I responded to an ad in the summer of 2001. When I showed up for the interview the position was for Perl, as advertised, but for a Perl programmer who could maintain some hackneyed scripts for control manufacturing equipment. Er, my HTML::Mason experience was a little out-of-place.
While there I met with a recruiter who asked me:
Where are you from?
What's your hobby?
I mean, besides work
I mean, besides computers
Do you like to party?
Then, he handed me an index card with an address and said, "Go to this address on Friday at 10 AM -- they're looking for a Perl programmer. I don't know, you might be interested." Turns out it was a very interesting position -- creating from scratch a Perl-based web application to control the dispensing of medication in a Dr.'s office and the inventory control that went along with it. Very cool.
But the recruiter was clueless and if I hadn't had a hunch I would have missed the opportunity.
Then the recruiter called the company and wanted 33% of my first year salary as compensation for the find. Huh? "Do you like to party" == vetting a candidate's skills, reasoning, background, education, references, etc.? Employer offered 15% -- and was refused. Recruiter got big ZERO -- turns out I never signed anything with them. If they had even tried to do their job I'd feel bad for them. (*Don't tell me that handing me the card was their fulfillment of their obligations -- maybe to ME but not to the employer; that I didn't turn out to be Jeffery Dahlmer's silent partner is pure luck.*)
One cool thing happened while waiting in the recruiter's office, though. I meet another Perl programmer with HTML::Mason experience. We've corresponded since as our careers changed over the past couple years -- and now she's a jewelry designer with her sister and loving it. So, even in apparent wasted interviews there are bright spots just waiting to be discovered.
Greetings, Anna. Would you like a new box of chocolate cream puffs delivered to you now? Your reality show from last night is ready to view on the Tivo.
Ok, that's it! Time to stop kissing Madonna and start kicking ASS!
Linux in general is more popular than this project.
The problem is that RedHat is more popular than Linux:)
What I mean is that people install and use RedHat Linux without understanding the technology they're using -- which is wonderful since Hacker-only OSes are as useful and pervasive as GNU Hurd. But RedHat's VPN offerings are limited (at least on the 7.x through 9 series) to CIPE. No support for IPSEC is included -- if you want IPSEC you'll have to look outside of RedHat's offerings.
This means RedHat users who want to VPN over insecure networks are using CIPE by default.
If CIPE is broken, architecturally or implemenationally, then RedHat is broken w/r/t VPN implementations.
Funnily enough, if you change your default fontto to Symbol, the page reads: "WE HAVE NO CLUE WHAT WE"RE DOING! WE'RE USING THE NAME OF A FORMER LARGE COMPANY AND ARE STANDING ON THE REPUTATION OF UNIX TO PROJECT PROFESSIONALISM BUT WE'RE TRULY CLUELESS BACKWASH HICKS". Quite amazing, really.
sorry for the apparent yelling but is it so appropriate to reflect the aol-ish chatroom rantings of the current technically naive leadership at scox. litigators, btw, always use caps to make their points especially in legal notices. just b/c cowboyneal has bad memories of legal notices haunting him to this day is not reason to abridge my artistic (how many more lowercase characters do i need to type, here??) liberties in portraying the fallen character of scox a.k.a. litigators are us.
I just got my new Dell 5150 and noticed the click through license, too. My thought was - well if I intend to not use Windows XP Pro and to rather install the OS of my choice, I better stop here. However, I did not worry because I fully intend to run Windows on this laptop.
If you want a refund, becareful.
P.S., this is a sweet machine. Runs cool and quiet -- has a 1600x1200 15" LCD, 3.06 GHz Pentium 4M. I got it with 256 MB RAM (the lowest amount you can order) and promptly went to Fry's to get my two 512MB chips for $99 a piece. Dell's markup on RAM is incredible -- but they need to make the margin somewhere (just not from me).
Oh, here's a tip -- common web page elements are completely munged by the default 120 DPI settings on fonts. Do yourself a favor and change to 96 DPI -- the resolution is great, but the size is tiny. If you can't read that small, get a 1072x768 monitor instead. 1600x1200 is very nice.
You can afford to be heartless because you have no responsibilities for a company's operations. Some of us are responsible for the company's IT operations, on one level or another. Here's the problem: most computer users are task-oriented and have been conditioned to Microsoft Windows. This is not a crime, just an environmental reality. People use Windows-based computers to accomplish various tasks.
