The Space Shuttle was supposed to usher in an era of inexpensive, airliner-like space flight because of reusability. Schoolkids in the 1970s read about shuttles flying every week and catering to teams of civilian scientists and researchers.
Instead the shuttle transmogrified into an overengineered, over-budget and expensive flying bomb. Disposable space capsules and rockets of the Mercury to Apollo era were far cheaper, safer and simpler. The budgetary goals expressed for the shuttle could have been met with 1960s space technology - although it would not have had the "cool" factor.
The shuttle is a key example of mediocrity and groupthink by engineers working really hard to burn a budget. In my mind it is a testament to the nascent power of really brilliant people to argue for and build exactly the wrong thing.
When I had a hiatus in my normal flow of software development projects last year, I attempted to build a sideline business in this kind of service. I was "convinced" by the older blog article posted here a couple of summers ago "Technical Self Employment is a Fat Paycheck Waiting to be Pocketed" as well as the Joshua Feinberg "Computer Consultants 101" course which I bought (my word on the latter: don't get it. I found it a cheap and quick "high" but very unhelpful in the longer run.)
Short version: this is a REALLY crappy business. This "story" of low end tech support being a viable career option seems to have been floating around for quite awhile. The pundits claiming that it is a good refuge for a underemployed techie are full of crap. You're much better off temping at Home Depot if you need quick money, and continuing to interview for a normal professional IT or engineering job.
The basic problems:
Customers expect a quick, easy spend; the potential liabilities are huge; there is extremely little pricing or maneuvering room even for due diligence.
What I found:
The market is absolutely glutted with freelance computer techs. I have absolutely no idea how this writer got off the ground so easily. My chamber has about 30 out of a 800 business member base. All quoting the "we are your virtual IT department" line.
As far as marketing: I had joined the chamber, I told every blessed professional and in-business person I knew, I gave talks, I advertised, I sent out a mass mailing of postcards. NOTHING. Or, very little business. I gave it a year.
The clients suck. You really need a signed agreement with every business you deal with, in order to limit your liabilities, but many won't sign one. The same people who will blithely sign away their rights at the Quick-Lube station that fills their crankcase with moldy Kayro syrup will act like you're trying to scam them if you ask their signature on an agreement to begin work.
Payment is a challenge. I let just one local business, an "ESTEEMED CHAMBER MEMBER", go without collecting on the date I was there. The jerk didn't pay me (a lousy $190) until he called me needing more work, several weeks later. Another business, a health club, stiffed me out of over 1/2 the billings for an onsite service call. And so on and so forth.
Respect? You're treated like the janitor by most clients.
More on due diligence: when a user has a really trashed out (virus/adware laden) PC, AND does not have any of the system recovery disks, AND wants their precious data recovered first... the amount of time it can take is essentially bottomless. You just can't tell them that it may be 3 hours to 15 hours. They will simply not accept that. And you just, absolutely do not know even the order of magnitude until you get into it.
EVERY job I got involved some hideously unpredictable ball of mud.
So you wind up looking like an asshole all the time because you can't predict within the $50 what the client may spend to bring their PC "back", so you wind up working like a dog to "keep it low".
The reason nobody in the retail area wants this business is for the reasons I've listed. It's just too bloody hard to undo the damage that end users do by unsafe computing practices. That's why most stores' service departments just format and reinstall. Their attitude is "screw you and your data, tough luck" for a reason. They know that few will pay to have it "done right". And you can't run a business that is so marginal.
Hopefully this documentary will explain the mindset and culture of BBSs. They were like little special interest tribes with tight knit peer groups and a hierarchy of "ownership".
The internet dissipated the people who populated the BBSes because nobody was interested in the "small town" of the BBS when the "cosmopolitan big city" of the internet was available. Even a big service like COMPUSERVE eventually folded many of its forums and combined them in the mid 90s.
There's no going back, either. BBSes existed as they were for a confluence of technical and social reasons - because owning a computer, and being willing to connect it to an informal "network" in the 80s through the early 90s was kind of special.
BBSes compared to the internet are a lot like ham radio compared to CBers and cell phone users. One is niche, special, requires some technical chops, the other, any idiot can hop on (and usually does.)
The plot crutch that ST:TNG came up with - incessant time travel used as a means to show alternate timelines or realities - has helped to ruin Enterprise.
What I mean is - it's been discussed on the newsgroups that Enterprise is creating a future for itself that is *not* the NCC-1701A, due to the meddling of "future guy" and the Suliban. So we have an Enterprise that is creating a timeline that may not even *include* Kirk or Picard.
The most boring episodes of TNG were those where Picard gave a knowing wink to Guinan and said something idiotic like "I'll see YOU in 500 years in a few minutes". This "anything goes because the writers have a trap door for all situations" removes tension and human interest.
The writers and producers of this show lack any spark of creativity whatsoever. The Trek franchise is a friggin' Cuisinart of bad and repetitive writing. One episode last season was a blatant ripoff of "Alien Mine" down to the shape of the lizard alien's head. And they have to rely on elaborate deus ex machina crap for most of their story ideas and for resolution of plots.
Just curious. Did the source code to the Tivo firmware ever get released? I never remember any such controversy about Tivo, and I also don't recall any release of GPLd code for Tivo anyway - admittedly I wasn't paying attention.
Seems to me that the issue is the same: embedded use of GPLd code in a commercial product.
"Face to face communication matters and is the only thing we're interested in!" saith most clients. Or at least that's been the case for me.
Here's what I really don't understand about the current move to offshoring, in context. The message I've gotten from virtually EVERY contracting prospect I've had in the last 10 years has been: LOCATION MATTERS and NOBODY TRUSTS YOU OFFSITE. Also, WE DON'T TRUST YOU TO COMMUNICATE UNLESS YOU'RE UNDER OUR THUMB. (caps deliberate.) Email and fax are generally (not always) disdained by most clients as a means to keep in contact on projects. This has been true in my marketing since I've done IC work and it's been the case even if the client doesn't have the onstaff brainpower or management skill to oversee the work. *Appearance* of oversight has seemingly been the main priority.
I tend to work most productively on solo projects when and where I do not have to deal with office disruptions and politics. In the majority of situations in which I've offered to do the work offsite on my generally better equipment, and even when I've offered very high granularity of reporting on my work, the response from prospects has been: DON'T CARE... DOESN'T MATTER... OUR POLICY IS ONSITE ONLY.
But companies today seem to view offshoring as "best practices" and necessary if they are to compete. The need to *appear* to save money seems to greatly outweigh the existing compulsion to "enforce" face to face contact. Things have thus been turned on their head from earlier office-political posturings.
As near as I can tell, offshoring seems to be the current management fad, and managers jump on these bandwagons like lemmings in order to appease their boards of directors and stockholders.
I just noticed this in the cast portion of the web site. Note the reference to the bolted-on eyepatch worn by Christopher Plummer's 'Chang':
SUBJECT:Commander Chang (played by Nathan Wolf)
AFFILIATION: Klingon Empire
STATUS/POSITION:Commanding Officer of Prototype Klingon Battle Cruiser
KNOWN HISTORY: Klingon Commander Chang commands the first Klingon battle cruiser equipped with a Romulan cloaking device. Klingon use of cloaking technology was confirmed during the U.S.S Exeter's encounter with Chang on Epsilon Indi IV. Chang initiated hand to hand combat with the Exeter's Captain Garrovick on the planet surface and, while defending himself, Garrovick inadvertently put out one of Chang's eyes. Since that encounter, Chang is reported to wear a patch over his injured eye.
