I'm obviously missing something, but to me it seems like a better solution for these two might be some sort of prosthetic assistance to the natural hand rather than a full amputation? Some sort of robotic "glove" that was wired into the nerves that will be used for the artificial hand, but fit over the dead natural hand might have allowed for them to keep the keep the limb, avoid possible side affects like phantom limb pain, and potentially regain natural use in later life when some hitherto unforeseen advance in nerve regeneration might occur. These advances in bionics are amazing and awesome for people who have had to have amputations, but it seems like they could come up with a less invasive means to help guys like this.
Perhaps someone more knowledgeable can comment on why it was done this way?
And no where in the summary, article or paper (OK, I didn't read the paper, but I seriously doubt it would make such a ridiculous claim) is it said that "Drinking coffee prevents cancer". The title kinda does if you read it that way, but a three word catchy title is hardly the "meat" of anything. All that's being claimed is a significant statistical correlation between drinking coffee and a reduced risk for this particular type of cancer.
The problem often comes in determining at what point "marginal and mistreated" ends and "sociopathic desire to hurt anyone who slights me" begins. For every anecdote like yours, there's another about a geek who was simply paranoid or antisocial enough to *feel* victimized by the normal churn of the day. A guy (or girl) who wrote your kill script, or something worse, with the full intention of using it. It's not even hard to imagine such a person (your old boss seems the type). Which is more common? Really hard to say, ask employees and they'll probably say your situation, ask managers, they'll probably say the opposite. Most people can't point to more than a handful of examples of either situation though.
Businesses and governments clearly need to watch out for and prepare for either situation. Ironically, your anecdote shows that at least in the first of your two cases, your company was doing exactly that. Someone did notice your boss' bad behavior and did something about it. Management isn't *always* incompetent or out to get you. In this case their actions both protected the marginalized and mistreated workers, and hopefully avoided a future Terry Childs situation on the form of your obviously immature and potentially dangerous boss.
In the case of Child's himself, there's a significant disconnect as to whether he was a marginalized victim, or a childish asshat lashing out at perceived injustice. To hear him talk sometimes, he was the former. Other times, he seems a lot more like the latter (obviously management thought he was the latter). I'm inclined to believe that, while he probably doesn't deserve the level of punishment he's gotten, his actions were blameworthy.
So the gist of this guy's blog post is "If I take everything said in the press release and twist it till it screams, it sounds vaguely like they're trying to do something bad. OMG PANIC!!111!!!!one". I know it's popular to think that everything any corporation of any size does is evil, but do you think we could at least get bent out of shape by stuff that actually is happening, and is actually bad?
Windows does the same thing? For that matter so do the GUIs in Linux if you chose to use them. Except at least on MacOS (or Linux) you can make a reasonable guess that if you changed something in, say, the LDAP GUI you probably made the change to/etc/ldap.conf or something similar. In Windows you almost certainly changed some obscure registry setting with a name like "HKEY_LOCALMACHINE\stuff\morestuff\settingsforstuff\currentsetting\subsytemsname\setting". And that setting was a actually a dword binary with undocumented meanings for most of its potential values. Also if you look, you can find pretty good documentation for what files and setting most of the Mac GUIs change. With a few notable exceptions they're mostly the files you'd expect from having worked with Unix systems in the past. If you're interested in what happens when your Mac boots hit "Command-V" and it will stream text like a Linux box. I believe the boot log is in/var/log/system.log if you want to look at it after the fact (by default it's not as complete as verbose boot messaging though)
If you know what you're doing a Mac is every bit as transparent as as a Unix box and more transparent than a Windows box. If you don't know what you're doing, why are you worrying about it? Let the OS do its thing.
I almost like Window 7. If I could just get Powershell to complete its transformation into a butterfl... err... Unix CLI I could probably even skip on Cygwin. I Still vaguely prefer MacOS, but a good chunk of that is the full Unix terminal with Bash.
It is. In fact, cut transmission line from this very plant are the main reason that the entire Huntsville metro area got a great opportunity for a 4-6 day "Gaslight" Con. Because we had no electricity and were using nothing but gaslights. Tornadoes tore apart the grid and support infrastructure for the plant and basically all of Northern Alabama was without power for four days to a week. On the bright side, the plant itself was able to smoothly move into a hot shutdown and smoothly ramp back up when the infrastructure was restored, so they much be doing something right.
