Boxing Day linkdump

[yendi]

1. Woman fired for writing romance novel at work. Let that be a lesson to all of you: disable any security or monitoring software on your work computer.

2. Idaho police academy graduates chose the slogan, "Don't suffer from PTSD, go out and cause it." Reminder to self: Assume any Idaho police officer is a thug.

3. A great re-run from Cognitive Daily: How babies build a picture of the world.

4. Gmail users: Check your filters to make sure that your account hasn't been hacked like this guy's was!

5. MTV, inexplicably spending time covering the music industry, thinks that 2007 is the year it broke.

6. There will be a complete Slings and Arrows box set. Which is great, except that some of us went and bought all three seasons, and thus are faced with the idea of spending $40 on a bonus disk. Have I mentioned that the only thing I hate more than re-releases are ones that reward latecomers instead of early fans? That said, if you haven't gotten the season sets, grab this when it comes out; there are few higher-quality shows that I can think of.

7. Want to know if that "Titanium" product is really made of that metal? Use a grindstone.

8. Bacon Cheese Baconburger! (ganked from yndy.)

9. A PS1 emulator for the iPhone. Because there's always a need for more completely pointless "just because we can" technologies.

10. Finally, here's a teaser for the new Knight Rider show.

Comments

[smallerdemon.livejournal.com]

1. Woman fired for writing romance novel at work. Let that be a lesson to all of you: disable any security or monitoring software on your work computer.

Or work where I work. The bureaucracy is so thick we can't get anyone to decide on any kind of security implementations.

[mfree.livejournal.com]

Grinding your mystery object is destructive testing.

Simply see if it's magnetic, which would eliminate the steel part of the equation; a light scratch with a nail would show aluminum.

[liamstliam.livejournal.com]

1. Don't do things at work other than work.

[moop2000.livejournal.com]

Should be careful about disabling security/monitoring software on work machines, that can get someone fired. I've seen it happen before.

Like nothing else on television

[darknbitter.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I expect good things from these people....

[cissa.livejournal.com]

Some kinds of steel aren't magnetic, though- I think some varieties of stainless, but could be wrong (my husband's the blacksmith around here). I do know I've had stainless knives that don't stick to our magnetic knife-holder.

Scratching will be most helpful if one has control objects to compare it too. Steel does scratch titanium- not as much as it will Al, though.

[cissa.livejournal.com]

Gotta be careful grinding Ti, though- small bits of Ti are explosive.

[allah-sulu.livejournal.com]

"Security or monitoring software? Don't those things cost money?"
-Pretty sure that's how they see it at my company. We've got standard firewalls and filters to block the wrong things from getting in and out; but as far as I know, they're not interested in devoting the time, money, and personnel required for any sort of intrusive monitoring.

(Expense might also be a factor in the lack of any kind of drug testing; but since that's not a concern for me, I don't really think about it.)

However, assuming she was telling the truth about only working on it during slow periods - what else was she supposed to be doing with her time if she didn't have actual work to do? My work goes in cycles, and they understand if we find ways to occupy ourself when work is slow, as long as the work gets done. It's only if someone was goofing off when they were supposed to be working, leading to problems, that it would become an issue...

She's lucky that her company didn't claim that they owned the document, since she created it on company time/equipment. Then again, maybe they considered it, but then changed their minds when they actually read it.