How? I politely refused. I said, "I'm sorry, I cannot do that with a clear conscience." They may taunt, cajole, and threaten but keep repeating the mantra, "I'm sorry, I can't do this."
If you're valued enough, and good enough at your job this is not a problem. SAGE (SysAdmin Guild), IIRC, has some articles on this and what it boils down to is: nobody is forcing you to do anything. Refusal to do this is defensible. This is a management issue, not a technical one. You are a technician, not a manager.
Don't preach, don't condescend, and don't moralize. Simply and quietly refuse to do it. By not making a big stink about it you cost no-one any face. The first, second or third sysadmin that refuses to do this will make them reconsider, and not even bring the topic up in the future. Sing the company song and in every other way be a team player, just quietly refuse to do this one thing.
PS: Make very sure your own house is clean before you attempt this. If they do find anything remotely questionable in your mailbox, you'll be out in a heartbeat--with good reason.
I work for one of those companies. You're right.
on
Feature:Geek Jobs
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· Score: 1
I do technical interviews (and other things) for a national IT services company. Your observations are right on the money, I'm just surprised that you're suprised.
Recruiters, almost always, are paid by the placement. They deal in hundreds of resumes a week trying to find one or two placements so they can get paid. As a result, lots of stuff slips through.
My advice: put EVERYTHING on the resume. Acronyms and expanded names, alternate names for technologies, every project you've ever worked on and every technology you've ever seen in the last 10 years. Make sure it's all on there somewhere. The rule about fitting your resume on a page (or two) is utter bullshit. You will not get hired by anybody with a brief resume, no matter how much depth is behind it.
Details!
When building that resume, with everything on it, make sure you quantify your experience. If you've had exposure to a technology, make sure you mention that it's just exposure. If you completely grok a technology, note that too. When it comes time for the technical interview, or your first employer interview at the first hint that you do not live up to your resume--you'll be dropped and never looked at again. Nobody has time for apologies or helping you quantify your experience. Having exposure to UNIX means one thing, simply putting an unqualified "used UNIX" on your resume can mean quite another. Don't tell anyone you're a "UNIX System Admin" either--that doesn't mean jack squat by itself. Mention it, but tell them what you did.
The cost of getting rid of an employee far exceeds the cost of not having one to begin with. Employers are cautious, and recruiters don't want to get burned--they might not ever place with that employer again.
Typically, your resume is reformatted by a non-technical drone, and may be reformatted for each kind of prospective employer they send it to. By putting everything down your chances of getting the right information in front of the right employers increases dramatically.
[For the curious, the website listed above has my resume under the "business" section. It's gotten me lots of jobs without an interview, and has been pretty effective. And no, I'm not looking.]
...she's a _music_columnist_. She spends most of her time writing about the fantasy land that is popular music. And the Village Voice let her write this piece? She spends most of her writing time in the mythical, barely in reality at all, music industry.
Was she abused in school? Was she an abuser in school? Did she have a happy experience in High School? Is this really any of her business? Why is "Jane Dark" relevant to this discussion at all?
...remember folks, like the poster said. This is an inflammatory piece. Its only value is to get you riled up.
Except for the James Cameron part (he's an egotist , Katz didn't see him at the Oscars), I agree 100%.
Katz++
I'll buy you a beer for this one.
Music Video QT/AVI does anyone have mirror?
on
More Star Wars Hype
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· Score: 1
I've been looking for a mirror for the music video for about a week now and can't find one. Apple's site is lame to the point where I can't get the video to download, even with a cable modem.
Anyone have a mirror? I've found the trailers mirrored, and even the TV commercials mirrored, but not the video.
Give them a target, and they'll have something to knock down. Right now Microsoft doesn't have an Open Source target at all. Just a lot of voices from thin air and blows coming from nowhere. Giving them a target will, I feel, in the end be the downfall of the whole Open Source movement. Or at least the end of all the good press we're getting, that's helping to fuel the movement.
If RedHat steps up to be the target, Microsoft will win. Why? Because any defeat can be made to look like victory. Microsoft has re-written history before, don't think they'll report the truth this time. And if Linux should lose on its own merits--that's reallyit.
"There is no more FUD, it's all truth anyways. You developers bought into ths benchmark."
Your manager, my manager, and everyone else will have a document they can hold up and say "you all bought into it", and that's the end of Linux. No-one in this industry ever comes back completely from defeat.
