I got fired from a company I worked for for two years because my boss found some emails I'd sent to a friend of mine (who worked at one of our suppliers) calling him a complete asshole.

This obviously put me in a bit of a tricky situation with references, but luckily the general manager of the company was a good guy and knew that the guy in question indeed was an asshole, so agreed to give me a reference.

Your case is even more clear-cut than mine, in that you have obviously done nothing wrong. Given that some people in your company are obviously acting in a completely childish manner, can you find a sympathetic individual - who's not your boss but is someone high up enough - who can give you a reference?

As a final point, most companies shouldn't give good/bad references for exactly these reasons - they can be used to distort the truth to benefit the company in question. A lot of places just give a standard statement confirming that the employee worked in the specified role between the specified dates - this should be standard.

Whether you agree with HuffPo's openly liberal politics or not, it's hard to deny that there was nothing like this kind of widespread online political commentary 10 years ago - certainly nothing that attracted the kind of traffic - or had the same kind of influence - that it now enjoys. Got to be a good thing - people need to be more interested in politics.

As for Gawker... ummmmmm... errrrrr.... yep you're right.

If anyone deserves a repeat spanking it's these people. I have to deal with enough marketing crap coming via my inbox & letterbox without having people call my phone all the time too. It's especially galling when people have explicitly indicated that they don't want to be called in the first place, as they have here.

I wish the whole concept of telemarketing would just die a horrible death. Who really wants to deal with persistent salespeople when they're trying to chill out at home and enjoy the precious little time that isn't spent staring at their work PC?

More spanking please.

FTA, it sounds like Gatehouse see this as a copyright violation but, as several other posters have pointed out, the same thing goes on on news aggregator sites all the time. In fact most stories on Slashdot contain snippets from other sites. It's an unavoidable and very useful facet of the web

This is yet another example of 'old' media not really understanding online practices. Most sites benefit tremendously from others linking to them - look at what happens with Slashdot. That is, unless the 'benefit' is so great that their server turns to dust.

I see what you mean to a certain extent, but given how the browser is becoming a platform in itself - one that can encompass both the productivity tools and media player that you cite in your examples - this has to be of far more relevance.

I think the EU are doing the right thing here, but something tells me this isn't going to be plain sailing until every Windows PC has alternatives to IE available by default.

I think that a lot of people think Google are good purely because they are now largely seen as the anti-MS... no other company has done remotely as much to scare the people at Redmond, and for that they should definitely be applauded. Paving the way to unseat a monopoly - however (un)likely the eventual unseating may be - is no small accomplishment and one that legions of us, pissed off with having to fund a monopolist all the time, should be quite appreciative of.

I do agree with your points though - I can just understand why people do like Google. There is also the fact that their mainstream tools usually just work. Can you say the same of MS?

QR codes have been doing exactly the same thing for a while now.

And to be honest, I really can't see either catching on... The general public are constantly getting more familiar with the web, and getting more comfortable with finding their own favourite 'trusted' sources of information. Even if Microsoft does somehow convince enough manufacturers to start adding codes to their packaging, are people really going to jump at the chance to instantly look up a load of information on that particular television/cosmetic/breakfast cereal on some arbitrary MS website? Because that's all this really amounts to... a link. More info here.

Whatever credibility you may have had at the start of your post was lost when you made dating a hot chick sound like running your own linux server.

A time when you HAVE to stay indoors and play with the computer? I'm completely amazed that the 'is great' option hasn't got 100% of the votes here.

Firefox currently has over 20% of the market share and growing - if it continues to gain share then I can't see Google pulling out of an agreement where they're the default search offering for over 20% of people on the web.

Having said this, it's going to be difficult for Mozilla to find a revenue stream that even comes close to that from Google. If they want independence, they'll have a hard time finding it. Somehow I can't see Microsoft stepping in with a bid if Google were to eventually pull out...

I've been amazed by the extent to which this issue has permeated the mainstream media - here in the UK it's been home page material for the BBC, The Guardian, The Times and a number of others.

One - this is really terrible PR for Microsoft. Two - this is really good news for the web as a whole (obviously not including anyone affected by the exploit), as anything that increases public awareness of security issues and alternative browsers has to be a good thing. I just hope it makes a difference.

Apparently a $0.50 component would have sorted out all these problems... I'm aware that after a lot of sales this translates into profit, but seriously... this is a very short-sighted corner to cut.

I think one of the biggest hurdles with adventure games, which the article touches on, is the fact that it's hard to make a complex world that is still easy to navigate.

For example, I love the idea of Sherlock Holmes games but often they devolve into a laborious click frenzy where you start investigating every object in the environment in the hope that it will be somehow relevant.
Similarly, how many people here have played Resident Evil and spent a lot of time walking awkwardly against the walls while mashing the X button?

I think the most successful adventure games are those that can make their world seem at once complex and immersive yet still easy to navigate and explore without becoming an exercise in endless clicking frustration.