That analysis isn't quite right as Stephen Harper(current PM) has done a fair bit of boat rocking with his far right agenda etc. That asshole has undone some 30+ years of relative progress in just a few short years.
He is very willing to bend over for any US agreements however. Mostly because he's busy pointing at the US(the southern US in particular) as an example for Canada to follow, as though thats a good idea. He slacked up on that part however after their economy collapsed and ours mostly just dipped and leveled out rather than collapsing.
Thats not possible for a lot of people. Particularly for the introverted Programmer. Yes, I know not all of them fall into that category but a good percentage do, and large percentage of your top 10% of best employees to get results are in that category.
Yes, this is my point exactly. They've also probably skipped over a few otherwise qualified candidates because they didn't have the proper thing they were looking for in the education/experience sections.
Also, everyone, everywhere, seems to be looking for 5+ years experience. That doesn't happen. Yes if you're looking for a project manager or something, 5 years experience is a good qualification to look for but usually then they'll tack on "in Project Management" which again, isn't going to happen. Instead the 5 years experience is something like "senior programmer" or some such.
Perfectly valid to have those there, but its best to have a "Skills" section on your resume. I only read the rest if I'm forced to via it not being there. Well, I read the cover letter too after I check for necessary skill set, or educational qualifications/experience.
In a well built resume I can check your skill set immediately, then read your cover letter to see if you're serious about the position at all and potentially get some background as to why you are interested, then cross check your education and your experience in more detail. The first look at education/experience is just a cursory glance to see if its in any way related to the position you are applying for. However a good skill section and a cover letter that details the reason you're interested in the position will usually qualify you for a quick phone call at the very least, even if the rest doesn't match up. Which gives YOU a chance to expand on how you acquired skills etc that do not line up with your education/work experience, or in the specific case you mention, how you have at least somewhat kept up your skills over the years.
I mean, 3 years of a CS Degree 10 years ago and not really having used much of it since professionally is fine for me if you're looking to get into a field that is CS oriented after all those years, but you need to have a good reason for not having used the degree and a good reason for me to believe that you have kept your skills at least somewhat brushed up so that I know you'll be up to speed again within a month or so.
Oh, and if anyone has actually read all of this, here's another free piece of advice that will help: If I see reference names and telephone numbers printed on your resume, I will throw it in the garbage immediately regardless of other qualifications, the only exception being if I'm just grabbing a resume for a very low level position and I'm barely even reading the thing. Otherwise, in the garbage it goes. Someone may scream that I can't discriminate against someone for something so simple, but I can. If you're sending out resumes chances are you've sent out a lot, and a lot of copies of those folks names. I don't mind getting a call for a reference for someone at all, but if I get 10 in a week my patience and the quality of their review is going down very very fast. It shows a lack of respect for the person whom you have asked to put in a good word for you in getting another job - not a good thing.
If you absolutely must brag about your references from previous jobs put a little (Reference(s) Available) after the work experience as applicable, then include a references section with a "References available upon request" as the only item there. Don't follow this advice if its a job advert specifically asking for references of course, some HR girl/guy has been given instructions to get references at that point and may dump your resume if they're not there. Even then though its best to leave the resume as is and include the references on a separate paper.
It is a real issue, but HR is the most massive problem in the IT sector today. They get a list of requirements and filter based on those. Many of the folks that have those requirements that are unemployed are unemployed for good reason. There are however a whole slew of people that could do the job that don't have exactly those requirements that get thrown in the trash by many an HR clerk.
In my experience the above is the leading cause of IT understaffing. Personally I look for a "Skills" section on a resume, and test the claimed skills in an interview. If they can get past my cursory test they're worth a shot, if they are just good at BSing then its obvious within a month, or at least well within their 3 month probationary period. You get more quality employees that are actually interested in what they are doing that way. Of course you end up interviewing more complete idiots as well, but its no loss, as you were going to interview (approximately, again, in my experience) the same amount of unsuitable candidates regardless.
