I'm not an instagram user. If I was and I signed up under the original TOS, I would have been offended at their proposed change, with no one telling me.

Nobody needs to be told, nor are they cheap, for someone trying to take their property away from them.

I'm guessing the final decision maker at Instagram either had to be a socially out of touch person who had no idea that change would upset their users or s/he had to be a ballsy semi-sociopathic Gordon Geko corporate raider type seeing what s/he could get away with.

Another possibility could be that the person who made that decision had both qualities.

Either way, it is for the best as Instagram's example will likely slow down similar abuses by social media in the future.

I imagine a lot of people will not like this. At some point they will buy an alternative after a manufacturer sees a market for it. In the interim, some people selling used laptops might make a little more money they would have before

If you are talking about weight control, it takes zero time to NOT eat something you don't need.

Make sure get 3 square meals in, even if you need to make them yourself and bring them in.

Find a low calorie caffeniated drink. I recommend tea. A higher quality tea will be tasty, less than a tall bottle of soda from a soda machine, will calm you while it stimulates you helping you think better and it has anti-oxidants.

If you want to eat out of boredom, promise yourself you will, IF YOU STILL WANT to after doing something else for 15 minutes like reading something.

Fill up a 2qt bottle with water at the start of your shift and make it game to finish it by the end. Poor hydration often makes people eat when their really only wants water.

I have a pop reminder come up every day about 2pm reminding me to do 5 stretching exercises I can do standing up, in my work clothes and take only about 5 min to do.

It isn't enough to keep me fit, I don't think anything in the slow moments of a job can be and not compromise your job.

However, I have noticed that when I stretch to work out in the evening, those measley 5 minutes make me feel a lot looser at the end of the day.

Money.

Cube farms are cheaper than offices,
Open office layouts are cheaper than cubes.

I hear you. During the dot com boom they were short on everything so I was sitting between two markerters. Then later on at the bigger place I was around the corner from some millionaire programmers who were working for the fun of it. Arrested adolescents literally playing with toys.

I had always taken quiet as a god given workplace right endorsed and understood by everyone.............not so.

Many of the causes of premature deaths for Americans are life style related. Watch a copy of "Forks Over Knives" ( the heart surgeon who helped make President Clinton's diet is in this documentary ). If you smoke, quit. If you drink, limit yourself to one a day.

A lot of things still may cut your life short, but you will take out about 2/3 of the top 10 causes of early death for Americans.

I program better when I am in a quiet environment.

I have been amazed how hard it is to get work done in cube farms, especially when there are people nearby whose job it is to talk on the phone often.

A few gigs like that made me invest in these. They work as well as ear plugs but without the inconvenience of roll and stuff them:
http://tinyurl.com/cw33u3x

There is this popular article about research that shows that quiet and solitude boosts productivity, including for developers
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/opinion/sunday/the-rise-of-the-new-groupthink.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

If an org will not pay for real offices they should consider separating people with noisy jobs ( phone use ) from others and make some rules about noise levels

Thanks for the interesting reply.

You are right, if I went through the hassle of getting an appointment with a doctor I would likely still have a copay, in addition to the loss of time of getting to a doctor.

Since I am working it was worth it to the get the shot, get it now and get that item off of my schedule.

The possibility you didn't mention is that insurance companies simply do not want to pay for anything that they do not have to pay for and will not if there are no consequences for them.

I am healthy. If I catch the flu I will get over it with the only damage being lost time at work and feeling badly for about two weeks. That doesn't cost the insurance company anything, yet the flu shot could still work and the medical advisors to an insurance company can still believe that flu shots work.

I don't know what tests you're alluding to, but man, if you can't do fizzbuzz-style exercise without breaking a sweat, you're useless, okay?

I mentioned 3 examples in the post your replied to. If your reading comprehension is that bad, you're useless, okay ? Geeze, what a horrible thing to say to a person. Untrue too.

I also wrote in the post you read that I have done well in the field for 14 years despite losing out in interviews where I was asked to take odd tests that I was unprepared for because my daily work has nothing to do with solving the tower of hanoi problem.

FWIW, I googled on "fizz buzz" and I would have had no problem with the first example of such a test that came up.

So I guess am I not "useless" by your standards.

Please don't lecture me about needing a thick skin in this field. I've met as well as worked with many callous, cynical or socially maladjusted people. I can handle it. I'm just honest about having feelings and since this isn't a work environment I gave you a piece of my mind in return.

Have a good weekend.

I've been programming for about 14 years. I have seen this conversation come up plenty of times. Many people come up with good reasons why such programming tests and other programming job interview techniques unfairly weed people out. I've been a victim of it myself at some interviews and have gone on to do STELLAR work at OTHER places. The bottom line is that employers feel that they need SOMETHING, even something crappy, so... these interview tests are a fact of life.

However misguided, if you are a programmer and you want a new job, you have to deal with this reality.

Fortunately, in 2013 there are a plethora of programming interview prep books out there so at least you have a chance if somebody throws a pop quiz at you about the tower of hanoi, asks you to write a script to print out only prime numbers or asks you to write a script to reverse a string using no speciality functions though you have not thought about such mishigas in years.

LOL

Do you have any hard information ( not anti-vac or alternative healthy copy ) to base that on?