Yes, but apparently in Mick's case your name is on the product, and your reputation gets ruined if you don't play ball. A big software company can pay lawyers much longer than you can keep food on the table without pay.
Even good lawyers would have trouble bending the obvious. He had no contract to produce the OST (first) and he could have publicly claimed, that he only produced the game music and was not involved in that final mix of the OST.
His name was there without permission effectively, due to the lack of contract, so I doubt they'd try to fight that way. They have the big team but the opposition has an open&shut case, not worth the cost and the risk of subsequent action for wrongful use of the name. They might threaten of course, so he'd still need nerves. Again, reasons why I've always stayed away from contracting!
Not sure if you're from the UK but if you're not then you should be aware that the BBC has become a lot more politicised as the government appointed a major donor as the director in 2021 [1] and have previously threatened the company, for example by changing the license fee to starve them of funding[2]. In addition, the BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg is not without controversy and accusations of pro-government bias[3].
Unfortunately both sides of the political spectrum now mistrust the BBC's impartiality.
Yes, I'm in the UK. BBC used to be my "news of last resort", in the sense that it was the least worst of all the UK reporting.
But with things that you mentioned and recently Martine Croxall [1], I've pretty much switched to Reuters and Bloomberg quite some time ago without realising.
You only have to look at the BBC news site front page, versus their 'most read' section to see what the BBC editorial staff think we should be reading (relentless politics, doom and gloom) versus what people are actually reading (today, right now, Peter Kay's comeback! :) ).
fancy doing this when they could have simply forced the fat-fingered user into an endless cycle of http redirects, popup adverts, crypto-mining banner ads and finally a "this domain is for sale" parking page..
IT Audit/Governance manager here. This is still a very common preventative/detective control in many businesses even outside of Financial Services, so much so that it is taught as part of many IT governance certifications such as the ISC2 CISSP and ISACA CISA.
Although the provenance of the control is to deter and detect fraud, it also helps to highlight key-person dependencies (where a process cannot run without a specific individual present). On the flip-side, humans are very innovative creatures and you can use this control to identify where someone has found a way to bypass parts of the process (the process time suddenly increases a lot when someone in the team is on their mandatory-vaykay, or the quality suddently drops).
I also see it used in smaller companies by bosses who want to simulate the effects of a person quitting, and how confident the rest of the team are to take over the running of a task.
> I also see it used in smaller companies by bosses who want to simulate the effects of a person quitting, and how confident the rest of the team are to take over the running of a task.
Aka the Bus Factor. What if our lead engineer takes a bus out of town (or the darker version).
Even in large companies, work is done by teams and those teams are susceptible to this problem as well.
With respect; a lot of us out here know and used many of those the same way; we’re silently aware of the intent. I used to be that way. Over time feeling the need to fake it fell away; now I just mock everyone through muted indifference and a shrug, “good job at being a member of social life like everyone else” kind of energy.
Emotional archetypes are limited. You have borrowed others ideas because that’s how it works; you memorized such emotional states from others. Awareness of such emotional state is not yours alone.
See. That’s how you put someone down. Directly. Not through passive aggressive southerner classics. You’re far too obvious to those who have diverse real world experience and just come off as a cliche. But we silently eye roll rather than validate such antics through feedback, good or bad.
I used to say, "in case I fall off a cliff," and then in a previous job a colleague went mountain climbing and literally fell to his death off a cliff. Now I just say, "for when I'm not around."
Similar here. 2000/2001(?), I was talking about the bus factor with a client, indicating that I'd brought on a couple more folks on my team - one part time, one full time, to avoid the bus factor.
"what do you mean?"
"oh, in case I get hit by a bus"
Silence.
Someone in their company had been hit by a bus and died a couple weeks earlier. Not in their department - it wasn't a direct friend/colleague - but it was... awkward enough that I didn't use that phrase again for a long time. And even when I do, I tend to catch myself before and rephrase it.
I was working with an IoT company who proudly showed us, their biggest customer, how the signing keys to particular actions that could impact many, many people were held on a rather trick little Spyrus USB stick. Which they displayed. In the pocket of a person that had the requisite passphrases to access it all on her own.
I asked what would prevent the person from hopping a plane out of nearby SFO and having a pleasant CCP-funded retirement and they turned all sorts of colors. They invested in a proper storage mechanism (and key management processes) after that.
I worked a lot for banks and aside from mandatory vacation there are other rules.