Why not move them to Linux/Mac/Amiga/Altaire? I would if I could but there are a few problems:
Conditioning
As mentioned above, many non-technical people know how to accomplish specific tasks using Windows computers. For example: this morning a pharmacist in our company called me about not being able to print from a drug vendor's application. I dropped by his office (its nearby) and saw the problem -- the vendor has a web-accessible Java application and the PharmD was trying to print with IE's Print function. However, the proper way to print was hitting the PrntScrn key to pop up a print wizard. This wizard was fairly straight forward and I had no trouble navigating it, but the PharmD was lost because it wasn't familiar territory. I bet this drug vendor gets a lot of help-line questions about printing.... Should we demand that our pharmacists know how to troubleshoot there own problems? Perhaps. But really, his value to the company is much more as a PharmD than as a computer tech.
Availble applications
I've struggled to find replacements for our internal office automation and business processing software. Good news is I can really see a viable alternative with OpenOffice.org instead of MS Office. Bad news is I can't find an affordable accounting/ERP system for Linux. I know there are expensive ERP solutions availble, but I'm looking for the SMB market solutions. The best solution (for our needs) ended up being MS GreatPlains.
Business partner applications
Even if we could use Compiere, OpenMFG, etc., we'd be stuck with applications from our large vendors and, in some industries, clients (like national retailers, automakers, etc.) who provide required software to interface with their systems; some of these run only on Windows. And why not? over 90% of business desktops are Windows.
There's more, but these suffice to require Windows desktops in many businesses.
However, there is one rule to live by, which I use to summarize my philosophy on OS use:
Windows faces the users; *Nix, the Internet
I *will not* put Windows directly on the Internet. Some kind of *Nix firewall is reuired. That means IIS sessions are served through proxies, etc. There is no reason to put Windows on the Internet directly, as exhibited by Microsoft's move to Akamai for defending itself against the Windows-specific worm attacks. (Akamai, last I heard, was based on Linux for its high-availibility services).
Friend of mine was a sought-after lead consultant on BlueMartini (the US$1 million Java application toolkit) back in the day (2000 was SO long ago). I asked him if I should consider that kit for my company's development. He responded: why? You are a perl programmer and you have CPAN. Everything you need to buy from BlueMartini for Java you get with CPAN.
Funny you asked that - I read your post right as the puss shot straight from the raised corpusle on the bridge of my nose onto the screen, slightly obsfucating your user name so I thought I was reading a note from "H3ckno". After I wiped the white pussy substance (with just a touch of blood) off the monitor I couldn't help but notice the streak of slime left there. It drew a line from your name down to today's poll option "Sleepover at Cowboyneal's" -- how cool is that?!
I feel like we're... connected.
I just love the feel of a popped zit -- especially one where the released is substantial enough to feel a stream escaping the blast hole.
I have a very common name: Robert James Taylor. Look in your white Pages and you'll find me (I'm stalking you;). Anyway, this fact has led to a number of strange "mistakes."
I moved to the Northwest a few years ago and was denied a driver's license due to "a suspended license for DUI in New Jersey." I'm from Texas. Some bloke in New Jersey with my exact name AND BIRTHDATE got his license suspended in New Jersey. Database matched me to his record and I was denied. So, thinking aloud, I told the clerk/officer that I am from TX and had never lived in NJ, never visited NJ, never flew over NJ nor had been to a neighboring state of NJ (*not completely true - I did visit Binghampton, NY once*). Then I asked a question: did his SSN match mine? "No." *WHEW* I got my license. Strange that my identity was proven by a number specifically bared from becoming an identification number (until the 1970's).
One other story...I went to open a checking account when I moved to CA. I was denied and the reason given is that I had used a fraudulent SSN#. Huh? I asked to see the report from their system and saw that, according to their check of Social Security Admin records my stated SSN was issued BEFORE I was born. I asked to see the date that their system said the number was assigned. Let's say I was born March 12, 1968 (I wasn't). The SSA's record for my SSN had Mar 0, 1968 as the assignment date. March ZERO? Turns out until sometime after the 1960's the day of issuance was not recorded. Unfortunately three things converged:
SSA didn't record the day of issuance
My dad, being a CPA specializing in Tax, signed me up for a SSN within days of my birth
Bank of America's DBAs decided that Null fields in the Day of issuance were Zeroes and, ergo, my birthdate 19680312 was after the interpolated issue date 19680300
So, I had to traipse down to the SSN office and get a signed document validating my identity. *Sheesh*
Er, the recall is part of the California election law, not some kind of new ploy. In fact, Gray Davis is on record as supporting the recall of elected officials (not himself, strangely...not).
