Duff

25 ms·

211.
by Duff 15y ago
My favorite thing like this for a purely technical topic was a project where there was a mandatory requirement to NOT support ethernet auto-negotiation. Why? The company had a long-standing policy of manually setting speed and duplex to ens
212.
by Duff 15y ago
Not really. Google "George Selden patent"
213.
by Duff 15y ago
Yeah... in enterprises. They are displacing big-iron Unix, just like I said.
214.
by Duff 15y ago
Issac Asimov described, in detail, humanoid and mechanical robots in books published 60 years ago. So when somebody invents a similar robot, should they be unable to patent that invention?
215.
by Duff 15y ago
It is innovative by definition, because nobody did it before. If it's so simple, why didn't Samsung do it? Paperclips seem like a obvious design that involves no innovation. Yet paperclips similar to what we use now weren't around until 186
216.
by Duff 15y ago
I'm really torn by this debate. On the one hand, for an idea so obvious, Apple was first for both phones and tablets -- and they were "first" very late in the game. Microsoft OEMs made tablets for a decade, but NONE of them (even the slate
217.
by Duff 15y ago
I think that outside of larger enterprises with EA's, Microsoft is losing traction. So it's broader than just web startups. But inside of many big corporate and government environments, Windows rules the roost. I think there's a good reason
218.
by Duff 15y ago
I agree with you whole-heartedly on these patents. But... I think the point that you're missing is that the Supreme Court is like a meta-court. You don't go there to appeal your case, you go there to appeal specific decisions and interpreta
219.
by Duff 15y ago
Paypal rocks, until it doesn't. I used it for years, mostly selling stuff on ebay. I never had negative feedback, never had an issue. I even used one of their two-factor auth tokens. Then one day, Paypal decided that they needed to review m
220.
by Duff 15y ago
New York loves feel-good laws, but this may improve how businesses deal with batteries. Many workplaces will have policies now for how to deal with batteries, particularly unionized companies where the employees will rat the company out. IM
221.
by Duff 15y ago
Sure, and any project manager worth his salt will ensure that the vendor does the minimum amount of work possible to fulfill the contract.
222.
by Duff 15y ago
I think that's his point. Outsourcing doesn't eliminate your responsibility as a customer to participate in the development process -- it just shifts part of the labor to another entity. Telling an outsourcer "do X for me", where X isn't a
223.
by Duff 15y ago
The issue isn't sensitive managers, it is that sensitive managers call men jerks, lazy or assholes, but they'll say that women are "shrill" or "too emotional". There's a difference there -- with the woman, the manager is attacking her as a
224.
by Duff 15y ago
Many folks on the coasts are unaware of how wacky some crazy religious people are. Fundamentalism is a southern and rural phenomenon in the US. I live in New York. There are definitely crazy religious people here, but not enough of them tha
225.
by Duff 15y ago
Have you ever dealt with an academic bureaucracy? Barbarism is a good description!
226.
by Duff 15y ago
I don't buy that. Its easy to point out the EAP kid who can't hack it in college. But I've never heard of anyone bemoaning the "qualified" upper-middle class fratboy who flunks out of school in a drunken haze.
227.
by Duff 15y ago
"Non-academic" status wouldn't work there anyway. The smartest person I ever met went there, and was in mortal fear of flunking out a few times.
228.
by Duff 15y ago
Older people who aren't IT don't get newsgroups, wiki, etc. Email to them is like a fast paper memo.
229.
by Duff 15y ago
Yes. But relatively few industries actually have such a requirement. This particular company is a consulting company. The other thing to consider is that Microsoft Lync is also a phone and video chat system. Don't assume that IM replaces em
230.
by Duff 15y ago
+1,000 One drawn out litigation is all you need to start a chain of legal holds that end up forcing you to retain email indefinitely. One of the organizations that I'm familiar with is retaining all email sent or received since 1992, due to
231.
by Duff 15y ago
You kinda missed the point. Consulting can be a side gig that stays a side gig. Other businesses can start slow/small, but you reach a point where you need to choose between the full time gig and your startup. There are a few clear examples
232.
by Duff 15y ago
I think that you're talking about a very specific type of startup business. People start and build businesses while employed all of the time. Some of those businesses require that the owners devote their full energies to them at a certain m
233.
by Duff 15y ago
Factor out the hobby farms and that number will tumble.
234.
by Duff 15y ago
Sorry that you don't believe it. The guy went from an offer that was low-ball to an offer that was basically market-rate at that time. With a big company, there's no way this would have happened. But this was company that was somewhere betw
235.
by Duff 15y ago
It was the best and worst job that I ever had. The guy wasn't too bad of a boss -- he pretty much left us alone, and was pretty effective managing the company execs. I had an opportunity to fix a bunch of stuff that was screwed up (due to t
236.
by Duff 15y ago
The interviewer followed me, and asked in the stairwell what it would take to get me hired. I said that I had multiple opportunities in the Boston area north of $80k, but wanted to stay local. He countered with "I'll get you $35k, and revie
237.
by Duff 15y ago
Sounds like one of the upsides of working at a place where I work now, where there is a salary scale. Places that play these kinds of games with salary really annoy me. For my first post-college job, as a DBA, I was offered $29,000/year (th
238.
by Duff 15y ago
Having difficulty firing someone is normal -- I'm not suggesting that it should be fun. Drinking Gin to give yourself the nerve to fire someone probably isn't fine. If you have a job to do, you need to be able to do it. If the psychic toll
239.
by Duff 15y ago
You are conflating alcohol abuse with alcohol dependence. Two different things, with different social and health consequences.
240.
by Duff 15y ago
Sounds to me like a recipe for a bad habit. If you have a problem doing "awkward" things like firing people, paying bills, etc, you need to figure out the root of your anxiety and deal with it. If numbing yourself with alcohol is how you ge

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