I learn something new nearly everyday. I learn more and more my boss is a clueless asshat, and if I didn't stay current with programming and technology I wouldn't be able to continue to work. Being flexible, knowing what I know, always willing to learn more keeps me employed. Because sooner or later when the "IT Director" is found out for the ignorant fool that he is I'll be in a position to take over his job. That or I'll find a new job and sit back and watch the company implode.
Think I'll plug it in and set it up to broadcast "CIA_DEA_FBI_SURVEILLANCE" but not connect it to anything. I wonder how long it will be before it shows up in a story here...
We had a lawyer and had him draft a letter requesting information on what they claimed was illegal. Then we offered to show them the results of an internal audit. We also offered to submit to a third party audit that BSA would have to pay for. After lots of meetings and lots of legal wrangling the BSA went away empty handed. One small difference was we were running non-licensed software and were in violation. It was a web design house with 8 graphic designers and not one legal copy of Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. Since the BSA provided us with the list they claimed was illegal, we scrubbed it from the offending boxes so as to appear legal. Then over the span of the next 2-years we bought all of the licenses needed to cover our butts. This cost over $120,000 in software licenses. Far cheaper than what the BSA wanted. But the lawyer was key. Check with the Bar in your area for a probono lawyer. Perhaps you can find someone willing to work on a sliding scale. Also check with the Small Business Administration for ideas for legal help. Good luck.
Depending on the job I would say yes, I agree with the article when it comes to high-level programming skills. But if its a low-level "entry" position, I'd say no. I've seen both sides of the issue, both as a person trying to learn the skills and craft, and as the "old-timer" helping HR hire a new person. If the skills needed are basic "idiot proof" skills, then why not hire the kid fresh out of school? It's only when you need the person who has the "mad skilz" when you really have to be careful. More places need to actually test their skills by having the potential employee do some actual code. My last job had set up a computer that was off the network and could only access the internet. I was given a series of tasks to complete in a set amount of time, so that they could actually see my coding skills. Not many of the places I've interviewed at actually tested my abilities. I'd have to say that there is where the problem lies. Not enough HR folks have the sense to bring in the IT group to help Test the potential new hires.
While some of the programming is slow to be posted to Hulu, my family and I are happy only shelling out $8.00/month to netflix. When I look at all the money I spent to both dish network and Directv it still makes me sick. For several years I fought with Directv to get the "Free" upgrades that new customers got. I left when they started jacking around my bill and not keeping agreements. Dish wasn't much better. The reception sucked, had them out several times to "re-aim the dish" to improve the signal. Then they too started charging for services that were supposed to be free. Then they stared tacking on more fees and charges and soon I was paying more but getting less. Since going to streaming, my kids love the cartoons on demand, I love being able to watch episode after episode of my favorite shows. Going back just isn't an option any more. We even live close enough where all the network stations can be viewed by antenna. It's wonderful!
If you hit the thrift stores and scrap off the glow-in-the-dark paint from pre-70's clocks and watches you can start to collect the needed radium for use in your breeder reactor. Let me know when you've collected at least 28 grams. Then we can start construction of the reactor using an old pickle crock and a washboard....
Is that the girl who is getting punished is NOT the girl who brought the candy. The State policy says that they won't limit what parents send their own kids. But the kid that's being punished was given the candy by another student. In short, the kid that brought the candy should be the one getting punished for passing it out to other students. After all, her parents can make the call for giving their kid candy, but their kid shouldn't be passing it out to others. What's to then prevent a kid from slipping a candy to another kid with the intent of getting another kid in trouble? My two cents is that they busted the wrong kid.
Roundup has been in use for as long as I can remember, 40+ years. It's great due to it's ability to kill a plant completely and then breakdown in the soil to inert ingredients. But I have to wonder if part of the problem with the weeds becoming resistant is due to the bacteria used to make the roundup ready crops. Seems that it's more possible for a bacteria to be passed from one plant to another, and since the first resistant strain was found in 2000, there has been ten years for the bacteria to spread to other weeds.
Perhaps it's time to not create crops that are safe to spray with herbicides and just find a better way to weed the farm by machine. Perhaps after harvest and just before planting a farmer could spray the fields with roundup and kill any weeds. Then after a couple of weeks, plant the seed and while waiting for the crops to grow, a new line of machine could be built that would make it possible to weed out any non-crop plants. In the long run it would be cheaper for the farmer since a machine would be cheaper to reuse than the high cost of roundup ready seeds, and the cost of spraying once the crop is growing.
It's a great product and I've used it myself for home use for over 35 years.
Just wish I could get my wife on board with its use. She feels I have a heavy hand with it.
It was a standard web house. Fortune 500 companies looking for someone to build and host the run-of-the-mill company website. I did basic html, php, mysql, etc. work. He was a she, and she thought that everyone was out to get/steal from her.
One of my former employers does this. They also run EVERY phone call past a human. The operator then reports to the owner on the length and subject of your in-coming and out-going calls. In short, if it isn't work related you had better get ready to clean out your desk.
I got a 90-day probation warning due to my wife calling and asking me "to call home when I left work" because she wanted me to stop at the store. Total time spent on the call, less than one minute. Had I gotten another warning in that 90-day period, I would have been fired.
The same applied to internet and email traffic. Problem was, I was in the IT department and had to justify anything I did. Even in client emails, if the client said "Have a great weekend" in an email on Friday, I had to explain why a client was telling me to have a good weekend. The owner figured you might have something going with her clients on the side and that would then be grounds for dismissal.
Glad that company is now virtually dead. Down from the over 100 employees to just 12.
Actually he's probably the ass hat that ruined it for the rest of us.
All that constant fingering without so much as a "how-do-you-do" pissed off the girl so much that we're all fighting an uphill battle to get women to like us. Bastard... I'm betting he's also the guy that ruined the "surprise in the popcorn box" stunt while watching a movie with your lady friend.
Please. I use to work for a mid-sized company that dealt with Fortune 500 companies. Companies that required us to use specific programs for FTP and accessing their systems. Despite several warnings, several long talks, we still had one account manager in our company that refused to follow the guidelines set out by our clients and used IE for all of his FTP traffic. We were dealing with companies paying us millions and we couldn't get one jackass to follow the rules. Even under the pressure of the IT department and the possible loss of a client couldn't get him to change his ways. Rather then fire the idiot, they moved him to a different client. Just goes to show that even when you beat someone over the head with rules, guidelines, and facts, they're still going to do what they want to do.
I work with a merchandising company that hires people all over the U.S. to go into department stores and stock shelves for specific manufacturers. Once the employee finishes restocking a site, they log into an online system to file an online report. Of the over 400 people employed by my client, the people we routinely have problems with are the AOL users. Either due to stupidity of the employee, or because the AOL browser keeps changing and filters or blocks them from some aspect of the report. Not to mention the problems sending email messages to AOL users, I'd love to force these folks to get a real ISP.
On top of it all, trying to work with the tech support team at AOL makes it even worse.
How the hell do you provide support to a system, if your stock answer is "I'm not sure how this works."
Either the email systems at AOL don't generate error messages or their staff is clueless, but trying to find out why a text only email was "blocked due to content" seems to confound them.
I for one would like to see AOL die once and for all.
Goggle at first refused to reveal the blogger's identity. Only after a Court Judge ordered Google to comply and reveal the name did they do so. The simple fact is that if you say anything online, you should be willing to stand behind it regardless of being posted under your name or a pseudonym. If you're not willing to stand behind your statements, then you should keep your comments to yourself. Much like many parents have taught their kids, "If you don't have anything nice to say, then don't say anything at all."
The fact that the two females knew each other, and that one of them chose to use a public forum for her own petty crap goes to show the character of the person. I don't think it mattered who blew her cover, she'd still want to sue.
But I'd be willing to wager that the models slander case gets refiled if the blogger gets any money out of Google.
IMHO I think both females are looking for a quick buck.
While this is an old story it's also still a problem.
About 6 months ago I read a similar story about business's using the credit reports as a guide to see if a prospective employee would steal or not. The idea being that the better your scores the less likely you are to embezzle, or steal from your employer.
I didn't think about it at the time and forgot about it.
Then my neighbor was turned down for a job based on her credit.
She lost her job a while back (over a year ago), and instead of getting a new job right away, took the severance package and enjoyed some time off from working. By the time she was ready to work again, jobs in her field were hard to come by. After being off for so long and no longer having the severance package to help pay bills, she started falling behind with her bills. Her mortgage company, seeing all the Fed money, refused to refinance the home since she doesn't have a job and started the foreclosure process. She finally found a possible job, and was told that pending a "background check" the job was hers.
By getting this job everything would be golden for her. She could pay her bills and then refinance the house. The problem was that she didn't get the job. The reason was due to the foreclosure on her house. That showed up on her credit report.
