And if you RTFA, companies can (and do) give lesser quality products under the same label to Wal-Mart.
IIRC, the same is true of some of the stuff at Best Buy as well.
WHAT!!?? You get what you pay for? I'm shockedSHOCKED I tell you!
Lest we forget, CAPTAIN Scott was always an engineer in his heart of hearts -- and showed the young pup Geordi a thing or two when they were stuck on the Dyson's Sphere. As I recall it was Mr. Scott's know-how along with Geordi's youth that allowed them to patch up the Genolan enough to rescue the Enterprise...
We miss you Scotty!
Unless you have your mail delivered to a P.O. box or have a mail slot in your front door, that's still no guarantee. I've read articles in the past about thieves who pried individual mailboxes from the outside wall of the house and ran off with them so that they could force it open later. The articles dealt with the theft of Social Security checks, but identity thieves could do the same thing.
If you want to get MS off your systems in a company environment you need to stop trying to convince your Co-Workers who don't even know what Linux is and don't care... You need to talk to the Bean Counters who manage the purse strings. Get the numbers for them and don't expect them to look anything up. Show them in a spread sheet. One column the cost for Windows XP or Vista, Office, and the other commercial software that you guys use... Then total that up and multiply by as many workstations and deduct any volume liscense discounts. Then in the other column you can just put a big fat ZERO for the cost of Ubuntu (or other distro like Fedora Core) and then list the open source alternatives to your software with those related (usually zero) prices. This will take the laugh factor out of the equations... Hit the bean counters with the numbers and let them do the rest of the math. Who cares if DELL doesn't offer anything you want... build your own systems with Fedora or Ubuntu or Slackware whatever you want. Show these numbers to the beanie and bowtie guy and he will listen.
The cost is not zero. There will be support costs (true for Windows as well). There will be migration costs (wiping the existing OS on all your workstations and installing a new corporate-wide image, for instance). There will be costs for new licenses for items that have no free equivalent (if those packages are even supported on Linux). There will be large costs associated with retraining staff, not to mention opportunity costs if the company cannot respond quickly to some external event while they are coming up to speed. Thinking that software alone is the only cost that a corpration deals with is naive at best.
hahahahahahahaha. Surely you are not serious. There's no way in hell that you are going to sit there and change out the "Dual Layer DVDs" while trying to perform backups. Your little crappy Linksys Netgear dumb switch/hub will not be able to support the constant traffic that a server requires. Do you really want to store your company's email on a free email account? We get those "I got a bright idea! Why don't we do this...." at my work also. I could go on and on and on... but why.
Umm -- you do understand the use of sarcasm and/or exaggeration to prove a point, do you not?
The question is whether our current evolution pattern is actually in our best interest, or if the dumb are outbreeding the smart (and on the side, are such things genetics based, or social).
Some people feel that "forward" evolution has stopped. It's messy to define "forward", and messier to figure out if it has stopped.
Well, if Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and various reality/game shows are any indication, I'd say we're going downhill fast...
If I follow through on this I'll finally be able to pay off the loan I took out for that worthless "work-from-home" scam from a few years back! I'll be rich! Rich I say!
My worries would be about the effects of sapping gulf stream energy (that is what this is using, right?) would have on the stream. This is probably a tiny fraction of it's total energy, but if this sort of thing becomes widespread, it can only serve to slow the vital gulf stream (climate regulation, mineral distribution, etc).
No worries at all, actually. There will be a sudden loss of signal from the generator, and when we go looking, we will discover that yet another artifact has mysteriously vanished in the triangle. No environmental damage, no sushi...
You sound something like a mechanized terminator. Thanks for the cold input. *shivers*
You misunderstand -- I did not say that I espoused these ideas. I simply attempted to provide the rationale (as I understand it) for why there seems to be so little peaceful debate, as the GP poster asked. I personally think that if we could lay aside our egos, sit down at a table, have a meal with our enemies and attempt to reach a real understanding, we'd be better off. At the least, if we could not reach a "meeting of the minds", we'd have a better understanding of how our enemies think and what we're up against. It seems though, that we (humanity in general) act according my first description of how the world works.
This all brings up a good question though:
Why can't people explore ideas peacefully without worrying about controversial agendas popping up all over the place or have someone come along and accuse you of being out of bounds with an agenda?
Because we, as a society, value order over chaos (believe it or not). We also believe that our view promotes order, and that your view promotes chaos. Since chaos is bad, not only are you clearly in error, but you are also a danger to an orderly society, and must be eliminated.
Even beyond that, if I have established myself as an arbiter of order vs. chaos, any challenge you make, however seemingly benign, is a threat to my authority. In order to maintain my status then, you and your mistaken ways of thinking must be eliminated.
Politically, it's bad if you're not in the office for extended periods of time. Out of sight, out of mind, and all that.
How is that bad? I don't have a manager micro-managing me, and can actually get more work done. I can work days I wouldn't other wise (sick days, etc). I can put in partial days, or even do overtime or on-call shifts a lot easier.
How is this bad?
if you work from home, you are always at the office, and can be called upon at any hour to log in to the corporate network
Great!! I'd love the overtime! And the on-call pay!! And if I didn't want to be bothered, I'd not answer the phone.
