have some peon enter into a DB and it all show up on the internet for any interested parties to find out.

I'm more surprised that this isn't currently done rather than the current setup.

Damn. We are loosely badly to all the lawlessness adware, malware, and viruses out there. I don't really want a cyber gun per se, but I'd like to hire some one to effectively shield myself from them. Current anti-virus, anti-spyware, and anti-malware products just aren't quiet cutting it right at the moment. They are better than nothing, but I want 'em to be much more effective.

Heck, I want assassin squads sent out after the writers of adware, malware, and viruses. Let's see what happens when these cyber guys come face to face with some actual physical military force.

I've been on the bad side of this one - a lack of criminal intent does not mitigate or extenuate criminal action. Their guilt is quite plain (having been admitted, even published by the BBC itself). Now, their lack of criminal intent does have a bearing on sentencing. Inasmuch as the BBC did not wilfully cause damage or fiscal loss to anybody (except, potentially, themselves?), the sentence should be something on the light side, perhaps even suspended; but the matter of their guilt is simple black-letter law.

These guys need to be chucked in jail ASAP. Why? They wonder why their youth has no respect for the law. It's because things like this are allowed to slide. Nailing these folks will make more of the knife youth pay attention to the system than almost anything else the government could easily do.

Regardless of intent it is illegal. They are gaining unauthorized access to someones PC and using it for their own personal gain. If I were to demonstrate how to crack someones WEP key in 5 minutes without the victim's explicit written permission it would be illegal, even if done just for "educational purposes." Sure, it's edgy reporting, but it is still highly illegal.

I doubt anything will come of it though.

I would love for tomorrow's headline to be X at BBC arrested for computer trespass or whatever the appropriate crime is. I'd want the reporter, the guys that did it, and the show's producer all arrested. This is like a kid going down the street and throwing rocks in every window and saying what he did wasn't criminal because he didn't intend wrong. Well, if you are get caught you go to jail regardless of what you think this looks, sounds and smells illegal.

MP3 and FM do have similar characteristics, but if you can't hear the high-frequency (15000-to-22,000) components on a CD, your hearing might be damaged. To me the difference between MP3/FM and CD is like night-and-day. For example if I pop-in a CD, I can hear background instruments on the CD that I never heard on my FM radio, due to CD's extended range.

If you can't hear the difference in your car, try it at home in a quiet room with headphones or speakers.

I'll take your word on it. I've always had some high pitch hearing lose in one ear. The wife and kids hearing are normal though. The thing is if we have to change our normal listening environment and listen closely and then maybe just maybe tell the difference. It ain't worth it. Have you listened to how noisy your average home is? We've got the dishwasher, washer, dryer, sometimes a TV, some fans, any running water, the AC, and if you pay attention enough your refrigerator. This is the environment that music will be listened to. You can turn off the TV, and the running water depends on if anyone's been to the bathroom lately, but most of the rest you can take as a given. And yes you can hear most of the stuff going from anywhere else in the house if you pay attention a tiny bit. That stuff I can hear. I can't hear these magically high pitched instruments that some are incredibly happy to hear. There are times that I wonder what I'm missing. Most of the time, I don't even bother thinking about it.

It's because your speakers suck. Honestly it is. upgrade them to decent quality component speakers and you will hear the difference. I show people how incredibly crappy XM and Sirius sounds all the time. plus a A-B compared of an mp3 to the CD is very obvious. also a car is the WORST listening environment there is the background noise level is incredibly high.

Yes, if your car has the stock speakers, even if you have the "premium sound" package are utter crap.

Which is funny at best. Why? Because do your comments it sounds like folks would be out demanding better stuff. Nope. Why not? Because we actually like the audio that we hear in the car. It works great for us. We have zero complaints with it. Why on Earth would we go out and buy speakers that would make our normal listening music suck?

If anything I wouldn't blame my existing music, I'd blame the crappy "high quality" overpriced pieces of junk that you suggested to put in my car.

I can see not hearing a difference between mp3 and CD, but can you really not tell (and aren't bothered by) the difference between a CD and FM?
I mean this sincerely and with jealousy: Ignorance really is bliss.

Within a car which is where we do 98% of our listening to music, no we can't. It all sounds the same. Well, mp3s are better than CDs and FM since you don't have commercials or songs that you don't like.

Damn, what kinda cars do you have where you can actually tell the difference between FM, CDs, and MP3s while the car is running and driving down the road?

Don't get me wrong, British society has plenty of problems, not least with its government what with all of the CCTV and the war in the Middle East and the economic issues etc. but the gun policy we have here works for us and I don't really think you should be so disdainful about it. As I said before the US (which I assume you're from, if not then sorry and insert your country as appropriate) is its own place and is entitled to its own policy on the matter. I wouldn't want to pass judgement on the internal affairs of a country of which I have no great understanding.

Ok. I'll accept that your gun policy works for you. Well, then you need a sword, knife and sharp cutting instruments policy as well. Basically any sharp blade that could slice, harm or kill a human needs to be banned or placed with an extremely large tax to prevent most of the population from being able to afford them. Video games have nothing to do with knife crimes. You want to stop knife crimes? Do what worked with your guns. You ban them.

Next, you might want ban anything that could be used as a club or rocks.

Right off the bat, there's some serious overgeneralizing in that statement. However, if it is the case, then the solution is simple in concept but difficult in execution.
Show young people that the system can work for them. That involves thousands of hours of education in basic finance, civics, and law.
Show young people that the system can work against them. That involves an effective police force and appropriate punishments

Are you kidding? If they had an effective police force all the kids that commit assault with knifes would be in jail or atleast their version of JDC.

If they had a half way decent educational system, it would have shown what ever info/propaganda that you want shoved down them.

