They're out there. The ones who are fed up dealing with the whiny MBAs who think that a degree without an equivalent amount of experience is worth more than a roll of toilet paper, the project managers who think they're "it" because they have had one success and one (or worse, no) failure (you need to fail - hard - at least 3 times before you learn all the skills for sweating the pressure-cooker times when everyone around you is losing it), and the juniors who impressed all the other juniors because they rediscovered stuff that's old hat.
They'd rather hire one older person than 2 younger ones. Ageism, like sexism, is rampant in I.T. - so it's fair game to exploit your experience and extra years any time you can.
Florian Mueller is not a patent expert. Additionally, he's generated a lot of FUD by giving the misleading impression that he's a lawyer when he's not. The guy is a paid shill. Ranks right down there with Darl McBride and SCO.
Unfortunately, here there are so many freelancers who are willing to work for less than the minimum wage because they are that desperate. They figure "it will help build up their portfolio". They're lying to themselves, but this is what happens when you have to compete with jobless workers in work programs who the government will literally let businesses hire for free - and kick back 100% of the salary of the people managing them to boot.
And then people wonder why there's such a high turnover rate in the industry here. Simple - why hire one person who knows what they're doing when you can get PAID to take on 5 for free, and hope that they'll muddle through, and if they do or they don't, either way it cost you nothing.
That sort of rot makes employers skeptical of the quality of all freelancers after 15 years. Crazy, isn't it?
His action was a form of passive-aggressive behavior. Give him a taste of his own medicine.
Don't go. If it's a scheduled outage, it's not an emergency. You're at a party and someone kept filling your glass when you weren't looking and now they've taken your keys away because friends don't let friends drive drunk.
And next time he schedules an outage, he should actually schedule it, and not just throw it at the wall and hope it sticks. Even restaurant owners know how to schedule people better than that.
This last experience was the limit - I simply cannot face the thought of writing code as a 9 to whatever job. And everyone I know is at that point - it's pretty bad when a minimum wage job where you just do your work and go home at night and your time is your own looks appealing.
I've had co-workers quit because even delivering pizza sounded better, others that were suicidal because they were treated with contempt every day (management would wait until I had left for the day, then they'd gang up on him - and tell him that if he told me about it, he's fired), and others who figured out that the best way to get ahead was to do nothing all day (they'd sleep at their desk, then check out someone else's code and put their name on it, and check it back in) and then brown-nose like crazy.
What do you do when the situation is so toxic that one of your coworkers comes to you in tears because the boss has rejected every idea for getting her job done - from everyone - insisting she do it the boss's way, and every time it fails, blaming her, and she knows she's going to be fired because she's failed, and I'm the only one she can talk to about it because I have a door to my office, and not a cubby? And the boss is a misogynistic s.o.b. who in meetings, if the suggestion came from a woman, he ignores it? And another boss ^W^W two other bosses who swear they will never hire another woman because "it interferes with the guys getting their work done and I can't scream at them because they're women and they're probably lesbians anyway so what's the point"?
And people wonder why so few women stick it out in I.T.
We're only "nobodies" if we let ourselves be treated that way. The comparison to Chinese labor conditions is a false dichotomy, and the sort of cowardly thinking that management drones use.
Are you that beaten down that you have to say to yourself "at least it's not as bad as in China" to justify working conditions that your parents, and most of your friends who don't work in I.T., would look at and say "Are you sick?"
Too much I.T. is like a bad marriage. It's always "I'm sorry, it was this one time - it won't happen again" - until it does. The crunch time, the extra hours, often unpaid and always unappreciated, it's the typical abusive situation. The only solution is to walk away, because management will not change. They can't afford to, because it would mean they are no longer "competitive", and so *they* would be out of a job.
But if a company can only survive by treating its employees like battered wives, they deserve to die. And then to be exposed by using this wonderful thing called the Internet.
They're not going to sue if you expose them (though they may threaten it like all heck) - they know what the Streisand Effect is like. And don't worry about your NDA and non-disclosures. Most of them are SO illegal it's not a joke - and you can ignore them when they are signed in bad faith.