So you're an hourly worker with poor interpersonal skills and no desire for advancement! Great for you! I'm on salary and get to work all the free overtime I can stand. Not answering the phone is not an option. Enjoy your stay on those low corporate rungs...
Given the obvious cost savings, why do employers hate telecommuniting so much?
There are a number of reasons, some good, some bad:
Some managers can't get their heads around the notion that professionals are paid to "produce", not "populate". If they can't see you, you must not be working.
Offices are already set up to provide meeting rooms and such for anything from a productive brainstorming session to a mundane "status" meeting. Trying to cope with conference calls with or without a video conference feed just adds more expense and delay to the equation.
Politically, it's bad if you're not in the office for extended periods of time. Out of sight, out of mind, and all that. There have been studies (which of course I can't find at present) that demonstrate that a lack of "face time" lowers an employee's odds of getting recognition for achievements and/or promotions for same.
Something else to consider -- if you work from home, you are always at the office, and can be called upon at any hour to log in to the corporate network (on call -- yes, I know...). We had a problem with this 100 or so years ago with people doing "piecework" from their homes. There are laws against this for a reason. Lets not be quite so eager to give up our personal space...
Why don't you just become an economist?
Seems like the logical solution, since your chosen industry seems pretty unstable, and you seem to envy the stability that being an economist offers.
Sure. I'll just go back to school and whip through the masters and PhD programs. I should only be (let's see -- carry the one...) 65 or so by then...
Don't feel sorry for me.
If I'm sleeping on a steam grate, that means I refused to adapt my skills to a changing economy.
OK, granted, the steam grate thing was over the top (usually sleeping on steam grates is accompanied by the types of psychotic ravings that make one unemployable, but that is s subject for another debate).
Having said that, there's only so much that one can do to adapt. If you're 25 and your job is outsourced, it's one thing. But let's take another look: You're 50 or older. You look around and even before the axe falls, you determine that your line of work is in decline. OK -- you go back to school and maybe "learn computers". Great. you are now 50+ years old with all the things that implies -- mortgage, kids, maybe elderly parents. You apply for a job somewhere. Who will hire you? You need a mid-life salary because of choices you've made when the future seemed rosier, but you are virtually unemployable due to the combination of your age and your lack of practical expertise. And that's if you attempt the move volunrarilly. What happens if you worked at Enron, Tyco, Worldcom (or, more recently, GM, Delphi, Ford, or the airline du jour) and you are suddenly forced out? Or you do make the mid-life switch and your comapny decides to outsource your position to a worthy young Bangladeshi who will do your job for $2.00 a day (or whatever the pay is these days)?
It's easy to say that you should be prepared and adapt, but in real life, it's increasingly difficult.
Low unemployment (very low) is bad because it causes inflation, which pretty much screws everyone (it will leads to higher unemployment over time)
Again, I will feel no pity for you when I pass you by shivering on a steam grate and slurping down your once-daily ration of [insert cat food brand name here].
You see, I havebeen laid off before. Three times, in fact. It's no fun. When I see an unemployed economist, political pundit and the like, then I'll know that someone might, just might, be getting a clue.
Great! So I won't feel sorry for you when I walk by and spy you sleeping on a steam grate... That's what bugs me -- the people (economists, policymakers) who make these silly-assed pronouncements are not the people out there scraping to make ends meet (or not). I'd feel better about this if, in his retirement, I saw Alan Greenspan standing on the street corner with a sign saying:
The mathematics to describe laminar fluid flows are well developed and understood, have been for centuries... but nobody has got the hang of turbulent flow.
Even closer to home -- where the hell do my socks go when I wash and dry them?
Slashdot Mirror
Do a GOOGLE search on "Meyers-Briggs" testing.
Lest we forget, CAPTAIN Scott was always an engineer in his heart of hearts -- and showed the young pup Geordi a thing or two when they were stuck on the Dyson's Sphere. As I recall it was Mr. Scott's know-how along with Geordi's youth that allowed them to patch up the Genolan enough to rescue the Enterprise... We miss you Scotty!
I'm overweight! I need an antigravity field!
Duh? We needed a study to tell us this?
Unless you have your mail delivered to a P.O. box or have a mail slot in your front door, that's still no guarantee. I've read articles in the past about thieves who pried individual mailboxes from the outside wall of the house and ran off with them so that they could force it open later. The articles dealt with the theft of Social Security checks, but identity thieves could do the same thing.
If I follow through on this I'll finally be able to pay off the loan I took out for that worthless "work-from-home" scam from a few years back! I'll be rich! Rich I say!
Even beyond that, if I have established myself as an arbiter of order vs. chaos, any challenge you make, however seemingly benign, is a threat to my authority. In order to maintain my status then, you and your mistaken ways of thinking must be eliminated.
Any questions?
That certainly seems to explain the behavior of all the PHBs!
Now all I have to do is find some way to reprogram the little beasties to my advantage!
<cackles maniaclly>
Something else to consider -- if you work from home, you are always at the office, and can be called upon at any hour to log in to the corporate network (on call -- yes, I know...). We had a problem with this 100 or so years ago with people doing "piecework" from their homes. There are laws against this for a reason. Lets not be quite so eager to give up our personal space...
"Will create financial models for food!"