Daniel Pfeffer wrote:

I fail to see why an obviously intelligent person would want a Twitter account in the first place.

I've got a Twitter account, but it is set to private as are all Tweets made using it. It's so I can test code or other solutions that integrate with their API before I point it towards a customer's account. Those customers use it for business purposes, press releases, and other public statements. Now I'm not trying to imply that I'm intelligent, I think my first tweet was along the lines of "Is this thing even working!?" which I then promptly deleted. Nor am I implying that my customers are, even though some are quite well educated. For that matter, does Neil deGrasse Tyson fall into the null set of intelligent Tweeters (Twits?)?

Pompey 3 wrote:

Anyone else directly affected?

Fortunately not me directly, but we've had customers ignoring the guidelines and posted signs on every door, stairwell, elevator, and throughout the hallways. Last week a different building had a customer show up for a meeting who was waiting on test results. So instead of informing anyone before hand and either postponing or conducting the meeting over the phone, they potentially exposed half a dozen people! :doh: :mad:

He's making up for all those missed hours earlier in his life before CP. Plus the 16 hours a day while not at work each get 5-10 minutes too! If you account for all of that it leaves... 5-10 minutes an hour for work.

Yes I do, several in fact! After leaving and returning, I was in fact a new customer and others had a chance to purchase during the time in between my visits Most likely the staff didn't want to argue about it. :laugh:

dandy72 wrote:

"Limit 2 per customer". Problem solved.

Until you get that person who comes in, buys 2, leaves, comes back half an hour later buys two more, leaves, repeats. ... Not that I would ever do that to buy my favorite single malt whisky when it was limit 1 bottle per customer. :-\

Eh, I've got one confirmed case about that far away from me as well. Think about it this way. You'll either get it or you won't. If you do get it you'll either die or you won't. With the mortality rate, odds are you'll be fine even if you do end up with it. Live your life, don't panic, be responsible, so on so forth.

That's some pretty Prime humor right there.

Everyone needs a day of doing completely nothing from time to time. I find that practice is required to not feeling guilty about it the following day. As such my professional recommendation is once a month minimum, every other week if possible. :-D

Robin Hood: Men in Tights[^] wrote:

Townspeople: A black sheriff?! Blinkin: He's black? Achoo: And why not? It worked in Blazing Saddles.

Based on the mediocre score, I don't believe the same could be said about this one.

Slowly working towards that level here too. Next idea is to get rid of the guest network for general use, force vendors to request access for specific time periods weeks in advance, and ban all personal devices from logging into VPN. Also got our two-factor fobs with no information about how to use them because the person responsible for that is out for the time being. :doh:

It has to do with the rules around federal grant money. To get it you agree to a very strict set of rules. When doing dev work for a medical research foundation, I worked on a number of federal grant funded projects. In the agreement we signed it specified that over-reporting (lying about) time worked on the project could be considered a federal offense and result in jail time. You are also required to report if you own stock worth over a specific amount in any companies that might be affected from your work. Morals, ethics, and all that to try our best to keep research scientific and not influenced by biases. Most of it is best effort and operating under the assumption you are trying to be honest about it, slip-ups do occur, questions are asked, and if it turns out to be an honest mistake, no harm no foul but your next grant application might get extra scrutiny. As others have mentioned, he got nailed for lying to federal authorities about money he received from foreign governments in concern with research he was conducting paid for in part by federal grants. If he had just said "Yes! I received money from them and here is why," up front I suspect he would be in the clear.

I'd prefer non-commercialized science funded by grants than those funded by companies who include clauses the bury any results they don't like. If we in the US did something similar to Australia where Government (i.e. tax) funded grants are licensed and used for more research. Instead of being used by private companies to earn obscene gobs of money, especially NIH funded ones for new medicines. Yes I'm straying dangerously close to old soapbox territory but my issues is with how the system allows the companies to exploit our tax dollars for their profit. Plus unless you think outside the box how else will you think of new, novel ideas and approaches to solving problems? If you follow the same path as everyone else you will get the same answer as everyone else. I'm choosing to ignore some of the more off the wall projects out there although the recent study about dealing with shaken beer cans[^] was quite informative. Thank you Denmark!

That's exactly what I thought but without the Italian part. "It's rude to someone, just not sure who."

It was a wild guess because we're dealing with the same policies here. Most recently there was a "problem" on a database server and we got asked what we'd like to do to fix it. Thing is, we don't have access to those servers because of security, even our DBA isn't allowed to have access to them. He has to write the scripts, send them to another team who will run said scripts and send back the results. :doh:

Let me guess, you aren't allowed to have access to GIT because of a 'security' policy.

Matt Bond wrote:

constantly ignores industry standard UI design principles

Are the design principles specific to your industry or design in general? I ask because if your program's UI is 20 years old, maybe updating things to be easier to use isn't a bad thing. I agree with Sander that you should try talking with the BA. Explain why the design needs to be consistent and if there are industry specific standards to follow, those as well. At the same time, be open to suggestions that might improve usage. Maybe some of the "new and better" ideas might improve things for the end users... would it be an improvement to get rid of wasted clicks even if they are 'standard'? That said, a lot of the CompSci people I've worked with (myself included) are terrible at UI. We don't always think about how things should work the same as 'normal' people do. It wasn't until I spent a few years with actual trained usability experts that I started to change my approach to something akin to 'If you have to think about it then it probably isn't a good UI.'

lopatir wrote:

- as in Engineer the Community

I read it as something akin to social engineering. Like Griff with his irrelevant daily posts that give all of us a chuckle (or a groan) to improve the place, although a little dusting wouldn't hurt either. Or it's something like the strange choice management made when they renamed the support desk here. It is now called 'client engineering', which raises a very interesting question. What sort of clients are we building and can we tweak the formula a little to make them a bit smarter?

That's what I'm predicting will happen here if/when we ever implement the same sort of policy. Someone who doesn't have to use it will force it into place, employees will use it and complain about how bad it is with a laundry list of reasons, and finally employees will be ignored and told that is the only option available. The other amusing piece being discussed here is that security wants to prohibit VPNing from non-managed (i.e. personal) devices. Problem is we won't purchase laptops for everyone and we're still expected to somehow provide service any time it is needed including after hours and weekends.

That sounds exactly like what we're discussing here for even local work, I'm glad to hear it works so well and I've been wrong this entire time! When I mentioned in meetings that the concept sounds really complicated, will be a drain on productivity due to having to log in/out of the VPN to look up references, and frustrate the developers to the point of hurting morale all I get is blank stares. It must take a government mindset to come up with solutions using such out of the box, counter-intuitive thinking.

It should be but apparently there can be a lot of marbling in there. Maybe people who talk or use their tongue more snore less. ;P