The software (and hardware) market is full of so many highly-qualified people, most with years of experience, that employers have little to no incentive to care whether their current employees are happy or not. If they're not, they can either leave or get fired, and it will be easy to replace them, probably with someone more qualified and/or with more experience, who will work for as much or maybe less money.
It costs approximately $10-15k (before you spend dime one in salary) to hire your average full-time employee in America. (This is an average, not a locked-in-cement dollar amount... It includes advertising, agency efforts, the manager's time, the HR manager's time, how much time it takes to sift through 2,000 resumes for a $22k per year helpdesk job, any training they may need to provide to get the new guy up to speed, drug test, background check, reference check, etc...)
Given this fact, in the long run, it costs MORE to have high turnover in a company than you could ever spend on treating your staff like human beings... I'm not talking about pool tables and six-figure salaries, either. I'm referring to simple things like flex-time so people can actually see their kids and have interests in their lives besides work.
It seems to me that any company operating under this "Who gives a shit about you?" theory should be avoided... Sadly, in this employment market, the talent (that's us) doesn't have the option of voting "nay" to shitty employers by walking off to other jobs.
I am quite fortunate that my new employer is a private (profitable) corporation that doesn't have to whack $1,000,000 out of the budget every five minutes to meet short-term proft forecasts and prevent stock price fluctuations. My former employer made $36 billion in PROFIT the year they laid us off. Sorry, but if you have to fire 5,000 people one quarter, then need to have a "massive hiring drive" the next, that is short-sigthed mismanagement by drones in suits who put their 401k balances ahead of the company's long-term stability and reputation.
It is easy to say "We can cut 30% out of tech support and still field the same number of calls" but "# of calls" is not the same figure as "# of calls handled satisfactorily." As the quality drops, long-term sales prospects of the company's newer products slowly evaporate as CIOs and IT Managers say "Why the hell should we deal with those slow/incompetent jerks, when XYZ Corporation still offers good service?"
(Ever spend big money with a vendor after their "support staff budget cuts" led to lousy service? Me neither...)
It's gonna be like this, in our job market at least, for a while. Hopefully not too long...!
Sadly, I'm afraid you're correct that we're going to have to deal with this sort of idiocy for a while longer... It is amazing to me that in strong economic times, managers complain endlessly about their "free agent" employees, louldy wondering where "loyalty" went?
Then, in the down times, selfsame managers do their best to shit all over said employees... Perhaps if employers didn't (ab)use their power over their employees in a lousy employment market they wouldn't be so eager to jump ship at the first opportunity.
Churn costs a lot of money. Virtually all cellphones are sold at below cost.
I bought a new v60 within a week of it being released...If I bought it at a loss (doubtful, it was $300) then perhaps motorola and the like need to find a way to reduce production costs.
Just like the music industry is in the middle of crumbling, the pay-for software industry is also about to start the long downward slide into irrelevance
And when it finally happens, don't bitch that you can't find a programming job in the US for more than $10/hour and the jobs that are there are so few and far between that you'll be flipping burgers at Burger King so you can continue to live in your parent's basement. I could work for free all-day-long, too, but I like being able to eat.
I find it amazing that people complain about the lack of jobs and then turn around and do work that they should be charging for and give it away for gratis.
I don't know what free work you refer to. (Although I have heard of companies asking for years of skills many hours of commitment for internships.)
I would like to dispute the notion that there will never be work again when the largest monopolist proprietary development companies cease to exist (or are severely crippled, limping, or dying).
By its very nature, open-source software allows you access to the code. If (Insert "Your Company" Here) is using Apache and needs a custom mod_something_new, a compile change, or a build, who is going to do it? The answer is the same people who do it now.
Small companies will buy service from consulting companies. I know a couple people who travel and make booku dinero installing and supporting various custom applications, open-source and otherwise.
Larger companies will hire their own developers and setup development teams to maintain and modify their enterprise applications. Will there be fewer jobs? Perhaps.
Or perhaps it will inspire a golden age of software development as entreprenuers who were previously dis-incentivized to innovate by afore-mentioned monopolist(s) get down to the business of innovating. There are plenty of smart, young developers in Universities around the world who have their own dreams and "uber-project-concepts" that they want to work on. It seems to me that by creating an environment for those people to innovate and grow in we will all benefit.
If my contribution to that can be nuking Exchange server in favor of qmail/courier/squirrel, so be it. I am not averse to acting in the interest of a long-term goal.
Indeed, open source is on everybody's road map
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I was hired at (start next week) at a "Microsoft" shop. I have some experience in that, and also a fair amount of linux/mac/opensource stuff too. The trend I'm seeing is that people who know both are in a good position to get a job: they represent flexibility for management, who have in-house talent with knowledge of "the other option" and can use it to leverage themselves against a vendor during price negotiations.
