Well, as a Canadian, my tuppence ha'penny's worth of opinion is,"That's what you get for electing your judges. You get popular, know-nothings." Ah, well. YMMV
A**hole bosses are not confined to IT
on
NetSlaves
·
· Score: 1
"...the company will find some schmuck that will. And quite likely, some schmuck that will do it for less money."
That is a common fear and one that A**hole bosses will play on if you let them. But, unless you are a ditch digger or floor sweeper, i.e. unskilled, casual labour, it is a crock.
Here are a few reasons why he is *very* unlikely to let you go if you just say, "No!"
(1) In most jurisdictions, there is a maximum number of hours that you can work without being paid overtime. After that, overtime must be paid, or your employer is breaking the law. Check with your local department of labour.
(2) If he did fire you for standing up for your rights, what's to say that the next person he hires won't be just as cranky about working for nothing.
(3) Many young people in the workforce don't know this one, but it's taught in the b-schools: The cost of hiring a skilled person usually costs out around the value of a third of the employee's annual salary. In other words, firing someone for no good reason is running up a major cost. (If he fires say five or six people, he's cost the company more than his annual salary. And what will *his* boss have to say about that?
(4) If you are fired for refusing to do unpaid overtime, you can sue for wrongful dismissal in most jurisdictions. Here in Canada, the courts will normally side with the discharged employee unless the employer can show (a) sufficient warning was given of unacceptable behaviour, (b) sufficient time was given for the employee to make corrections, (c) evidence is given to show that the unacceptable behaviour continued, and (d) "unacceptable behaviour" falls within the legal definition - which does *not* include working for free!
In other words, if your boss is pressuring you do work overtime fornothing, he's probably just trying it on to see if you are sucker enough to do it.
Just tell him politely, "TANSTAAFL!" ("There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch!")
But what is your MTBR (Mean Time Between Reboots)? Linux servers tend to have a much greater MTBR than NT servers. Quite apart from the question of crashes, in *nix systems you can reconfigure the system and in most cases they will take effect without a reboot. It is the opposite case for NT.
. . . was, of course, Admiral Grace Hopper, oldest serving officer (of *either* sex) in the US Navy, project leader of the team that built the first commercial general purpose language, and a Righteous Babe.
"Don't ask for permission. Just do it! It's easier to apologize for having done something than it is to get permission to do it." - G. Hopper
Which is why OpenSource development works so well when you come to think of it.
"Epeeist" touches on this, and it is something that is often forgotten in debates like this. There is the corporate market and the home market and their needs (and their budgets) are different.
The user at home does not need an office suite, and, as someone else posted further down the stream, are often better off getting individual, separate packages. Don't need a spreadsheet app? Don't get a spreadsheet app./Don't get a bloated office suite. And cost is usually more important a factor to the home buyer than it is for the corporate buyer.
Corporations have to consider "total cost of ownership" which includes such things as: - cost of maintenance, - cost of installation (And installing the app once on a network server rather than 'nnn' times on individual workstations is a no-brainer!) - cost of interoperability between your apps and data and outside sources.
Add into that the importance to a corporate network of having everybody use the same version of the software. ("I'm sorry, could you please redo that data you sent me? I only have [your version number - 1].")
Sun is aiming at the corporate office. That is where they expect to see their money made. I get the impression that they don't care about the home market.
This does not preclude a universe where Sun servers provide network apps to a network of, say, Linux clients.
In a word, be calm. Take a deep breath. Sun is not going to destroy Linux.
