Don't you realize now that FB has gone public, the people that matter have already made their money?
Any further profits are just gravy now. Watch as things get worse and worse as the second and third waves come to feed at the trough. And when the hogs have been fully slopped, it's gonna be straight down the toilet.
And when they finally go down for good, getting your data off of MegaUpload's servers is going to look like a walk in the park compared to trying to retrieve all your photos, videos, inane ramblings, etc. from FB.
If you are trying to pick up girls, and they all ask if you have Facebook, and when you say no and ask for the phone number, just never ever give it to you... how long will you stand it, go home, and fap to porn... again? Hm?
How blind or forever alone are you, that you haven't realized that there isn't really any choice.
Willingly... as in: You have the choice sign up, or be forever alone.
If you really think that not having FB is what's keeping you from getting laid...gosh, I just don't know what to say except you're doing it wrong.
These spare parts were always commodities, and as soon as Compaq came along you could put an IBM board into a Compaq and vice-versa with no problem whatever.
That's not quite true. The original Compaq PCs were *not* plug compatible with the original IBM PCs. Also, IBM moved beyond the ISA bus to MCA bus, which was, most certainly, proprietary. At the same time, Compaq was pushing the EISA bus which was almost as (un)successful (at least in consumer terms -- the Corps bought lots of MCA and EISA hardware) as the MCA bus.
But I guess that was so long ago you've forgotten the bus wars.
At this point, I'm of the opinion that you and I are in violent agreement.:)
The only nit I'd pick is that your gun sale analogy isn't a very good one.
Since the shrink-wrap EULA (AFAIK) states that you agree not to export the device to countries on the prohibited list, Apple isn't liable (IANAL either) if the customer does so.
Even so, comparing the purchase of an iPad which *might* at some future time be exported to a bad(TM) place, and selling a gun to someone who is threatening to kill someone with it ain't the same ballpark, it ain't the same league, it ain't even the same fuckin' sport! (with apologies to Quentin Tarantino).
Correct. I conflated two different reports of customers being turned away. There was a separate case involving an Iranian on a student visa that was mentioned in the articles, and I apparently confused the two. That was an error on my part.
That said, the article also report:
"When we said 'Farsi, I'm from Iran,' he said, 'I just can't sell this to you. Our countries have bad relations,'" Sabet said.
So it's reasonable to believe that she may also be an Iranian citizen in addition to an American since she said she's from Iran. Even if she isn't, for purposes of exports to an embargoed country, it wouldn't matter. Worst case scenario, I'm outright incorrect (which is quite likely), but it still doesn't change anything if she was planning to sending it or bringing it into Iran.
Right or wrong, on second reading, your comments were understandable and stemmed from a reasonable reading of a poorly written TFA.
However, I disagree with your conclusion. I do not believe that the sales person should have taken that tack. If the salesperson was concerned about the legality of the sale, he should have verbally confirmed (in English) with at least one witness present, whether or not the customer wanted to export the device to Iran.
If she was dumb enough to say yes, then he can take appropriate action. If she said "no" and he didn't believe her, he can still contact the authorities. Last time I checked, it's not a retail store employee's role to enforce ITAR regulations.
At this point, it's just his word against hers as to what was actually said (in Farsi) in front of him.
Even though she admitted later that she wanted it for a cousin in Iran, there's no evidence that he verified that before refusing the sale.
All that said, as I mentioned previously, the Apple Store (or any other private business) can refuse to do business with anyone for any reason. However, especially since two different incidents happened recently, it smacks of discrimination which is bad PR for Apple. Which is why (IMHO) the Apple apologists are getting their knickers in a twist over "following the law."
I think we both could do with some better reading comprehension. In your case, you apparently missed this in the articles (emphasis mine):
"When we said 'Farsi, I'm from Iran,' he said, 'I just can't sell this to you. Our countries have bad relations,'" Sabet said.
