My father in law was a plumber, who started off working in the family business. I have a lot of respect for the man and apart from him being a genuine and generous bloke a lot of it has to do with having a very different skillset and being able to do things I can't. He hates computers and won't use a dishwasher, but he can strip down and fix an engine, and he was a fantastic plumber. However he got out of working in shit, literally, for the most part. He did that by teaching plumbing. He also got holidays that coincided with school holidays, so my wife and her siblings had great trips away. If you're smart and you're willing to teach your art if it's manual and avoid some of the unpleasantness. (Of course teaching has it's own problems. Towards the end the students were driving him up the wall).
I'm sorry but it's not. If I put up a sign on my front door that says "all female guests waive the right to refuse to have sex with me" does that mean I can rape with impunity?
Man, THAT is why no chicks come to your party! D'oh!
As far as I'm concerned, if you don't spend your time coding or connected to a MMORPG, and living on pizza and coke you're not net addicted!!!
On a more serious note I find it interesting that they don't distinguish between work and play. An addict is online because he or she wants to be, and will not take the opportunity to do other things. A worker may jump at the chance to get away from the computer (provided that doesn't mean they have a hell of a job trying to catch up when they get back).
New languages are announced every week or so in different places... it doesn't change the fact that the language that most big projects rely on now is one of the old guard. C is, despite it's incarnations (or deformations, depending on who you believe) still king, and it was designed in 1972.
Yet, so few are learning how to code in C and all new work seems to get done in Java. We recently had need to train a couple of Java developers in C. We eventually found a couple of suitable courses but you'd be surprised how little good training is available. You'd also be surprised how little C is sought in the job market, at least for business/finance industry programming. I certainly was.
Mod -1:Quoted JoelOnSoftware - that man is the very definition of a Microsoft apologist and a shill. What else do you call someone who's take on BillG's rude, arrogant and abusive behaviour towards employees as some sign of devine genius. It doesn't matter if some of what he says is true or makes sense because a lot of it is twisted nonsense. He lost my respect long ago.
Isn't the reason Google's child care costs are doubling is because they switched to a really insanely expensive childcare service(37k/year/kid!) after one of the VP's had a kid?
Sounds plausible. Wouldn't surprise me, but I honestly don't know enough about their reasons. Just that it was a jackass of a thing to do and it _could_ mean the difference between staying or going if I were a Google employee. Would depend on the whole package of course, but if I had felt any loyalty that'd be enough to shatter it.
Or the employees could've showed some sanity and found an off-campus daycare that is on their commute...
Depends on what's available and what the waiting lists are like. Perhaps those prices are pretty standard in which case their subsidised child care was a part of their employment package that just got yanked without any compensation.
Where I live (Sydney Australia), child care's VERY expensive and waiting lists are long. (What's worse is we just had a major child care chain go bust). I have friends whose partners find it not worthwhile to go back to work while the kids aren't yet at school age. That's going to be us in a couple of years.
What's more, all modern BlackBerry handsets have an Auto On/Off feature. If you're really so concerned, have it switch itself off at 6pm and come back on in the morning.
Most people don't have a problem with the device. Even getting into the habbit of manually switching it off wouldn't be too much to ask. What's more difficult is managing your boss' expectation that the thing is on. For that very reason I don't want a Crackberry.
In Winter, the time goes 01:59:58, 01:59:59, 01:00:00. You gain an hour there.
Make sense?
Not really. When you tell me you had the munchies at 1:15am on the change over, I presume you mean local time, but I don't know if it's the first 1:15am or the second one. Okay what time you have the muchines isn't so important, but there are lots of instances where it is (eg. a police report). Sure there are ways of dealing with these things but I wouldn't say they "make sense".
Google does search well (most of the time, and not just general weeb search - I like scholar for example). Obviously they must do the associated ads well since they make their money there. They also do Google Maps and Google Earth well, I must admit.
They don't do much else well in my opinion. Lots of hype for beta software or software they've assimilated and made buggy beta. They destroyed Deja news. (Google groups is quite buggy and has had big problems from time to time). I own a Gmail account but never use it because frankly i don't want someone else to keep my email for me (even what I delete). Chrome was awful and installed spyware that you had to go to some pain to delete. Picasa did nothing but crash for me. Every other product I've seen has been cool for the geek to play with but never become a really stable product. Google Web Toolkit sounded interesting for a while but someone turned me off it by telling me it was over-engineered and I don't have time to play much outside of work at the moment.
As for "Do no evil", I think they should change their motto. It's wearing thin and doesn't ring true when you suddenly double the cost of child care for your employees without compensating them in any way.
Google has to be one of the most overhyped companies on the planet.
If you're going to (permanently) break the 12pm = sun overhead, 12am = midnight relation, why not just ignore timezones and use UTC instead?