I wonder if this "taints" the production seriously from the standpoint of fair use? It would appear so.
Vinman, first, thanks for the kudo and understanding.
Your points are well taken. Ever hear of the frog in the slowly boiling water? You are right to scrutinize the speaker of a contentious commentary like mine.
On desperation: more to the point, most of these episodes happened when I was somewhat less confident and held "BUSINESS" people in the same lofty regard as their egos demanded. As I have seen such people's bloated self image and arrogance collide with personal and professional disasters instigated mainly by their own ego and hubris, I have realized just how full of s*** the ego of most semi-successful small time entrepreneur's truly is. This realization helps me tolerate the nonsense better than I used to. Also, I am in Ohio, whose business culture is generally anti-innovation and (in logic notation) "Silicon Vally NOT" or "Silicon Valley - bar". Very thin technology market here that is geek hostile, and as a result I've had to nurse along some slim pickins.
Re: the reference letter, it would be truly interesting to see if the guy that I am writing about blunders in here and recognizes himself. I "tolerated" this one because the alternative was pissing him off by "demanding" mature reciprocal behavior and thus getting no letter.
Lastly, much of the abuse has been simple innuendo, disparaging one-to-one off the cuff comments, etc. which is pretty much beyond the reach of law.
I don't think I am being singled out or am singularly inept in dealing with customers, because, for all the crap I've had to deal with, the FTEs I've known have generally had it much worse. At least I get to set my own hours!
Many have already sounded off on the non-Dickensian nature of most technology work. The work is generally
physically safe, conducted in generally well lighted and air conditioned/heated offices.
What I want to know is - how old are those posting the anti-union, pro-intelligentsia drivel that is
in this thread?
So many here are missing one basic issue that the BBC article alludes to: IT work itself is
ABSOLUTELY NOT RESPECTED by most companies nor managements, and neither are
the practitioners. I think that is the underlying problem that is reflected
in poorly designed, one dimensional, excessively macho work culture in this
field.
To reflect this assertion, the proportion of top executives in most
large companies whose background is engineering or applied sciences is
truly insignificant, and the career track in IT and engineering is absolutely
non-existent and must be manufactured ad hoc by the individual. This is
as truly a young person's game as major league "anything".
My post is not about wanting anyone to guarantee me a job, nor a plea for anyone to kiss my ass in
gratitude for knowing how to code a constructor or a GUI. I simply would like to see some genuine
appreciation from the people whose businesses I help. Alas, I find that
I am expected to: shut up; code my nuts off; not express any opinion; and
conveniently disappear when my piece is done.
You may feel that you're doing great at 25 or 30. I challenge those beating their chests in
shared exultation at the primacy of the uber-geek to say the same things at 40 or 50! At some point
real soon now, unless you enter into some sweetheart partnership or start
your own company, you're going to see your options shrivel unless you
*aggressively* re-make yourself. In my area, I simply see almost nobody over
45 in high tech.
My background and perspective: I am a self employed IT contractor and have done this for 9+ years. Prior to
that I was employed in several jobs for a total of 20+ years of experience in mixed HW and SW applications.
I have mainly developed shrink wrap resalable applications for my clients and I have represented myself, so
I have not had to contend with any static from a body shop agency.
My experience, overall, has been that I have pretty much been treated more as
a temp or grunt worker along the lines outlined above. Here are some of the
wonderful roses and tokens of appreciation thrown to my feet for developing
mission critical applications for my client base.
- Threatened with death/disappearance/lawsuit/other by a startup's paranoid
CEO if I were to quit a 1099 contract or reduce my work hours.
- Bullied continually by another company when working on a fixed cost contract,
and treated like I was their janitor and their property - it was a conversion
of their flagship vertical product to Windows. I pulled it off in a reasonable
time and cost and I was told later that they felt I was 'sleaze'.
- The president of a long term client took something like four months and
much wheedling and begging from me to write a simple stinking letter of
reference. This from a guy that claims that he was grossly underpaid and
abused when he was "just" a programmer... IE: my brother, a corporate
controller, says that he dashes off letters like this on demand within 2-3
business days so that he doesn't forget.... and feels that it's his duty when
someone does their job well.
- Another client's owner insists on using me pretty much like a robotic pair
of coding arms, reserving all design decisions for himself and treating
all developers in his company like code technicians. "Here, put this 'Begin'
starting at column 4, and space down two lines, and put a 'writeln()'.." etc.
- Got shingles (at age 37!) working in a boiler room office coding VB apps
while the office's tech writer is constantly over my desk grunting inane
questions at the other developer in the office.
Mostly, I find that
flagrant hypocrisy, psychological abuse, ingratitude, and snotty
holier-than-thou "I was a coder once but now I'm not a loser like that"
attitudes are bestowed on software and engineering types by business owners
and managers.
So why am I still doing this crap, you may ask? The major
reason is degree of investment in the industry - at some point, age, cunning
and (my) nastiness;-) have to count for something. Put another way, I
am much better at this stuff than anything else I could choose to do. And
with age comes the wisdom to see through the pretense of those on the other
side of the negotiation fence for what it is.
The Simputer is different enough from established computer platforms that I believe it will require some grass roots efforts to popularize it. I think that allowing some hobbyist electronics companies to produce a Simputer kit would help proliferate the device and probably would cross-fertilize the initiative to develop the computer for poor countries.
In particular, the licensing terms from simputer.org are unfavorable to very small commercial operations:
Any commercial exploitation of the Specifications (whether Simputer or Simputerized) involves a nominal one time payment to the Trust. The payment will be $25,000 for developing countries and $250,000 for developed countries.
So, what about a smaller kit company in a developed nation, such as Jameco or others? They're almost certainly not going to spend $250K for a Simputer license. But if kit vendors were allowed open access to the plans, specifications, PC board layouts, etc. we could see enough hobbyists building and using Simputers to create a small revolution.
At least, the royalty should be graduated according to the company's current size and profitability.
My point: sometimes, drawing a hard line in the sand between "noble" non commercial use and "lowly" commercial exploitation is silly, and I can think of innumerable examples in the world where lack of profit motive and strong armed egalitarianism ruined a market.
Everyone in the developer - company - customer triad is to blame.
Developers are to blame for creating a "boss jock" culture in the workplace that stresses quick results and sheer brawn over correctness, literacy, and maintainability. Developers are to blame for wallowing in and encouraging over complexity and churn of APIs, platforms, and programming languages. Many developers seem to get their rocks off on "being superior" to each other rather than creating something that is truly usable. Most developers have no conception of the key tradeoff between "fragile" and "simple but robust". Many developers are also to blame for "resume engineering", putting needless complexity into products because they want to justify new buzzwords on their resumes.
Companies are to blame for having absolutely no quality standards beyond profitability, and for creating sheltered sandbox playgrounds of idiot savant techies (the programmers competing with each other for kewlness) that encourages churn of tools for its own sake. Often, there are no grown adults with an ounce of clue paying attention. Also blame dual track career systems that encourage ghettoization of developers and which grooms the incompetent to lead and manage activities that they are demonstrably not good at (the Peter Principle, or the PHB plague.)