So here's the rub. Can't stop foreclosure without a job, can't get a job due to the foreclosure.
Granted, it's her own fault for not getting another job so soon after being unemployed, but I've seen dozens of folks do the same thing. You get a large payout and take a vacation.
I wonder how many other people are caught up in the same sort of issue?
You want to work, but can't due to the credit report, but if you had the job, you could resolve the bad credit report.
Let's get real. If you're going to make the case for every CS student to learn FORTRAN, then why not COBOL? Or why not PASCAL? Perhaps it should be broken out to it's own course structure, based on the field or major/minor of the student.
That way you don't bore the crap out of someone that will never use it.
I still have the books and notes from the PASCAL I learned in High School, and the notes and printouts from the FORTRAN and COBOL courses. Never use them now, and never used them after I left College.
Since the majority of the furniture was still in the hotel room, there is metal everywhere.
But since the hotel didn't have a metal detector, nor did the police provide one, I was left doing it manually.
After all, it never occurred for me to ask for such a thing. I was 20 years old, and having grown up in a small town where things like this didn't happen, it was a lot to take in and deal with.
I was more surprised that they didn't do this themselves and that they let "civilians" handle possible evidence.
With the advent of the WYSIWYG, most any fartknocker suddenly started calling himself/herself a "web developer".
For those of us, including myself, that actually know how to code from scratch, for years fought against being called a web developer because I didn't want to be lumped into that group. As the web changed and I started doing more database and online application work, I opted for the "web applications developer" moniker. I found that it gave a better explanation about what I did and kept me from being lumped into the group of folks that wouldn't know how to code "hello world" unless they used a WYSI.
As a freelance programmer I still find myself cleaning up the crap sites built by those assh*les.
Slashdot Mirror
I learn something new nearly everyday. I learn more and more my boss is a clueless asshat, and if I didn't stay current with programming and technology I wouldn't be able to continue to work. Being flexible, knowing what I know, always willing to learn more keeps me employed. Because sooner or later when the "IT Director" is found out for the ignorant fool that he is I'll be in a position to take over his job. That or I'll find a new job and sit back and watch the company implode.
If I choose to post a comment and not have my name attached to it (Anonymous) does that make me a member of Anonymous or just another willing pawn?
That commute is going to be a bitch...
Think I'll plug it in and set it up to broadcast "CIA_DEA_FBI_SURVEILLANCE" but not connect it to anything. I wonder how long it will be before it shows up in a story here...
We had a lawyer and had him draft a letter requesting information on what they claimed was illegal. Then we offered to show them the results of an internal audit. We also offered to submit to a third party audit that BSA would have to pay for. After lots of meetings and lots of legal wrangling the BSA went away empty handed. One small difference was we were running non-licensed software and were in violation. It was a web design house with 8 graphic designers and not one legal copy of Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. Since the BSA provided us with the list they claimed was illegal, we scrubbed it from the offending boxes so as to appear legal. Then over the span of the next 2-years we bought all of the licenses needed to cover our butts. This cost over $120,000 in software licenses. Far cheaper than what the BSA wanted. But the lawyer was key. Check with the Bar in your area for a probono lawyer. Perhaps you can find someone willing to work on a sliding scale. Also check with the Small Business Administration for ideas for legal help. Good luck.
Depending on the job I would say yes, I agree with the article when it comes to high-level programming skills. But if its a low-level "entry" position, I'd say no. I've seen both sides of the issue, both as a person trying to learn the skills and craft, and as the "old-timer" helping HR hire a new person. If the skills needed are basic "idiot proof" skills, then why not hire the kid fresh out of school? It's only when you need the person who has the "mad skilz" when you really have to be careful. More places need to actually test their skills by having the potential employee do some actual code. My last job had set up a computer that was off the network and could only access the internet. I was given a series of tasks to complete in a set amount of time, so that they could actually see my coding skills. Not many of the places I've interviewed at actually tested my abilities. I'd have to say that there is where the problem lies. Not enough HR folks have the sense to bring in the IT group to help Test the potential new hires.
Goran
Was that your server I attacked? I'm sorry.
I thought it was the Dancing with the Stars host.
(Must remember not to drink and hack.)