The person was from Iran according to their own quote in the article, so I did get that correct, though that does not, of course, preclude them from also being an American citizen, so it is possible that we're both correct about their citizenship. Even if they're not an Iranian citizen, that doesn't change #3 from what I said earlier, and that would apply to everyone, regardless of citizenship.
That said, you weren't alone in missing details, since I apparently conflated two separate reports mentioned in the articles regarding customers being turned away. In the second case, the person had an Iranian citizen with them on a student visa, which I mixed up with the first case in my previous comment. So for that, I do apologize.
Not to worry. Perhaps I missed the part about the customer saying something about exporting the device within earshot of the sales person. If so, I apologize. Then again, the truth is that in the end, a private business can refuse to sell to anyone - for any reason. However, if it's a poor reason, bad press may result.
Refusing to sell a piece of electronics to an American Citizen because they are of Iranian extraction
Comprehension failure. There was no "might". Read the article.
Blowing off the mods I've made on this thread -- due to Double comprehension failure. FTFY above. See quote from TFA below. The refused buyer said she was "from Iran" in Farsi. She did not say that she was going to ship the device to Iran. The moron at the Apple store decided not to sell to someone who said they were from Iran. This is not illegal, just prejudiced and stupid -- given that Ms. Sabet is an American citizen who lives in the US. It means that the Apple store employee is a jerk -- again, not illegal -- but if you take your own advice and read the quoted text (in the TFA) of Apple's export policy, the employee did not follow corporate policy. As such, he is not only a jerk, but a crappy employee.
All that said, no one (at least I haven't seen it on this thread) has produced the text of the embargo law that specifically restricts this technology from being *given* to anyone. AFAIK, the sanctions are specific to companies that knowingly *sell* restricted technologies to foreign governments or the agents thereof. I could be wrong on that -- please correct me if I am.
From TFA:
Sabet [the refused buyer] is a U.S. citizen and a student at the University of Georgia but the iPad was to be a gift for a cousin living in Iran.
"When we said 'Farsi, I'm from Iran,' he said, 'I just can't sell this to you. Our countries have bad relations,'" Sabet said.
Also note that this feature is about implementing offline updates for GNOME. Other spins are not affected, although they could choose to use the same systemd and PackageKit infrastructure, and provide a similar experience.
[emphasis mine]
I guess you could just use a spin that doesn't require this or just not use GNOME.
Except that if you read the summary, this is about more than just secure email. They also want to do it for text messaging, phone calls, and videoconferencing. I think it would be pretty hard to use SMTP for all of that.
I stand..err...sit corrected. In that case I completely agree with OP. P2P is definitely the way to go.
In order to secure such a p2p environment, you'd need to create an environment of trust for DNS and key exchange. That argues for centralized resources -- assuming they can be secured.
It should be decentralized, P2P (with redundancy).
You mean like so?
1. endpoints encrypt email/files/whatever with PGP/GNUPG, etc,etc.>br>
2. Shares public key with receiver via OOB mechanism
3. Endpoints/send receive data via P2P mechanism (SMTP anyone?)
4. Profit!
Brilliant. No one else could ever have thought of that.
This officially answers the question if icann are out of their minds. How does anyone even remotely sober come up with such an utterly stupid idea? IF this would be for some gaming site handing out free beta keys it would OK, even fun. But if you are talking about business in the 6 figure range something a little more sophisticated should be used. Unless of course you want to look like a bunch of script kiddies far out of their league.
Despite the moronic way they went about playing their game it does inject at least two areas of uncertainty into the equation: The pseudo-randomness (not so random -- those with lowest latency and most precise automation tools win) of the arbitrarily timed click, and the unknown amount of time, financial resources, focus and/or too much time on their hands used to prepare themselves.
This slants the field toward those with more resources, which was probably the point anyway. This farce isn't so blatant as, say, creating tiered applications fees with the highest fee payers getting preferential consideration, thus making them look dumb rather than greedy. They get to reward the folks with more resources, who can (already have?) reward them right back. Perhaps they even rent rack space right next to the time-recording servers to their special friends?
