I agree; that only amounts to $25/hour, assuming they didn't make him work overtime. I hope they had the decency to at least pay him in cash or as a contractor so he wouldn't have to report the income for taxes.
Yes, and when you do this, it's fine, because the workers are getting paid for their time and everyone knows the deal from the outset. Expecting people to work for free in exchange for a stupid condo is BS, and should be illegal.
Quite possible. xaoslaad didn't say that your friend had a fucked-up personality, just that it might not be a fit. If the company is full of assholes, and he's not an asshole, then he wouldn't be a good fit. There's a lot of companies like that. As the old saying goes, "birds of a feather flock together", and you frequently see this dynamic in workplaces. You go to one company and everyone's really friendly and great, and you go to another company and everyone has serious personality problems or is an asshole. The assholes don't stick around company #1 because they get fired, not hired in the first place, or don't like that their behavior isn't well-tolerated when they get called out on it. The decent people don't stick around company #2 because they don't like being around assholes and look for a new job ASAP, or they don't get hired because "they're not a team player".
A beachfront condo is nearly worthless if you have to spend the day at work. Whoopee--you get to hear the waves at night after you've been toiling away all day, working for free.
I don't see how this unpaid week-long stint is of any benefit at all to the employee. Sure, it'll help the employer avoid hiring poor performers or people who don't fit into the organization, but what does the employee get out of it? The only benefit for the employee I see is if the candidate is going to have to make a long-distance move to take the job; moving (esp. from out-of-state) incurs significant costs, which can take a while to earn back in paychecks. However, this is really something the employee should consider themselves; it's frequently a good idea to just rent a room or efficiency short-term while you're in your "probationary period" with such a new job, so if it doesn't work out (which could be for all kinds of reasons, not just poor performance on your part; maybe the coworkers are assholes or you find the city to be a cesspool and didn't realize until you had to live there for a while), you can quit the job and go back home without losing much, but still retaining the pay you earned. This goes double if the employer isn't giving you any relocation bonus (which is probably usually the case these days; these used to be common 10+ years ago, but not any more unfortunately).
I think this week-long interview thing is a pile of crap really. They're getting a week of free work out of the candidate in exchange for nothing besides the cost of renting this condo (which they've probably rented long-term to save on costs, and they just stick a new candidate in it every week) and airfare, and the candidate walks away with nothing if he doesn't get the job, except for week in a beachfront condo which isn't all that great when you have to spend all day at the workplace, and not at the condo. The candidate's significant other might be getting a good deal here, but only if they had nothing better to do than spend a week on the beach while their SO was interviewing; if they have their own job or don't want to burn their vacation time this way, it's not such a great deal at all. I think this would be fine, however, if they paid the candidate for their time on an hourly basis like any normal contractor, but this company is probably too cheap to do that. I'm surprised this is even legal actually.
Unfortunately, as an African, you apparently haven't spent enough time on Slashdot to realize that almost no good ever comes from reading comments by Anonymous Cowards, and this place is full of filth when you browse at that level. (Of course, it's still full of assholes even if you exclude all the AC comments, but it's not quite as horrible.)
The idea here is that you go with your significant other, and while s/he's toiling away at this stupid company and working for free all day, you're sitting in the nice beachfront condo they put you up in, relaxing and enjoying the beach, and maybe even getting some nice meals and drinks on the company's dime. Heck, while he's busy programming (assuming it's a he), you can find a short-term boyfriend and have him over at the condo during the day....
Ubuntu is also easily the most popular Linux distro, by far (though this may be changing thanks to Unity), so both our statements could very well be true and not conflicting.
However, Red Hat/Fedora is a big supporter of Gnome, and employs many/most of their most influential developers, such as Jon McCan't. It's pretty obvious that Gnome's intent is to tablet-ify the Linux desktop too, and somehow lure millions of new users to their platform (they're even talking about making their own "Gnome OS" now), so I think it's safe to assume the Red Hat also has this as its goal, or else they wouldn't employ these people and allow them to follow this agenda.
And windows doesn't need support? What about training costs when Win8 with its stupid new Metro UI comes along?
The application thing is the primary real problem. But large companies get their own applications anyway, so they can demand it to be developed for whatever platform they prefer. Lowe's seems to get along just fine with KDE3.
Half those problems are going to apply when Windows 8 hits too. The printer setup in Win8 certainly isn't going to look anything like it did in Win7, and playing movies and music is going to be very different too. If a prominent Linux distro had a version running KDE that worked much like Win7, it'd be easy to get a lot of people to switch, especially business users (who don't give a shit about 3D games nor drivers for them), because then this Linux version would be more like Windows then Windows (8).
