From TFA: “I can’t quite even start down the parade of horribles in terms of all the ways this could be a problem,” said Sarah Staudt, senior policy analyst and staff attorney for Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice and a former juvenile defense attorney in Cook County. “The idea that an adult can turn on a listening device while a child is, say, in the bathroom or in their bedroom is not good.”
That is the most horrible thing she can think of? I suppose it is possible there might be an authorized agent who gets off on the sound of pooping.
How about one on a kid playing video games using headphones while his parents and some friends who are supporters of Candidate A are discussing how they are going to use some dirt they just dug up on Candidate B.
I remember when the Bulgarians were the best hackers. They would include the names of viruses they had written on their resumes when applying for a computer job. Many firsts. Are they still in the game I wonder?
My trade was electronics. I worked in Cable TV. We had just started installing satellite dishes so I wrote a program on an HP programmable calculator to calculate the azimuth and elevation for the 4.5 meter dishes. I was hired by another company who also owned businesses in other industries. They had a Commodore 8032. I wrote a program to calculate the value of the equipment on each pole from a survey using a bicycle wheel with a counter then converting the circumference to feet. This task had been previously done by a professional engineering firm.
Our accounting and AR system used file cards, two per customer which were updated by clerks using a pencil. We bought an IBM XT. I wrote it in ZIM. They ditched the fie cards. The folks doing this tedious job had to be very good. This was over 40 years ago and the ladies that did not retire in the past few years are still with us.
I was asked what I could do for a sister company. I went in at the end of the day and looked for the trash cans with the most adding machine paper. In the morning I visited them and asked them to show me what they do. A couple of days later they were using a spreadsheet with a bit of Quick Basic code. Every single one of them were good employees, They had to be.
I am a hacker, not a Programmer. Whenever someone suggested we sell my programs I said "it won't work." No comments, spaghetti code. I still haven't taken a single course. Almost all of our current production software is purchased or written by our internal 'real' programmers. I can still do a report needed for a meeting with a customer next Monday morning in a couple hours that would take a pro several days only because I know where the data lives and stuff like UserDate2 is Arrival DateTime. I will retire in a few months after we finish transitioning to new software the a good report writer and our programming department will take it from there.
We have about 6 times more employees now compared to when I started doing this. Our companies are all profitable. All the employee tasks that were automated are still with us or retired or nearing retirement.
Technology has reduced time to repair in our repair centers and we sill have more mechanics than ever.
I had a "cellphone" provided by my employer 30 ago. It was expensive and huge. "a dollar a holler" It was only provided for managers and some territory supervisors. Now all our managers and field employees have them. We have custom applications so all technicians can see their assigned calls and update them live.
It allows for another level in Japanese poetry and even given names. There are multiple Chinese characters that have the same sound in Japanese. One can write a poem that meets all the rhythm and meter in Japanese with the choice of characters for the sound adds another level of complexity or meaning.
It appears to be the same for given names. We had an exchange student whose given name was Jiro.
Jir can be written using different kanji characters and can mean:
It is my understanding that Inuit means "The people" when we say "the Inuit" they hear "The people the people" This was explained to me by a person that was once called an Eskimo.
I think there can be a conservative case for UBI One advantage to employers with this plan is that folks who don't know how to work will be out of our way. It is much better than make work. One day I left for work and some vehicles pulled up loaded with workers (about 8) who started cleaning the trash out of the roads and gutters accompanied by two white-hatted guys (supervisors) who sat in their town provided SUV. When I came home for lunch, they were still at it along with the idle supervisors.
I know I could have sent two of my guys to do the same job, they wouldn't need supervision and would be done in two hours.
If we can get rid of all the government workers who check to see if there aren't any men's shoes under the bed and provide grants to companies that locate in areas that they wouldn't choose without the subsidies and all other "make work" bureaucrats we could probably cover the costs.
Also a group of folks who came up with an idea for a business could live off the UBI while they built their company. It should go to everyone. Poor people and millionaires should get the direct deposit and it would be taxed back starting at 30k or so.
Our support folks had several calls today "caused" by the time change. i.e. "Gas pumps have the wrong time", "Appointments are off by an hour", etc. There will be several more over the next week or two.