Since I quit in February, my blood pressure is back to normal - without any meds, thank you very much... my eyesight is better than it's ever been in my life (it's the first time ever that I can watch TV without glasses, and it's all good except for one little blotch that is slowly going away now that one of the underlying causes of the retinal bleeding - stress-related hypertension - is gone, and I expect that blotch will also disappear over the next few months), and I have time to work on my tan, cycle, and actually visit people I haven't seen in over a decade.
If I *ever* do overtime again, it will never be for less than 5x base pay. Even for a lousy 30 minutes. More than 10 hours extra in a week? 10x. Otherwise, bite me. Or hire someone else. Or figure out why management needs overtime (hint - it's your bad planning and not listening and trying to "negotiate away" the time required when we give our time estimates, and your insistence on taking shortcuts and using your stupid latest buzz-word methodology. Go buzz yourself!)
People should ask themselves if the quality of their life was better before they started in I.T.
How many people can keep up a good schedule of anything when their sleep schedule is topsy-turvy?
"Crunch time" - it used to be exceptional. It's now not just acceptable; it's become the norm. This is because increasingly, clueless management simply can't manage resources properly, and substitutes crazy hours to make up for it because we let them. Your body needs 2 weeks to a month to fully recover from a single 24-hour shift of high-stress in-the-zone concentration. It's not worth it.
"But it's the only way we can compete!" No, it's the only way YOU can compete. If you can't get the work without abusing your employees, YOU have the problem. I quit.
We all have the point where we've had our fill of it. It wasn't this bad prior to the Internet, so take your "Internet Time" and shove it. YOU need it - I'd rather be broke than further ruin my health to make up for managements' inability to do their jobs properly.
I'm happier and a lot less stressed since I "took the pledge" and decided to never again take a job writing code. There are things worse than not making enough money. Working in I.T. has become one of them.
Cost of computer, cost of electricity, cost of net connection, cost of servers, cost of lines / wireless transmitters, cost of right-of-way, cost of maintenance and upgrades,cost of hazardous waste disposal, etc. vs. cost of stamping out a coin that will last 20 years. The coin is cheaper and more environmentally friendly.
The new plastic notes are also more durable, so...
... because I tried and it also wants the person's name. Who knows... maybe they're trying a "split run" where some can do one thing, and some can do another. It's what I'd be doing if I were running this experiment.
You might want to check out G+ hangout. Think "multi-user video chat done right". You create a hangout and invite either individuals or a circle (you'll get the whole "circles thing" after just a few moments) and others come and go as they please.
That alone will kill facebook for grandma and grandpa. No typing, no chat, just say hi to the kids and see them say hi to you, talk with their cousins, etc.
And it will be a killer for kids as well. Video Party Line!
Even business will latch onto it for teleconferences.
G+ will pass facebook within 2 years, and possibly within 1.
I believe games are coming, but when they do it, they're going to do it better than "the other guy". The basic service should be completely rolled out by the first week of the fall school semester, to "catch the wave".
The way facebook is blocking exporting contacts, you know they're scared.
This way, you get people you more or less already know...
Don't use your slashdot journal? Philistine!
Also, not getting your kid's grandparents to use it at this time can be considered a feature. Let the early adopters work out the kinks first, otherwise when they try to move from failbook they'll just move right back.
And more important, a wallet doesn't charge a transaction fee to anyone. On the internet, content is king - everywhere else it's cash.
Wallets also carry bank cards, ID cards, drivers licenses, bus and subway tickets, all sorts of other cards (and credit, store, and gas cards WANT you to see their logo every time you pull it out).
What next - "Paypal predicts the end of the purse by 2020?"
For a universe that's supposed to be half-Chinese, Firefly sure doesn't have any Asians.
So who were the people grilling dog meat under the "hot dogs" sign in the marketplace descended from when Shepherd Book was walking around trying to figure out which ship to take?
(No, it;s not a myth. Asians eat dog meat. I know two women (chinese parents) who were tricked by their parents into eating it when they went back for a visit.)
Indeed. They might have avoided complaints about atrocious chinese pronunciation if they ever had put a chinese character on screen!
The english you speak today certainly doesn't sound like the english people 400 years and an ocean away spoke... how much would you expect chinese 400 years and several light-years away to remain unchanged.
Firefly takes place in a multi-cultural future, primarily a fusion of Occidental and Chinese cultures, where there is a significant division between the rich and poor. As a result of the Sino-American Alliance, Mandarin Chinese is a common second language; it is used in advertisements, and characters in the show frequently use Chinese words and curses. According to the DVD commentary on the episode "Serenity", this was explained as being the result of China and the United States being the two superpowers that expanded into space.
Life imitates art, or as is often the case, sci-fi is "Future History".
Slashdot Mirror
Stop with the Oracle FUD. The Dalvik engine does not run java, and cross-compiling has always been legal. End of story.
Will they fire you? It's not like they can go and replace you with an unpaid intern when you file a complaint with the gov't.
Or as a consumer, you can vote with your dollars. All my previous cellphones were Motorola. Last week I picked up an LG.
Great post - and I'd like to add another point:
"Look for a company with older management."
They're out there. The ones who are fed up dealing with the whiny MBAs who think that a degree without an equivalent amount of experience is worth more than a roll of toilet paper, the project managers who think they're "it" because they have had one success and one (or worse, no) failure (you need to fail - hard - at least 3 times before you learn all the skills for sweating the pressure-cooker times when everyone around you is losing it), and the juniors who impressed all the other juniors because they rediscovered stuff that's old hat.
They'd rather hire one older person than 2 younger ones. Ageism, like sexism, is rampant in I.T. - so it's fair game to exploit your experience and extra years any time you can.
Florian Mueller is not a patent expert. Additionally, he's generated a lot of FUD by giving the misleading impression that he's a lawyer when he's not. The guy is a paid shill. Ranks right down there with Darl McBride and SCO.
Perfectly legal - the statute of limitations is LONG over. So yes, it IS clever of him.
You obviously read neither the article, nor the source it linked to.
Notice the site: royal.gov.uk. The official site of the British monarchy.
When asked to comment on your post, the Queen reportedly said "We are not amused."
Doesn't make it such less for you, of course ...
And then people wonder why there's such a high turnover rate in the industry here. Simple - why hire one person who knows what they're doing when you can get PAID to take on 5 for free, and hope that they'll muddle through, and if they do or they don't, either way it cost you nothing.
That sort of rot makes employers skeptical of the quality of all freelancers after 15 years. Crazy, isn't it?
His action was a form of passive-aggressive behavior. Give him a taste of his own medicine.
Don't go. If it's a scheduled outage, it's not an emergency. You're at a party and someone kept filling your glass when you weren't looking and now they've taken your keys away because friends don't let friends drive drunk.
And next time he schedules an outage, he should actually schedule it, and not just throw it at the wall and hope it sticks. Even restaurant owners know how to schedule people better than that.
This last experience was the limit - I simply cannot face the thought of writing code as a 9 to whatever job. And everyone I know is at that point - it's pretty bad when a minimum wage job where you just do your work and go home at night and your time is your own looks appealing.
I've had co-workers quit because even delivering pizza sounded better, others that were suicidal because they were treated with contempt every day (management would wait until I had left for the day, then they'd gang up on him - and tell him that if he told me about it, he's fired), and others who figured out that the best way to get ahead was to do nothing all day (they'd sleep at their desk, then check out someone else's code and put their name on it, and check it back in) and then brown-nose like crazy.
What do you do when the situation is so toxic that one of your coworkers comes to you in tears because the boss has rejected every idea for getting her job done - from everyone - insisting she do it the boss's way, and every time it fails, blaming her, and she knows she's going to be fired because she's failed, and I'm the only one she can talk to about it because I have a door to my office, and not a cubby? And the boss is a misogynistic s.o.b. who in meetings, if the suggestion came from a woman, he ignores it? And another boss ^W^W two other bosses who swear they will never hire another woman because "it interferes with the guys getting their work done and I can't scream at them because they're women and they're probably lesbians anyway so what's the point"?
And people wonder why so few women stick it out in I.T.
.
We're only "nobodies" if we let ourselves be treated that way. The comparison to Chinese labor conditions is a false dichotomy, and the sort of cowardly thinking that management drones use.
Are you that beaten down that you have to say to yourself "at least it's not as bad as in China" to justify working conditions that your parents, and most of your friends who don't work in I.T., would look at and say "Are you sick?"
There's life after I.T.
But if a company can only survive by treating its employees like battered wives, they deserve to die. And then to be exposed by using this wonderful thing called the Internet.
They're not going to sue if you expose them (though they may threaten it like all heck) - they know what the Streisand Effect is like. And don't worry about your NDA and non-disclosures. Most of them are SO illegal it's not a joke - and you can ignore them when they are signed in bad faith.
Since I quit in February, my blood pressure is back to normal - without any meds, thank you very much ... my eyesight is better than it's ever been in my life (it's the first time ever that I can watch TV without glasses, and it's all good except for one little blotch that is slowly going away now that one of the underlying causes of the retinal bleeding - stress-related hypertension - is gone, and I expect that blotch will also disappear over the next few months), and I have time to work on my tan, cycle, and actually visit people I haven't seen in over a decade.
If I *ever* do overtime again, it will never be for less than 5x base pay. Even for a lousy 30 minutes. More than 10 hours extra in a week? 10x. Otherwise, bite me. Or hire someone else. Or figure out why management needs overtime (hint - it's your bad planning and not listening and trying to "negotiate away" the time required when we give our time estimates, and your insistence on taking shortcuts and using your stupid latest buzz-word methodology. Go buzz yourself!)
People should ask themselves if the quality of their life was better before they started in I.T.
"Crunch time" - it used to be exceptional. It's now not just acceptable; it's become the norm. This is because increasingly, clueless management simply can't manage resources properly, and substitutes crazy hours to make up for it because we let them. Your body needs 2 weeks to a month to fully recover from a single 24-hour shift of high-stress in-the-zone concentration. It's not worth it.
"But it's the only way we can compete!" No, it's the only way YOU can compete. If you can't get the work without abusing your employees, YOU have the problem. I quit.
We all have the point where we've had our fill of it. It wasn't this bad prior to the Internet, so take your "Internet Time" and shove it. YOU need it - I'd rather be broke than further ruin my health to make up for managements' inability to do their jobs properly.
I'm happier and a lot less stressed since I "took the pledge" and decided to never again take a job writing code. There are things worse than not making enough money. Working in I.T. has become one of them.
The new plastic notes are also more durable, so ...
... because I tried and it also wants the person's name. Who knows ... maybe they're trying a "split run" where some can do one thing, and some can do another. It's what I'd be doing if I were running this experiment.
You might want to check out G+ hangout. Think "multi-user video chat done right". You create a hangout and invite either individuals or a circle (you'll get the whole "circles thing" after just a few moments) and others come and go as they please.
That alone will kill facebook for grandma and grandpa. No typing, no chat, just say hi to the kids and see them say hi to you, talk with their cousins, etc.
And it will be a killer for kids as well. Video Party Line!
Even business will latch onto it for teleconferences.
G+ will pass facebook within 2 years, and possibly within 1.
Then you have to close google+, add the person to your contacts, and reopen google+. Now you'll be able to add them easily.
The way facebook is blocking exporting contacts, you know they're scared.
Don't use your slashdot journal? Philistine!
Also, not getting your kid's grandparents to use it at this time can be considered a feature. Let the early adopters work out the kinks first, otherwise when they try to move from failbook they'll just move right back.
Wallets also carry bank cards, ID cards, drivers licenses, bus and subway tickets, all sorts of other cards (and credit, store, and gas cards WANT you to see their logo every time you pull it out).
What next - "Paypal predicts the end of the purse by 2020?"
Paypal will disappear long before wallets do.
So who were the people grilling dog meat under the "hot dogs" sign in the marketplace descended from when Shepherd Book was walking around trying to figure out which ship to take?
(No, it;s not a myth. Asians eat dog meat. I know two women (chinese parents) who were tricked by their parents into eating it when they went back for a visit.)
The english you speak today certainly doesn't sound like the english people 400 years and an ocean away spoke ... how much would you expect chinese 400 years and several light-years away to remain unchanged.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefly_(TV_series)
Life imitates art, or as is often the case, sci-fi is "Future History".
That's how bad laws get changed, by people openly breaking the law.
1955 called - Rosa Parks wants to have a talk with you.