Even if the IP thing is a red hearing, even if Microsoft meant it, and it is now pretty much tossed out by the Supreme Court. Novell having a deal with Microsoft AND now being the only official version of linux to work with Microsoft products AND now having DELL load SUSE on servers. I would say Microsoft has finally found a way to survive in a linux world.
As long as Novel and Microsoft has a deal, Microsoft provides support and the big boys DELL/HP only sell servers preloaded with SUSE. Both Novel and Microsoft seem to have a long and proserous business in the Linux Market.
Also it looks like Novel with SUSE, MOMO, Gnome and their exchange replacement project, may have by dumb luck, known what they were doing.
That is not at all "like" what appears to be Bill Gates's management style.
Close enough for me. I won't work for someone who automatically say about any idea "It's the dumbest f*cking thing I have every heard"
I have no problem defending my ideas, but I have better things to do with my life than have a pissing contest with my supervisor.
Consider it a lifestyle choice on my part. I am 40 years old, and have have worked for enough people. I know the kind of person and company I want to work for. I won't settle for less, I won't be happy and the company won't be happy with me. I won't do that to me, and I won't waste someone elses time either.
I have worked with several types of managers over the years. It may be my own personal preferences, but I WILL NOT work in that kind of environment. It is one thing to sit around with friends, and have them kick your idea to the curb and having to defend it. It is another thing all together when someone you are working for who is inscrutable pulls that on you.
I have worked for a boss like that. He would look at you with the cold dead snake eyes, and ask you a question. He has already decided in his mind what response he wanted, and if you did not give it, you were demoted or fired. The problem was, he would either ask you question a) something he believed in and wanted you to champion the idea to him, or b) some straw man, which you had to strongly disagree with. He was always very quiet and never let anyone in on where the company was going or what he was thinking, everyone was always having to take the multiple choice quiz. There was only one manager that had been with him 15 years, everyone else was 5 years or less.
For me, that did not work. I like having an idea what the boss is thinking. Being able to get my job done, not having to ask stupid questions, and then being able to anticipate what they might need in the future and providing that for them. Quite frankly between working at a place where any question could be my demise, and my employer is thinking, well a new higher will make $2.00 less an our. Or a job where they apologize for giving you a 25% raise the first year you are there, because it is not any larger than that. I will take the second job. Which by the way, does not come with the boss who is a bully.
On the plus side, yes Windows is the monopoly that it is today. On the downside, they have championed legacy compatibility at the cost of security. Finally we arrive at Vista, a prodcut that is out of touch with it users. Who needs it? Businesses? Home users? What is it's target audience? What does it do better than XP? Vista is like a car that costs 4 times as much as last years model, is larger, gets less than half of the mpg of last years model. It has less trunk space but "a bitching dashboard", with all of the controls and readouts moved from what everone else has used in the industry for the last 50 years.
What kind of thinking do you think it took to make that product, what kind of leadership. What items were championed into the prodcut, and what items where championed and pushed the backer of it out the door? By which I mean, this bully attitude is NOT working for Microsoft. They are not going to stay "an industry leader" if they keep working that way.
Seeing that Michael Dell uses Automatix2, I am sure he has had it vetted by his lawyers. It is nice to know all the codecs and software in it are legal to download and run in the United States
If your computer came with a coupon for "duke nukem forever", that said "duke nukem ready" and they showed the game with beautiful 3d rendered graphics, and when you get the game, you get 2fps, and have to go to "stick figure buddy" mode to get 30fps, you would feel that they were not honest with you. Especially if the "duke numkem ready" is part of what enticed you into buying the computer today, instead of in the future.
With all ads showing Aero doing it's thing and being called Vista, and knowing how Windows has worked in the past. I.E. If you had 98 on it, and you loaded XP, it may have been slow, but all the features were there. You would expect that "Vista Ready" would mean that all of vista would run on your machine.
Things like drivers not being available, BIOS needing updates, not enough hardware to run Aero. Are all things that an average user would not expect.
It would be like buying a new TV set with a coupon that says it is "flat pannel" ready. Then it turns out that yes, a 21" CRT will convert to a 15" flat panel. That all CRT's 29" and under, lose 25% of their display size in conversion, but sets 30" or more in size, maintain it. All the commercials show 40" flat panels' never what a 15" conversion will look like.
Anyone reading/. knew what was going to happen with the bait and switch. Meanwhile Joe Sixpack had no idea.
My wife is a non techie. Her new laptop came with Vista. She tried it for 2 weeks. After that, it was back to the good ol' days. Linux for day to day stuff and Windows XP for her games.
