@Home is still using that idiotic setup. They have improved a bit though. I've gone from regularly receiving @Home mail a month late to receiving it only a day or three late. They keep apologizing, but never seem to actually do anything to resolve the problem. Then there's the fact that their mailservers are only intermittently available in my area anyhow.
These days, I try to bypass their servers whenever possible, and just use the sendmail setup on my box. Saves me migraines (and clients).
I'm a free-lance tech writer living in Oregon. My primary contracts are with a major publishing house in Michigan, so I don't have to do meetings except over the telephone and am able to work out of my home office.
OTOH, if it weren't for the wife and her medical benefits, I'd be SOL.
I'm a freelancer living in Oregon. My primary client is in Southeast Michigan. I telecommute daily, connecting to their network via the Linux Citrix client. I love telecommuting. For five years I put up with commutes which ran anywhere from forty minutes to an hour and a half each way. Now I walk downstairs in the morning, log into my desktop box and start my day with a cup of tea,/. and the cat curled up on my desk watching the birds at the feeder outside my office window.
Yes, telecommuting can have its drawbacks, as with any type of job. In general, I've found the following to be true:
1.) Working in your bathrobe isn't fun after the second week. Sweats and a T-shirt, however, are wonderful, and you won't feel odd when the FedEx guy/mailman/&c. comes to the door.
2.) It's important to structure your time. Otherwise, it's easy to get out of bed late and putz around the house all day. OTOH, you don't have to be Orwellian about it. Once you get into a routine, you've usually got the problem licked.
3.) It's very important that spouses, family and friends understand that you're 'at work' even though you're physically at home. The first month or so, my wife tried to load me down with all sorts of 'honey could you' projects. She just didn't realize that I wouldn't have time to grocery shop, clean the house, run her packages to the post office and run errands all over town for her. After all, I was at home all day, right? Once we talked about it and she realized what she was doing, it stopped and hasn't been a problem since.
4.) Don't let yourself become 'housebound'. Get out and go for walks occasionally. Take the laptop and work from the backyard if possible. Forward your phone to the cellphone and take the laptop down to the local diner and work once in a while. Things like that. Generally, so long as your productivity is as good or better than most people working 'in the office', managers won't begrudge you a little flexibility in your schedule. There are exceptions, of course, but you can always tell them you were in the bathroom or had gone out to the mailbox to get the mail and didn't notice the message waiting on the voice mail when you returned. So long as your productivity doesn't drop and they think of you as 'reliable(TM)', you're usually good to go.
5.) Phone meetings and phone conferences are becoming more and more accepted in the business environment. I've yet to have to fly to Michigan. Everything's been nicely handled via phone and email. *Do* remember to keep in touch with your clients / managers. Some sort of minor email 'check-in' daily is generally a good idea, if they expect you to be working 'full time' on a project. "Out of sight, out of mind" isn't really much of a problem, if they hear from you regularly. OTOH, pestering people with inappropriate messages is a *bad* idea. Use proper judgement.
I've just been 'sniffed' by an IT outfit on the other coast, and am talking about the posibillity of working for them as an employee. While I might consider becoming a 'corporate lackey' again (keeping the free-lance business on the side), I wouldn't consider working 'on site' for more than a couple of weeks unless I was truly desperate. I find the stress level and other hassles are so much lower, working from a home office. I'm actually enjoying work for the first time in years.
And I've been there. The first attempt to kill (yes, I mean murder - to throw me over the rail of an open, multistory stairwell, in fact) happened in junior high. More followed. I won't even get into the emotional and psychological harassment. There's enough of that on/. already. However, I don't think that segregation...excuse me..."isolation" is the answer.
Children are vicious. No argument. The scars can last for years. Again, no argument. I'm still coping with some of mine. However, the adult world isn't a cakewalk either. Isolating children from their peers is an effective short-term solution, but what about it as a long-term solution?
I've seen many people who didn't have to deal with much in the way of adversity as children fall flat on their faces, when having to deal with real life as adults. "Isolating" them, whether segregating them into "Introverts and Extroverts" or keeping them away from harassment is only going to leave them unprepared for dealing with it as adults, when it becomes more sophisticated and more subtle. This doesn't mean that I advocate harassment and physical / psychological abuse of children. I do, however, believe that more effective solutions would be in the direction of better child supervision while in school, and more emotional support / teaching them better coping skills to combat this sort of harassment when they're at home.
Currently, children are warehoused from nine until three, and then essentially left to fend for themselves ("Go play in the yard" or "Go watch TV. I'm tired/busy/reading the paper. &c.") until bedtime. The next day the cycle starts all over again.