I recall a similar "look at it from this angle" long ago when I worked in Cable TV.
I was in the owners office when a friend of his came in and asked him if he could have free service at his house. "Why should I do that?" my boss asked. He replied, "Because I'm your friend." Boss replied, "If I am your friend, why don't you pay me double?"
In those days 50% of gross went to cash flow. I suspect it isn't that juicy today.
Where I work we hire folks right out of technical school with no experience as well as 50 year old's with a significant list of certs and experience. We are primarily a Windows shop. A newbie who runs Linux at home or an old guy who maintains a local non profit's Linux network would have an edge over other applicants.
No dog in this hunt. I don't live in the USA. I agree with you. I've listened to several of the in-context interviews and read some transcripts. The interpenetration of his comments is political. He didn't say what folks are saying he said and I don't think he meant the things that folks are saying he meant.
I am close enough to death to be immune to any economic damage to me regardless of who becomes President of the USA. My federal pensions will not go down because I am a baby boomer and if you screw with our federal pensions, you probably won't get re-elected. I have some non-government income sources which allows for trips and toys but I can have a warm dry place to sleep and sufficient food, Internet, etc, on a governemt pension.
The wrong guy might get me killed earlier than I would have died of natural causes but I think that is remote.
From my own, watching from (somewhat) afar, I would like to see, Trump, Carson or Sanders become president. Not just for entertainment value (although that would be abundant) , but because it would mean the American Citizens authorized this President.
My Dad, WWII vet, once said to me, "I love Britain but I hate the British. I hate America but I love the Americans.
I saw the string "n00bz" and its variations online in the days of dial up at 1200 baud and bang path emailing. I even used it myself once or twice. I didn't see or use it IRL though. We were treated like rock stars by the users. This was probably partly due to the low hanging fruit of a 25 person administrative office and no computers or "ceremonial" computers running a single industry-specific application.
I'd go in after office hours and locate the trash baskets with the most adding machine tape. The next day I'd sit the user for an hour and bring in a computer running Lotus 123 or that Borland app whose name I forget. and show them how to use it. It was not uncommon to cut the labour time in half. A month or so later when we were implementing a custom-written app with changes in the code written the night before and the um.... occasional... user-annoying bug. The users were our friends and partners.
The kids today on our first level support are occasional treated like crap by users/customers. Important executive is outraged because his new mobile has email on it he specifically remembers deleting on his old one. I know the sample size is less than TFA but my feeling is they are not stressed and don't hate their jobs. I do sense more stress in middle managers and the folks that the customers bitch to when they are unhappy with the service.
I was an early adopter of all the Usenet.die.die, mud, etc. I even used ICqueue. Today - I have a gmail account,/. and perhaps one or two other blogs.
I'm still employed by the same company for almost 30 years and I have NO stress in my job.
They plan to double their current workforce by adding approximately 400 jobs. These positions will include paid internships for Canadian students and long-term employees.
This program will also bring international employees into 18-month (see note below) rotational training positions.
Note: Even though Microsoft’s Rotational Program is generally 18 months in duration, a 24-month work permit will be issued so that the employee may continue to perform Rotational Program job duties until they are transitioned by Microsoft into a new position elsewhere. Extensions
No work permit extensions will be issued for this program.
As for the shortage, it's not that hard to find a person for a level 1 or 2 help desk, staging technician, etc. (it's still not that easy) It is a challenge and takes some time to recruit a level 3+ tech who can visit a site and design a system to improve their productivity or solve a data flow problem.
Our company pays $1,000 to anyone who refers an applicant for an advertised position. We probably pay a lot more to recruiting firms.
If the oil companies had their way, the spill would not have taken place. The Business Proposal was the Mackenzie Valley pipeline. The environmental folks opposed it because it. There were hearings and it was denied. "The noise of construction might frighten the caribou.!", etc.