My kid is 6 years old now. Very smart. Handles a computer better than most adults. (On his own correctly analyzed and fixed a hardware setup problem last week when his game stopped working...) He's not particularly athletic, he despises "team" sports, and he's a nonconformist. His chances are pretty good at being a smart outcast in school.
I was blessed. I got to go through public elementary school in a 1-day-a-week gifted student program. Wonderful implementation. Freedom of expression was foremost. Most of those kinds of programs have dried up. I'm wondering if my child is going to have any way of expressing himself when his time to go through high school comes around. I doubt it. Parents are so quick to put on the Jackboots, and squash individuality. Supress individuality and expressiveness long enough, and it will find its own way out--in short, harmful, and explosive bursts.
As a postscript, my wife and I have raised Foster Children before (and shortly after) our son was born. For children that are truly destructive, harmful, and uncontrollable there are lots of warning signs. In practice, they differ from expressiveness and individuality as much as a shovel from a bayonet. Only when expressed in the dry, clinicians language used for describing behaviour do the differences fade. "Flat, sharp, metallic, with a handle". It's this dry description that's going to be used to hunt down the individualists.
(We had a Foster Child committed to a home for a while because of this kind of desctuctive behaviour, with good results. It's possible to tell the difference, and necessary to act on them.)
Any decent UNIX admin can performance tune a box. There are books (and books...and books...) which describe the process. So I don't think we need a howto to teach performance tuning.
What we DO need is a HOWTO describing the idiosynchrocies of doing this under Linux. What parts of the tuning are in the Kernel and need recompilation? Where are the tweakable parts? What needs to be frobbed under/proc?
From there, it's a short jump to the developers of Apache and Samba to say "increase the PROC table", or "increase the file buffer area". This advice would apply to all architectures. (But even if they don't tell us how, a good admin can probably figure most of this out.)
Randal Schwartz (yeah, the Perl Guy) was sentenced to prison for being a too concerned about security on a network he didn't own, but was connected to.
Before you start, or even begin concerning yourself with the rest of the network:
Cover your ass before doing anything. Get permission from your superiors. In writing.
Tell Everyone You Know, on both networks, their bosses, their bosses' boss, and anyone else you can find what you're up to.
Repeat Steps #1 and #2 ad nauseam.
Then go poking around the network.
Ultimately, if you screw up, you too can wind up with jail time, legal fees, and a felony conviction on your record.
Since when has an IRC channel been a place to pop in, irritate the hosts and not expect to get flamed/kicked/banned? What planet have you been doing IRC on?
Netiquette is dead. Long live the kick/ban/ignore/killfile.
Like anything else on the 'Net: lurk, stay on topic, don't ask FAQ's, don't annoy the hosts/moderators and you will be treated nicely. Don't like it? Start your own channel. #cowards_perl maybe.
The author complains about cost per transaction being much higher with UNIX than NT, and yet he's completely dismissive of UNIX running on commodity hardware! (Linux/BSD)
Apples and Oranges! If the NT benchmarks had been done on something exotic like Alpha hardware, or PPC hardware the numbers would be quite different. Everyone knows the "mainstream" UNIX vendors are raping their customers with price, but to exploit that in a benchmark is silliness.
What part of "anything I say is tainted for the purpose of objective academic research or analysis [this is...] simply a collection interesting [..] stories " did you not get? The author clearly doesn't want to be recognized as anything but an amateur, just writing down some thoughts. Hell, if this is a crime, USENET is a seething pit of demons.
Personally, I see nothing wrong with taking an almost-free resource, slapping a label on it and making some cash. It's the American Way. It's like buying ice at the party store or bottled water. You're paying for the convenience. Also, you're paying for some re-assurance that you're not buying water strained through dirty socks. That's what the brand-name is all about.
And if Red Hat ever turns out a truly horrible release, it'll sink like a stone if there's a competetor to take up the slack. (pardon the pun). Perrier damn-near fell out of the water market for mistakes four years ago. Red Hat can too.
For the record, I use Red Hat (among other distributions), and recommend it (and Debian) to people who just need to get a taste of Linux simply because it's omnipresent. I have small problems with their QC, but they're manageable. If it ever gets to be unmanageable (like Microsoft) I'll stop.