Its partly a problem of the jargon too. Most of the HR folks aren't going to have a clue how your previous job relates to this one or how your own pet projects relate to the job you are applying for, but for an engineer say, they realize that working as building designer for 5 years necessarily includes that you have a lot of civil engineering requirements even if you don't have a degree in civil engineering. If you have 10 years experience working in C with some minor experience in Java but the job requires almost pure Java, the HR girl/guy likely doesn't have a clue how the skills could be transferable and will dump you in favor of someone with a college/uni degree that focused on Java at some point, meanwhile they end up firing the guy because he cheated his way through school and doesn't actually have a clue.
Thats not really an anecdote. That happens all the time. I've had cops respond to a B&E alarm at my place and be on the way with the dogs and everything but then get a man hiding with a shotgun report and have to take off before they can do anything. For something like a B&E they know they can come back to it, but if they've got someone pulled over for a DUI they can't process him, they have to go, so he will get off with the crime.
They specifically(at least here) receive instructions to let whoever it is go for anything non-life-threatening in order to respond to a situation that IS life threatening. Which makes perfect sense to me.
Careful with the broad brush, there. I've met MBAs who were well-trained to run a business, and I've met others who just got their ticket punched from a "name brand" school who were somewhat worse than useless.
-jcr
I haven't met any of those people. The good MBAs that I HAVE seen have an MBA pretty much as an afterthought. They were already good managers that came up from a different background. Engineering, IT, something like that.
The rest can often negotiate well and make decent business decisions but the majority of the problem with them is they think management is everything and that they don't have to listen to their employees, even when the employees are saying "Listen, theres a bridge up ahead thats only half done. At the rate you're going, when you get to it, you're going to smash into the cliff wall on the opposite side of the gap"
Often the MBAs will feel their authority is being threatened by something like that as well because in a good amount of cases their underlings are smarter than they are, if not as well trained in powerpoint. In this case the MBA over reacts to something small that someone brings to their attention, and next time it just doesn't get brought to their attention, then the MBA blames worker X and moves up the ranks.
I've met an MBA who moved up the ranks at a fairly large corporation this way, he wasn't at the top at that point, but very close to it and by all indicators going to get it when the opportunity arose. He knew almost nothing about his companies product. I don't mean knowing technical details, though at that point he should have been able to answer a few technical questions well enough to at least satisfy the average joe, but basic functions of the product.
The CEO of that company on the other hand had a technical background and could answer almost anything you wanted to know, and that is largely responsible for its success. I'm shorting stock in the company if I hear he's leaving.
There are outliers of course, I think I may have met one a year or so ago but its too early in his career to tell. The SNR is just so bad that I haven't met the folks you are talking about.
You're making a case here that MBAs are actually supposed to have a purpose besides attempting to further their own career and screwing over anyone and everyone in their path to do so. Said case does not exist. An MBA for training focuses almost entirely on skills required for those two above goals, there is no technical skill imparted and no technical skills tested. Therefore your MBA's come out of their programs with very little value for actually knowing something about the jobs of the people they are managing and end up either looking good enough on an interview to start making colossal mistakes in a management position somewhere, or inept enough that the interview is actually at McDonalds.
The really good MBAs can manage to blame all mistakes on someone else while making themselves look good at the same time. These are what usually rise the ranks into CEO territory, and are all largely responsible for the utter mess that the economy is in right now.
Now, there are the select few that don't fit that description. Those people either end up being one of the very few stellar CEO's or are too good at their jobs and not good enough at politicking and work in middle management somewhere for the duration of their careers.
You actually hit the nail on the head for #2 and #3 at least
haha
Also, here, and in many parts of the world I am sure, a good many prostitutes have chosen their profession above fast food work. That should really tell you something.
I thought their budget was in the 10b range, which would put it closer to 1/10th of a penny. I wouildn't call that extremely tiny fraction of a penny, but thats 1/1000th of your tax dollar. or 0.1% of the budget total. I'm going to have to agree with you yelling at the DoD for wastage instead.
You do realize that the packets used for the most basic ping test are a few bits of an image of a topless pin up model, right?