Then again, when it comes to humanity, stupidity is generally the odds-on favorite.
The contrast you point out is a perfect example of what I am saying: the cloud is very much more than the above comments and IT has NOT delivered this sort of thing before.
IT has, is and will continue to deliver this sort of thing. The difference is small companies can now utilize the economies that larger companies have been building in-house for a long time. Whether and when these third-party hosted services become ubiquitous is an open question.
I have no doubt, however, that some organizations will keep their IT in-sourced and on company owned and operated infrastructure regardless of the cost benefits or flexibility. Defense contractors, large financial institutions, large law firms, utilities and other companies whose business model requires that they keep a tight rein on core business technology operations.
That's not to say that ancillary services won't be pushed out to third parties in many cases as well. As many others have pointed out on this thread, IT is IT is IT whether it's all in-house, completely hosted by third parties or some combination of the two.
Until such time as a datacenter in the hills of Oregon (or wherever) can provide sub 10ms access to users in Milan or Shenzhen, companies won't outsource their core IT infrastructure to third parties. I suppose that may be coming, but it's not here yet.
All that said, there's much to like about third party SAAS, hosted applications and servers, etc. Small companies can use the same tools as the big boys without breaking the bank on private infrastructure. The only major obstacle is the cost of bandwidth, which can be considerable depending on the needs of the business.
I wonder if this "fear the cloud" meme comes from the possibility that companies will be able to handle their IT needs without actually hiring any IT people? The office I work in is seriously considering moving into a tiny office suite with enough room for just a few people and the rest of us will telecommute. In support of this idea I've been pushing the use of Google Apps for Business.
I'm just wondering, but are IT people afraid of "the cloud" the way that autoworkers are afraid that their factories will be moved to the 3rd world?
As a veteran IT guy, I am blissfully unconcerned about being superannuated because of hosted apps/hosted servers/software as a service/etc. There will always be a need for (no, a shortage of) quality IT people. The people who need to be concerned are those who cannot or will not adapt to changes in both technology and in the business climate.
The text below is part of an email I sent my brother the other day when he suggested that my organization move our IT onto hosted servers (I refuse to use the 'c' word because it's just marketing bullshit). It details some of the reasons why using a hosting provider won't work for my organization. This is the case for my organization -- YMMV. Some of the text has been obfuscated to protect identities:
Why don't we use hosted servers?
Think about it like this, a [industry] business is based on information, confidentiality and good reputation.
How would you like it if you were involved in a [transaction] with, say, a [business] who mishandled funds related to [your stuff]. Your [representative] puts all his files on a hosted EC3 or Azure server and there's a breach. Those documents could well include confidential communications, financial information, etc., etc., etc., Now your confidential information is out in the wild.
What would that say about the trustworthiness of your [representative] and his/her processes?
We employ multi-layered security to ensure that doesn't happen. We control who has physical access to our VM infrastructure as well as network access. Those who have administrative access are all employees of [business]. They're not employees of a third party who has no stake (other than retaining the revenue stream) in the success of the [business].
And I haven't even touched on the network bandwidth issues -- we have to manage and process huge amounts of data, much of which comes from our customers.. If I send you a couple dozen DVDs, will [your hosting provider] load them up onto the server? No? Then we have to transfer huge datasets of customer data across the internet So then we need to increase the size of our network pipes. What's the latency between [provider's] data centers and Europe? Asia?
We get anywhere from sub-millisecond to 10-15ms latency between our offices and our virtual infrastructure. Unless we move our offices into the [provider's] data centers, we won't get anything close to that.
I could go on and on and on.
Bottom line, hosted servers are great. 95% of our servers are VMs. We just host them on our own virtualization infrastructure. If you're a start up or a small company like [other person], it *may* make sense. For medium and large businesses, not so much.
It's all about fitting the infrastructure to the business model.