While some of the programming is slow to be posted to Hulu, my family and I are happy only shelling out $8.00/month to netflix. When I look at all the money I spent to both dish network and Directv it still makes me sick. For several years I fought with Directv to get the "Free" upgrades that new customers got. I left when they started jacking around my bill and not keeping agreements. Dish wasn't much better. The reception sucked, had them out several times to "re-aim the dish" to improve the signal. Then they too started charging for services that were supposed to be free. Then they stared tacking on more fees and charges and soon I was paying more but getting less. Since going to streaming, my kids love the cartoons on demand, I love being able to watch episode after episode of my favorite shows. Going back just isn't an option any more. We even live close enough where all the network stations can be viewed by antenna. It's wonderful!
If you hit the thrift stores and scrap off the glow-in-the-dark paint from pre-70's clocks and watches you can start to collect the needed radium for use in your breeder reactor. Let me know when you've collected at least 28 grams. Then we can start construction of the reactor using an old pickle crock and a washboard....
"cough, cough" Bullsh*t "cough, cough"
Is that the girl who is getting punished is NOT the girl who brought the candy. The State policy says that they won't limit what parents send their own kids. But the kid that's being punished was given the candy by another student. In short, the kid that brought the candy should be the one getting punished for passing it out to other students. After all, her parents can make the call for giving their kid candy, but their kid shouldn't be passing it out to others. What's to then prevent a kid from slipping a candy to another kid with the intent of getting another kid in trouble? My two cents is that they busted the wrong kid.
-Goran
Roundup has been in use for as long as I can remember, 40+ years. It's great due to it's ability to kill a plant completely and then breakdown in the soil to inert ingredients. But I have to wonder if part of the problem with the weeds becoming resistant is due to the bacteria used to make the roundup ready crops. Seems that it's more possible for a bacteria to be passed from one plant to another, and since the first resistant strain was found in 2000, there has been ten years for the bacteria to spread to other weeds.
Perhaps it's time to not create crops that are safe to spray with herbicides and just find a better way to weed the farm by machine. Perhaps after harvest and just before planting a farmer could spray the fields with roundup and kill any weeds. Then after a couple of weeks, plant the seed and while waiting for the crops to grow, a new line of machine could be built that would make it possible to weed out any non-crop plants. In the long run it would be cheaper for the farmer since a machine would be cheaper to reuse than the high cost of roundup ready seeds, and the cost of spraying once the crop is growing.
It's a great product and I've used it myself for home use for over 35 years.
Just wish I could get my wife on board with its use. She feels I have a heavy hand with it.
-Goran
It was a standard web house. Fortune 500 companies looking for someone to build and host the run-of-the-mill company website. I did basic html, php, mysql, etc. work. He was a she, and she thought that everyone was out to get/steal from her.
- Goran
Too late.
One of my former employers does this. They also run EVERY phone call past a human. The operator then reports to the owner on the length and subject of your in-coming and out-going calls. In short, if it isn't work related you had better get ready to clean out your desk.
I got a 90-day probation warning due to my wife calling and asking me "to call home when I left work" because she wanted me to stop at the store. Total time spent on the call, less than one minute. Had I gotten another warning in that 90-day period, I would have been fired.
The same applied to internet and email traffic. Problem was, I was in the IT department and had to justify anything I did. Even in client emails, if the client said "Have a great weekend" in an email on Friday, I had to explain why a client was telling me to have a good weekend. The owner figured you might have something going with her clients on the side and that would then be grounds for dismissal.
Glad that company is now virtually dead. Down from the over 100 employees to just 12.
-Goran
Actually he's probably the ass hat that ruined it for the rest of us.
All that constant fingering without so much as a "how-do-you-do" pissed off the girl so much that we're all fighting an uphill battle to get women to like us. Bastard... I'm betting he's also the guy that ruined the "surprise in the popcorn box" stunt while watching a movie with your lady friend.
Please. I use to work for a mid-sized company that dealt with Fortune 500 companies. Companies that required us to use specific programs for FTP and accessing their systems. Despite several warnings, several long talks, we still had one account manager in our company that refused to follow the guidelines set out by our clients and used IE for all of his FTP traffic. We were dealing with companies paying us millions and we couldn't get one jackass to follow the rules. Even under the pressure of the IT department and the possible loss of a client couldn't get him to change his ways. Rather then fire the idiot, they moved him to a different client. Just goes to show that even when you beat someone over the head with rules, guidelines, and facts, they're still going to do what they want to do.
