You can pay fairly competent Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/Vista desktop support people $12 an hour.
Note this is NOT a personal attack as I too have been offered low ball hourly wages under $20 per hour and simply said no thank you. My guess is that we have different definitions for fairly competent and \"desktop support people\".
While Telephone tech support (i.e. call center phone support) Do seem try to keep their pay rates around the $12 range; these people are NOT Desktop Support technicians by my definition because they do NOT get up from their desk and go to another desktop when performing their job. (Yes I know about software that will enable a user to take over a desktop...if run via a secure tunnel or other ssh session that is encrypted, than that is a valid solution. I just wish companies would use them, very few are even today and that is a shame.)
Personally IT support companies would be smart to offer $20 - $25 per hour for part time phone support people, letting them telecommute from home (reducing their internal desktop support costs, and other overhead costs related to full time employment). However I would not work for less than $20 and still have to commute to/from my home or apartment to work. And do NOT get me started about having years of experience and giving that knowledge away. I would rather flip hamburgers (West Coast Hamburger chain In/Out starts employees at $10.00 per hour) and not have to worry about after hours and weekend support, but I digress.
And when gas prices go back up, as we all know that they will; can you afford to work at that rate and pay over $100 per week for gasoline?
No disrespect intended for call center technicians either as I know first hand that it is more difficult to support users via telephone versus having access to the desktop hands on. As a System Administrator you are first contacted by phone, so all IT Technical support people have provided this type of support. It is not as easy as it sounds is it. Occasionally you can even fix the problem from your desk, however, often it makes the internal customer feel better to see someone at their desk when they have a problem. Makes them feel like they are receiving support.
As a Systems Administrator, back in the mid 80s, we were receiving between $50,000 - $120,000 in salary per year. The people receiving over $100,000 had more than 5 years of experience as we were in an area that was considered cheaper to live. It was NOT St Louis, however if you analyze the cost of living, you will find that there are areas where the cost of living is similar to St Louis. I use the term Systems Administrator instead of Desktop Support person as many companies treat these titles as the same. I have seen Systems Administrators referred to as the following roles as well: Administrator, Programmer Analyst I, PC Technician, IT Support, IT Analyst, IT Support Engineer, Level I help desk, Network Administrator, Junior Systems Administrator, Linux Administrator, Web Administrator, Server Armin, and a few others. So I take titles with a grain of salt.
As for payrates I recommend that you depend on your own research for a given area. You can count on the fact that the company talking to you KNOWs what it costs to live near them. So this is the best way to negotiate rates. If you have skills, they tech you out and want you, you should NOT settle for less than $20 per hour for these roles...but that is my opinion.
For those that think $20 is too much, I have seen offers, even in this poor job market in the $45 - $60 per hour range. Granted you will have to have 3 to 5 years of experience. If the company is asking for more than 5 years of experience, they should not be offering you a rate that low anyway. And if they want 10 years of experience, please do not give away your skills. You are worth more based on experience it is as simple as that.
...Moving the "x" to close a window from the left corner to the right corner drove me absolutely insane at first because I kept closing my windows when I only wanted to minimize them. After a (very) little while, however, I got used to it....
I remember many users complaining about having to learn the new GUI with Windows 95. Thanks for the memory.
What drives me insane, is having my PC slow down due to all the ad aware, cookies, flash junk cookie like tracking stuff constantly getting installed and reinstalled on my PC whether I like it or not. Use to happen to me all the time with IE and Windows, back in the day.
At least Firefox will let me decide which web sites are always or never allowed to use cookies via the Exceptions windows. Sure its a bit of of a hassle to have to make an exception for every single cookie the first time you encounter a website. However keeping my browsing faster, while making it a bit more difficult for companies to track my internet usage is worth it for me.
It is amazing how many sites want to set 20+ cookies, something most people never see as they do not set up their security to the highest setting which requires manually approving everything, the first time only. One popular email site (nope, not Google) not only set over 20 cookies, but attempted to change one of my settings from Allow for session to permanent or Enable. Made me wonder how many other sites try to take advantage by resetting a cookie that you have already set as Allow for Session.
Using the Exceptions window and setting most cookies as only Allow for Session or Disable / Deny in addition to having Firefox clean up as it exits works extremely well for me. Each time I start it up there are less than 6 cookies open and tracking me, since I Enable very sparingly. So far I am a year plus and running with no browser sluggishness or slow downs as I use to experience with IE. If I get bogged down I quickly check my routers DD-WRT software, nice having the capability of a $600 Router for less than $60 and find that it is my ISP artificially throttling packets and slowing down my surfing. For me this happens 100% of the time that I am on the internet, You know it is your ISP when this happens early in the AM, (2 am â" 5 am) when very few people are even awake, much less online. Another clue is when you get throttled during normal business hours when few neighbors are even home. I use to get a steady 2 â" 3 Mbps, until just before or after dinner time when people got home from work, lately I am lucky to get 300Kbps. Thanks to my DD-WRT software I can monitor bandwidth usage and more. Occasionally I see higher peaks, however it never lasts very long any more, even when downloading new linux distros...and that is without using a bit torrent package. Yes, I feel cheated and taken advantage of by my ISP.
Hopefully I will be able to get one of the many FREE players that specifically use the H.264 superior in quality CODEC as my default player instead of Flash or Media Player. By avoiding those players I can avoid the behind the scenes tracking stuff that they put on peoples PCs without them being aware of it. It is not just the silent tracking that I object too, its the slowing down of my surfing that they cause that I do NOT
I am sure they called it something fancy too, lmao...thanks for the laugh, still smiling as I type this.
Anyway, I'm through with cheapskates and idiots. I now work as an independent for very high grade people who care about quality, not cost (withing sensible limits, of course) and my reputation and the trust I am granted is now something *I* control, not some flunky in an office who has been tasked by his superior to flog the troops some more because he needs a new Rolls.
Congrats on finally getting there and I hope that you are able to maintain it through the foreseeable future, something tells me that you will.
Hey companies hiring tech workers. Take a good look at your requirements in your job posting. Are you expecting a Senior level person but paying at a Junior level rate?
Are you listing 20 years worth of requirements but looking for someone with a minimum of three years of experience?
Are you looking for a paper tiger? (Certifications that are either unnecessary or that have nothing to do with the actual job that the person is performing for the company; or making any specific certification a MUST have instead of considering equivalent experience.)
Are you looking for someone with 5 years of experience with a technology that has only been out of the labs for two years or less? (I have personally seen this with a new application or new development tool / language more than once, I make sure to give the consulting company a heads up that they can NOT get a person with that many years of experience as the new tool was NOT in development for that long, much less released to the public for consumption for more than a year. I always wondered if any of them ever gave a heads up to the hiring company or not. I know I got a laugh out of it.)
Most important, if you are in Human Resources and you want to save your company some money by bringing in a Junior person at a little (not massively lower) lower rate to save the company some money, how about reducing the number of years of experience to only 1 or at most two for any one requirement; or better yet state outright that you are looking for someone with no experience with a specific skill but equivalent experiences (X language development experience preferred) and train them up. Push some pressure back on Management and suggest to them that they could help you save the company some money by working up a technical training program for new hires in their department. And than make sure that the new hires are spending at least 20% of their time actually being trained by the Manager. (Or even better than that, encourage the Manager to work with the more Senior member of their team for a specific technical skill and have that Senior development person develop a training program for the skill they have mastered and get the entire team cross trained and new hires up to speed faster! Talk about team building at its best.) Have your Senior team members develop tasks that will help a new hire come up to speed on the applications and systems that are critical to your company. This would benefit even experienced professionals at coming up to speed quickly as a new hire.
While this seems pretty basic to most of you reading this, based on my personal experience I have rarely seen this type of coming up to speed for new hire training programs unless I implemented myself as the Manager or Senior member of the team.
When I first started in IT, there were those that thought by hoarding knowledge it gave them power over others and/or the company. At one company the IT shop was split between three Managers, one was attempting to force everyone to sign out the 7, 8 and 9 track tapes (yeppers it was a mainframe environment back in the late 70s) thus he controlled them. What he did not know is that the System P
What makes you think they did not have RFID built into the cameras?
How about LCD screens too. I mean really, if you were going to put up Public LCDs, there is not anything preventing you from embedding them with whatever you want. Cameras, Infrared, RFID scanners, etc....
...We don't need smarter programs and more restrictions, we need smarter people. period.
And that smarter person that you hired needs to be allowed to use their brain when performing their job.
Also they must be given time to do the job right. Are your deadlines honestly realistic? If an Agile company, is your velocity realistically maintainable over time without burning out your staff?
I remember one site where the schedule was created by a big 5 accounting firm; where the consultants were working 12 - 14 hour days and living out of a hotel room, their family was not in the same city. They were paid for every hour of course.
When the project was finally turned over to the company employees, the schedule was kept at the same pace yet those employees lived with their families in town and were only paid for an 8 hour day, even though overtime was expected by all if the project was perceived to be slipping. It was unacceptable to slip the schedule for any reasons, even valid ones.
I saw the writing on the wall and found a better opportunity real fast, gave my two weeks notice and never looked back...even have good references from the job as with all my positions.
I have no problem with working hard and typically put in 50 - 60 hour weeks as a rule, rare is the week where I only work 40 hours.
At one consulting site, where I was paid for every hour that I worked thank goodness, I burned myself out on 65 - 70 hour weeks. Since I was living out of a hotel out of town, away from my family, I could work those long hours without further negatively impacting them. However had I been at home, there is no way I could have worked that kind of scheduled and still had a family.
Its all about TRUST! Once lost, trust is very difficult to rebuild. Since many businesses simply refuse to change their business practices, I am of the opinion that too many simply do NOT understand that. If they did, they would make sure that they did NOT get hit the first time. Which means hiring qualified professionals and giving them the time to do the job right!.
Just last week I was offered a System Administration job at a company not too far from me. I was told that they were they had been in business for over 10 years and where the Cadillac of the web server hosting business. They really focused on their customers needs, unlike a company, she called them by name , I do NOT like them however still do not see the reason to state their name, that advertises during the Super Bowl.
I did not laugh when she offered me a rate that was $28 less per hour than what current jobs are paying in my area now, even with this economy. I did not mention that the rate was $12.00 per hour less than what I was paid to do the equivalent job at a company in the mid 1980s. My guess is that whoever they hire will be on call 24/7 and will be responsible for their server security in short order. They probably will not be allowed time to monitor those servers for Break Ins either. Just too few people and too much work. Oh and you can bet that they are not hiring additional bodies, just because they are getting them at a lower rate. And were I live it is not considered cheaper to live than most other areas of the country.
The would be smarter to re evaluate all their hardware and software licensing and annual renewals to see how much they could save by replacing them with effective open source and FOSS solutions.
In this specific case, I am confidant that the company will get what they are willing to pay for. And when the economy turns around, which it will do eventually, whoever they hire will be the first to leave them and they will be starting all over again. And that is their upside; their downside is getting hit by crackers and losing their customers trust.
