The SCOX Yahoo Finance Board is actually a good source of information and comments as well. Contrary to the usual stock board the regulars there are quite knowledgable and try to keep the spam cleaned up. Which is not to say there are no trolls, but any rating above a 4 is usually good.
> I'm not trying to defend recruiters who won't tell you > what a job is worth - it's not fair to expect you to > interview before you can even know what's on offer - > but you need to understand that (in our case at least) > salaries are very dependant on the candidate.
To me that is the true value of a _good_ recruiter: he makes that preliminary assessment and tells both parties what the realistic range is. And that is true from either side of the table.
Sadly I have only worked with 3 really good recruiters in 25 years, but that is another story...
> The internet has completely failed to do > anything positive at all for employment > search OR employee search.
I tend to susupect you never searched for a job in the 1980s, much less the 1970s. The Internet-based system we have now has some negatives, although I think most of those are dictated by employers more than the sites or even the evil recruiters. But compared to the 1980s? I take it you never had to spend $100/city/3-month-period subscribing to the Sunday paper for EACH CITY you were interested in? And then never being competitive because you didn't get the paper (via US Mail) until Wednesday (and your mailed resume didn't arrive until the following Monday), by which time the employer already had 100 resumes?
Um, right. If I post a job with a listed salary range of 45,000 - 55,000, what is going to be every single candidates' opening offer? Say, 57,500? And will they accept an offer below 52,500 regardless of their skills, experience, or interview performance?
> Is it possible to create an internet that relies > instead on peer-to-peer connectivity?
You have just describe the net (later the Net, still later the Internet) circa 1982. You can search Usenet to read about the excitement level when USR 2400 baud modems were released: doubling of connection speed to transmit netnews!
Of course, you can also read about what happened when news (alone) was distributed on a meshed basis.
There are a lot of scare phrases in that article which are typically used to drum up business for consultants. I would talk to your Legal Dept (for a bigger employer) or CPA (for a small employer) before trashing every resume in the Inbox.
After the DMCA was passed, the Sonny Bono Act upheld, and the The SCO Group lawsuit was filed, I realized that I had been wrong in my opinion of RMS, and that what had appeared to me to be fanaticism was in fact a very clear appreciate of reality. Progress depends on unreasonable men and all that.
However, that is not to say that a fanatic who has had a clear and correct vision cannot later go over a cliff, and in the last year or so that does seem to me where RMS is headed.
It means that 20 Senators, 100 Congressmen, and 1000 federal judges, along with Tommy Lee Jones in a US Marshall's uniform, called upon the USPTO and told them that they could either find a way to invalidate the patents or they could all find themselves drafted under secret provisions of various secret laws and assigned as the US Navy's designated patent examiners at the secret underground Antarctic base for the rest of their lives, with no vacation time or days off. And no funeral; their bodies would just be tossed out for leapord seals to eat sometime around 2030.
And believe me, that was probably the only true BIPARTISAN delegation Washington DC has seen in 13 years.
=== maintaining a professional atmosphere (i.e. deleting things they don't like) ===
I read all 900 or so comments before they were deleted (600 in the first batch, which disappeared, and 300 in the second batch). Of those about 20-30 were offensive and deserved to be removed (if the message board was considered "edited").
The rest were in no way offensive or profane, but they were critical of the Washington Post, and provided factual backup for that criticism. That I think was the problem; the factual backup that is.
There may have been some profanity and unacceptable insults in those comments. It takes me 30-45 seconds each morning and afternoon to clear similar out of my inbox, so I am not sure what the big problem was for the WaPo.com site managers. Most of the original comments can be found here if you are interested.
But there were also two fundamental problems: (1) The Washington Post has printed demontrable factually incorrect statements concerning Abramoff, a lifelong Republican and key friend/confident of Grover Norquist, giving money to Democrats - which he did not (2) both the WaPo and WaPo.com (note: two different entities) utterly refusing to engage this question any any level. The closest they have come is to admit that their articles were "inartful" - when they were in fact wrong.
It is like the old problem with taking quality surveys: if you take a survey, and then don't do anything, your customers are left angrier than they were before. WaPo.com solicited feedback, received it, and then cold-shouldered its readers. Guess what the reaction was.
=== there are already whispers of various Dell models running 10.4 x86, etc ===
My memory grows dim, but I IIRC I first heard those rumours in 1986. I would be willing to bet that Apple has had versions of its OS' running on every major platform in the lab. Doesn't mean they ever do anything with them, much less release them.