I think Microsoft is going to find it harder to push Vista on the masses. The average user hates the LUA in Vista, and turning it off leaves you with a computer that runs slower than XP but has that "glass look to it". Hardly a reason to upgrade from XP.
Since this seems to be a story about the bare essentials. Once, back in 96 to impress a friend and and show him what this internet thing is about. I went over to his place with a bunch of floppies.
I had a local dialup account. He had some old computer parts:
1. Low end VGA monitor 2. VGA card capable of 16 colors at 640x480 3. 2 Megs of Ram 4. 20 Meg Hard Drive 5. 1200 baud modem 6. 1.2m floppy dirve 7. A 386-SX motherboard with a lowend 16hmz CPU
On this sweet box, I was able to install a striped down DOS 6.22, a bare install of Windows 3.11, trumpet winsock (1.x series I belive), and the Opera Web Browser (3.x) series.
I had to practically perform a seance to get MEMMAKER to give the MGA adapter memory over for use to bump the DOS 640k limit.
It was painful, but I was able to get a graphic dial up connection at 1200 baud, 16 color 640x480 resolution and show my friend this brave new world of the internet.
Of course this system operated with the rock soild reliability we have all come to know and trust from Mircosoft.
The sad thing is. It probably took less time to build this box AND install all the software than it takes to do a VISTA install nowdays.
There was company A. It made several products. It is then purchased by company X. At some point, they dropped a product line. One of the original founders of company A, gets the rights to the dropped product line, and starts company B. As time goes on, company A gets back into the market that B is in. Well, Company X decides that does not care to be in the business any more.
Well, the owner of company B, meets the guy who owns company Y, they chat about company A, and that it is quite a find. Well, company Y buys company A from company X. Now company Y tries to sue company B for having derived their product from company A.
So the owner of B, having been dorked by Company Y, now owner of Company A. So when my friend went over to company B, after getting dorked by Company Y, did not mind AT ALL. As a matter of fact, they understood very well wanting to take a shot below the belt at company Y.
He was not shooting for moral high grounds. Just following his own ethics. Hey, give notice, get paid what I am owed. He always gave 100% for what he was paid. Once it was well known that what he was worth was double what he was being paid, or more. He decided he would seek work elsewhere. He would have left his old customer base alone, unless they had specifically went looking for him. But being cussed at, fired, and finally, being cheated out of $250.00 worth of commissions, was just to much for him. At that point, he thought that was the best way to make a statement.
What was even funnier, was that both companies needed a part that was only made by one company in the world. Well, they bought out that company. So now, his old employer, has to call him, every time they need more of that part. No one else sells it, and they can't afford to be shut down as long as it would take to get a suitable alternative.
The CEO believed that there was not a salesman on the planet worth more than $40,000.00 per year in pay, perks, and commissions. No matter how much they sold.
In the rest of the company he believed in the "Wally Factor". Don't hire a high priced, highly skilled "Dilbert" to do a job. They keep getting raises, and you always have to replace them with more high priced, skilled labor.
Hire a "Wally", just pay them a little bit over minimum wage. Teach them how to do whatever is just in front of them. It only takes a day to train them, and the can replaced in a matter of minutes. Due to the lack of skill, you can pay them nothing.
The drawback, is all the understand is "plug these two parts together". They can't tell if the parts are broke or not, they don't even know if they did a good job at putting the parts together. But they don't care, they are paid $7.50 an hour to do it, so they do it.
The company has saved TONS of money. Now they pay $7.50 per hour instead of $22.00 per hour for someone to put the instrument together. Also, instead of a Chemist spending 2 days on site to set up and train on a new system. They now have the Chemist there for an average of 7 days. Waiting for parts to arrive from the factory and for the chemist to install them. Because all the Wallies at the factory could not tell they were shipping a defective unit.
There is a lot of incest in the local job market -- anyone who leaves would almost be expected to take some underlings and accounts with them. That is why -- again, generally -- I must get people out of the office as soon as I know they have another job.
Now I can tell you the parable of the $22 commission.
There was a company. The sold big dollar equipment. $30,000 or more per sale. They had 5 or 6 people in the filed. And back at the company. They had one guy who handled all the after market stuff. They sold about $350,000 a year in after market stuff.
This guy, had a sick relative in the area, had just moved to town, and was willing to work for anything. So they started him out at $22,000.00 a year. He told them he would work hard, and talk about salary after a year. He went to work, went through 20 file cabinets of old records and cold called everyone who had ever bought a piece of equipment from the company. Asked them if they still had it around or used it. Got some of them to start using it. Would call some people and say "hey, it has been 3 months since you ordered, I am having a slow week, help me out."