Do you expect anyone to show up for thousands of hours of education in basic finance, civics, and law outside of basic education? Nope. Not going to happen. If you want that it's got to be when kids are young enough to be still going to public school just because parents are using it for daycare. Then you have to cross your fingers and pray that your info/propaganda/religion takes hold so that they don't commit crimes within your society.

Were the to pool the opinions of students of Julliard rather than Stamford he'd likely get a completely different result.

If the young person in question is fond of mass produced music -- as most are I guess -- then the sound quality probably isn't important to them, just as tonal nuances wasn't important to the original musicians. For kids that are musicians themselves, and especially jazz or classical musicians, the sound quality matters a great deal.

Hey, that's like saying that Linux users like looking at the source code for every one of their apps and can tell the difference when using a closed source app. Your average user don't freaking care if its open or closed source or how buggy the devs think it is. The average users have their own standards for the apps.

This applies equally to everything. If you make X, you are aware of every flaw that your X has. Your coworkers might be able to point out the flaws to X as well. The average users of X usually will never notice. My personal example. My mom hangs wall paper. She will notice and point out little things about seams not matching or things just alittle off. If you didn't have her pointing it out, you'd never know. I rarely catch it myself. You've got the same thing apply to music, programs, or hanging wall paper. Those that do, can see the mistakes, everyone else just cares about the design that they picked out and its got to be a really bad mistake for them to pick up on it.

I would be curious to see what these kids would think about the different samples if they went a month without listening to any music. They like the hiss because they're not used to hearing anything without it (on crappy headphones none-the-less). I wanna know what happens when they "reboot" their ears. This isn't just a matter of some people prefer sennheiser headphones and some people prefer grado headphones, this is a matter of some people liking how things actually sound vs. some people liking distorted music with hiss laid over it. That's kind of unsettling to me.

I'm curious about all these that have this apparently super hearing. My wife and I have an MP3 CD player in the car and use it. We and the kids can't tell the difference between the average mp3, FM, and most CDs. I'm amazed at the BS audiophiles come up with to justify their audio opinions. If you've got portions of a populations that can't tell the freaking difference, but then Mr Super Ears can well, it ain't better cause Mr. Super Ears likes it. It's better if the average likes it.

I'd actually prefer something like this be made and sold straight to DVD. I think Star Trek or Star Wars both could easily sell just about any show that they produced straight to DVD. They'd manage 3-4 seasons without a sweat. Actually, I think that it's far past time for a Star Wars TV series.

I've always liked Trek, but it's felt bland for awhile. They are always presented as being one thing but very soon they all bring out their Kirk side. This refers to every federation leader that we've seen.

I miss B5. I feel that it managed to set a standard that Star Trek should easily be able to match or better. I mean come on any Trek series should be able to make it 5 seasons. They should easily be able to add those little background things B5 had to pull it all together. If anything, I've been kinda disappointed in Trek lately.

It's kinda sad that the series wants to return to its roots and go out to find hot alien women.

Where do you eat dinner? McDonalds? Is a special night out Taco Bill?
When I go out to dinner, the average bill for a two-up is $100 or so.

Where the hell are you getting raped at? I want city and place names so that I can put them on my never visit black list.

I can go out for a family of four in the nicest place in town and still pay under $30. One of the reasons that we switched to nice places was that fast food was getting close to that price for a family anyway.

I don't see what your complaint against Taco Bell is. In high school and most of college, Taco Bell and Subway were the best places to take a date. The only time more expensive places make sense is if you have money to burn. Girls that like wasteful guys may be impressed, but you'd be surprised at how many would rather have the money spent else where.

Hey, I may be wrong, you may be able to lay out $100 for a date every night like I lay out $30 for family eating out every night. Most folks don't have that much income to be throwing around though.

And of course, there are some dancers who do "extras" but they take that business outside the club for the reasons I gave before. Strip clubs sell fantasy, and for most sensible people, fantasy is enough. Incidentally, I know more business school and law school grads who have done "extras" to make it at their workplace than dancers who have. And my former dancer girlfriend is an amazing woman with a better moral compass than most people I've met.

Um, pond scum has a better moral compass than your average lawyer/business school grad. I'd think that your average hooker does as well. My complaint is that its illegal rather than regulated. If properly regulated, then it should be fairly safe business transaction. Those dancers may be selling fantasies, but hookers see the realities. Now, if it's moral business transaction is a completely different thing, but back to one. Your average business/lawyer school ain't very moral either; they've just got some college behind them.

That sounds like the start of a great joke, an MBA, lawyer, and hooker go to a strip club, what's the dancer's punch line?

I was asked to design and build systems to do just this too, because I could CCTV up a room cheaper than their suppliers. I built one to cover the ICT office which *we* turned on and off overnight or during the holidays to help spot where our laptops were disappearing to, and had no further part in anything else. Not only does it exist - it is happening, it is accepted and it's not being questioned by ANYONE, staff, students, parents, heads, local authorities, etc. even when they are made aware of it. That's more scary than merely "it's possible" or "it exists".

I work in a city government building. Within the last six months, the building has been wired up with 16+ cameras and a DVR for supposed building security. Every manager has been given shortcuts and use it to spy on employees in the morning, at lunch, and when they get off, or when they are just in the public areas of the building.

Oh, they don't care about the general public, unless it's someone that they actually know. It's one of those things where they like having the little bit of extra power over someone. What's really bad, is the building already and still has vericard readers all over and all employees have to use those cards to even get to work so we've already been tracked on our entrances/exits and mostly where we've been at in the building for the last 10 years or so.

There isn't any way for us to complain about this. They could just use the its your employer's building and that they aren't recording the bathrooms excuse.