Are they going linux tomorrow? Probably not. But their web-servers are ALL IIS, and Apache sure looks more and more attractive with each new iis problem that finds it's way onto CNN.
my favorite is that Marijuana use funds terrorism. Funny, most of the Marijuana sold in the US is from farms in KY and TN... Unless Terrorists like to reside in the hills of KY and TN I doubt this is true...
+5 Funny for Microsoft and the MPAA!
...And occasionally British Columbia... And of course, you know you should fear those canucks.
After all, anybody who preaches free health care must be "un-American." (Lately I've been thinking being unAmerican isn't all bad...)
Whether it is legal or not, I do not feel that it is ethical, and may leave the company if I am pushed to do this.
My advice here is make sure you have a new job lined up. I "took a stand" about 14 months ago, ended up being pushed out, and just got a new job a few days ago. Moral of the story? Have a fallback position, or a big bank account.
See, they can't fire you for refusing to break the law, but "you're not a team player" situations like this can lead to people getting fired for forgetting to refill the printer paper, or failing to turn off the lights on Friday night or something stupid like that...
And definitely don't tell somebody you're interviewing with the reason you want to leave--You will almost automagically be eliminated from consideration for saying something "negative" about your former employer...Even if it is the truth.
You have to come up with a creative quasi-lie to explain your desire to take the risk of changing jobs in a shitty economy.
Craftsman/Journeyman/Apprentice not always great
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This may seem slightly off-topic, but bear with me, and the relevance will become clear...
My family owns a home-improvement business (I don't work there now, but did summers during college) and often deal with builders who work on the principle described by the author.
On more than a few occasions when I worked there, I would go to hang rain gutters (on new homes) and find all sorts of messes: Corners not square, roofing materials cut way too short or way too long, roof vent holes that have had shingles nailed over them, and even more idiotic and egregious mistakes than this--All of them perpetrated by either apprentices under supervision, journeymen or mastercrafstmen. Usually, it was the result of a project that was behind schedule and needing to cut corners to catch up.
My point? It doesn't matter what "Quality Assurance" system you have in place if you set unrealistic goals and/or hire the cheapest labor you can get your hands on.
Why on earth would you ever black out an interested/paying customer?
One word, one syllable: Greed.
The amount of money they get for the season from the local tv deal is in their pocket. It represents an amount that isn't going to change.
Pay-per-view/subscription offerings like MLB Extra Innings from DirecTV represent extra money for the teams from each subscriber. If they didn't black-out out of market games, who would buy this ludicrously overpriced package?
By the way, that price doesn't let you see everything... You get "up to" 35 games per week. If the teams you want to see aren't available, you're screwed.
I love baseball, but I'm not changing satellite systems (I have dishnetwork) AND paying $140 per season to see games I should be able to watch for free. I mean, they still show all the commercials in those subscription delivered games...
I'd rather (and I would think the TEAM would prefer that I) spend that $140 at the stadium on tickets to a couple games and beers/souvenirs.
Essentially, MLB has been seduced by fool's gold. Instead of making the game MORE accessible to young people, they put up another barrier that sends another group of kids that might otherwise enjoy baseball off to soccer camp.
In effect, they're killing the game with greed... Not a new thing, just a new angle to how they're doing it.
The interesting part is that in order not to violate TV blackout rules, they'll try to deny service to viewers who instead have local broadcasts available, using Quova's user-location service.
IMO the MLB tv blackout rules are an anachronism of a bygone era.
Besides preventing national broadcasts from competing with local broadcasts (which is arguably a "good thing") they also force fans who live outside the broadcast/must-carry range of the local station to pay outrageous Pay Per View charges to watch their favorite team.
If I was a bad citizen, I'd consider modifying my sattellite TV receiver to allow me to get out of market local channels as locals... Not that I would ever do that, of course.
Once I get a phone number, I call and ask for the company name and address as I'm sending a package. It never fails.
...Is that you're telling the truth--You really were preparing to send a package over. The package containing a letter threatening a lawsuit. You're my personal hero, dude. This sort of makes me want to move to Seattle.
In theory, if you spent enough time working on it (and could make sure you got a LOT of spam, say by even HAVING a hotmail account) you could make a living doing this. Shit, I wish my state (Indiana) had a law like this. I would certainly become a full-on Spam vigilante if I could make $500 per message.
For the cost of a threatening letter/offer to settle, and occasionally an hour or two in court you could certainly reap a nice little income stream.
At least until somebody designs a mail protocol to replace SMTP that isn't so prone to abuse...
Non-paid internships actually are paid...Just not in money. To be kosher, a "non-paid" internship has to compensate you in some way, usually college credit. That's how they get around the "No free labor" law...
But I think this provision of the law is important, and it isn't a loophole. Its in the law by design to give college kids the opportunity to immerse themselves in a field and get some actual experience. Its designed to fix the Catch-22 of "Most jobs require experience. Since I have none, I can't get a job to earn experience."