Consumers are to blame for demanding feature bulk in new products without being discerning enough to notice that the useful, core features are not well implemented. Consumers are to blame for buying and accepting crap with no comment or protest.
Everyone involved deserves each other. Consumers wouldn't pay the bucks to buy conservatively engineered and reliable software (beyond tiny product niches.) Companies would definitely not fund development of products that didn't have some incredible short term payback potential. Developers won't willingly work on stuff that isn't bleeding edge cool.
In this equation, everyone involved is pushing on each other HARD to make and ship crappy, fragile, bloated products.
This is not a technical problem, this is mainly a behavioral and cultural issue.
Users aren't going to do *anything* they don't prefer to do, and you have no way of compelling them to do the "right" thing. The post about domain logons and establishing "My Documents" on the network server is excellent, but the users could still save everything on their C: drive. (They probably will because a network share is usually slower than the local hard drive, and they're used to using C:.)
My recommendation would be to gain and establish management support for a backup policy. To do this, you will have to demonstrate to management the risks inherent in not compelling users to back up their data - such as loss of operational data, client lists, engineering data, etc.
Ideally, management would issue an edict that specified that employees were responsible for cooperating with your backup regimen.
Short of this, it ain't gonna happen, because users are basically "stupid". (Defined as shortsighted, unable to see the big picture, unable to imagine loss of data, etc.) And without a real enforceable policy with disciplinary measures in place, they are going to skirt the policy, count on it.
Imagine the near future when these things proliferate.
You're living in an apartment building listening to an "ordinary" radio one evening. Suddenly, hideous whining and crackling proceeds to interrupt every station you could receive before. The entire FM and AM bands are trashed with this sound.
Your TV (not yet connected to cable) with rabbit ears - same story.
You pick up the portable phone to call the apartment manager, and your phone gives off that two tone beep that indicates either that your portable can't sync with the base unit because 1) your phone's battery is dying or 2) there is too much ambient interference.
Oh... you suddenly figured it out. The computer geek next door just got one of those new UWB networks set up.
The point: the quality of life for certain pastimes will take a dramatic nosedive... yet another way that your fellow man can make your life miserable without even breaking a sweat. Any sort of radio equipment will have to be used well away from most buildings.
I know, they will set "thresholds" of acceptable power for these things. The problem is, there are many legitimate uses for sensitive radio equipment, such as shortwave, or non hardwired TVs or radios.
What an IDIOTIC idea. It basically erases 100+ years of progress in electronics.
The bottom line of this article appears to be that if someone uses *anything* called a 'chat room', they're implicitly engaged in illicit activities:
"It's older, it's not tied to Microsoft or AOL or a big company, it's one of the Internet protocols... so if you're running Windows or Linux or Macintosh or another flavor of Unix, you can use it," says Schneier. "So it's not that it's more suitable for hackers to use, it's just a more basic service and people who are anti-big-corporation are going to be more likely to use something like IRC."
This spokesperson is basically saying that chat outside the venue of a benevolent, all-watching big corporation is evidence of intent to cause harm to the capitalist system, by extension. (and don't forget all of the child molesters hanging out on... er... AOL!!)
While many are mocking the origin of the story, don't laugh.
Civil liberties can easily be eroded by the F.U.D. and implied subversion that a large media company such as CNN can implant in the minds of readers over a perior of time. "Chat room" == "bad unsupervised people up to no good" can become implanted in reader's minds subtly by repetition... with the terrorism paranoia running rampant in our society, spin like this ain't positive.
This site was a deliberate joke - it apparently wasn't intended to fool anyone into believing that it was fake buzz (check out his resume linked to the site if you want evidence of this contention - he supposedly works at some fast food place but he's got experience with like three dozen OSes.)
"Travis Latke" is actually someone who was associated with production of Galaxy Quest, who volunteered to be the personna of this guy who got his web site "kicked off the Cal Poly servers".
That site is one of the funnier things I've seen on the internet in the last several years...
The biggest difference between small and large ISPs is that smaller outfits place fewer brick walls between a customer and someone that can actually answer a question thoughtfully. To a non corporate end user customer, the effective IQ of a regional/national ISP is single digits; the same 'effective IQ' of a small local ISP is probably triple digits most of the time. This does not explain everything, however. The second biggest difference is that a small ISP may not cover its operations effectively at all times (particularly on holidays, or when the one head geek is out of town on vacation.)
So in exchange for smallness and accessibility, you trade off technical coverage and expertise. The smaller ISP may actually be eager to help you, but you can sometimes hear the sound of O'Reilly books flipping furiously in the background when you ask them something outside the norm.
On customer service: regional and national ISPs appear to operate (or outsource) huge call centers literally staffed by orangutangs. With these call centers, their absolute top priority appears to be to prevent you at all cost from escalating your inquiry to someone with actual technical knowledge.
From what people in that business have told me, it appears that managements' priority at the big places is to shuck off all tech support calls with no thought, if possible. It must be a law of averages: MOST people don't need tech support, so the few customers that do (IE those with special dial up problems, etc) are considered high
maintenance and expendable. It's the only explanation that fits.
Example 1: I had been using Ohio's One.Net (a large regional ISP), which had recently become acquired by a huge national corporation. One Net had over the mid 90s developed a reputation here in Cincinnati for being an extraordinarily geek-friendly ISP. No more after the buy out. I was shopping for dial up ISDN service a while back, so I called One Net. Nobody I spoke with on the phone could tell if if One Net had a local dial up point of presence in my town. I talked with operators that didn't even know what ISDN was, that it was different either from DSL or analog dial up, etc. They might as well have had home siding telemarkerers staffing the calls.
Example 2: "The On Ramp", a regional ISP based in northern Ohio. Tried them a while back (attractive monthly rates.) Even worse than One Net. The guy I spoked with about a dial up problem appeared to be reading notes on dialer settings from a cheat sheet and was clueless when I asked him how things interacted. Dropped em after a week.
Lately, I've been through two local small town ISPs, each with probably a few hundred users. One such ISP appeared to be a local class act but had dreams of grandiosity - they got a franchise to supply cable internet to the local area, and in that aftermath I could get no help with a problem I had with their satellite based caching downlink that interfered with certain sites I visit. (Turns out the franchise has been re-awarded to another carrier since then.)
The other ISP I am currently with has in the past had a reputation for quality and service issues, but I established ISDN with them lately because it was incredibly easy (talked with the guy who did the changeover right as I was on the phone!)
So, it's a tradeoff between the benefits of large vs small businesses to the extreme... the large ISP has better resources but is stingy about allocating them to "just anyone" (read: a non corporate customer). The small ISP may not have as good coverage on some things but generally tries harder.
Opinions and Prognostications
on
Apocalypse Not
·
· Score: 5
Well, the US did not instantly turn into Somalia last night; New World Order "storm troopers" did not foment riots on Time's Square; and Mad Max type survivalists are not yet careening down my street here in the sticks, pillaging houses at random and taking all the fertile women.
OK, so everything's "cool" for now. My opinions....
- Have been reading commentary in various online papers stating in effect, was Y2K remediation money wasted? My take - "bulls***"! - NO, the fact that everything went smoothly around the world was testament to timely preparation. But this type of second guessing is so similar to corporate life in IT! If there's no crisis when someone does their job well, everyone around them clucks that they 1) wasted their time and someone else's money by "being too careful" and 2) the care taken was unnecessary. Anyone who states that Y2K remediation was unnecessary is either a complete idiot, uninformed, or an ambulance chasing lawyer. I think, JUST THIS ONCE, a united effort to fix a pervasive major problem was successful.