I applied for their Beta program for the Playbook SDK and received the reply below a couple weeks later; Our company uses several custom-developed applications on several hundred blackberries. We have five professional software developers and a couple dozen amateur hacker-geeks. The Playbook's technical capabilities blows away any other tablet but is currently useless as a business tool. A company with a BES server could implement Playbooks tomorrow with very little concern about security IF there were applications. The guys are testing Citrix on it now and it appears to be ok but until there are other remote apps (Teamviewer, RDP) None of the techies will use it for anything other than a toy gadget. RIM won't allow us to have a native SDK for the Playbook because they want to focus on games??!! I used to like Novell too.
================ Thank you for your application to participate in the closed beta for the Native SDK for BlackBerry Tablet OS. We have received a large number of requests to join the beta, including yours, and apologize for the delay in responding As we discussed in our blog post (http://devblog.blackberry.com/2011/08/native-sdk-for-blackberry-tablet-os-closed-beta/) the focus for the beta was game developers who would be leveraging OpenGL ES to create or port games to the platform. As your application currently stands, you did not meet the initial beta criteria, and we are unable to provide you with access today. We have added your name to the list for access to the beta when it’s opened up to a broader audience. We appreciate your patience and look forward to seeing your native application running on PlayBook in the near future. Please check the Inside BlackBerry Developer’s Blog for updates or follow us at @BlackBerryDev. Thanks, BlackBerry Developer Relations Team
Our company (In Canada) uses Websense for web filtering Content blocked by your organization Reason: This Websense category is filtered: Advocacy Groups. URL: http://www.defendwisconsin.org/
A lot of folks use third party web filtering services like websense. Websense also places www.rightwingnews.com in the same category.
If one of our users "Needed" to access that site they would open a call with support who would unblock it.
Cisco, Trend, Symantec and others would operate similarly.
Ten or so years ago, our trucking division experimented with such a program. It ran on a PC and had a controller with a single knob which could be rotated left or right.
You used the knob to keep the cursor in the center spot on the screen. The cursor would become more difficult to control during the test (about 30 seconds)
Drivers would sign in for the first time and establish a baseline for themselves by taking the test multiple times until the program indicated that a baseline was established. (About a dozen attempts, I think)
Once a baseline was established, a driver had to pass the test before starting his shift. If he failed, he had to see a supervisor.
I tested it on myself. After two (unmeasured) shots of vodka, I would have had to see a supervisor were I a driver.
An additional advantage was that you would also fail the test if you had the flu, were sleep-deprived or emotionally unfit to drive.
The program never went into full production at our place. Currently drivers are tested when hired and after any accident or delivery process incident.
I forget what it was called (I tried googling). I thought it was "fair". If you couldn't pass the test, you probably shouldn't drive a truck that day.
If you smoked a joint a week ago, it wouldn't affect the test but if you were up all night watching movies, you'd likely fail.
I helped a customer get off AOL's blacklist a couple months ago.
It was a straightforward process with an immediate automated reply.
In order to complete the process you must be able to receive an email at abuse@, postmaster@, or the technical or administrative contact for your domain.
The final email was from a human. It was completed the day following.
It's been a while since I had contact with teachers and computers.
Our company bought its first computer (Commodore 8032 used for counting money...spreadsheets). Except for one-of's here and there, computers were not in classrooms.
I occasionally traveled to another province where the brother of a fellow employee had a job to investigate what was available for use in education. He was a teacher prior to landing this plum job. When I was in town, I looked him up, had dinner, visited his friends, etc. They were all very knowledgeable about computers. They were writing instructions/ideas , many were messing with BASIC, etc.
They were all teachers... real teachers with home rooms who marked papers at night and they were all learning on their own and from each other. That group of sort-of randomly group of a dozen or so folks was quite likely the best "amateur" computer experts in the province.
Where I currently work we have a help desk that treats or escalates calls from "Fonts are wrong in Word", "Can't log in.", to calls requiring senior IT folks with meetings and conversations in hallways. Our customers vary from three person family operations to national accounts with multiple small and large offices. For most of these we provide first level support. "Fonts, email bounced, I lost a file, etc.
If your business is not computers. (oil, pizza, educated children, etc.) then you have to provide first level support to the folks who work in that business. It's expensive per user and it's a cost that's easy to hide by requiring users to do it themselves or sleeze it from someone whose job is to do something else.
A few years ago we quoted on a hardware software job for a group of schools. (we weren't chosen)The quote was for supplying hardware, installing software and standard warranty on the job. No costs were allocated for support.