Yeah, some of us started our careers without an internship, but for a lot of people it illuminates a path to follow at a time in your life when some people might really need a path.
I was attached to a software package that didn't have a backdoor per se, so much as an undocumented account with a password of "a" that you could not take out of the database without doing major surgery. The software also (used to, anyways) put the undocumented account BACK into the users table and and restore the specific records to their "default state".
Savvier customers changed the username and password (the rule required the user_id entry to stay in the db. But you could change the username/pass to keep undesirables out of the system. Yet many of the customers didn't ever even officially "discover" it... Before I left I never heard of any malicious things being done with this account, but as I told my boss the day I found out about it, "Its only a matter of time."
I left when everybody around me started getting ".com" fever. Like, wacky. People who made $50k annually were leveraging a fortune in paper stock options to buy brand new Mercedes Benzes and hot tubs...
Man, that was years ago. I didn't know those things were still legal....;)
#include IANAL.h
A former roommate of mine used to work at the neighborhood head shop in college. She explained the law to me like this: A bong is only parphenelia (thus, illegal) when used for smoking something illegal out of it. If they profess to use it for tobacco, or don't tell you WHAT they'll be using it for, then its (at least, used to be) technically legal.
I didn't hear about any new "anti-bong" laws, so I'm assuming John "NaziBoy" Ashcroft is "enforcing" the old laws. So then the issue becomes, did the sites mention smoking buds, or did it refer to the items as "tobacco accessories?"
Regardless, the best bong I ever had was home made from a water cooler tank... Made it into a giant 6 -man hookah. And peopls say pot smokers never accomplish anything.
Quite satisfying to use too, because we made it ourselves.
Don't just post to slashdot. Go out, with wallet in hand, and BUY a boxed Mandrake distribution. Hell, buy two and get one for a friend. I've bought three mandrake distros in the last few years and will probably buy 9.1 when it comes out too.
Just because it is available for free doesn't mean there isn't some merit in paying for it sometimes. I won't go up on some soap box about how "every download is a dagger in free software's heart" because that would be absurd. Free downloads are what spur the rapid discovery, reporting and repair of bugs as well as bring noobs into the fold. 95% of the noobs I've brought over have been swayed with the logic "Hey, no risk to try it other than the download time..."
But at the same time, if you get good use out of Mandrake, (or any distribution) the best support you can give them is to vote with your dollars. Spend some money on Mandrake services or products. Buy a t-shirt... I bet your girlfriend would look smashing in a "Mandrake Club" t-shirt... (Is that the geek equivalent of having her wear your football jersey?)
*money = &mouth;/* Put your money where your mouth is. */
1) Don't go to college until you're ready to study hard, because if you don't study hard at undergrad, other options are not as easily accessible to you in the future. (Graduate school, doctoral study, etc...)
2) Play sports. If you're any good, it'll get you laid, and no matter what will make you a well-rounded person who can fight like hell for something, but accept defeat if you must.
Doesn't the California state government realize that just because PDF stands for "Portable Document Format" that it isn't automatically accessible to all taxpayers? That just because the price on Adobe Acrobat Reader is $0 doesn't mean I have the option to run it.
Certifications like the CompTIA certs do not carry much value to techies, but may mean alot to that HR rep.
If you don't have the right alphabet soup at the top of your resume, that HR person may very well throw away your resume, even if you have years of experience.
So true! I've been looking for a long time, and if anything, as time passes, the HR Reps seem to become more arrogant, obnoxious, and totally aware of the power they have over people's lives. One twat actually said to me this week that she automatically throws out the resume of anybody who calls her on the phone to follow-up (before she calls them) because "Chances are, anybody who is rabidly looking for a job is an unemployed 'bad' employee who we don't want anyway..." ('Bad' apparently means anyone with enough ambition to follow-up on a job after submitting a resume.)
The way it works at large companies is your resume gets dumped text only into a database, and they then do some keyword searching based on what they're hiring for. (ie. MCSE, RHCE, MCSD, Linux+, Samba, Apache, RedHAt, whatever...) All the "hits" are evaluated by human eyes, the rest get automated rejection post cards. Period. If your resume isn't designed to get a "hit" in the DB query no person will ever look at it. Your experience level, where you've worked, your accomplishments and what projects you've worked on--none of them matter at the "HR Slug" phase of hiring.
All that matters is that when they're seeking an MCSD who knows SQL, C++, Perl, and HTML, the DB Query looks for those letter combinations and flags them. Again, anybody else isn't even considered. If these buzz words aren't on your resume, you don't get an interview.
And I agree, it sucks. Believe me. Shit, I've been working on getting into ond company for six months now--A job that would be PERFECT for me.