Because you'd have to look up business hours every time you travelled more than a few hours east or west. Local time zones do make sense. Daylight savings and changing the time at an agreed upon date twice a year doesn't.
Not to mention that most Blackberry users have devices paid for by their employer. The majority of iPhone users buy their own phones.
Regardless of who bought it, which would you spend more time protecting? Your personal entertainment device that lets you listen to music etc. or the virtual servant bell which forces you to check your email regularly out of hours and which few people use for personal calls.
Google Code Search is also fun for searching for unprofessional and frustrated abuse in code. Phrase like "what idiot" and "this is bullshit" always amuse.
Wow, what a mess. Download this package. Now download fourteen more packages (DownThemAll is the only reason I didn't give up right then). Y'know, I'm kinda interested in this subject, as I have no trouble hearing artifacts in most 128kbps CBR MP3s, but this is just a huge pain in the ass. Wouldn't a simple Flash app have made things so much easier?
In a hidden clause of a contract (or EULA) it says that you agree to give up your first born child.
Damn, EA is getting tight on those EULAs. Oh well he was a cute little bugger, but he screams and poops a lot and I REALLY want to play Spore. "Hey honey, where's our son at the moment?";-)
"Oh come on Honey, that's not mean. They probably just want him to bring him up as a code slave. You know the drill, 120 hour weeks for a pitance wage. Just like daddy. Only we won't have to feed him or pay for college because EA will train him in house...and I get to play Spore. Tell you what, I'll buy you a nice necklace with some of the money we save. See, honey, everybody wins!"
In a hidden clause of a contract (or EULA) it says that you agree to give up your first born child.
Damn, EA is getting tight on those EULAs. Oh well he was a cute little bugger, but he screams and poops a lot and I REALLY want to play Spore. "Hey honey, where's our son at the moment?";-)
RMS might not be the choice, but it should be someone with vision.
RMS? Yes not the right choice, in the same way that a drooling mad serial killer might not be the right choice for a babysitter. If by "someone with vision" you mean someone with one, possibly 2 eyes, I agree. If you mean a zealot and an extremist that thinks they know best for the world and want to force anyone who disagrees into complying with that vision anyway, we'll have to disagree.
Exactly. If you are just doing generic IT stuff, then a small company may very well be better off with some sort of maintenance agreement instead of keeping you. Your boss has already realized this and is probably already soliciting bids. Sorry.
Ah the good old outsourcing solves everything myth. No one's going to look out for your company's interests better than a dedicated salaried employee that feels valued and has the right attitude. Bringing in another company just brings in outside interests (like bilking you for a profit, keeping out of legal disputes etc.) that have nothing to do with your own company's interests.
Seriously what use is this except to use as evidence for people you wish to persecute IF they happen to be doing anything dodgy online? Who's going to spend the time and money tracking down every 12 year old that downloads a movie or says the word "shit" on a public forum? What the fuck is wrong with these people, that they spend money on this? It doesn't even make sense if you do want a police state because there is always a way around this kind of thing and it's about as cost effective as a high class hooker. It means the people coming up with this aren't just evil: They're so evil they make cartoon and joke character the likes of Dr. Evil look sane. Governments around the world have seriously lost the plot.
The majority of people don't have musical talent. Hoping to get a random group together to learn instruments and play recognizable songs late at night after a night out partying is a pipe dream.
You think I'd put together a band because I have talent!?!? MUhahahahahahhahaha. I play badly, and I can't read sheet music, but I'm not trying to earn a living or make it big so who cares. Playing an instrument reasonably in tune gives you a huge sense of accomplishment when you get it right. Even moreso if you and your buddies make sound that isn't unbearable. The idea that you need talent to play music only applies if you're trying to be a pro.
If I was going to go to the trouble of getting people together to play different instruments, I'd ditch the fake guitar hero ones and buy real instruments. I was in a garage band in high school, but even if it required me to pick up an instrument from scratch I think it would be a lot more fun than playing a video game version. I realize they aren't the same thing, and each to their own, but the reward is so much greater when you actually play that I'm surprised by the popularity of the group game even more than I'm surprised the original guitar sims took off. C'est la vie (...or c'est la Guerre)
Slashdot Mirror
Is that what I'm doing wrong? I just assumed all the chicks knew I was a /.'er and stayed away for that reason ;)
Holy sane slashdotter, Batman! A slashdot user with a sense of humour who knows how to take a joke without being offended! I think I'm going to faint!
Plumbers work in shit. Literally.