It wouldn't be the first time that Apple has held their collective noses and put a lot of effort into a piece of large scale Windows software for a strategic goal; I mean you can dislike iTunes for Windows all you like, it's probably the single most popular music player and manager on the platform. It's certainly a tier one development priority. They put the effort in becasue they wanted to sell iPods to Windows users. Whether they see the same level of usefulness in porting a communication software I can't say, but it's hardly laughable. For that matter, Safari for Windows is obviously a pretty high dev priority, despite not even being all that popular.
For that matter, Apple has a nice toy in Facetime. It needs some work and a few non-iDevice clients, but it could be a contender without breaking the bank (especially not Apple's bank). I could see them releasing Mac and Windows clients, though Linux and Android might be a bridge too far for them... So that could seriously cripple the whole deal. Apple's "control every aspect" fixation would be at war with the fact that social networks (and let's face it, that's basically what we're talking about here) become more valuable the more clients you have.
No, because it's a different principle. The Linux Kernel is designed to be secure. Insecurities are there as a result of bugs or mistakes. the algorithms are intended to run the computer in safe secure way. Many eyes looking at the code catches the bugs and mistakes (hopefully) before the bad guys find them and exploit them.
Google's algorithms are intended to rank pages a certain way. It's not a bug or mistake that they rank them in the manner they do, it's a heuristic attempt to apply rules that will give you the most useful results. Unfortunately, knowing exactly what those rules are will allow spammers to craft pages that better conform to them. It's not a bug that correlation (a) is considered more important than correlation (b), it's a deliberate decision designed to give the user more relevant results. If however I *know* that (a) is greater than (b) I can take advantage of that fact to create something artificially relevant.
Interestingly I've worked in Boeing facilities, and I can comment a bit on their CM and process management (I'm not and never have been a Boeing employee, I was a sub on one of their government projects). You are 100% right about the way Boeing generates, well, everything. Code, systems, engineering, from rockets to airplanes, from missiles to widgets. It all gets vigorous change management, quality control, and review processes. Specs *are* complete, becasue review of requirements is complete, becasue requirements generation is complete, and if any of it isn't complete it'll get pushed back up the chain until it is. Period. Because being a few mils off on the kind of stuff Boeing builds probably means someone is going to have a really bad day. Possibly a fatal day.
I understand completely why they work the way they do, and every time I fly to Boston on a 737 I thank them for it. That said it's an incredibly painful way to work, and it generated a phenomenal amount of inefficiency on systems and processes that really don't need to be perfect. The corporate culture is utterly incapable of turning off the "we build airplanes, everything must be within a 1 mil tolerance" frame of mind. The pain and suffering required to make the most minute changes to our lab environment made my head spin. I was really glad to get out of that place.
I think there are basically three things to consider when it comes to process and change management:
1) The same level of care is not required in a simulations lab as is required to build 777's. Though the level of care should definitely be more than the level used in a college research project. Pick a a level of process and control that is appropriate to your environment and goals.
2) Know your team. Different people flourish under different environments. In some ways this is related to (1). A team of game designers is never going to be happy working under the constraints that a team of aeronautical engineers would consider fairly loose.
3) Accept that some level of process and control is probably inevitable. One of the many memes that Slashdot loves is that software engineers are not real engineers. There is a level of validity to this statement, but it is in fact changing. We are becoming, more and more, the engineers that we've been claiming to be for a while. Software engineers at a company like Boeing *are* engineers in every way except maybe the PE cert. The rest of the industry is following a bit more slowly. There are both pluses and minuses to this formalization and professionalization, but it's probably going to happen regardless.
You missed the part about switching the one cable to a logical provider of your choice at some government run/regulated NOC. Probably not physically, they can just route your cable to the provider of your choice logically. Though I'm not sure on where exactly CATV stops being a networked digital signal and becomes a "TV" signal; a physical switch might be necessary. Regardless, such a system would alleviate how much hardware has to get "to the curb" or even to the neighborhood level amps and splitters (which would have to be huge to accommodate even 10 different company's hardware. Those green boxes would become green garden sheds or even small houses). If you want to switch providers you just call the entity that runs the public infrastructure and have them switch your provider at the NOC.