Porn joined the internet party in the form of BBS's before the internet was even the internet. I have a record of the file transfer of a single playboy playmate image from 1987. Its the first porno I have a record of on the internet(what was the internet at the time), I keep it for nostalgic purposes, plus she's hot.
There is also a very good argument to be made that the internet would have taken a lot longer to go graphical at all if it wasn't for porn.
Also, didn't someone find ascii porn on like the second Univac system ever built?
Its not necessarily any/better/ but it can be made easier to use. Put in skype uname/pwd in router setup wizard and never have to touch anything else, plug in the phone, push in the wireless network password and presto, done. Makes the skype phones cheaper since most everything could be handled router side and you can easily bundle it with 3 or 4 handsets like a lot of cordless phone sets come bundled now.
Plus people are familiar with routers. Someone that might be a bit scared of wasting money on a skype phone might not be as afraid of something that more or less functions exactly as the phone set they already have.
The reasons for the market potential are many and varied but they are there, you just have to think about it for a minute and realize that most of the market is outside of the slashdot readership.
However I for one would buy a bundled, easy to configure setup that costs a lot less than skype phones do nowadays.
I agree on maxtor but also have had the opposite experience with WD. I had one fail but it gave me plenty of warning before it did so I snagged all the data off it before I slagged it.
On the other hand I have a 10 year old 80gb maxtor drive thats been reading/writing almost ever since I bought it and it won't die. The day I unplug it is probably the day it'll die.
Seagate however is so far my worst experience by a long shot. I had some old drives in the 2-40gb range years back that were pretty decent from them but I've had 6 250gb, 1 160gb, 3 500gb and a 1tb drive fail within 3 months from them. thats out of a total of about 20 seagate drives.
Really? I'm hoping they add built in Skype functionality to their routers. Cordless phones with the router as the base. Shit they could even bundle it. The market potential is HUGE.
This is like the Net Neutrality folks yelling for net neutrality and the big wigs at the telecoms going "Shit, we can do that? Why aren't we doing that? We need to do that!"
Sony has enough bad ideas already.
Also that other solution would probably have a bug included that bricked the PS3 if there was a power outage or something knowing Sony.
Its like a fat hooker you picked up while drunk with free syphilis and gonorrhea that cries after she's had sex then won't leave after you pay her twice to do so once you've sobered up.
I don't know whats worse, the fact that he's a nutso that took hostages or the fact that I just read his web site and actually partly agree with some of the things he said...
I get AM signals from Russia in Newfoundland, Canada sometimes due to the extraordinary range and a trick of the signal bouncing off the atmosphere. Its real quiet and a bit fuzzy but its understandable. At least, it would be if I spoke Russian.
FM gets fuzzy more than 100km from the transmitter.
I can't see that much spalling happening considering everything is being stabilized by the surrounding mountainside and its only rated for 6 meter penetration which should contain the blasts damage to within the first 20m probably. 10m of granite is still a lot of granite.
RTFA, it was not a FOIA request. That may have in fact been much more successful. It was a subpoena request for information based on trumped up(invalid) fraud charges. However a FOIA request would have been much less politically advantageous if it went through, which is all that this whole thing was really about, he wasn't looking for evidence he was looking to be able to smear the guys name with the fact that there may have been enough evidence against him to even start a full scale legally backed investigation.
You should be thanking this judge for setting this idiot in his place and not allowing him to abuse the legal system and your tax dollars purely for his own political gain.
It is also still left open for the guy to back up his trumped up fraud charges a little better and resubmit the subpoena request.
Sorry if I'm less than sympathetic towards the guy but his entire career reeks of abuse of power to push nonsensical politically advantageous policies while largely ignoring bigger problems. Global warming and its existence isn't even on my top TEN list of things for politicians to be worrying about.
Slashdot Mirror
Once its polished more and can move smaller objects, and do it quickly, then it probably would be a good thing for manufacturing.
I'm not an engineer however, could someone with some experience in the field of chip manufacturing RTFA and weigh in?
That analysis isn't quite right as Stephen Harper(current PM) has done a fair bit of boat rocking with his far right agenda etc. That asshole has undone some 30+ years of relative progress in just a few short years.