- What of the vast Y2K survivalist preparation cottage industry? Expect MAJOR bargains in freeze dried food in the coming year. Likewise for slightly used generators (as with most excessive Y2K preparation, a generator purchased in anticipation of Y2K power outage is idiocy, like you're going to keep a 200 gal. tank of gasoline in your basement? Yup!)
- Likewise, the dead trees publishing industry has wasted major quantities of wood-pulp on apocalyptic publications which will be destined for "Half Price Books" or your favorite remaindered book reseller. My question: are these books simply trash or could a decent library of Y2K related publications be considered collectible in 10-20 years? I am thinking the latter because most Y2K books, etc will go straight to the trash, as a burr in the side of anyone who paid good money for em. Finding mint copies of these books in 2015 might be as rare as a mint #1 edition of "Mad Magazine" is today.
- Back to Y2K preparation bargains - how about survivalist lots in the sticks? I wonder how many people went into hock and headed for the hills? Wonder what the foreclosures could be like for lots and houses in remote areas purchased with heavy mortgages and small down payments with little thought to paying them off? This might be an *excellent* time to look at rural acreage.
Now, the BIG issues - IT and the general economy... Even though the general economy is not just IT, I think that the general economy *has* been heavily influenced by the 'holding one's breath' aspect of Y2K anticipation, IE, IT and the general economy have probably been synchronized somewhat in terms of anticipation and dread.
The economy, and particularly the stock market, may well *take off like a rocket* at least for the first month of this year. Optimism and relief over no major Y2K problems will drive it. I suspect that, regardless of the current nutty high P/E ratios and valuations, a lot of investors have actually sidelined themselves in cash looking to see what will happen. THEN we may have a MAJOR blowoff.
Some economists have stated that we may get a recession out of Y2K due to delayed effects upon smaller companies. We may have big surprises in store, but I am guessing not - that problems will crop up gradually, be recognized gradually as most operational problems have been diagnosed day to day, and fixed as they happen. So no big deal.
Again, what I am personally expecting - I am no psychic nor do I play one on infomercials:-) - a BIG, and risky short term run-up in most stock indexes due to Y2K relief and euphoria, followed by a major blowoff (bear market). This economic distortion is probably the current single biggest risk. I think this contention is valid because expectation and 'irrational exuberance' and not technical nor value indicators have governed our markets for several years. I know how I felt when my partner and I were toasting New Year's last night as we watched every time zone go by with no problems, no terrorism --- massively relieved! I was expecting MUCH worse at least in terms of terror from the 'fatwah' crowd, and nothing. Multiply that attitude across the entire economy and you will have a MAJOR 'pop'.
Nobody here has yet mentioned the lifecycle of Compuserve and its forums. I used to frequent a VERY active forum on CI$ named CONSULT, for computer consultants, in the early 90's. But the recent lifecycle of those forums matches the description at the top of this thread. They began a serious decline when Compuserve users began to notice that ISP accounts were a much better deal than CIS for being on-line.
By mid '97 the message traffic on CIS:CONSULT was in serious decline; I heard that recently, CONSULT was merged into several other techie fora and is a ghost of its former self.
Yes, BBSs are a dying breed, even thought there are orders of magnitude more people online today than there were 7 or 8 years ago. You'd think the exact opposite would have happened.
Today, as an adjuct to, or in place of proprietary online service forums such as GEnie or CIS, you have freeware web based BBSes that anyone with a Perl CGI based web host (that is, just about anyone on an ISP) can set up... but, maybe because the cost of entry as a BBS is so low, the BBS action is splintered and fragmented across perhaps thousands of individually operated niche BBSs.
Also, limiting size of web BBS forums: just FINDING the right BBS on the web can be a chore. With Compuserve it was easy... you wanted to discuss flowers and gardening, here's the one or two or three fora you should use... etc.
Maybe what's needed is a comprehensive cross reference of all web BBSs. There ARE thousands... including the ones that are buried underneath local newspaper sites, or under corporate domains.
My favorite web BBS is the Computer Contractor's BBS (plug: http://www.realrates.com/bbs). Maybe it can be a representative of the best that a BBS can be on the internet. The thing that the Realrates BBS lacks, probably due to its focus, is the participation of a truly broad cross section of professionals, such as business owners, managers, and profesional writers and speakers - CONSULT had this.
Many moons ago (~20 years) companies treated salaried workers as professionals and as being part of the management team. This mindset has slowly collapsed in most industries.
The implicit dividing line up to the early 80's seemed to be: salaried == ivory tower, college educated/and/or management, committed to company success, 'on the same team as management and the owners'; self-directed. IE, 'professional', holding to a higher standard than others.
By the same thinking, hourly == blue collar, caring only about pay, working against management interests, one of a faceless rabble, to be herded and directed.
Today, most salaried workers that are not directors or owners are essentially treated as tradespeople, and I would dare say are regarded much as hourly workers were 20 years ago as stated above. This goes not just for technology but also other nominally professional fields such as accounting and medecine.
Basically, ALL of us... salaried, hourly, even the PhBs that are blamed for simply being instruments of the blunt application of stupidity from above... are at-will workers with no guarantee of "anything". In fact, given the way employment law is usually applied, I regard full time employment as 'contracting' with a fixed price.
The point is, after reading some posts here I gather that a lot of people regard hourly compensation as an employee as demeaning... as a management signal that "you work for the money only"... I personally consider this view extremely naive. The ONLY question you should be asking (as a worker) is: will I make more money over the long run going hourly or salaried?
I am a contractor, working hourly as an external resource for several clients. Most of us who have adopted contracting for a living were 'de virginized' by one or more companies that exploited our personal desire to 'be professional'. The ripoff that salaried employment can be at many companies is usually pivotal in this career redirection.
The career track of a contractor usually follows the pattern:
- Work diligently as an FTE, believe in "the process", wait your turn.
- Be rewarded with broken promises: sub COLA raises; startup company rewards that were conveniently forgotten; fellow employees with little accountability but having "executive hair" etc. being promoted at a whim.
- Be branded and labeled "heads down", "just one of our programmers", etc. (IE, be insulted as well as having a shortcutted salary progression.)
- Finally, be laid off or fired for essentially doing your job.
I required, fully three of these cycles in order to make the mental decision to contract. As a contractor, I command MUCH more respect than I ever did as an employee. I AM professional too - completely self responsible for my further education... expected to produce tangible results... and hourly, to boot. And MOST important, there is NO silly salaried employment 'social contract' hanging over my head that both sides are obliged to fulfill. When I'm done, I'm out. I'm OK with that. That is quite a bit more 'delimited' than an hourly pay arrangement as a full timer who expects to be used for other things, but it illustrates that your pay arrangement does not define your professional personhood.
So, to everyone on the technical worker side who considers hourly "declasse", get a grip and look at the money... that's what counts. This work isn't a religious order, a calling, or really considered "professional" by anyone except us. To the executives we are just button pushers, a different flavor of machinist or other skilled tradesperson.
Just decide what is the best deal offered and go with it.