Of all of those I'd only rate the LAZIK surgery as being in the same ball park. The rest either correct an otherwise uncorrectable deficiency (skull implanted hearing aides), or are "cosmetic" in more ways than one. One of the hallmarks of nearly all elective cosmetic surgery (every procedure I know of at any rate, though I grant you that my knowledge is unlikely to be all encompassing or even close to it) is that they never get past "superficial" cuts. They may cut into skin, fatty tissue, even muscle in some cases, but they never breach any of the important body cavities that house our internal bits. It adds all kinds of complications to surgery when you get past skin and muscle cuts.
Here's an example. Most doctors in the US, Canada or most of Europe won't do lap-band surgery on patients that aren't at least 75-100 pounds overweight, even when the patient is willing to pay for it themselves. The surgery is relatively trivial, the systems involved are very well understood, the complication rate is extremely low. Why won't they do it? A lot of reason, but largely because surgery past the abdominal wall, even routine, well understood, simple surgery, is considered a high risk activity. Unless the pay off is a significant weight reduction and therefore significant quality and (average) length of life increase, they don't want to take the risk.
I thought about that, but waving at the sensor occasionally seemed less annoying than having a fan blowing crap all over my office. Other than a ceiling fan set low, I've never been much of a fan of fans (ha ha).
The lights in my office at my last job were on a motion sensor. Let me tell you, the office of a computer professional is about the worst place for motion activated lights:::tap tap click tap tap {light out} {sigh} {wave at sensor}... tap tap tap tap {lights out} {sigh}...::
Because brain surgery is expensive, messy, painful, and prone to kill a small, but non-zero, percentage of patients. We're not talking about a boob job here, no ethical doctor is going to open up your skull and poke around installing consumer electronics becasue you think it's cool. You might see some limited applications for people who have legitimate medial problems that direct implants will solve (optical or audio sensors wired to the appropriate nerves or brain centers for the blind or deaf come to mind), but the idea of brain surgery for purely elective implants seems improbable at best.
I really don't think so. Neither store is particularly well set up to search apps by publisher, but I count at least several app by Microsoft on both the Android Market and Apple's App Store. Microsoft has been getting a lot better about supporting alternative OSes on non-core products (Silverlight is another example). We'll see of course, I could easily be wrong; but in the short to medium term they probably won't kill existing clients, even if they plan to halt development on them log term, so you should have time to react regardless.
You know this is a really good thought. I hadn't considered it to be honest. I've been toying with buying a XBox just for Kinect; but I need to check out the living room size in the apartment the wife got us in Boston first. I hate to sped $300 on something that I might not be able to use in a month or two.
If nothing else it means very little in the short to medium term. They'd be fools to kill the Linux and Mac client development right off, even if that is their long term plan. Realistically though, MS has been pretty good about cross platform support on their non-core technologies lately. They've got several pieces of software on both the Android and iDevice App stores; and while the Silverlight client for Linux is clearly no one's top priority, it's getting regular updates. I'm not going to lie, I kinda wish they'd do an Office for Linux; but only if they put at least the amount of effort into it as they do into the Mac client. Unless you just have moral issues with using anything associated with MS, I tend to think it'll be fine.
I seriously doubt Microsoft would make that kind of mistake. Say what you will about their technology divisions, but no one doubts the prowess of their lawyers.
Who says I didn't work hard? Where do you draw the line between "working hard" and "driven like a slave?" I have a few basic expectations out of employers:
Compensate me for what I do, in a manner compatible with what other companies and people with similar skills have on average considered "adequate".
Provide me with the tools I need to do my job, or failing that, compensate me for the fact that you're using my stuff to run your company.
Accept that I'm not working 24x7x365. Does that mean that I work 40 hours and go home? That I won't ever stay late to finish an important project? That I won't ever come in or be on call Saturday night? No, or course it doesn't. I'm not going to spend *every* Saturday in the office though, nor work *60-80* hours every week. Again, I've sacrificed on this rule in the past, but for additional compensation. When I was an SSE for SGI I was pretty much on call 24/7 but they paid me overtime for any calls I got.
