While you may not be bothered about it, you could take legal action against such activity if you wished because that list is implicitly copyrighted (at least in any country which is a signatory to the Berne Convention, and assuming that it's an original work) at the point at which it is fixed in a tangible medium (e.g., written on paper).
Now, whether or not you'd have much to sue about is another issue (the value of that shopping list is probably negligible).
Even back when I was starting out as a programmer (in 1988), it was assumed that each of us would be spending a certain amount of time training ourselves. My employer back then was nice enough to give us some paid time during the day for OJT (On-the-Job Training), at least when there weren't higher-priority things to do, but sometimes I ended up reading manuals at home because I didn't have the time to do so at work.
It'll vary by employer, of course, and often each manager will have their own policy w.r.t. OJT eevn within a single organization. If people expect a job to be done right, they should allow a certain amount of time for reading, online studying, or formal coursework, but I'm not sure you should "expect" that. Some organizations have more long-term focus than others, and employee development helps the company in the long run, but sometimes it's hard to justify the time spent that way when there are fires to fight and clients to feed.
Who says this managers actions had anything to do with the team being successful? It is a possibility that his underlings were getting things done in spite of his actions.
My ISP has used Postini for a couple of years, and the filters are highly customizable and can be tweaked to a certain extent or turned off completely. Postini also provides the ability to create a white list (including mailing lists) and/or a black list, so you can deal with false positives or negatives and eventually eliminate them.
Postini filters out between 200 and 300 messages per day for me, and I haven't seen a false positive in the trap for several months now. That ain't bad.:-)
The economy, at least in the US, is tremendously varied from state to state. Some metro areas where large companies laid off hundreds (or thousands) of IT folks over the past few years are still difficult areas in which to find IT employment, since the local job market is still relatively saturated with experienced people seeking work. Other areas were far more fortunate and are able to provide job seekers with more legitimate opportunities or with less competition for those positions.
Anyone who says that finding a position is "no problem" is not being very realistic, though, at least in my opinion. It can still be a multi-month process even for those who have the best skillsets and abilities -- a lot depends on specific circumstances.
Frequent updates are necessary, especially when it comes to networked systems.
When it comes to systems which are exposed to the outside world, you mean, or perhaps to potentially hostile users.
For systems like dedicated fileservers which are safely hidden behind a firewall, I'm not so sure that system updates or patches are all that important.
I agree. People understand the concept of a notebook that has lots of pages, so let them have one.:-)
I also think a lot of the default UI elements on modern desktops (scroll bars, icons, and overlapping windows for starters) are overkill for a significant number of users.
If they don't ever use two programs at once, and if they have a large enough screen to view a whole page at a time, then why confuse them by scattering strange graphical elements all over the screen that they might never care about?
Many older boxes *had* no peripheral storage (disk, drum) at all -- just magnetic core memory and some means of feeding cmoputer instructions and data in and out (usually a static medium such as punched cards, tape, or switches resident on the main panel).
Because of this, the term "memory" made sense -- it was the only place where the machine could dynamically store information or code in a manner which was easily accessible to the CPU, and in that sense it was roughly analogous to a human's brain. You fed the computer a program to run and perhaps some accompanying data, it remembered that program and associated data long enough to process it, and then it replaced that code/data with other code/data when the next processing task came along.
When long-term storage came along and two different dynamic storoge areas becamse commonly available, the term made somewhat less sense unless you differentiate CPU-addressible storage from peripheral storage and call the former "memory" (since the main CPU/brain of the system can only see that type of storage directly).
The word "system" (short for "computer system") traditionally includes all of the hardware and software elements that make up the computer being referred to.
The fact that some of the extraneous peripherals don't fit in the main system box (that's why they're "peripheral" elements) doesn't lessen the fact that most of the system is included within the main case.
Because of this, using "system" to refer to the case and all hardware/software inside of it isn't all that much of a stretch.
Calling the entire thing a "CPU" is more complicated and potentially less correct because some systems have more than one type of processor (remember the days of CPUs and math coprocessors? Now consider the smart elements on your disk controller(s) and video card(s)), so the term "CPU" has usually referred to the main system processor (Central Processing Unit).
That's one of the reasons why many companies (like major airlines) do their own in-house software development. That way they can create software in their own way and on their own schedule without having sales weenies interfering with the process, creating unworkable release dates, etc.
NTFS is not documented in a way that developers can use, and it's also been a constantly changing target over the years. That's why the drivers are considered "experimental" -- the reverse-engineering required to verify the accurace of the drivers is a trial-and-error process.
Why doesn't Microsoft open up NTFS? Because they don't believe in interoperability.
How was this behavior different from the conquests that took place in Europe, Asia, Africa, or any other region of the world at various points in history?
When a more advanced (technologically, not necessarily in other ways) civilization starts to explore and encounters a less advanced civilization, the latter is almost always adversely impacted by the encounter. Don't you play Risk?:-):-)
Seriously (and sadly), though, that seems to be the way Homo Sapiens operates regardless of the geographical or chronological location at which the encounter occurs. We aren't always as enlightened or "civilized" as we like to think we are.
What does your "technical interview process" involve?
More to the point: are you looking for people who possess a particular skillset *now* to work on projects for you in the short term, or are you looking for people with more generalized IT or technical experience who might be a better long-term investment?
The former is a head-hunter approach to employees (assuming that people are plug-n-play and basing quality assessments on their ability to perform rote memorization or limit themselves to a fairly limited set of specific technologies), but it might make your search for quality people far more difficult than it could be.
That's why I still know a few IT folks who are experienced and competent but who are still bouncing from short-term contract to short-term contract (when they can get them).
With so many people looking for work, it takes a long time to reabsorb them into the ranks of the employed again.
The timed skills test will weed out the unskilled, but it will also weed out some tremendously talented people who might not currently have what you need but could pick it up in a matter of months, weeks, or even days.
If your search is for long-term employees, are those really people you want to eliminate from consideration?
Probably things like disease, unstable political situations, difficulty of obtaining work visas, etc. Or maybe such a concept is too far outside their comfort zone to consider.
I know I would have to think long and hard before moving outside the US, even if I knew that there were no inherent risks. My friends and family are here, and I like the community in which I live.
Slashdot Mirror
While you may not be bothered about it, you could take legal action against such activity if you wished because that list is implicitly copyrighted (at least in any country which is a signatory to the Berne Convention, and assuming that it's an original work) at the point at which it is fixed in a tangible medium (e.g., written on paper).
:-)
Now, whether or not you'd have much to sue about is another issue (the value of that shopping list is probably negligible).
IANAL, etc., but I can search Google.
What does a claim of "...most significant..." have to do with security?
80-column cards with rectangular chads are the fault of IBM -- UNIVAC had 90-column punch cards with round chads. :-)
Even back when I was starting out as a programmer (in 1988), it was assumed that each of us would be spending a certain amount of time training ourselves. My employer back then was nice enough to give us some paid time during the day for OJT (On-the-Job Training), at least when there weren't higher-priority things to do, but sometimes I ended up reading manuals at home because I didn't have the time to do so at work.
It'll vary by employer, of course, and often each manager will have their own policy w.r.t. OJT eevn within a single organization. If people expect a job to be done right, they should allow a certain amount of time for reading, online studying, or formal coursework, but I'm not sure you should "expect" that. Some organizations have more long-term focus than others, and employee development helps the company in the long run, but sometimes it's hard to justify the time spent that way when there are fires to fight and clients to feed.
This is what I see:
57.250.242.249
Your IP address has scored 0. This is ranked #5531 of the 5531 IPs spotted so far.
Who says this managers actions had anything to do with the team being successful? It is a possibility that his underlings were getting things done in spite of his actions.
He says where would be no plural in Latin.
In English, he says, the plural would be "viruses"...
My ISP has used Postini for a couple of years, and the filters are highly customizable and can be tweaked to a certain extent or turned off completely. Postini also provides the ability to create a white list (including mailing lists) and/or a black list, so you can deal with false positives or negatives and eventually eliminate them.
:-)
Postini filters out between 200 and 300 messages per day for me, and I haven't seen a false positive in the trap for several months now. That ain't bad.
click me
The economy, at least in the US, is tremendously varied from state to state. Some metro areas where large companies laid off hundreds (or thousands) of IT folks over the past few years are still difficult areas in which to find IT employment, since the local job market is still relatively saturated with experienced people seeking work. Other areas were far more fortunate and are able to provide job seekers with more legitimate opportunities or with less competition for those positions.
Anyone who says that finding a position is "no problem" is not being very realistic, though, at least in my opinion. It can still be a multi-month process even for those who have the best skillsets and abilities -- a lot depends on specific circumstances.
That's right. TSR - Tactical Studies Rules, the folks who created Dungeons and Dragons. :-)
Frequent updates are necessary, especially when it comes to networked systems.
When it comes to systems which are exposed to the outside world, you mean, or perhaps to potentially hostile users.
For systems like dedicated fileservers which are safely hidden behind a firewall, I'm not so sure that system updates or patches are all that important.
I agree. People understand the concept of a notebook that has lots of pages, so let them have one. :-)
I also think a lot of the default UI elements on modern desktops (scroll bars, icons, and overlapping windows for starters) are overkill for a significant number of users.
If they don't ever use two programs at once, and if they have a large enough screen to view a whole page at a time, then why confuse them by scattering strange graphical elements all over the screen that they might never care about?
Many older boxes *had* no peripheral storage (disk, drum) at all -- just magnetic core memory and some means of feeding cmoputer instructions and data in and out (usually a static medium such as punched cards, tape, or switches resident on the main panel).
Because of this, the term "memory" made sense -- it was the only place where the machine could dynamically store information or code in a manner which was easily accessible to the CPU, and in that sense it was roughly analogous to a human's brain. You fed the computer a program to run and perhaps some accompanying data, it remembered that program and associated data long enough to process it, and then it replaced that code/data with other code/data when the next processing task came along.
When long-term storage came along and two different dynamic storoge areas becamse commonly available, the term made somewhat less sense unless you differentiate CPU-addressible storage from peripheral storage and call the former "memory" (since the main CPU/brain of the system can only see that type of storage directly).
The word "system" (short for "computer system") traditionally includes all of the hardware and software elements that make up the computer being referred to.
The fact that some of the extraneous peripherals don't fit in the main system box (that's why they're "peripheral" elements) doesn't lessen the fact that most of the system is included within the main case.
Because of this, using "system" to refer to the case and all hardware/software inside of it isn't all that much of a stretch.
Calling the entire thing a "CPU" is more complicated and potentially less correct because some systems have more than one type of processor (remember the days of CPUs and math coprocessors? Now consider the smart elements on your disk controller(s) and video card(s)), so the term "CPU" has usually referred to the main system processor (Central Processing Unit).
It turned inside out ... and then it exploded. :-)
Mute is your friend. Who uses sound at work?
That's one of the reasons why many companies (like major airlines) do their own in-house software development. That way they can create software in their own way and on their own schedule without having sales weenies interfering with the process, creating unworkable release dates, etc.
NTFS is not documented in a way that developers can use, and it's also been a constantly changing target over the years. That's why the drivers are considered "experimental" -- the reverse-engineering required to verify the accurace of the drivers is a trial-and-error process.
Why doesn't Microsoft open up NTFS? Because they don't believe in interoperability.
How was this behavior different from the conquests that took place in Europe, Asia, Africa, or any other region of the world at various points in history?
:-) :-)
When a more advanced (technologically, not necessarily in other ways) civilization starts to explore and encounters a less advanced civilization, the latter is almost always adversely impacted by the encounter. Don't you play Risk?
Seriously (and sadly), though, that seems to be the way Homo Sapiens operates regardless of the geographical or chronological location at which the encounter occurs. We aren't always as enlightened or "civilized" as we like to think we are.
What does your "technical interview process" involve?
More to the point: are you looking for people who possess a particular skillset *now* to work on projects for you in the short term, or are you looking for people with more generalized IT or technical experience who might be a better long-term investment?
The former is a head-hunter approach to employees (assuming that people are plug-n-play and basing quality assessments on their ability to perform rote memorization or limit themselves to a fairly limited set of specific technologies), but it might make your search for quality people far more difficult than it could be.
Lay offs were literally in the millions.
That's why I still know a few IT folks who are experienced and competent but who are still bouncing from short-term contract to short-term contract (when they can get them).
With so many people looking for work, it takes a long time to reabsorb them into the ranks of the employed again.
The timed skills test will weed out the unskilled, but it will also weed out some tremendously talented people who might not currently have what you need but could pick it up in a matter of months, weeks, or even days.
If your search is for long-term employees, are those really people you want to eliminate from consideration?
Assuming a single point of human origin, 99.9999% of the human population on this planet has an immigrant at some point in their history.
Probably things like disease, unstable political situations, difficulty of obtaining work visas, etc. Or maybe such a concept is too far outside their comfort zone to consider.
I know I would have to think long and hard before moving outside the US, even if I knew that there were no inherent risks. My friends and family are here, and I like the community in which I live.