Actions speak louder than words.
So many companies will pay lip service to so many things that they claim are important, yet when it comes time to do the right thing, they do NOT. The proof is always in their actions, regardless of their words, whether verbal or on paper, business cards and news releases.
Its more expensive to get a new customer than retain an existing customer.
They will say that it is harder (and more expensive) to get a a new customer, than keep an existing customer. Yet their business policies, specifically their customer no service response to their customers problems say otherwise. Are there any companies that do NOT fall in this category today, as I would like to seek employment with them as they are obviously in business for the long haul. (And if I can Google the company name + (problem or fraud or issue) OR if they have too many problems listed on Ripoff Reports, please do NOT suggest to me or anyone else that they are not customer â" no â" service â" entities.)
At least with Ripoff Reports, when a company gets listed it is forever, they can respond to the complaint; however unlike the most Better Business Bureaus, the company can NOT pay to have the incident closed. Note: Often the person making the complaint to the BBB is not a member, however the company can be, is encouraged to be or is.
The customer is almost always right!
The customer is always right. Personally I do not believe this is true, yet have followed th
Maybe cheap on the hardware end, but the VMWare per node licenses are going to be pretty painful.
Maybe cheap on the hardware end, but the VMWare per node licenses are going to be pretty painful.
Nope, just do not use VMWare...
Of course Linux being open source, there is always a way to get anything to work if you are willing to spend the time figuring out how to do it. From a corporate standpoint, the hard part is getting things to work the first time, after that you simply duplicate the steps. Sadly some companies will not give their techs the time to figure out how to get something to work...deciding instead to only buy software and hardware with the promise of support from the outside, whether or not that support will work or not. As long as they promise to support it, my butt is covered and protected...dont you hate that short sighted attitude, I know I do. Sometimes what they do is in the best interests of the company, however most of the time it is NOT, just misguided CYA.
These types of computers are great if they do everything you need them to do out of the box. If not then you might have issues.
If its built in to the net book, it just works...sometimes adding something can be a problem.
If a netbook or laptop has WiFi built in, Cam built in, NIC built in, USB Built in(2 or 3 are better), External monitor port Built in; head set and microphone jacks built in; than it just works. Oops, just described an Eee PC there... These $99 - $399 Linux netbooks, laptops and computers have been around since October 2007 and are only getting cheaper today. And thank goodness they will run some version of Linux.
Take Silverlight for instance, you do NOT have to use it, there are other alternatives. Look at Flash, you can develop Flash with whatever code, even Adobe's, but makes sure it will play with the FREE Gnash Flash movie player [slashdot.org], not just the Adobe player.
Yes, but you can do the same with Silverlight and Moonlight. What makes Flash better?
Most people when they refer to Flash are talking about Adobe Flash and Adobe Flash reader only. I am not. I am suggesting that create Flash content with whatever software tools that you want, but on your website, DO NOT offer an "Adobe" specific version as the first or only choice.
If how ever you encode it allows it to be opened with Gnash or Flash Player, great.
If how ever you encode it, lets say you use an Adobe specific library and/or function that only can be understood by Adobe Flash Player, so that Gnash or other non-Adobe- specific-Flash players can NOT open it, not good at all. Best to avoid problems due to lock in.
Personally I do not think either Flash or Silverlight either one are superior to a an encoded H.264 CODEC enabled video. Though admittedly it depends on the settings used by the person who encodes the video. It is telling that to get close, not equivalent to, H.264 quality with other CODECs you have to increase the resolution and the FPS. Per this evaluation of video codecs (H.264, VC-6, and VC-1) In all comparisons, H.264 exhibited the best still frame quality.. They analyzed individual still frames of various videos looking for problems with the images and side effects by inferior encoding and compression methods, not just still pictures. H.264 encoded Videos were better of higher quality and better to the eye to watch. H.264 can come in either proprietary or open source coding. The open source codec is superior or equivalent to all proprietary H.264 codecs...so why make anything proprietary unless you are lazy or have alternative motives..i.e. Software or Operating System Lock In.
Therefore I might suggest the MPlayer is superior to either Silverlight or Flash. And it will work under all operating systems that most people use: Unix, Linux, MacIntosh and yes even Microsoft Windows.
Flexibility, open to all; the fact that H.264 is a superior CODEC than what is standard for Adobe Flash and/or Microsoft Media Player is icing on the cake.
As a business that wants everyone to see my content and at the highest resolution and the most effective frame rate (fps) that makes sense for the bandwidth that I have available to me.
Why is it Microsoft goes under so much scrutiny but Apple and it's iPhone don't
Okay I'll bite, I am in that mood today...
With Apple, you can NOT develop for them if you do NOT pay them a royalty. No way around that. In fact they designed their iPhone so they could delete any app that is not 'authorized' by them. So you are effectively locked in 100%.
IBM's Microchannel architecture was superior in the day to other bus architectures, however, to use it you had to pay a royalty to IBM...thus its market share was diminished, not as widely adopted as if it were free...like the PC was as it was free and open. This is also one of Microsoft's problems, they write proprietary software for an open platform. Sure they irritate many by limiting BIOS and hardware device driver development. But the platform they develop for is wide open.
Because of Apple's model, everything is proprietary, they do NOT get as wide an adoption for their hardware and software as they might have. Thus their market share is controlled and artificially limited by their own business model and methods.
If they had more market share than they do, and spent years doing spreading FUD on everyone and everything else, denying they ever make any mistakes at all cost, than perhaps people would be as frustrated with them. Apple is smarter than that, and Jobs usually did NOT release software until it at least worked. (A Blue Screen of Death when Gates was demoing comes to mind)
Customers understand they must buy Apple stuff from Apple when they go there, so they accept it and happily pay more. Heck they do not even get mad enough to churn when valid technologies, like FireWire, still widely used in Video circles and will be for years, are removed from the platform (as it has been recently) and no longer standard...even a couple of years ago they touted Firewire as a superior technology and sold products based on that. Go figure, as a developer no way was I going to develop any product where I would be forced to pay a royalty to any other company without them doing anything for me...just not smart.
With Microsoft, sheeple don't realize they are being locked in, until it would cost them too much money to get out. At that point, they just follow along oblivious without thinking too much, thus the term sheeple is appropriate. They happily pay more and more and more to Microsoft each and every year, even in bad economic times when their coworkers are getting laid off due to less business and less cash flow. Like an ostrich, they never raise up their head and look for better alternatives that are available and have been for a couple of years now, nope they just go about their Merry way and pay up. They accept the business as usual and future marketing promises that is just enough to have them hang on a little bit longer. By the time they get frustrated enough with yet another wave of missed marketing promises, another wave of marketing promises are issued to get them to hang on yet a little longer. It will be better tomorrow. The next release will fix this. Yes we know its bad, but its not our fault its your fault, but do not worry the next release will be better.
Insanity, yes; as they keep doing the same thing, paying more and more and more, and expecting Microsoft to play nice, not lock in their data where they can use it anywhere else.
It's a horrible idea. Websites should never discriminate against web browsers, even those strange ones from Redmond. The web is supposed to be open to everyone.
As it is horrible to lock-in customers with proprietary data formats.
As it is horrible to lock-in customers with proprietary codecs.
As it is horrible to lock-in customers with software (.NET, Active X, Microsoft Project, Office, Outlook, Silverlight and many others) that will not let them share their data with others that do NOT use the Microsoft platform.
As it is horrible to act like you are working with standards setting committees when really you are there ONLY pushing your own agenda and refusing to compromise to better standards because that will prevent you from locking in customers with your IE browser.
As it is horrible to bully hardware providers into developing hardware for only your software.
As it is horrible to bully BIOS providers in catering to your software.
As it is horrible to threaten suppliers with pulling your products (which is over 40% of their profit) if they dare carry a competitors product. Or to force suppliers to carry additional copies of your not wanted operating system software (i.e. Vista) with the threats that the next release of your software will not be available to them in enough numbers if they do NOT accept the extra they cannot sale.
As it is horrible to market, extend and replace software with Microsoft's poorer, less functional software but bundled into the operating system software. Often at the expense of innovation in order to dominate the market. Kudos to them for this one, they have been very successful, but at what cost?
It is horrible to act like another companies partner and advocate only to replace them in their vertical market place. (There are too many examples to list, the most recent ones are the Virus and Ad Ware software companies that will not have a marketplace as Microsoft has publicly stated they are replacing them and the Linux and MacIntosh marketplace do NOT need them.
You really should read some of the blogs and posts on owners of website that honestly tried to work with Microsoft with the Web 2.0 standards...shame I do NOT have their links in front of me to share with you; as you would have to either work for Microsoft or be a Microsoft Shill not to see the truth in their statements. It honestly disgusted me.
While I agree with you that it is a horrible idea, I cannot condemn anyone for wanting to turn the tables on I.E.; it really has been a long time coming.
Fact of the matter, the only thing that will honestly bring them back to the standards setting table will be a huge loss of market share because of their resistance to adopting standards. While they have lost allot of market share, they have NOT lost enough yet to even consider changing their historically documented and factual past of interference and obstructionism.
I was forced to support their shenanigans years ago and experienced Microsoft support first hand stating that what I was experiencing was not happening, did not happen, or else I was doing something wrong. Thank goodness that I had enough knowledge to counter their BS, excuses and their LIES; as it almost cost me my Systems Administration job with a telco. That was my FIRST HAND EXPERIENCE back in the day with General Protection Faults...disgusting and horrible. I was in the IT field operations, programming and supporting users before Microsoft ever existed and I have seen almost all of it first hand. As you gain experience you learn what to avoid and it does become easier.
And I have been current with them through to XP, but am off the farm finally, thank goodness, because of their current (and past) business policies of forced updates, forced compliance checks and ignoring my experience. When I set something to not happen until I decide it should happen, that is what I expect to happen. Mid way th
But worry not, with Silverlight now released, ActiveX usage in browsers is going to be killed by MS itself soon enough.
Silverlight, err, sure, that will not create more vendor lock in...ummm, yea, right....; Fortunately they have only a small percentage of the market so far and if a website attempts to force silverlight, as NBC attempted with the Olympics last year, we can just say no and find another source for the information. Thankfully there are open source codecs for H.264 which is superior to either VC-1 or VC-6 (I wonder if the newer VC-6L will be better or not?)
I agree with others that Active X opens up and creates more problems than it is worth, thankfully there are other ways to do everything that Active X will do for you. So if you decide to use ActiveX, then IMO you have made a questionable business decision that opens up more risk than you should assume for your website. Admittedly if your IT Mgmt has already drunk on the proprietary-is-the only-solution cool-aid there is not much you can do. I would suggest keeping that job until you find a better job with a more forward looking and thinking IT Management structure than you have now, but that is just me. It is getting easier as more of these stuck in the old way is the ONLY way attitudes move on and retire. It will get easier, honest.