Now having said that, the companies I do chose to work for have rarely had cause to complain about my work ethic. Treat me well, I'll do everything I can to help you succeed; treat me poorly and I'll find a new job that treats me well. That's the contract that every employee should be making with their employer, becasue the whole point of a contract is that you're both supposed to be getting something. If you're just taking everything the boss man wants to dish out becasue "that's what you have to do to get ahead", then yes. You are soulless and/or mindless. I'm sorry to hear it.
They also tend to force you to not do the "I'ma skip this chapter, because I know this stuff" that often plagues my attempts at self training. Sometimes suffering through the chapter with the stuff you know can help put something in perspective, give you some critical insight on how this implementation is in fact slightly different than what you thought you knew, or just give you a critical refresher you didn't think you needed. I can and have forced myself to read that chapter anyway, but I know I'm not giving it the attention it deserves. In a classroom you have little else to do anyway, so you generally pay attention; and sometimes go "Oh, hey, I hadn't thought about that. Glad we did this part after all".
Stupid answer: I already have a job with people that value my skills and are willing to do their part (Compensate me, purchase the tools I require to work on their systems, etc). I'm simply simply not going to even consider a move to such a clearly sociopathic employer. They can hire people who aren't bright enough to understand their own value. Most of whom tend to quickly morph into (if they aren't already) the kind of mindless, soulless automata those companies both deserve, and can't understand why they have. I and anyone I can successfully warn off won't fall for the trap.
It's also worth pointing out that while the summary, and to a certain extent the article, focuses on traditional "become a certified Share Point guru" sorts of training; there's a strong undercurrent of people "training" in the sense of just being given on the clock time to learn stuff and play with tech. At least one company is specifically mentioned as having a policy similar to Google's "20%" where they expect their tech employees to spend 20% of their time (on the clock) learning, working on personal projects, and generally unwinding. This company has seem efficiency gains rather than loses since implementing the policy. The majority of the article does focus on the kind of training that a lot of slashdotters consider useless (I don't entirely agree, but I can see the point), but there's definitely kernels of wisdom floating around in there too.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm obviously missing something, but to me it seems like a better solution for these two might be some sort of prosthetic assistance to the natural hand rather than a full amputation? Some sort of robotic "glove" that was wired into the nerves that will be used for the artificial hand, but fit over the dead natural hand might have allowed for them to keep the keep the limb, avoid possible side affects like phantom limb pain, and potentially regain natural use in later life when some hitherto unforeseen advance in nerve regeneration might occur. These advances in bionics are amazing and awesome for people who have had to have amputations, but it seems like they could come up with a less invasive means to help guys like this.
Perhaps someone more knowledgeable can comment on why it was done this way?
And no where in the summary, article or paper (OK, I didn't read the paper, but I seriously doubt it would make such a ridiculous claim) is it said that "Drinking coffee prevents cancer". The title kinda does if you read it that way, but a three word catchy title is hardly the "meat" of anything. All that's being claimed is a significant statistical correlation between drinking coffee and a reduced risk for this particular type of cancer.
The problem often comes in determining at what point "marginal and mistreated" ends and "sociopathic desire to hurt anyone who slights me" begins. For every anecdote like yours, there's another about a geek who was simply paranoid or antisocial enough to *feel* victimized by the normal churn of the day. A guy (or girl) who wrote your kill script, or something worse, with the full intention of using it. It's not even hard to imagine such a person (your old boss seems the type). Which is more common? Really hard to say, ask employees and they'll probably say your situation, ask managers, they'll probably say the opposite. Most people can't point to more than a handful of examples of either situation though.
Businesses and governments clearly need to watch out for and prepare for either situation. Ironically, your anecdote shows that at least in the first of your two cases, your company was doing exactly that. Someone did notice your boss' bad behavior and did something about it. Management isn't *always* incompetent or out to get you. In this case their actions both protected the marginalized and mistreated workers, and hopefully avoided a future Terry Childs situation on the form of your obviously immature and potentially dangerous boss.
In the case of Child's himself, there's a significant disconnect as to whether he was a marginalized victim, or a childish asshat lashing out at perceived injustice. To hear him talk sometimes, he was the former. Other times, he seems a lot more like the latter (obviously management thought he was the latter). I'm inclined to believe that, while he probably doesn't deserve the level of punishment he's gotten, his actions were blameworthy.
