I'm nowhere near NYC, but my voip provider was taken down by these floods and was very slow to failover to their other, lower-capacity sites. Still not working right. Complaints were especially vocal from people on the west coast, who were quite surprised to have their business lines knocked out.
In Ontario, this might be construed as "constructive dismissal". From what I've experienced here, signing any employment contracts is a bad idea. Without an employment contract, you'd be covered by common-law, which is generally favourable to the employee regarding severance amounts, etc. Employment contracts usually replace all that with explicit terms that favour the employer.
IMHO, you'd have to be NUTS to work as an employee in high tech outside of government or unionized employers. Ontario's labour laws are terrible for "technology professionals". As unemployment rates are very low, and there is plenty of unfulfilled demand for skills, you're far better off subcontracting, where the legal relationship is between corporate peers. Some of the rights you retain as a subcontractor include:
- pay by the hour, if you so arrange. No unpaid OT. - the right to conduct business with other clients
normal employer rights that are NOT applicable in contracting: - the right to supervise and direct - the right to set hours of work (duration and timing) - exclusivity to all the employee's production, intellectual or otherwise, regardless of whether the efforts were during paid working hours.
There is a lot more variation and flexibility in terms, and you still have to keep your clients happy - i.e. they won't be happy if you openly compete against them and work 3h/week, and your contract will be cancelled.
If you are a non-unionized employee, remember, the only real power you have is to quit.
You send some of those yankee greenbacks up here in Canada, where you get a nice shiney toonie....
http://www.oemexpress.com
many are priced for brown box buyers, various warranty terms etc. You want it, they got it.
For me its only blocks, for you, a click.I think I'll take a stroll and pick up a nice Abit MAX.
Also, if your buying a Honda Odyssey van, they are several thousand dollars cheaper. So pose as a true Canadian (see Strange Brew, The Jackel, etc), since the dealers are bound by Honda not to sell the cheaper priced Canadian vehicles to Uncle Sam's citizens, lest they figure this deal out.
Your strongarm tactics against small businesses are a disgrace. Why don't you come play ball against corporations that can afford to defend themselves against your ridiculous patent claims?
I suggest you respond to the story on Slashdot.org and present your side of it.
Your actions are a true insult to the spirit of mutually beneficial commerce and free enterprise.
And how do you propose we make terrorists "not want to attack?" There isn't any set of conditions that would satisfy the demands of the all the world's terrorists.
Fundamentalism in its many forms isn't big on agreeing to disagree and respecting the right of others to dissent and do their own thing.
The best we can hope for is a set of conditions that maximizes tolerence and minimizes the numbers of people motivated to commit terrorist acts. The citizens and govts. of the world are well aware of things they can do to move closer to this imperfect ideal (i.e. reduce crushing poverty). Citizens in democracies have a responsibility to themselves (as potential victims of terrorism) and to the world in general to ensure their govts. keep moving forward.
The Canadian federal government has this already, although I believe it is built on leased lines. I think its called gnet, and is provided by PWGSC. Many depts using this had 3 levels of 'net - Public (for the public), "middlenet" - special sites only accessible from within govt, and intranet, sites only accessible from within the dept.
Me took Smalltalk tu at Karletun. The Digitalk Smalltalk/V version was pretty slow, but easy to use. Built-in inspectors and the ability to run and inspect arbitrary code fragments from anywhere in the IDE is a good idea.
I imagine many students using Java for early OO classes spend way too much time frustrating themselves with classpath, package naming hierarchy, tool issues, etc.
Smalltalk also lets the students experiment a lot with the IDE itself. My classmates changed most of the IDE to make it more obscene and interesting.
One of the important considerations in utilizing OSS is vendor independance. During my years with the Canadian govt., numerous departments were sued by vendors that did not win procurement competitions.
The software competitive procurement process for public organizations and govts. has become extremely complicated and expensive to utilize, and, as evidenced by the lawsuits, subjective and arbitrary.
Choosing the OSS/Free Software route eliminates a lot of these problems. You can't get sued for "misprocuring" something that doesn't need to be procured in the first place.
So you save the license fee, cost of procuring a commercial product, and reduce the risk of getting sued.
Support contracts are easier to bid, they boil down to "who can provide this exact level of support at the best price?", a clear and objective question.
There is an extreme range of maturity in OSS products and commercial products as well.
It's incorrect to assume that OSS software requires more retraining, expert staff etc. All new software incurs this cost, commercial or otherwise.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm nowhere near NYC, but my voip provider was taken down by these floods and was very slow to failover to their other, lower-capacity sites. Still not working right. Complaints were especially vocal from people on the west coast, who were quite surprised to have their business lines knocked out.