By asking you to accept a promotion with vastly increased responsibilities without the commensurate remuneration. Essentially, they're saying "Here's a promotion but no raise."
If you feel that the role will have benefits other than monetary ones, then weigh those. If the monetary upside *potential* is good enough and you trust these folks, that's something to consider as well.
But in the end, they're just asking you to do more work and take on more responsibility for the same money. There could be many reasons for this (including their perceptions of your skills/capabilities), but they could also just be cheap bastards. But you'd know better than we do -- you work for these people.
On the other hand, someone entering a company through tech support is likely to run into a different problem: Some companies have mostly on-site tech support, and someone without experience is unlikely to already own a suitable motor vehicle to travel to the customer's site.
Huh? At age 45 I can say that I have never owned a motor vehicle (suitable or otherwise) in my entire life. That's never caused me a moment's issue WRT to getting, performing or keeping a job.
Then again, I live in an area where owning a "suitable" or any motor vehicle is a hindrance rather than a necessity.
It seems to me that if you don't have the means to get to your place of work, you have bigger problems than not having appropriate experience and you should probably move to a place which has appropriate public transportation. Also, unlike your implication, while some jobs do require that you travel to remote locations, many job roles require you to be in a specific location to address issues as they arise. A good example of this would be Help Desk/break fix for corporate IT infrastructure. Not only will that usually keep you in one place, it will also expose you to a wider set of technologies than working tech support for a vendor.
The key point to my initial post, and to technology jobs in general is that there's no substitute for experience. Paying one's dues working help desk or tech support is a great way to get that experience. IMHO.
The whole motor vehicle thing is AFAICT, one big non-sequitur.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't you realize now that FB has gone public, the people that matter have already made their money?
Any further profits are just gravy now. Watch as things get worse and worse as the second and third waves come to feed at the trough. And when the hogs have been fully slopped, it's gonna be straight down the toilet.
And when they finally go down for good, getting your data off of MegaUpload's servers is going to look like a walk in the park compared to trying to retrieve all your photos, videos, inane ramblings, etc. from FB.
If you are trying to pick up girls, and they all ask if you have Facebook, and when you say no and ask for the phone number, just never ever give it to you... how long will you stand it, go home, and fap to porn... again? Hm?
How blind or forever alone are you, that you haven't realized that there isn't really any choice.
Willingly... as in: You have the choice sign up, or be forever alone.
If you really think that not having FB is what's keeping you from getting laid...gosh, I just don't know what to say except you're doing it wrong.
These spare parts were always commodities, and as soon as Compaq came along you could put an IBM board into a Compaq and vice-versa with no problem whatever.
That's not quite true. The original Compaq PCs were *not* plug compatible with the original IBM PCs. Also, IBM moved beyond the ISA bus to MCA bus, which was, most certainly, proprietary. At the same time, Compaq was pushing the EISA bus which was almost as (un)successful (at least in consumer terms -- the Corps bought lots of MCA and EISA hardware) as the MCA bus.
But I guess that was so long ago you've forgotten the bus wars.
Yup. Ten percent uptime is where it's at!
Agreed.
Sure. The text is here: http://law.justia.com/cfr/title31/31-3.1.1.1.14.2.1.4.html
"the exportation, reexportation, sale, or supply" Only one of those words requires that the item is sold. Note the use of the word "or".
Thanks for the link and the clarification.
At this point, I'm of the opinion that you and I are in violent agreement. :)
The only nit I'd pick is that your gun sale analogy isn't a very good one.
Since the shrink-wrap EULA (AFAIK) states that you agree not to export the device to countries on the prohibited list, Apple isn't liable (IANAL either) if the customer does so.
Even so, comparing the purchase of an iPad which *might* at some future time be exported to a bad(TM) place, and selling a gun to someone who is threatening to kill someone with it ain't the same ballpark, it ain't the same league, it ain't even the same fuckin' sport! (with apologies to Quentin Tarantino).
