I looked at my own monitor and... realized none of the 5 monitors in my home office have stands, because they are wall-mounted. Also, all of the monitors I have purchased in the last 2 years have been WQHD (2560x1440) resolution, not 1080p.

Putting a charger in the stand might be useful for a certain percentage of their customers, but it is hardly earth-shaking and revolutionary, particularly when such a device could just as easily be decoupled from the monitor completely as its own device, thus eliminating the need to have your whole monitor serviced if that one doo-dad malfunctions.

Integrating an unrelated component into the monitor is really quite useless. Better would have been to make the stand less obtrusive so a charger could easily fit below the monitor. Likewise, I don't really need a USB hub or network switch build into my monitor.

About the only usb functionality that would be useful would be a built-in KVM switch, with enough ports for keyboard, mouse/trackball, audio, web cam and a headset.

Now... if the charger also somehow wirelessly allowed your phone to interface to the screen... you'd have something, but we won't see bluetooth-like connectivity to displays for a probably five or six years down the road, at least.

The second happens when people join, typically fresh out of school, and never build their skills, always kind of hanging on in the fringe. It's quite easy in a large company like HP, too... it's harder to fire the same guy you wouldn't hire,so to speak.

A recent "Town Hall" had an executive telling us all that a manager would re-evaluate the positions that were left by personnel quitting (imagine that), including who they'd hire in that spot.

He also expected us to report to offices, even if there was no space, because engineers love to work off of 15" laptop screens, on laptop keyboards, while sitting on a bench at a cafeteria table (yes, he said we should make the "up to 95 mile" drive even if it means working in the cafeteria) as others wander around, eating and talking. The ultimate open office space.

So when a manager has to fire a direct report, it's a tough proposition... fire a warm body and possibly lose the spot outright, or let them hang in and keep your manpower up enough to keep your own job? They know these guys are borderline, but a big company is a machine unto itself.

If they do fire anybody... it usually ends up being based solely on salary and location, based on what I saw this past week - they WFRed a bunch of guys who were responsible for millions of lines of good, solid code. Tested, true libraries that have run for ages in hundreds of thousands of PCs.... people tossed aside on a whim from on higher up than the managers they report to. Why? Because again, a big company is a machine unto itself... often the actions of execs and the upper management is pure quackery, because they can be just as clueless as anybody else in an organization; it's also a bit worse, because it's a club of privileged people who protect each other from personal failure, even at the expense of the companies they run.

This.

First pulling people back into the office after some have been telecommuting for years, often as HP's facilities have shrunk in most places - they are now expected to make the drive or relocate, regardless of the distance.

Our team has exactly 4 people in this state, and two of them will absolutely HAVE to quit if not given exemptions (which seems unlikely), and another will probably be gone by the end of the year.

They are effectively putting additional costs onto their employees, and want them to quit. Sadly, this (downright evil) tactic usually results in your best people leaving... and finding out that HP doesn't even pay engineers 75% of what their competitors do in the same geographical areas.

All that remains are the employees who either lack the confidence in their skills to feel that they are employable elsewhere... or those employees who lack the skills.

I don't think Meg has thought her cunning little plan all the way through.

We all agree that it's a bot being used to detect references to Universal Picture's works... but the purpose? Not to stop piracy, but to eliminate search results from competing with United's own marketing. While the IMDB link is obviously unintentional, it is also most likely the top result.

Basically, they're knocking out anything that competes in searches, regardless of actual pirated content.

As reported, the probe sent had the same processor as the PlayStation. They used the 3D graphics capability to create images of Pluto and Charon in CGI.

Q.E.D.

Study it out, sheeple!

So the Pawn Store is dealing with old RTS game servers?

What?

That's easy. A few well placed h-bombs, perhaps in conjunction with some volcanoes, and we can put a nice sun-shield up into our atmosphere.

If man can affect global climate change, it can work both ways. What have we got to lose?

Exactly where I find myself. My company thinks paying me below average (about 20% less) will fly when they literally cost me $400/mo more to follow their idiotic policies (while costing my manager $1000/mo from his budget, which means less money for any possible raises) - worse, to drive to a location where I will be forced to pay city income taxes because the company got a break in taxes to move there.

I'm finding my higher salary requirements are being met with no issues.

Corporations need to realize these tactics for "Work Force Reduction" only lead to the cream being skimmed and the ones you have left are the ones willing to put up with that sort of nonsense.

Ah well. It was motivation I needed to advance my career.

I haven't observed a lot of intelligence from those executives.

Corporate executives are supposed to make policy decisions and approve high-profile actions. In short, they had the ultimate review of this, which anybody with an above-average IQ would easily see it's a bad plan, on numerous fronts, whether it is from the consumers' perspective (bad deal, bad price, bad service) or company perspective (destined to be a failure)

Yes, I seriously question the intelligence of executives who keep approving this sort of nonsense. I might also be a bit bitter that these people make decisions that affect so many of us, impacting us regularly in a negative manner. Please note, I'm not asking for freebies here... give me a service that provides common sense features and I'll gladly pay. Why is it so hard for corporations to offer consumers quality service and goods for the price being demanded?

In my neck of the woods, I have been told there are these things called "buses" that come around and pick people up... I often see people waiting under signs that indicate they are "places of bus stopping" - yet I rarely see these elusive contraptions actually on the road, or picking up passengers.

Public transportation is a great idea in theory, but poorly run in practice, even in metropolitan areas. As for Michigan, it might as well as be non-existent. Rural and suburban areas are always poorly serviced. The solution, of course, is for people to move to areas closer to work and other required destinations - but that only works well for people who do not put down roots somewhere with a mortgage.

Free or not, I simply don't have the option. My current employer used to be willing to let me telecommute, now they expect me to commute an hour or more every day, each way, to satisfy some CEO's bizarre notion of esprit de corps (though most of my team members are in other states). I'd gladly ride a bus if it was convenient, both in timing and within a reasonable distance to my destination, but it doesn't even exist.

Downvoted as a troll? Is Slashdot giving Comcast execs mod points now?

Still no practical choices to get a full plate of live sports without being tied to cable... Football, Baseball, Hockey, Basketball - college and pro levels, that shouldn't be too much to ask for, but either you spend $100+ for cable, or run XBMC/Kodi with SportsDevil to stream it.

Geez, idiots, just give me an option to pay $10~25/mo for live locals and sports stations and you'll get my money.

Unfortunately, you are only interested in short-sheeting the consumer with fewer offerings than NetFlix or Sling at a higher price with more limitations.

Is a sub-80 IQ a requirement for an MBA and a job as a media company executive these days?

I used to think that way. Over the years, I've mellowed. At least 10 in the provincial prison would be enough, but no less.

Watch the "White Bear" episode from the excellent anthology series "Black Mirror" - it's probably a far more cruel thing to inflict a crime upon an individual, over and over, than deal with it in the most direct, blunt sense.

The guy deserves harsh punishment, for sure. If the law put just 10% of the effort into catching these idiots that they do toward pursuing "copyright infringers" the world would be a far better place.

A Hotmail account I signed up for in 1996 or 1997 is often used as a throw-away e-mail by idiots all the time.

Often, I will log in to the service they used my address for, and reset the password and take it over, just to let it sit.

If morons are dumb enough to use my e-mail, then they should not have access to whatever service they signed up for.

One time, a "sugardaddy.com" account used my e-mail, and I took it over, changing the profile pics to some handy images from "faces of meth" and spicing up the profile. Sadly, a drug-addicted, STD carrying woman still sparks a lot of interest, apparently, among "sugar daddies"

Is the project head named Baron Von Westphalen?