More to the point of the article, how can any entity test proprietary code if the company will not release said proprietary code. And its not just proprietary code, as others have mentioned proprietary data storage and manipulation formats. How many of you are looking seriously at proprietary CODECS (audio and especially video)
Seems to me it would be a wiser course of action for all developers to avoid proprietary lock in, they probably can in 80% or more of all circumstances if they try. At least educate your management streams to the possibility, if presented correctly I really do not see the issue with, if we use this codec/data format, instead of xx% of users being able to use our information; 100% of our customers (regardless of their preferences of Microsoft, MacIntosh, Unix or Linux) will be able to use the information on our company's website. Seems like a no brain-er to me.
Take Silverlight for instance, you do NOT have to use it, there are other alternatives. Look at Flash, you can develop Flash with whatever code, even Adobe's, but makes sure it will play with the FREE Gnash Flash movie player, not just the Adobe player. Does your content play with other players than Adobes player, just because they have 80% of the market is no reason to get locked in. That just creates hassles for your customers.
Also more and more hand held devices are coming with Linux embedded because Linux will run faster and more apps with less memory and less of a processor than other embedded Oss. If you are producing video output for PCs and hand-helds you are already creating multiple output data streams as you must accommodate differences in processor speed, memory and available bandwidth (cellular, wifi and High Speed Internet)
Since there are open source and free players and free CODECs, why not just switch to a player like MPlayer, which not only works with Linux (BSD, Solaris, etc...), MacIntosh, but also Microsoft Windows. Why limit anyone? Best of all as more sites implement High Definition videos with higher than 30 frames per second, (too many people are in denial about this...if I can view something in a better quailty, higher fps, higher resolution, you bet I will PREFER that website) this player will be able to handle them. In spite of H.264 being a superior yet FREE codec, still the majority of sites default to Adobe Flash players (80%) and Microsoft Media Player; players that can NOT play h.264, go figure ⦠Okay, I get that it is easier for you. You would think you would like an
... there is something to be said for the idea of constructing pipelines through which objects flow instead of text...
Perhaps I am being too literal here, but it seems to me that any code written to pass an object from one program to another would be slower, less efficient and less optimized than passing a pointer to that object (whether stored in memory on in a file) or am I missing something here...
I feel like I am missing something here...am I?
I would thing this would be true even if passed from one machine to another or one system to another (using system loosely to include any environment even if geographically distributed...not in the normal system as in a PC or machine).
Can someone enlighten me here, because I honestly feel like I am missing a point or something? Sign me curious.
Perhaps this week is last year and last week was next year?
Did you see a blinding, flashing light in the sky?
But seriously, a meter is a bit farther than other reports I have read. Prior to this report I thought the distance was microscopic. Guess I need to go back and read last weeks report again.
One day we (err our kids) may be able to say, "Beam me up Scotty!"
How many versions of Internet Explorer have been released with no desire, attempt or effort to pass the simple Acid 2 compatibility standards test? (...not that it matters as there are plenty of other browser options)
Per the Wikipedia page on Acid 2, The only major browser that does not yet pass the test is Internet Explorer, although a version of Internet Explorer that passes Acid2 is in development.
IE. V 8.0.x was released publicly on March 5, 2008.
In March 2008, Ian Hickson released Acid3 as a follow-up to Acid2. While Acid2 primarily tests CSS, Acid3 focuses more on JavaScript and other "Web 2.0" technologies.[11];
Based on past experience we can extrapolate out that Microsoft Internet Explorer might pass the Acid 3 tests around 2012, but I doubt it.
Sure they believe in standards compatibility, sure they do...NOT. Simple historical reality exposes their hypocrisy!
"In my standards-compatibility testing, IE8 RC1 passed the Acid2 Browser Test (which evaluates CSS support) with flying colors. But on the Acid3 Web standards test, a program that focuses on DOM (document object model) support and JavaScript, IE8 RC1 did the same as Beta 2, getting a score of 20 out of 100, still much better than IE7, which only got a score of 12. But compared with Firefox 3's 71, Chrome's 79, and Opera's 100, IE still has a long way to go. "
Great catch and something I consider very informative, since I do NOT have mod points I wanted to thank you for posting this.
Also stated in that article,
Times are tough for Microsoft, with job cuts, the European Union breathing down its neck again, and Firefox slowly but steadily encroaching on Internet Explorer.
As you have factually pointed out, it is Internet Explorer (20 of 100) that is slowly catching up to Firefox 3 (71), Chrome (79) and Opera (100); hardly the other way around as they would like to try and SPIN IT!
...The latest IE also solves a problem that's a leading cause of browser slowdown...
Yea right, you have gotta be kidding me, Microsoft must think we are idiots.... I did not stop reading the article at that point (but should have) and just laughed, poor, poor fools that keep buying the marketing BS.
My suggestion to all, do NOT adopt any new product offerings from them for at least a year after they are released. You will probably be glad you waited. Not only will you get them cheaper if they are legitimate improvements, you will avoid unnecessary hassles and problems by letting others work them out for you. You have to admit their track record of late has been dismal at best.
The newer operating systems (since mid XP, Vista and now Windows 7) slowly bloat up and slow down, no matter what you do. There are many reasons, most that we the end user can NO LONGER control â" even a little and/or prevent from happening, thanks to auto updates, audit, compliance and validity checks, etc....
I was not surprised to hear a caller on Leo Laporte, The Tech Guy s radio show just this last weekend mention that he attempted the normal method of re formatting his PC's hard disk and re installing all his software to get his computer running faster again like it use too and it simply would not work. Leo as usual asked him a few intelligent questions about how he went about it and what exactly he did and to each and every question the callers responses were intelligent and right on the money. It was obvious he knew what he was doing, had done it before, but this was the first time it simply did NOT work. Leos response was classic and not unexpected for any and all that have listened to him for years. Basically that is should not be doing that. Too funny and too sad for all that use Microsoft Operating System and the Internet Explorer browser. The slow down, loss of privacy, general bloat that causes slower and slower internet surfing over time due to Flash tracking BS, cookie tracking BS, spyware, Viral injections, etc...; can NO longer be fixed via a re format and re install of all software.
I knew this would happen sooner or later, with the CWA, auto detect, auto update BS that we have to deal with to use their software, however I did not expect it to happen this soon. I sincerely thought this type of Microsoft forced bloat would not happen until some time next year after the Windows 7 early adopters were forced to install Vista via updates, compliance checks and having no other supportable option and/or upgrade path.
Yet another violation of trust in my opinion.
I should have stopped reading there, but I read the article to the end and read this under Security and Privacy around page 3 or 4 of the article I believe. I admit that I did smirk and laugh at combining IE with Security and Privacy....
Well, call Microsoft a copycat once again, but IE8 does a little more than just duplicate this capability...
Another funny one there, is it just me or does Microsoft continue to implement more and more functionality found in Linux, FOSS and Open Source software. Too rich. Further in that page it stated....
Microsoft reps claim that their engineers agonized over making sure that Shift-Enter took you to the desired site.
I have been using Shift Enter to launch URLs from graphics, URLs copied into OpenOffice.org Writer and other Open Source software under Linux for years now. It is one of the many reasons I say Linux is my share point, because you can copy/paste from almost anything to anything with Linux application software.
IE8 can block the script while still giving you access to the site. In my testing, Firefox failed to block the sample XSS site provided by Microsoft,
But... Comcast's traffic shaping policies do not apply unless you've used over 75% of the upstream or downstream for 15 minutes straight, and even then only when the whole cable node is congested....
You can not be serious...or perhaps you are not reading all the posts and complaints from customers who have and are experiencing problems with throttling, the crafting of RST packets to cut off communication between your PC and another. Like almost everyone, I have seen my upstream and downstream traffic throttled within the first 30 secs to (consistently) less than 1 minute of beginning to connect and read, connect and download, connect and view, attempt to upload...etc.... to very low Kbps rates of usually around 20 or 30 Kbps, consistently less than 200 Kbps on cable and that does suck. (And this happens without using any P2P or BitTorrent software...just browsing the web...reading articles, viewing still images, it is a wonder videos will even play at all when you think about it.) Of course they do choke out and stop occasionally as well.
I wish that I got 25% of the bandwidth that I am paying for. You made me laugh with your 75% figure. I wish... Also after 15 minutes...that too I wish I would get, but do not. My speed drops in less than 20 seconds. I am so sick and tired of sites (not blaming the sites in most cases) with images loading slow and slowing me down when I am looking for information on the net. I too would take a non-throttled slower service over the currently throttled fake promises of Telcos, Cable and DSL providers. Granted my experience is strictly with cable and it does suck, big time, for everyone at this time, with no good future in sight any time soon.
Heck I wish I got a consistent 2 MB down and 600 Kbps up (instead of 30 Kbps, much less than 200 Kbps, thus they are not providing me high speed internet even with the older FCC definition of 200 Kbps which only recently got updated to 768K, which is still a joke). I know it can NOT happen without government intervention as happened in Japan back before 2000. I seriously doubt that it will ever happen until some competitor enters the market offering fiber from their location to my home, period, end of discussion. (Note: FIOS and other current American ISP / Telco Fiber initiatives will not give Americans what other countries have had since 2000, read on... that joke is on all US consumers, sad really.)
Until we have a new competitor enter (very profitable, yet unlikely) the market or government intervention and regulation (much more likely to happen sooner thanks to the current administration), the current group of ISP and bandwidth providers will continue to ignore consumers, stick their collective noses up at our elected officials, showing their arses I might add. Obviously they would not be able to take billions (more than $200 billion) of our money via set asides, increased taxes and incentives if they did not pay off more than a few politicians.
While I challenge the Obama Administration to fix this, sadly too many current politicians (both Democrats and Republicans) are in the telco's pockets today. Heck they canno
Nobody bothers to explain how to verify that things are working. Or why they chose the settings that they did. Or what settings are required and which ones were only due to some local mandate.
Having been the primary Sys Admin for a major telco, one of the few with Sniffer experience supporting in excess of 10,000 desktops in multiple geographic locations, I can attest that most Sys Admins think they know how a proprietary tool works and are similarly flabbergasted and surprised when the proprietary tool / software / app / protocol / whatever opens a gaping security hole or violates the protocol they mistakenly believed was sacrosanct; something they could never see if they do NOT get a packet sniffer and start sniffing to see what is actually truly going on. Heck I was sent to training with Network General for the Distributed Sniffer, however, I had to perform the baselines on my own time...rolling stones and moss and all that... for most of us Sys Admins, we pay the price if we do NOT take our own time in spite of the manager or company.
Now I do NOT blame the Sys Admins, as they are NEVER given the time (or enough time) to base line; and learn how various things work together before there is a problem...before there is a need to know. By learn I mean, work with, play with and use the appropriate software and hardware tools to see what is actually happening, not what the manual states is suppose to happen. Also to play what if with those tools and see what happens when they generate various errors in order to be ready when the need arises.