"Supplying it in some form" does not equal encouraging users (esp. new users) to use it. New users who just want something stable to get their work done don't want to use something with a radically different, tablet-esque UI, however that's what all the distros are pushing today, and then wondering why "Linux on the desktop" isn't going anywhere. Sure, those distros may supply a crappy version of KDE with no real integration and lots of brokenness (like another poster who complained that OpenSuse's version didn't even have a working network manager, which is unusable if you have a laptop), but they do the same for lots of other DEs too like LXDE and Enlightenment. That isn't going to help the cause of Linux on the desktop. Making KDE the primary, flagship DE and supporting that well, integrating it into the distro well so everything "just works", that will attract more users coming from Windows, because it'll be easy for them to sit down with it and start using it without having to re-learn everything they thought they knew about using computers. Trying to push Gnome3 or Unity on them won't. But that's what all the distros do.
You obviously have no idea what you're talking about. 3D support is irrelevant to KDE; that's a driver issue. The KDE team can't fix that, any more than they can fix the kernel or x.org. And you can set up remote file shares in KDE's Control Center pretty easily.
The network configuration thing you mention is obviously a distro issue, since it works fine in LinuxMint for you (as it does for me). I haven't used OpenSuse in a long time, but if it's not working there, that's a failure of the distro I think. And that's part of the problem; any DE is going to depend on the distro to do a certain amount of integration and configuration work. If a distro is treating it as an afterthought, then you're not going to have the greatest experience. Most of the distros put a lot more work into Gnome/Unity than KDE, and it shows.
The color issues you complain about are again distro problems to a certain extent. KDE is completely themable and configurable; there's nothing forcing you to stick with the default except effort. And that's something that distros can do: make their own unique themes and make those the default. But they don't.
BTW, network management IS "braindead simple to use and switch around on laptops", at least on LinuxMint on my Thinkpad. It's pretty pathetic that OpenSuse, once the standard-bearer for KDE, can't even get that part right.
I love how no one wants to bother to do anything about these dangerous volcanoes because "it's too hard!!!", so they'd rather just sit around and let them erupt and kill thousands or even millions of people.
I used to commute on the Pima Freeway every day, and I've never seen anyone drive that fast. Maybe they do after midnight or something; I live near US-60 in Tempe and I hear motorcycle engines screaming on that road on many nights. I have seen people going that fast on I-17 north of Phoenix though, on some of the really long downhill stretches.
Some small earthquakes caused by a pressure-relief hole would be far preferable to a giant volcanic eruption. It'd also be best if some kind of path for the lava were built to direct it someplace safe, like into the sea.
The idea is that you need to vent the magma in a slow, controlled way, rather than letting the pressure build up until it explodes. Direct the magma (now "lava" after it's out of the ground) into the sea.
Yep. I'll push my wife (and kids if that ever happens) to use Linux, because I'm the tech support person anyway and using Linux means fewer problems, but for everyone else, I just don't have the time and energy for it. They need to hire someone to be their tech support if they can't do it themselves. I don't want my wife hiring others to do tech support because that comes out of my paycheck and hurts our budget, but for other people that's not my problem.
For the record, I've had my wife using KDE (Kubuntu, though I'm switching her to Linux Mint KDE soon) for at least a year now, and it's been working out pretty well, except for some hardware problems on her aging laptop which obviously aren't Linux's fault. She's not a computer person, but she's had no trouble switching over.
Yep, I remember having to do a work project with Mac OS 9, and that also had MANUAL MEMORY MANAGEMENT. It took me a while to figure out why my Perl program wasn't working right, until I found out that I needed to increase the memory allocated to the interpreter. Huh? Since when do you need to tell an OS how much memory a program is allowed to use? I don't think even Windows 3.0 had this limitation.
Make the Linux look & feel like the XP/Seven OS that everyone knows and feels comfortable with, so the transition is near-painless.
The problem is, this has already been done! KDE4 works very much like Windows Vista/7 with some minor differences, and is highly configurable and themable to make it look like a near-clone if you want. However, the Linux distros don't like KDE, and are either pushing Gnome3 or in Ubuntu's case, Unity, which are both radical departures from the XP/Vista/7 type interface that Windows users are all comfortable with. The distros seem to think they need to push something new and different and "bold", and that somehow this is going to make millions of Windows users dump Windows and switch to Linux, rather than providing an environment that's an easy transition.
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I agree; that only amounts to $25/hour, assuming they didn't make him work overtime. I hope they had the decency to at least pay him in cash or as a contractor so he wouldn't have to report the income for taxes.