Correct. I conflated two different reports of customers being turned away. There was a separate case involving an Iranian on a student visa that was mentioned in the articles, and I apparently confused the two. That was an error on my part.
That said, the article also report:
"When we said 'Farsi, I'm from Iran,' he said, 'I just can't sell this to you. Our countries have bad relations,'" Sabet said.
So it's reasonable to believe that she may also be an Iranian citizen in addition to an American since she said she's from Iran. Even if she isn't, for purposes of exports to an embargoed country, it wouldn't matter. Worst case scenario, I'm outright incorrect (which is quite likely), but it still doesn't change anything if she was planning to sending it or bringing it into Iran.
Right or wrong, on second reading, your comments were understandable and stemmed from a reasonable reading of a poorly written TFA.
However, I disagree with your conclusion. I do not believe that the sales person should have taken that tack. If the salesperson was concerned about the legality of the sale, he should have verbally confirmed (in English) with at least one witness present, whether or not the customer wanted to export the device to Iran.
If she was dumb enough to say yes, then he can take appropriate action. If she said "no" and he didn't believe her, he can still contact the authorities. Last time I checked, it's not a retail store employee's role to enforce ITAR regulations.
At this point, it's just his word against hers as to what was actually said (in Farsi) in front of him.
Even though she admitted later that she wanted it for a cousin in Iran, there's no evidence that he verified that before refusing the sale.
All that said, as I mentioned previously, the Apple Store (or any other private business) can refuse to do business with anyone for any reason. However, especially since two different incidents happened recently, it smacks of discrimination which is bad PR for Apple. Which is why (IMHO) the Apple apologists are getting their knickers in a twist over "following the law."
I think we both could do with some better reading comprehension. In your case, you apparently missed this in the articles (emphasis mine):
"When we said 'Farsi, I'm from Iran,' he said, 'I just can't sell this to you. Our countries have bad relations,'" Sabet said.
The person was from Iran according to their own quote in the article, so I did get that correct, though that does not, of course, preclude them from also being an American citizen, so it is possible that we're both correct about their citizenship. Even if they're not an Iranian citizen, that doesn't change #3 from what I said earlier, and that would apply to everyone, regardless of citizenship.
That said, you weren't alone in missing details, since I apparently conflated two separate reports mentioned in the articles regarding customers being turned away. In the second case, the person had an Iranian citizen with them on a student visa, which I mixed up with the first case in my previous comment. So for that, I do apologize.
Not to worry. Perhaps I missed the part about the customer saying something about exporting the device within earshot of the sales person. If so, I apologize. Then again, the truth is that in the end, a private business can refuse to sell to anyone - for any reason. However, if it's a poor reason, bad press may result.
2) The person doesn't just have "cultural links to said country", they're a citizen of that country and are studying in America on a visa.
True
false. From TFA:
Sabet is a U.S. citizen and a student at the University of Georgia
2) The person doesn't just have "cultural links to said country", they're a citizen of that country and are studying in America on a visa.
Wrong. The person who was turned away is an American Citizen. You should read the TFA. If you can actually read that is.
Refusing to sell a piece of electronics to an American Citizen because they are of Iranian extraction
Comprehension failure. There was no "might". Read the article.
Blowing off the mods I've made on this thread -- due to Double comprehension failure. FTFY above. See quote from TFA below. The refused buyer said she was "from Iran" in Farsi. She did not say that she was going to ship the device to Iran. The moron at the Apple store decided not to sell to someone who said they were from Iran. This is not illegal, just prejudiced and stupid -- given that Ms. Sabet is an American citizen who lives in the US. It means that the Apple store employee is a jerk -- again, not illegal -- but if you take your own advice and read the quoted text (in the TFA) of Apple's export policy, the employee did not follow corporate policy. As such, he is not only a jerk, but a crappy employee.