Also I would guess that over 70% of the companies (probably much higher) employing System Administrators out there, even today, DO NOT allow time for monitoring of servers, networks, etc... No that seems to be something they just expect a Sys Admin to know how to do when something goes wrong. I would rather not assume either, admittedly sometimes we have no other choice and that does suck.
And for those that think I might be trying to start some sort of flame war about a company that begins with an M, give it a rest as my first experience of this type was when a Sun authorization server violated the Token Ring Protocol responding to packets that were NOT meant for it.
I will agree with you that the documentation is poor in many cases and the explanations are made poorer due to someone taking that documentation as gospel, can you say General Protection Fault.... at least that is shorter than the 40 page troubleshooting guide provided by that nameless company that never worked....but I digress. I am sure I am not the only person that gave the a one finger salute and simply turned off/on the computer.
Everybody else sits in their parents' basement eating Cheetos and masturbating to Japanese tentacle porn?
What an insulting thing to say! I don't even like Cheetos, let alone eat them.
Try sprinkling Cheetos on top of Cool Whip and Fudge Ripple Ice Cream (on top of chocolate cake, brownies, chocolate chip cookies or if desperate Chocolate Cup Cakes). Finally pouring Herseys chocolate syrup liberally on top. But than I do NOT, nor have I lived in my parents basement for many, many years.
Of course you could just buy an Apple Pie (heated in the Microwave) and serve it ala mode with chocolate syrup!
...Vendors really need to get on the ball and realize that Linux is getting on enough devices now that they *do* have to support it, and they can't make it a magic black art that only power users and greater can accomplish....
You said a mouthful and I agree with you. But I feel we, computer (and Linux) users, are partially to blame here. We should..., must insist on:
a BIOS that will see and work with Linux and NOT care about Microsoft.
motherboards that will use that BIOS and advertise this fact openly
Sound cards that will work with those motherboard, that BIOS and both BSD and non BSD versions of Linux.
Graphics cards that will work with those motherboard and BIOS
memory modules that will work with that motherboard and BIOS.
a supports Linux acknowledgement on all hardware and software.
At least I can burn a BIOS on a PC without using Microsoft, so we are heading in the right direction.
Not only should we insist on vendors supporting Linux (currently they cater to Microsoft, with Linux being an after thought); we should advertise which vendors do support and start voting for those vendors with our $$$$.
Vendors cater to Microsoft because of the number of machines that are sold pre-installed with that operating system, just as they always have. Am I thankful that Dell offers Linux, not really, as they bury it on their site and only advertise Microsoft Operating Systems. And like many Linux computer users I too am sick of the lip service that vendors use to placate Linux users...sadly too many still buy it. There are still too few of us holding them responsible.
You could easily add in many more hardware, software and Internet Access Providers in to the list here with Verizon, Microsoft, etc... How many of us have had to stop using one of our favorite non-Microsoft proprietary software products only because that company did NOT offer an installation without Microsoft. Worse yet they require you to upgrade your operating system to the latest greatest Microsoft Operating System before the installation will progress....how many Windows 2000 and Windows XP users said heck no to Vista...I know I did. I wonder how many will get sucked in the near time by Windows 7 only to have Vista shoved down their hole down the road....some will never learn.
For those of us who have seen the writing on the wall, we are simply tired of being pushed in directions we DO NOT NEED nor WANT to go. I want my computer to work, without being hassled by auto updates, by WMA BS compliance checks and without being forced to use other tools that we consider to be security threats (i.e. Java, JavaScript,.NET, Flash, etc...) All of them should be OPTIONS ONLY, not required.
Some might think that I am trying to start a flame war, I am NOT. I am just sick and tired of having my time wasted via a forced update process that opens up a computer desktop that I have previously secured, because some bonehead thinks I need Action X or some other intrusive unable to be controlled by the user BS. I know I am not alone.
We need to hold them accountable. When we do NOT, we all lose.
Remember that if you only have one or two options, than you have NO options. You should always have at least three options.
Windows, MacIntosh and Linux makes three...as does MacIntosh, Linux BSD (RPM) and Linux DEB distros.
If your hardware, software or tool does not support all three, do yourself a favor and find a better alternative, they are out there for those that take the time to look for them!
All information provided by ComStock, Inc. ("ComStock") and its affiliates (the "ComStock Information") is owned by or licensed to ComStock and its affiliates and any user is permitted to store, manipulate, analyze, reformat, print and display the ComStock Information only for such user's personal use....
...NEITHER COMSTOCK NOR ITS AFFILIATES WILL BE LIABLE TO ANY USER OR ANYONE ELSE FOR ANY INTERRUPTION, INACCURACY, ERROR OR OMISSION, REGARDLESS OF CAUSE, IN THE COMSTOCK INFORMATION OR FOR ANY DAMAGES (WHETHER DIRECT OR INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR EXEMPLARY) RESULTING THEREFROM.
Pretty standard stuff, however I started wondering who the affiliates were and how they might use your banking information?
There were 18 ripoff reports, FYI...considering that all banks have negative reports, and 18 is pretty low...as long as Interactive data and their affiliates are not mis using your data it sounds like a decent bank all in all.
If a bank uses Chexsystems (most do, but not all) be aware that if you get a negative report in chexsystems for any reason, it becomes very difficult if not impossible to open a new bank or checking account anywhere else. Check out these 137 reports to learn about this from others mistakes. Personally based on what I have seen, that 137 number appears to be very low, so check on other search engines as well.
To be safe, maintain a minimum of two bank accounts at all times, preferably three, so that if one bank does something stupid (anything customer no service) you can find a new bank first, before you drop the offending bank. Never drop an account until you have a replacement bank account open, otherwise you might have problems opening a new account. Remember that many banks have relationships with other banks and that makes it harder to find two banks that are not related. Make your third bank a Credit Union or Savings and Loan as they will honestly work with you when a regular bank will not.
Remember you catch more flies with honey, so treat the people you are talking to with respect and you will find that you get respect in return. Save the yelling for somewhere else as that just insures that they will NOT help you.
For instance use Google Finance to look up information on companies that are publicly traded. Refer to the Related Companies section (its right after the chart) to see if two banks are related. Did you know that while Bank of America and Washington Mutual use to not be directly related as they are today. However even back in the day, prior to December 2008, both banks were indirectly related via both Citibank and Wells Fargo. Today they are directly related vi
...But as for businesses, I'd be my personal opinion that "e-statements" are part of the service you are paying for monthly from them, and the day you are no longer their customer, they should be under no obligation to continue to provide you with e-statements....
Let me know if I have found a flaw in this with the following:
The company forces the customer to go to an electronic statement. (..perhaps not in this specific article, however in the future...)
The customer leaves that company, therefore per your argument they are no longer under any obligation to provide the information, the e-statements.
Warrants are issued for the information because of suspected wrong doing...what is the company's obligation to provide this information?
If an individual can be accused of fraud by the IRS for up to 7 (or 10) years from today, would not that business have a legal responsibility to provide the information?
If said company has destroyed the records, since the customer is no longer a customer...what than? Are there any financial, tax or legal laws that require the company to maintain the records for either 7 years or 10 years as an individual must?
If so, than the company must maintain these records for that minimal period or be legally in jeopardy. Is this right?
Personally I believe it would be cheap insurance to pay the.99 cents fee in order to have a paper copy stored and available should you get audited...say for a minimum of 7 years.
If you are charged with criminal activity, do you need financial records for 10 years or only 7 years?
...Customers love me. Whether the bosses love me or not depends on whether they're "please the customer at all costs" types or CYA types (that 70% are mostly CYA types). The CYA people hate my guts because I won't tell outrageous lies to customers. This is why I can't work in sales.
Great post, I too have worked for very large and very small companies in a variety of IT roles, including Systems Administration and IT Support.
IMO, you are underestimating the CYA type of bosses...I think they are closer to 90%, especially in larger corporations. Primarily because I believe people seek management for the wrong reasons, anything other than working with and for others.
Anyone who has ever had training under the DISC profiler system will readily recognize that most Managers, Directors are D (Dominance) types. They train those following in their footsteps in their preferred management style, Dominence is a more directorial type of style, my way or the highway attitude. (I do not work for them, but if anyone is interested it costs $19.95 per test on line. I was fortunate at one of the very large companies we had a training department and the Director of the department was certified in training people in use of the DISC profiler system. If the techniques are applied successfully, everyone is happier. Most people are a combination of types, at least two, though some are only one type. I was typed as Isd (she said IsD would have been more accurate for me if they allowed that.)...which drives the straight D types crazy if they are too autocratic, and do not seek input from others.)
Sure I have had a couple of good managers over the years, however they are usually the exception rather than the rule. Man, I loved working for the good managers, no task was too small; and I was there supporting them in everything that they did. After ten years in any profession, you know the difference between a good and bad manager. (I suppose that depends on if you had a good manager and a bad manager so that you can compare one to the other...that definitely makes it easier to discern the difference.)
If at this late date PJ wants to do the right thing, she can "un shadow" all comments, re-insert all deletions; and provide either a.pdf or downloadable file with all the information.
I too doubt that this will ever happen.
This is why I screen-scrape and/or copy almost every article, news report, link, etc.. that I reference for informational purposes. Later If I blog about it, or link to it from any site and someone (in their infinite wisdom , decides to delete the post; well I will just post the "cached" copy that I screen scraped giving all credit to the site, just like the search engines do.
It would be interesting to see all the comments both pro and con to all the issues posted there. You really get a good insight to a particular persons and company's PR methods when you start pouring through these links. Many containing Highly Confidential and damning memos to/from company s like Microsoft. You do NOT have to take my word for it, here is a link to one such document, when going through the comments and posts (if this link does not come through, you sill see this line at the top of the first link To read comments to this article, go here and all you have to do is click on the word here in that line to see the comments and posts).
I was amazed at how obvious their anti-FOSS strategy was. Even funnier knowing how many people still defend this FUD. Not funny how well it works, at least until they are exposed for the shills that they are, backed up with links, documentation and facts of course.
I like how you can expose the relationships between people, companies and websites (news, PR and otherwise) by pouring through these documents.
While I personally believe in following the tenets of the robot.txt file, I am glad that many sites do NOT as now, PERHAPS, allot of this information will NOT be lost forever.
It is obvious to see which company has the MOST to gain from Groklaw being disabled and removed. Very obvious.
Slashdot Mirror
You can pay fairly competent Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/Vista desktop support people $12 an hour.
Note this is NOT a personal attack as I too have been offered low ball hourly wages under $20 per hour and simply said no thank you. My guess is that we have different definitions for fairly competent and \"desktop support people\".
While Telephone tech support (i.e. call center phone support) Do seem try to keep their pay rates around the $12 range; these people are NOT Desktop Support technicians by my definition because they do NOT get up from their desk and go to another desktop when performing their job. (Yes I know about software that will enable a user to take over a desktop...if run via a secure tunnel or other ssh session that is encrypted, than that is a valid solution. I just wish companies would use them, very few are even today and that is a shame.)