=== If you can prove through solid design and input and output types that the program wont lose control then your set. ===
Well, if that were the case your program would never crash on input, but it could still take that input data and make an incorrect calculation on it. Add the difference between the airport's height and sea level, for example, rather than subtracting it.
I have yet to discover a large, centralized IT infrastructure departement that provides an adequate service, not to mention a good one.
I had one working for me once, from about 1991 to 1993. We provided tremendous amounts of high-level, high-availability support, training, desktop tutoring and handholding. You wanted it? We would figure out a way to provide it. We had roaming desktops for Windows 3.1, something Microsoft said was impossible. Transparent access to all resources at all sites. A proactive research and deployment group looking at new technology (both productive and toys) all the time. The end users loved it.
Around 1994, corporate management sat down, looked at the cost, and outsourced the whole kit-and-kaboodle. I went back to the engineering department; it was sad to get calls from my coworkers begging me to come over and fix something for them. No can do - it isn't my job anymore, and I am back on the timesheet myself.
Now, you can say corporate management was right or wrong to do that. I would say, probably wrong in that case (in the end the oursourcers cost them more than we did, for substantially worse service). But the plain fact is no organization with a budget can afford the amount and particularly quality of computer support that end users demand.
Now that I manage business software systems, I get requests all the time for deskside tutoring. The associates and 1st line managers want a person to go to each desk, and sit with each person for individual tutoring. The tutor should have a deep understanding of all the organization's business processes, a complete knowledge of the software, a detailed knowledge of the tutee's tasks and responsibilities, and be a first-class teacher, trainer, procedure writer (did I mention the super-guy should write all the procedures?), and of course a report writer able to use the vulcan mind-meld to extract business requirements from peoples' minds. And he needs to be able to fix any PC hardware problems that might come up, and get rid of that annoying virus that the associate installed while surfing at lunchtime.
Now, a few such people exist. They typically work for consulting firms, charge $250/hr, and burn out on the whole tutoring thing after 18 months. But I am supposed to have a force of these supermen who will arrive at a deskside at a moment's notice at zero cost to the business unit? And oh yeah, my own budget is cut 20% this year.
Riiiight. Methinks this just might be the "we need someone to blame syndrome".
Here's a question that has been bothering me for a while. The various health agencies have believed for a while that it is possible that the H5N1 virus could mutate into a form that spreads easily among humans. Of course, they cannot know in advance what that mutation will be, and once the mutation appears it will take 18-24 months to develop a vaccine for that specific strain.
So - wouldn't it have made sense to create a vaccine for H5N1 itself, and add that to this year's usual 3-flu cocktail? My understanding is that the human immune system maintains a library of antibodies for viruses that have challenged it in the past. Wouldn't there be a greater liklihood that an H5N1Mutant antibody could be developed if there was already an H5N1 antibody in the library? Again, my understanding is that the difference in surface structure between the primary and the mutant is usually fairly small.
Am I oversimplifing things too much? Or would there be a danger that vaccinating people for H5N1 would actually _increase_ the chance of the mutant developing?
Enlightenment from people who deal with the squishy stuff would be appreciated.
Most organizations I have been a part of have broken pieces of their anatomy striving for innovation - either physical prdouct or business process innovation. Whereas if they had just worked hard to improve what they were already doing by, say, 20%, so much additional money would have flowed in that eventually it would have created enough serendipity for an actual innovation to break out (read the Thorn/EMI CAT scanner case from HBS).
But digging in and doing the hard, dirty work of improving actual operations 20% (without the use of million-dollar miricle consultants) is a lot less fun than chasing the next Google or transistor, so in my experience it rarely gets done.
=== I'm sure this will be mentioned by others I find that the mouse, rather than the keyboard, is the thing that really brings on RSI. I've asked around it seems quite a few people have come to the same conclusion but I've not really heard it mentioned in the press. ===
Stongly agree. And although aging was probably a factor too, I find it interesting that I never experienced wrist pain when I was typing on electric typewriters or old-style IBM/DEC computer keyboards that were set up to mimic typewriters, but as soon as I started using mice and flat-style keyboards (often installed in locations where a standard typewriter-ergonomic setup was not possible) I also started having wrist pains.
Personally I found that using the touch pad rather than mouse alleviates 80% of the pain, but that is different for each person.