All that said, no one (at least I haven't seen it on this thread) has produced the text of the embargo law that specifically restricts this technology from being *given* to anyone. AFAIK, the sanctions are specific to companies that knowingly *sell* restricted technologies to foreign governments or the agents thereof. I could be wrong on that -- please correct me if I am.
From TFA:
Sabet [the refused buyer] is a U.S. citizen and a student at the University of Georgia but the iPad was to be a gift for a cousin living in Iran. "When we said 'Farsi, I'm from Iran,' he said, 'I just can't sell this to you. Our countries have bad relations,'" Sabet said.
[emphasis mine]
Also note that this feature is about implementing offline updates for GNOME. Other spins are not affected, although they could choose to use the same systemd and PackageKit infrastructure, and provide a similar experience.
[emphasis mine]
I guess you could just use a spin that doesn't require this or just not use GNOME.
What rock have you been living under?
Except that if you read the summary, this is about more than just secure email. They also want to do it for text messaging, phone calls, and videoconferencing. I think it would be pretty hard to use SMTP for all of that.
I stand..err...sit corrected. In that case I completely agree with OP. P2P is definitely the way to go.
In order to secure such a p2p environment, you'd need to create an environment of trust for DNS and key exchange. That argues for centralized resources -- assuming they can be secured.
It should be decentralized, P2P (with redundancy).
You mean like so? ,etc.>br>
2. Shares public key with receiver via OOB mechanism
1. endpoints encrypt email/files/whatever with PGP/GNUPG, etc
3. Endpoints/send receive data via P2P mechanism (SMTP anyone?)
4. Profit!
Brilliant. No one else could ever have thought of that.
This officially answers the question if icann are out of their minds. How does anyone even remotely sober come up with such an utterly stupid idea? IF this would be for some gaming site handing out free beta keys it would OK, even fun. But if you are talking about business in the 6 figure range something a little more sophisticated should be used. Unless of course you want to look like a bunch of script kiddies far out of their league.
Despite the moronic way they went about playing their game it does inject at least two areas of uncertainty into the equation: The pseudo-randomness (not so random -- those with lowest latency and most precise automation tools win) of the arbitrarily timed click, and the unknown amount of time, financial resources, focus and/or too much time on their hands used to prepare themselves.
This slants the field toward those with more resources, which was probably the point anyway. This farce isn't so blatant as, say, creating tiered applications fees with the highest fee payers getting preferential consideration, thus making them look dumb rather than greedy. They get to reward the folks with more resources, who can (already have?) reward them right back. Perhaps they even rent rack space right next to the time-recording servers to their special friends?
Then again, when it comes to humanity, stupidity is generally the odds-on favorite.
The contrast you point out is a perfect example of what I am saying: the cloud is very much more than the above comments and IT has NOT delivered this sort of thing before.
IT has, is and will continue to deliver this sort of thing. The difference is small companies can now utilize the economies that larger companies have been building in-house for a long time. Whether and when these third-party hosted services become ubiquitous is an open question.
I have no doubt, however, that some organizations will keep their IT in-sourced and on company owned and operated infrastructure regardless of the cost benefits or flexibility. Defense contractors, large financial institutions, large law firms, utilities and other companies whose business model requires that they keep a tight rein on core business technology operations.
That's not to say that ancillary services won't be pushed out to third parties in many cases as well. As many others have pointed out on this thread, IT is IT is IT whether it's all in-house, completely hosted by third parties or some combination of the two.
Until such time as a datacenter in the hills of Oregon (or wherever) can provide sub 10ms access to users in Milan or Shenzhen, companies won't outsource their core IT infrastructure to third parties. I suppose that may be coming, but it's not here yet.
All that said, there's much to like about third party SAAS, hosted applications and servers, etc. Small companies can use the same tools as the big boys without breaking the bank on private infrastructure. The only major obstacle is the cost of bandwidth, which can be considerable depending on the needs of the business.