- Goran
I work with a merchandising company that hires people all over the U.S. to go into department stores and stock shelves for specific manufacturers. Once the employee finishes restocking a site, they log into an online system to file an online report. Of the over 400 people employed by my client, the people we routinely have problems with are the AOL users. Either due to stupidity of the employee, or because the AOL browser keeps changing and filters or blocks them from some aspect of the report. Not to mention the problems sending email messages to AOL users, I'd love to force these folks to get a real ISP.
On top of it all, trying to work with the tech support team at AOL makes it even worse.
How the hell do you provide support to a system, if your stock answer is "I'm not sure how this works." Either the email systems at AOL don't generate error messages or their staff is clueless, but trying to find out why a text only email was "blocked due to content" seems to confound them.
I for one would like to see AOL die once and for all.
-Goran
Would it concern being able to surf pron with only one hand?
Just wondering what mad skills they might be looking for....
-Goran
That they will end up using this as fodder for a episode of the Simpsons?
You know it will end up in the show as a story line.
-Goran
Goggle at first refused to reveal the blogger's identity. Only after a Court Judge ordered Google to comply and reveal the name did they do so. The simple fact is that if you say anything online, you should be willing to stand behind it regardless of being posted under your name or a pseudonym. If you're not willing to stand behind your statements, then you should keep your comments to yourself. Much like many parents have taught their kids, "If you don't have anything nice to say, then don't say anything at all."
The fact that the two females knew each other, and that one of them chose to use a public forum for her own petty crap goes to show the character of the person. I don't think it mattered who blew her cover, she'd still want to sue.
But I'd be willing to wager that the models slander case gets refiled if the blogger gets any money out of Google.
IMHO I think both females are looking for a quick buck.
-Goran
While this is an old story it's also still a problem.
About 6 months ago I read a similar story about business's using the credit reports as a guide to see if a prospective employee would steal or not. The idea being that the better your scores the less likely you are to embezzle, or steal from your employer.
I didn't think about it at the time and forgot about it.
Then my neighbor was turned down for a job based on her credit.
She lost her job a while back (over a year ago), and instead of getting a new job right away, took the severance package and enjoyed some time off from working. By the time she was ready to work again, jobs in her field were hard to come by. After being off for so long and no longer having the severance package to help pay bills, she started falling behind with her bills. Her mortgage company, seeing all the Fed money, refused to refinance the home since she doesn't have a job and started the foreclosure process. She finally found a possible job, and was told that pending a "background check" the job was hers.
By getting this job everything would be golden for her. She could pay her bills and then refinance the house. The problem was that she didn't get the job. The reason was due to the foreclosure on her house. That showed up on her credit report. So here's the rub. Can't stop foreclosure without a job, can't get a job due to the foreclosure.
Granted, it's her own fault for not getting another job so soon after being unemployed, but I've seen dozens of folks do the same thing. You get a large payout and take a vacation.
I wonder how many other people are caught up in the same sort of issue?
You want to work, but can't due to the credit report, but if you had the job, you could resolve the bad credit report.
- Goran
Let's get real. If you're going to make the case for every CS student to learn FORTRAN, then why not COBOL? Or why not PASCAL? Perhaps it should be broken out to it's own course structure, based on the field or major/minor of the student. That way you don't bore the crap out of someone that will never use it.
I still have the books and notes from the PASCAL I learned in High School, and the notes and printouts from the FORTRAN and COBOL courses. Never use them now, and never used them after I left College.
- Goran
Didn't someone in Wasilla already come out with a smaller more light-weight version of this mecha?
I think they called it Sarah Palin...
Since the majority of the furniture was still in the hotel room, there is metal everywhere.
But since the hotel didn't have a metal detector, nor did the police provide one, I was left doing it manually. After all, it never occurred for me to ask for such a thing. I was 20 years old, and having grown up in a small town where things like this didn't happen, it was a lot to take in and deal with.
I was more surprised that they didn't do this themselves and that they let "civilians" handle possible evidence.
-Goran
With the advent of the WYSIWYG, most any fartknocker suddenly started calling himself/herself a "web developer". For those of us, including myself, that actually know how to code from scratch, for years fought against being called a web developer because I didn't want to be lumped into that group. As the web changed and I started doing more database and online application work, I opted for the "web applications developer" moniker. I found that it gave a better explanation about what I did and kept me from being lumped into the group of folks that wouldn't know how to code "hello world" unless they used a WYSI.
As a freelance programmer I still find myself cleaning up the crap sites built by those assh*les.