When's the last time you heard of that happening. It doesn't even happen with air bags literally exploding in your face. There are more drivers injured by air bags going off while they're picking their noses.
You completely blew off the "documentation" aspect by ignoring it completely. Asking a technical writer to write the docs is a waste of YOUR time - it's quicker to write them yourself than it is to bring someone else up to speed, then proof-read everything to make sure they really grokked the thing, and then to point out all the other things they missed, or put the wrong emphasis on, then proof-read again, etc.
The best documentation is the source - except when it isn't. But good docs cover more than just the current code. WAY more.
Unless you're into either those big-ass fugly Elton John-style glasses, or the old-skool "aviator" style frames, the difference in weight is minimal. Most glasses are a lot smaller than they were a generation ago.
The coke-bottle-bottoms effect comes from the standard plastic lens having to be thicker to achieve the same degree of correction, made worse by combining it with one of the older, bigger eye glass frames.
The RI of ordinary glass is 1.5623., not 1.3 or 1.4. And all the polycarbonate plastics have really crappy scratch resistance (and don't clean as easily as glass).
Somebody could build a name and shame website. The interns post their 'report cards' on the companies. Interns must use their full names.
Just an idea. Play to the fact that companies like to have a good image.
Or you can name them right here on slashdot, either in the main thread, like Starmedia Communications Inc. which is run by a scammer who uses interns as free labour and steals code, or in your sig (see mine), or in your slashdot journal (google now indexes user journals) or on a subdomain devoted to exposing them. Same with John Abbott College and their useless training programs. Same with the various government departments (too numerous to name here - just follow the links), or my current investigation of the bank (BMO) that appears to have allowed a company that was dissolved over a year ago to continue to have a corporate bank account (see the "Coming soon" on the left side).
Of course, most slashdotters are to *cluck cluck" CHICKEN "cluck cluck" to do so. All talk and no action.
Here's the thing. Nobody's going to do it all for them. If the company is screwing over interns, they're probably doing the same elsewhere. However, interns aren't going to expose them, since that will mean that they won't pass their course, and they'll be "marked" as trouble-makers. It's time for those of us who have been around the block to "pay it forward" a bit, and expose the crap.
Some companies won't work with you afterward? So what - you didn't want to work with crooks, cheats, and scoundrels anyway. What's stopping you from naming names right here, where people in the industry can read them? Are you all too busy "cluck cluck cluck"ing?
Just wait till that free worker fucks up something important (on purpose or not), and you have to take him/her to court to recoup your losses. That'll be funny;)
No, what will be funny is your customers suing you because you didn't inform them that the work was being done by an intern, and that as a consequence there could be delays and other problems, and the intern suing you for being paid less than the minimum wage.
We've had clients that have a movie listed on IMDB with well known actors where the budget was FOUR MILLION dollars try to low-ball us (two man small dev team) to have us make a site for $1,000. I wanted to respond "Oh, is that why your current wordpress site sucks, because you did it as cheaply as possible?"
Of course they're going to low-ball you. They can get an intern or 4 to do it for free from the local college, devoting a lot more hours on trying different things than you ever could for, say, $5k. Webmonkeys are a dime a dozen, literally.
Interns are inherently worthless: they cost more to educate than they deliver in productivity. I hire interns every year, and they get paid WHEN THEY WORK, not when they SHOW UP. For most interns, this means they get paid for perhaps 10% of their onsite time. Why? Because 90% of their onsite time is unproductive learning -- studying technical materials, being taught procedures by full-time employees, etc. EVERYTHING an intern does has to be double-checked by a competent staffer, because interns are inexperienced and make many, many mistakes. The liability for using interns is high, especially where safety-related products and services are involved. When a prospective intern asks me if he gets paid the moment he "clocks in", I always say "No, you only get paid when you make money for us. You're lucky we don't charge you tuition."
Do you do that with your regular employees too? Or do you pay your interns the same rate as your regular employees when they "make money for you?"
If I pay someone to write code, do I give two shits about whether they can also write 5000 words on imagery in the poems of Robert Frost? No.
It's a^^holes like you who don' t want anyone to devoting time to "non-productive stuff" like decent documentation or manuals, which DO require the ability to write more than just "codese".
Someone hasn't told all those advertisers on kijiji.ca who are looking for unpaid interns to fix up their web sites and do all sorts of "promotional work".
Again, Canada is no better than the U.S. in this respect. As long as intern programs can make it look like the government is "doing something" about jobs, nothing will change.
Thanks. The amount of piracy at these places is nutzo. EVERYTHING is pirated. It sort of makes sense - after all, they're just showing the same sense of entitlement to both labour and software that everyone else should pay for.
I remember having to explain to one intern after he finished his course that he had basically blown a year of his life. The evaluation form was a joke. One of the questions was on the interns grooming/appearance. I wrote:
I am a bit worried to see such a question on an evaluation form, especially in a field where people are supposed to be evaluated on their abilities, and not their appearance. There are plenty of people who, for example, skimp on work clothes, or don't get their hair styled as often as they would like so that their children can have a bit extra. This is especially true for people doing an internship. And let's be honest, I.T. is known for redefining the term "casual".
All of the questions were "feel-good" questions. Nowhere was there a "Is this person now capable of working in the profession they are training for?" Why not? Because the answer would have been NO in all three cases.
Half of what they were taught was either wrong, out of date, or just plain counter-productive. One was afraid of computers, and another was unteachable due to stubbornness and an "if it isn't Microsoft or I can't just click on it, it's crap" don't-wanna-learn attitude (he's the one who filed off the GPL and copyright notices without even blinking).
It's not THAT hard to design a much harder-to-bypass copy-protection scheme. Microsoft knows that it's simply not in its best interest, because then more people would switch to FLOSS, giving it the critical mass it needs, and casual piracy by schools and interns is a wink-wink nudge-nudge part of maintaining market share by cutting off FLOSS air supply.
If an unpaid internship is a requirement, they can just register a dot.com for $8, set up a phony website, and have one of their relatives or friends (the "president" or "CIO") listed as the site owner and another as the admin in the registration info. Copy one of the better Nigerian scam "legal" sites, and get your letter confirming your internship, and your great evaluation, from them.
You think they're going to check? Colleges already place interns with companies that don't exist. When students complain to the college, they're told that "perhaps they shouldn't look too closely." The reality is that the college doesn't want to lose the $15k per student that the government pays for what is really make-work mickey mouse courses.
The whole job training thing is a scam that benefits everyone but the interns.
And you can't read the title of the article - it specifies unpaid internships.
But since you bring up paid internships - the links I'm referring to are to government-subsidized (as in paid) internships that are just as bad.
Zombie companies that continue to scam the system even after the government dissolves them, because the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing,happen more often then you'd think.
Politicians like these programs because they make it look like they're "doing something", even though they are far less cost-effective than just spending half the money on "hookers and booze", and banking the rest.
Colleges and universities like these programs because they get to charge a grossly inflated price for "training" that goes nowhere - like "webmaster's assistant".
Students learn not to complain because the courses aren't coming out of their pockets or purses, and they get to extend their benefits for a year. If they do complain (irrelevant material, poor teachers, crappy on-the-job internships) they don't graduate AND lose their benefits.
Maybe because internships are one of the biggest BS things going, but most of the people involved don't want to admit it because it goes against their own interests. Schools won't admit it, companies that use them won't admit it, and the students won't call BS because they won't graduate if they do... so the cycle continues.
and then setup an agreement where they only gave Righthaven the right to sue for their copyrights. The newspaper company kept ownership of the copyrights
... which is what I said... and that the judge is cheesed off because Righthaven, not owning the copyrights, doesn't have standing to sue.
Your "I know for a fact" just makes you out to be a dumbass. First, I never said it does it every time. Second, there's no reason to try if it doesn't see a connection to the net. Third, you probably don't have a bunch of extensions running, or you would have gotten warnings.
Don't even bother trying... you need to preserve those remaining brain cells.
Are you kidding? This is a benefit! Now if only we can get Windows to crash for lawyers on the next version, our planet will be saved!
Microsoft Windows Save-the-Planet Release - "Windows ain't done until the lawyers won't run!"
Or just have some nice hackers write up a virus that, if the current document looks like it's in a legal format and full of legalese, silently insert a bunch of tourette-isms in it on saving.
Righthaven was suing for copyright, when they weren't the owners of the copyrighted material. You can't "hive off" the right to sue to a 3rd party like Righthaven. Righthaven lacked standing, and should have known they lacked standing (after all, if you're a bunch of lawyers suing over copyrights, you should at least know copyright law, right?)
The way each suit should have proceeded was that the rights-holders hire Righthaven to sue on their behalf; this makes things harder for Righthaven in court, since then they rights-holder has to be involved at every step - something that drives up the cost of each suit. Righthaven wanted to do this stuff in bulk, un its own name, without crossing each T and dotting each I, and it doesn't work that way.
Then there was the sloppy casework...
The judge was not amused at what looks like a fraud upon the court, and has been kicking Righthaven in the nads ever since.
Seriously, it couldn't happen to a nicer guy - but it does point out the problem with browsers that, at startup, make you wait while they ping their mothership to check for updates when all you want to do is surf for 5 minutes.
Other online retailers such as walmart manage to do the tax thing with no problems. Amazon's actions speak louder than words - they really DO want to dump their affiliates - 4% to 10% adds up, you know.
Slashdot Mirror
When's the last time you heard of that happening. It doesn't even happen with air bags literally exploding in your face. There are more drivers injured by air bags going off while they're picking their noses.
You completely blew off the "documentation" aspect by ignoring it completely. Asking a technical writer to write the docs is a waste of YOUR time - it's quicker to write them yourself than it is to bring someone else up to speed, then proof-read everything to make sure they really grokked the thing, and then to point out all the other things they missed, or put the wrong emphasis on, then proof-read again, etc.
The best documentation is the source - except when it isn't. But good docs cover more than just the current code. WAY more.
The coke-bottle-bottoms effect comes from the standard plastic lens having to be thicker to achieve the same degree of correction, made worse by combining it with one of the older, bigger eye glass frames.
The RI of ordinary glass is 1.5623., not 1.3 or 1.4. And all the polycarbonate plastics have really crappy scratch resistance (and don't clean as easily as glass).
Use plastic only if you *like* the coke-bottle-bottoms dork effect.
For one, if results can't be duplicated, they're questionable.
Then there's the "accidental discoveries" when people are pursuing the same goal, using mostly the same methods ...
Having one official project is so "Soviet Russia". Like having one OS, one browser, one type of car, one political party, one employer ...
The only sick individual here is you, APK (the "hosts file guy")
Or you can name them right here on slashdot, either in the main thread, like Starmedia Communications Inc. which is run by a scammer who uses interns as free labour and steals code, or in your sig (see mine), or in your slashdot journal (google now indexes user journals) or on a subdomain devoted to exposing them. Same with John Abbott College and their useless training programs. Same with the various government departments (too numerous to name here - just follow the links), or my current investigation of the bank (BMO) that appears to have allowed a company that was dissolved over a year ago to continue to have a corporate bank account (see the "Coming soon" on the left side).
Of course, most slashdotters are to *cluck cluck" CHICKEN "cluck cluck" to do so. All talk and no action.
Here's the thing. Nobody's going to do it all for them. If the company is screwing over interns, they're probably doing the same elsewhere. However, interns aren't going to expose them, since that will mean that they won't pass their course, and they'll be "marked" as trouble-makers. It's time for those of us who have been around the block to "pay it forward" a bit, and expose the crap.
Some companies won't work with you afterward? So what - you didn't want to work with crooks, cheats, and scoundrels anyway. What's stopping you from naming names right here, where people in the industry can read them? Are you all too busy "cluck cluck cluck"ing?
No, what will be funny is your customers suing you because you didn't inform them that the work was being done by an intern, and that as a consequence there could be delays and other problems, and the intern suing you for being paid less than the minimum wage.
Of course they're going to low-ball you. They can get an intern or 4 to do it for free from the local college, devoting a lot more hours on trying different things than you ever could for, say, $5k. Webmonkeys are a dime a dozen, literally.
Do you do that with your regular employees too? Or do you pay your interns the same rate as your regular employees when they "make money for you?"
Die, useless scumbag.
It's a^^holes like you who don' t want anyone to devoting time to "non-productive stuff" like decent documentation or manuals, which DO require the ability to write more than just "codese".
Canada isn't an intern paradise. There are plenty of people in federally and provincially-subsidized job retraining programs doing internships for less than the legal minimum wage.
Canada is no better than the U.S.
Someone hasn't told all those advertisers on kijiji.ca who are looking for unpaid interns to fix up their web sites and do all sorts of "promotional work".
The government doesn't give a sh*t. Not when government-subsidized job interns are working for free on an illegal lottery-type contest draw to promote a phony group-buying site with a bunch of phony "sponsors" and "partners" for a company that is just as fake, and when you report it, they do nothing.
Again, Canada is no better than the U.S. in this respect. As long as intern programs can make it look like the government is "doing something" about jobs, nothing will change.
Thanks. The amount of piracy at these places is nutzo. EVERYTHING is pirated. It sort of makes sense - after all, they're just showing the same sense of entitlement to both labour and software that everyone else should pay for.
I remember having to explain to one intern after he finished his course that he had basically blown a year of his life. The evaluation form was a joke. One of the questions was on the interns grooming/appearance. I wrote:
All of the questions were "feel-good" questions. Nowhere was there a "Is this person now capable of working in the profession they are training for?" Why not? Because the answer would have been NO in all three cases.
Half of what they were taught was either wrong, out of date, or just plain counter-productive. One was afraid of computers, and another was unteachable due to stubbornness and an "if it isn't Microsoft or I can't just click on it, it's crap" don't-wanna-learn attitude (he's the one who filed off the GPL and copyright notices without even blinking).
It's not THAT hard to design a much harder-to-bypass copy-protection scheme. Microsoft knows that it's simply not in its best interest, because then more people would switch to FLOSS, giving it the critical mass it needs, and casual piracy by schools and interns is a wink-wink nudge-nudge part of maintaining market share by cutting off FLOSS air supply.
If an unpaid internship is a requirement, they can just register a dot.com for $8, set up a phony website, and have one of their relatives or friends (the "president" or "CIO") listed as the site owner and another as the admin in the registration info. Copy one of the better Nigerian scam "legal" sites, and get your letter confirming your internship, and your great evaluation, from them.
You think they're going to check? Colleges already place interns with companies that don't exist. When students complain to the college, they're told that "perhaps they shouldn't look too closely." The reality is that the college doesn't want to lose the $15k per student that the government pays for what is really make-work mickey mouse courses.
The whole job training thing is a scam that benefits everyone but the interns.
But since you bring up paid internships - the links I'm referring to are to government-subsidized (as in paid) internships that are just as bad.
Zombie companies that continue to scam the system even after the government dissolves them, because the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing ,happen more often then you'd think.
Politicians like these programs because they make it look like they're "doing something", even though they are far less cost-effective than just spending half the money on "hookers and booze", and banking the rest.
Colleges and universities like these programs because they get to charge a grossly inflated price for "training" that goes nowhere - like "webmaster's assistant".
Students learn not to complain because the courses aren't coming out of their pockets or purses, and they get to extend their benefits for a year. If they do complain (irrelevant material, poor teachers, crappy on-the-job internships) they don't graduate AND lose their benefits.
We need more whistle-blowers, not fewer.
Maybe because internships are one of the biggest BS things going, but most of the people involved don't want to admit it because it goes against their own interests. Schools won't admit it, companies that use them won't admit it, and the students won't call BS because they won't graduate if they do ... so the cycle continues.
Interns are asked to pirate software, defraud job training programs, file off GPL copyrights, help defraud customers, and all sorts of crap
Internships benefit the teachers, the colleges, and the politicians who say "we're doing something to help train people". It's all BS.
Don't even bother trying ... you need to preserve those remaining brain cells.
Microsoft Windows Save-the-Planet Release - "Windows ain't done until the lawyers won't run!"
Or just have some nice hackers write up a virus that, if the current document looks like it's in a legal format and full of legalese, silently insert a bunch of tourette-isms in it on saving.
Let the judges sort it out :-)
Both firefox and opera do it under linux, firefox does it under windows (haven't checked the others).
Righthaven was suing for copyright, when they weren't the owners of the copyrighted material. You can't "hive off" the right to sue to a 3rd party like Righthaven. Righthaven lacked standing, and should have known they lacked standing (after all, if you're a bunch of lawyers suing over copyrights, you should at least know copyright law, right?)
The way each suit should have proceeded was that the rights-holders hire Righthaven to sue on their behalf; this makes things harder for Righthaven in court, since then they rights-holder has to be involved at every step - something that drives up the cost of each suit. Righthaven wanted to do this stuff in bulk, un its own name, without crossing each T and dotting each I, and it doesn't work that way.
Then there was the sloppy casework ...
The judge was not amused at what looks like a fraud upon the court, and has been kicking Righthaven in the nads ever since.
Seriously, it couldn't happen to a nicer guy - but it does point out the problem with browsers that, at startup, make you wait while they ping their mothership to check for updates when all you want to do is surf for 5 minutes.
Other online retailers such as walmart manage to do the tax thing with no problems. Amazon's actions speak louder than words - they really DO want to dump their affiliates - 4% to 10% adds up, you know.