Yes, and when you do this, it's fine, because the workers are getting paid for their time and everyone knows the deal from the outset. Expecting people to work for free in exchange for a stupid condo is BS, and should be illegal.
Well, they did say this was in Florida. That state isn't exactly known for being good at protecting workers' rights.
Quite possible. xaoslaad didn't say that your friend had a fucked-up personality, just that it might not be a fit. If the company is full of assholes, and he's not an asshole, then he wouldn't be a good fit. There's a lot of companies like that. As the old saying goes, "birds of a feather flock together", and you frequently see this dynamic in workplaces. You go to one company and everyone's really friendly and great, and you go to another company and everyone has serious personality problems or is an asshole. The assholes don't stick around company #1 because they get fired, not hired in the first place, or don't like that their behavior isn't well-tolerated when they get called out on it. The decent people don't stick around company #2 because they don't like being around assholes and look for a new job ASAP, or they don't get hired because "they're not a team player".
A beachfront condo is nearly worthless if you have to spend the day at work. Whoopee--you get to hear the waves at night after you've been toiling away all day, working for free.
I don't see how this unpaid week-long stint is of any benefit at all to the employee. Sure, it'll help the employer avoid hiring poor performers or people who don't fit into the organization, but what does the employee get out of it? The only benefit for the employee I see is if the candidate is going to have to make a long-distance move to take the job; moving (esp. from out-of-state) incurs significant costs, which can take a while to earn back in paychecks. However, this is really something the employee should consider themselves; it's frequently a good idea to just rent a room or efficiency short-term while you're in your "probationary period" with such a new job, so if it doesn't work out (which could be for all kinds of reasons, not just poor performance on your part; maybe the coworkers are assholes or you find the city to be a cesspool and didn't realize until you had to live there for a while), you can quit the job and go back home without losing much, but still retaining the pay you earned. This goes double if the employer isn't giving you any relocation bonus (which is probably usually the case these days; these used to be common 10+ years ago, but not any more unfortunately).
I think this week-long interview thing is a pile of crap really. They're getting a week of free work out of the candidate in exchange for nothing besides the cost of renting this condo (which they've probably rented long-term to save on costs, and they just stick a new candidate in it every week) and airfare, and the candidate walks away with nothing if he doesn't get the job, except for week in a beachfront condo which isn't all that great when you have to spend all day at the workplace, and not at the condo. The candidate's significant other might be getting a good deal here, but only if they had nothing better to do than spend a week on the beach while their SO was interviewing; if they have their own job or don't want to burn their vacation time this way, it's not such a great deal at all. I think this would be fine, however, if they paid the candidate for their time on an hourly basis like any normal contractor, but this company is probably too cheap to do that. I'm surprised this is even legal actually.
Unfortunately, as an African, you apparently haven't spent enough time on Slashdot to realize that almost no good ever comes from reading comments by Anonymous Cowards, and this place is full of filth when you browse at that level. (Of course, it's still full of assholes even if you exclude all the AC comments, but it's not quite as horrible.)
The idea here is that you go with your significant other, and while s/he's toiling away at this stupid company and working for free all day, you're sitting in the nice beachfront condo they put you up in, relaxing and enjoying the beach, and maybe even getting some nice meals and drinks on the company's dime. Heck, while he's busy programming (assuming it's a he), you can find a short-term boyfriend and have him over at the condo during the day....
Ubuntu is also easily the most popular Linux distro, by far (though this may be changing thanks to Unity), so both our statements could very well be true and not conflicting.
However, Red Hat/Fedora is a big supporter of Gnome, and employs many/most of their most influential developers, such as Jon McCan't. It's pretty obvious that Gnome's intent is to tablet-ify the Linux desktop too, and somehow lure millions of new users to their platform (they're even talking about making their own "Gnome OS" now), so I think it's safe to assume the Red Hat also has this as its goal, or else they wouldn't employ these people and allow them to follow this agenda.
And windows doesn't need support? What about training costs when Win8 with its stupid new Metro UI comes along?
The application thing is the primary real problem. But large companies get their own applications anyway, so they can demand it to be developed for whatever platform they prefer. Lowe's seems to get along just fine with KDE3.
Yeah, Pontiac tried that with the Aztek. Being "different" isn't a recipe for success.
Half those problems are going to apply when Windows 8 hits too. The printer setup in Win8 certainly isn't going to look anything like it did in Win7, and playing movies and music is going to be very different too. If a prominent Linux distro had a version running KDE that worked much like Win7, it'd be easy to get a lot of people to switch, especially business users (who don't give a shit about 3D games nor drivers for them), because then this Linux version would be more like Windows then Windows (8).