Personally IT support companies would be smart to offer $20 - $25 per hour for part time phone support people, letting them telecommute from home (reducing their internal desktop support costs, and other overhead costs related to full time employment). However I would not work for less than $20 and still have to commute to/from my home or apartment to work. And do NOT get me started about having years of experience and giving that knowledge away. I would rather flip hamburgers (West Coast Hamburger chain In/Out starts employees at $10.00 per hour) and not have to worry about after hours and weekend support, but I digress.
And when gas prices go back up, as we all know that they will; can you afford to work at that rate and pay over $100 per week for gasoline?
No disrespect intended for call center technicians either as I know first hand that it is more difficult to support users via telephone versus having access to the desktop hands on. As a System Administrator you are first contacted by phone, so all IT Technical support people have provided this type of support. It is not as easy as it sounds is it. Occasionally you can even fix the problem from your desk, however, often it makes the internal customer feel better to see someone at their desk when they have a problem. Makes them feel like they are receiving support.
As a Systems Administrator, back in the mid 80s, we were receiving between $50,000 - $120,000 in salary per year. The people receiving over $100,000 had more than 5 years of experience as we were in an area that was considered cheaper to live. It was NOT St Louis, however if you analyze the cost of living, you will find that there are areas where the cost of living is similar to St Louis. I use the term Systems Administrator instead of Desktop Support person as many companies treat these titles as the same. I have seen Systems Administrators referred to as the following roles as well: Administrator, Programmer Analyst I, PC Technician, IT Support, IT Analyst, IT Support Engineer, Level I help desk, Network Administrator, Junior Systems Administrator, Linux Administrator, Web Administrator, Server Armin, and a few others. So I take titles with a grain of salt.
As for payrates I recommend that you depend on your own research for a given area. You can count on the fact that the company talking to you KNOWs what it costs to live near them. So this is the best way to negotiate rates. If you have skills, they tech you out and want you, you should NOT settle for less than $20 per hour for these roles...but that is my opinion.
For those that think $20 is too much, I have seen offers, even in this poor job market in the $45 - $60 per hour range. Granted you will have to have 3 to 5 years of experience. If the company is asking for more than 5 years of experience, they should not be offering you a rate that low anyway. And if they want 10 years of experience, please do not give away your skills. You are worth more based on experience it is as simple as that.
With more than 10 years of experience, a positiv
...Moving the "x" to close a window from the left corner to the right corner drove me absolutely insane at first because I kept closing my windows when I only wanted to minimize them. After a (very) little while, however, I got used to it....
I remember many users complaining about having to learn the new GUI with Windows 95. Thanks for the memory.
What drives me insane, is having my PC slow down due to all the ad aware, cookies, flash junk cookie like tracking stuff constantly getting installed and reinstalled on my PC whether I like it or not. Use to happen to me all the time with IE and Windows, back in the day.
At least Firefox will let me decide which web sites are always or never allowed to use cookies via the Exceptions windows. Sure its a bit of of a hassle to have to make an exception for every single cookie the first time you encounter a website. However keeping my browsing faster, while making it a bit more difficult for companies to track my internet usage is worth it for me.
It is amazing how many sites want to set 20+ cookies, something most people never see as they do not set up their security to the highest setting which requires manually approving everything, the first time only. One popular email site (nope, not Google) not only set over 20 cookies, but attempted to change one of my settings from Allow for session to permanent or Enable. Made me wonder how many other sites try to take advantage by resetting a cookie that you have already set as Allow for Session.
Using the Exceptions window and setting most cookies as only Allow for Session or Disable / Deny in addition to having Firefox clean up as it exits works extremely well for me. Each time I start it up there are less than 6 cookies open and tracking me, since I Enable very sparingly. So far I am a year plus and running with no browser sluggishness or slow downs as I use to experience with IE. If I get bogged down I quickly check my routers DD-WRT software, nice having the capability of a $600 Router for less than $60 and find that it is my ISP artificially throttling packets and slowing down my surfing. For me this happens 100% of the time that I am on the internet, You know it is your ISP when this happens early in the AM, (2 am â" 5 am) when very few people are even awake, much less online. Another clue is when you get throttled during normal business hours when few neighbors are even home. I use to get a steady 2 â" 3 Mbps, until just before or after dinner time when people got home from work, lately I am lucky to get 300Kbps. Thanks to my DD-WRT software I can monitor bandwidth usage and more. Occasionally I see higher peaks, however it never lasts very long any more, even when downloading new linux distros...and that is without using a bit torrent package. Yes, I feel cheated and taken advantage of by my ISP.
Does your router / firewall work with DD-WRT? Here is a list of supported routers and firewall/routers. With DD-WRT you can set Quality of Service settings for different types of TCP/IP, UDP and other packets...very well worth the time to learn how to configure it.
Hopefully I will be able to get one of the many FREE players that specifically use the H.264 superior in quality CODEC as my default player instead of Flash or Media Player. By avoiding those players I can avoid the behind the scenes tracking stuff that they put on peoples PCs without them being aware of it. It is not just the silent tracking that I object too, its the slowing down of my surfing that they cause that I do NOT
They developed a process ...
I am sure they called it something fancy too, lmao...thanks for the laugh, still smiling as I type this.
Anyway, I'm through with cheapskates and idiots. I now work as an independent for very high grade people who care about quality, not cost (withing sensible limits, of course) and my reputation and the trust I am granted is now something *I* control, not some flunky in an office who has been tasked by his superior to flog the troops some more because he needs a new Rolls.
Congrats on finally getting there and I hope that you are able to maintain it through the foreseeable future, something tells me that you will.
Hey companies hiring tech workers. Take a good look at your requirements in your job posting. Are you expecting a Senior level person but paying at a Junior level rate?
Are you listing 20 years worth of requirements but looking for someone with a minimum of three years of experience?
Are you looking for a paper tiger? (Certifications that are either unnecessary or that have nothing to do with the actual job that the person is performing for the company; or making any specific certification a MUST have instead of considering equivalent experience.)
Are you looking for someone with 5 years of experience with a technology that has only been out of the labs for two years or less? (I have personally seen this with a new application or new development tool / language more than once, I make sure to give the consulting company a heads up that they can NOT get a person with that many years of experience as the new tool was NOT in development for that long, much less released to the public for consumption for more than a year. I always wondered if any of them ever gave a heads up to the hiring company or not. I know I got a laugh out of it.)
Most important, if you are in Human Resources and you want to save your company some money by bringing in a Junior person at a little (not massively lower) lower rate to save the company some money, how about reducing the number of years of experience to only 1 or at most two for any one requirement; or better yet state outright that you are looking for someone with no experience with a specific skill but equivalent experiences (X language development experience preferred) and train them up. Push some pressure back on Management and suggest to them that they could help you save the company some money by working up a technical training program for new hires in their department. And than make sure that the new hires are spending at least 20% of their time actually being trained by the Manager. (Or even better than that, encourage the Manager to work with the more Senior member of their team for a specific technical skill and have that Senior development person develop a training program for the skill they have mastered and get the entire team cross trained and new hires up to speed faster! Talk about team building at its best.) Have your Senior team members develop tasks that will help a new hire come up to speed on the applications and systems that are critical to your company. This would benefit even experienced professionals at coming up to speed quickly as a new hire.
While this seems pretty basic to most of you reading this, based on my personal experience I have rarely seen this type of coming up to speed for new hire training programs unless I implemented myself as the Manager or Senior member of the team.
When I first started in IT, there were those that thought by hoarding knowledge it gave them power over others and/or the company. At one company the IT shop was split between three Managers, one was attempting to force everyone to sign out the 7, 8 and 9 track tapes (yeppers it was a mainframe environment back in the late 70s) thus he controlled them. What he did not know is that the System P
What makes you think they did not have RFID built into the cameras?
How about LCD screens too. I mean really, if you were going to put up Public LCDs, there is not anything preventing you from embedding them with whatever you want. Cameras, Infrared, RFID scanners, etc....
...We don't need smarter programs and more restrictions, we need smarter people. period.
And that smarter person that you hired needs to be allowed to use their brain when performing their job.
Also they must be given time to do the job right. Are your deadlines honestly realistic? If an Agile company, is your velocity realistically maintainable over time without burning out your staff?
I remember one site where the schedule was created by a big 5 accounting firm; where the consultants were working 12 - 14 hour days and living out of a hotel room, their family was not in the same city. They were paid for every hour of course.
When the project was finally turned over to the company employees, the schedule was kept at the same pace yet those employees lived with their families in town and were only paid for an 8 hour day, even though overtime was expected by all if the project was perceived to be slipping. It was unacceptable to slip the schedule for any reasons, even valid ones.
I saw the writing on the wall and found a better opportunity real fast, gave my two weeks notice and never looked back...even have good references from the job as with all my positions.
I have no problem with working hard and typically put in 50 - 60 hour weeks as a rule, rare is the week where I only work 40 hours.
At one consulting site, where I was paid for every hour that I worked thank goodness, I burned myself out on 65 - 70 hour weeks. Since I was living out of a hotel out of town, away from my family, I could work those long hours without further negatively impacting them. However had I been at home, there is no way I could have worked that kind of scheduled and still had a family.
Its all about TRUST!
Its all about TRUST! Once lost, trust is very difficult to rebuild. Since many businesses simply refuse to change their business practices, I am of the opinion that too many simply do NOT understand that. If they did, they would make sure that they did NOT get hit the first time. Which means hiring qualified professionals and giving them the time to do the job right!.
Just last week I was offered a System Administration job at a company not too far from me. I was told that they were they had been in business for over 10 years and where the Cadillac of the web server hosting business. They really focused on their customers needs, unlike a company, she called them by name , I do NOT like them however still do not see the reason to state their name, that advertises during the Super Bowl.
I did not laugh when she offered me a rate that was $28 less per hour than what current jobs are paying in my area now, even with this economy. I did not mention that the rate was $12.00 per hour less than what I was paid to do the equivalent job at a company in the mid 1980s. My guess is that whoever they hire will be on call 24/7 and will be responsible for their server security in short order. They probably will not be allowed time to monitor those servers for Break Ins either. Just too few people and too much work. Oh and you can bet that they are not hiring additional bodies, just because they are getting them at a lower rate. And were I live it is not considered cheaper to live than most other areas of the country.
The would be smarter to re evaluate all their hardware and software licensing and annual renewals to see how much they could save by replacing them with effective open source and FOSS solutions.
In this specific case, I am confidant that the company will get what they are willing to pay for. And when the economy turns around, which it will do eventually, whoever they hire will be the first to leave them and they will be starting all over again. And that is their upside; their downside is getting hit by crackers and losing their customers trust.
Actions speak louder than words.
So many companies will pay lip service to so many things that they claim are important, yet when it comes time to do the right thing, they do NOT. The proof is always in their actions, regardless of their words, whether verbal or on paper, business cards and news releases.
Its more expensive to get a new customer than retain an existing customer.
They will say that it is harder (and more expensive) to get a a new customer, than keep an existing customer. Yet their business policies, specifically their customer no service response to their customers problems say otherwise. Are there any companies that do NOT fall in this category today, as I would like to seek employment with them as they are obviously in business for the long haul. (And if I can Google the company name + (problem or fraud or issue) OR if they have too many problems listed on Ripoff Reports, please do NOT suggest to me or anyone else that they are not customer â" no â" service â" entities.)
At least with Ripoff Reports, when a company gets listed it is forever, they can respond to the complaint; however unlike the most Better Business Bureaus, the company can NOT pay to have the incident closed. Note: Often the person making the complaint to the BBB is not a member, however the company can be, is encouraged to be or is.
The customer is almost always right!
The customer is always right. Personally I do not believe this is true, yet have followed th
Maybe cheap on the hardware end, but the VMWare per node licenses are going to be pretty painful.
Maybe cheap on the hardware end, but the VMWare per node licenses are going to be pretty painful.
Nope, just do not use VMWare...
Of course Linux being open source, there is always a way to get anything to work if you are willing to spend the time figuring out how to do it. From a corporate standpoint, the hard part is getting things to work the first time, after that you simply duplicate the steps. Sadly some companies will not give their techs the time to figure out how to get something to work...deciding instead to only buy software and hardware with the promise of support from the outside, whether or not that support will work or not. As long as they promise to support it, my butt is covered and protected...dont you hate that short sighted attitude, I know I do. Sometimes what they do is in the best interests of the company, however most of the time it is NOT, just misguided CYA.
These types of computers are great if they do everything you need them to do out of the box. If not then you might have issues.
If its built in to the net book, it just works...sometimes adding something can be a problem.
If a netbook or laptop has WiFi built in, Cam built in, NIC built in, USB Built in(2 or 3 are better), External monitor port Built in; head set and microphone jacks built in; than it just works. Oops, just described an Eee PC there... These $99 - $399 Linux netbooks, laptops and computers have been around since October 2007 and are only getting cheaper today. And thank goodness they will run some version of Linux.
Take Silverlight for instance, you do NOT have to use it, there are other alternatives. Look at Flash, you can develop Flash with whatever code, even Adobe's, but makes sure it will play with the FREE Gnash Flash movie player [slashdot.org], not just the Adobe player.
Yes, but you can do the same with Silverlight and Moonlight. What makes Flash better?
Most people when they refer to Flash are talking about Adobe Flash and Adobe Flash reader only. I am not. I am suggesting that create Flash content with whatever software tools that you want, but on your website, DO NOT offer an "Adobe" specific version as the first or only choice.
If how ever you encode it allows it to be opened with Gnash or Flash Player, great.
If how ever you encode it, lets say you use an Adobe specific library and/or function that only can be understood by Adobe Flash Player, so that Gnash or other non-Adobe- specific-Flash players can NOT open it, not good at all. Best to avoid problems due to lock in.
Personally I do not think either Flash or Silverlight either one are superior to a an encoded H.264 CODEC enabled video. Though admittedly it depends on the settings used by the person who encodes the video. It is telling that to get close, not equivalent to, H.264 quality with other CODECs you have to increase the resolution and the FPS. Per this evaluation of video codecs (H.264, VC-6, and VC-1) In all comparisons, H.264 exhibited the best still frame quality. . They analyzed individual still frames of various videos looking for problems with the images and side effects by inferior encoding and compression methods, not just still pictures. H.264 encoded Videos were better of higher quality and better to the eye to watch. H.264 can come in either proprietary or open source coding. The open source codec is superior or equivalent to all proprietary H.264 codecs...so why make anything proprietary unless you are lazy or have alternative motives..i.e. Software or Operating System Lock In.
Therefore I might suggest the MPlayer is superior to either Silverlight or Flash. And it will work under all operating systems that most people use: Unix, Linux, MacIntosh and yes even Microsoft Windows.
Flexibility, open to all; the fact that H.264 is a superior CODEC than what is standard for Adobe Flash and/or Microsoft Media Player is icing on the cake.
As a business that wants everyone to see my content and at the highest resolution and the most effective frame rate (fps) that makes sense for the bandwidth that I have available to me.
MPlayer is a movie player which runs on many systems (see the documentation). It plays most MPEG/VOB, AVI, Ogg/OGM, VIVO, ASF/WMA/WMV, QT/MOV/MP4, RealMedia, Matroska, NUT, NuppelVideo, FLI, YUV4MPEG, FILM, RoQ, PVA files, supported by many native, XAnim, and Win32 DLL codecs. You can watch VideoCD, SVCD, DVD, 3ivx, DivX 3/4/5, WMV and even H.264 movies.
Why is it Microsoft goes under so much scrutiny but Apple and it's iPhone don't
Okay I'll bite, I am in that mood today...
With Apple, you can NOT develop for them if you do NOT pay them a royalty. No way around that. In fact they designed their iPhone so they could delete any app that is not 'authorized' by them. So you are effectively locked in 100%.
IBM's Microchannel architecture was superior in the day to other bus architectures, however, to use it you had to pay a royalty to IBM...thus its market share was diminished, not as widely adopted as if it were free...like the PC was as it was free and open. This is also one of Microsoft's problems, they write proprietary software for an open platform. Sure they irritate many by limiting BIOS and hardware device driver development. But the platform they develop for is wide open.
Because of Apple's model, everything is proprietary, they do NOT get as wide an adoption for their hardware and software as they might have. Thus their market share is controlled and artificially limited by their own business model and methods.
If they had more market share than they do, and spent years doing spreading FUD on everyone and everything else, denying they ever make any mistakes at all cost, than perhaps people would be as frustrated with them. Apple is smarter than that, and Jobs usually did NOT release software until it at least worked. (A Blue Screen of Death when Gates was demoing comes to mind)
Customers understand they must buy Apple stuff from Apple when they go there, so they accept it and happily pay more. Heck they do not even get mad enough to churn when valid technologies, like FireWire, still widely used in Video circles and will be for years, are removed from the platform (as it has been recently) and no longer standard...even a couple of years ago they touted Firewire as a superior technology and sold products based on that. Go figure, as a developer no way was I going to develop any product where I would be forced to pay a royalty to any other company without them doing anything for me...just not smart.
With Microsoft, sheeple don't realize they are being locked in, until it would cost them too much money to get out. At that point, they just follow along oblivious without thinking too much, thus the term sheeple is appropriate. They happily pay more and more and more to Microsoft each and every year, even in bad economic times when their coworkers are getting laid off due to less business and less cash flow. Like an ostrich, they never raise up their head and look for better alternatives that are available and have been for a couple of years now, nope they just go about their Merry way and pay up. They accept the business as usual and future marketing promises that is just enough to have them hang on a little bit longer. By the time they get frustrated enough with yet another wave of missed marketing promises, another wave of marketing promises are issued to get them to hang on yet a little longer. It will be better tomorrow. The next release will fix this. Yes we know its bad, but its not our fault its your fault, but do not worry the next release will be better.
Insanity, yes; as they keep doing the same thing, paying more and more and more, and expecting Microsoft to play nice, not lock in their data where they can use it anywhere else.
It's a horrible idea. Websites should never discriminate against web browsers, even those strange ones from Redmond. The web is supposed to be open to everyone.
As it is horrible to lock-in customers with proprietary data formats.
As it is horrible to lock-in customers with proprietary codecs.
As it is horrible to lock-in customers with software (.NET, Active X, Microsoft Project, Office, Outlook, Silverlight and many others) that will not let them share their data with others that do NOT use the Microsoft platform.
As it is horrible to act like you are working with standards setting committees when really you are there ONLY pushing your own agenda and refusing to compromise to better standards because that will prevent you from locking in customers with your IE browser.
As it is horrible to bully hardware providers into developing hardware for only your software.
As it is horrible to bully BIOS providers in catering to your software.
As it is horrible to threaten suppliers with pulling your products (which is over 40% of their profit) if they dare carry a competitors product. Or to force suppliers to carry additional copies of your not wanted operating system software (i.e. Vista) with the threats that the next release of your software will not be available to them in enough numbers if they do NOT accept the extra they cannot sale.
As it is horrible to market, extend and replace software with Microsoft's poorer, less functional software but bundled into the operating system software. Often at the expense of innovation in order to dominate the market. Kudos to them for this one, they have been very successful, but at what cost?
It is horrible to act like another companies partner and advocate only to replace them in their vertical market place. (There are too many examples to list, the most recent ones are the Virus and Ad Ware software companies that will not have a marketplace as Microsoft has publicly stated they are replacing them and the Linux and MacIntosh marketplace do NOT need them.
You really should read some of the blogs and posts on owners of website that honestly tried to work with Microsoft with the Web 2.0 standards...shame I do NOT have their links in front of me to share with you; as you would have to either work for Microsoft or be a Microsoft Shill not to see the truth in their statements. It honestly disgusted me.
While I agree with you that it is a horrible idea, I cannot condemn anyone for wanting to turn the tables on I.E.; it really has been a long time coming.
Fact of the matter, the only thing that will honestly bring them back to the standards setting table will be a huge loss of market share because of their resistance to adopting standards. While they have lost allot of market share, they have NOT lost enough yet to even consider changing their historically documented and factual past of interference and obstructionism.
I was forced to support their shenanigans years ago and experienced Microsoft support first hand stating that what I was experiencing was not happening, did not happen, or else I was doing something wrong. Thank goodness that I had enough knowledge to counter their BS, excuses and their LIES; as it almost cost me my Systems Administration job with a telco. That was my FIRST HAND EXPERIENCE back in the day with General Protection Faults...disgusting and horrible. I was in the IT field operations, programming and supporting users before Microsoft ever existed and I have seen almost all of it first hand. As you gain experience you learn what to avoid and it does become easier.
And I have been current with them through to XP, but am off the farm finally, thank goodness, because of their current (and past) business policies of forced updates, forced compliance checks and ignoring my experience. When I set something to not happen until I decide it should happen, that is what I expect to happen. Mid way th
But worry not, with Silverlight now released, ActiveX usage in browsers is going to be killed by MS itself soon enough.
Silverlight, err, sure, that will not create more vendor lock in...ummm, yea, right....; Fortunately they have only a small percentage of the market so far and if a website attempts to force silverlight, as NBC attempted with the Olympics last year, we can just say no and find another source for the information. Thankfully there are open source codecs for H.264 which is superior to either VC-1 or VC-6 (I wonder if the newer VC-6L will be better or not?)
I agree with others that Active X opens up and creates more problems than it is worth, thankfully there are other ways to do everything that Active X will do for you. So if you decide to use ActiveX, then IMO you have made a questionable business decision that opens up more risk than you should assume for your website. Admittedly if your IT Mgmt has already drunk on the proprietary-is-the only-solution cool-aid there is not much you can do. I would suggest keeping that job until you find a better job with a more forward looking and thinking IT Management structure than you have now, but that is just me. It is getting easier as more of these stuck in the old way is the ONLY way attitudes move on and retire. It will get easier, honest.
More to the point of the article, how can any entity test proprietary code if the company will not release said proprietary code. And its not just proprietary code, as others have mentioned proprietary data storage and manipulation formats. How many of you are looking seriously at proprietary CODECS (audio and especially video)
Seems to me it would be a wiser course of action for all developers to avoid proprietary lock in, they probably can in 80% or more of all circumstances if they try. At least educate your management streams to the possibility, if presented correctly I really do not see the issue with, if we use this codec/data format, instead of xx% of users being able to use our information; 100% of our customers (regardless of their preferences of Microsoft, MacIntosh, Unix or Linux) will be able to use the information on our company's website. Seems like a no brain-er to me.
Take Silverlight for instance, you do NOT have to use it, there are other alternatives. Look at Flash, you can develop Flash with whatever code, even Adobe's, but makes sure it will play with the FREE Gnash Flash movie player, not just the Adobe player. Does your content play with other players than Adobes player, just because they have 80% of the market is no reason to get locked in. That just creates hassles for your customers.
Also more and more hand held devices are coming with Linux embedded because Linux will run faster and more apps with less memory and less of a processor than other embedded Oss. If you are producing video output for PCs and hand-helds you are already creating multiple output data streams as you must accommodate differences in processor speed, memory and available bandwidth (cellular, wifi and High Speed Internet)
Since there are open source and free players and free CODECs, why not just switch to a player like MPlayer, which not only works with Linux (BSD, Solaris, etc...), MacIntosh, but also Microsoft Windows. Why limit anyone? Best of all as more sites implement High Definition videos with higher than 30 frames per second, (too many people are in denial about this...if I can view something in a better quailty, higher fps, higher resolution, you bet I will PREFER that website) this player will be able to handle them. In spite of H.264 being a superior yet FREE codec, still the majority of sites default to Adobe Flash players (80%) and Microsoft Media Player; players that can NOT play h.264, go figure ⦠Okay, I get that it is easier for you. You would think you would like an
... there is something to be said for the idea of constructing pipelines through which objects flow instead of text...
Perhaps I am being too literal here, but it seems to me that any code written to pass an object from one program to another would be slower, less efficient and less optimized than passing a pointer to that object (whether stored in memory on in a file) or am I missing something here...
I feel like I am missing something here...am I?
I would thing this would be true even if passed from one machine to another or one system to another (using system loosely to include any environment even if geographically distributed...not in the normal system as in a PC or machine).
Can someone enlighten me here, because I honestly feel like I am missing a point or something? Sign me curious.
Obviously you do not watch Lost...
Perhaps this week is last year and last week was next year?
Did you see a blinding, flashing light in the sky?
But seriously, a meter is a bit farther than other reports I have read. Prior to this report I thought the distance was microscopic. Guess I need to go back and read last weeks report again.
One day we (err our kids) may be able to say, "Beam me up Scotty!"
How many versions of Internet Explorer have been released with no desire, attempt or effort to pass the simple Acid 2 compatibility standards test? (...not that it matters as there are plenty of other browser options) Per the Wikipedia page on Acid 2, The only major browser that does not yet pass the test is Internet Explorer, although a version of Internet Explorer that passes Acid2 is in development.
IE. V 8.0.x was released publicly on March 5, 2008.
In March 2008, Ian Hickson released Acid3 as a follow-up to Acid2. While Acid2 primarily tests CSS, Acid3 focuses more on JavaScript and other "Web 2.0" technologies.[11]; Based on past experience we can extrapolate out that Microsoft Internet Explorer might pass the Acid 3 tests around 2012, but I doubt it.
Sure they believe in standards compatibility, sure they do...NOT. Simple historical reality exposes their hypocrisy!
"In my standards-compatibility testing, IE8 RC1 passed the Acid2 Browser Test (which evaluates CSS support) with flying colors. But on the Acid3 Web standards test, a program that focuses on DOM (document object model) support and JavaScript, IE8 RC1 did the same as Beta 2, getting a score of 20 out of 100, still much better than IE7, which only got a score of 12. But compared with Firefox 3's 71, Chrome's 79, and Opera's 100, IE still has a long way to go. "
Great catch and something I consider very informative, since I do NOT have mod points I wanted to thank you for posting this.
Also stated in that article,
Times are tough for Microsoft, with job cuts, the European Union breathing down its neck again, and Firefox slowly but steadily encroaching on Internet Explorer.
As you have factually pointed out, it is Internet Explorer (20 of 100) that is slowly catching up to Firefox 3 (71), Chrome (79) and Opera (100); hardly the other way around as they would like to try and SPIN IT!
Please someone mode nitroscen up!
A lot of web developers are going to be very angry about this....
Do you really think their market position has weakened enough for them once again to feign that they care. One day perhaps, but not yet....
...The latest IE also solves a problem that's a leading cause of browser slowdown...
Yea right, you have gotta be kidding me, Microsoft must think we are idiots.... I did not stop reading the article at that point (but should have) and just laughed, poor, poor fools that keep buying the marketing BS.
My suggestion to all, do NOT adopt any new product offerings from them for at least a year after they are released. You will probably be glad you waited. Not only will you get them cheaper if they are legitimate improvements, you will avoid unnecessary hassles and problems by letting others work them out for you. You have to admit their track record of late has been dismal at best.
The newer operating systems (since mid XP, Vista and now Windows 7) slowly bloat up and slow down, no matter what you do. There are many reasons, most that we the end user can NO LONGER control â" even a little and/or prevent from happening, thanks to auto updates, audit, compliance and validity checks, etc....
I was not surprised to hear a caller on Leo Laporte, The Tech Guy s radio show just this last weekend mention that he attempted the normal method of re formatting his PC's hard disk and re installing all his software to get his computer running faster again like it use too and it simply would not work. Leo as usual asked him a few intelligent questions about how he went about it and what exactly he did and to each and every question the callers responses were intelligent and right on the money. It was obvious he knew what he was doing, had done it before, but this was the first time it simply did NOT work. Leos response was classic and not unexpected for any and all that have listened to him for years. Basically that is should not be doing that. Too funny and too sad for all that use Microsoft Operating System and the Internet Explorer browser. The slow down, loss of privacy, general bloat that causes slower and slower internet surfing over time due to Flash tracking BS, cookie tracking BS, spyware, Viral injections, etc...; can NO longer be fixed via a re format and re install of all software.
I knew this would happen sooner or later, with the CWA, auto detect, auto update BS that we have to deal with to use their software, however I did not expect it to happen this soon. I sincerely thought this type of Microsoft forced bloat would not happen until some time next year after the Windows 7 early adopters were forced to install Vista via updates, compliance checks and having no other supportable option and/or upgrade path.
Yet another violation of trust in my opinion.
I should have stopped reading there, but I read the article to the end and read this under Security and Privacy around page 3 or 4 of the article I believe. I admit that I did smirk and laugh at combining IE with Security and Privacy....
Well, call Microsoft a copycat once again, but IE8 does a little more than just duplicate this capability...
Another funny one there, is it just me or does Microsoft continue to implement more and more functionality found in Linux, FOSS and Open Source software. Too rich. Further in that page it stated....
Microsoft reps claim that their engineers agonized over making sure that Shift-Enter took you to the desired site.
I have been using Shift Enter to launch URLs from graphics, URLs copied into OpenOffice.org Writer and other Open Source software under Linux for years now. It is one of the many reasons I say Linux is my share point, because you can copy/paste from almost anything to anything with Linux application software.
IE8 can block the script while still giving you access to the site. In my testing, Firefox failed to block the sample XSS site provided by Microsoft,
But... Comcast's traffic shaping policies do not apply unless you've used over 75% of the upstream or downstream for 15 minutes straight, and even then only when the whole cable node is congested....
You can not be serious...or perhaps you are not reading all the posts and complaints from customers who have and are experiencing problems with throttling, the crafting of RST packets to cut off communication between your PC and another. Like almost everyone, I have seen my upstream and downstream traffic throttled within the first 30 secs to (consistently) less than 1 minute of beginning to connect and read, connect and download, connect and view, attempt to upload...etc.... to very low Kbps rates of usually around 20 or 30 Kbps, consistently less than 200 Kbps on cable and that does suck. (And this happens without using any P2P or BitTorrent software...just browsing the web...reading articles, viewing still images, it is a wonder videos will even play at all when you think about it.) Of course they do choke out and stop occasionally as well.
I wish that I got 25% of the bandwidth that I am paying for. You made me laugh with your 75% figure. I wish... Also after 15 minutes...that too I wish I would get, but do not. My speed drops in less than 20 seconds. I am so sick and tired of sites (not blaming the sites in most cases) with images loading slow and slowing me down when I am looking for information on the net. I too would take a non-throttled slower service over the currently throttled fake promises of Telcos, Cable and DSL providers. Granted my experience is strictly with cable and it does suck, big time, for everyone at this time, with no good future in sight any time soon.
Heck I wish I got a consistent 2 MB down and 600 Kbps up (instead of 30 Kbps, much less than 200 Kbps, thus they are not providing me high speed internet even with the older FCC definition of 200 Kbps which only recently got updated to 768K, which is still a joke). I know it can NOT happen without government intervention as happened in Japan back before 2000. I seriously doubt that it will ever happen until some competitor enters the market offering fiber from their location to my home, period, end of discussion. (Note: FIOS and other current American ISP / Telco Fiber initiatives will not give Americans what other countries have had since 2000, read on... that joke is on all US consumers, sad really.)
government intervention is credited for 100MB/100MB in Japan
1GB / 1GB (for less than $55 per month)
Until we have a new competitor enter (very profitable, yet unlikely) the market or government intervention and regulation (much more likely to happen sooner thanks to the current administration), the current group of ISP and bandwidth providers will continue to ignore consumers, stick their collective noses up at our elected officials, showing their arses I might add. Obviously they would not be able to take billions (more than $200 billion) of our money via set asides, increased taxes and incentives if they did not pay off more than a few politicians.
While I challenge the Obama Administration to fix this, sadly too many current politicians (both Democrats and Republicans) are in the telco's pockets today. Heck they canno
Nobody bothers to explain how to verify that things are working. Or why they chose the settings that they did. Or what settings are required and which ones were only due to some local mandate.
Having been the primary Sys Admin for a major telco, one of the few with Sniffer experience supporting in excess of 10,000 desktops in multiple geographic locations, I can attest that most Sys Admins think they know how a proprietary tool works and are similarly flabbergasted and surprised when the proprietary tool / software / app / protocol / whatever opens a gaping security hole or violates the protocol they mistakenly believed was sacrosanct; something they could never see if they do NOT get a packet sniffer and start sniffing to see what is actually truly going on. Heck I was sent to training with Network General for the Distributed Sniffer, however, I had to perform the baselines on my own time...rolling stones and moss and all that... for most of us Sys Admins, we pay the price if we do NOT take our own time in spite of the manager or company.
