Rolling the Stone
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“Bloody Thursday” - Police open fire on striking longshoremen in San Francisco. |
| 1946 - The bikini is introduced in Paris, France. | |
| 1996 - Dolly the sheep becomes the first mammal cloned from an adult cell. | |
| Visit Wikipedia, the free on-line encyclopedia where you will find more historic events and over two million other articles. |
Microsoft will begin selling a subscription version of its Office programs in mid-July that will go by the handle “Equipt.” The software bundle includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, plus OneCare (Microsoft’s security software) and some of the free Windows Live applications.
It will initially be offered through Circuit City stores at a cost of $70 per year, which will include free upgrades to any new version that come out during the year. If you want to own your a copy of Office, it will cost you about $200 but you do not get free upgrades when Microsoft introduces a new version.
The deal with Circuit City is not exclusive so other vendors like HP and Dell will be offering the subscription option in the future.
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1776 - American Independence Day: The United States Declaration of Independence by the Second Continental Congress declaring itself free of British rule. |
| 1802 - At West Point, New York the United States Military Academy opens. | |
| 1966 - President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Freedom of Information Act into United States law. The act goes into effect the next year. | |
| Visit Wikipedia, the free on-line encyclopedia where you will find more historic events and over two million other articles. |
A Kentucky woman is looking at a prostitution charge for trading sex for gasoline. The 34 year old woman was busted at a Days Inn where she allegedly traded sexual favors that were paid for, in part, using a $100 Speedway gas card.
The woman was was charged with prostitution and doing business without an occupational license. The John was popped for promoting prostitution. The local prosecutor said it was sad to see someone selling their goods for 25 gallons of gas. I think the real crime is that she can only get 25 gallons of gas for $100.
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1775 - American Revolutionary War: George Washington takes command of the Continental Army at Cambridge, Massachusetts. |
| 1819 - The first savings bank in the United States (The Bank of Savings in New York City) opens. | |
| 1976 - Israeli commandos rescue 105 hostages at Entebbe Airport, Uganda during Operation Yonatan. | |
| Visit Wikipedia, the free on-line encyclopedia where you will find more historic events and over two million other articles. |
I love my MacBook. There, I said it. When was the last time that you heard a person profess their love for a Dell computer? OK, love may be a little strong but I sure do enjoy the things I can do on my Mac. What I really enjoy is the free software that is available for the Mac that makes my computing activities so much fun.
I run a training consulting company and an on-line training system so I have some pretty unique software needs. In the five years since I switched to a Mac, I have built quite a library of specialized Mac freeware. In my experience, if I discover some unique computing need, someone in the Mac community has already met the need by writing an inexpensive or free software program. In fact, I recently discovered a fantastic repository of Mac open source freeware, FreeSmug.
FreeSmug is an online user group site that has a ton of tutorials, info, news and free Mac software. This is one site that every Mac user should have bookmarked. Check it out.
CLICK HERE:
In Texas you have to be a licensed Private Detective to repair computers. And any consumer using anyone other than a licensed PI to fix his or her computer can be thrown in jail. Firefox users more secure on the Internet. Microsoft beginning to rent software starting in mid-July. Rhapsody going to put a dent in iTunes. Mac OS-X surges 32-percent. Microsoft officially retires XP. Say it’s not so: Micro-hoo back in play? Feds looking into Google-Yahoo deal. HP rolling out a $599 hotrod computer. Meanwhile, Dell buying back stock for personal account. Netgear doing an Open Source Router.
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1698 - Thomas Savery patented the first steam engine |
| 1962 - The first Wal-Mart store opens for business in Rogers, Arkansas. | |
| 1964 - President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits segregation in public places. | |
| Visit Wikipedia, the free on-line encyclopedia where you will find more historic events and over two million other articles. |
As we have previously discussed, the purpose of discipline is not to punish - it’s to change unacceptable behavior into acceptable behavior and help get a good performer back on track.
Another critical factor to consider is when to discipline. One of the worst mistakes you can make is to discipline employees when you are angry with them, This may cause you to place the emphasis on emotions instead of the employee behavior that resulted in the discipline.
The best way to ensure that you are not emotional when you discipline an employee is to develop and follow a systematic process for investigating personnel incidents.
First, gather all the fact about the incident. Make sure you check your emotions at the door and consider only the facts.
Next, take the time to write a narrative of your findings in a concise manner. This will later serve as your documentation of the facts as determined through your investigation.
Next, pull out your policy manual and determine if there is written policy or procedure that addressed the situation. Make sure that you include a copy of the policy with your narrative.
This next step will require that you step back from the incident and evaluate whether the rule is both fair and enforceable. Oftentimes, you will find yourself in a situation where, depending upon the interpretation of the policy, a violation may have occurred. However, if you are dealing with a good employee, a fair supervisor should always give the benefit of any doubt to the employee.