If you want workers to produce something and work with computers, and use them to count money or pour concrete, you have to support the dumbasses, smart ass know it all's and klutzes.
I think it is reasonable to have most teachers trained to the level of a "user" with first level support for "Getting an error when opening Word"
It doesn't matter whether the operating system is Microsoft Linux, PICK, or what applications are used. If you expect folks to use computers to do their job, you have to provide ongoing support.
I've seen many schools with computer labs with more than half the equipment not working and teachers with computers on their desks that aren't being used because of a problem
Teachers are no different than any other trade around computers. Office clerks, engineers, lawyers, executives, shpppers... they all contain a subset of people who are horribly clueless and dangerous with a computer.
It seems that people expect teachers to be better with computers than a typical tradesman in another industry.
I think it is possible for a middle aged teacher with very low computer skills to teach an elementary class programming if they are provided with the tools and support. A teacher who has two servers at home and writes software for Linux in his spare time might... might be able to do it better.
I'd have a hard time deciding the weight of "Good Teacher" against the weight of "Good at the subject being taught"
Where are the folks who can solder, "feel" what a capacitor does and do all Ohm's Law calculation in their subconscious?
Trades schools used to produce them in quantity. All the guys at my company who do component level work are over 40 except for one who emigrated from China.
They have come from somewhere. I can't imagine Engineers getting anything work or fixing anything without technicians.:)
Slashdot Mirror
From TFA: “I can’t quite even start down the parade of horribles in terms of all the ways this could be a problem,” said Sarah Staudt, senior policy analyst and staff attorney for Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice and a former juvenile defense attorney in Cook County. “The idea that an adult can turn on a listening device while a child is, say, in the bathroom or in their bedroom is not good.”
That is the most horrible thing she can think of? I suppose it is possible there might be an authorized agent who gets off on the sound of pooping.
How about one on a kid playing video games using headphones while his parents and some friends who are supporters of Candidate A are discussing how they are going to use some dirt they just dug up on Candidate B.
I care too.
I remember when the Bulgarians were the best hackers. They would include the names of viruses they had written on their resumes when applying for a computer job. Many firsts. Are they still in the game I wonder?
My trade was electronics. I worked in Cable TV. We had just started installing satellite dishes so I wrote a program on an HP programmable calculator to calculate the azimuth and elevation for the 4.5 meter dishes. I was hired by another company who also owned businesses in other industries. They had a Commodore 8032. I wrote a program to calculate the value of the equipment on each pole from a survey using a bicycle wheel with a counter then converting the circumference to feet. This task had been previously done by a professional engineering firm.
Our accounting and AR system used file cards, two per customer which were updated by clerks using a pencil.
We bought an IBM XT. I wrote it in ZIM. They ditched the fie cards.
The folks doing this tedious job had to be very good. This was over 40 years ago and the ladies that did not retire in the past few years are still with us.
I was asked what I could do for a sister company. I went in at the end of the day and looked for the trash cans with the most adding machine paper. In the morning I visited them and asked them to show me what they do. A couple of days later they were using a spreadsheet with a bit of Quick Basic code. Every single one of them were good employees, They had to be.
I am a hacker, not a Programmer. Whenever someone suggested we sell my programs I said "it won't work."
No comments, spaghetti code. I still haven't taken a single course. Almost all of our current production software is purchased or written by our internal 'real' programmers. I can still do a report needed for a meeting with a customer next Monday morning in a couple hours that would take a pro several days only because I know where the data lives and stuff like UserDate2 is Arrival DateTime. I will retire in a few months after we finish transitioning to new software the a good report writer and our programming department will take it from there.
We have about 6 times more employees now compared to when I started doing this. Our companies are all profitable.
All the employee tasks that were automated are still with us or retired or nearing retirement.
Technology has reduced time to repair in our repair centers and we sill have more mechanics than ever.
Good employees really are Gold.
I had a "cellphone" provided by my employer 30 ago. It was expensive and huge. "a dollar a holler" It was only provided for managers and some territory supervisors.
Now all our managers and field employees have them. We have custom applications so all technicians can see their assigned calls and update them live.