I have every single qualification they want except one: Paid experience working with Crystal Reports. They WILL NOT INTERVIEW ME because I've never been paid to use Crystal Reports. The job has sat open for six months because they can't find anybody with all the DB skills and crystal reports who will work for the money they're offerring. I even offerred to pay for Crystal Reports training OUT OF MY OWN POCKET if I could just get an interview, even offerred to submit to multiple skills tests, and to create reports for them as an "audition" for the job. I pointed out that since they haven't filled the job in six months they should think alternatives if they're serious about hiring somebody. Response?
"Nope, sorry. We need at least a year of paid Crystal experience to even consider you. We won't train or allow anybody to prove themselves." You know what's really sad? This paragraph originally ended with "At least these assholes answer the phone." But the more I think about it, the more I wish I'd never been told this. Part of me (the part that holds on to hope of ever getting another job) needs to think that employers aren't all completely stupid, inflexible ninnies who leave qualified DB Admins like myself posting on slashdot over lack of paid experience with a fucking database abstraction GUI. Hell, I've had interviews for other jobs where they say "Crystal? Shit, somebody with your skills can learn that in 25 minutes", so I know I'M not crazy.
Yeah, I could just buy the software, learn it, and then lie on my resume. But that sort of thing will get you fired if it comes out down the road (and I don't have $1000 for enterprise-level Crystal Reports software.)
Bottom line? HR Reps are the most worthless people at any technology company. They don't know what the hell they're doing as far as hiring IT and technology skill workers, but are still in charge of "pre-screening" these people.
This is just something you have to learn to accept. Yeah, some guys will get lucky and find a job where people take time to review resumes by hand and hire people based on the depth of information they draw from this activity. More power to him! I'm glad he was so fortunate. But for the rest of us, who need jobs, being picky in this economy isn't really practical.
As much is it sucks to admit, if you want a job, the best way to optimize your chances is to pander to the idiot HR Monkey. You simply have to accept that most (99%+) American companies regard you as cattle--interchangable beasts whose relative merits are best analyzed with a black and white DB query. You get a hit, you might get an interview. If not, you won't ever hear from them.
You can take the "moral high ground" which seems to be this unspoken IT elitism that we shouldn't have to jump through hoops to get a job because we know about computers... But in this economy this "high ground" is really more like a beach that unemployed techies run aground on.
My only practical advice is that if you find the process distasteful, you should consider hiring a professional resume writer to re-work what you have. I've had five interviews in three weeks with four companies since getting my resume re-done... She did all the distasteful buzzword stuff-- I just showed up and told her about myself and what I do/want to do. Best $200 I ever spent...
Specifically, the patent claims as Ameritech's original idea the concept of having elements on a web page that don't change, yet apply directly to other parts of the page that do change.
While Cringley is correct to point out that the only thing that can save us from this is prior art, I have to disagree with the assertion that there "are no villians here." In that respect, he's dead wrong. SBC is the villian.
They are attempting to wring money out of people (money they didn't provide any good or service for) under threat of imminent negative consequences. Perhaps you've heard of extortion? Also, the fact that the letter doesn't specifically threaten legal action is irrelevant: When SBC's law firm sends you a letter asking for money, the threat need not be present to be implied. You can bet the next letter they receive won't be quite so friendly.
In my opinion, a patent should only be awarded to the person (or organization) who invents something. If I invent something new, I can patent it. If I invent something new for a company, they can patent it. If I see somebody else's cool (unpatented) idea, and run out and slap a patent on it, I should be guilty of a crime. Not only should that patent be nullified, but the filing party (in this case SBC) should be liable for damages to the real inventor, any parties you've attempted to collect royalties from (including all legal fees to fight your false patent.) Repeat offenders should be jailed on mail fraud or extortion charges. This is, after all, a very prettied up extortion racket.
Even though these racketeers wear three piece suits and drive Mercedes Benz to work everyday, its just the same as Johnny "No-Neck" Locascio coming to your mom and pop store with a baseball bat and threatening to trash you and your place if you don't "pay up."
This type of patent filing is like a corporate extortion lottery. They burn a few thousand dollars financing a (frivolous) patent application in the hopes that one day they can milk $1 billion out of said patent.
If we want to stop companies from playing this game, we have to introduce some negative consequences to people who commit these frauds. Slap a couple white-collar Benz drivers in jail for 7 years and see how quickly this stuff stops.
Better yet, send over Johnny "No-Neck" Locascio to have a talk with them...
Not to mention the fact that DVDs cost just as much to manufacture and distribute, and the content costs several orders of magnitude more to produce... by your reasoning,
I think that, yes, this is EXACTLY what he's saying...
If $5 is a fair price for a CD, $25 ($5 x 5) is a fair price for a movie.
DVDs already cost about this much at the store anyway, so I don't see the problem. Of course, if the MPAA decided to follow this strategy they'd probably raise their prices to be five times current CD prices rather than five times the fair price for a CD.
I'm sure you and I will be the first ones tortured^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hdetained for questioning in connection with disparaging government efforts to "stop terror."