However, you should review past experience with similar violations and discuss the situation with your Human Resources personnel. Absent any extenuating circumstances, make sure you are consistent and fair.
Above all remain unemotional and impartial and do not attempt to discipline an employee until you have gotten rid of your anger.
It is a good practice to approach disciplinary situations like a problem-solving process. Identify the problem, develop a list of possible solutions, implement the best solution and follow up to evaluate the effectiveness of the solution.
Keep in mind that an effective agency does not rely on punishment to intimidate employees into compliance with policies. You can get away with ruling by intimidation for a little while but it will eventually have an impact on employee retention. The bottom line is people do not want to work in an intimidating environment. Instead, try to simply hold employees accountable for meeting standards and use discipline to correct unacceptable behavior.
Here is the deal, employees are motivated by personal responsibility and loyalty, rather than fear. As a result, morale will usually be much higher because employees will know what is expected. They can concentrate on doing their jobs and you will not have to spend all you time handing out reprimands and suspensions so you may actually have time to do more productive activities.
This is the final article in this four part series. If you would like to read the other articles in this four part series, just type “discipline” in the search box or click on the “Supervision” category in the right column.
My Essentials of Effective Supervision course includes an extensive discussion of employee discipline and a variety of other topics that will improve your supervisory skills. This four day course is pre-approved for DCJS in-service credit in Virginia so it can be conducted at any location. For more information, send me an e-mail at rich@rlsei.com or give me a call at 540.797.3853.
Did Steve Ballmer say Bill Gates created the IBM PC? Is he high?. Meanwhile the company is battling VM-ware, Orbitz to replace Expedia on MSN. IPO’s in the doldrums. When did the full-frame camera become hot? The semantic search is a dead-end, says I. Adobe gives Yahoo and Google special flash search code. Samsung Instinct handset is hot. Smart phones now catching on with new implementations. Family Guy creator does deal with Google.
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1870 - The United States Department of Justice formally comes into existence. |
| 1958 - The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation links television broadcasting across Canada via microwave. | |
| 1968 - The CIA’s Phoenix Program is officially established. | |
| Visit Wikipedia, the free on-line encyclopedia where you will find more historic events and over two million other articles. |
During the past week, there has been some information circulating throughout the law enforcement community concerning the social networking site Ziggs that may not be quite accurate. In addition to providing its member with the ability to build profile pages, chat, establish and join groups and generally network with other members, Ziggs offers an alert service when anyone accesses a member’s Ziggs profile.
It is important that law enforcement agencies realize that this alert service is being provided to Ziggs members. However, what is even more important is that they realize that virtually anyone that is hosting their own server has access to same information about anyone who visits the websites on the server. For instance, anytime someone using AOL visits my blog, The Sisyphus Comments, my server stats provide me with their IP address and the location of the address holder. It looks like this:
cache-mtc-aa15.proxy.aol.com (America Online Inc) Virginia, Reston, United States
This is the type of information that Ziggs is providing to its members. Unfortunately, the information circulating in law enforcement circles would lead one to believe that Ziggs is providing the actual postal address of the person doing the search. It is possible to determine a user’s actual physical address by tracking the person that was using a given IP address at a particular time but it would require the assistance of the Internet Service Provider (ISP). If you have ever tried to get this type of information from an ISP for a criminal investigation, you know that it probably is not going to happen without a warrant. Of course, if a law enforcement agency is using a dedicated IP address with a label like “Middletown Police Department”, it would be obvious to the bad guys that that the cops were to them.
It should also be clarified that it is probably not accurate to say that the search alerts work “with any search engine, including major search engines such as Google and Yahoo.” If John Doe was a Ziggs member and I Googled his name, he would not receive an alert from Ziggs unless one of the links that Google returned was his Ziggs profile and I clicked on that link.
This is my understanding of how the Ziggs alert service works. Of course, I welcome any comments from those of you who are better informed than I about these matters.
Norway probling Microsoft. Everyone has to get into the act. Lo-Jack for laptops? More than 600,000 laptops stolen in airports yearly. How does this happen in these "secure" airports? AD blockers worry advertisers. Why does Sun Microsystems have a chief gaming officer? EBay burned for allowing sales of fakes. Samsung pushing OLED. Look for Rhapsody to attack iTunes. No more Bill Gates stories.
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1859 - French acrobat Charles Blondin crosses Niagara Falls on a tightrope. |
| 1953 - The first Chevrolet Corvette rolls off the assembly line in Flint, Michigan. | |
| 1986 - The U.S. Supreme Court rules that states could outlaw homosexual acts between consenting adults. | |
| Visit Wikipedia, the free on-line encyclopedia where you will find more historic events and over two million other articles. |