It allows for another level in Japanese poetry and even given names.
There are multiple Chinese characters that have the same sound in Japanese. One can write a poem that meets all the rhythm and meter in Japanese with the choice of characters for the sound adds another level of complexity or meaning.
It appears to be the same for given names. We had an exchange student whose given name was Jiro.
Jir can be written using different kanji characters and can mean:
, "next, son"
, "next, melodious"
, "second, son"
, "second, melodious"
, "reign, son"
It is my understanding that Inuit means "The people" when we say "the Inuit" they hear "The people the people"
This was explained to me by a person that was once called an Eskimo.
I think there can be a conservative case for UBI
One advantage to employers with this plan is that folks who don't know how to work will be out of our way.
It is much better than make work.
One day I left for work and some vehicles pulled up loaded with workers (about 8) who started cleaning the trash out of the roads and gutters accompanied by two white-hatted guys (supervisors) who sat in their town provided SUV.
When I came home for lunch, they were still at it along with the idle supervisors.
I know I could have sent two of my guys to do the same job, they wouldn't need supervision and would be done in two hours.
If we can get rid of all the government workers who check to see if there aren't any men's shoes under the bed and provide grants to companies that locate in areas that they wouldn't choose without the subsidies and all other "make work" bureaucrats we could probably cover the costs.
Also a group of folks who came up with an idea for a business could live off the UBI while they built their company.
It should go to everyone. Poor people and millionaires should get the direct deposit and it would be taxed back starting at 30k or so.
Our support folks had several calls today "caused" by the time change. i.e. "Gas pumps have the wrong time", "Appointments are off by an hour", etc. There will be several more over the next week or two.
Yeah it is clickbaity but it's accurate.
Yes the hack was over a year ago but the "news" is that it was made widely available about three days ago.
Damn! sorry I hit Redundant instead of Insightful.
Posting to remove it.
If I had mod points +1 insightful. :)
I recall a similar "look at it from this angle" long ago when I worked in Cable TV.
I was in the owners office when a friend of his came in and asked him if he could have free service at his house. "Why should I do that?" my boss asked.
He replied, "Because I'm your friend."
Boss replied, "If I am your friend, why don't you pay me double?"
In those days 50% of gross went to cash flow. I suspect it isn't that juicy today.
Where I work we hire folks right out of technical school with no experience as well as 50 year old's with a significant list of certs and experience. We are primarily a Windows shop. A newbie who runs Linux at home or an old guy who maintains a local non profit's Linux network would have an edge over other applicants.
No dog in this hunt. I don't live in the USA.
I agree with you. I've listened to several of the in-context interviews and read some transcripts. The interpenetration of his comments is political.
He didn't say what folks are saying he said and I don't think he meant the things that folks are saying he meant.
I am close enough to death to be immune to any economic damage to me regardless of who becomes President of the USA. My federal pensions will not go down because I am a baby boomer and if you screw with our federal pensions, you probably won't get re-elected. I have some non-government income sources which allows for trips and toys but I can have a warm dry place to sleep and sufficient food, Internet, etc, on a governemt pension.
The wrong guy might get me killed earlier than I would have died of natural causes but I think that is remote.
From my own, watching from (somewhat) afar, I would like to see, Trump, Carson or Sanders become president. Not just for entertainment value (although that would be abundant) , but because it would mean the American Citizens authorized this President.
My Dad, WWII vet, once said to me, "I love Britain but I hate the British. I hate America but I love the Americans.
I saw the string "n00bz" and its variations online in the days of dial up at 1200 baud and bang path emailing. I even used it myself once or twice. I didn't see or use it IRL though. We were treated like rock stars by the users. This was probably partly due to the low hanging fruit of a 25 person administrative office and no computers or "ceremonial" computers running a single industry-specific application.
I'd go in after office hours and locate the trash baskets with the most adding machine tape. The next day I'd sit the user for an hour and bring in a computer running Lotus 123 or that Borland app whose name I forget. and show them how to use it. It was not uncommon to cut the labour time in half. A month or so later when we were implementing a custom-written app with changes in the code written the night before and the um .... occasional... user-annoying bug. The users were our friends and partners.