("And a free trip to a Carribbean island? Great!")
In all seriousness, this christmas I'm giving copies of 1984 to a number of people, and I suggest others do the same if they're stuck for an idea, or just need something cheap to give a lot of people that will have the effect of (maybe) making them think.
I read it for the first time recently and found it quite eerie how similar some of the passages were to contemporary events.
Plus, for 12 bucks a pop, I've got gifts for christmas for several smart, "hard to buy for" people. Amazon is where I got the cool, hard-back edition I'm giving this year. I don't get anything from clicking on the link--so do so guilt free.
You FINALLY found a girl who think enough of you to use the phone number you gave her.
My dating research shows you should get HER phone number, not give her yours. You get a couple big advantages out of going this route:
- If she won't give it to you, you know you're barking up the wrong tree and can move on. - If she says yes you're in a stronger position than you were "waiting for her to call you." I mean, how often does that work out? - Plus you get to appear strong and self-confident in her eyes when you ask for the number.
Hey, asking for her phone number isn't a marriage proposal, it's nothing to be afraid of or nervous about. If you feel comfortable asking, chances are you should. After a while, you'll get better at it, develop your own technique, and find yourself surprised at the number of numbers you get.
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It costs approximately $10-15k (before you spend dime one in salary) to hire your average full-time employee in America. (This is an average, not a locked-in-cement dollar amount... It includes advertising, agency efforts, the manager's time, the HR manager's time, how much time it takes to sift through 2,000 resumes for a $22k per year helpdesk job, any training they may need to provide to get the new guy up to speed, drug test, background check, reference check, etc...)
Given this fact, in the long run, it costs MORE to have high turnover in a company than you could ever spend on treating your staff like human beings... I'm not talking about pool tables and six-figure salaries, either. I'm referring to simple things like flex-time so people can actually see their kids and have interests in their lives besides work.
It seems to me that any company operating under this "Who gives a shit about you?" theory should be avoided... Sadly, in this employment market, the talent (that's us) doesn't have the option of voting "nay" to shitty employers by walking off to other jobs.
I am quite fortunate that my new employer is a private (profitable) corporation that doesn't have to whack $1,000,000 out of the budget every five minutes to meet short-term proft forecasts and prevent stock price fluctuations. My former employer made $36 billion in PROFIT the year they laid us off. Sorry, but if you have to fire 5,000 people one quarter, then need to have a "massive hiring drive" the next, that is short-sigthed mismanagement by drones in suits who put their 401k balances ahead of the company's long-term stability and reputation.
It is easy to say "We can cut 30% out of tech support and still field the same number of calls" but "# of calls" is not the same figure as "# of calls handled satisfactorily." As the quality drops, long-term sales prospects of the company's newer products slowly evaporate as CIOs and IT Managers say "Why the hell should we deal with those slow/incompetent jerks, when XYZ Corporation still offers good service?"
(Ever spend big money with a vendor after their "support staff budget cuts" led to lousy service? Me neither...)
Sadly, I'm afraid you're correct that we're going to have to deal with this sort of idiocy for a while longer... It is amazing to me that in strong economic times, managers complain endlessly about their "free agent" employees, louldy wondering where "loyalty" went?
Then, in the down times, selfsame managers do their best to shit all over said employees... Perhaps if employers didn't (ab)use their power over their employees in a lousy employment market they wouldn't be so eager to jump ship at the first opportunity.
I bought a new v60 within a week of it being released...If I bought it at a loss (doubtful, it was $300) then perhaps motorola and the like need to find a way to reduce production costs.
I don't know what free work you refer to. (Although I have heard of companies asking for years of skills many hours of commitment for internships.)
I would like to dispute the notion that there will never be work again when the largest monopolist proprietary development companies cease to exist (or are severely crippled, limping, or dying).
By its very nature, open-source software allows you access to the code. If (Insert "Your Company" Here) is using Apache and needs a custom mod_something_new, a compile change, or a build, who is going to do it? The answer is the same people who do it now.
Small companies will buy service from consulting companies. I know a couple people who travel and make booku dinero installing and supporting various custom applications, open-source and otherwise.
Larger companies will hire their own developers and setup development teams to maintain and modify their enterprise applications. Will there be fewer jobs? Perhaps.
Or perhaps it will inspire a golden age of software development as entreprenuers who were previously dis-incentivized to innovate by afore-mentioned monopolist(s) get down to the business of innovating. There are plenty of smart, young developers in Universities around the world who have their own dreams and "uber-project-concepts" that they want to work on. It seems to me that by creating an environment for those people to innovate and grow in we will all benefit.
If my contribution to that can be nuking Exchange server in favor of qmail/courier/squirrel, so be it. I am not averse to acting in the interest of a long-term goal.