Until families (not just parents) realize that raising a child is as important a job and takes as much or more commitment than they give to their work, hobbies, recreational activities, social circle, religious functions, or golf game, things aren't going to get better for the kids. It's not only in the schools that the peer-abuse and harassment occur. And anyone thinking it ends with high school is naive. It simply becomes more subtle and (occasionally) more sophisticated. It's part of life, like it or not.
And BTW, the fact that someone doesn't consider his/her childhood a hellish experience does not imply that s/he was one of the ones making life hell for everyone else. This sort of 'either/or' thinking doesn't get anyone anywhere, though it does make life easier for the simple-minded.
The 'Young Ladies Illustrated Primer' was designed to be subversive from the outset. It was a highly-specialized conditioning tool, used to mold a child's character and personality toward subversion of the existing social order.
A tool such as Woz describes might indeed be an 'ideal teacher', but whose designs it would be 'ideal' for would depend upon who was overseeing the design and implimentation of the coding. It could just as easily be used to produce nice little conformist, children who'd be perfect targets for mass-marketing and corporate merchandising (i.e. "drones"), which would be more likely concerning the development costs and who'd be most likely to underwrite them.
However, computers don't have to teach empathy and social ettiquette. No one suggested the children be put into creches. Simply that computers might be used more extensively in teaching them. Parents / friends / family are, and would be the ones to teach these things, in such a situation.
Stopped at Win-Co the other day and stocked-up on food and necessities, but that had more to do with the fact that we didn't have any food in the house than fears of Y2K. Mention of Bushmills got me t' thinkin', though. I really should drive into town and pick-up a fifth of Jameson's. Be nice to have a nip to celebrate the new millenium. (My late) Grandpa would approve.
Non-geek friends have been phoning and eMailing to ask me (at this late date) whether they should do anything about their computers for Y2K. I keep thinking I should BOFH them more....
Haven't seen or heard of any great rushes on the stores out here (Salem, Oregon) yet. Last I'd heard, the stores had ordered more bottled water for the expected panic, and were stuck with a massive surplus. Then again, it rains here in the winter, so people may be planning to do the equivelent of the "snow-melt" thing. News services are all prattling that Portland's the most likely target for terrorist crap in the PacNW, now that Seattle's cancelled it's Y2K bash. Doesn't make much difference to me, as the wife and I were planning on staying home anyhow, and screwing-in the new year.
Yeah, I've a shotgun, but don't expect to have to use it. Going to stay out of the city for a couple of days, though. Some of the more rabid religious types are getting downright wierd about the new millenium stuff. Luckily my wife and I do the home office thing, so as long as I've a net.connection, we're good to go. We're up in the hills above the city, so it should be fun to watch the show if of the zealots decide to hasten the second coming a bit. I'm thinking of picking-up a telescope, when I'm in town today.
I was born and raised in Michigan (Flint / Flushing). Miss the snow. Hope you guys are enjoying it for me. I'd rather be shoveling than squelching around in the mud any day, but the wife has family out here....
Responsibility for action stays with the person performing the action.
Depending upon how reprehensible the application is, everyone can jump up and down, shaking fingers and getting red-faced at the developer. If it's a particularly noxious piece of work, I'd probably join in.
Certainly there's a case to be made that, if a product is likely to be used in an 'unethical' manner (and I won't open that can of worms - determining what is and isn't 'ethical' is left as an exercise for the student) it is unethical to make the product more easily available (cf. the H-bomb). However, having a gun available in the house, an H-bomb in your armory, or a malicious piece of hardware/software at one's disposal doesn't negate the user's responsibility for using the thing.
If I make kitchen knives, I'm not responsible for domestic violence which employs them. If I'm a gunsmith, I'm not responsible for the mis-use of the guns I make (assuming, of course, that 'proper' use of guns can be said to be 'personal protection' and hunting for food). With items such as H-bombs, cigarettes (carcinogenic in their 'proper' use), or applications having no potential use other than malice (viruses, &c.), it gets a bit stickier.
Nonetheless, the fact that one is capable of using a thing does not relieve the individual from responsibility for using (or not using) the thing. If if did, we're in an endless-loop, trying to distribute the blame (The person(s) who first tamed fire would be responsible for all malicious uses of fire since, but the ones _they_ taught the techniques to would be responsible for passing them on and refining them, and so one has an endless chain of responsibility leading down to the arsonist who just torched your Uncle Jake's barn. After all, if fire hadn't been available in the first place, he couldn't've burned the thing, right?
No. Responsibility for an action lies with the person performing the action, IMO. I can sit at home and write trojans all day (I don't), but actually putting one to use is a different matter.
Same if I'm a script-kiddie, scanning RR, @Home, &c. using a prepackaged script. I may've wrote the thing, but you're responsible for how you use it.
