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20% of companies have sacked a pornhound
Here’s the latest development in our SMS world: Getting canned via instant message. According to The Inquirier, over 2,500 workers at the British Amulet Group received the following text message on their mobile phones:
you are being made redundant with immediate effect
Down in Australia, an air-traffic controller is actually suing over this. As a News.com story notes, Tom Earls got the following message in February from JNI Traffic Control:
Its (sic) official, you no longer work for JNI Traffic Control and u (sic) have forfided (sic) any arrangements made
As it turns out, the company claims that Earls wasn’t fired — he’d actually quit the previous day. But even so, a commissioner with the NSW Industrial Relations Commissioners was less than impressed:
“What happened to the old-fashioned letter or talking to someone in person?” Ms Bishop asked.
(Thanks to Boing Boing for finding the previous one!)
I'm Clive Thompson, a writer on science, technology, and culture. This blog collects bits of offbeat research I'm running into, and musings thereon.
Currently, I'm a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired magazine. I also write for Fast Company and Wired magazine's web site, among other places. Email or AOL IM me (pomeranian99) to say hi or send in something strange!
A long German word for “noticing when ads are being customized based on your surfing history”
“El Ajedrecista” — an analog chess-playing computer from 1912
“How did you find my site?” and Vannevar Bush’s memex
» visit the Collision Detection archives
May 20, 2011 » 02:28 PM
From Christopher Kennedy’s very droll book “Neitzsche’s Horse”.
July 28, 2010 » 07:35 AM
“Wr” - S
July 06, 2010 » 10:05 AM
My Xbox broke, and I was trying to Google some possible technical solutions, when I noticed that Google appears to be encouraging me to make a typo. I suppose it’s possible that Google’s algorithms know that typing “wont” instead of “won’t” would produce better results.
June 29, 2010 » 05:00 PM
On the other hand, when I tried the test for multitasking, I was pretty abysmal. I performed worse than people who identify themselves as heavy multitaskers, and those who identify as low multitaskers.
June 29, 2010 » 04:58 PM
I finally got around to trying out the interactive “test your distractability and multitasking” page at the New York Times, which they put up alongside their story earlier this month about how computer distractions are eroding our lives.
According to the test, I guess I have good focus — I’m not very distractable!
» see all of my photos on Flickr
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A long German word for "noticing when ads are being customized based on your surfing history"