I was hired at (start next week) at a "Microsoft" shop. I have some experience in that, and also a fair amount of linux/mac/opensource stuff too. The trend I'm seeing is that people who know both are in a good position to get a job: they represent flexibility for management, who have in-house talent with knowledge of "the other option" and can use it to leverage themselves against a vendor during price negotiations.
Are they going linux tomorrow? Probably not. But their web-servers are ALL IIS, and Apache sure looks more and more attractive with each new iis problem that finds it's way onto CNN.
After all, anybody who preaches free health care must be "un-American." (Lately I've been thinking being unAmerican isn't all bad...)
My advice here is make sure you have a new job lined up. I "took a stand" about 14 months ago, ended up being pushed out, and just got a new job a few days ago. Moral of the story? Have a fallback position, or a big bank account.
See, they can't fire you for refusing to break the law, but "you're not a team player" situations like this can lead to people getting fired for forgetting to refill the printer paper, or failing to turn off the lights on Friday night or something stupid like that...
And definitely don't tell somebody you're interviewing with the reason you want to leave--You will almost automagically be eliminated from consideration for saying something "negative" about your former employer...Even if it is the truth.
You have to come up with a creative quasi-lie to explain your desire to take the risk of changing jobs in a shitty economy.
This may seem slightly off-topic, but bear with me, and the relevance will become clear...
My family owns a home-improvement business (I don't work there now, but did summers during college) and often deal with builders who work on the principle described by the author.
On more than a few occasions when I worked there, I would go to hang rain gutters (on new homes) and find all sorts of messes: Corners not square, roofing materials cut way too short or way too long, roof vent holes that have had shingles nailed over them, and even more idiotic and egregious mistakes than this--All of them perpetrated by either apprentices under supervision, journeymen or mastercrafstmen. Usually, it was the result of a project that was behind schedule and needing to cut corners to catch up.
My point? It doesn't matter what "Quality Assurance" system you have in place if you set unrealistic goals and/or hire the cheapest labor you can get your hands on.
One word, one syllable: Greed.
The amount of money they get for the season from the local tv deal is in their pocket. It represents an amount that isn't going to change.
Pay-per-view/subscription offerings like MLB Extra Innings from DirecTV represent extra money for the teams from each subscriber. If they didn't black-out out of market games, who would buy this ludicrously overpriced package?
By the way, that price doesn't let you see everything... You get "up to" 35 games per week. If the teams you want to see aren't available, you're screwed.
I love baseball, but I'm not changing satellite systems (I have dishnetwork) AND paying $140 per season to see games I should be able to watch for free. I mean, they still show all the commercials in those subscription delivered games...
I'd rather (and I would think the TEAM would prefer that I) spend that $140 at the stadium on tickets to a couple games and beers/souvenirs.
Essentially, MLB has been seduced by fool's gold. Instead of making the game MORE accessible to young people, they put up another barrier that sends another group of kids that might otherwise enjoy baseball off to soccer camp.
In effect, they're killing the game with greed... Not a new thing, just a new angle to how they're doing it.
Uhh... It's "Dingers".
Zingers are cheap, knock-off twinkies...
IMO the MLB tv blackout rules are an anachronism of a bygone era.
Besides preventing national broadcasts from competing with local broadcasts (which is arguably a "good thing") they also force fans who live outside the broadcast/must-carry range of the local station to pay outrageous Pay Per View charges to watch their favorite team.
If I was a bad citizen, I'd consider modifying my sattellite TV receiver to allow me to get out of market local channels as locals... Not that I would ever do that, of course.
In theory, if you spent enough time working on it (and could make sure you got a LOT of spam, say by even HAVING a hotmail account) you could make a living doing this. Shit, I wish my state (Indiana) had a law like this. I would certainly become a full-on Spam vigilante if I could make $500 per message.
For the cost of a threatening letter/offer to settle, and occasionally an hour or two in court you could certainly reap a nice little income stream.
At least until somebody designs a mail protocol to replace SMTP that isn't so prone to abuse...
Non-paid internships actually are paid...Just not in money. To be kosher, a "non-paid" internship has to compensate you in some way, usually college credit. That's how they get around the "No free labor" law...
But I think this provision of the law is important, and it isn't a loophole. Its in the law by design to give college kids the opportunity to immerse themselves in a field and get some actual experience. Its designed to fix the Catch-22 of "Most jobs require experience. Since I have none, I can't get a job to earn experience."
Yeah, some of us started our careers without an internship, but for a lot of people it illuminates a path to follow at a time in your life when some people might really need a path.
I was attached to a software package that didn't have a backdoor per se, so much as an undocumented account with a password of "a" that you could not take out of the database without doing major surgery. The software also (used to, anyways) put the undocumented account BACK into the users table and and restore the specific records to their "default state".
Savvier customers changed the username and password (the rule required the user_id entry to stay in the db. But you could change the username/pass to keep undesirables out of the system. Yet many of the customers didn't ever even officially "discover" it... Before I left I never heard of any malicious things being done with this account, but as I told my boss the day I found out about it, "Its only a matter of time."