The reason for the uproar is that he purposefully hid the size of the deficit prior to the election and within days of (barely) winning re-election (against a brainless buffoon, Bill 'Slander' Simon) he released the $30 billion deficit numbers. Brainless Bill Simon said the deficit would be over $25 billion and Joe "Gray" Davis denied this in the campaign, saying Simon was inflating the numbers unfairly and the deficit would only be $10 billion at the most.
BTW, the reason for the deficit is NOT the energy scams run by the likes of Enron, et al. That fiasco is being passed directly on to businesses and consumers in the form of high rates all because Do-Nothing Davis sat on the crisis, eating his To-Fu Berry shakes and Turkey sandwiches, for over a year until he signed the stupid multi-year rate agreement with the power cos.
This recall is not about right-wingers upset at Democrats -- those signing the 1.7 million signatures for the recall election came from a cross-section of political opinion in Ca.
Lastly, the recall is an ELECTION. If the voters want to keep this train-wreck of a governor, they can say so at the polls.
When a company closes who owns the office furniture, the wall art, the company name, the trademarks, logos...?
Can I start a company called WebVan today? Maybe. How about using WorldCom's logo for my new venture?
Bigger question: will anyone who can claim rights to those things pursue me if I use them for myself? Probably not -- unless I am successful. If I am successful that will get the attention of people who might have told me "who cares." If there is a legal heir, they will fight for the throne.
I've seen the legal agreements for software ownership at software companies -- there is always a clear deliniation of ownership rights for contingencies such as sale, merger, public offering or dissolution, etc., of the company.
In one recent agreement we had a partner who was responsible for writing and maintaining the bulk of the application system. We had contract language to the effect that if the company could not support the application or if the company folded we would obtain rights to the software. That's just an example.
Point is, there most likely is a legal owner and if you do something unauthorized, you'll be vulnerable to legal repercussions.
BTW: Don't mix that source code in any forum that could be seen by GNU or Open Source developers, or you'll taint the community.
Disagreeing with the government is a time-honored tradition in this country. Promoting and enabling the violent overthrow of the government is wrong and should be punished.
If you really think the government needs to be violently overthrown, as in the American Revolution of 1776, don't expect the current government to assist your efforts.
Speak your peace (not "piece," by the way), change minds, reform the system, vote your conscience, protest, seek redress for grievances -- but do not expect sympathy for promoting violent acts.
It is one metric that bears on the case, namely, the ability to follow through on the expense of the suit. But it doesn't mean small companies (with ZERO market cap) can't beat huge market capp'ed companies -- Microsoft has lost recently to tiny companies (e.g., MS vs Immersion).
If you're going to get in a legal fight first determine the facts and don't forget the funds. If you have enough of each, proceed.
One husband, one wife::One Christ, one Bride. Exception: if a spouse commits adultery the other spouse is free of the marriage covenant.
As much as people make fun of Mormons (or is it Mormans?) for poligamy, this country practices "serial poligamy" quite freely -- even among the religious.
1) All believers are priests in the NT 2) All elders (the overseers of the local churches) MUST be the "husband of one wife". 3) Paul said it was better not to marry -- only to those who were not yet married -- so they could concentrate on serving the Lord. This was early in his ministry (1 Corinthians); later he told younger widows to marry. 4) Jesus never spoke anything to indicate we should hesitate to be married.
That "your church" does this or that is irrelevant to the Scriptures.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you like to party? Then, he handed me an index card with an address and said, "Go to this address on Friday at 10 AM -- they're looking for a Perl programmer. I don't know, you might be interested." Turns out it was a very interesting position -- creating from scratch a Perl-based web application to control the dispensing of medication in a Dr.'s office and the inventory control that went along with it. Very cool.
But the recruiter was clueless and if I hadn't had a hunch I would have missed the opportunity.