So the gist of this guy's blog post is "If I take everything said in the press release and twist it till it screams, it sounds vaguely like they're trying to do something bad. OMG PANIC!!111!!!!one". I know it's popular to think that everything any corporation of any size does is evil, but do you think we could at least get bent out of shape by stuff that actually is happening, and is actually bad?
Windows does the same thing? For that matter so do the GUIs in Linux if you chose to use them. Except at least on MacOS (or Linux) you can make a reasonable guess that if you changed something in, say, the LDAP GUI you probably made the change to /etc/ldap.conf or something similar. In Windows you almost certainly changed some obscure registry setting with a name like "HKEY_LOCALMACHINE\stuff\morestuff\settingsforstuff\currentsetting\subsytemsname\setting". And that setting was a actually a dword binary with undocumented meanings for most of its potential values. Also if you look, you can find pretty good documentation for what files and setting most of the Mac GUIs change. With a few notable exceptions they're mostly the files you'd expect from having worked with Unix systems in the past. If you're interested in what happens when your Mac boots hit "Command-V" and it will stream text like a Linux box. I believe the boot log is in /var/log/system.log if you want to look at it after the fact (by default it's not as complete as verbose boot messaging though)
If you know what you're doing a Mac is every bit as transparent as as a Unix box and more transparent than a Windows box. If you don't know what you're doing, why are you worrying about it? Let the OS do its thing.
I almost like Window 7. If I could just get Powershell to complete its transformation into a butterfl... err... Unix CLI I could probably even skip on Cygwin. I Still vaguely prefer MacOS, but a good chunk of that is the full Unix terminal with Bash.
It is. In fact, cut transmission line from this very plant are the main reason that the entire Huntsville metro area got a great opportunity for a 4-6 day "Gaslight" Con. Because we had no electricity and were using nothing but gaslights. Tornadoes tore apart the grid and support infrastructure for the plant and basically all of Northern Alabama was without power for four days to a week. On the bright side, the plant itself was able to smoothly move into a hot shutdown and smoothly ramp back up when the infrastructure was restored, so they much be doing something right.
It wouldn't be the first time that Apple has held their collective noses and put a lot of effort into a piece of large scale Windows software for a strategic goal; I mean you can dislike iTunes for Windows all you like, it's probably the single most popular music player and manager on the platform. It's certainly a tier one development priority. They put the effort in becasue they wanted to sell iPods to Windows users. Whether they see the same level of usefulness in porting a communication software I can't say, but it's hardly laughable. For that matter, Safari for Windows is obviously a pretty high dev priority, despite not even being all that popular.
For that matter, Apple has a nice toy in Facetime. It needs some work and a few non-iDevice clients, but it could be a contender without breaking the bank (especially not Apple's bank). I could see them releasing Mac and Windows clients, though Linux and Android might be a bridge too far for them... So that could seriously cripple the whole deal. Apple's "control every aspect" fixation would be at war with the fact that social networks (and let's face it, that's basically what we're talking about here) become more valuable the more clients you have.
No, because it's a different principle. The Linux Kernel is designed to be secure. Insecurities are there as a result of bugs or mistakes. the algorithms are intended to run the computer in safe secure way. Many eyes looking at the code catches the bugs and mistakes (hopefully) before the bad guys find them and exploit them.
Google's algorithms are intended to rank pages a certain way. It's not a bug or mistake that they rank them in the manner they do, it's a heuristic attempt to apply rules that will give you the most useful results. Unfortunately, knowing exactly what those rules are will allow spammers to craft pages that better conform to them. It's not a bug that correlation (a) is considered more important than correlation (b), it's a deliberate decision designed to give the user more relevant results. If however I *know* that (a) is greater than (b) I can take advantage of that fact to create something artificially relevant.