Bottom line, after 3 months, he outsold, everyone out in the filed, by selling $300.00 of stuff at a time. He also sold 10 or 11 systems in that time...but he did not get credit for those, only the "in the field" reps got credit. Turned after market from $350,000 into better than $1,100,000. Not bad work for the year.
So the year is up, they offered him a raise, of 50 cents. Yes, from $22,000.00 a year to $23,000.00 though he could demonstrate that he made the company an extra million a year in after market and equipment sales.
So a competitor heard about him, and offered him $36,000.00 per year starting pay, promised to have him at $48,000.00 inside of two years, PLUS profit sharing and his commissions. He took it. Gave two weeks notice and offered to train his replacement. Well, they fired him on the spot.
You know what, he was cool with that. So he got his pay, But for what he sold that month, he should of had a commission check of about $270.00. We had talked, and he was going to leave his old customers alone, and just build his business by cold calling from their old files at the new company.
Well, they sent him a commission check of $22.00. When he complained that he sold "x" that month and it should be about $270.00 they told him he did not work there any more and that was just to bad....
At that point, he decided, Over that $250.00 he would take every customer he could. Now I will note, he had almost a photographic memory. he Knew all the prices on the products, what the markups were, and most of his own customers. He had no problem at all moving them over.
So the company he had worked for, in addition to losing him, by being cheap. Also lost, what has amount to several million dollars in sales over the course of a few years, because they thought screwing him out of $250.00 was a funny thing to do. And make no mistake, if they would have given him that $250.00, he would have left them alone. It went from "ethical" to "personal" with the way they had treated him at that point.
Hey, I was nice, I gave two weeks notice at a job where the training program is a week long for a replacement. So that would be one week to find a replacement and one week to train them. They ASKED me to stay.
So I did, and I gave it my all during those two weeks. I could of started working my new job the day I left, I put it off two weeks for them out of kindness to help them out. I had a good manager. He appreciated my work, he trusted that my work would not suffer during those two weeks and he appreciated that I helped him out of a bind.
I don't know what type of work force you manage, but I find it sad either that a) truthfully, the job you offer is so bad, that anyone who has given notice, would "mentally check out" once they see the light of day or b) that you have such a dim view of people.
However, I do have to say, paying for the rest of the week, is just plain decent of you.
I have been around the block a few times. I have worked for companies where during a downsize, they gave everyone a minimum of 6 months pay, retraining, and have an employment agency work with you.
I have also been at jobs, where in the middle of a document window reboots, and while you are trying to sign back in, and think you got your password wrong, security shows up and escorts you from the building.
With that being said, what terms I will accept when I start a new job or project. And on what terms I will leave. Depends on how the employer treats their employees.
If I am working at a place, where one day, mid day they will walk in, and dismiss me, and I have seen it happen all around me. They get ZERO notice. Period. If I am nice, I will show up, and quit. If I am not nice, I will work part of a day, and walk out.
If a company, gives the employee a notice of two or four weeks (and I have seen that), or gives them pay AFTER they have been terminated or fired. For such a company, I would give notice, and tell my new employer that they will have to wait 2 weeks or 4 weeks for me to start.
My duty to the company is as strong as the duty of the company is to me.
So when it is livestock and being worked by the low class English slave, it is COW and PIG, but when it is served to the Norman conquerors it is BEEF and PORK.
Amazing what you can learn from reading the first two pages of IVANHO (and not the rest of the book)
I find leaving most folks over 50 or under 20 with a computer running windows is like sitting around and watching someone club a baby seal to death.
Spyware, popups, etc. They just could not stop themselves from downloading that cute new screen saver.
These people don't like learning about computers and have learned just enough about windows to get by on a clean running system...which won't stay that way for long.
They don't want to learn how to run on a non-admin account. They don't want to learn how to keep their antivirus and spyware software up to date, and they expect that anyone that knows anything about computers will download scads of pirated software for them.
They don't want to use linux, because it is different from what they already know, and it would take the same personal responsibilty they would have to have to run on a non-admin account.
So every three months, their system is slagged by all the junk running on it.
Like I said, it is like watching a baby seal being clubbed to death.
Change will come, RIAA is going to be road kill sooner or later.
Since most adults who have had to replace their back catalog of cassettes and records have moved to CD, who drove the huge album sales of the 90's. I am sure they will be buying plenty more new Cd's, since they care what Beyoncé, Dixie Chicks, Carrie Underwood, Corinne Bailey Rae, Gnarls Barkley et al have to say.
