There is a vast difference between an H1B visa holder and those who wish to emigrate. Those that wish to stay are competing on a level playing field in the same job category and they want to be "us". H1B visa holders are cheap hired help that are required by law to leave and intend to do so at the end of their employment. The H1B is created as a way to hire cheap labor and not to provide a path to citizenship. Considering the way the system has continued to be abused they need to do away with it. If the country needs more high-tech help they should ask that they either emigrate as in the old days or provide laws requiring these workers to be paid at a premium. In the current political environment neither is likely to happen.
This does no good if the drive dies or the file system is stomped on by the OS. As said above: Multiple copies in multiple locations. Either do this or kiss your data goodby right now...
I'd rather stay away from the networking sites. I need to keep my clearance to keep my job. Make enough noise and they start wondering what else you're up to. This is not negotiable with most similar positions. It's agreed to as a term of employment.
"Not to mention that this is actually like the Telecom Immunity Bill. It "grants" legal status to an un-Constitutional act."
And that is where this starts to look bad. This law gives the government permission to do what they should not be doing in the first place. For US citizens ther is no reason for confiscating anything other than items already listed as illeagal. A personal or even business laptop should require a search warrant.
When did the DHS suddenly become the new SS anyhow? I didn't think I was living in a totalitarian state but it sure looks like we're headed there...
We received a crate a while back from Agilent with a chassis and desk for an 8510 that had not been rack mounted as it was being re-tasked. The lower part of the crate had a fold out ramp that allowed the wheeled chassis to roll right down onto the floor of the lab. Pretty fancy for an empty rack. The tradition continues long after splitting away from the parent company.
Avionics and military equipment are also exempt for a while. Tin whiskers are the largest reason that they have been exempted for now. I'm actually on the second mainboard on the machine I'm typing this from that has the ROHS logo. The old one was a relatively old AMD Athlon XP board. This has been around a while now. I first hear about this at Litton in 1999 (not that we needed to use it). It's been used in electronics for at least that long
As far as I can tell the problem with the Wiki ban was that it was done out of sight of the rest of us and with little evidence that it was nessesary. Overstock is hardly my favorite company but the issue raised about naked short selling is legitimate. Pulling this sort of crap is a real good wayfor Wikipedia to become irrelevant in no time.
Back in the day that's what they said about the F4 Phantom II. I still think that is the ugliest aircraft that was ever built as a jet fighter. McNamara loved that blasted thing and sold it to the Navy and the Air Force.
The best tactic for short-circuiting management's conviction that the shop should go the Windows route: Do the math for 'em. Management where I work short changes development like many other places. Show them the real cost of what they have in mind. Cost factors should include Windows and SQL Server CALs, retraining costs, Visual Studio licenses (I like it but it costs money just like everything else) and expected down time from the switchover. Give the expected project time frame for deployment from start to finish. Include the cost of server hardware for switchover if this is needed to keep the old apps alive long enough to pull the switch.
Management is more sensitive to costs than any other factor but no manager lives in a vacuum these days. Be honest and build a compelling case. DO NOT go into this with an attitude that the boss is just another PHB. If he actually is one then tighten up that resume and start looking. Wall Street laid an egg this week but the job market for what we do is better than it has been in a long time.
Documentation is part of the nondiscriminatory requirement. The laws you describe are very lax even here in MD. That you do not understand this belies your naiveté. I do not claim perfection for myself, but that is what you are doing. I don't live in a perfect world. It apparently isn't the world you live in.
"Personally, I don't think many (if any) of us on/. are good judges of "easy to use" on computers. We're too involved in the technical end and know too much to judge what would be easy for someone without a lot of experience."
I use SuSE on a daily basis. My daughters learned Windows first but prefer the SuSE PC as it is just as easy to use as Windows is. Power users start early and learn what they need when they need it. The girls in question are 11, 9 and 7 years of age. I chose KDE because I'm used to it and it works well. They like it, too.
This is Bullshit! The Unions didn't run the companies into the ground: The Companies did this to themselves. They had a chance to compete 30 years ago when they expected us to buy the same crap over and over again. The Big Three decided not to make small cars and when they did they made BAD small cars. Reliability was an option you got from the imports and not them. You can hardly blame the unions for building the wrong products at the wrong times. The executive class in all of the US has a lot to answer for. They flew our jobs over seas first class.
I have worked in and outside of a Union. My current position is professional and not Union. Other than getting paid monthly and paying more for health insurance there isn't much difference from the inside - unless I do something stupid. The unions allow make sure that the employer does what they are supposed to if the worker breaks the rules. There has to be documentation rather than just pushing someone out the door. In some cases it keeps someone in-house long enough to save them from themselves. In other cases it is designed so that they do not get a chance to come back. This protects the company, the workers on the job and the worker with the problem.