He is very willing to bend over for any US agreements however. Mostly because he's busy pointing at the US(the southern US in particular) as an example for Canada to follow, as though thats a good idea. He slacked up on that part however after their economy collapsed and ours mostly just dipped and leveled out rather than collapsing.
Thats not possible for a lot of people. Particularly for the introverted Programmer. Yes, I know not all of them fall into that category but a good percentage do, and large percentage of your top 10% of best employees to get results are in that category.
Yes, this is my point exactly. They've also probably skipped over a few otherwise qualified candidates because they didn't have the proper thing they were looking for in the education/experience sections.
Also, everyone, everywhere, seems to be looking for 5+ years experience. That doesn't happen. Yes if you're looking for a project manager or something, 5 years experience is a good qualification to look for but usually then they'll tack on "in Project Management" which again, isn't going to happen. Instead the 5 years experience is something like "senior programmer" or some such.
Perfectly valid to have those there, but its best to have a "Skills" section on your resume. I only read the rest if I'm forced to via it not being there. Well, I read the cover letter too after I check for necessary skill set, or educational qualifications/experience.
In a well built resume I can check your skill set immediately, then read your cover letter to see if you're serious about the position at all and potentially get some background as to why you are interested, then cross check your education and your experience in more detail. The first look at education/experience is just a cursory glance to see if its in any way related to the position you are applying for. However a good skill section and a cover letter that details the reason you're interested in the position will usually qualify you for a quick phone call at the very least, even if the rest doesn't match up. Which gives YOU a chance to expand on how you acquired skills etc that do not line up with your education/work experience, or in the specific case you mention, how you have at least somewhat kept up your skills over the years.
I mean, 3 years of a CS Degree 10 years ago and not really having used much of it since professionally is fine for me if you're looking to get into a field that is CS oriented after all those years, but you need to have a good reason for not having used the degree and a good reason for me to believe that you have kept your skills at least somewhat brushed up so that I know you'll be up to speed again within a month or so.
Oh, and if anyone has actually read all of this, here's another free piece of advice that will help:
If I see reference names and telephone numbers printed on your resume, I will throw it in the garbage immediately regardless of other qualifications, the only exception being if I'm just grabbing a resume for a very low level position and I'm barely even reading the thing. Otherwise, in the garbage it goes. Someone may scream that I can't discriminate against someone for something so simple, but I can. If you're sending out resumes chances are you've sent out a lot, and a lot of copies of those folks names. I don't mind getting a call for a reference for someone at all, but if I get 10 in a week my patience and the quality of their review is going down very very fast. It shows a lack of respect for the person whom you have asked to put in a good word for you in getting another job - not a good thing.
If you absolutely must brag about your references from previous jobs put a little (Reference(s) Available) after the work experience as applicable, then include a references section with a "References available upon request" as the only item there. Don't follow this advice if its a job advert specifically asking for references of course, some HR girl/guy has been given instructions to get references at that point and may dump your resume if they're not there. Even then though its best to leave the resume as is and include the references on a separate paper.
It is a real issue, but HR is the most massive problem in the IT sector today. They get a list of requirements and filter based on those. Many of the folks that have those requirements that are unemployed are unemployed for good reason. There are however a whole slew of people that could do the job that don't have exactly those requirements that get thrown in the trash by many an HR clerk.
In my experience the above is the leading cause of IT understaffing. Personally I look for a "Skills" section on a resume, and test the claimed skills in an interview. If they can get past my cursory test they're worth a shot, if they are just good at BSing then its obvious within a month, or at least well within their 3 month probationary period. You get more quality employees that are actually interested in what they are doing that way. Of course you end up interviewing more complete idiots as well, but its no loss, as you were going to interview (approximately, again, in my experience) the same amount of unsuitable candidates regardless.
Its partly a problem of the jargon too. Most of the HR folks aren't going to have a clue how your previous job relates to this one or how your own pet projects relate to the job you are applying for, but for an engineer say, they realize that working as building designer for 5 years necessarily includes that you have a lot of civil engineering requirements even if you don't have a degree in civil engineering. If you have 10 years experience working in C with some minor experience in Java but the job requires almost pure Java, the HR girl/guy likely doesn't have a clue how the skills could be transferable and will dump you in favor of someone with a college/uni degree that focused on Java at some point, meanwhile they end up firing the guy because he cheated his way through school and doesn't actually have a clue.
Thats not really an anecdote. That happens all the time. I've had cops respond to a B&E alarm at my place and be on the way with the dogs and everything but then get a man hiding with a shotgun report and have to take off before they can do anything. For something like a B&E they know they can come back to it, but if they've got someone pulled over for a DUI they can't process him, they have to go, so he will get off with the crime.
They specifically(at least here) receive instructions to let whoever it is go for anything non-life-threatening in order to respond to a situation that IS life threatening. Which makes perfect sense to me.
Careful with the broad brush, there. I've met MBAs who were well-trained to run a business, and I've met others who just got their ticket punched from a "name brand" school who were somewhat worse than useless.
-jcr
I haven't met any of those people. The good MBAs that I HAVE seen have an MBA pretty much as an afterthought. They were already good managers that came up from a different background. Engineering, IT, something like that.
The rest can often negotiate well and make decent business decisions but the majority of the problem with them is they think management is everything and that they don't have to listen to their employees, even when the employees are saying "Listen, theres a bridge up ahead thats only half done. At the rate you're going, when you get to it, you're going to smash into the cliff wall on the opposite side of the gap"
Often the MBAs will feel their authority is being threatened by something like that as well because in a good amount of cases their underlings are smarter than they are, if not as well trained in powerpoint. In this case the MBA over reacts to something small that someone brings to their attention, and next time it just doesn't get brought to their attention, then the MBA blames worker X and moves up the ranks.
I've met an MBA who moved up the ranks at a fairly large corporation this way, he wasn't at the top at that point, but very close to it and by all indicators going to get it when the opportunity arose. He knew almost nothing about his companies product. I don't mean knowing technical details, though at that point he should have been able to answer a few technical questions well enough to at least satisfy the average joe, but basic functions of the product.
The CEO of that company on the other hand had a technical background and could answer almost anything you wanted to know, and that is largely responsible for its success. I'm shorting stock in the company if I hear he's leaving.
There are outliers of course, I think I may have met one a year or so ago but its too early in his career to tell. The SNR is just so bad that I haven't met the folks you are talking about.
You're making a case here that MBAs are actually supposed to have a purpose besides attempting to further their own career and screwing over anyone and everyone in their path to do so. Said case does not exist. An MBA for training focuses almost entirely on skills required for those two above goals, there is no technical skill imparted and no technical skills tested. Therefore your MBA's come out of their programs with very little value for actually knowing something about the jobs of the people they are managing and end up either looking good enough on an interview to start making colossal mistakes in a management position somewhere, or inept enough that the interview is actually at McDonalds.
The really good MBAs can manage to blame all mistakes on someone else while making themselves look good at the same time. These are what usually rise the ranks into CEO territory, and are all largely responsible for the utter mess that the economy is in right now.
Now, there are the select few that don't fit that description. Those people either end up being one of the very few stellar CEO's or are too good at their jobs and not good enough at politicking and work in middle management somewhere for the duration of their careers.
You actually hit the nail on the head for #2 and #3 at least
haha
Also, here, and in many parts of the world I am sure, a good many prostitutes have chosen their profession above fast food work. That should really tell you something.
I thought their budget was in the 10b range, which would put it closer to 1/10th of a penny. I wouildn't call that extremely tiny fraction of a penny, but thats 1/1000th of your tax dollar. or 0.1% of the budget total. I'm going to have to agree with you yelling at the DoD for wastage instead.
You do realize that the packets used for the most basic ping test are a few bits of an image of a topless pin up model, right?
Porn joined the internet party in the form of BBS's before the internet was even the internet. I have a record of the file transfer of a single playboy playmate image from 1987. Its the first porno I have a record of on the internet(what was the internet at the time), I keep it for nostalgic purposes, plus she's hot.
There is also a very good argument to be made that the internet would have taken a lot longer to go graphical at all if it wasn't for porn.