Or a better state...
In Ontario, this might be construed as "constructive dismissal". From what I've experienced here, signing any employment contracts is a bad idea. Without an employment contract, you'd be covered by common-law, which is generally favourable to the employee regarding severance amounts, etc. Employment contracts usually replace all that with explicit terms that favour the employer.
IMHO, you'd have to be NUTS to work as an employee in high tech outside of government or unionized employers. Ontario's labour laws are terrible for "technology professionals". As unemployment rates are very low, and there is plenty of unfulfilled demand for skills, you're far better off subcontracting, where the legal relationship is between corporate peers. Some of the rights you retain as a subcontractor include:
- pay by the hour, if you so arrange. No unpaid OT.
- the right to conduct business with other clients
normal employer rights that are NOT applicable in contracting:
- the right to supervise and direct
- the right to set hours of work (duration and timing)
- exclusivity to all the employee's production, intellectual or otherwise, regardless of whether the efforts were during paid working hours.
There is a lot more variation and flexibility in terms, and you still have to keep your clients happy - i.e. they won't be happy if you openly compete against them and work 3h/week, and your contract will be cancelled.
If you are a non-unionized employee, remember, the only real power you have is to quit.
Where is the link to the article?
I compliment you on your gumption and will continue to fully support these kinds of activities.
Sincerely,
J. E. Francis
You send some of those yankee greenbacks up here in Canada, where you get a nice shiney toonie....
http://www.oemexpress.com
many are priced for brown box buyers, various warranty terms etc. You want it, they got it.
For me its only blocks, for you, a click.I think I'll take a stroll and pick up a nice Abit MAX.
Also, if your buying a Honda Odyssey van, they are several thousand dollars cheaper. So pose as a true Canadian (see Strange Brew, The Jackel, etc), since the dealers are bound by Honda not to sell the cheaper priced Canadian vehicles to Uncle Sam's citizens, lest they figure this deal out.
I sent the following letter to an address on their page:
Dear Sir
I'm extremely offended to see the types of things your company is doing, as described on Slashdot.org, here:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/05/13/191
Your strongarm tactics against small businesses are a disgrace. Why don't you come play ball against corporations that can afford to defend themselves against your ridiculous patent claims?
I suggest you respond to the story on Slashdot.org and present your side of it.
Your actions are a true insult to the spirit of mutually beneficial commerce and free enterprise.
Disgusted,
John E. Francis
_loosely_ based on historical events. BlackHawk Down is entertainment, not history.
And how do you propose we make terrorists "not want to attack?" There isn't any set of conditions that would satisfy the demands of the all the world's terrorists.
Fundamentalism in its many forms isn't big on agreeing to disagree and respecting the right of others to dissent and do their own thing.
The best we can hope for is a set of conditions that maximizes tolerence and minimizes the numbers of people motivated to commit terrorist acts. The citizens and govts. of the world are well aware of things they can do to move closer to this imperfect ideal (i.e. reduce crushing poverty). Citizens in democracies have a responsibility to themselves (as potential victims of terrorism) and to the world in general to ensure their govts. keep moving forward.
The Canadian federal government has this already, although I believe it is built on leased lines. I think its called gnet, and is provided by PWGSC. Many depts using this had 3 levels of 'net - Public (for the public), "middlenet" - special sites only accessible from within govt, and intranet, sites only accessible from within the dept.
Me took Smalltalk tu at Karletun. The Digitalk Smalltalk/V version was pretty slow, but easy to use. Built-in inspectors and the ability to run and inspect arbitrary code fragments from anywhere in the IDE is a good idea. I imagine many students using Java for early OO classes spend way too much time frustrating themselves with classpath, package naming hierarchy, tool issues, etc. Smalltalk also lets the students experiment a lot with the IDE itself. My classmates changed most of the IDE to make it more obscene and interesting.
One of the important considerations in utilizing OSS is vendor independance. During my years with the Canadian govt., numerous departments were sued by vendors that did not win procurement competitions. The software competitive procurement process for public organizations and govts. has become extremely complicated and expensive to utilize, and, as evidenced by the lawsuits, subjective and arbitrary. Choosing the OSS/Free Software route eliminates a lot of these problems. You can't get sued for "misprocuring" something that doesn't need to be procured in the first place. So you save the license fee, cost of procuring a commercial product, and reduce the risk of getting sued. Support contracts are easier to bid, they boil down to "who can provide this exact level of support at the best price?", a clear and objective question. There is an extreme range of maturity in OSS products and commercial products as well. It's incorrect to assume that OSS software requires more retraining, expert staff etc. All new software incurs this cost, commercial or otherwise.