Unfortunately it's QT based, yeah so?
on
Opera for Linux
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· Score: 1
That's a problem...how? That you'll have to pay for Opera? Big deal. Their page goes to great lengths to point out that Opera isn't free, never was, and never will be. Cough up the $35 and show that Linux has a future worth investing in.
Is that a problem because it's part of the Yet Another X Toolkit Syndrome? YAXTS has been going around for 15 years now, there's no stopping it. Everyone wants a cooler toolkit. That only means once you buy Opera it'll have a bigger footprint on your disk. (So much for the "Browser on a floppy" claim they love so much.)
In Ameritech Country, deep in the heart of Michigan, ISDN is it. No xSDL. Also no Cable Modems in the heart of TCI country, either.
I'd beg, borrow, or steal a Win95 box long enough to get the xSDL hardware set up and make your provider happy. Consider yourself lucky to even have the option, and quit whining.
Slashdot Mirror
If you're valued enough, and good enough at your job this is not a problem. SAGE (SysAdmin Guild), IIRC, has some articles on this and what it boils down to is: nobody is forcing you to do anything. Refusal to do this is defensible. This is a management issue, not a technical one. You are a technician, not a manager.
Don't preach, don't condescend, and don't moralize. Simply and quietly refuse to do it. By not making a big stink about it you cost no-one any face. The first, second or third sysadmin that refuses to do this will make them reconsider, and not even bring the topic up in the future. Sing the company song and in every other way be a team player, just quietly refuse to do this one thing.
PS: Make very sure your own house is clean before you attempt this. If they do find anything remotely questionable in your mailbox, you'll be out in a heartbeat--with good reason.
Recruiters, almost always, are paid by the placement. They deal in hundreds of resumes a week trying to find one or two placements so they can get paid. As a result, lots of stuff slips through.
My advice: put EVERYTHING on the resume. Acronyms and expanded names, alternate names for technologies, every project you've ever worked on and every technology you've ever seen in the last 10 years. Make sure it's all on there somewhere. The rule about fitting your resume on a page (or two) is utter bullshit. You will not get hired by anybody with a brief resume, no matter how much depth is behind it.
Details!
When building that resume, with everything on it, make sure you quantify your experience. If you've had exposure to a technology, make sure you mention that it's just exposure. If you completely grok a technology, note that too. When it comes time for the technical interview, or your first employer interview at the first hint that you do not live up to your resume--you'll be dropped and never looked at again. Nobody has time for apologies or helping you quantify your experience. Having exposure to UNIX means one thing, simply putting an unqualified "used UNIX" on your resume can mean quite another. Don't tell anyone you're a "UNIX System Admin" either--that doesn't mean jack squat by itself. Mention it, but tell them what you did.
The cost of getting rid of an employee far exceeds the cost of not having one to begin with. Employers are cautious, and recruiters don't want to get burned--they might not ever place with that employer again.
Typically, your resume is reformatted by a non-technical drone, and may be reformatted for each kind of prospective employer they send it to. By putting everything down your chances of getting the right information in front of the right employers increases dramatically.
[For the curious, the website listed above has my resume under the "business" section. It's gotten me lots of jobs without an interview, and has been pretty effective. And no, I'm not looking.]
Was she abused in school? Was she an abuser in school? Did she have a happy experience in High School? Is this really any of her business? Why is "Jane Dark" relevant to this discussion at all?
Katz++
I'll buy you a beer for this one.
Anyone have a mirror? I've found the trailers mirrored, and even the TV commercials mirrored, but not the video.
A little help?
If RedHat steps up to be the target, Microsoft will win. Why? Because any defeat can be made to look like victory. Microsoft has re-written history before, don't think they'll report the truth this time. And if Linux should lose on its own merits--that's reallyit.
"There is no more FUD, it's all truth anyways. You developers bought into ths benchmark."
Your manager, my manager, and everyone else will have a document they can hold up and say "you all bought into it", and that's the end of Linux. No-one in this industry ever comes back completely from defeat.
I was blessed. I got to go through public elementary school in a 1-day-a-week gifted student program. Wonderful implementation. Freedom of expression was foremost. Most of those kinds of programs have dried up. I'm wondering if my child is going to have any way of expressing himself when his time to go through high school comes around. I doubt it. Parents are so quick to put on the Jackboots, and squash individuality. Supress individuality and expressiveness long enough, and it will find its own way out--in short, harmful, and explosive bursts.