The kids today on our first level support are occasional treated like crap by users/customers. Important executive is outraged because his new mobile has email on it he specifically remembers deleting on his old one. I know the sample size is less than TFA but my feeling is they are not stressed and don't hate their jobs. I do sense more stress in middle managers and the folks that the customers bitch to when they are unhappy with the service.
I was an early adopter of all the Usenet.die.die, mud, etc. I even used ICqueue. Today - I have a gmail account, /. and perhaps one or two other blogs.
I'm still employed by the same company for almost 30 years and I have NO stress in my job.
If the oceans put about 70 gigatonnes of co2 and land puts about 70 giga tonnes wouldn't aviation's 500 mt (according to TFA) be less than 1%?
Here is what I read:
Microsoft is building a training center.
They will be training folks from Canada as well as folks from other countries.
Microsoft Obscuristan has a young person they would like to train so they send him to the Microsoft training center in Canada.
They are not bringing them here to sew shirts in a sweatshop (or any IT equivalant) they are bringing them here to train.
It is a net benefit to Canada. It has a net positive effect on jobs available to Canadians.
From:
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/r...
They plan to double their current workforce by adding approximately 400 jobs. These positions will include paid internships for Canadian students and long-term employees.
This program will also bring international employees into 18-month (see note below) rotational training positions.
Note: Even though Microsoft’s Rotational Program is generally 18 months in duration, a 24-month work permit will be issued so that the employee may continue to perform Rotational Program job duties until they are transitioned by Microsoft into a new position elsewhere.
Extensions
No work permit extensions will be issued for this program.
As for the shortage, it's not that hard to find a person for a level 1 or 2 help desk, staging technician, etc. (it's still not that easy) It is a challenge and takes some time to recruit a level 3+ tech who can visit a site and design a system to improve their productivity or solve a data flow problem.
Our company pays $1,000 to anyone who refers an applicant for an advertised position. We probably pay a lot more to recruiting firms.
I would rescue the above from Flamebait if I had points. It's on-topic for this thread (sort-of). Whether you agree with it or not, it fits here.
If the oil companies had their way, the spill would not have taken place. The Business Proposal was the Mackenzie Valley pipeline. The environmental folks opposed it because it. There were hearings and it was denied. "The noise of construction might frighten the caribou.!", etc.
Interesting article at the Internet Storm Center "Why Flame is Lame"
http://isc.sans.edu/diary.html?storyid=13342#comment
I applied for their Beta program for the Playbook SDK and received the reply below a couple weeks later;
Our company uses several custom-developed applications on several hundred blackberries. We have five professional software developers and a couple dozen amateur hacker-geeks. The Playbook's technical capabilities blows away any other tablet but is currently useless as a business tool. A company with a BES server could implement Playbooks tomorrow with very little concern about security IF there were applications.
The guys are testing Citrix on it now and it appears to be ok but until there are other remote apps (Teamviewer, RDP) None of the techies will use it for anything other than a toy gadget.
RIM won't allow us to have a native SDK for the Playbook because they want to focus on games??!!
I used to like Novell too.
================
Thank you for your application to participate in the closed beta for the Native SDK for BlackBerry Tablet OS. We have received a large number of requests to join the beta, including yours, and apologize for the delay in responding
As we discussed in our blog post (http://devblog.blackberry.com/2011/08/native-sdk-for-blackberry-tablet-os-closed-beta/) the focus for the beta was game developers who would be leveraging OpenGL ES to create or port games to the platform. As your application currently stands, you did not meet the initial beta criteria, and we are unable to provide you with access today. We have added your name to the list for access to the beta when it’s opened up to a broader audience. We appreciate your patience and look forward to seeing your native application running on PlayBook in the near future. Please check the Inside BlackBerry Developer’s Blog for updates or follow us at @BlackBerryDev.
Thanks,
BlackBerry Developer Relations Team
Our company (In Canada) uses Websense for web filtering
Content blocked by your organization
Reason:
This Websense category is filtered: Advocacy Groups.
URL:
http://www.defendwisconsin.org/
A lot of folks use third party web filtering services like websense. Websense also places www.rightwingnews.com in the same category.
If one of our users "Needed" to access that site they would open a call with support who would unblock it.