I left when everybody around me started getting ".com" fever. Like, wacky. People who made $50k annually were leveraging a fortune in paper stock options to buy brand new Mercedes Benzes and hot tubs...
#include IANAL.h
A former roommate of mine used to work at the neighborhood head shop in college. She explained the law to me like this: A bong is only parphenelia (thus, illegal) when used for smoking something illegal out of it. If they profess to use it for tobacco, or don't tell you WHAT they'll be using it for, then its (at least, used to be) technically legal.
I didn't hear about any new "anti-bong" laws, so I'm assuming John "NaziBoy" Ashcroft is "enforcing" the old laws. So then the issue becomes, did the sites mention smoking buds, or did it refer to the items as "tobacco accessories?"
Regardless, the best bong I ever had was home made from a water cooler tank... Made it into a giant 6 -man hookah. And peopls say pot smokers never accomplish anything.
Quite satisfying to use too, because we made it ourselves.
Pictures only here. Please be gentle...
Just because it is available for free doesn't mean there isn't some merit in paying for it sometimes. I won't go up on some soap box about how "every download is a dagger in free software's heart" because that would be absurd. Free downloads are what spur the rapid discovery, reporting and repair of bugs as well as bring noobs into the fold. 95% of the noobs I've brought over have been swayed with the logic "Hey, no risk to try it other than the download time..."
But at the same time, if you get good use out of Mandrake, (or any distribution) the best support you can give them is to vote with your dollars. Spend some money on Mandrake services or products. Buy a t-shirt... I bet your girlfriend would look smashing in a "Mandrake Club" t-shirt... (Is that the geek equivalent of having her wear your football jersey?)
Two bits of advice:
1) Don't go to college until you're ready to study hard, because if you don't study hard at undergrad, other options are not as easily accessible to you in the future. (Graduate school, doctoral study, etc...)
2) Play sports. If you're any good, it'll get you laid, and no matter what will make you a well-rounded person who can fight like hell for something, but accept defeat if you must.
Doesn't the California state government realize that just because PDF stands for "Portable Document Format" that it isn't automatically accessible to all taxpayers? That just because the price on Adobe Acrobat Reader is $0 doesn't mean I have the option to run it.
Obviously not.
On what planet is asking a valid question a troll?
This the stuff Hotblack Desiato's ship is made from in Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
So true! I've been looking for a long time, and if anything, as time passes, the HR Reps seem to become more arrogant, obnoxious, and totally aware of the power they have over people's lives. One twat actually said to me this week that she automatically throws out the resume of anybody who calls her on the phone to follow-up (before she calls them) because "Chances are, anybody who is rabidly looking for a job is an unemployed 'bad' employee who we don't want anyway..." ('Bad' apparently means anyone with enough ambition to follow-up on a job after submitting a resume.)
The way it works at large companies is your resume gets dumped text only into a database, and they then do some keyword searching based on what they're hiring for. (ie. MCSE, RHCE, MCSD, Linux+, Samba, Apache, RedHAt, whatever...) All the "hits" are evaluated by human eyes, the rest get automated rejection post cards. Period. If your resume isn't designed to get a "hit" in the DB query no person will ever look at it. Your experience level, where you've worked, your accomplishments and what projects you've worked on--none of them matter at the "HR Slug" phase of hiring.
All that matters is that when they're seeking an MCSD who knows SQL, C++, Perl, and HTML, the DB Query looks for those letter combinations and flags them. Again, anybody else isn't even considered. If these buzz words aren't on your resume, you don't get an interview.
And I agree, it sucks. Believe me. Shit, I've been working on getting into ond company for six months now--A job that would be PERFECT for me.
I have every single qualification they want except one: Paid experience working with Crystal Reports. They WILL NOT INTERVIEW ME because I've never been paid to use Crystal Reports. The job has sat open for six months because they can't find anybody with all the DB skills and crystal reports who will work for the money they're offerring. I even offerred to pay for Crystal Reports training OUT OF MY OWN POCKET if I could just get an interview, even offerred to submit to multiple skills tests, and to create reports for them as an "audition" for the job. I pointed out that since they haven't filled the job in six months they should think alternatives if they're serious about hiring somebody. Response?
"Nope, sorry. We need at least a year of paid Crystal experience to even consider you. We won't train or allow anybody to prove themselves." You know what's really sad? This paragraph originally ended with "At least these assholes answer the phone." But the more I think about it, the more I wish I'd never been told this. Part of me (the part that holds on to hope of ever getting another job) needs to think that employers aren't all completely stupid, inflexible ninnies who leave qualified DB Admins like myself posting on slashdot over lack of paid experience with a fucking database abstraction GUI. Hell, I've had interviews for other jobs where they say "Crystal? Shit, somebody with your skills can learn that in 25 minutes", so I know I'M not crazy.
