Posts by Brett

Paris Hilton Angle?

Sorry but all I see is curves.

rant

I used to supervise 40 people. I wasn’t a manager as the company was too cheap to pay me as a manager.

My job was to make sure people could to their jobs (It was manual labouring). The job was five fold. Training, team composition, delegation, discipline and problem solving. That was it. I knew I was doing my job well when I got board so started helping out the general labours. I didn't think I did a brilliant job but have since been told by people below and above me that I did.

I learnt everything from word of mouth from good managers. I had some semi retired people working for me so they were great sources of info. I did some management at university but it all appeared to be counter intuitive. I see a lot of mistakes from people that are taught by academics who have never managed anything in their life.

Management is fairly common sense. You treat people how you would like to be treated. Also when it comes to discipline you must be fair and consistent. Warn people then follow through. People don't mind discipline if they know why they are being disciplined and the person next to them who did the same get the same punishment.

I said team composition. I had the luxury of choosing teams on a daily basis. Most days I let people go where they wanted as they knew who they worked well with. I knew who were the better trainers and they got new staff. Who were the better leaders and so they got the bigger teams. Who were the most experienced and they got the complicated stuff.

/rant

Well I would love to stay and chat but..

I'm off to start up my company to make really crappy things that don't work properly but will in the future. Holographic comunication anyone?

Performance apprasel at my exit interview

I just quit my job to go travelling WOOT! Anyway in my exit interview it had a question "Did you find the performance appraisal process helpful." I answered No. This was naturally queried from the HR bot. My response was "I’m sure it helped some people but it looked like stating the obvious to me."

Or course my boss was new to the whole appraisal thing as was I so we were honest and treated it seriously. Which I’ve since found it is a rare thing and the HR department don’t really know how to take is as it means more work for them.

@ heystoopid

Your right. This will go away and he will dissapear in a black hellicopter and spend the rest of his life hacking the chineese

More on Aussie election

It's also interesting to note that Rudd moved away from references to Terrorism and Illegal immigrants and all the normal scape goats. He spoke of such optimism of the future it was amazing. People were cheering on the streets the night of the election. A new sense of optimism has gone through the people. Even many people who voted for the encumberant and saying that he's not a bad choice.

In the one and only live debate we had the "worm" essentially its a marketing tool to show what people are thinking about what is currently being said. At the time it was accused of bias but I noticed that every time one of the leaders spoke positively of the future the people responded massively in favour.

In the end it turned out that in the politics of fear the certainty of global warming beats the potential of terrorism.

I rember when..

Charlies angels: Full throttle had a game that was sponsored by a mobile phone company. I remember playing the demo (as the game was too shit to buy) and thinking as the character took a photo of a fast moving truck with a mobile phone, from a distance, at night then zooming in to the licence plate "No fucking way. What a load of crap." 3 odd years later and my new phone couldn't even do that.

2ndly in Tabula Rasa there are Dell computers in there. I've heard more about dells problems than anything due to them. The problem with in game advertisement, especially with tech, is that you have such a large and diverse user base that some people with hate the product enough to very publicly rubbish it.

But in the end I have the same opinion about product placement in movies. If it doesn't detract from the experience its fine. If it does the company who paid for the add just pisses me off. I have a blacklist of companies that have annoyed my through advertising. Some have been on the list since I was 8 now 14 years later the list is longer and I have never broken the blacklist.

@Mike

Isn't that, you know, illegal? And what makes you so smug when you are essentally lowering yourself to the level of a malware pusher?

Destroying some poor familys home computer because some 12 year old dosn't understand email is a bit harsh.

And to all those "people who arn't security experts are morons" grow up. I know a few really smart people who only know what they have to on computers and do important jobs like saving lives.

I agree with the ISP monortering. If they can send me an email saying I have used 95% of my d/loads for the month why can't they tell me I have send 1000 emails in the last hour.

10 instalations?

Come on its not like you can argue personal spyware use for 1 and dealer use for 10.

If someone hid a GPS tracker in my car the charges start with unlawful access and can end up at stalking. Why are computers diffrent?

@Gower

Its only a slur if its not true.....

@ Anno Coward

I've been at parties where we have spared for an hour or two. Not quite fight club style but chops to chin boxing and the like. Were just smart enough to do it in the back yard.

I've noticed that this death and the canadian death both have victims that were tasered while being two slow to comply to police requestes. I know we live in a paranoid world but if someone is deaf in both ears are they can't sign I'm deaf and they can't hear instructions that are voice only.

In fact that could be the bigger link. One person was partially deaf and one was unable to speak english. Perhaps the police should not rely on voice commands.

@Scott Michaels

I notice your source is Police Chief magazine in 2005. Biased and outdated perhaps? Perhaps not as I'm no expert but that was my first thought.

Considering since that time tasers are now defined as "less lethal" weapons in Australia someone thinks that they have a high enough percentage chance to kill. Consider that you can kill more than .00018% of the pop with peanuts I think they must have been using different statistics.

The real problem is the frequency of use. Every jurisdiction that I am familiar with (not many) that introduced tasers used the line "last resort" or similar. It is not becoming fairly routine. Lets assume (because its convenient for my next point) that .00018% fatality rate is accurate and the number of fatalities in America is 70 per year in 2004. So the number of people tasered in 2004 in the USA is about 388 888. Considering that they are now being used more casually in 2007 and in more jurisdictions world wide that’s a lot of people being tasered.