If I piss off someone where I work I get the boot.
My PC uses a 7300GT. It has the horsepower to run Aero if I had Vista on it even though there is no fan on the thing. Alas it is used as a Linux display and just shows KDE, emacs, eclipse, Firefox and perhaps a xterm or two. I also play movies on the thing.
I'll second this. I'm a Sr. Technician at a Defense company. I have a clearance. I can go almost anywhere on the floor and do what I learned first hand, with college or on my own. There is a reason companies ask for "self starters": they are interested in knowing how things work and are cross-trained pretty well in what the company needs to get things done. My degree is hardly a license to steal, just a bigger foot in the door to greater possibilities and the company paid the bill for the last 30 credits or so for me to finish it.
Have more than one skillset. Be ready to do grunge work, Put in the time and effort. If the company is worth staying with you will be rewarded. Do what you like best if you can when you get the chance. IT is a big field and the possibilities grow more with time. That said DO have other interests. Mine was and still is military hardware. It can be anything that the company makes the most money with that deteremines your interest in what they do. People that work as play do what they do because they want to. Try very hard to be one of those. They are ultimately the most successful over time. Miserable people do not get promoted, get bonuses or raises. Their heart isn't in it and it shows after a while.
"Ultimately, here is my take. A degree is a degree. Obviously the more recognized the name the better, but don't fret over that too much. Try to avoid programs that give "life credit" for working in a real job, or offer things like "Bachelor's Degree in Computer Studies"."
For some folks with lots of military experience or those who have been working for a while this may be true. Experience is the key. My degree is from UMUC http://www.umuc.edu/. Before my hearing failed I took courses at the campus. Now that I can't do that I'm finishing the last course of my undergrad studies on-line. The school has lots of support for those in the military and any current military folks get the same rate for tuition as I get and I live in Maryland. My employer has paid for about the last third of my degree and isn't complaining about the course being on-line.
I'm being qualified for a cochlear implant. If this lives up to the advertizing I'll be able to take courses at school again which is what I prefer. The advantages should be obvious: Three hours of the subject at hand without constant interruption (I have three kids), networking with others in the industry and the chance to meet other people in a mostly pleasant environment. Some courses at the college offer the advantages of both through the use of the same setup they use for on-line classes as a research and study aid.
I find on-line courses a bit harder than traditional classes. The Professors don't give subtle hints about what to commit to memory and what to skim over. You manage your time carefully and interact in the class or you get docked 10% of your grade. It's real easy to goof off if you are so inclined. Some Professors spend lots of time with the class and actively participate and some seem to do as little as they can get away with - the first group I suspect enjoy the format where the second bunch does not.
I have been given a chance to finish what I started a while back. Without on-line courses I'd be out of luck. I'm considering graduate school as the next step. I may go back to UMUC. A lot depends on how much of my hearing is restored beteen now and then. I need the implant as much for professional reasons as for academic reasons. I also have in the back of my mind that wherever the degree comes from there are employers that may not require a degree from you but that add it to the group of considerations that ultimately result in your being hired. If you want the degree and are short on options an on-line degree isn't a bad option at all. Just make sure of the reputation of the college or university and of your own commitment to the degree completion.
"The Linux community has its security head in the sand. Linux isn't secure. It is just that it is only run by a few computer literate people who know how to keep their insecure systems safe."
And most of us also use the system for work, school and play. We know more about computing and the threats to our systems than most windows users because the system is teaching us. You don't learn how things work with a mouse. You learn them by breaking the system, messing with it, building software and installing from source code. The best security in the world is learning and reacting to the real world. By sheilding us from it Microsoft has insulated us not from the threats of the world but from the tools to protect ourselves and educate ourselves about the system.
To say that Microsoft or linux is better for security is a red herring in either case. I like the basic simplicity of the *NIX model. My stuff works. My systems do what I want.
"no need to feel sorry for blue collar getting outsourced either, it is simple market dynamics, supply and demand. If they lose their $8/hr job at the assembly line in the factory they can get another $8/hr job at Wal-Mart which is growing and expanding all over the place last time I checked."
You're forgetting that manufaturing jobs were mostly like $18/hr. at decent manufacturing jobs accrued over years of increases. This is certainly NOT replaced by an $8/hr. job at Walmart. I take it it's OK if someone else can't feed their family and end up living on the street? You must be from a red state. I live in a really blue state. I also work in a Union shop.
"If the "religious" forces expressed half the love for babies that they do for foetuses, maybe I'd feel differently about this."