For example in one bank I worked for there is a 2 year limit on how long you can work there as a contractor. This is to make sure that all key personnel is actually employed by the bank and the assumption being that if somebody worked for 2 years they become key personnel by default and have to either be hired as an employee or fired as a contractor.
One big reason for this is the tax law in US and Canada. Legally, contractors (esp. when incorporated) are considered employees if they work exclusively for one client over an extended period of time without interruption. Occasionally, I have seen such contractors take a few month sabbatical and return to work after that (still contracting).
Note: There are other criteria that have to be met as well for the govt to consider someone an employee:
- if work happens a the employer’s premises
- if the employer owns all equipment needed for work
- how is the work instructed - can denote a manager/employee dynamic)
Microsoft has approximately the same rule, and it’s entirely for the sake of employment law, not because they care about key personnel being contractors.
My defined benefit pension was basically handled by one person through a number of decades (and a couple acquisitions). If you wanted to start receiving your pension or whatever, you called so and so. I assume some degree of chaos would have ensued if something unexpected happened to her one day.
I assume she eventually retired or something because it was transferred to one of the big benefits companies a few years back.
That happened to my dad when he retired from a gov agency. He had an unusual situation and was held hostage for about a year, and eventually was able to retire with the intervention of a State Senator.
It was interesting when I joined my current employer about ten years ago after having worked for a big computer maker for about a decade (with an in between longish stint at a couple small to very small companies).
At the computer maker, where my pension is from, getting things done tended to be about reaching out to the right person who knew how to make such and such happen. Of course at the intervening smaller companies everyone knew everyone else. Where I am now, personal connections still matter of course. But when I joined, it was a bit of an adjustment to just "submit a ticket" rather than tracking down the right individual to ask a question or do something--at least with respect to company operations like payroll, benefits, or legal.
True, my company was founded basically as an agglomeration of several small companies where everyone knew each other, but due to big investment and commitments it was built with more formal business processes from the start. Old-timers like me still need occasional reminding that tickets do, in fact, are generally picked up without additional personal reminders.
It’s fascinating seeing a company successfully grow from 30 to 300 in a couple of years, with effectiveness mostly increasing.
i used to know the "pension person". and she wanted to keep working from home to take care of her family. the execs said no, so she quit. never had a backup person because.... that would have cost extra FTE.
chaos did, in fact, ensue. pretty sure it was part of the reason some big clients left.
Interestingly, I work in DoD IT where everyone is required to have certifications from ISC2, ISACA, CompTIA, etc. so we all get taught and tested on knowledge of this and many other controls, but I haven't actually heard of it formalized or enforced. In practice, we just rely on ad hoc high turnover as people change jobs every year or two, or get pulled away into unrelated projects, or sent away for exercises and deployments.
> IT Audit/Governance manager here. This is still a very common preventative/detective control in many businesses even outside of Financial Services, so much so that it is taught as part of many IT governance certifications such as the ISC2 CISSP and ISACA CISA.
This is covered in accounting and the CPA as well. Not that I'd necessarily recommend a CPA over an IT auditor in many cases.
Exactly. I installed projection systems in classrooms, theatres and lecture spaces for three years and the minimum classroom system would be 3500 lumens for a 'short throw' projector. Standards at universities were a minumum of 5000 lumens for a visible screen image.
the inverse square law problem isn't different for short-throw projectors (and it seems the person you are responding to was in fact installing short-throw projectors anyway).
short-throw projectors are just normal projectors optimized for very large beam angles, so at the end of the day the brightness out is exactly proportionnal to lumen amount between regular and short-throw projectors, modulo negligible airborne particles loss.
If you're planning on being with your partner during the birth, remember your personal admin as well. 16 hours on your feet in a high adrenaline situation is easy to forget to eat and drink, use the bathroom etc until your body tells you enough is enough.. and that's usually just before your little bundle of joy arrives..
this is the exact and very obvious point missing from the article, which makes me very skeptical as to the intentions of the writer.
since all mail will now have a unique tracker on it, all the issuer need do is log who purchases which stamps and you can now track who sends mail.
this could have a chilling effect on many areas of society who communicate via items or letters sent in the post, as the anonymity and neutrality of mail is eroded.
Yes, very true. However when people forget the passphrase to their wallet and lose access to their funds, suddenly they don't want to be their own bank anymore, they want a name and number to yell at down the phone until it comes back.
Yes, but apparently in Mick's case your name is on the product, and your reputation gets ruined if you don't play ball. A big software company can pay lawyers much longer than you can keep food on the table without pay.