this whole investigation is a diversion, trying to keep our attention off the fact that congress was elected to fix our fucking economy. instead they'd rather continue their partisan bickering, and keep us from questioning congress on their decision to fund another $79B to Afghanistan. Our nation's "leadership" is severely lacking any kind of honesty or morality.
the recent hearings in DC are just for public spectacle. elected officials have no intention of bearing down on apple & google & microsoft -- they're just pulling a "look over there" maneuver, in order to distract the population from other matters -- like how 5 years after Obama was elected, we're still paying $79 billion to fund the war effort in Afghanistan. They're all a bunch of lowlife criminals, our "representatives", completely self-serving and generally immune to the effects of the laws which affect the rest of the 99%.
If the Teabaggers are calling to eliminate taxes and destroy the USA to "save us from big government", then maybe some big government SHOULD be investigating those self-righteous dummies. They're practically a terrorist organization anyway.
who cares if we can spot idiots. a zillion people spotted president bush as an idiot, yet he still was able to fuck our country long and hard, with no end in sight. creationists are destroying our country with their bullshit laws.
HA! I knew things were better in America, where chickens are separated by people and exposure to the majority of us comes through frozen, deep-fried chicken strips rather than on the bone, in the feather like in China.
the ability of the programmers of most of the medical applications I've installed, managed, and used, is slightly higher than your average chimp. but not by much.
Do you want respect or a paycheck? Letting employers push you around and shuttle you out the door to keep them from paying you so much is their objective; it doesn't have to be your objective too. find other work and give notice.
most companies couldn't give a rat's ass about their employees, no matter what bullshit pr they promote. the whole point of the GOP's "right to work employment" push is so that companies can drop you from their roster whenever they feel like it, for whatever damned reason they want.
as for the tech industry, we're not organized, and don't benefit from labor unions like "unskilled" blue collar workers. jobs tend to be contract only where i'm looking, with no health care benefits or 401k. they won't pay relocation, even if it's across the country. which means that most of my calls from India pretending to be stateside are just a waste of time, since I'm not moving to Texas if they're not going to pay for the apartment and deposit, since it's only a 90 day contract, yadda yadda.
the only reason companies offer salaried positions to IT anymore is so they can suck the life out of us by making us work nights and weekends in addition to daylight hours. we carry a cellphone now, but back in the 90's it was a pager. who cares what the device is technically called -- it's basically a leash.
yeah, i'm just a little bitter.
for an industry where us geeks value each other's brainpower and initiative, we certainly don't get much respect from the PHB's for whom we're just another friggin' sprocket for them to earn profits from. they've been billing $100+ an hour for my talents since 1991, but I'm lucky to pull home $15/hour now. 20 years experience, and I'm kissing ass to get a job that pays 30% what i earned in 2008 -- about $19k after taxes and child support. the boss has 2 houses and a boat, and I get to drive a 2006 corolla and live with my folks at age 45. whenever anyone asks me about going into IT I tell them to stay the hell out of this crappy industry. things were better pre-Y2k but it's been rolling downhill ever since.
the only purpose of recertifying with microsoft or A+ or Cisco every 2-3 years is to ensure a steady profit stream for their certification departments.
but as my buddy the tech trainer says, certification just gets you through the HR limbo dance.
Midwest IT pay has dropped precipitously this past decade because most small companies treat IT as an expense, not as a way to leverage their business to be more competitive. good luck getting $15/hour in IT in the Midwest. it sucks here.
but even low-wage entry level tech support jobs are being farmed out to india and other countries, so it's difficult for college grads to do a couple of years grinding through tech support phone lines before getting a job with more responsibilities. the move to the cloud will accelerate this trend.
That's happened to me almost every place I've worked. You earn what you learn, and no (dumbass) employer wants to pay for you to educate yourself then get a better job elsewhere.
At the few forward-thinking organizations where I've worked, employee training was limited to $100/employee per year thru HR, and you had to get permission first. Our boss said "screw that, we're the IT department" and paid several thousand dollars a year per employee to get us trained and prepared to handle the new tech we were implementing. It was our duty to train the operations staff, so we got the long end of the stick.
with the exception that even locations with 100 users will need to be managed in a statewide system comprising thousands of users. so it's worth a little more dough up front to make the system as homogeneous as possible, so that it's easier to manage remotely.
gravitational force between a manmade spaceship and an asteroid won't be large enough to make that much of a difference, depending upon the SPEED of the incoming asteroid and the time it takes for us to build a ship, train a crew, and launch it into space. blowing it up could have dire consequences if the asteroid gets close enough to the earth or the moon. but if we can stop it by the time it reaches the asteroid belt, we might be ok.
the last thing we need is some tricky pool shot where you think you're going to hit the right stones but we end up tugging the earth into the corner pocket, game over.
anyone whose IT department reports to the CFO is already screwed. it happens. they dictate you do more with less staff, and BAM a decade later, salaries have slipped 20% and IT guys are worried about losing their jobs. innovation? not from Microsoft.
not bloody likely. word 2003 is all right, but frankly, since word 5.1 added hyperlink support, i haven't needed an updated version except when required to get it to work on a new OS.
and when apple stops making professional desktop units, a lot of people are stuck using their overpriced laptops because our body of work is from OSX and logic. with tons of data (samples, sounds, 12 dual sided DVD installs, etc) one can't just expect an SSD to fit everyone's needs, especially if they're liable to break. that's why i want 7200rpm mechanical drives. oh well.
is 1600x900 a problem? why wouldn't they pick a better standard like 1920x1080? perhaps the ARM chip they're using cannot support a higher resolution. and dang Apple, for the price they charge for their products, one would hope they could understand the importance of using universal standards like 1080p.
It was obvious from the beginning that Samsung (a Korean company) stole Apple's design ideas outright, because that's what most Korean tech companies do. I've worked with a ton of Korean businessmen in Chicago (whose Korean population is second-largest only to Seoul) and not a one of them valued copyright or trademarks developed by other people -- from my girlfriend's boss who made her rip off designer-brand styles to the owner of "Popeye's" coffee shop.
I don't agree with her decision and she's done too much meddling and wavering. Nobody should be happy with how things have turned out. And after all, isn't that's what compromise is about -- disappointing both parties.
Slashdot Mirror
this whole investigation is a diversion, trying to keep our attention off the fact that congress was elected to fix our fucking economy. instead they'd rather continue their partisan bickering, and keep us from questioning congress on their decision to fund another $79B to Afghanistan. Our nation's "leadership" is severely lacking any kind of honesty or morality.
the recent hearings in DC are just for public spectacle. elected officials have no intention of bearing down on apple & google & microsoft -- they're just pulling a "look over there" maneuver, in order to distract the population from other matters -- like how 5 years after Obama was elected, we're still paying $79 billion to fund the war effort in Afghanistan. They're all a bunch of lowlife criminals, our "representatives", completely self-serving and generally immune to the effects of the laws which affect the rest of the 99%.
let us know when the left has some extremists. what fox calls "left" is really centrist.
If the Teabaggers are calling to eliminate taxes and destroy the USA to "save us from big government", then maybe some big government SHOULD be investigating those self-righteous dummies. They're practically a terrorist organization anyway.
he said "MacBook Air" so the question is "Would you like to pay $XXX.xx more for that." You forgot the hundreds column.
who cares if we can spot idiots. a zillion people spotted president bush as an idiot, yet he still was able to fuck our country long and hard, with no end in sight. creationists are destroying our country with their bullshit laws.
HA! I knew things were better in America, where chickens are separated by people and exposure to the majority of us comes through frozen, deep-fried chicken strips rather than on the bone, in the feather like in China.
the ability of the programmers of most of the medical applications I've installed, managed, and used, is slightly higher than your average chimp. but not by much.
Do you want respect or a paycheck? Letting employers push you around and shuttle you out the door to keep them from paying you so much is their objective; it doesn't have to be your objective too. find other work and give notice.
that god hates us and wants us to get knocked out in a tavern brawl. because god is a dick.
I mean when the cops smash your $1500 camera/glasses into your face, not when we all get Kurzweil-style singularity upgrades.
Just wait until protesters are sent to the emergency room for "google glass embedded in eyeballs". it's going to happen.
most companies couldn't give a rat's ass about their employees, no matter what bullshit pr they promote. the whole point of the GOP's "right to work employment" push is so that companies can drop you from their roster whenever they feel like it, for whatever damned reason they want.
as for the tech industry, we're not organized, and don't benefit from labor unions like "unskilled" blue collar workers. jobs tend to be contract only where i'm looking, with no health care benefits or 401k. they won't pay relocation, even if it's across the country. which means that most of my calls from India pretending to be stateside are just a waste of time, since I'm not moving to Texas if they're not going to pay for the apartment and deposit, since it's only a 90 day contract, yadda yadda.
the only reason companies offer salaried positions to IT anymore is so they can suck the life out of us by making us work nights and weekends in addition to daylight hours. we carry a cellphone now, but back in the 90's it was a pager. who cares what the device is technically called -- it's basically a leash.
yeah, i'm just a little bitter.
for an industry where us geeks value each other's brainpower and initiative, we certainly don't get much respect from the PHB's for whom we're just another friggin' sprocket for them to earn profits from. they've been billing $100+ an hour for my talents since 1991, but I'm lucky to pull home $15/hour now. 20 years experience, and I'm kissing ass to get a job that pays 30% what i earned in 2008 -- about $19k after taxes and child support. the boss has 2 houses and a boat, and I get to drive a 2006 corolla and live with my folks at age 45. whenever anyone asks me about going into IT I tell them to stay the hell out of this crappy industry. things were better pre-Y2k but it's been rolling downhill ever since.
the only purpose of recertifying with microsoft or A+ or Cisco every 2-3 years is to ensure a steady profit stream for their certification departments.
but as my buddy the tech trainer says, certification just gets you through the HR limbo dance.
Midwest IT pay has dropped precipitously this past decade because most small companies treat IT as an expense, not as a way to leverage their business to be more competitive. good luck getting $15/hour in IT in the Midwest. it sucks here.
but even low-wage entry level tech support jobs are being farmed out to india and other countries, so it's difficult for college grads to do a couple of years grinding through tech support phone lines before getting a job with more responsibilities. the move to the cloud will accelerate this trend.
That's happened to me almost every place I've worked. You earn what you learn, and no (dumbass) employer wants to pay for you to educate yourself then get a better job elsewhere.
At the few forward-thinking organizations where I've worked, employee training was limited to $100/employee per year thru HR, and you had to get permission first. Our boss said "screw that, we're the IT department" and paid several thousand dollars a year per employee to get us trained and prepared to handle the new tech we were implementing. It was our duty to train the operations staff, so we got the long end of the stick.
with the exception that even locations with 100 users will need to be managed in a statewide system comprising thousands of users. so it's worth a little more dough up front to make the system as homogeneous as possible, so that it's easier to manage remotely.
gravitational force between a manmade spaceship and an asteroid won't be large enough to make that much of a difference, depending upon the SPEED of the incoming asteroid and the time it takes for us to build a ship, train a crew, and launch it into space. blowing it up could have dire consequences if the asteroid gets close enough to the earth or the moon. but if we can stop it by the time it reaches the asteroid belt, we might be ok.
the last thing we need is some tricky pool shot where you think you're going to hit the right stones but we end up tugging the earth into the corner pocket, game over.
anyone whose IT department reports to the CFO is already screwed. it happens. they dictate you do more with less staff, and BAM a decade later, salaries have slipped 20% and IT guys are worried about losing their jobs. innovation? not from Microsoft.
not bloody likely. word 2003 is all right, but frankly, since word 5.1 added hyperlink support, i haven't needed an updated version except when required to get it to work on a new OS.
and when apple stops making professional desktop units, a lot of people are stuck using their overpriced laptops because our body of work is from OSX and logic. with tons of data (samples, sounds, 12 dual sided DVD installs, etc) one can't just expect an SSD to fit everyone's needs, especially if they're liable to break. that's why i want 7200rpm mechanical drives. oh well.
is 1600x900 a problem? why wouldn't they pick a better standard like 1920x1080? perhaps the ARM chip they're using cannot support a higher resolution. and dang Apple, for the price they charge for their products, one would hope they could understand the importance of using universal standards like 1080p.
It was obvious from the beginning that Samsung (a Korean company) stole Apple's design ideas outright, because that's what most Korean tech companies do. I've worked with a ton of Korean businessmen in Chicago (whose Korean population is second-largest only to Seoul) and not a one of them valued copyright or trademarks developed by other people -- from my girlfriend's boss who made her rip off designer-brand styles to the owner of "Popeye's" coffee shop.
I don't agree with her decision and she's done too much meddling and wavering. Nobody should be happy with how things have turned out. And after all, isn't that's what compromise is about -- disappointing both parties.