The key word there would seem to be "unprotected". A $49 firewall set to block all incoming traffic (which you can configure off-line) followed by direct surfing to appropriate update links before doing anything else (and installation of Firefox for most browsing if you don't already have it) should do the trick.
> I don't think anyone rooted for > Microsoft in the early days.
What do you consider the early days? Certainly in the early days of business personal computing (say 1984-1994), Microsoft was seen as the ally helping the enchained corporate manager fight against the evil, controlling clutches of the evil Data Processing Department. Read the trade press of the time - Microsoft was spoken of as an ally (if not a friend) and partner.
Slashdot Mirror
sPh
> I'm not trying to defend recruiters who won't tell you
> what a job is worth - it's not fair to expect you to
> interview before you can even know what's on offer -
> but you need to understand that (in our case at least)
> salaries are very dependant on the candidate.
To me that is the true value of a _good_ recruiter: he makes that preliminary assessment and tells both parties what the realistic range is. And that is true from either side of the table.
Sadly I have only worked with 3 really good recruiters in 25 years, but that is another story...
sPh
> The internet has completely failed to do
> anything positive at all for employment
> search OR employee search.
I tend to susupect you never searched for a job in the 1980s, much less the 1970s. The Internet-based system we have now has some negatives, although I think most of those are dictated by employers more than the sites or even the evil recruiters. But compared to the 1980s? I take it you never had to spend $100/city/3-month-period subscribing to the Sunday paper for EACH CITY you were interested in? And then never being competitive because you didn't get the paper (via US Mail) until Wednesday (and your mailed resume didn't arrive until the following Monday), by which time the employer already had 100 resumes?
sPh
> 2) manditory salary ranges
Um, right. If I post a job with a listed salary range of 45,000 - 55,000, what is going to be every single candidates' opening offer? Say, 57,500? And will they accept an offer below 52,500 regardless of their skills, experience, or interview performance?
sPh
I am guessing they will use resublimated Thiotimoline as the base material, proving once again that Asimov was ahead of his time.
sPh
What happens when they get to -1 nm then? Can they keep going smaller?
sPh
> Is it possible to create an internet that relies
> instead on peer-to-peer connectivity?
You have just describe the net (later the Net, still later the Internet) circa 1982. You can search Usenet to read about the excitement level when USR 2400 baud modems were released: doubling of connection speed to transmit netnews!
Of course, you can also read about what happened when news (alone) was distributed on a meshed basis.
sPh
There are a lot of scare phrases in that article which are typically used to drum up business for consultants. I would talk to your Legal Dept (for a bigger employer) or CPA (for a small employer) before trashing every resume in the Inbox.
sPh
After the DMCA was passed, the Sonny Bono Act upheld, and the The SCO Group lawsuit was filed, I realized that I had been wrong in my opinion of RMS, and that what had appeared to me to be fanaticism was in fact a very clear appreciate of reality. Progress depends on unreasonable men and all that.
However, that is not to say that a fanatic who has had a clear and correct vision cannot later go over a cliff, and in the last year or so that does seem to me where RMS is headed.
sph
Google "RTG".
But yeah, it has the potential to "cause cancer and stuff"!
sPh
It means that 20 Senators, 100 Congressmen, and 1000 federal judges, along with Tommy Lee Jones in a US Marshall's uniform, called upon the USPTO and told them that they could either find a way to invalidate the patents or they could all find themselves drafted under secret provisions of various secret laws and assigned as the US Navy's designated patent examiners at the secret underground Antarctic base for the rest of their lives, with no vacation time or days off. And no funeral; their bodies would just be tossed out for leapord seals to eat sometime around 2030.
And believe me, that was probably the only true BIPARTISAN delegation Washington DC has seen in 13 years.
sPh
The rest were in no way offensive or profane, but they were critical of the Washington Post, and provided factual backup for that criticism. That I think was the problem; the factual backup that is.
sPh
But there were also two fundamental problems: (1) The Washington Post has printed demontrable factually incorrect statements concerning Abramoff, a lifelong Republican and key friend/confident of Grover Norquist, giving money to Democrats - which he did not (2) both the WaPo and WaPo.com (note: two different entities) utterly refusing to engage this question any any level. The closest they have come is to admit that their articles were "inartful" - when they were in fact wrong.