Now I do NOT blame the Sys Admins, as they are NEVER given the time (or enough time) to base line; and learn how various things work together before there is a problem...before there is a need to know. By learn I mean, work with, play with and use the appropriate software and hardware tools to see what is actually happening, not what the manual states is suppose to happen. Also to play what if with those tools and see what happens when they generate various errors in order to be ready when the need arises.
Also I would guess that over 70% of the companies (probably much higher) employing System Administrators out there, even today, DO NOT allow time for monitoring of servers, networks, etc... No that seems to be something they just expect a Sys Admin to know how to do when something goes wrong. I would rather not assume either, admittedly sometimes we have no other choice and that does suck.
And for those that think I might be trying to start some sort of flame war about a company that begins with an M, give it a rest as my first experience of this type was when a Sun authorization server violated the Token Ring Protocol responding to packets that were NOT meant for it.
I will agree with you that the documentation is poor in many cases and the explanations are made poorer due to someone taking that documentation as gospel, can you say General Protection Fault.... at least that is shorter than the 40 page troubleshooting guide provided by that nameless company that never worked....but I digress. I am sure I am not the only person that gave the a one finger salute and simply turned off/on the computer.
Everybody else sits in their parents' basement eating Cheetos and masturbating to Japanese tentacle porn?
What an insulting thing to say! I don't even like Cheetos, let alone eat them.
Try sprinkling Cheetos on top of Cool Whip and Fudge Ripple Ice Cream (on top of chocolate cake, brownies, chocolate chip cookies or if desperate Chocolate Cup Cakes). Finally pouring Herseys chocolate syrup liberally on top. But than I do NOT, nor have I lived in my parents basement for many, many years.
Of course you could just buy an Apple Pie (heated in the Microwave) and serve it ala mode with chocolate syrup!
Substitute your favorite Ice Cream please....
...Vendors really need to get on the ball and realize that Linux is getting on enough devices now that they *do* have to support it, and they can't make it a magic black art that only power users and greater can accomplish....
You said a mouthful and I agree with you. But I feel we, computer (and Linux) users, are partially to blame here. We should..., must insist on:
At least I can burn a BIOS on a PC without using Microsoft, so we are heading in the right direction.
Not only should we insist on vendors supporting Linux (currently they cater to Microsoft, with Linux being an after thought); we should advertise which vendors do support and start voting for those vendors with our $$$$.
Vendors cater to Microsoft because of the number of machines that are sold pre-installed with that operating system, just as they always have. Am I thankful that Dell offers Linux, not really, as they bury it on their site and only advertise Microsoft Operating Systems. And like many Linux computer users I too am sick of the lip service that vendors use to placate Linux users...sadly too many still buy it. There are still too few of us holding them responsible.
You could easily add in many more hardware, software and Internet Access Providers in to the list here with Verizon, Microsoft, etc... How many of us have had to stop using one of our favorite non-Microsoft proprietary software products only because that company did NOT offer an installation without Microsoft. Worse yet they require you to upgrade your operating system to the latest greatest Microsoft Operating System before the installation will progress....how many Windows 2000 and Windows XP users said heck no to Vista...I know I did. I wonder how many will get sucked in the near time by Windows 7 only to have Vista shoved down their hole down the road....some will never learn.
For those of us who have seen the writing on the wall, we are simply tired of being pushed in directions we DO NOT NEED nor WANT to go. I want my computer to work, without being hassled by auto updates, by WMA BS compliance checks and without being forced to use other tools that we consider to be security threats (i.e. Java, JavaScript, .NET, Flash, etc...) All of them should be OPTIONS ONLY, not required.
Some might think that I am trying to start a flame war, I am NOT. I am just sick and tired of having my time wasted via a forced update process that opens up a computer desktop that I have previously secured, because some bonehead thinks I need Action X or some other intrusive unable to be controlled by the user BS. I know I am not alone.
We need to hold them accountable. When we do NOT, we all lose.
Remember that if you only have one or two options, than you have NO options. You should always have at least three options.
Windows, MacIntosh and Linux makes three...as does MacIntosh, Linux BSD (RPM) and Linux DEB distros.
If your hardware, software or tool does not support all three, do yourself a favor and find a better alternative, they are out there for those that take the time to look for them!
...TD has the added benefit of a location half a block from where I work...
When looking at TD Bank's website, I noticed that they use interactive data. Interactive Data's terms of services states:
All information provided by ComStock, Inc. ("ComStock") and its affiliates (the "ComStock Information") is owned by or licensed to ComStock and its affiliates and any user is permitted to store, manipulate, analyze, reformat, print and display the ComStock Information only for such user's personal use....
...NEITHER COMSTOCK NOR ITS AFFILIATES WILL BE LIABLE TO ANY USER OR ANYONE ELSE FOR ANY INTERRUPTION, INACCURACY, ERROR OR OMISSION, REGARDLESS OF CAUSE, IN THE COMSTOCK INFORMATION OR FOR ANY DAMAGES (WHETHER DIRECT OR INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR EXEMPLARY) RESULTING THEREFROM.
Pretty standard stuff, however I started wondering who the affiliates were and how they might use your banking information?
There were 18 ripoff reports, FYI...considering that all banks have negative reports, and 18 is pretty low...as long as Interactive data and their affiliates are not mis using your data it sounds like a decent bank all in all.
If a bank uses Chexsystems (most do, but not all) be aware that if you get a negative report in chexsystems for any reason, it becomes very difficult if not impossible to open a new bank or checking account anywhere else. Check out these 137 reports to learn about this from others mistakes. Personally based on what I have seen, that 137 number appears to be very low, so check on other search engines as well.
Helpful link concerning chexsystems here. Remember that this information, even after you pay it current, remains on chexsystems for a minimum of five years, good luck.
To be safe, maintain a minimum of two bank accounts at all times, preferably three, so that if one bank does something stupid (anything customer no service) you can find a new bank first, before you drop the offending bank. Never drop an account until you have a replacement bank account open, otherwise you might have problems opening a new account. Remember that many banks have relationships with other banks and that makes it harder to find two banks that are not related. Make your third bank a Credit Union or Savings and Loan as they will honestly work with you when a regular bank will not.
Remember you catch more flies with honey, so treat the people you are talking to with respect and you will find that you get respect in return. Save the yelling for somewhere else as that just insures that they will NOT help you.
For instance use Google Finance to look up information on companies that are publicly traded. Refer to the Related Companies section (its right after the chart) to see if two banks are related. Did you know that while Bank of America and Washington Mutual use to not be directly related as they are today. However even back in the day, prior to December 2008, both banks were indirectly related via both Citibank and Wells Fargo. Today they are directly related vi
...But as for businesses, I'd be my personal opinion that "e-statements" are part of the service you are paying for monthly from them, and the day you are no longer their customer, they should be under no obligation to continue to provide you with e-statements....
Let me know if I have found a flaw in this with the following:
The company forces the customer to go to an electronic statement. (..perhaps not in this specific article, however in the future...)
The customer leaves that company, therefore per your argument they are no longer under any obligation to provide the information, the e-statements.
Warrants are issued for the information because of suspected wrong doing...what is the company's obligation to provide this information?
If an individual can be accused of fraud by the IRS for up to 7 (or 10) years from today, would not that business have a legal responsibility to provide the information?
If said company has destroyed the records, since the customer is no longer a customer...what than? Are there any financial, tax or legal laws that require the company to maintain the records for either 7 years or 10 years as an individual must?
If so, than the company must maintain these records for that minimal period or be legally in jeopardy. Is this right?
Personally I believe it would be cheap insurance to pay the .99 cents fee in order to have a paper copy stored and available should you get audited...say for a minimum of 7 years.
If you are charged with criminal activity, do you need financial records for 10 years or only 7 years?
...Customers love me. Whether the bosses love me or not depends on whether they're "please the customer at all costs" types or CYA types (that 70% are mostly CYA types). The CYA people hate my guts because I won't tell outrageous lies to customers. This is why I can't work in sales.
Great post, I too have worked for very large and very small companies in a variety of IT roles, including Systems Administration and IT Support.
IMO, you are underestimating the CYA type of bosses...I think they are closer to 90%, especially in larger corporations. Primarily because I believe people seek management for the wrong reasons, anything other than working with and for others.
Anyone who has ever had training under the DISC profiler system will readily recognize that most Managers, Directors are D (Dominance) types. They train those following in their footsteps in their preferred management style, Dominence is a more directorial type of style, my way or the highway attitude. (I do not work for them, but if anyone is interested it costs $19.95 per test on line . I was fortunate at one of the very large companies we had a training department and the Director of the department was certified in training people in use of the DISC profiler system. If the techniques are applied successfully, everyone is happier. Most people are a combination of types, at least two, though some are only one type. I was typed as Isd (she said IsD would have been more accurate for me if they allowed that.)...which drives the straight D types crazy if they are too autocratic, and do not seek input from others.)
Sure I have had a couple of good managers over the years, however they are usually the exception rather than the rule. Man, I loved working for the good managers, no task was too small; and I was there supporting them in everything that they did. After ten years in any profession, you know the difference between a good and bad manager. (I suppose that depends on if you had a good manager and a bad manager so that you can compare one to the other...that definitely makes it easier to discern the difference.)
If at this late date PJ wants to do the right thing, she can "un shadow" all comments, re-insert all deletions; and provide either a .pdf or downloadable file with all the information.
I too doubt that this will ever happen.
This is why I screen-scrape and/or copy almost every article, news report, link, etc.. that I reference for informational purposes. Later If I blog about it, or link to it from any site and someone (in their infinite wisdom , decides to delete the post; well I will just post the "cached" copy that I screen scraped giving all credit to the site, just like the search engines do.
It would be interesting to see all the comments both pro and con to all the issues posted there. You really get a good insight to a particular persons and company's PR methods when you start pouring through these links. Many containing Highly Confidential and damning memos to/from company s like Microsoft. You do NOT have to take my word for it, here is a link to one such document, when going through the comments and posts (if this link does not come through, you sill see this line at the top of the first link To read comments to this article, go here and all you have to do is click on the word here in that line to see the comments and posts).
I was amazed at how obvious their anti-FOSS strategy was. Even funnier knowing how many people still defend this FUD. Not funny how well it works, at least until they are exposed for the shills that they are, backed up with links, documentation and facts of course.
I like how you can expose the relationships between people, companies and websites (news, PR and otherwise) by pouring through these documents.
While I personally believe in following the tenets of the robot.txt file, I am glad that many sites do NOT as now, PERHAPS, allot of this information will NOT be lost forever.
It is obvious to see which company has the MOST to gain from Groklaw being disabled and removed. Very obvious.