Yeah, I could just buy the software, learn it, and then lie on my resume. But that sort of thing will get you fired if it comes out down the road (and I don't have $1000 for enterprise-level Crystal Reports software.)
Bottom line? HR Reps are the most worthless people at any technology company. They don't know what the hell they're doing as far as hiring IT and technology skill workers, but are still in charge of "pre-screening" these people.
This is just something you have to learn to accept. Yeah, some guys will get lucky and find a job where people take time to review resumes by hand and hire people based on the depth of information they draw from this activity. More power to him! I'm glad he was so fortunate. But for the rest of us, who need jobs, being picky in this economy isn't really practical.
As much is it sucks to admit, if you want a job, the best way to optimize your chances is to pander to the idiot HR Monkey. You simply have to accept that most (99%+) American companies regard you as cattle--interchangable beasts whose relative merits are best analyzed with a black and white DB query. You get a hit, you might get an interview. If not, you won't ever hear from them.
You can take the "moral high ground" which seems to be this unspoken IT elitism that we shouldn't have to jump through hoops to get a job because we know about computers... But in this economy this "high ground" is really more like a beach that unemployed techies run aground on.
My only practical advice is that if you find the process distasteful, you should consider hiring a professional resume writer to re-work what you have. I've had five interviews in three weeks with four companies since getting my resume re-done... She did all the distasteful buzzword stuff-- I just showed up and told her about myself and what I do/want to do. Best $200 I ever spent...
So I must owe at least a couple dollars to SBC for posting these links to various sites whose content changes dynamically and regularly.
While Cringley is correct to point out that the only thing that can save us from this is prior art, I have to disagree with the assertion that there "are no villians here." In that respect, he's dead wrong. SBC is the villian.
They are attempting to wring money out of people (money they didn't provide any good or service for) under threat of imminent negative consequences. Perhaps you've heard of extortion?
Also, the fact that the letter doesn't specifically threaten legal action is irrelevant: When SBC's law firm sends you a letter asking for money, the threat need not be present to be implied. You can bet the next letter they receive won't be quite so friendly.
In my opinion, a patent should only be awarded to the person (or organization) who invents something. If I invent something new, I can patent it. If I invent something new for a company, they can patent it. If I see somebody else's cool (unpatented) idea, and run out and slap a patent on it, I should be guilty of a crime. Not only should that patent be nullified, but the filing party (in this case SBC) should be liable for damages to the real inventor, any parties you've attempted to collect royalties from (including all legal fees to fight your false patent.) Repeat offenders should be jailed on mail fraud or extortion charges. This is, after all, a very prettied up extortion racket.
Even though these racketeers wear three piece suits and drive Mercedes Benz to work everyday, its just the same as Johnny "No-Neck" Locascio coming to your mom and pop store with a baseball bat and threatening to trash you and your place if you don't "pay up."
This type of patent filing is like a corporate extortion lottery. They burn a few thousand dollars financing a (frivolous) patent application in the hopes that one day they can milk $1 billion out of said patent.
If we want to stop companies from playing this game, we have to introduce some negative consequences to people who commit these frauds. Slap a couple white-collar Benz drivers in jail for 7 years and see how quickly this stuff stops.
Better yet, send over Johnny "No-Neck" Locascio to have a talk with them...
I think that, yes, this is EXACTLY what he's saying...
If $5 is a fair price for a CD, $25 ($5 x 5) is a fair price for a movie.
DVDs already cost about this much at the store anyway, so I don't see the problem. Of course, if the MPAA decided to follow this strategy they'd probably raise their prices to be five times current CD prices rather than five times the fair price for a CD.
I'm sure you and I will be the first ones tortured^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hdetained for questioning in connection with disparaging government efforts to "stop terror."
("And a free trip to a Carribbean island? Great!")
In all seriousness, this christmas I'm giving copies of 1984 to a number of people, and I suggest others do the same if they're stuck for an idea, or just need something cheap to give a lot of people that will have the effect of (maybe) making them think.
I read it for the first time recently and found it quite eerie how similar some of the passages were to contemporary events.
Plus, for 12 bucks a pop, I've got gifts for christmas for several smart, "hard to buy for" people. Amazon is where I got the cool, hard-back edition I'm giving this year. I don't get anything from clicking on the link--so do so guilt free.
My dating research shows you should get HER phone number, not give her yours. You get a couple big advantages out of going this route:
- If she won't give it to you, you know you're barking up the wrong tree and can move on.
- If she says yes you're in a stronger position than you were "waiting for her to call you." I mean, how often does that work out?
- Plus you get to appear strong and self-confident in her eyes when you ask for the number.
Hey, asking for her phone number isn't a marriage proposal, it's nothing to be afraid of or nervous about. If you feel comfortable asking, chances are you should. After a while, you'll get better at it, develop your own technique, and find yourself surprised at the number of numbers you get.