My biggest problem in this is that he didn't appear to do anything in front of the mounties apart from comply. When he lunged to the side I though that that was why they did it. But on rewatching I realised that he lunged because they tasered him. Having only ever seen tasers done on junkies on COPS I was not prepared to see the effect on someone not on amphetamines.

Electric shock isn't the only danger associated with tasers. As someone who has had someone die in my family from an epileptic fit (head hit the gutter) I watched in shock as he nearly hit the doors and ground with his head on the way down.

I do believe tasers serve there purpose but routinely shocking of agitated people who are not direct threats isn't one of them.

Even if he did "flash" the ladies

Is that a sex offence? I rember reading 1984 and the bit about new speak. The part that is relevent to this and terrorism is the removal of words from the laguage. In that case there was only one word for sexual deviancy and included a lot of things from rape to enjoying sex to homosexuality to bike sex to masterbation ect.

If you haven't read 1984 read the section on new speak. It should be required reading in schools. Although any goverment who actually did that probably would be half decent.

We should all be consered about the nature of words used to describe (techinally innocent till proven guity) crims. In Australia the words rape and sexual assult are interchangable. But sexual assult also has other meanings. String them up if their guilty either way in my book but there is a huge difference between some being charged with sexual assult insted of sexual assult you none of you know what that difference is because I won't explain further.

If it gets to the point where an accusation or arrest (but yet no convition) can add you to the list then very bad things will happen. A number of us know of someone who has been accused of a sexual crime at some point. In my case it was a tech geek who spend time with other tech geeks. There was a 10 year age difference though so it was 13-14 year olds and a 23-24 year old. He had cops threating to kill his farm dog. And that was 10 years ago.

@ Ross

I read your head line and all I could think of was.

"Were all going to diiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeee. Details at 6."

hmm perhaps big corperates will realsie

that they need to pay people for us to care about them. For small buisness and local shops this will be a boon. Depends on how they do the pricing.

Anyway facebook is on my spam list so I don't care.

I hope they gave..

.. many appologies for the incowenience.

But how can journos spark an international incident? Someone was looking to get pissed off I think.

The even older rule applies....

If someone tells you about a problem you have never heard of then in the next breath will fix it for a price then its a scam.

Heros et al

I would have thought TV series were written *before* they started to show the series on air.

Hopefully better pay = better writers.

Also lucky computer games arn't considered "real" entertainment and so the strike won't stop fallout 3.

GW are bastards

Well thats kinda enough said. I thought that it was particuarly ironic that they ended up releasing a LOTR game when Warhammer Fantasy appears to ripped off from LOTR.

They have a bad habit of enforcing copywright to things like Ork and so on. A lot of this stuff is ripped off then copywrited.

Back to the doom maps and ID. ID did release map packs made from user mods. In the doom fine print they took the rights to user created content. ID have done this since. Same with Valve (couter strike) and some othe companys. It does make sence to me that someone with fiction IP should be able to take control of Fan stuff based on it. But there should have to be a very driect link.

With a name like reaper

how else can you talk. If the machine was the "netralize" or "defender" or "governator" then that would be diffrent. I though it was more a poke at the name and the concept of a unmaned airborne drone that would would indeed hunt fleeing people. I can't picture the controlers going "Well Osama is running away. Lets stop shooting at them."

Post office and parcels

I'm home first from work in my house so I often pick up packages from the post office for family members. You go to offer ID and you get "oh I suppose I should."

That and they don't even bother knocking when you are home. Or leave registered post on your front door step. Or give you the package when you just happen to be standing in the front yard with no ID check and no way of proving that you even live there.The post office is definatly a week link in the security chain.

For an idea on post office security just look at how much cash they have in the draws next time you pay a bill in a peak time. This with no security guards/ barriers. Wonder why idiots bother with holding up servos and video stores.

PS this is in Australia so hopefully things are better else where.

@david

The problem is intent. If you did it once or twice you could go "whoops" but by continuing to do it she showed an intent to get free merchendice. If all were an accident then then she would be fine. Unfortunatly for her she did it to exploit.

Another uniformed comment

So sounds like this chap is guilty of manuly doing a process that google et al do automatically.

Is that the problem? Not the link but the intent. I am against this procecution but perpaps the charge could have been aiding and abeting.... Helping someone comit a crime is a crime. However google could do the "Whoops look what people have SOMEHOW managed to add to our database. We try to find these....."

Now if google was paid by a warez hoster for top billing THAT would be a crime as they are making a profit.

PS I don't live in the UK or USA but AUS so I really don't know what I'm talking about :)

new standards

2 ideas.

Plausibility. Measured in Tin Foil Hats.

Needless outrage. Measured in Children (to be thought off)

@people who don't use a lot of bandwidth

If I buy a game and d/load 4gigs in a hour or two its normally P2P. I will be pissed if I have to walk to EB games because their shit.

Also as we buy *licences* for games if I loose a cd I will d/load it. Use my legit key and away we go. I used to get pissed off that in the terms and conditions you only technically own a licence but now I'm reallising that its a good thing.

Oh I also d/load about 20 gigs of porn a month thats rated X so I can't buy in Australia. Leave my P2P along so I can get decent porn!