Then the recruiter called the company and wanted 33% of my first year salary as compensation for the find. Huh? "Do you like to party" == vetting a candidate's skills, reasoning, background, education, references, etc.? Employer offered 15% -- and was refused. Recruiter got big ZERO -- turns out I never signed anything with them. If they had even tried to do their job I'd feel bad for them. (*Don't tell me that handing me the card was their fulfillment of their obligations -- maybe to ME but not to the employer; that I didn't turn out to be Jeffery Dahlmer's silent partner is pure luck.*)
One cool thing happened while waiting in the recruiter's office, though. I meet another Perl programmer with HTML::Mason experience. We've corresponded since as our careers changed over the past couple years -- and now she's a jewelry designer with her sister and loving it. So, even in apparent wasted interviews there are bright spots just waiting to be discovered.
*sniff* Snuffed by an Anonymous Coward. *Sniff*
- Greetings, Anna.
Ok, that's it! Time to stop kissing Madonna and start kicking ASS!Would you like a new box of chocolate cream puffs delivered to you now?
Your reality show from last night is ready to view on the Tivo.
The problem is that RedHat is more popular than Linux :)
What I mean is that people install and use RedHat Linux without understanding the technology they're using -- which is wonderful since Hacker-only OSes are as useful and pervasive as GNU Hurd. But RedHat's VPN offerings are limited (at least on the 7.x through 9 series) to CIPE. No support for IPSEC is included -- if you want IPSEC you'll have to look outside of RedHat's offerings.
This means RedHat users who want to VPN over insecure networks are using CIPE by default.
If CIPE is broken, architecturally or implemenationally, then RedHat is broken w/r/t VPN implementations.
This is a big deal.
The preceeding joke told by all four year olds is matched only in insipid banality by reference to the "Any Key" joke.
sorry for the apparent yelling but is it so appropriate to reflect the aol-ish chatroom rantings of the current technically naive leadership at scox. litigators, btw, always use caps to make their points especially in legal notices. just b/c cowboyneal has bad memories of legal notices haunting him to this day is not reason to abridge my artistic (how many more lowercase characters do i need to type, here??) liberties in portraying the fallen character of scox a.k.a. litigators are us.
If you want a refund, becareful.
P.S., this is a sweet machine. Runs cool and quiet -- has a 1600x1200 15" LCD, 3.06 GHz Pentium 4M. I got it with 256 MB RAM (the lowest amount you can order) and promptly went to Fry's to get my two 512MB chips for $99 a piece. Dell's markup on RAM is incredible -- but they need to make the margin somewhere (just not from me).
Oh, here's a tip -- common web page elements are completely munged by the default 120 DPI settings on fonts. Do yourself a favor and change to 96 DPI -- the resolution is great, but the size is tiny. If you can't read that small, get a 1072x768 monitor instead. 1600x1200 is very nice.
Why not move them to Linux/Mac/Amiga/Altaire? I would if I could but there are a few problems:
- Conditioning
- Availble applications
- Business partner applications
There's more, but these suffice to require Windows desktops in many businesses.However, there is one rule to live by, which I use to summarize my philosophy on OS use:
- Windows faces the users; *Nix, the Internet
I *will not* put Windows directly on the Internet. Some kind of *Nix firewall is reuired. That means IIS sessions are served through proxies, etc. There is no reason to put Windows on the Internet directly, as exhibited by Microsoft's move to Akamai for defending itself against the Windows-specific worm attacks. (Akamai, last I heard, was based on Linux for its high-availibility services).Friend of mine was a sought-after lead consultant on BlueMartini (the US$1 million Java application toolkit) back in the day (2000 was SO long ago). I asked him if I should consider that kit for my company's development. He responded: why? You are a perl programmer and you have CPAN. Everything you need to buy from BlueMartini for Java you get with CPAN.
It seems CPAN really is worth a million.
What's wrong with:
# perl -e shell -MCPAN
or
# cpan
?
- most of these would be surprising to me to find in an email.
- DO* Word Documents and Templates
- URL Internet Shortcut (Uniform Resource Locator)
- POT PowerPoint Templates
- PPT PowerPoint Files
- XL* Excel Files and Templates
Yeah, who'd ever expect to receive one of those as an attachment?;)
I feel like we're ... connected.
I just love the feel of a popped zit -- especially one where the released is substantial enough to feel a stream escaping the blast hole.
I moved to the Northwest a few years ago and was denied a driver's license due to "a suspended license for DUI in New Jersey." I'm from Texas. Some bloke in New Jersey with my exact name AND BIRTHDATE got his license suspended in New Jersey. Database matched me to his record and I was denied. So, thinking aloud, I told the clerk/officer that I am from TX and had never lived in NJ, never visited NJ, never flew over NJ nor had been to a neighboring state of NJ (*not completely true - I did visit Binghampton, NY once*). Then I asked a question: did his SSN match mine? "No." *WHEW* I got my license. Strange that my identity was proven by a number specifically bared from becoming an identification number (until the 1970's).