And to the manager who started this thread, your decision making is EXTREMELY foresighted and fair... because, whether you realize it or not, you are anticipating that your own people will be confronted with a similar career conundrum at some point, and you're saying "your time is worth something".
Slashdot Mirror
The Space Shuttle was supposed to usher in an era of inexpensive, airliner-like space flight because of reusability. Schoolkids in the 1970s read about shuttles flying every week and catering to teams of civilian scientists and researchers.
Instead the shuttle transmogrified into an overengineered, over-budget and expensive flying bomb. Disposable space capsules and rockets of the Mercury to Apollo era were far cheaper, safer and simpler. The budgetary goals expressed for the shuttle could have been met with 1960s space technology - although it would not have had the "cool" factor.
The shuttle is a key example of mediocrity and groupthink by engineers working really hard to burn a budget. In my mind it is a testament to the nascent power of really brilliant people to argue for and build exactly the wrong thing.
So I'll believe THIS when I see it.
Lexx: "Lost in Space" with boobs.
When I had a hiatus in my normal flow of software development projects last year, I attempted to build a sideline business in this kind of service. I was "convinced" by the older blog article posted here a couple of summers ago "Technical Self Employment is a Fat Paycheck Waiting to be Pocketed" as well as the Joshua Feinberg "Computer Consultants 101" course which I bought (my word on the latter: don't get it. I found it a cheap and quick "high" but very unhelpful in the longer run.)
Short version: this is a REALLY crappy business. This "story" of low end tech support being a viable career option seems to have been floating around for quite awhile. The pundits claiming that it is a good refuge for a underemployed techie are full of crap. You're much better off temping at Home Depot if you need quick money, and continuing to interview for a normal professional IT or engineering job.
The basic problems:
Customers expect a quick, easy spend; the potential liabilities are huge; there is extremely little pricing or maneuvering room even for due diligence.
What I found:
The market is absolutely glutted with freelance computer techs. I have absolutely no idea how this writer got off the ground so easily. My chamber has about 30 out of a 800 business member base. All quoting the "we are your virtual IT department" line.
As far as marketing: I had joined the chamber, I told every blessed professional and in-business person I knew, I gave talks, I advertised, I sent out a mass mailing of postcards. NOTHING. Or, very little business. I gave it a year.
The clients suck. You really need a signed agreement with every business you deal with, in order to limit your liabilities, but many won't sign one. The same people who will blithely sign away their rights at the Quick-Lube station that fills their crankcase with moldy Kayro syrup will act like you're trying to scam them if you ask their signature on an agreement to begin work.
Payment is a challenge. I let just one local business, an "ESTEEMED CHAMBER MEMBER", go without collecting on the date I was there. The jerk didn't pay me (a lousy $190) until he called me needing more work, several weeks later. Another business, a health club, stiffed me out of over 1/2 the billings for an onsite service call. And so on and so forth.
Respect? You're treated like the janitor by most clients.
More on due diligence: when a user has a really trashed out (virus/adware laden) PC, AND does not have any of the system recovery disks, AND wants their precious data recovered first... the amount of time it can take is essentially bottomless. You just can't tell them that it may be 3 hours to 15 hours. They will simply not accept that. And you just, absolutely do not know even the order of magnitude until you get into it.
EVERY job I got involved some hideously unpredictable ball of mud.
So you wind up looking like an asshole all the time because you can't predict within the $50 what the client may spend to bring their PC "back", so you wind up working like a dog to "keep it low".
The reason nobody in the retail area wants this business is for the reasons I've listed. It's just too bloody hard to undo the damage that end users do by unsafe computing practices. That's why most stores' service departments just format and reinstall. Their attitude is "screw you and your data, tough luck" for a reason. They know that few will pay to have it "done right". And you can't run a business that is so marginal.
Hopefully this documentary will explain the mindset and culture of BBSs. They were like little special interest tribes with tight knit peer groups and a hierarchy of "ownership".
The internet dissipated the people who populated the BBSes because nobody was interested in the "small town" of the BBS when the "cosmopolitan big city" of the internet was available. Even a big service like COMPUSERVE eventually folded many of its forums and combined them in the mid 90s.
There's no going back, either. BBSes existed as they were for a confluence of technical and social reasons - because owning a computer, and being willing to connect it to an informal "network" in the 80s through the early 90s was kind of special.
BBSes compared to the internet are a lot like ham radio compared to CBers and cell phone users. One is niche, special, requires some technical chops, the other, any idiot can hop on (and usually does.)
Absolutely incredible. We now have the phenomenon of two competing, non-Paramount reincarnations of "TOS style" in production at the same time.
The plot crutch that ST:TNG came up with - incessant time travel used as a means to show alternate timelines or realities - has helped to ruin Enterprise.
What I mean is - it's been discussed on the newsgroups that Enterprise is creating a future for itself that is *not* the NCC-1701A, due to the meddling of "future guy" and the Suliban. So we have an Enterprise that is creating a timeline that may not even *include* Kirk or Picard.
The most boring episodes of TNG were those where Picard gave a knowing wink to Guinan and said something idiotic like "I'll see YOU in 500 years in a few minutes". This "anything goes because the writers have a trap door for all situations" removes tension and human interest.
The writers and producers of this show lack any spark of creativity whatsoever. The Trek franchise is a friggin' Cuisinart of bad and repetitive writing. One episode last season was a blatant ripoff of "Alien Mine" down to the shape of the lizard alien's head. And they have to rely on elaborate deus ex machina crap for most of their story ideas and for resolution of plots.
Kill it, Jim, it's dead already.
Looked in Google groups: "Tivo GPL" was the search. Move along, nothing to see...
http://www.tivo.com/linux/index.html
Just curious. Did the source code to the Tivo firmware ever get released? I never remember any such controversy about Tivo, and I also don't recall any release of GPLd code for Tivo anyway - admittedly I wasn't paying attention.
Seems to me that the issue is the same: embedded use of GPLd code in a commercial product.
Here's what I really don't understand about the current move to offshoring, in context. The message I've gotten from virtually EVERY contracting prospect I've had in the last 10 years has been: LOCATION MATTERS and NOBODY TRUSTS YOU OFFSITE. Also, WE DON'T TRUST YOU TO COMMUNICATE UNLESS YOU'RE UNDER OUR THUMB. (caps deliberate.) Email and fax are generally (not always) disdained by most clients as a means to keep in contact on projects. This has been true in my marketing since I've done IC work and it's been the case even if the client doesn't have the onstaff brainpower or management skill to oversee the work. *Appearance* of oversight has seemingly been the main priority.
I tend to work most productively on solo projects when and where I do not have to deal with office disruptions and politics. In the majority of situations in which I've offered to do the work offsite on my generally better equipment, and even when I've offered very high granularity of reporting on my work, the response from prospects has been: DON'T CARE... DOESN'T MATTER... OUR POLICY IS ONSITE ONLY.
But companies today seem to view offshoring as "best practices" and necessary if they are to compete. The need to *appear* to save money seems to greatly outweigh the existing compulsion to "enforce" face to face contact. Things have thus been turned on their head from earlier office-political posturings.
As near as I can tell, offshoring seems to be the current management fad, and managers jump on these bandwagons like lemmings in order to appease their boards of directors and stockholders.