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@Home is still using that idiotic setup. They have improved a bit though. I've gone from regularly receiving @Home mail a month late to receiving it only a day or three late. They keep apologizing, but never seem to actually do anything to resolve the problem. Then there's the fact that their mailservers are only intermittently available in my area anyhow.
These days, I try to bypass their servers whenever possible, and just use the sendmail setup on my box. Saves me migraines (and clients).
I'm lucky.
I'm a free-lance tech writer living in Oregon. My primary contracts are with a major publishing house in Michigan, so I don't have to do meetings except over the telephone and am able to work out of my home office.
OTOH, if it weren't for the wife and her medical benefits, I'd be SOL.
I'm a freelancer living in Oregon. My primary client is in Southeast Michigan. I telecommute daily, connecting to their network via the Linux Citrix client. I love telecommuting. For five years I put up with commutes which ran anywhere from forty minutes to an hour and a half each way. Now I walk downstairs in the morning, log into my desktop box and start my day with a cup of tea, /. and the cat curled up on my desk watching the birds at the feeder outside my office window.
Yes, telecommuting can have its drawbacks, as with any type of job. In general, I've found the following to be true:
1.) Working in your bathrobe isn't fun after the second week. Sweats and a T-shirt, however, are wonderful, and you won't feel odd when the FedEx guy/mailman/&c. comes to the door.
2.) It's important to structure your time. Otherwise, it's easy to get out of bed late and putz around the house all day. OTOH, you don't have to be Orwellian about it. Once you get into a routine, you've usually got the problem licked.
3.) It's very important that spouses, family and friends understand that you're 'at work' even though you're physically at home. The first month or so, my wife tried to load me down with all sorts of 'honey could you' projects. She just didn't realize that I wouldn't have time to grocery shop, clean the house, run her packages to the post office and run errands all over town for her. After all, I was at home all day, right? Once we talked about it and she realized what she was doing, it stopped and hasn't been a problem since.
4.) Don't let yourself become 'housebound'. Get out and go for walks occasionally. Take the laptop and work from the backyard if possible. Forward your phone to the cellphone and take the laptop down to the local diner and work once in a while. Things like that. Generally, so long as your productivity is as good or better than most people working 'in the office', managers won't begrudge you a little flexibility in your schedule. There are exceptions, of course, but you can always tell them you were in the bathroom or had gone out to the mailbox to get the mail and didn't notice the message waiting on the voice mail when you returned. So long as your productivity doesn't drop and they think of you as 'reliable(TM)', you're usually good to go.
5.) Phone meetings and phone conferences are becoming more and more accepted in the business environment. I've yet to have to fly to Michigan. Everything's been nicely handled via phone and email. *Do* remember to keep in touch with your clients / managers. Some sort of minor email 'check-in' daily is generally a good idea, if they expect you to be working 'full time' on a project. "Out of sight, out of mind" isn't really much of a problem, if they hear from you regularly. OTOH, pestering people with inappropriate messages is a *bad* idea. Use proper judgement.
I've just been 'sniffed' by an IT outfit on the other coast, and am talking about the posibillity of working for them as an employee. While I might consider becoming a 'corporate lackey' again (keeping the free-lance business on the side), I wouldn't consider working 'on site' for more than a couple of weeks unless I was truly desperate. I find the stress level and other hassles are so much lower, working from a home office. I'm actually enjoying work for the first time in years.
No, Damn wrong, I think.
/. already. However, I don't think that segregation...excuse me..."isolation" is the answer.
And I've been there. The first attempt to kill (yes, I mean murder - to throw me over the rail of an open, multistory stairwell, in fact) happened in junior high. More followed. I won't even get into the emotional and psychological harassment. There's enough of that on
Children are vicious. No argument. The scars can last for years. Again, no argument. I'm still coping with some of mine. However, the adult world isn't a cakewalk either. Isolating children from their peers is an effective short-term solution, but what about it as a long-term solution?
I've seen many people who didn't have to deal with much in the way of adversity as children fall flat on their faces, when having to deal with real life as adults. "Isolating" them, whether segregating them into "Introverts and Extroverts" or keeping them away from harassment is only going to leave them unprepared for dealing with it as adults, when it becomes more sophisticated and more subtle. This doesn't mean that I advocate harassment and physical / psychological abuse of children. I do, however, believe that more effective solutions would be in the direction of better child supervision while in school, and more emotional support / teaching them better coping skills to combat this sort of harassment when they're at home.
Currently, children are warehoused from nine until three, and then essentially left to fend for themselves ("Go play in the yard" or "Go watch TV. I'm tired/busy/reading the paper. &c.") until bedtime. The next day the cycle starts all over again.