Also, didn't someone find ascii porn on like the second Univac system ever built?
Its not necessarily any /better/ but it can be made easier to use. Put in skype uname/pwd in router setup wizard and never have to touch anything else, plug in the phone, push in the wireless network password and presto, done. Makes the skype phones cheaper since most everything could be handled router side and you can easily bundle it with 3 or 4 handsets like a lot of cordless phone sets come bundled now.
Plus people are familiar with routers. Someone that might be a bit scared of wasting money on a skype phone might not be as afraid of something that more or less functions exactly as the phone set they already have.
The reasons for the market potential are many and varied but they are there, you just have to think about it for a minute and realize that most of the market is outside of the slashdot readership.
However I for one would buy a bundled, easy to configure setup that costs a lot less than skype phones do nowadays.
I agree on maxtor but also have had the opposite experience with WD. I had one fail but it gave me plenty of warning before it did so I snagged all the data off it before I slagged it.
On the other hand I have a 10 year old 80gb maxtor drive thats been reading/writing almost ever since I bought it and it won't die. The day I unplug it is probably the day it'll die.
Seagate however is so far my worst experience by a long shot. I had some old drives in the 2-40gb range years back that were pretty decent from them but I've had 6 250gb, 1 160gb, 3 500gb and a 1tb drive fail within 3 months from them. thats out of a total of about 20 seagate drives.
Really? I'm hoping they add built in Skype functionality to their routers. Cordless phones with the router as the base. Shit they could even bundle it. The market potential is HUGE.
Please, please don't give them ideas.
This is like the Net Neutrality folks yelling for net neutrality and the big wigs at the telecoms going "Shit, we can do that? Why aren't we doing that? We need to do that!"
Sony has enough bad ideas already.
Also that other solution would probably have a bug included that bricked the PS3 if there was a power outage or something knowing Sony.
No.
Its like a fat hooker you picked up while drunk with free syphilis and gonorrhea that cries after she's had sex then won't leave after you pay her twice to do so once you've sobered up.
I don't know whats worse, the fact that he's a nutso that took hostages or the fact that I just read his web site and actually partly agree with some of the things he said...
Wow. Just wow.
I get AM signals from Russia in Newfoundland, Canada sometimes due to the extraordinary range and a trick of the signal bouncing off the atmosphere. Its real quiet and a bit fuzzy but its understandable. At least, it would be if I spoke Russian.
FM gets fuzzy more than 100km from the transmitter.
Doesn't always work that way, and birth control isn't 100% effective.
Then theres always that night that the two of you go out to a party have a few too many and just forget.
Real life usually isn't to plan.
Windows user is middle of the road. He has brains and money but not enough of either.
I can't see that much spalling happening considering everything is being stabilized by the surrounding mountainside and its only rated for 6 meter penetration which should contain the blasts damage to within the first 20m probably. 10m of granite is still a lot of granite.
30 meters of granite is approximately equivalent to 30 meters of concrete. I'd say you'd be dusty and a bit banged up but otherwise absolutely fine.
Its nice to see mods that don't mod based on political bias. [/sarcasm]
+1 insightful for someone that didn't even read the summary? Really?
The -1 to me obviously makes his opinion more valid as well. Mhmmm.
RTFA, it was not a FOIA request. That may have in fact been much more successful. It was a subpoena request for information based on trumped up(invalid) fraud charges. However a FOIA request would have been much less politically advantageous if it went through, which is all that this whole thing was really about, he wasn't looking for evidence he was looking to be able to smear the guys name with the fact that there may have been enough evidence against him to even start a full scale legally backed investigation.
You should be thanking this judge for setting this idiot in his place and not allowing him to abuse the legal system and your tax dollars purely for his own political gain.
It is also still left open for the guy to back up his trumped up fraud charges a little better and resubmit the subpoena request.
Sorry if I'm less than sympathetic towards the guy but his entire career reeks of abuse of power to push nonsensical politically advantageous policies while largely ignoring bigger problems. Global warming and its existence isn't even on my top TEN list of things for politicians to be worrying about.