Wha happens if an employee just stops showing up for work on their own? I assume they will be fired. Does this still need a three month cooling off period?
The 1500 dollar price tag was for a low volume unpolished prototype, given to people already vested in the concept (vested enough to she'll or that kind of money). The world has not yet seen the consumer version aesthetics or price point
Am I being pedantic if I point out that Amazon is not getting out of paying sales tax, it is getting our of being an unpaid collector of sales tax from the buyers on behalf of the state they live in? Collecting sales tax people owe is a service, and has costs (1800 odd sales tax jurisdictions in the US, if I recall correctly, since each town in a county can add their own local sales taxes). Should a state be able to force someone with no presence in the state, who uses no state service, to become an unpaid contractor for the state?
Hmm. I have Diabetes. I am myopic. By natural selection alone, I would be dead. I use glasses (in violation of the fitness rule) to improve my sight. I use (gasp) drugs to fight natural selection and live.
Everytime you go to a doctor and take medicine, arguably that militates against natural selection.
Unfortunately, we have gotten rid of a lot of diseases and phisical handicaps as selection criteria - but others, often overlooked, have come into play. Selection does not necesarily require the adult organism to die, merely not reproducing, or reproducing less fecundly than other seegments of the population or species, can drive selection too. Just check out the figures corelating birth rates and poverty, or birth rates and education to see what is being selected for modern homo sapiens
: If you want a child so badly, lady, go ADOPT ONE.
I think either you have a poor idea of the biological imperative that drives us, or you are delibrately ignoring it for the sake or argument.
A desire to have ones genes (or genes close to ones own) to propogate in the gene pool is built in, and far stronger than you give credit for.
What is so wrong about going this route as opposed to paying thousands for a procedure like this? You help a child already alive, and more importantly, you give that child a chance to have a better life, and that is what it's all about.
Atruism is not a survival trait. That is not to say it is not laudable, however, basic human nature, one of the very things that allows us to survive as a species, is enlightened self interest. So I don't think giving a organism carrying none of my genes a better life is what it is all about (but feel free to continue to believe that, all the better for my offspring).
Before y'all jump on me with a flame thrower, I do agre that slefishness needs be moderated with concern for the needs of the herd as well -- humans are not solitary animals, we would have far lower standards of living without division of labour and cooperation. (Also, people may argue that if society did not provide medicine, hospitals and shelter for folks like me who are quite obviously unfit to survive on our own (I would make a lousy hunter gatherer), we could use the resources to better use for folks deemed better investment in the future). Adopting children and caring for the less fortunate in society strengthens it (again, better chances for my offspring/genes to survive). But It is not the only thing that matters.
I guess I should pull on the absestos underwear now
I whole heartedly second this. Doxygen generates great documents, and it also generates great eye candy for class heirarchies and include graphs. It is also flexible enough to allow you to add external documents into the result. For example, the code documented here contains referemces to XML schemas and XSLT tranform files used by the software, as well as README files that you expect to find in the source tree. Just go to any header file (under file list) and look at the graphics.
This is the first time I have found the literate programming paradigm hassle free enough to actually implement and carry though in a project.
First, some back ground: I have been telecommuting since 1996, when I followed my wife to ALabama. There are few high tech positions here on the gulf coast, and I have been working for people in New England, wihch is rooughly a commute of 1500 miles;-).
I initially worked as a critical escalation specialist, which is a PHB way of saying fourth level support or firefighting. That worked out well, since most of the time I was answering emails that filtered through to me, or heading out to the client site on 24 hours notice to handle crisis situations, and really there was no team or office work involved (I did get to visit Hong Kong and France;-)
My current job is a more conventional integration/development position. In both these posts, I have realized that for the telecommuter, espescially a long distance full time telecommuter, you have to work harder to resolve issues. The most common are:
Management Buy IN Managements, espescially your boss, has to feel comfortable with the idea of letting you work out of sight. There is a strong sense that managers have about their contribution is minimal unless the employee is there to be managed.
There is also the obvious matter of trust: How does your boss know you are not sleeping away most of the time?. In practice, I have not found this to be a major concern, though.
CommunicationThis is the one of the two major hurdles.
It is hard to overemphasize the role of the water cooler discussions, or the quick consultation over the cubicle wall. Don't believe people who say that the phone is a good substitute; using the phone generally devolves into phone tag. If you can get people to join in on a office only IRC channel, that is good, and in some ways better than the office talk; and it leverages technology. Unfortnately, you need an understanding security team (I use ssh and a text based irc client)
Face to face meetings are critical. I have a telecon once a week, and I fly up every month, but this is non-optimal. In my experience you need face to face meetings every week, or at least once a fortnight. I compensate by staying in New england for a week on every visit.