Until families (not just parents) realize that raising a child is as important a job and takes as much or more commitment than they give to their work, hobbies, recreational activities, social circle, religious functions, or golf game, things aren't going to get better for the kids. It's not only in the schools that the peer-abuse and harassment occur. And anyone thinking it ends with high school is naive. It simply becomes more subtle and (occasionally) more sophisticated. It's part of life, like it or not.
And BTW, the fact that someone doesn't consider his/her childhood a hellish experience does not imply that s/he was one of the ones making life hell for everyone else. This sort of 'either/or' thinking doesn't get anyone anywhere, though it does make life easier for the simple-minded.
Not necessarily.
The 'Young Ladies Illustrated Primer' was designed to be subversive from the outset. It was a highly-specialized conditioning tool, used to mold a child's character and personality toward subversion of the existing social order.
A tool such as Woz describes might indeed be an 'ideal teacher', but whose designs it would be 'ideal' for would depend upon who was overseeing the design and implimentation of the coding. It could just as easily be used to produce nice little conformist, children who'd be perfect targets for mass-marketing and corporate merchandising (i.e. "drones"), which would be more likely concerning the development costs and who'd be most likely to underwrite them.
However, computers don't have to teach empathy and social ettiquette. No one suggested the children be put into creches. Simply that computers might be used more extensively in teaching them. Parents / friends / family are, and would be the ones to teach these things, in such a situation.
Stopped at Win-Co the other day and stocked-up on food and necessities, but that had more to do with the fact that we didn't have any food in the house than fears of Y2K. Mention of Bushmills got me t' thinkin', though. I really should drive into town and pick-up a fifth of Jameson's. Be nice to have a nip to celebrate the new millenium. (My late) Grandpa would approve.
Non-geek friends have been phoning and eMailing to ask me (at this late date) whether they should do anything about their computers for Y2K. I keep thinking I should BOFH them more....
Haven't seen or heard of any great rushes on the stores out here (Salem, Oregon) yet. Last I'd heard, the stores had ordered more bottled water for the expected panic, and were stuck with a massive surplus. Then again, it rains here in the winter, so people may be planning to do the equivelent of the "snow-melt" thing. News services are all prattling that Portland's the most likely target for terrorist crap in the PacNW, now that Seattle's cancelled it's Y2K bash. Doesn't make much difference to me, as the wife and I were planning on staying home anyhow, and screwing-in the new year.
Yeah, I've a shotgun, but don't expect to have to use it. Going to stay out of the city for a couple of days, though. Some of the more rabid religious types are getting downright wierd about the new millenium stuff. Luckily my wife and I do the home office thing, so as long as I've a net.connection, we're good to go. We're up in the hills above the city, so it should be fun to watch the show if of the zealots decide to hasten the second coming a bit. I'm thinking of picking-up a telescope, when I'm in town today.
I was born and raised in Michigan (Flint / Flushing). Miss the snow. Hope you guys are enjoying it for me. I'd rather be shoveling than squelching around in the mud any day, but the wife has family out here....
Just my $0.02 on the subject:
Responsibility for action stays with the person performing the action.
Depending upon how reprehensible the application is, everyone can jump up and down, shaking fingers and getting red-faced at the developer. If it's a particularly noxious piece of work, I'd probably join in.
Certainly there's a case to be made that, if a product is likely to be used in an 'unethical' manner (and I won't open that can of worms - determining what is and isn't 'ethical' is left as an exercise for the student) it is unethical to make the product more easily available (cf. the H-bomb). However, having a gun available in the house, an H-bomb in your armory, or a malicious piece of hardware/software at one's disposal doesn't negate the user's responsibility for using the thing.
If I make kitchen knives, I'm not responsible for domestic violence which employs them. If I'm a gunsmith, I'm not responsible for the mis-use of the guns I make (assuming, of course, that 'proper' use of guns can be said to be 'personal protection' and hunting for food). With items such as H-bombs, cigarettes (carcinogenic in their 'proper' use), or applications having no potential use other than malice (viruses, &c.), it gets a bit stickier.
Nonetheless, the fact that one is capable of using a thing does not relieve the individual from responsibility for using (or not using) the thing. If if did, we're in an endless-loop, trying to distribute the blame (The person(s) who first tamed fire would be responsible for all malicious uses of fire since, but the ones _they_ taught the techniques to would be responsible for passing them on and refining them, and so one has an endless chain of responsibility leading down to the arsonist who just torched your Uncle Jake's barn. After all, if fire hadn't been available in the first place, he couldn't've burned the thing, right?
No. Responsibility for an action lies with the person performing the action, IMO. I can sit at home and write trojans all day (I don't), but actually putting one to use is a different matter.
Same if I'm a script-kiddie, scanning RR, @Home, &c. using a prepackaged script. I may've wrote the thing, but you're responsible for how you use it.
Naturally, YMMV. HTH. HAND.