SUBJECT:Commander Chang (played by Nathan Wolf)
AFFILIATION: Klingon Empire
STATUS/POSITION:Commanding Officer of Prototype Klingon Battle Cruiser
KNOWN HISTORY: Klingon Commander Chang commands the first Klingon battle cruiser equipped with a Romulan cloaking device. Klingon use of cloaking technology was confirmed during the U.S.S Exeter's encounter with Chang on Epsilon Indi IV. Chang initiated hand to hand combat with the Exeter's Captain Garrovick on the planet surface and, while defending himself, Garrovick inadvertently put out one of Chang's eyes. Since that encounter, Chang is reported to wear a patch over his injured eye.
I wonder if this "taints" the production seriously from the standpoint of fair use? It would appear so.
Vinman, first, thanks for the kudo and understanding.
Your points are well taken. Ever hear of the frog in the slowly boiling water? You are right to scrutinize the speaker of a contentious commentary like mine.
On desperation: more to the point, most of these episodes happened when I was somewhat less confident and held "BUSINESS" people in the same lofty regard as their egos demanded. As I have seen such people's bloated self image and arrogance collide with personal and professional disasters instigated mainly by their own ego and hubris, I have realized just how full of s*** the ego of most semi-successful small time entrepreneur's truly is. This realization helps me tolerate the nonsense better than I used to.
Also, I am in Ohio, whose business culture is generally anti-innovation and (in logic notation) "Silicon Vally NOT" or "Silicon Valley - bar". Very thin technology market here that is geek hostile, and as a result I've had to nurse along some slim pickins.
Re: the reference letter, it would be truly interesting to see if the guy that I am writing about blunders in here and recognizes himself. I "tolerated" this one because the alternative was pissing him off by "demanding" mature reciprocal behavior and thus getting no letter.
Lastly, much of the abuse has been simple innuendo, disparaging one-to-one off the cuff comments, etc. which is pretty much beyond the reach of law.
I don't think I am being singled out or am singularly inept in dealing with customers, because, for all the crap I've had to deal with, the FTEs I've known have generally had it much worse. At least I get to set my own hours!
Many have already sounded off on the non-Dickensian nature of most technology work. The work is generally physically safe, conducted in generally well lighted and air conditioned/heated offices.
;-) have to count for something. Put another way, I
am much better at this stuff than anything else I could choose to do. And
with age comes the wisdom to see through the pretense of those on the other
side of the negotiation fence for what it is.
What I want to know is - how old are those posting the anti-union, pro-intelligentsia drivel that is in this thread?
So many here are missing one basic issue that the BBC article alludes to: IT work itself is ABSOLUTELY NOT RESPECTED by most companies nor managements, and neither are the practitioners. I think that is the underlying problem that is reflected in poorly designed, one dimensional, excessively macho work culture in this field.
To reflect this assertion, the proportion of top executives in most large companies whose background is engineering or applied sciences is truly insignificant, and the career track in IT and engineering is absolutely non-existent and must be manufactured ad hoc by the individual. This is as truly a young person's game as major league "anything".
My post is not about wanting anyone to guarantee me a job, nor a plea for anyone to kiss my ass in gratitude for knowing how to code a constructor or a GUI. I simply would like to see some genuine appreciation from the people whose businesses I help. Alas, I find that I am expected to: shut up; code my nuts off; not express any opinion; and conveniently disappear when my piece is done.
You may feel that you're doing great at 25 or 30. I challenge those beating their chests in shared exultation at the primacy of the uber-geek to say the same things at 40 or 50! At some point real soon now, unless you enter into some sweetheart partnership or start your own company, you're going to see your options shrivel unless you *aggressively* re-make yourself. In my area, I simply see almost nobody over 45 in high tech.
My background and perspective: I am a self employed IT contractor and have done this for 9+ years. Prior to that I was employed in several jobs for a total of 20+ years of experience in mixed HW and SW applications. I have mainly developed shrink wrap resalable applications for my clients and I have represented myself, so I have not had to contend with any static from a body shop agency.
My experience, overall, has been that I have pretty much been treated more as a temp or grunt worker along the lines outlined above. Here are some of the wonderful roses and tokens of appreciation thrown to my feet for developing mission critical applications for my client base.
- Threatened with death/disappearance/lawsuit/other by a startup's paranoid CEO if I were to quit a 1099 contract or reduce my work hours.
- Bullied continually by another company when working on a fixed cost contract, and treated like I was their janitor and their property - it was a conversion of their flagship vertical product to Windows. I pulled it off in a reasonable time and cost and I was told later that they felt I was 'sleaze'.
- The president of a long term client took something like four months and much wheedling and begging from me to write a simple stinking letter of reference. This from a guy that claims that he was grossly underpaid and abused when
he was "just" a programmer... IE: my brother, a corporate controller, says that he dashes off letters like this on demand within 2-3 business days so that he doesn't forget.... and feels that it's his duty when someone does their job well.
- Another client's owner insists on using me pretty much like a robotic pair of coding arms, reserving all design decisions for himself and treating all developers in his company like code technicians. "Here, put this 'Begin' starting at column 4, and space down two lines, and put a 'writeln()'.." etc.
- Got shingles (at age 37!) working in a boiler room office coding VB apps while the office's tech writer is constantly over my desk grunting inane questions at the other developer in the office.
Mostly, I find that flagrant hypocrisy, psychological abuse, ingratitude, and snotty holier-than-thou "I was a coder once but now I'm not a loser like that" attitudes are bestowed on software and engineering types by business owners and managers.
So why am I still doing this crap, you may ask? The major reason is degree of investment in the industry - at some point, age, cunning and (my) nastiness
In particular, the licensing terms from simputer.org are unfavorable to very small commercial operations: Any commercial exploitation of the Specifications (whether Simputer or Simputerized) involves a nominal one time payment to the Trust. The payment will be $25,000 for developing countries and $250,000 for developed countries.
So, what about a smaller kit company in a developed nation, such as Jameco or others? They're almost certainly not going to spend $250K for a Simputer license. But if kit vendors were allowed open access to the plans, specifications, PC board layouts, etc. we could see enough hobbyists building and using Simputers to create a small revolution.
At least, the royalty should be graduated according to the company's current size and profitability.
My point: sometimes, drawing a hard line in the sand between "noble" non commercial use and "lowly" commercial exploitation is silly, and I can think of innumerable examples in the world where lack of profit motive and strong armed egalitarianism ruined a market.
Developers are to blame for creating a "boss jock" culture in the workplace that stresses quick results and sheer brawn over correctness, literacy, and maintainability. Developers are to blame for wallowing in and encouraging over complexity and churn of APIs, platforms, and programming languages. Many developers seem to get their rocks off on "being superior" to each other rather than creating something that is truly usable. Most developers have no conception of the key tradeoff between "fragile" and "simple but robust". Many developers are also to blame for "resume engineering", putting needless complexity into products because they want to justify new buzzwords on their resumes.
Companies are to blame for having absolutely no quality standards beyond profitability, and for creating sheltered sandbox playgrounds of idiot savant techies (the programmers competing with each other for kewlness) that encourages churn of tools for its own sake. Often, there are no grown adults with an ounce of clue paying attention. Also blame dual track career systems that encourage ghettoization of developers and which grooms the incompetent to lead and manage activities that they are demonstrably not good at (the Peter Principle, or the PHB plague.)