My father in law was a plumber, who started off working in the family business. I have a lot of respect for the man and apart from him being a genuine and generous bloke a lot of it has to do with having a very different skillset and being able to do things I can't. He hates computers and won't use a dishwasher, but he can strip down and fix an engine, and he was a fantastic plumber. However he got out of working in shit, literally, for the most part. He did that by teaching plumbing. He also got holidays that coincided with school holidays, so my wife and her siblings had great trips away. If you're smart and you're willing to teach your art if it's manual and avoid some of the unpleasantness. (Of course teaching has it's own problems. Towards the end the students were driving him up the wall).
I'm sorry but it's not. If I put up a sign on my front door that says "all female guests waive the right to refuse to have sex with me" does that mean I can rape with impunity?
Man, THAT is why no chicks come to your party! D'oh!
As far as I'm concerned, if you don't spend your time coding or connected to a MMORPG, and living on pizza and coke you're not net addicted!!!
On a more serious note I find it interesting that they don't distinguish between work and play. An addict is online because he or she wants to be, and will not take the opportunity to do other things. A worker may jump at the chance to get away from the computer (provided that doesn't mean they have a hell of a job trying to catch up when they get back).
New languages are announced every week or so in different places... it doesn't change the fact that the language that most big projects rely on now is one of the old guard. C is, despite it's incarnations (or deformations, depending on who you believe) still king, and it was designed in 1972.
Yet, so few are learning how to code in C and all new work seems to get done in Java. We recently had need to train a couple of Java developers in C. We eventually found a couple of suitable courses but you'd be surprised how little good training is available. You'd also be surprised how little C is sought in the job market, at least for business/finance industry programming. I certainly was.
Mod -1:Quoted JoelOnSoftware - that man is the very definition of a Microsoft apologist and a shill. What else do you call someone who's take on BillG's rude, arrogant and abusive behaviour towards employees as some sign of devine genius. It doesn't matter if some of what he says is true or makes sense because a lot of it is twisted nonsense. He lost my respect long ago.
Boss: I sent it at 9pm last night.
Me: Ah, that must be it. I left at 6. So what's up?
Boss: I expect you to be contactable in case of a production problem.
Me: I don't want to do that.
Boss: That wasn't a request. It's a requirement for the job.
Me: I won't do that.
Boss: Okay, consider this your 2 weeks notice.
Isn't the reason Google's child care costs are doubling is because they switched to a really insanely expensive childcare service(37k/year/kid!) after one of the VP's had a kid?
Sounds plausible. Wouldn't surprise me, but I honestly don't know enough about their reasons. Just that it was a jackass of a thing to do and it _could_ mean the difference between staying or going if I were a Google employee. Would depend on the whole package of course, but if I had felt any loyalty that'd be enough to shatter it.
Or the employees could've showed some sanity and found an off-campus daycare that is on their commute...
Depends on what's available and what the waiting lists are like. Perhaps those prices are pretty standard in which case their subsidised child care was a part of their employment package that just got yanked without any compensation.
Where I live (Sydney Australia), child care's VERY expensive and waiting lists are long. (What's worse is we just had a major child care chain go bust). I have friends whose partners find it not worthwhile to go back to work while the kids aren't yet at school age. That's going to be us in a couple of years.
What's more, all modern BlackBerry handsets have an Auto On/Off feature. If you're really so concerned, have it switch itself off at 6pm and come back on in the morning.
Most people don't have a problem with the device. Even getting into the habbit of manually switching it off wouldn't be too much to ask. What's more difficult is managing your boss' expectation that the thing is on. For that very reason I don't want a Crackberry.
In Winter, the time goes 01:59:58, 01:59:59, 01:00:00. You gain an hour there.
Make sense?
Not really. When you tell me you had the munchies at 1:15am on the change over, I presume you mean local time, but I don't know if it's the first 1:15am or the second one. Okay what time you have the muchines isn't so important, but there are lots of instances where it is (eg. a police report). Sure there are ways of dealing with these things but I wouldn't say they "make sense".
Google does search well (most of the time, and not just general weeb search - I like scholar for example). Obviously they must do the associated ads well since they make their money there. They also do Google Maps and Google Earth well, I must admit.
They don't do much else well in my opinion. Lots of hype for beta software or software they've assimilated and made buggy beta. They destroyed Deja news. (Google groups is quite buggy and has had big problems from time to time). I own a Gmail account but never use it because frankly i don't want someone else to keep my email for me (even what I delete). Chrome was awful and installed spyware that you had to go to some pain to delete. Picasa did nothing but crash for me. Every other product I've seen has been cool for the geek to play with but never become a really stable product. Google Web Toolkit sounded interesting for a while but someone turned me off it by telling me it was over-engineered and I don't have time to play much outside of work at the moment.
As for "Do no evil", I think they should change their motto. It's wearing thin and doesn't ring true when you suddenly double the cost of child care for your employees without compensating them in any way.