Correct: Babies are not entitled to medical care, prenatal care, food or clothing under the current system. This is provided by parents that may or not be able to. To abolish abortion as one part in the Republican agenda and at the same time determine that people that don't have jobs are essentially worthless is not entirely honest especially if they are parents. What the Republican agenda purports to be freedom isn't worth much to those who the system has already failed.
"I hear people complain about gnu C++ alot because its not as good as commercial compilers.
However from what I see is the performance of the compiled code is the same with the exception that the resulting binaries are alot bigger."
Though this has changed recently, the reason some people prefer the GNU compilers was for reasons of stability and consistancy of the product. Sun's compilers were stated to me as being painful to work with and generated more headaches than code.
I think you're a dork. If you have ugly fonts on your system and you are using a recent install then you didn't read any of the documentation that came with your setup or you blew the partition away to give more room to XP. X.org uses the same font architecture and layout as XFree does. There are pleny of lovely fonts out there to install as you see fit. SuSE 9.0 (yeah the last one) installs plenty of pretty fonts for you as I believe Mandrake does. Slack puts things in different places but the parts are largely the same and supports anti-aliasing just like the other distros. Why are you still whineing about this now? See:
Do yourself a favor: Get a new job. Whatever you talk about with another prospective employer, don't talk about your current job. The anger will come out and you'll end up sounding like a loose cannon. It doesn't take much to get rejected from new employment. Just talk about what you can do and what you have done. Keep mum about the management where you work. Keep your eye on the prize and focus on that. I did it. You can too.
I worked for one of those companies where the walls were coming down and management was NOT competent to know it. I focused on what I could do for the new employer and I got the job I needed to get somewhere. Your obvious anger has to be put aside for long enough to bail out.
I've had few problems with SuSE at all... When I do have a problem, manpages, newsgroups and manual digging fixed things more frequently than the manuals ever did. Often enough the answer is on the SuSE website in plain english to be printed out for explicit use. I buy the updates these days and then do a fresh install. I have 9.0 and don't intend to update the thing until I have problems building tarballs from scratch.
Slashdot Mirror
There is a vast difference between an H1B visa holder and those who wish to emigrate. Those that wish to stay are competing on a level playing field in the same job category and they want to be "us". H1B visa holders are cheap hired help that are required by law to leave and intend to do so at the end of their employment. The H1B is created as a way to hire cheap labor and not to provide a path to citizenship. Considering the way the system has continued to be abused they need to do away with it.
If the country needs more high-tech help they should ask that they either emigrate as in the old days or provide laws requiring these workers to be paid at a premium. In the current political environment neither is likely to happen.
This does no good if the drive dies or the file system is stomped on by the OS. As said above: Multiple copies in multiple locations. Either do this or kiss your data goodby right now...
I'd rather stay away from the networking sites. I need to keep my clearance to keep my job. Make enough noise and they start wondering what else you're up to. This is not negotiable with most similar positions. It's agreed to as a term of employment.
"Not to mention that this is actually like the Telecom Immunity Bill. It "grants" legal status to an un-Constitutional act."
And that is where this starts to look bad. This law gives the government permission to do what they should not be doing in the first place. For US citizens ther is no reason for confiscating anything other than items already listed as illeagal. A personal or even business laptop should require a search warrant.
When did the DHS suddenly become the new SS anyhow? I didn't think I was living in a totalitarian state but it sure looks like we're headed there...
We received a crate a while back from Agilent with a chassis and desk for an 8510 that had not been rack mounted as it was being re-tasked. The lower part of the crate had a fold out ramp that allowed the wheeled chassis to roll right down onto the floor of the lab. Pretty fancy for an empty rack. The tradition continues long after splitting away from the parent company.
And who's to say that there aren't other intelligent species out there?
That will kick our asses in any case.
Avionics and military equipment are also exempt for a while. Tin whiskers are the largest reason that they have been exempted for now.
I'm actually on the second mainboard on the machine I'm typing this from that has the ROHS logo. The old one was a relatively old AMD Athlon XP board. This has been around a while now. I first hear about this at Litton in 1999 (not that we needed to use it). It's been used in electronics for at least that long
As far as I can tell the problem with the Wiki ban was that it was done out of sight of the rest of us and with little evidence that it was nessesary. Overstock is hardly my favorite company but the issue raised about naked short selling is legitimate. Pulling this sort of crap is a real good wayfor Wikipedia to become irrelevant in no time.
Back in the day that's what they said about the F4 Phantom II. I still think that is the ugliest aircraft that was ever built as a jet fighter. McNamara loved that blasted thing and sold it to the Navy and the Air Force.