"Supplying it in some form" does not equal encouraging users (esp. new users) to use it. New users who just want something stable to get their work done don't want to use something with a radically different, tablet-esque UI, however that's what all the distros are pushing today, and then wondering why "Linux on the desktop" isn't going anywhere. Sure, those distros may supply a crappy version of KDE with no real integration and lots of brokenness (like another poster who complained that OpenSuse's version didn't even have a working network manager, which is unusable if you have a laptop), but they do the same for lots of other DEs too like LXDE and Enlightenment. That isn't going to help the cause of Linux on the desktop. Making KDE the primary, flagship DE and supporting that well, integrating it into the distro well so everything "just works", that will attract more users coming from Windows, because it'll be easy for them to sit down with it and start using it without having to re-learn everything they thought they knew about using computers. Trying to push Gnome3 or Unity on them won't. But that's what all the distros do.
You obviously have no idea what you're talking about. 3D support is irrelevant to KDE; that's a driver issue. The KDE team can't fix that, any more than they can fix the kernel or x.org. And you can set up remote file shares in KDE's Control Center pretty easily.
The network configuration thing you mention is obviously a distro issue, since it works fine in LinuxMint for you (as it does for me). I haven't used OpenSuse in a long time, but if it's not working there, that's a failure of the distro I think. And that's part of the problem; any DE is going to depend on the distro to do a certain amount of integration and configuration work. If a distro is treating it as an afterthought, then you're not going to have the greatest experience. Most of the distros put a lot more work into Gnome/Unity than KDE, and it shows.
The color issues you complain about are again distro problems to a certain extent. KDE is completely themable and configurable; there's nothing forcing you to stick with the default except effort. And that's something that distros can do: make their own unique themes and make those the default. But they don't.
BTW, network management IS "braindead simple to use and switch around on laptops", at least on LinuxMint on my Thinkpad. It's pretty pathetic that OpenSuse, once the standard-bearer for KDE, can't even get that part right.
You look forward to being raped by a sea monster's tentacle, and then being shot at by a battle mech? To each his own, I guess.
I love how no one wants to bother to do anything about these dangerous volcanoes because "it's too hard!!!", so they'd rather just sit around and let them erupt and kill thousands or even millions of people.
I used to commute on the Pima Freeway every day, and I've never seen anyone drive that fast. Maybe they do after midnight or something; I live near US-60 in Tempe and I hear motorcycle engines screaming on that road on many nights. I have seen people going that fast on I-17 north of Phoenix though, on some of the really long downhill stretches.
Some small earthquakes caused by a pressure-relief hole would be far preferable to a giant volcanic eruption. It'd also be best if some kind of path for the lava were built to direct it someplace safe, like into the sea.
The idea is that you need to vent the magma in a slow, controlled way, rather than letting the pressure build up until it explodes. Direct the magma (now "lava" after it's out of the ground) into the sea.
Don't forget battle mechs and tentacled rapist sea monsters.
Yep. I'll push my wife (and kids if that ever happens) to use Linux, because I'm the tech support person anyway and using Linux means fewer problems, but for everyone else, I just don't have the time and energy for it. They need to hire someone to be their tech support if they can't do it themselves. I don't want my wife hiring others to do tech support because that comes out of my paycheck and hurts our budget, but for other people that's not my problem.
For the record, I've had my wife using KDE (Kubuntu, though I'm switching her to Linux Mint KDE soon) for at least a year now, and it's been working out pretty well, except for some hardware problems on her aging laptop which obviously aren't Linux's fault. She's not a computer person, but she's had no trouble switching over.
Regular users want a small, lightweight desktop environment just like they want a small, simple cellphone that only makes calls.
Yep, I remember having to do a work project with Mac OS 9, and that also had MANUAL MEMORY MANAGEMENT. It took me a while to figure out why my Perl program wasn't working right, until I found out that I needed to increase the memory allocated to the interpreter. Huh? Since when do you need to tell an OS how much memory a program is allowed to use? I don't think even Windows 3.0 had this limitation.
Make the Linux look & feel like the XP/Seven OS that everyone knows and feels comfortable with, so the transition is near-painless.
The problem is, this has already been done! KDE4 works very much like Windows Vista/7 with some minor differences, and is highly configurable and themable to make it look like a near-clone if you want. However, the Linux distros don't like KDE, and are either pushing Gnome3 or in Ubuntu's case, Unity, which are both radical departures from the XP/Vista/7 type interface that Windows users are all comfortable with. The distros seem to think they need to push something new and different and "bold", and that somehow this is going to make millions of Windows users dump Windows and switch to Linux, rather than providing an environment that's an easy transition.