You have to make yourself visible. It is very easy to drop out of sight, and out of mind. If you want the plum assignemnts, make it a point to send relevant mail every day to some member of the team.
Make a habit of filing weekly progress reports, even if that is not the norm for your team. As a telecommuter, it is up to you to ket your boss know exactly how your time was spent. I don't mean you need account for every half an hour slot of your time, but an item for every day is the minimum
Local Distractions I don't have kids, but that doesn't mean that working from home did not require changes. Having a separate room (which I do not use for non-work related uses) helps. Taking formal lunch breaks rather than heading over to the fridge and eating at the computer helps too -- it helps me structure work time separate from non-work time. I do tend to come in and work at night when I can't sleep - but I'm trying to reform.
Slashdot Mirror
Wha happens if an employee just stops showing up for work on their own? I assume they will be fired. Does this still need a three month cooling off period?
Would it not be better to get the information removed from the primnary sites? It would then automatically slide off google.
The 1500 dollar price tag was for a low volume unpolished prototype, given to people already vested in the concept (vested enough to she'll or that kind of money). The world has not yet seen the consumer version aesthetics or price point
Am I being pedantic if I point out that Amazon is not getting out of paying sales tax, it is getting our of being an unpaid collector of sales tax from the buyers on behalf of the state they live in? Collecting sales tax people owe is a service, and has costs (1800 odd sales tax jurisdictions in the US, if I recall correctly, since each town in a county can add their own local sales taxes). Should a state be able to force someone with no presence in the state, who uses no state service, to become an unpaid contractor for the state?
With Search Inside The Book (SITB), users can indeed "examine" the book they are aout to buy. The number of pages they can read is limited, though.
Hmm. I have Diabetes. I am myopic. By natural selection alone, I would be dead. I use glasses (in violation of the fitness rule) to improve my sight. I use (gasp) drugs to fight natural selection and live.
Everytime you go to a doctor and take medicine, arguably that militates against natural selection.
Unfortunately, we have gotten rid of a lot of diseases and phisical handicaps as selection criteria - but others, often overlooked, have come into play. Selection does not necesarily require the adult organism to die, merely not reproducing, or reproducing less fecundly than other seegments of the population or species, can drive selection too. Just check out the figures corelating birth rates and poverty, or birth rates and education to see what is being selected for modern homo sapiens
I think either you have a poor idea of the biological imperative that drives us, or you are delibrately ignoring it for the sake or argument. A desire to have ones genes (or genes close to ones own) to propogate in the gene pool is built in, and far stronger than you give credit for.
Atruism is not a survival trait. That is not to say it is not laudable, however, basic human nature, one of the very things that allows us to survive as a species, is enlightened self interest. So I don't think giving a organism carrying none of my genes a better life is what it is all about (but feel free to continue to believe that, all the better for my offspring).
Before y'all jump on me with a flame thrower, I do agre that slefishness needs be moderated with concern for the needs of the herd as well -- humans are not solitary animals, we would have far lower standards of living without division of labour and cooperation. (Also, people may argue that if society did not provide medicine, hospitals and shelter for folks like me who are quite obviously unfit to survive on our own (I would make a lousy hunter gatherer), we could use the resources to better use for folks deemed better investment in the future). Adopting children and caring for the less fortunate in society strengthens it (again, better chances for my offspring/genes to survive). But It is not the only thing that matters.
I guess I should pull on the absestos underwear now
Hi,
I whole heartedly second this. Doxygen generates great documents, and it also generates great eye candy for class heirarchies and include graphs. It is also flexible enough to allow you to add external documents into the result. For example, the code documented here contains referemces to XML schemas and XSLT tranform files used by the software, as well as README files that you expect to find in the source tree. Just go to any header file (under file list) and look at the graphics.
This is the first time I have found the literate programming paradigm hassle free enough to actually implement and carry though in a project.
manoj
Hi,
First, some back ground: I have been telecommuting since 1996, when I followed my wife to ALabama. There are few high tech positions here on the gulf coast, and I have been working for people in New England, wihch is rooughly a commute of 1500 miles ;-).
I initially worked as a critical escalation specialist, which is a PHB way of saying fourth level support or firefighting. That worked out well, since most of the time I was answering emails that filtered through to me, or heading out to the client site on 24 hours notice to handle crisis situations, and really there was no team or office work involved (I did get to visit Hong Kong and France ;-)
My current job is a more conventional integration/development position. In both these posts, I have realized that for the telecommuter, espescially a long distance full time telecommuter, you have to work harder to resolve issues. The most common are: