that some Republicans know of is of the "tubesteak" variety.
That's probably why Mark Foley avoided contributions from companies like Verizon in favor of legal firms, healthcare concerns, oh and friends of the RIAA.
The big difference between now and yesteryear is OJT and learned-training.
Companies expect a long history of experience. Actually in most programming work, your degree counts as a secondary nice-to-have. Certifications and job history count as #1 (after the salary discussion is over and both sides accept).
That's the big difference between skilled workers now and skilled workers during WWI and WWII.
During WWII especially, there was a CRISIS of qualified men to work skilled and semi-skilled jobs.
Rosie the riveter didn't go from the kitchen to slamming hot rivets into huge plates of steel overnight. She had to learn how to do it, understand quality control, and know what was a good rivet finish vs. a bad one, or her work would lead to structure integrity failure down the road.
It wasn't until after WWII that women in engineering colleges started to pop up, and employers were willing to start hiring them.
When employers are REALLY pushed against the wall, then they will make investments in training and education.
Right now, we don't have a shortage. You'll almost never be able to walk into a company without the skill they want (say, Great Plains experience) and get that training after hire. They expect--they demand that you already have it before you even fill out the paperwork.
That to me, so no indication of a real tech worker shortage. That's just employers not willing to make an investment in their people so the tasks can be fulfilled.
Step 1. Date or make friends with someone in HR systems who runs the Peoplesoft/Oracle/SAP HR system. Help them out with database work (like complex batch jobs). Step 2. Pay attention to the kinds of queries they need help with. Step 3. If they begin compiling seniority studies / benefits calculations for projections IN THE FUTURE (red flag!) or estimate retirement dates if your company has a defined pension benefit, see step 4.
Step 4. Put up resume on dice.com and start "disappearing" during lunch to return headhunter phone calls.
CA is still a crappy consulting headshop to work for, and they still mooch a lot of business for supporting mainframe tools for shops who are still using z/OS on their mainframes and haven't completely converted over to Linux on their s/390 hardware yet.
Microsoft wants to put XGL into another release of Windows to improve Glass.
I just know it.
I use XGLcompiz constantly and need it because I don't have room for another monitor. Now I can do the work of four monitors easily with a smoother interface than MacOS.
I think Microsoft's UI guys want this on the Windows desktop---BAD.
At my office, the pumpkin carving contest has become a tradition. Almost always they turn into mini-ITX computers running Linux (because we can't afford all those WinXP Professional licenses for trash boxes).
I keep the same mobo for it year after year, sometimes buying a new one (the nano-ITX from VIA works good).
Every year the cron job the pumpkin executes gets more complex.
This time in addition to catting out spooky wav files to/dev/dsp at random times, randomly during working hours we had the pumpkin switch on a USB turntable and start playing funky disco music (George Clinton, Avg White Band, etc).
I think next year we might actually slip in a small LCD screen if there's budget money. The pumpkin went 802.11g last year,
But this action, if Oracle succeeds at becoming a large Linux vendor, could actually propel Unix into a large market share in the "Corporate Enterprise" world if it actually takes hold.
The reason being is Oracle Finanials and Oracle HR. Larry is looking for a way to not only get at more of what is in the server room, but he's looking at a way to put Oracle on a platform that can quickly replace existing Windows boxes. Oracle's VERY expensive ERP software is less expensive when it is running on a managed Linux platform instead of a Wintel one paying the Microsoft tax. Every Oracle install on Windows generates a significant side revenue for Microsoft, and this is a way to eliminate it, plus there is the side money that comes with full-time Linux support and consulting.
Forget the Oracle file system for a minute and focus on what his business plan really is. Red-Hat is a target because it has the buzz, but it, and SuSE, have a decent install base (IBM now gives you Linux on every z/Series iron, so it's already running in most of the Fortune 500, but might not be running the critical things).
SAP already has full support of IBM and the Linux platform. If Oracle wants to get at what shops still solely on PC servers, this is a way to do it and to not give Microsoft any indirect cut of the action.
That's gotta be what's going on in this guy's head.
You're assuming a space elevator needs a cable for the entire length of the elevator.
It's an engineering problem like the World Trade Center. It was impractical to have elevator shafts running up the entire building (in the WTC, I believe there was only one shaft that did so).
In the case of a space elevator... why not temporarily "lock" the car at a certain height, then have a mechanism unhoist the cable and change it to another hoist motor? (repeat as necessary)
The net effect that the elevator would have to "rest" at certain periods on the way up and back down. A zero-G elevator would need to use friction... so the last part of the trip would just be using toothed-gears along a similar linear tooth track.
So, when the elevator gets stuck... how is the Otis repairman supposed to pry you out?
This info is rather stale (like the 2600)
on
The 20 Worst Games Ever
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
This list has been rather arbitrary, however the "official" list can be found and edited on Wikipedia.
I agree on #1 though. I cannot forget how much ET sucked (and I was a little tyke around this time). I had JUST gotten exposed to the 2600 and the crappy Pac-Mac clone released for it when the console abruptly was shoved into the closet never to see the light of day again.
I did enjoy the Atari 400 my mother had bought for my older sibling. We would both play Zaxxon for hours on it, which required starting a rather chunky and heavy cassette tape machine which you connected to the 400. There was some cheesy elevator music with some marketing propoganda (you had to turn the volumn down to ignore it). After going to get a soda and cigarettes at the store for my brother, the game would be completely loaded into RAM and we'd spend a good part of the afternoon trying to top scores.
ET however managed to suck the life out of Atari and it destroyed the company. Had it not done that, NES would have had no void to fill.
In fact, the Atari caused so much damage to the video game market (and all the other cheap video game systems), that Nintendo had to market the first 8-bit consoles by showing only the Nintendo R.O.B. (remember that thing?) The ROB had a major suck factor, but it was such a cool gimmick that the "seperate console" it needed to play the game managed to suck in enough kids that eventually the ROB was discarded (within about 6 months after it released).
The ROB gimmick was quickly removed from the marketplace and the only boxes you could find where the standard console and the one with the Duck Hunt gun. The original issue had everything--the NES, the ROB and the gun with all those games! What a steal!
I dunno, but I was really happy when I bought an HP 3050 since it works with every OS (ok, took 20 mins to get the automatic document feeder working with Linux... but it's trivial).
Now I'm wondering if my printer is mysteriously sending all my scanned docs to the feds when I sleep at night.
If I was an employee at HP, I would be searching dice.com right now, because this distraction is obviously going to mire ongoing project work within the company. Too bad the competition with the 10,000 laid off Intel employees is going to pose a bit of a competition for EEs and PMs working at the company.
Perhaps it's time to wipe off the board and start over--or take the company private so that it doesn't have to worry so much with the intense SEC and Wall Street scrutiny. It's not like HP share price is ever going to go back into the stratosphere. Most of I/T, thanks to the outsourcing phenomenon, is on a path to the lowest common economic denominator, with cost-control ruling the day over developing new markets and innovative products.
There is no market HP is engaged in where it is not one of a multitude of players in an oligopoly. This situation leaves HP with a lock-in on narrow or diminishing margins. It's time to reinvent the company... again.
Should Congressional Action Be Warranted?
on
UnBox Calls Home, A Lot
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I am tired of seeing companies, whether it is open source or not, offering services that bury unforseen privacy violations within them. There are responsible programs like (on Windows) Winamp and Windows Media Player and even (on *IX) pine, which inform you that it is going to be sending usage information back to home base, with an option to decline such activity.
Some of the software is so sneaky as to masquerade as a legitimate SSL requirest, so even a network administrator has no clue whether or not the information coming out of their network does or does not contain proprietary information about the network's users--and you are left to the "trust us" language in the EULAs with no proof that the data being sent is benign info.
Being a resident of Philadelphia and knowing the city very well, I think this is probably the ONLY place in the US Microsoft could have done this and actually not stir up contoversy or much debate.
Everyone knows the New York City school system is the most pathetic, poor and inept one on the planet, even though it is the most richest city in the United States.
Philadelphia's system is similarly bad, since most people with any means raise their kids in private or parochial schools if they live in the city. Everyone else moves just outside the city limits if they can't afford to do this, so that their kids don't have to suffer the Philadelphia School District. With only two exceptions (Masterman and Central Philadelphia High School), the rest of the system is an absolute disgrace.
Anyone familiar with Philadelphia itself knows that the blight and decline is not in large swaths of the city, but it is in tiny pockets scattered around the entire area... like swiss cheese [with one exception: North Philadelphia].
The particular area where the Microsoft High School happens to be in is a heavily forested area near the zoo, which is closer to stately homes than it is to the actual hood of West Philly.
If this school is actually a success... I'd like to see Microsoft put its money where its mouth is and take over South Philadelphia High and at least one other school in "da hood".
Maybe Microsoft could also fix our subway system while they're at it.
This website has been my favorite for a long time. I've played 2 of the games the author has tried with some success (I got a fake Western Union receipt from one). The more baiters out there, the fewer of these scams will perpetrate across the Internet.
Someone needs to come up with a perl script smart enough to do automated baiting. It would sell really well as a sendmail/Exchange server filter. Think of the possibilities!!!
TO PURCHASE LICESNE FOR FILTER, I NEED ACCOUNT TO WIRE MONEY TO YOU FROM LAGOS NIGERIA. CAN YOU SEND ME PHONE NUMBER I CONTACT YOU? THANKS SO MUCH GOD BLESS.
The biggest problem I have with Monster and Dice (and I expressed this concern to both sites) is that employers and recruiters oftentimes put the major city instead of the actual jobsite location on the job listing. This is EXTREMELY annoying!
There are several areas in the U.S. where this information is important.
If you are like me and you live in Philadelphia, I want to know whether or not the job is in the far NW suburbs (extreme traffic congestion on I-76... it's worse than I-10 in Los Angeles), or if it's in New Jersey (you need EZ-Pass if you want to get back home quickly). 1/6 of the population that lives in the City of Philadelphia does not own a car, any even those who do (like me) prefer to work for employers in the urban core where train, bus and subway transit offers a relief from the painful rush hour traffic.
For the 5th largest city (5 million people in the area) we have fewer throughways and roads than the 8th largest city (San Antonio - 2 million).
But, for an employer to list the township they are really in (like King of Prussia), that can be the kiss of death for the good job candidates who refuse to even talk to those employers because of their location. I don't know how many times I've talked to a recruiter only to find out that they listed Philadelphia, PA as the location, but instead it's really a TWO HOUR DRIVE from Center City to Valley Forge, PA which is in a completely different county and has no access to commuter rail. Throw as many worthless stock options at me as you want, you can't pay me enough to sit in my car for a minimum of FOUR hours a day to drive out there.
New Yorkers go through the same thing... job says NYC, but it's really White Plains. WTF? No one from Manhattan is going to reverse commute up there.
I have no desire to move to the edge of a corporate office park out in the boondocks and have to waste gas driving everywhere in absolutely unbearable traffic conditions. That's why I'm in the city in the first place!
Dice.com has made this somewhat better by requiring an area code in the job posting, so at least I can search only metro numbers and the "beltway" area codes I can screen out, but that's not very specific as many area cell phone numbers are used instead of land lines. Having a zip code of where my fsck'ing desk would-be located would give me a better perception of how far away the job is from where I live, and whether or not I have commuting options to get there from here.
Instead of whining about the machinations of capitalism, join it. Go here, or here, or go through your bank, open an account, and start buying the shares these companies have out on the market.
Way before Katrina came along, I bought $10,000 worth of VLO, back when this company was $10. My mouth was watering after they became the biggest oil refining company in the United States (they took over Diamond Shamrock not too long ago).
After Katrina hit, I had well over 5x my original investment and dumped the stock. So, now I have almost a year's worth of wages I'm sitting on, and I can take this money and go put it somewhere else.
These companies that layoff workers are only doing it for one single reason: to please Wall Street. Any Wall St. analyst would be shocked if a merger or acquisition did NOT involve layoffs, since that is primarily a driver for the merger in the first place (increase market share + lower costs == higher returns).
So, if the company is doing the layoff is a sincere, sound manner... why not invest? Oracle and SAP have pretty-much shutout all the other accounting (er... "ERP") systems on the market... MAS-90/100, Solomon, J.D. Edwards, and a myriad of other big speciality systems... they are ALL going the way of the dodo.
POS vendors are probably the next target to be consolidated after this (which I would breathe a HUGE sigh of relief if that happened... do you know how many different POS systems are out there???)
Having worked with the IRS and their original eFile system, I doubt that this is true.
The truth is probably closer to the fact that they may have a problem with their personal account system and field lengths for values within the system. Whatever jobs are loading the results from the filing system are failing when trying to import his records. Since he has been filing for years and continues to file, the system is picking up the fact that nothing is coming over since his amount owed (and whatever other data elements) went over whatever field lengths they are using.
Remember, the IRS doesn't have one big gigantic system. They have a bagillion systems. As much as they consolidate, they still pass data around from one place to another and also have tons of job automation to sift, analyze and filter data as it moves from place to place.
For example, on the eFile program, one very popular routine that income tax preparers see all the time is the duplicate dependant SSN program. As new returns enter the filing system and are drained before going to Andover, a job runs that looks at your dependant SSN numbers showing on your tax return. If that SSN already shows up on a return someone else filed this tax season, your tax return is kicked out and rejected. If you filed through a tax preparer, they will call you about it as soon as they get back the IRS Acknowledgement File. If you file online, you may get some sort of electronic notice. After a few weeks, you should receive a letter from the master correspondence system notifying you about it. This is of course to protect the IRS against fraud when a seperated or two non-married people are attempting to claim the same child (the rule is whoever provided care for the child for the majority of the year gets to claim it).
The reason BillG is getting notices is because his files are not sent over to be update the A/R from the main filing system, so the correspondence system picks this up when the jobs run to look over personal tax account balances (he shows $0 and no filings reported although he has tax returns in the main filing systems).
I would think IBM and Siemens contractors have fixed this by now. Many 1120 and 1120S tax returns have gigantic figures on various forms, especially on page 1.
Slashdot Mirror
that some Republicans know of is of the "tubesteak" variety.
That's probably why Mark Foley avoided contributions from companies like Verizon in favor of legal firms, healthcare concerns, oh and friends of the RIAA.
---
I make my red-state a pink one!
The big difference between now and yesteryear is OJT and learned-training.
Companies expect a long history of experience. Actually in most programming work, your degree counts as a secondary nice-to-have. Certifications and job history count as #1 (after the salary discussion is over and both sides accept).
That's the big difference between skilled workers now and skilled workers during WWI and WWII.
During WWII especially, there was a CRISIS of qualified men to work skilled and semi-skilled jobs.
Rosie the riveter didn't go from the kitchen to slamming hot rivets into huge plates of steel overnight. She had to learn how to do it, understand quality control, and know what was a good rivet finish vs. a bad one, or her work would lead to structure integrity failure down the road.
It wasn't until after WWII that women in engineering colleges started to pop up, and employers were willing to start hiring them.
When employers are REALLY pushed against the wall, then they will make investments in training and education.
Right now, we don't have a shortage. You'll almost never be able to walk into a company without the skill they want (say, Great Plains experience) and get that training after hire. They expect--they demand that you already have it before you even fill out the paperwork.
That to me, so no indication of a real tech worker shortage. That's just employers not willing to make an investment in their people so the tasks can be fulfilled.
Step 1. Date or make friends with someone in HR systems who runs the Peoplesoft/Oracle/SAP HR system. Help them out with database work (like complex batch jobs).
Step 2. Pay attention to the kinds of queries they need help with.
Step 3. If they begin compiling seniority studies / benefits calculations for projections IN THE FUTURE (red flag!) or estimate retirement dates if your company has a defined pension benefit, see step 4.
Step 4. Put up resume on dice.com and start "disappearing" during lunch to return headhunter phone calls.
CA is still a crappy consulting headshop to work for, and they still mooch a lot of business for supporting mainframe tools for shops who are still using z/OS on their mainframes and haven't completely converted over to Linux on their s/390 hardware yet.
Microsoft wants to put XGL into another release of Windows to improve Glass.
I just know it.
I use XGLcompiz constantly and need it because I don't have room for another monitor. Now I can do the work of four monitors easily with a smoother interface than MacOS.
I think Microsoft's UI guys want this on the Windows desktop---BAD.
At my office, the pumpkin carving contest has become a tradition. Almost always they turn into mini-ITX computers running Linux (because we can't afford all those WinXP Professional licenses for trash boxes).
/dev/dsp at random times, randomly during working hours we had the pumpkin switch on a USB turntable and start playing funky disco music (George Clinton, Avg White Band, etc).
I keep the same mobo for it year after year, sometimes buying a new one (the nano-ITX from VIA works good).
Every year the cron job the pumpkin executes gets more complex.
This time in addition to catting out spooky wav files to
I think next year we might actually slip in a small LCD screen if there's budget money. The pumpkin went 802.11g last year,
But this action, if Oracle succeeds at becoming a large Linux vendor, could actually propel Unix into a large market share in the "Corporate Enterprise" world if it actually takes hold.
The reason being is Oracle Finanials and Oracle HR. Larry is looking for a way to not only get at more of what is in the server room, but he's looking at a way to put Oracle on a platform that can quickly replace existing Windows boxes. Oracle's VERY expensive ERP software is less expensive when it is running on a managed Linux platform instead of a Wintel one paying the Microsoft tax. Every Oracle install on Windows generates a significant side revenue for Microsoft, and this is a way to eliminate it, plus there is the side money that comes with full-time Linux support and consulting.
Forget the Oracle file system for a minute and focus on what his business plan really is. Red-Hat is a target because it has the buzz, but it, and SuSE, have a decent install base (IBM now gives you Linux on every z/Series iron, so it's already running in most of the Fortune 500, but might not be running the critical things).
SAP already has full support of IBM and the Linux platform. If Oracle wants to get at what shops still solely on PC servers, this is a way to do it and to not give Microsoft any indirect cut of the action.
That's gotta be what's going on in this guy's head.
You're assuming a space elevator needs a cable for the entire length of the elevator.
It's an engineering problem like the World Trade Center. It was impractical to have elevator shafts running up the entire building (in the WTC, I believe there was only one shaft that did so).
In the case of a space elevator... why not temporarily "lock" the car at a certain height, then have a mechanism unhoist the cable and change it to another hoist motor? (repeat as necessary)
The net effect that the elevator would have to "rest" at certain periods on the way up and back down. A zero-G elevator would need to use friction... so the last part of the trip would just be using toothed-gears along a similar linear tooth track.
So, when the elevator gets stuck... how is the Otis repairman supposed to pry you out?
This list has been rather arbitrary, however the "official" list can be found and edited on Wikipedia.
I agree on #1 though. I cannot forget how much ET sucked (and I was a little tyke around this time). I had JUST gotten exposed to the 2600 and the crappy Pac-Mac clone released for it when the console abruptly was shoved into the closet never to see the light of day again.
I did enjoy the Atari 400 my mother had bought for my older sibling. We would both play Zaxxon for hours on it, which required starting a rather chunky and heavy cassette tape machine which you connected to the 400. There was some cheesy elevator music with some marketing propoganda (you had to turn the volumn down to ignore it). After going to get a soda and cigarettes at the store for my brother, the game would be completely loaded into RAM and we'd spend a good part of the afternoon trying to top scores.
ET however managed to suck the life out of Atari and it destroyed the company. Had it not done that, NES would have had no void to fill.
In fact, the Atari caused so much damage to the video game market (and all the other cheap video game systems), that Nintendo had to market the first 8-bit consoles by showing only the Nintendo R.O.B. (remember that thing?) The ROB had a major suck factor, but it was such a cool gimmick that the "seperate console" it needed to play the game managed to suck in enough kids that eventually the ROB was discarded (within about 6 months after it released).
The ROB gimmick was quickly removed from the marketplace and the only boxes you could find where the standard console and the one with the Duck Hunt gun. The original issue had everything--the NES, the ROB and the gun with all those games! What a steal!
I dunno, but I was really happy when I bought an HP 3050 since it works with every OS (ok, took 20 mins to get the automatic document feeder working with Linux... but it's trivial).
Now I'm wondering if my printer is mysteriously sending all my scanned docs to the feds when I sleep at night.
Better slap a network sniffer on that baby.
First Fiorina, now this.
If I was an employee at HP, I would be searching dice.com right now, because this distraction is obviously going to mire ongoing project work within the company. Too bad the competition with the 10,000 laid off Intel employees is going to pose a bit of a competition for EEs and PMs working at the company.
Perhaps it's time to wipe off the board and start over--or take the company private so that it doesn't have to worry so much with the intense SEC and Wall Street scrutiny. It's not like HP share price is ever going to go back into the stratosphere. Most of I/T, thanks to the outsourcing phenomenon, is on a path to the lowest common economic denominator, with cost-control ruling the day over developing new markets and innovative products.
There is no market HP is engaged in where it is not one of a multitude of players in an oligopoly. This situation leaves HP with a lock-in on narrow or diminishing margins. It's time to reinvent the company... again.
I am tired of seeing companies, whether it is open source or not, offering services that bury unforseen privacy violations within them. There are responsible programs like (on Windows) Winamp and Windows Media Player and even (on *IX) pine, which inform you that it is going to be sending usage information back to home base, with an option to decline such activity.
Some of the software is so sneaky as to masquerade as a legitimate SSL requirest, so even a network administrator has no clue whether or not the information coming out of their network does or does not contain proprietary information about the network's users--and you are left to the "trust us" language in the EULAs with no proof that the data being sent is benign info.
Where is the EFF on this???
Being a resident of Philadelphia and knowing the city very well, I think this is probably the ONLY place in the US Microsoft could have done this and actually not stir up contoversy or much debate.
Everyone knows the New York City school system is the most pathetic, poor and inept one on the planet, even though it is the most richest city in the United States.
Philadelphia's system is similarly bad, since most people with any means raise their kids in private or parochial schools if they live in the city. Everyone else moves just outside the city limits if they can't afford to do this, so that their kids don't have to suffer the Philadelphia School District. With only two exceptions (Masterman and Central Philadelphia High School), the rest of the system is an absolute disgrace.
Anyone familiar with Philadelphia itself knows that the blight and decline is not in large swaths of the city, but it is in tiny pockets scattered around the entire area... like swiss cheese [with one exception: North Philadelphia].
The particular area where the Microsoft High School happens to be in is a heavily forested area near the zoo, which is closer to stately homes than it is to the actual hood of West Philly.
If this school is actually a success... I'd like to see Microsoft put its money where its mouth is and take over South Philadelphia High and at least one other school in "da hood".
Maybe Microsoft could also fix our subway system while they're at it.
This website has been my favorite for a long time. I've played 2 of the games the author has tried with some success (I got a fake Western Union receipt from one). The more baiters out there, the fewer of these scams will perpetrate across the Internet.
Someone needs to come up with a perl script smart enough to do automated baiting. It would sell really well as a sendmail/Exchange server filter. Think of the possibilities!!!
TO PURCHASE LICESNE FOR FILTER, I NEED ACCOUNT TO WIRE MONEY TO YOU FROM LAGOS NIGERIA. CAN YOU SEND ME PHONE NUMBER I CONTACT YOU? THANKS SO MUCH GOD BLESS.
YOUR FRIEND IN CRIST
NABLOM NUGUABYA
...how can we use this for sex again?
This service will also change your voice and record calls for you.
GEE. This sounds like it's a trap from the Feds if you use this calling card stuff.
Some dummy stalker uses this card for a callerID spoof and voice change, calls his victim... 3 hours later the cops show up. Nice.
The biggest problem I have with Monster and Dice (and I expressed this concern to both sites) is that employers and recruiters oftentimes put the major city instead of the actual jobsite location on the job listing. This is EXTREMELY annoying!
There are several areas in the U.S. where this information is important.
If you are like me and you live in Philadelphia, I want to know whether or not the job is in the far NW suburbs (extreme traffic congestion on I-76... it's worse than I-10 in Los Angeles), or if it's in New Jersey (you need EZ-Pass if you want to get back home quickly). 1/6 of the population that lives in the City of Philadelphia does not own a car, any even those who do (like me) prefer to work for employers in the urban core where train, bus and subway transit offers a relief from the painful rush hour traffic.
For the 5th largest city (5 million people in the area) we have fewer throughways and roads than the 8th largest city (San Antonio - 2 million).
But, for an employer to list the township they are really in (like King of Prussia), that can be the kiss of death for the good job candidates who refuse to even talk to those employers because of their location. I don't know how many times I've talked to a recruiter only to find out that they listed Philadelphia, PA as the location, but instead it's really a TWO HOUR DRIVE from Center City to Valley Forge, PA which is in a completely different county and has no access to commuter rail. Throw as many worthless stock options at me as you want, you can't pay me enough to sit in my car for a minimum of FOUR hours a day to drive out there.
New Yorkers go through the same thing... job says NYC, but it's really White Plains. WTF? No one from Manhattan is going to reverse commute up there.
I have no desire to move to the edge of a corporate office park out in the boondocks and have to waste gas driving everywhere in absolutely unbearable traffic conditions. That's why I'm in the city in the first place!
Dice.com has made this somewhat better by requiring an area code in the job posting, so at least I can search only metro numbers and the "beltway" area codes I can screen out, but that's not very specific as many area cell phone numbers are used instead of land lines. Having a zip code of where my fsck'ing desk would-be located would give me a better perception of how far away the job is from where I live, and whether or not I have commuting options to get there from here.
Instead of whining about the machinations of capitalism, join it. Go here, or here, or go through your bank, open an account, and start buying the shares these companies have out on the market.
Way before Katrina came along, I bought $10,000 worth of VLO, back when this company was $10. My mouth was watering after they became the biggest oil refining company in the United States (they took over Diamond Shamrock not too long ago).
After Katrina hit, I had well over 5x my original investment and dumped the stock. So, now I have almost a year's worth of wages I'm sitting on, and I can take this money and go put it somewhere else.
These companies that layoff workers are only doing it for one single reason: to please Wall Street. Any Wall St. analyst would be shocked if a merger or acquisition did NOT involve layoffs, since that is primarily a driver for the merger in the first place (increase market share + lower costs == higher returns).
So, if the company is doing the layoff is a sincere, sound manner... why not invest? Oracle and SAP have pretty-much shutout all the other accounting (er... "ERP") systems on the market... MAS-90/100, Solomon, J.D. Edwards, and a myriad of other big speciality systems... they are ALL going the way of the dodo.
POS vendors are probably the next target to be consolidated after this (which I would breathe a HUGE sigh of relief if that happened... do you know how many different POS systems are out there???)
What cure for AIDS?
Until rounds of human trails even begins, it is no cure. It's still a hypothesis. I can kill HIV just by pouring it in Clorox.
Ceragenix Pharmaceuticals... some weird compond name, not even a basic description of the molecule they created...
I wonder if they were also behind the miracle cures Relacore and Trim-Spa?
Then, this "scientific breakthrough" for AIDS didn't happen. It's crap until it's published, not when it's hyped.
In Soviet Russia, ALTAIR BASIC kicks you!
But... does it run Linux?
Having worked with the IRS and their original eFile system, I doubt that this is true.
The truth is probably closer to the fact that they may have a problem with their personal account system and field lengths for values within the system. Whatever jobs are loading the results from the filing system are failing when trying to import his records. Since he has been filing for years and continues to file, the system is picking up the fact that nothing is coming over since his amount owed (and whatever other data elements) went over whatever field lengths they are using.
Remember, the IRS doesn't have one big gigantic system. They have a bagillion systems. As much as they consolidate, they still pass data around from one place to another and also have tons of job automation to sift, analyze and filter data as it moves from place to place.
For example, on the eFile program, one very popular routine that income tax preparers see all the time is the duplicate dependant SSN program. As new returns enter the filing system and are drained before going to Andover, a job runs that looks at your dependant SSN numbers showing on your tax return. If that SSN already shows up on a return someone else filed this tax season, your tax return is kicked out and rejected. If you filed through a tax preparer, they will call you about it as soon as they get back the IRS Acknowledgement File. If you file online, you may get some sort of electronic notice. After a few weeks, you should receive a letter from the master correspondence system notifying you about it. This is of course to protect the IRS against fraud when a seperated or two non-married people are attempting to claim the same child (the rule is whoever provided care for the child for the majority of the year gets to claim it).
The reason BillG is getting notices is because his files are not sent over to be update the A/R from the main filing system, so the correspondence system picks this up when the jobs run to look over personal tax account balances (he shows $0 and no filings reported although he has tax returns in the main filing systems).
I would think IBM and Siemens contractors have fixed this by now. Many 1120 and 1120S tax returns have gigantic figures on various forms, especially on page 1.