The best tactic for short-circuiting management's conviction that the shop should go the Windows route: Do the math for 'em. Management where I work short changes development like many other places. Show them the real cost of what they have in mind. Cost factors should include Windows and SQL Server CALs, retraining costs, Visual Studio licenses (I like it but it costs money just like everything else) and expected down time from the switchover. Give the expected project time frame for deployment from start to finish. Include the cost of server hardware for switchover if this is needed to keep the old apps alive long enough to pull the switch.
Management is more sensitive to costs than any other factor but no manager lives in a vacuum these days. Be honest and build a compelling case. DO NOT go into this with an attitude that the boss is just another PHB. If he actually is one then tighten up that resume and start looking. Wall Street laid an egg this week but the job market for what we do is better than it has been in a long time.
Documentation is part of the nondiscriminatory requirement. The laws you describe are very lax even here in MD. That you do not understand this belies your naiveté. I do not claim perfection for myself, but that is what you are doing. I don't live in a perfect world. It apparently isn't the world you live in.
Crawl back under your rock, troll...
"Personally, I don't think many (if any) of us on /. are good judges of "easy to use" on computers. We're too involved in the technical end and know too much to judge what would be easy for someone without a lot of experience."
I use SuSE on a daily basis. My daughters learned Windows first but prefer the SuSE PC as it is just as easy to use as Windows is. Power users start early and learn what they need when they need it. The girls in question are 11, 9 and 7 years of age. I chose KDE because I'm used to it and it works well. They like it, too.
This is Bullshit! The Unions didn't run the companies into the ground: The Companies did this to themselves. They had a chance to compete 30 years ago when they expected us to buy the same crap over and over again. The Big Three decided not to make small cars and when they did they made BAD small cars. Reliability was an option you got from the imports and not them. You can hardly blame the unions for building the wrong products at the wrong times. The executive class in all of the US has a lot to answer for. They flew our jobs over seas first class.
I have worked in and outside of a Union. My current position is professional and not Union. Other than getting paid monthly and paying more for health insurance there isn't much difference from the inside - unless I do something stupid. The unions allow make sure that the employer does what they are supposed to if the worker breaks the rules. There has to be documentation rather than just pushing someone out the door. In some cases it keeps someone in-house long enough to save them from themselves. In other cases it is designed so that they do not get a chance to come back. This protects the company, the workers on the job and the worker with the problem.
If I piss off someone where I work I get the boot.
My PC uses a 7300GT. It has the horsepower to run Aero if I had Vista on it even though there is no fan on the thing. Alas it is used as a Linux display and just shows KDE, emacs, eclipse, Firefox and perhaps a xterm or two. I also play movies on the thing.
Bob
I'll second this. I'm a Sr. Technician at a Defense company. I have a clearance. I can go almost anywhere on the floor and do what I learned first hand, with college or on my own. There is a reason companies ask for "self starters": they are interested in knowing how things work and are cross-trained pretty well in what the company needs to get things done. My degree is hardly a license to steal, just a bigger foot in the door to greater possibilities and the company paid the bill for the last 30 credits or so for me to finish it.
Have more than one skillset. Be ready to do grunge work, Put in the time and effort. If the company is worth staying with you will be rewarded. Do what you like best if you can when you get the chance. IT is a big field and the possibilities grow more with time. That said DO have other interests. Mine was and still is military hardware. It can be anything that the company makes the most money with that deteremines your interest in what they do. People that work as play do what they do because they want to. Try very hard to be one of those. They are ultimately the most successful over time. Miserable people do not get promoted, get bonuses or raises. Their heart isn't in it and it shows after a while.