Interestingly I've worked in Boeing facilities, and I can comment a bit on their CM and process management (I'm not and never have been a Boeing employee, I was a sub on one of their government projects). You are 100% right about the way Boeing generates, well, everything. Code, systems, engineering, from rockets to airplanes, from missiles to widgets. It all gets vigorous change management, quality control, and review processes. Specs *are* complete, becasue review of requirements is complete, becasue requirements generation is complete, and if any of it isn't complete it'll get pushed back up the chain until it is. Period. Because being a few mils off on the kind of stuff Boeing builds probably means someone is going to have a really bad day. Possibly a fatal day.
I understand completely why they work the way they do, and every time I fly to Boston on a 737 I thank them for it. That said it's an incredibly painful way to work, and it generated a phenomenal amount of inefficiency on systems and processes that really don't need to be perfect. The corporate culture is utterly incapable of turning off the "we build airplanes, everything must be within a 1 mil tolerance" frame of mind. The pain and suffering required to make the most minute changes to our lab environment made my head spin. I was really glad to get out of that place.
I think there are basically three things to consider when it comes to process and change management:
1) The same level of care is not required in a simulations lab as is required to build 777's. Though the level of care should definitely be more than the level used in a college research project. Pick a a level of process and control that is appropriate to your environment and goals.
2) Know your team. Different people flourish under different environments. In some ways this is related to (1). A team of game designers is never going to be happy working under the constraints that a team of aeronautical engineers would consider fairly loose.
3) Accept that some level of process and control is probably inevitable. One of the many memes that Slashdot loves is that software engineers are not real engineers. There is a level of validity to this statement, but it is in fact changing. We are becoming, more and more, the engineers that we've been claiming to be for a while. Software engineers at a company like Boeing *are* engineers in every way except maybe the PE cert. The rest of the industry is following a bit more slowly. There are both pluses and minuses to this formalization and professionalization, but it's probably going to happen regardless.
OK, you win, that's a lot worse than my story.
You missed the part about switching the one cable to a logical provider of your choice at some government run/regulated NOC. Probably not physically, they can just route your cable to the provider of your choice logically. Though I'm not sure on where exactly CATV stops being a networked digital signal and becomes a "TV" signal; a physical switch might be necessary. Regardless, such a system would alleviate how much hardware has to get "to the curb" or even to the neighborhood level amps and splitters (which would have to be huge to accommodate even 10 different company's hardware. Those green boxes would become green garden sheds or even small houses). If you want to switch providers you just call the entity that runs the public infrastructure and have them switch your provider at the NOC.
Of all of those I'd only rate the LAZIK surgery as being in the same ball park. The rest either correct an otherwise uncorrectable deficiency (skull implanted hearing aides), or are "cosmetic" in more ways than one. One of the hallmarks of nearly all elective cosmetic surgery (every procedure I know of at any rate, though I grant you that my knowledge is unlikely to be all encompassing or even close to it) is that they never get past "superficial" cuts. They may cut into skin, fatty tissue, even muscle in some cases, but they never breach any of the important body cavities that house our internal bits. It adds all kinds of complications to surgery when you get past skin and muscle cuts.
Here's an example. Most doctors in the US, Canada or most of Europe won't do lap-band surgery on patients that aren't at least 75-100 pounds overweight, even when the patient is willing to pay for it themselves. The surgery is relatively trivial, the systems involved are very well understood, the complication rate is extremely low. Why won't they do it? A lot of reason, but largely because surgery past the abdominal wall, even routine, well understood, simple surgery, is considered a high risk activity. Unless the pay off is a significant weight reduction and therefore significant quality and (average) length of life increase, they don't want to take the risk.
I thought about that, but waving at the sensor occasionally seemed less annoying than having a fan blowing crap all over my office. Other than a ceiling fan set low, I've never been much of a fan of fans (ha ha).
The lights in my office at my last job were on a motion sensor. Let me tell you, the office of a computer professional is about the worst place for motion activated lights: ::tap tap click tap tap {light out} {sigh} {wave at sensor} ... tap tap tap tap {lights out} {sigh}...::
Because brain surgery is expensive, messy, painful, and prone to kill a small, but non-zero, percentage of patients. We're not talking about a boob job here, no ethical doctor is going to open up your skull and poke around installing consumer electronics becasue you think it's cool. You might see some limited applications for people who have legitimate medial problems that direct implants will solve (optical or audio sensors wired to the appropriate nerves or brain centers for the blind or deaf come to mind), but the idea of brain surgery for purely elective implants seems improbable at best.