One other story...I went to open a checking account when I moved to CA. I was denied and the reason given is that I had used a fraudulent SSN#. Huh? I asked to see the report from their system and saw that, according to their check of Social Security Admin records my stated SSN was issued BEFORE I was born. I asked to see the date that their system said the number was assigned. Let's say I was born March 12, 1968 (I wasn't). The SSA's record for my SSN had Mar 0, 1968 as the assignment date. March ZERO? Turns out until sometime after the 1960's the day of issuance was not recorded. Unfortunately three things converged:
- SSA didn't record the day of issuance
- My dad, being a CPA specializing in Tax, signed me up for a SSN within days of my birth
- Bank of America's DBAs decided that Null fields in the Day of issuance were Zeroes and, ergo, my birthdate 19680312 was after the interpolated issue date 19680300
So, I had to traipse down to the SSN office and get a signed document validating my identity. *Sheesh*The reason for the uproar is that he purposefully hid the size of the deficit prior to the election and within days of (barely) winning re-election (against a brainless buffoon, Bill 'Slander' Simon) he released the $30 billion deficit numbers. Brainless Bill Simon said the deficit would be over $25 billion and Joe "Gray" Davis denied this in the campaign, saying Simon was inflating the numbers unfairly and the deficit would only be $10 billion at the most.
BTW, the reason for the deficit is NOT the energy scams run by the likes of Enron, et al. That fiasco is being passed directly on to businesses and consumers in the form of high rates all because Do-Nothing Davis sat on the crisis, eating his To-Fu Berry shakes and Turkey sandwiches, for over a year until he signed the stupid multi-year rate agreement with the power cos.
This recall is not about right-wingers upset at Democrats -- those signing the 1.7 million signatures for the recall election came from a cross-section of political opinion in Ca.
Lastly, the recall is an ELECTION. If the voters want to keep this train-wreck of a governor, they can say so at the polls.
That is the legal election process in California.
Fair? What a stupid, insipid question.
I own a number of Zaurii and they all have a license from Caldera/SCO already (via Lineo). How is it that I now owe them money, again?
no
Can I start a company called WebVan today? Maybe. How about using WorldCom's logo for my new venture?
Bigger question: will anyone who can claim rights to those things pursue me if I use them for myself? Probably not -- unless I am successful. If I am successful that will get the attention of people who might have told me "who cares." If there is a legal heir, they will fight for the throne.
I've seen the legal agreements for software ownership at software companies -- there is always a clear deliniation of ownership rights for contingencies such as sale, merger, public offering or dissolution, etc., of the company.
In one recent agreement we had a partner who was responsible for writing and maintaining the bulk of the application system. We had contract language to the effect that if the company could not support the application or if the company folded we would obtain rights to the software. That's just an example.
Point is, there most likely is a legal owner and if you do something unauthorized, you'll be vulnerable to legal repercussions.
BTW: Don't mix that source code in any forum that could be seen by GNU or Open Source developers, or you'll taint the community.
If you really think the government needs to be violently overthrown, as in the American Revolution of 1776, don't expect the current government to assist your efforts.
Speak your peace (not "piece," by the way), change minds, reform the system, vote your conscience, protest, seek redress for grievances -- but do not expect sympathy for promoting violent acts.
I don't pay for VaporWare and I won't pay for a VaporCaper.
If you're going to get in a legal fight first determine the facts and don't forget the funds. If you have enough of each, proceed.
Exception: if a spouse commits adultery the other spouse is free of the marriage covenant.
As much as people make fun of Mormons (or is it Mormans?) for poligamy, this country practices "serial poligamy" quite freely -- even among the religious.
1) All believers are priests in the NT
2) All elders (the overseers of the local churches) MUST be the "husband of one wife".
3) Paul said it was better not to marry -- only to those who were not yet married -- so they could concentrate on serving the Lord. This was early in his ministry (1 Corinthians); later he told younger widows to marry.
4) Jesus never spoke anything to indicate we should hesitate to be married.
That "your church" does this or that is irrelevant to the Scriptures.
Er, what happened to the lameness filter??