As a postscript, my wife and I have raised Foster Children before (and shortly after) our son was born. For children that are truly destructive, harmful, and uncontrollable there are lots of warning signs. In practice, they differ from expressiveness and individuality as much as a shovel from a bayonet. Only when expressed in the dry, clinicians language used for describing behaviour do the differences fade. "Flat, sharp, metallic, with a handle". It's this dry description that's going to be used to hunt down the individualists.
(We had a Foster Child committed to a home for a while because of this kind of desctuctive behaviour, with good results. It's possible to tell the difference, and necessary to act on them.)
What we DO need is a HOWTO describing the idiosynchrocies of doing this under Linux. What parts of the tuning are in the Kernel and need recompilation? Where are the tweakable parts? What needs to be frobbed under /proc?
From there, it's a short jump to the developers of Apache and Samba to say "increase the PROC table", or "increase the file buffer area". This advice would apply to all architectures. (But even if they don't tell us how, a good admin can probably figure most of this out.)
Before you start, or even begin concerning yourself with the rest of the network:
- Cover your ass before doing anything. Get permission from your superiors. In writing.
- Tell Everyone You Know, on both networks, their bosses, their bosses' boss, and anyone else you can find what you're up to.
- Repeat Steps #1 and #2 ad nauseam.
- Then go poking around the network.
Ultimately, if you screw up, you too can wind up with jail time, legal fees, and a felony conviction on your record.For more details: http://www.lightlink.com/spacenka/fors/
Then again, this is probably not for touch typists or developers. :-) Underwater developers, maybe.
Since when has an IRC channel been a place to pop in, irritate the hosts and not expect to get flamed/kicked/banned? What planet have you been doing IRC on?
Netiquette is dead. Long live the kick/ban/ignore/killfile.
Like anything else on the 'Net: lurk, stay on topic, don't ask FAQ's, don't annoy the hosts/moderators and you will be treated nicely. Don't like it? Start your own channel. #cowards_perl maybe.
http://www.geeksalad.org
Click on the Star Wars logo (borrowed from /.) on the main page. It will only be up about a week, so get it now!
Star Wars doesn't count--since it was a false alarm. :-)
Apples and Oranges! If the NT benchmarks had been done on something exotic like Alpha hardware, or PPC hardware the numbers would be quite different. Everyone knows the "mainstream" UNIX vendors are raping their customers with price, but to exploit that in a benchmark is silliness.
Ain't Windown NT GREAT?
What part of "anything I say is tainted for the purpose of objective academic research or analysis [this is...] simply a collection interesting [..] stories " did you not get? The author clearly doesn't want to be recognized as anything but an amateur, just writing down some thoughts. Hell, if this is a crime, USENET is a seething pit of demons.
Personally, I see nothing wrong with taking an almost-free resource, slapping a label on it and making some cash. It's the American Way. It's like buying ice at the party store or bottled water. You're paying for the convenience. Also, you're paying for some re-assurance that you're not buying water strained through dirty socks. That's what the brand-name is all about.
And if Red Hat ever turns out a truly horrible release, it'll sink like a stone if there's a competetor to take up the slack. (pardon the pun). Perrier damn-near fell out of the water market for mistakes four years ago. Red Hat can too.
For the record, I use Red Hat (among other distributions), and recommend it (and Debian) to people who just need to get a taste of Linux simply because it's omnipresent. I have small problems with their QC, but they're manageable. If it ever gets to be unmanageable (like Microsoft) I'll stop.
Is that a problem because it's part of the Yet Another X Toolkit Syndrome? YAXTS has been going around for 15 years now, there's no stopping it. Everyone wants a cooler toolkit. That only means once you buy Opera it'll have a bigger footprint on your disk. (So much for the "Browser on a floppy" claim they love so much.)
What's your point?
:-)
*sigh*
Anyone got some swampland they wanna develop as a joint venture?
Ah well, _I_ know it's there...and where it is.
This is just SO good for a website's credibility. Invite the whole friggin' world in, and (apparently) not even set a root password.
I'd beg, borrow, or steal a Win95 box long enough to get the xSDL hardware set up and make your provider happy. Consider yourself lucky to even have the option, and quit whining.
At my 128Kbits/sec, I really can't sympathize.