I really don't think so. Neither store is particularly well set up to search apps by publisher, but I count at least several app by Microsoft on both the Android Market and Apple's App Store. Microsoft has been getting a lot better about supporting alternative OSes on non-core products (Silverlight is another example). We'll see of course, I could easily be wrong; but in the short to medium term they probably won't kill existing clients, even if they plan to halt development on them log term, so you should have time to react regardless.
You know this is a really good thought. I hadn't considered it to be honest. I've been toying with buying a XBox just for Kinect; but I need to check out the living room size in the apartment the wife got us in Boston first. I hate to sped $300 on something that I might not be able to use in a month or two.
If nothing else it means very little in the short to medium term. They'd be fools to kill the Linux and Mac client development right off, even if that is their long term plan. Realistically though, MS has been pretty good about cross platform support on their non-core technologies lately. They've got several pieces of software on both the Android and iDevice App stores; and while the Silverlight client for Linux is clearly no one's top priority, it's getting regular updates. I'm not going to lie, I kinda wish they'd do an Office for Linux; but only if they put at least the amount of effort into it as they do into the Mac client. Unless you just have moral issues with using anything associated with MS, I tend to think it'll be fine.
I seriously doubt Microsoft would make that kind of mistake. Say what you will about their technology divisions, but no one doubts the prowess of their lawyers.
Who says I didn't work hard? Where do you draw the line between "working hard" and "driven like a slave?" I have a few basic expectations out of employers:
Compensate me for what I do, in a manner compatible with what other companies and people with similar skills have on average considered "adequate".
Provide me with the tools I need to do my job, or failing that, compensate me for the fact that you're using my stuff to run your company.
Accept that I'm not working 24x7x365. Does that mean that I work 40 hours and go home? That I won't ever stay late to finish an important project? That I won't ever come in or be on call Saturday night? No, or course it doesn't. I'm not going to spend *every* Saturday in the office though, nor work *60-80* hours every week. Again, I've sacrificed on this rule in the past, but for additional compensation. When I was an SSE for SGI I was pretty much on call 24/7 but they paid me overtime for any calls I got.
Now having said that, the companies I do chose to work for have rarely had cause to complain about my work ethic. Treat me well, I'll do everything I can to help you succeed; treat me poorly and I'll find a new job that treats me well. That's the contract that every employee should be making with their employer, becasue the whole point of a contract is that you're both supposed to be getting something. If you're just taking everything the boss man wants to dish out becasue "that's what you have to do to get ahead", then yes. You are soulless and/or mindless. I'm sorry to hear it.
They also tend to force you to not do the "I'ma skip this chapter, because I know this stuff" that often plagues my attempts at self training. Sometimes suffering through the chapter with the stuff you know can help put something in perspective, give you some critical insight on how this implementation is in fact slightly different than what you thought you knew, or just give you a critical refresher you didn't think you needed. I can and have forced myself to read that chapter anyway, but I know I'm not giving it the attention it deserves. In a classroom you have little else to do anyway, so you generally pay attention; and sometimes go "Oh, hey, I hadn't thought about that. Glad we did this part after all".
Stupid answer: I already have a job with people that value my skills and are willing to do their part (Compensate me, purchase the tools I require to work on their systems, etc). I'm simply simply not going to even consider a move to such a clearly sociopathic employer. They can hire people who aren't bright enough to understand their own value. Most of whom tend to quickly morph into (if they aren't already) the kind of mindless, soulless automata those companies both deserve, and can't understand why they have. I and anyone I can successfully warn off won't fall for the trap.
It's also worth pointing out that while the summary, and to a certain extent the article, focuses on traditional "become a certified Share Point guru" sorts of training; there's a strong undercurrent of people "training" in the sense of just being given on the clock time to learn stuff and play with tech. At least one company is specifically mentioned as having a policy similar to Google's "20%" where they expect their tech employees to spend 20% of their time (on the clock) learning, working on personal projects, and generally unwinding. This company has seem efficiency gains rather than loses since implementing the policy. The majority of the article does focus on the kind of training that a lot of slashdotters consider useless (I don't entirely agree, but I can see the point), but there's definitely kernels of wisdom floating around in there too.