Cisco, Trend, Symantec and others would operate similarly.
Ten or so years ago, our trucking division experimented with such a program. It ran on a PC and had a controller with a single knob which could be rotated left or right.
You used the knob to keep the cursor in the center spot on the screen. The cursor would become more difficult to control during the test (about 30 seconds)
Drivers would sign in for the first time and establish a baseline for themselves by taking the test multiple times until the program indicated that a baseline was established. (About a dozen attempts, I think)
Once a baseline was established, a driver had to pass the test before starting his shift. If he failed, he had to see a supervisor.
I tested it on myself. After two (unmeasured) shots of vodka, I would have had to see a supervisor were I a driver.
An additional advantage was that you would also fail the test if you had the flu, were sleep-deprived or emotionally unfit to drive.
The program never went into full production at our place. Currently drivers are tested when hired and after any accident or delivery process incident.
I forget what it was called (I tried googling). I thought it was "fair". If you couldn't pass the test, you probably shouldn't drive a truck that day.
If you smoked a joint a week ago, it wouldn't affect the test but if you were up all night watching movies, you'd likely fail.
I helped a customer get off AOL's blacklist a couple months ago.
It was a straightforward process with an immediate automated reply.
In order to complete the process you must be able to receive an email at abuse@, postmaster@, or the technical or administrative contact for your domain.
The final email was from a human. It was completed the day following.
It's been a while since I had contact with teachers and computers.
Our company bought its first computer (Commodore 8032 used for counting money...spreadsheets). Except for one-of's here and there, computers were not in classrooms.
I occasionally traveled to another province where the brother of a fellow employee had a job to investigate what was available for use in education. He was a teacher prior to landing this plum job. When I was in town, I looked him up, had dinner, visited his friends, etc. They were all very knowledgeable about computers. They were writing instructions/ideas , many were messing with BASIC, etc.
They were all teachers... real teachers with home rooms who marked papers at night and they were all learning on their own and from each other. That group of sort-of randomly group of a dozen or so folks was quite likely the best "amateur" computer experts in the province.
Where I currently work we have a help desk that treats or escalates calls from "Fonts are wrong in Word", "Can't log in.", to calls requiring senior IT folks with meetings and conversations in hallways. Our customers vary from three person family operations to national accounts with multiple small and large offices. For most of these we provide first level support. "Fonts, email bounced, I lost a file, etc.
If your business is not computers. (oil, pizza, educated children, etc.) then you have to provide first level support to the folks who work in that business. It's expensive per user and it's a cost that's easy to hide by requiring users to do it themselves or sleeze it from someone whose job is to do something else.
A few years ago we quoted on a hardware software job for a group of schools. (we weren't chosen)The quote was for supplying hardware, installing software and standard warranty on the job. No costs were allocated for support.
If you want workers to produce something and work with computers, and use them to count money or pour concrete, you have to support the dumbasses, smart ass know it all's and klutzes.
I think it is reasonable to have most teachers trained to the level of a "user" with first level support for "Getting an error when opening Word"
It doesn't matter whether the operating system is Microsoft Linux, PICK, or what applications are used. If you expect folks to use computers to do their job, you have to provide ongoing support.
I've seen many schools with computer labs with more than half the equipment not working and teachers with computers on their desks that aren't being used because of a problem
Teachers are no different than any other trade around computers. Office clerks, engineers, lawyers, executives, shpppers... they all contain a subset of people who are horribly clueless and dangerous with a computer.
It seems that people expect teachers to be better with computers than a typical tradesman in another industry.
I think it is possible for a middle aged teacher with very low computer skills to teach an elementary class programming if they are provided with the tools and support. A teacher who has two servers at home and writes software for Linux in his spare time might... might be able to do it better.
I'd have a hard time deciding the weight of "Good Teacher" against the weight of "Good at the subject being taught"
Where are the folks who can solder, "feel" what a capacitor does and do all Ohm's Law calculation in their subconscious?
Trades schools used to produce them in quantity. All the guys at my company who do component level work are over 40 except for one who emigrated from China.
They have come from somewhere. I can't imagine Engineers getting anything work or fixing anything without technicians. :)