I think the primary component in a lack of minorities in IT is access to technology. And, yes it's silly to suggest that PC at the public library. I attribute my career choice to having PCs in my home that I had total access to; not kiosks with restrictions on availability and built-in security.
But, I also encounter racism in the industry. I've had White Americans flat out laugh in my face when I told them I was a software engineer; after all how can a Black person work with computers? One of my biggest annoyances is the "White Test" I get when IT people try to surreptitiously quiz me to prove that I really am in IT. Usually it's by someone who's not as smart as they think they are which adds to the frustration. I've heard coworkers drop N-bombs at work when they thought I was out of earshot. With all that, can you honestly say the playing field is level?
For all of you writing your speculative posts on what "must" be going on in the industry, how about going out and talking to someone instead of extrapolating from your limited experiences?
I think you're looking at the wrong side of the street. This isn't about the top-end computing power; it's about the efficiencies on the bottom end. So, now you can start churning out laptops and cheap PCs with pedestrian graphics cards that use low power and provide significant performance. No need to take the truck nuts off your Dell, sir.
I have a Facebook account that I *only* use to allow old friends to locate me. I never stay logged in on my account. But, I also like answering programming questions from newbies as a bit of a pay it forward effort. No way will I leave my Facebook account logged in for this crap. I foresee this decision being reversed pretty quickly...unless Facebook dropped some insane amount of cash on them.
And, I don't mean getting busted by the graders. I mean, if you're not really learning the content, how do you get away with not understanding the fundamentals when you get to higher class levels. Seems like it would eventually catch up with you.
When the moveyourmoney.info campaign was in full swing. Bank of America flat out lied to me about my mortgage, defrauded me on escrow fees, and conned me on a car loan. It was so bad I wrote my congressman and senators as well as the BBB.I went so far as to refinance my house to sever all ties to that organization. For some reason, business culture from this country has gone from "take care of our customers" to "squeeze those suckers for every drop of blood, then if they pack up and leave try to kiss and make up."
Been a while since I read up on this case, but as I recall this is the charge against him. Which essentially meant he had sex w/o protection without the consent of his partner.
We wanted to keep a token security force there (3-4 thousand?), but were denied by the Iraqis. And, the withdrawal has been occurring for years now. You make it sound like the Iraqis said "get out" and we backed up 150,000 troops and left. The status of forces disagreement was over the size of the remaining token force of American troops.
We also have about 30-40 thousand troops in theater stationed I believe in Bahrain.
This game has very little of the elements that make Battlefield 2 fans so loyal. I have no clue what marketing "genius" came up with the idea to call a Bad Company sequel the long awaited Battlefield 3 and thought we'd be dumb enough to swallow the bait.
Well, the trade laws we had in place seemed to work just fine for 70 years. The fact is we have an educated workforce, infrastructure, and favorable labor laws that create the markets that everyone in the world wants to sell to.
You can't dispute the fact that we've outsourced our manufacturing base overseas. I bet if our economy didn't go Milton Friedmann and those jobs were still here, you wouldn't see complaining about the labor market. But, I guess a service economy built around tending to the whims of the upper classes should suffice in 21st century America.
The complaints of us peons don't matter. A while back I had some contact with Corporate America and one common theme I heard from their IT departments was they don't really make "democratic" changes to their infrastructure. So, if they get a lot of complaints about a feature or lack thereof, unless it's some media-driven tidal wave it's basically ignored. But, if ONE Big Fish client asks for online banking support it gets done pronto. If you look around you, you'll see this in effect everywhere.
An example of what I'm talking about: There was a piss-ant town bordering KC that really wasn't big enough to be incorporated, but since it sat on a major highway the town would use cops to prey on traffic passing through to the city. People where getting all sorts of BS tickets, a couple miles over the speed limit, driving too slow, crossing lines, etc. Whatever they could to generate revenue for their piss-ant town.
Now, of course people complained and complained a lot. But nothing ever got done. Until, the morons in this little town decided to pull over and ticket a state congressman for crossing the white line (which he said he never did). Said congressman takes it up with his colleagues and passes a bill that says towns may only make a certain percentage of revenue from traffic tickets. Offending incorporated town can no longer fund itself or it's police force, then dissolves; problem solved. Years of public complaints didn't do a damned thing.
