sadcox - Slashdot User

Ask Slashdot: How Does Your Company Evaluate Your Performance? 525

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday July 05, 2012 @04:52AM from the score-me dept.

jmcbain writes "I'm a former Microsoftie, and one thing I really despised about the company is the 'stack ranking' employee evaluation system that was succinctly captured in a recent Vanity Fair article on the company. Stack ranking is basically applying a forced curve distribution on all employees at the same level, so management must place some percentage of employees into categories of overperforming, performing on average, and underperforming. Even if it's an all-star team doing great work, some folks will be marked as underperforming. Frankly, this really sucked. I know this practice gained popularity with GE in the 1980s and is being used by some (many?) Fortune 500 companies. Does your company do this? What's the best way to survive this type of system?"

Ask Slashdot: Dividing Digital Assets In Divorce? 458

Posted by timothy on Thursday February 16, 2012 @04:27PM from the don't-forget-your-malware dept.

An anonymous reader writes "I am a long time Slashdotter and currently find myself in the beginning of a divorce process. How have you dealt with dispersing of shared data, accounts and things online in such a situation? Domains, hosting, email, sensitive data backups and social media are just a few examples."

US Watchdog Bans Photoshop Use In Cosmetics Ads 383

Posted by Soulskill on Friday December 16, 2011 @12:16PM from the or-as-some-people-call-it-lying dept.

MrSeb writes "In an interesting move that should finally bring the United States' fast-and-loose advertising rules and regulations into line with the UK and EU, the National Advertising Division (NAD) — the advertising industry's self-regulating watchdog — has moved to ban the misleading use of photoshopping and enhanced post-production in cosmetics adverts. The ban stems from a Procter & Gamble (P&G) CoverGirl ad that photoshopped a model's eyelashes to exaggerate the effects of a mascara. There was a footnote in the ad's spiel about the photo being manipulated, but according to the director of the NAD, that simply isn't enough: 'You can't use a photograph to demonstrate how a cosmetic will look after it is applied to a woman's face and then — in the mice type — have a disclosure that says "okay, not really."' The NAD ruled that the ad was unacceptable, and P&G has since discontinued it. The ruling goes one step further, though, and points out that 'professional styling, make-up, photography and the product's inherent covering and smoothing nature' should be enough, without adding Photoshop to the mix. The cosmetics industry is obviously a good starting point — but what if the ban leaks over to product photography (I'm looking at you, Burger King), video gameplay demos, or a photographer's own works?"

Comment Re:Isn't It Obvious? (Score 1) 507

by digitalmuse on Wednesday July 27, 2011 @11:11PM (#36903948) Attached to: Climate Unit Releases Virtually All Remaining Data

poland cannot into global warming?

The Rules of Thumb For Tech Purchasing 401

Posted by timothy on Sunday May 15, 2011 @08:27AM from the kevin-kelly-always-has-brain-candy dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "Sam Grobart writes in the NYT that buying gadgets can sometimes be like buying a car; it requires sorting through options because the reality is that most of us are usually dealing with a finite amount of money to spend, and that means making trade-offs. Grobart puts forward his set of rules for getting the most for your tech dollar when buying computers, cameras, cellphones, data plans, and service contracts. For example, Rule No. 1: pay for PC memory, not speed. 'When buying and configuring a new computer, companies often give the option of upgrading the processor and adding more memory, or RAM. If it is an either/or proposition, go for the RAM,' writes Grobart. 'Processors are usually fast enough for most people; it is the RAM that can be the bottleneck.' Other rules include 'Pay for the messaging, not the minutes,' 'Pay for the components, not the cables,' 'Pay for the sensor size, not the megapixels,' and 'Pay for the TV size, not the refresh rate.' Kevin Kelly expands on Grobart's rules of thumb with 'Pay for the glass, not the shutters,' 'Pay for reliability, not mileage,' and 'Pay for comfort, not for weight.' Any others?"

The State of Electronic Voting In the 2008 US Elections 223

Posted by Soulskill on Friday November 07, 2008 @08:40PM from the no-paper-trail-no-problem dept.

Geek Satire writes "Voting works only if you believe your vote gets counted accurately. The 2008 US elections have avoided many well-known problems of the 2004 and 2000 elections, but many problems remain. O'Reilly News interviewed Dr. Barbara Simons, advisor to the Federal Election Assistance Commission, to review electronic voting in the 2008 US elections, discussing the physical security of storing and maintaining election machines, the move from electronic back to paper ballots, and why open source voting machines don't necessarily solve problems of bugs, backdoors, and audits."

Journal Journal: Recommend any software for using gamepad instead of a mouse? 11

Journal by eugene ts wong on Monday February 19, 2007 @02:45PM

I'm interested in using a gampad or joystick instead of a mouse, for my Kubuntu desktop pointer. Later on, I'm planning on reinstalling Gentoo on a seperate partition. At this point, I'm intending to go with js2mouse. What do you recommend? Should I use a different software package? Should I use js2mouse as a kernel module? Also, I'd like to recommend this idea to my brother for his Windows XP desktop. What software package do you recommend for that? The packages that I've seen look kind of l

Comment It's due in part to user stupidity (Score 2, Insightful) 631

by ShatteredDream on Sunday January 15, 2006 @08:04PM (#14478285) Attached to: Apple Sends Hidden Message to Hackers?

Most computer users are stupid. They'd try to run OS X on a typical PC, it'd suck and then they'd do the typical stupid computer user thing which is to say "this software fucking sucks." Never mind that the software was targetted at a specific hardware platform, that's too much mental heavy lifting for the average, at least American, computer user. Apple has to prevent piracy of its OS if for no other reason than to protect the brand from the idiots out there who aren't smart enough to realize that OSX is DESIGNED to work primarily with one specific hardware set, but would have nothing stopping them from running OSX into the ground with everyone they know.

Comment Re:XSS? (Score 1, Insightful) 321

by sadcox on Friday October 14, 2005 @09:33AM (#13789953) Attached to: Cross-Site Scripting Worm Floods MySpace

the problem here is they let users render html & javascript in their own pages on the site

No, the problem is that they let users render html & javascript badly in their own pages on the site

Journal Journal: Today

Journal by sadcox on Wednesday September 01, 2004 @12:29PM

I farted.

Comment Re:Ho Hum (Score 1) 1353

by digitalmuse on Tuesday August 17, 2004 @12:39PM (#9992394) Attached to: Your Right to Travel Anonymously: Not Dead Yet

I'm SOOOOO on-board with this concept. I for one volunteer to sit at the back of the plane with a a PSG-1 and deal with those offensive twits in 1st Class...
all kidding aside, I can't imagine what the statistical extrapoliation of such a passenger list would predict, but I bet everyone would be really polite. As R.A. Heinlein said, a well-armed society is a polite one.

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