A good response, but I do have a caveat about one part of it: Mr. Johnson wrote: "Assuming that there is no God involved is not the same as proving it. And requiring the teaching of a theory based on the assumption that there is no God is substantially equivalent to an establishment of naturalism and/or atheism as a state religion." Both these statements are quite true. What I jibe at is what seems to be an underlying assumption: If I teach a theory that does not require the existence of God, then I am teaching that God does not exist. I have to say that IMHO, that does not follow. It is rather like saying that if all the laws that I obey have been created by Conservitives or Liberals, then I am proving that the New Democratic Party does not exist. I also submit that nowhere in the thory of evolution is it posited that there is no deity. The question does not arise, to be sure, but that is not equivalent to saying that there is none. I have a fairly firm belief in God. I just don't expect to be able to prove it. And even if everything I saw was explainable in terms that did not require the existence of God, my belief would not diminish. I think the only thing required to allow a belief in the Deity, is a belief that life has more meaning than simple existence. Your mileage may vary. I think his advice to all you Yanks is good tho.
The BBC story was pretty good, but at another story on this new search engine (http://www.latimes.com/HOME/BUSINESS/t000068951.h tml), one commentator said,"What does it mean to have another 100,000 or 200,000 links show up in a search? . . . The only thing that matters is the top 10 links you get back . .."
I think he misses the point. IMHO the ideal search engine (1) covers all of the Web (Yes, I *know* it's impossible! This is an *ideal*.) and (2) allows me to construct a proper Boolean search argument.
Boolean is very important to me. It allows me to pare those results down from 1,276,349 to 280. When I pare down the number of results then the top hits are far more likely to be relevant. So far as I know (and correct me please if I'm wrong) the only search engine that allows the proper construction of Boolean arguments (AND, OR, parentheses and NEAR) is Alta Vista. Other engines such as HotBot and Google allow some ability to refine the argument, but not enough for my taste. This new engine still doesn't satisfy that desire either.
However, it does give some tools (phrases, + and - but no parentheses or OR) so having a bigger database is a Good Thing.
I found it snapped back the results pretty quickly too.
By the way, something that isn't discussed very often, but is pretty relevant in evaluating the effectiveness of search engines is latency. At the WWW8 conference in Toronto, I heard a paper that made the observation that search engines have a bad tendency to "forget" URLs. I.e. the same argument given over time will some times not discover a site that an earlier search found. On occasion, a later search will then "rediscover" the page. (Sorry I don't have the reference to hand. I've really got to do some housekeeping. . . ) The moral of this is: bookmark that interestin' site when you find it or you may never see it again.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, as a Canadian, my tuppence ha'penny's worth of opinion is,"That's what you get for electing your judges. You get popular, know-nothings." Ah, well. YMMV
That is a common fear and one that A**hole bosses will play on if you let them. But, unless you are a ditch digger or floor sweeper, i.e. unskilled, casual labour, it is a crock.
Here are a few reasons why he is *very* unlikely to let you go if you just say, "No!"
(1) In most jurisdictions, there is a maximum number of hours that you can work without being paid overtime. After that, overtime must be paid, or your employer is breaking the law. Check with your local department of labour.
(2) If he did fire you for standing up for your rights, what's to say that the next person he hires won't be just as cranky about working for nothing.
(3) Many young people in the workforce don't know this one, but it's taught in the b-schools: The cost of hiring a skilled person usually costs out around the value of a third of the employee's annual salary. In other words, firing someone for no good reason is running up a major cost. (If he fires say five or six people, he's cost the company more than his annual salary. And what will *his* boss have to say about that?
(4) If you are fired for refusing to do unpaid overtime, you can sue for wrongful dismissal in most jurisdictions. Here in Canada, the courts will normally side with the discharged employee unless the employer can show (a) sufficient warning was given of unacceptable behaviour, (b) sufficient time was given for the employee to make corrections, (c) evidence is given to show that the unacceptable behaviour continued, and (d) "unacceptable behaviour" falls within the legal definition - which does *not* include working for free!
In other words, if your boss is pressuring you do work overtime fornothing, he's probably just trying it on to see if you are sucker enough to do it.
Just tell him politely, "TANSTAAFL!" ("There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch!")
Cheers.
But what is your MTBR (Mean Time Between Reboots)? Linux servers tend to have a much greater MTBR than NT servers. Quite apart from the question of crashes, in *nix systems you can reconfigure the system and in most cases they will take effect without a reboot. It is the opposite case for NT.