I wonder if this "fear the cloud" meme comes from the possibility that companies will be able to handle their IT needs without actually hiring any IT people? The office I work in is seriously considering moving into a tiny office suite with enough room for just a few people and the rest of us will telecommute. In support of this idea I've been pushing the use of Google Apps for Business. I'm just wondering, but are IT people afraid of "the cloud" the way that autoworkers are afraid that their factories will be moved to the 3rd world?
As a veteran IT guy, I am blissfully unconcerned about being superannuated because of hosted apps/hosted servers/software as a service/etc. There will always be a need for (no, a shortage of) quality IT people. The people who need to be concerned are those who cannot or will not adapt to changes in both technology and in the business climate.
Why don't we use hosted servers?
Think about it like this, a [industry] business is based on information, confidentiality and good reputation.
How would you like it if you were involved in a [transaction] with, say, a [business] who mishandled funds related to [your stuff]. Your [representative] puts all his files on a hosted EC3 or Azure server and there's a breach. Those documents could well include confidential communications, financial information, etc., etc., etc., Now your confidential information is out in the wild.
What would that say about the trustworthiness of your [representative] and his/her processes?
We employ multi-layered security to ensure that doesn't happen. We control who has physical access to our VM infrastructure as well as network access. Those who have administrative access are all employees of [business]. They're not employees of a third party who has no stake (other than retaining the revenue stream) in the success of the [business].
And I haven't even touched on the network bandwidth issues -- we have to manage and process huge amounts of data, much of which comes from our customers.. If I send you a couple dozen DVDs, will [your hosting provider] load them up onto the server? No? Then we have to transfer huge datasets of customer data across the internet So then we need to increase the size of our network pipes. What's the latency between [provider's] data centers and Europe? Asia?
We get anywhere from sub-millisecond to 10-15ms latency between our offices and our virtual infrastructure. Unless we move our offices into the [provider's] data centers, we won't get anything close to that.
I could go on and on and on.
Bottom line, hosted servers are great. 95% of our servers are VMs. We just host them on our own virtualization infrastructure. If you're a start up or a small company like [other person], it *may* make sense. For medium and large businesses, not so much.
It's all about fitting the infrastructure to the business model.
By asking you to accept a promotion with vastly increased responsibilities without the commensurate remuneration. Essentially, they're saying "Here's a promotion but no raise."
If you feel that the role will have benefits other than monetary ones, then weigh those. If the monetary upside *potential* is good enough and you trust these folks, that's something to consider as well.
But in the end, they're just asking you to do more work and take on more responsibility for the same money. There could be many reasons for this (including their perceptions of your skills/capabilities), but they could also just be cheap bastards. But you'd know better than we do -- you work for these people.
Grr! shouldn't
Thanks. You're probably right about the last line. I guess I should let the ACs annoy me.
On the other hand, someone entering a company through tech support is likely to run into a different problem: Some companies have mostly on-site tech support, and someone without experience is unlikely to already own a suitable motor vehicle to travel to the customer's site.
Huh? At age 45 I can say that I have never owned a motor vehicle (suitable or otherwise) in my entire life. That's never caused me a moment's issue WRT to getting, performing or keeping a job.
Then again, I live in an area where owning a "suitable" or any motor vehicle is a hindrance rather than a necessity.
It seems to me that if you don't have the means to get to your place of work, you have bigger problems than not having appropriate experience and you should probably move to a place which has appropriate public transportation. Also, unlike your implication, while some jobs do require that you travel to remote locations, many job roles require you to be in a specific location to address issues as they arise. A good example of this would be Help Desk/break fix for corporate IT infrastructure. Not only will that usually keep you in one place, it will also expose you to a wider set of technologies than working tech support for a vendor.
The key point to my initial post, and to technology jobs in general is that there's no substitute for experience. Paying one's dues working help desk or tech support is a great way to get that experience. IMHO.
The whole motor vehicle thing is AFAICT, one big non-sequitur.
I think that was the most poorly written post I've ever done on /. My apologies.