There's a huge problem with your analogy. What if you indulged your fantasy of murdering your boss by purchasing videos of people killing their bosses on film? What if thousands of people like you created a viable market for people to murder their bosses and post the videos on-line?
That's the problem with the possession of child porn. The demand for an illegal and harmful activity creates a market for committing a crime and committing it to film. That's not to say that every child molested is being taped, but it does contribute to the problem.
If I have any sort of interaction with any company besides a pure cash transaction, somehow I'm ceding all rights to my information. I get more calls on my landline from 3rd party vendors who've purchased my profile from some company than I do from people I know. I bought a house 4 years ago and my mailbox was stuffed with targeted new homeowner fliers on the first day I opened the mailbox. I filled a prescription with an online pharmacy and now I've got people calling me trying to sell me all kinds of healthcare products. I bought one political magazine prescription (more out of pity than interest) and now I get tons of fliers and ads from special interest groups. I made a few small dollar donations ($20 range) in the last couple elections and now I have politicians from all over the country both calling and writing me for donations!
We need a privacy bill of rights. Opt-in, full disclosure, and deterrent-level fines and fees for breaking the rules.
Use this as an opportunity to contribute what you know to your company. Don't assume that the deficits in your work environment are a result of apathy. With 5 years experience in that environment, you can well be the worker to come up with a proposal or demonstration to upgrade the environment.
Make sure you don't assume that everyone knows or understands what the benefits of the solutions you want to bring to the table are. Lay it out and be prepared to show real-world examples and answer questions. You might get more out of this than just a better work environment. This could be a stellar opportunity for career advancement!
These are supposed to be utility devices that sit between your phone and laptop/PC. Who wants to pay laptop prices for a tool (that you might not use much) besides Apple zealots? Rather than pimping out $500 pads with more features, they need to figure out how to par the manufacturing demands down to $99-$149 dollar devices and let the consumers get a taste for them. That obviously makes them more appealing to the general public.
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I think the primary component in a lack of minorities in IT is access to technology. And, yes it's silly to suggest that PC at the public library. I attribute my career choice to having PCs in my home that I had total access to; not kiosks with restrictions on availability and built-in security.
But, I also encounter racism in the industry. I've had White Americans flat out laugh in my face when I told them I was a software engineer; after all how can a Black person work with computers? One of my biggest annoyances is the "White Test" I get when IT people try to surreptitiously quiz me to prove that I really am in IT. Usually it's by someone who's not as smart as they think they are which adds to the frustration. I've heard coworkers drop N-bombs at work when they thought I was out of earshot. With all that, can you honestly say the playing field is level?
For all of you writing your speculative posts on what "must" be going on in the industry, how about going out and talking to someone instead of extrapolating from your limited experiences?
I can. Looks a lot like the 20 cars in front of me on the drive home.
Fool! Without that alert, how on earth are you going to talk the closest girl to you into impending disaster sex?
Especially if your lab partner has big boobs.
I think you're looking at the wrong side of the street. This isn't about the top-end computing power; it's about the efficiencies on the bottom end. So, now you can start churning out laptops and cheap PCs with pedestrian graphics cards that use low power and provide significant performance. No need to take the truck nuts off your Dell, sir.
I have a Facebook account that I *only* use to allow old friends to locate me. I never stay logged in on my account. But, I also like answering programming questions from newbies as a bit of a pay it forward effort. No way will I leave my Facebook account logged in for this crap. I foresee this decision being reversed pretty quickly...unless Facebook dropped some insane amount of cash on them.
And, I don't mean getting busted by the graders. I mean, if you're not really learning the content, how do you get away with not understanding the fundamentals when you get to higher class levels. Seems like it would eventually catch up with you.
When the moveyourmoney.info campaign was in full swing. Bank of America flat out lied to me about my mortgage, defrauded me on escrow fees, and conned me on a car loan. It was so bad I wrote my congressman and senators as well as the BBB.I went so far as to refinance my house to sever all ties to that organization. For some reason, business culture from this country has gone from "take care of our customers" to "squeeze those suckers for every drop of blood, then if they pack up and leave try to kiss and make up."
For about $19.95/mo*, I can see lots of big discs getting sucked into black holes.
* Torrenters get it free
Been a while since I read up on this case, but as I recall this is the charge against him. Which essentially meant he had sex w/o protection without the consent of his partner.
If they were smart, they would have saved their gold and bought a fel iron reactor in a few levels.