. . . was, of course, Admiral Grace Hopper, oldest serving officer (of *either* sex) in the US Navy, project leader of the team that built the first commercial general purpose language, and a Righteous Babe.
"Don't ask for permission. Just do it! It's easier to apologize for having done something than it is to get permission to do it." - G. Hopper
Which is why OpenSource development works so well when you come to think of it.
"Epeeist" touches on this, and it is something that is often forgotten in debates like this. There is the corporate market and the home market and their needs (and their budgets) are different.
The user at home does not need an office suite, and, as someone else posted further down the stream, are often better off getting individual, separate packages. Don't need a spreadsheet app? Don't get a spreadsheet app./Don't get a bloated office suite. And cost is usually more important a factor to the home buyer than it is for the corporate buyer.
Corporations have to consider "total cost of ownership" which includes such things as:
- cost of maintenance,
- cost of installation (And installing the app once on a network server rather than 'nnn' times on individual workstations is a no-brainer!)
- cost of interoperability between your apps and data and outside sources.
Add into that the importance to a corporate network of having everybody use the same version of the software. ("I'm sorry, could you please redo that data you sent me? I only have [your version number - 1].")
Sun is aiming at the corporate office. That is where they expect to see their money made. I get the impression that they don't care about the home market.
This does not preclude a universe where Sun servers provide network apps to a network of, say, Linux clients.
In a word, be calm. Take a deep breath. Sun is not going to destroy Linux.
A good response, but I do have a caveat about one part of it: Mr. Johnson wrote: "Assuming that there is no God involved is not the same as proving it. And requiring the teaching of a theory based on the assumption that there is no God is substantially equivalent to an establishment of naturalism and/or atheism as a state religion." Both these statements are quite true. What I jibe at is what seems to be an underlying assumption: If I teach a theory that does not require the existence of God, then I am teaching that God does not exist. I have to say that IMHO, that does not follow. It is rather like saying that if all the laws that I obey have been created by Conservitives or Liberals, then I am proving that the New Democratic Party does not exist. I also submit that nowhere in the thory of evolution is it posited that there is no deity. The question does not arise, to be sure, but that is not equivalent to saying that there is none. I have a fairly firm belief in God. I just don't expect to be able to prove it. And even if everything I saw was explainable in terms that did not require the existence of God, my belief would not diminish. I think the only thing required to allow a belief in the Deity, is a belief that life has more meaning than simple existence. Your mileage may vary. I think his advice to all you Yanks is good tho.
The BBC story was pretty good, but at another story on this new search engine (http://www.latimes.com/HOME/BUSINESS/t000068951.h tml), one commentator said,"What does it mean to have another 100,000 or 200,000 links show up in a search? . . . The only thing that matters is the top 10 links you get back . . ."
I think he misses the point. IMHO the ideal search engine (1) covers all of the Web (Yes, I *know* it's impossible! This is an *ideal*.) and (2) allows me to construct a proper Boolean search argument.
Boolean is very important to me. It allows me to pare those results down from 1,276,349 to 280. When I pare down the number of results then the top hits are far more likely to be relevant. So far as I know (and correct me please if I'm wrong) the only search engine that allows the proper construction of Boolean arguments (AND, OR, parentheses and NEAR) is Alta Vista. Other engines such as HotBot and Google allow some ability to refine the argument, but not enough for my taste. This new engine still doesn't satisfy that desire either.
However, it does give some tools (phrases, + and - but no parentheses or OR) so having a bigger database is a Good Thing.
I found it snapped back the results pretty quickly too.
By the way, something that isn't discussed very often, but is pretty relevant in evaluating the effectiveness of search engines is latency. At the WWW8 conference in Toronto, I heard a paper that made the observation that search engines have a bad tendency to "forget" URLs. I.e. the same argument given over time will some times not discover a site that an earlier search found. On occasion, a later search will then "rediscover" the page. (Sorry I don't have the reference to hand. I've really got to do some housekeeping. . . ) The moral of this is: bookmark that interestin' site when you find it or you may never see it again.