"Ultimately, here is my take. A degree is a degree. Obviously the more recognized the name the better, but don't fret over that too much. Try to avoid programs that give "life credit" for working in a real job, or offer things like "Bachelor's Degree in Computer Studies"." For some folks with lots of military experience or those who have been working for a while this may be true. Experience is the key. My degree is from UMUC http://www.umuc.edu/. Before my hearing failed I took courses at the campus. Now that I can't do that I'm finishing the last course of my undergrad studies on-line. The school has lots of support for those in the military and any current military folks get the same rate for tuition as I get and I live in Maryland. My employer has paid for about the last third of my degree and isn't complaining about the course being on-line. I'm being qualified for a cochlear implant. If this lives up to the advertizing I'll be able to take courses at school again which is what I prefer. The advantages should be obvious: Three hours of the subject at hand without constant interruption (I have three kids), networking with others in the industry and the chance to meet other people in a mostly pleasant environment. Some courses at the college offer the advantages of both through the use of the same setup they use for on-line classes as a research and study aid. I find on-line courses a bit harder than traditional classes. The Professors don't give subtle hints about what to commit to memory and what to skim over. You manage your time carefully and interact in the class or you get docked 10% of your grade. It's real easy to goof off if you are so inclined. Some Professors spend lots of time with the class and actively participate and some seem to do as little as they can get away with - the first group I suspect enjoy the format where the second bunch does not. I have been given a chance to finish what I started a while back. Without on-line courses I'd be out of luck. I'm considering graduate school as the next step. I may go back to UMUC. A lot depends on how much of my hearing is restored beteen now and then. I need the implant as much for professional reasons as for academic reasons. I also have in the back of my mind that wherever the degree comes from there are employers that may not require a degree from you but that add it to the group of considerations that ultimately result in your being hired. If you want the degree and are short on options an on-line degree isn't a bad option at all. Just make sure of the reputation of the college or university and of your own commitment to the degree completion.
"The Linux community has its security head in the sand. Linux isn't secure. It is just that it is only run by a few computer literate people who know how to keep their insecure systems safe."
And most of us also use the system for work, school and play. We know more about computing and the threats to our systems than most windows users because the system is teaching us. You don't learn how things work with a mouse. You learn them by breaking the system, messing with it, building software and installing from source code. The best security in the world is learning and reacting to the real world. By sheilding us from it Microsoft has insulated us not from the threats of the world but from the tools to protect ourselves and educate ourselves about the system.
To say that Microsoft or linux is better for security is a red herring in either case. I like the basic simplicity of the *NIX model. My stuff works. My systems do what I want.
"no need to feel sorry for blue collar getting outsourced either, it is simple market dynamics, supply and demand. If they lose their $8/hr job at the assembly line in the factory they can get another $8/hr job at Wal-Mart which is growing and expanding all over the place last time I checked."
You're forgetting that manufaturing jobs were mostly like $18/hr. at decent manufacturing jobs accrued over years of increases. This is certainly NOT replaced by an $8/hr. job at Walmart. I take it it's OK if someone else can't feed their family and end up living on the street? You must be from a red state. I live in a really blue state. I also work in a Union shop.
"Am I the only slashdot user that thought that Minority Report qualified as a horror movie?"
No
"If the "religious" forces expressed half the love for babies that they do for foetuses, maybe I'd feel differently about this."
Correct:
Babies are not entitled to medical care, prenatal care, food or clothing under the current system. This is provided by parents that may or not be able to. To abolish abortion as one part in the Republican agenda and at the same time determine that people that don't have jobs are essentially worthless is not entirely honest especially if they are parents. What the Republican agenda purports to be freedom isn't worth much to those who the system has already failed.
I don't need a sig.
"I hear people complain about gnu C++ alot because its not as good as commercial compilers.
However from what I see is the performance of the compiled code is the same with the exception that the resulting binaries are alot bigger."
Though this has changed recently, the reason some people prefer the GNU compilers was for reasons of stability and consistancy of the product. Sun's compilers were stated to me as being painful to work with and generated more headaches than code.
I think you're a dork.
If you have ugly fonts on your system and you are using a recent install then you didn't read any of the documentation that came with your setup or you blew the partition away to give more room to XP. X.org uses the same font architecture and layout as XFree does. There are pleny of lovely fonts out there to install as you see fit. SuSE 9.0 (yeah the last one) installs plenty of pretty fonts for you as I believe Mandrake does. Slack puts things in different places but the parts are largely the same and supports anti-aliasing just like the other distros. Why are you still whineing about this now? See:
http://patriot.net/~scoile/fonts/fixing-2.html/
for the real deal.
Aren't SUV's a bitch?
Do yourself a favor: Get a new job.
Whatever you talk about with another prospective employer, don't talk about your current job. The anger will come out and you'll end up sounding like a loose cannon. It doesn't take much to get rejected from new employment. Just talk about what you can do and what you have done. Keep mum about the management where you work. Keep your eye on the prize and focus on that. I did it. You can too.
I worked for one of those companies where the walls were coming down and management was NOT competent to know it. I focused on what I could do for the new employer and I got the job I needed to get somewhere. Your obvious anger has to be put aside for long enough to bail out.
Good luck.
I've had few problems with SuSE at all...
When I do have a problem, manpages, newsgroups and manual digging fixed things more frequently than the manuals ever did. Often enough the answer is on the SuSE website in plain english to be printed out for explicit use.
I buy the updates these days and then do a fresh install. I have 9.0 and don't intend to update the thing until I have problems building tarballs from scratch.