We wanted to keep a token security force there (3-4 thousand?), but were denied by the Iraqis. And, the withdrawal has been occurring for years now. You make it sound like the Iraqis said "get out" and we backed up 150,000 troops and left. The status of forces disagreement was over the size of the remaining token force of American troops.
We also have about 30-40 thousand troops in theater stationed I believe in Bahrain.
This game has very little of the elements that make Battlefield 2 fans so loyal. I have no clue what marketing "genius" came up with the idea to call a Bad Company sequel the long awaited Battlefield 3 and thought we'd be dumb enough to swallow the bait.
Well, the trade laws we had in place seemed to work just fine for 70 years. The fact is we have an educated workforce, infrastructure, and favorable labor laws that create the markets that everyone in the world wants to sell to.
You can't dispute the fact that we've outsourced our manufacturing base overseas. I bet if our economy didn't go Milton Friedmann and those jobs were still here, you wouldn't see complaining about the labor market. But, I guess a service economy built around tending to the whims of the upper classes should suffice in 21st century America.
The complaints of us peons don't matter. A while back I had some contact with Corporate America and one common theme I heard from their IT departments was they don't really make "democratic" changes to their infrastructure. So, if they get a lot of complaints about a feature or lack thereof, unless it's some media-driven tidal wave it's basically ignored. But, if ONE Big Fish client asks for online banking support it gets done pronto. If you look around you, you'll see this in effect everywhere.
An example of what I'm talking about: There was a piss-ant town bordering KC that really wasn't big enough to be incorporated, but since it sat on a major highway the town would use cops to prey on traffic passing through to the city. People where getting all sorts of BS tickets, a couple miles over the speed limit, driving too slow, crossing lines, etc. Whatever they could to generate revenue for their piss-ant town.
Now, of course people complained and complained a lot. But nothing ever got done. Until, the morons in this little town decided to pull over and ticket a state congressman for crossing the white line (which he said he never did). Said congressman takes it up with his colleagues and passes a bill that says towns may only make a certain percentage of revenue from traffic tickets. Offending incorporated town can no longer fund itself or it's police force, then dissolves; problem solved. Years of public complaints didn't do a damned thing.
What, and stifle innovation?
at what point do people say, "hey, this isn't an interesting and enjoyable dining experience. This is pure masochism."?
There's a huge problem with your analogy. What if you indulged your fantasy of murdering your boss by purchasing videos of people killing their bosses on film? What if thousands of people like you created a viable market for people to murder their bosses and post the videos on-line?
That's the problem with the possession of child porn. The demand for an illegal and harmful activity creates a market for committing a crime and committing it to film. That's not to say that every child molested is being taped, but it does contribute to the problem.
If I have any sort of interaction with any company besides a pure cash transaction, somehow I'm ceding all rights to my information. I get more calls on my landline from 3rd party vendors who've purchased my profile from some company than I do from people I know. I bought a house 4 years ago and my mailbox was stuffed with targeted new homeowner fliers on the first day I opened the mailbox. I filled a prescription with an online pharmacy and now I've got people calling me trying to sell me all kinds of healthcare products. I bought one political magazine prescription (more out of pity than interest) and now I get tons of fliers and ads from special interest groups. I made a few small dollar donations ($20 range) in the last couple elections and now I have politicians from all over the country both calling and writing me for donations!
We need a privacy bill of rights. Opt-in, full disclosure, and deterrent-level fines and fees for breaking the rules.
Maybe it's just me, but newborns look pretty gross.
Yeah, now when she tells you to "Go fsck yourself" you'll be more inclined to do so!
It's big-boned
Use this as an opportunity to contribute what you know to your company. Don't assume that the deficits in your work environment are a result of apathy. With 5 years experience in that environment, you can well be the worker to come up with a proposal or demonstration to upgrade the environment.
Make sure you don't assume that everyone knows or understands what the benefits of the solutions you want to bring to the table are. Lay it out and be prepared to show real-world examples and answer questions. You might get more out of this than just a better work environment. This could be a stellar opportunity for career advancement!
These are supposed to be utility devices that sit between your phone and laptop/PC. Who wants to pay laptop prices for a tool (that you might not use much) besides Apple zealots? Rather than pimping out $500 pads with more features, they need to figure out how to par the manufacturing demands down to $99-$149 dollar devices and let the consumers get a taste for them. That obviously makes them more appealing to the general public.