Google has to be one of the most overhyped companies on the planet.
If you're going to (permanently) break the 12pm = sun overhead, 12am = midnight relation, why not just ignore timezones and use UTC instead?
Because you'd have to look up business hours every time you travelled more than a few hours east or west. Local time zones do make sense. Daylight savings and changing the time at an agreed upon date twice a year doesn't.
Not to mention that most Blackberry users have devices paid for by their employer. The majority of iPhone users buy their own phones.
Regardless of who bought it, which would you spend more time protecting? Your personal entertainment device that lets you listen to music etc. or the virtual servant bell which forces you to check your email regularly out of hours and which few people use for personal calls.
Does anyone else have a mental image of some guy walking up to a car manufacture bot and starting his tirade of abuse with "Yo mamma's so fat..."
Google Code Search is also fun for searching for unprofessional and frustrated abuse in code. Phrase like "what idiot" and "this is bullshit" always amuse.
Wow, what a mess. Download this package. Now download fourteen more packages (DownThemAll is the only reason I didn't give up right then). Y'know, I'm kinda interested in this subject, as I have no trouble hearing artifacts in most 128kbps CBR MP3s, but this is just a huge pain in the ass. Wouldn't a simple Flash app have made things so much easier?
I gave up at step 3751 "Buy Monster cables". ;-)
In a hidden clause of a contract (or EULA) it says that you agree to give up your first born child.
Damn, EA is getting tight on those EULAs. Oh well he was a cute little bugger, but he screams and poops a lot and I REALLY want to play Spore. "Hey honey, where's our son at the moment?" ;-)
"Oh come on Honey, that's not mean. They probably just want him to bring him up as a code slave. You know the drill, 120 hour weeks for a pitance wage. Just like daddy. Only we won't have to feed him or pay for college because EA will train him in house...and I get to play Spore. Tell you what, I'll buy you a nice necklace with some of the money we save. See, honey, everybody wins!"
In a hidden clause of a contract (or EULA) it says that you agree to give up your first born child.
Damn, EA is getting tight on those EULAs. Oh well he was a cute little bugger, but he screams and poops a lot and I REALLY want to play Spore. "Hey honey, where's our son at the moment?" ;-)
Cute summer student.
Alterior motives and humour aside, a human assistant is actually a very good idea.
RMS might not be the choice, but it should be someone with vision.
RMS? Yes not the right choice, in the same way that a drooling mad serial killer might not be the right choice for a babysitter. If by "someone with vision" you mean someone with one, possibly 2 eyes, I agree. If you mean a zealot and an extremist that thinks they know best for the world and want to force anyone who disagrees into complying with that vision anyway, we'll have to disagree.
Exactly. If you are just doing generic IT stuff, then a small company may very well be better off with some sort of maintenance agreement instead of keeping you. Your boss has already realized this and is probably already soliciting bids. Sorry.
Ah the good old outsourcing solves everything myth. No one's going to look out for your company's interests better than a dedicated salaried employee that feels valued and has the right attitude. Bringing in another company just brings in outside interests (like bilking you for a profit, keeping out of legal disputes etc.) that have nothing to do with your own company's interests.
Woah, your lawn does that? I always have to check for errors by hand...
Hands???? Luxury!!!!
Seriously what use is this except to use as evidence for people you wish to persecute IF they happen to be doing anything dodgy online? Who's going to spend the time and money tracking down every 12 year old that downloads a movie or says the word "shit" on a public forum? What the fuck is wrong with these people, that they spend money on this? It doesn't even make sense if you do want a police state because there is always a way around this kind of thing and it's about as cost effective as a high class hooker. It means the people coming up with this aren't just evil: They're so evil they make cartoon and joke character the likes of Dr. Evil look sane. Governments around the world have seriously lost the plot.
The majority of people don't have musical talent. Hoping to get a random group together to learn instruments and play recognizable songs late at night after a night out partying is a pipe dream.
You think I'd put together a band because I have talent!?!? MUhahahahahahhahaha. I play badly, and I can't read sheet music, but I'm not trying to earn a living or make it big so who cares. Playing an instrument reasonably in tune gives you a huge sense of accomplishment when you get it right. Even moreso if you and your buddies make sound that isn't unbearable. The idea that you need talent to play music only applies if you're trying to be a pro.
If I was going to go to the trouble of getting people together to play different instruments, I'd ditch the fake guitar hero ones and buy real instruments. I was in a garage band in high school, but even if it required me to pick up an instrument from scratch I think it would be a lot more fun than playing a video game version. I realize they aren't the same thing, and each to their own, but the reward is so much greater when you actually play that I'm surprised by the popularity of the group game even more than I'm surprised the original guitar sims took off. C'est la vie (...or c'est la Guerre)