Consumers are to blame for demanding feature bulk in new products without being discerning enough to notice that the useful, core features are not well implemented. Consumers are to blame for buying and accepting crap with no comment or protest.
Everyone involved deserves each other. Consumers wouldn't pay the bucks to buy conservatively engineered and reliable software (beyond tiny product niches.) Companies would definitely not fund development of products that didn't have some incredible short term payback potential. Developers won't willingly work on stuff that isn't bleeding edge cool.
In this equation, everyone involved is pushing on each other HARD to make and ship crappy, fragile, bloated products.
This is not a technical problem, this is mainly a behavioral and cultural issue.
Users aren't going to do *anything* they don't prefer to do, and you have no way of compelling them to do the "right" thing. The post about domain logons and establishing "My Documents" on the network server is excellent, but the users could still save everything on their C: drive. (They probably will because a network share is usually slower than the local hard drive, and they're used to using C:.)
My recommendation would be to gain and establish management support for a backup policy. To do this, you will have to demonstrate to management the risks inherent in not compelling users to back up their data - such as loss of operational data, client lists, engineering data, etc.
Ideally, management would issue an edict that specified that employees were responsible for cooperating with your backup regimen.
Short of this, it ain't gonna happen, because users are basically "stupid". (Defined as shortsighted, unable to see the big picture, unable to imagine loss of data, etc.) And without a real enforceable policy with disciplinary measures in place, they are going to skirt the policy, count on it.
Imagine the near future when these things proliferate.
You're living in an apartment building listening to an "ordinary" radio one evening. Suddenly, hideous whining and crackling proceeds to interrupt every station you could receive before. The entire FM and AM bands are trashed with this sound.
Your TV (not yet connected to cable) with rabbit ears - same story.
You pick up the portable phone to call the apartment manager, and your phone gives off that two tone beep that indicates either that your portable can't sync with the base unit because 1) your phone's battery is dying or 2) there is too much ambient interference.
Oh... you suddenly figured it out. The computer geek next door just got one of those new UWB networks set up.
The point: the quality of life for certain pastimes will take a dramatic nosedive... yet another way that your fellow man can make your life miserable without even breaking a sweat. Any sort of radio equipment will have to be used well away from most buildings.
I know, they will set "thresholds" of acceptable power for these things. The problem is, there are many legitimate uses for sensitive radio equipment, such as shortwave, or non hardwired TVs or radios.
What an IDIOTIC idea. It basically erases 100+ years of progress in electronics.
"It's older, it's not tied to Microsoft or AOL or a big company, it's one of the Internet protocols ... so if you're running Windows or Linux or Macintosh or another flavor of Unix, you can use it," says Schneier. "So it's not that it's more suitable for hackers to use, it's just a more basic service and people who are anti-big-corporation are going to be more likely to use something like IRC."
This spokesperson is basically saying that chat outside the venue of a benevolent, all-watching big corporation is evidence of intent to cause harm to the capitalist system, by extension. (and don't forget all of the child molesters hanging out on ... er... AOL!!)
While many are mocking the origin of the story, don't laugh.
Civil liberties can easily be eroded by the F.U.D. and implied subversion that a large media company such as CNN can implant in the minds of readers over a perior of time. "Chat room" == "bad unsupervised people up to no good" can become implanted in reader's minds subtly by repetition... with the terrorism paranoia running rampant in our society, spin like this ain't positive.
LAN parties sound like too much work to me if you have to bring your own equipment...
This site was a deliberate joke - it apparently wasn't intended to fool anyone into believing that it was fake buzz (check out his resume linked to the site if you want evidence of this contention - he supposedly works at some fast food place but he's got experience with like three dozen OSes.)
"Travis Latke" is actually someone who was associated with production of Galaxy Quest, who volunteered to be the personna of this guy who got his web site "kicked off the Cal Poly servers".
That site is one of the funnier things I've seen on the internet in the last several years...
The biggest difference between small and large ISPs is that smaller outfits place fewer brick walls between a customer and someone that can actually answer a question thoughtfully. To a non corporate end user customer, the effective IQ of a regional/national ISP is single digits; the same 'effective IQ' of a small local ISP is probably triple digits most of the time. This does not explain everything, however. The second biggest difference is that a small ISP may not cover its operations effectively at all times (particularly on holidays, or when the one head geek is out of town on vacation.)
So in exchange for smallness and accessibility, you trade off technical coverage and expertise. The smaller ISP may actually be eager to help you, but you can sometimes hear the sound of O'Reilly books flipping furiously in the background when you ask them something outside the norm.
On customer service: regional and national ISPs appear to operate (or outsource) huge call centers literally staffed by orangutangs. With these call centers, their absolute top priority appears to be to prevent you at all cost from escalating your inquiry to someone with actual technical knowledge.
From what people in that business have told me, it appears that managements' priority at the big places is to shuck off all tech support calls with no thought, if possible. It must be a law of averages: MOST people don't need tech support, so the few customers that do (IE those with special dial up problems, etc) are considered high
maintenance and expendable. It's the only explanation that fits.
Example 1: I had been using Ohio's One.Net (a large regional ISP), which had recently become acquired by a huge national corporation. One Net had over the mid 90s developed a reputation here in Cincinnati for being an extraordinarily geek-friendly ISP. No more after the buy out. I was shopping for dial up ISDN service a while back, so I called One Net. Nobody I spoke with on the phone could tell if if One Net had a local dial up point of presence in my town. I talked with operators that didn't even know what ISDN was, that it was different either from DSL or analog dial up, etc. They might as well have had home siding telemarkerers staffing the calls.
Example 2: "The On Ramp", a regional ISP based in northern Ohio. Tried them a while back (attractive monthly rates.) Even worse than One Net. The guy I spoked with about a dial up problem appeared to be reading notes on dialer settings from a cheat sheet and was clueless when I asked him how things interacted. Dropped em after a week.
Lately, I've been through two local small town ISPs, each with probably a few hundred users. One such ISP appeared to be a local class act but had dreams of grandiosity - they got a franchise to supply cable internet to the local area, and in that aftermath I could get no help with a problem I had with their satellite based caching downlink that interfered with certain sites I visit. (Turns out the franchise has been re-awarded to another carrier since then.)
The other ISP I am currently with has in the past had a reputation for quality and service issues, but I established ISDN with them lately because it was incredibly easy (talked with the guy who did the changeover right as I was on the phone!)
So, it's a tradeoff between the benefits of large vs small businesses to the extreme... the large ISP has better resources but is stingy about allocating them to "just anyone" (read: a non corporate customer). The small ISP may not have as good coverage on some things but generally tries harder.
Well, the US did not instantly turn into Somalia last night; New World Order "storm troopers" did not foment riots on Time's Square; and Mad Max type survivalists are not yet careening down my street here in the sticks, pillaging houses at random and taking all the fertile women.
....
:-) - a BIG, and risky short term run-up in most stock indexes due to Y2K relief and euphoria, followed by a major blowoff (bear market). This economic distortion is probably the current single biggest risk. I think this contention is valid because expectation and 'irrational exuberance' and not technical nor value indicators have governed our markets for several years. I know how I felt when my partner and I were toasting New Year's last night as we watched every time zone go by with no problems, no terrorism --- massively relieved! I was expecting MUCH worse at least in terms of terror from the 'fatwah' crowd, and nothing. Multiply that attitude across the entire economy and you will have a MAJOR 'pop'.
OK, so everything's "cool" for now. My opinions
- Have been reading commentary in various online papers stating in effect, was Y2K remediation money wasted? My take - "bulls***"! - NO, the fact that everything went smoothly around the world was testament to timely preparation. But this type of second guessing is so similar to corporate life in IT! If there's no crisis when someone does their job well, everyone around them clucks that they 1) wasted their time and someone else's money by "being too careful" and 2) the care taken was unnecessary. Anyone who states that Y2K remediation was unnecessary is either a complete idiot, uninformed, or an ambulance chasing lawyer. I think, JUST THIS ONCE, a united effort to fix a pervasive major problem was successful.
- What of the vast Y2K survivalist preparation cottage industry? Expect MAJOR bargains in freeze dried food in the coming year. Likewise for slightly used generators (as with most excessive Y2K preparation, a generator purchased in anticipation of Y2K power outage is idiocy, like you're going to keep a 200 gal. tank of gasoline in your basement? Yup!)
- Likewise, the dead trees publishing industry has wasted major quantities of wood-pulp on apocalyptic publications which will be destined for "Half Price Books" or your favorite remaindered book reseller. My question: are these books simply trash or could a decent library of Y2K related publications be considered collectible in 10-20 years? I am thinking the latter because most Y2K books, etc will go straight to the trash, as a burr in the side of anyone who paid good money for em. Finding mint copies of these books in 2015 might be as rare as a mint #1 edition of "Mad Magazine" is today.
- Back to Y2K preparation bargains - how about survivalist lots in the sticks? I wonder how many people went into hock and headed for the hills? Wonder what the foreclosures could be like for lots and houses in remote areas purchased with heavy mortgages and small down payments with little thought to paying them off? This might be an *excellent* time to look at rural acreage.
Now, the BIG issues - IT and the general economy... Even though the general economy is not just IT, I think that the general economy *has* been heavily influenced by the 'holding one's breath' aspect of Y2K anticipation, IE, IT and the general economy have probably been synchronized somewhat in terms of anticipation and dread.
The economy, and particularly the stock market, may well *take off like a rocket* at least for the first month of this year. Optimism and relief over no major Y2K problems will drive it. I suspect that, regardless of the current nutty high P/E ratios and valuations, a lot of investors have actually sidelined themselves in cash looking to see what will happen. THEN we may have a MAJOR blowoff.
Some economists have stated that we may get a recession out of Y2K due to delayed effects upon smaller companies. We may have big surprises in store, but I am guessing not - that problems will crop up gradually, be recognized gradually as most operational problems have been diagnosed day to day, and fixed as they happen. So no big deal.
Again, what I am personally expecting - I am no psychic nor do I play one on infomercials
Nobody here has yet mentioned the lifecycle of Compuserve and its forums. I used to frequent a VERY active forum on CI$ named CONSULT, for computer consultants, in the early 90's. But the recent lifecycle of those forums matches the description at the top of this thread. They began a serious decline when Compuserve users began to notice that ISP accounts were a much better deal than CIS for being on-line.
By mid '97 the message traffic on CIS:CONSULT was in serious decline; I heard that recently, CONSULT was merged into several other techie fora and is a ghost of its former self.
Yes, BBSs are a dying breed, even thought there are orders of magnitude more people online today than there were 7 or 8 years ago. You'd think the exact opposite would have happened.
Today, as an adjuct to, or in place of proprietary online service forums such as GEnie or CIS, you have freeware web based BBSes that anyone with a Perl CGI based web host (that is, just about anyone on an ISP) can set up... but, maybe because the cost of entry as a BBS is so low, the BBS action is splintered and fragmented across perhaps thousands of individually operated niche BBSs.
Also, limiting size of web BBS forums: just FINDING the right BBS on the web can be a chore. With Compuserve it was easy... you wanted to discuss flowers and gardening, here's the one or two or three fora you should use... etc.
Maybe what's needed is a comprehensive cross reference of all web BBSs. There ARE thousands... including the ones that are buried underneath local newspaper sites, or under corporate domains.
My favorite web BBS is the Computer Contractor's BBS (plug: http://www.realrates.com/bbs). Maybe it can be a representative of the best that a BBS can be on the internet. The thing that the Realrates BBS lacks, probably due to its focus, is the participation of a truly broad cross section of professionals, such as business owners, managers, and profesional writers and speakers - CONSULT had this.
Many moons ago (~20 years) companies treated salaried workers as professionals and as being part of the management team. This mindset has slowly collapsed in most industries.
The implicit dividing line up to the early 80's seemed to be: salaried == ivory tower, college educated/and/or management, committed to company success, 'on the same team as management and the owners'; self-directed. IE, 'professional', holding to a higher standard than others.
By the same thinking, hourly == blue collar, caring only about pay, working against management interests, one of a faceless rabble, to be herded and directed.
Today, most salaried workers that are not directors or owners are essentially treated as tradespeople, and I would dare say are regarded much as hourly workers were 20 years ago as stated above. This goes not just for technology but also other nominally professional fields such as accounting and medecine.
Basically, ALL of us... salaried, hourly, even the PhBs that are blamed for simply being instruments of the blunt application of stupidity from above... are at-will workers with no guarantee of "anything". In fact, given the way employment law is usually applied, I regard full time employment as 'contracting' with a fixed price.
The point is, after reading some posts here I gather that a lot of people regard hourly compensation as an employee as demeaning... as a management signal that "you work for the money only"... I personally consider this view extremely naive. The ONLY question you should be asking (as a worker) is: will I make more money over the long run going hourly or salaried?
I am a contractor, working hourly as an external resource for several clients. Most of us who have adopted contracting for a living were 'de virginized' by one or more companies that exploited our personal desire to 'be professional'. The ripoff that salaried employment can be at many companies is usually pivotal in this career redirection.
The career track of a contractor usually follows the pattern:
- Work diligently as an FTE, believe in "the process", wait your turn.
- Be rewarded with broken promises: sub COLA raises; startup company rewards that were conveniently forgotten; fellow employees with little accountability but having "executive hair" etc. being promoted at a whim.
- Be branded and labeled "heads down", "just one of our programmers", etc. (IE, be insulted as well as having a shortcutted salary progression.)
- Finally, be laid off or fired for essentially doing your job.
I required, fully three of these cycles in order to make the mental decision to contract. As a contractor, I command MUCH more respect than I ever did as an employee. I AM professional too - completely self responsible for my further education... expected to produce tangible results... and hourly, to boot. And MOST important, there is NO silly salaried employment 'social contract' hanging over my head that both sides are obliged to fulfill. When I'm done, I'm out. I'm OK with that. That is quite a bit more 'delimited' than an hourly pay arrangement as a full timer who expects to be used for other things, but it illustrates that your pay arrangement does not define your professional personhood.
So, to everyone on the technical worker side who considers hourly "declasse", get a grip and look at the money... that's what counts. This work isn't a religious order, a calling, or really considered "professional" by anyone except us. To the executives we are just button pushers, a different flavor of machinist or other skilled tradesperson.
Just decide what is the best deal offered and go with it.
And to the manager who started this thread, your decision making is EXTREMELY foresighted and fair... because, whether you realize it or not, you are anticipating that your own people will be confronted with a similar career conundrum at some point, and you're saying "your time is worth something".