It is like the old problem with taking quality surveys: if you take a survey, and then don't do anything, your customers are left angrier than they were before. WaPo.com solicited feedback, received it, and then cold-shouldered its readers. Guess what the reaction was.
sPh
sPh
> Unfortunately, I think reclaiming breaking
> energy with an electric motor was thought of,
> and used much earlier then that.
Around 1870 in fact.
sPh
sPh
Around 1994, corporate management sat down, looked at the cost, and outsourced the whole kit-and-kaboodle. I went back to the engineering department; it was sad to get calls from my coworkers begging me to come over and fix something for them. No can do - it isn't my job anymore, and I am back on the timesheet myself.
Now, you can say corporate management was right or wrong to do that. I would say, probably wrong in that case (in the end the oursourcers cost them more than we did, for substantially worse service). But the plain fact is no organization with a budget can afford the amount and particularly quality of computer support that end users demand.
Now that I manage business software systems, I get requests all the time for deskside tutoring. The associates and 1st line managers want a person to go to each desk, and sit with each person for individual tutoring. The tutor should have a deep understanding of all the organization's business processes, a complete knowledge of the software, a detailed knowledge of the tutee's tasks and responsibilities, and be a first-class teacher, trainer, procedure writer (did I mention the super-guy should write all the procedures?), and of course a report writer able to use the vulcan mind-meld to extract business requirements from peoples' minds. And he needs to be able to fix any PC hardware problems that might come up, and get rid of that annoying virus that the associate installed while surfing at lunchtime.
Now, a few such people exist. They typically work for consulting firms, charge $250/hr, and burn out on the whole tutoring thing after 18 months. But I am supposed to have a force of these supermen who will arrive at a deskside at a moment's notice at zero cost to the business unit? And oh yeah, my own budget is cut 20% this year.
Riiiight. Methinks this just might be the "we need someone to blame syndrome".
sPh
If the information is so trivial and useless, why do they collect it?
If the information has value, why don't they pay me for it?
Is there any validity to the theories (and software) of social networking?
sPh
> The problem with H5N1 is that since its an avian flu, it
> kills the bird embryo before you can develop/grow anything
> useful for humans.
Interesting. How do they make the vaccine for chickens used in, e.g. Vietnam? Is there any other way to make the vaccine other than using egg base?
sPh
Here's a question that has been bothering me for a while. The various health agencies have believed for a while that it is possible that the H5N1 virus could mutate into a form that spreads easily among humans. Of course, they cannot know in advance what that mutation will be, and once the mutation appears it will take 18-24 months to develop a vaccine for that specific strain.
So - wouldn't it have made sense to create a vaccine for H5N1 itself, and add that to this year's usual 3-flu cocktail? My understanding is that the human immune system maintains a library of antibodies for viruses that have challenged it in the past. Wouldn't there be a greater liklihood that an H5N1Mutant antibody could be developed if there was already an H5N1 antibody in the library? Again, my understanding is that the difference in surface structure between the primary and the mutant is usually fairly small.
Am I oversimplifing things too much? Or would there be a danger that vaccinating people for H5N1 would actually _increase_ the chance of the mutant developing?
Enlightenment from people who deal with the squishy stuff would be appreciated.
sPh
Most organizations I have been a part of have broken pieces of their anatomy striving for innovation - either physical prdouct or business process innovation. Whereas if they had just worked hard to improve what they were already doing by, say, 20%, so much additional money would have flowed in that eventually it would have created enough serendipity for an actual innovation to break out (read the Thorn/EMI CAT scanner case from HBS).
But digging in and doing the hard, dirty work of improving actual operations 20% (without the use of million-dollar miricle consultants) is a lot less fun than chasing the next Google or transistor, so in my experience it rarely gets done.
sPh
Personally I found that using the touch pad rather than mouse alleviates 80% of the pain, but that is different for each person.
sPh
The key word there would seem to be "unprotected". A $49 firewall set to block all incoming traffic (which you can configure off-line) followed by direct surfing to appropriate update links before doing anything else (and installation of Firefox for most browsing if you don't already have it) should do the trick.
sPh
sPh
> I don't think anyone rooted for
> Microsoft in the early days.
What do you consider the early days? Certainly in the early days of business personal computing (say 1984-1994), Microsoft was seen as the ally helping the enchained corporate manager fight against the evil, controlling clutches of the evil Data Processing Department. Read the trade press of the time - Microsoft was spoken of as an ally (if not a friend) and partner.
sPh