Yeah and what bit do you end up reading to decide what to click on?

A giant shield to block the sun? There could be one deployed right now, i'd never know about it.

Facebook defined

... boiling water and turning it into a gas won't open a portal to a parallel universe. (If it were that easy, you think I'd still be here?)

Well, that depends.

Maybe this IS the best of all possible worlds. B-)

It was so much easier taking people off line 10 years ago. These days it's all laptops and UPSes and they're back up on a wireless link in under minute.

Don't worry, the helicopters will arrive shortly.

--
Black Van Guy

It depends on how much of a rootkit the "you must have the CD" check really is. We've seen how bad that can get in practice.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-03-04-federal-pay_N.htm Here is a cite for you. There are many more, but I will leave that research to you.

This is the truth.

Don't lie about what you know. I.e. it's better to say "I don't know but I can find out." rather that pulling something out of your ass.

Don't complain about anything unless you can also offer a solution to the problem.

Do good work. Figure out what the company considers "good." I.e. some companies value speed of development, others value high-quality.

Never, ever take offense when someone points out a bug in your code. If there's a 'real' bug thank the person who found it, after all they are improving on your work. If it's a not a real bug work with them to figure out why they were mistaken (bad documentation? Not trained enough on what it's supposed to do?)

Social skills help. But don't be a phony.

Manage up. If you think you deserve something from your boss, and they won't give it to you, work out a plan to get it. (If you want a promotion, work out with your boss what he needs to see before he can promote you. Work out a plan with you boss to meet those goals.)

Hopefully you get the idea. Basically you should always try to improve the situation for everyone, not just yourself.

Until you reach middle-management. And then the knives come out and it's best to be a complete sociopath.

Suggesting Taco Bell is ok... it's the aftermath that can be alienating.

It depends a lot on the industry, the demographics of the work place, and the company's customers! All of the above are great tips. Try to get a feel for other people's interests, their work ethics, their dress and appearance, and their level of self-expression, and try to emulate it. I've worked at ma and pa telcos where ties and sparkling clean desks are unspoken mandatory, trading firms where just talking to another employee can spark a random stress meltdown, as well as government contracting companies where people wear jeans and have nerf gun fights. Be yourself - just get a feel for how much of yourself you can be.

DLP projectors have been using 7 color color wheels for years. I can't speak to this implementation, but it can make difference.

@SpeedyDX

I can't find a simple quote, so I'll sum up. You're saying "I've noticed slashdotters like Saas as a possible copyright sidestep for Software, but seem to enjoy having offline, bit-level (or nysquist-sampling-level) control over their music. Is this a double standard?"

Firstly, thank you for the astute observation. I don't believe this is a double standard, however. The mechanics of playing a game or using software vs listening to music are very different. In order to use software you must be at a computer, in order to play a game you must be at a game console, and in all of these scenarios we normally also want internet access. We appreciate the realtime connectedness (both social and infrastructural) online infrastructure allows us in virtually all software/game settings.

For example, rare is the time you want to work on a document or spreadsheet that you won't show it to someone when you are finished, so Google Docs (one example) beats Word/XL because the person (or more tellingly, the people) you will show it to can view it while you are working on it, make changes, version control is baked in for you, the social element is integral to that application. MMorpg players must be online, both to collaborate with other players and to interact with a realtime, globally persistent environment. Even puzzle gamers enjoy competing against one another, posting high scores, easy access to forums to get them unstuck, etc.

This is a generalization. I don't want all my software in the cloud, there are many swiss army knives (for example) I just want on my machine. I am a network engineer, so there are times I want bit-level control over a certain toolkit of software: where by definition I have no access to the internet. The generalization does cover a vast majority of todays profit centers in software however.

Finally, at issue with software is that the customer is not really interested in the bits, but in the service provided. One drawback to owning the bits is the administrative hassles of bit-rot: your software needs security updates, feature additions to remain competitive, UI improvements, etc over time. All things equal, the less you as a consumer have to do stay on this treadmill the better.

The contrast to music is that music (again, generalization..) represents a static piece of artwork. I want to hear that one song. I do not need to socialize to hear it, I do not need access to anything that changes in realtime, there is no bitrot or administrative updates required, a static string of bits will continue representing that song (assuming I either always know how to decode the bits, or else assuming I can transcode them over time) for perpetuity. I am not limited to experiencing this media on equipment where I already want interent connectivity, either. Sometimes I want to hear it in my car. Sometimes to lul me to sleep. Sometimes as I'm jogging, and I don't want the song interrupted by "dead zones". For music, it is virtually always advantageous to have the bits, and always relatively disadvantageous to tether to the net.

The important illumination here is that these are two invaluable data points in understanding consumer expectations. They are not at odds with one another, and both serve to demonstrate the disruptive role of copyright in a consumer's relationship with creative works. In short, it is sane to sell me software as a service. That provides me value which cannot easily be duplicated. It is sane to offer bits for sale, and people will still buy them without DRM. It is not sane to pitch a fit that those bits will then be freely shared, and so try to ruin the experience for your customers. After all, I am not really paying you for the bits, am I? I am paying for you to conveniently provide me with the media I want. I am buying a satisfaction guarantee. I am funding your continued efforts. I am seriously not going to do that if you treat me like a criminal.

@b4dc0d3r

I'm kind of making assumptions here on your definitions of "no one", "acceptable", "method", "selling"... scratch that, I'm making assumptions on every non-pleonasm in your statement. But have you considered Assurance Contracts yet? I think that is an acceptable method by which patrons can fund the speculative work of a creator, while allowing the work to enrich the public domain on the very day of it's release.

I agree completely. During the Apollo missions, the vehicles the astronauts drove on the moon were considered a critical component of the astronaut's life support system, in a way. The carried emergency supplies, communication equipment, and most importantly, the ability to ferry the astronauts back to the lander quickly. The missions were designed to allow the astronauts to walk back to the lander before they exhausted their life support if needed (by progressively having them work back toward the lander as time went on), but there is no way they would ever let their vehicle wander away on it's own and think that was a good idea...

It's a feature!...from V'ger!