Also, I know the entire generation of teenagers and young adults, who grew up downloading music off of p2p networks, and find everything cool on myspace. I am sure they are convinced that they want to buy Cd's with root kits on them. That they see the value added by the RIAA and the labels. That they will continue to support the many starving artists who are rapaciously stealing from the poor record execs by taking such a large percentage of the pie from ringtone downloads.
I am sure their business model is in no danger at all. Not jeopardized in the least.
Or I could be wrong...........
It is not like I have ever seen a 70 year old woman tell me, when setting up a new computer for her, to make sure that I put Limewire on the new machine, because she does not want to be without her music.
I am sure young and old alike see the value in purchasing major label music.
Microsoft prodcuts are picky. Once upon a time, back in 2000, I had resized some partitions with a linux tool. After about the 3rd or 4th time I did this, Microsoft products would not recognize the drive or partition table.
From a boot. floppy, MS DOS 3.x 4.x 5.x 6.x, Win95 and Win98 could not do it. Win 98 on the drive, could not do it. Would lock up tight as a drum about 3 seconds into booting it up.
However Dr Dos, FreeDos and PC Dos could all boot just fine, even let you run fdisk. Microsoft fdisk would not work even after a boot from one of the working boot floppies.
I would try accessing it from Linux or a system booted of of FreeDos or PC Dos. It may be worth the effort.
I did not say that moral absolutes were effective at controlling human behavior.
I will also say there are plenty of religious people who do not think critically and do not know why they believe what they believe. They know they believe because their mother believes, but not why they believe. I have a great deal of respect for someone, even if I think they are wrong, if at least they have thought out what the believe.
Our problems aren't because evil atheists decide crimes are morally acceptable. They're usually because religious people aren't used to thinking critically and passing responsibility for their actions to some made-up framework.
To be honest, we have not had enough atheists in charge doing what they want, how they want, to see if they make more of a mess of it than someone who via no critical thinking try to follow some made-up framework. I am sure that will change soon enough, and I am pretty sure the results will not be any better.
I am not joking. Belive me, I know some lines are not real black and white. There are honest debates in all religions on where certain lines fall. There are even people that in their hearts believe a line is in a certain place, and do not like it there, and try to rationalize moving that line.
"Thou shalt not commit adultery" is such a line. It is clean and simple. At the very least it is talking about not being involved in a sexual act with someone who is not your spouse.
It is a line set up by someone other than yourself. So if you subscribe to that faith. That is an absolute. You can't move the line can call some adultery OK, and some not OK. All adultery is not OK. An atheist does not have any moral absolutes. Because they can pick where the line goes. Then can feel adultery is Ok this week, or not next week. Or that it is OK for them to commit adultery but not for their spouse to do such a thing.
All I am doing is responding to the claim that "atheists are morally bankrupt or have no morals or lack the capacity to have morals". I am just stating that atheists have no moral absolutes, because there is no one outside of themselves who can set unmoving moral rules for them.
I also stated that I have known atheists who have excellent morals, that live a more christian lifestyle than most Christians I know. So they have morals, but that is not to say they could not lower that bar, because they set the height of the bar. If you have moral absolutes, you don't get to move the bar, you can decide to aim lower or higher, you just don't get to move the bar. As an atheist, you get to move the bar
It is not that they lack the capacity for morality. The problem is they have no moral absolutes. Being free to draw the line anywhere they want. Thus depending on the person....and their willingness to move the line, making it stricter when they see something is wrong, even if it benefits them where the line is at currently OR moving it downward because it is convenient.
This will give you some atheists who will see a meat packing warehouse toss a box of meat because the corner of the box is dinged, who will immediately grab it and run it to a soup kitchen to feed the poor.
It will also give you some atheists who will tell you it is wrong to steal, but if they feel they did not get the raise they deserved, would feel it justified to steal from their job.
And yes, those are both real world examples of atheists I know.
Back in the day, when I did clerical, secretarial and data entry work, I would use that as a selling point.
"Hey, I notice you have 10 ladies working here, want to change the dynamic of your clerical staff? Add a man to it. After all when someone gets catty with me, and I ignore it, they will just think I am a man and missed it"
But with free software, there is no taxable transaction. Taken to the limit the government could lose billions of dollars of tax revenues...
Yes, they could....
If they left the money in the bank and did not spend it. Most likely what would have been the software budget, will go to something else and when that something else is purchased, the government still gets their tax money.
Slashdot Mirror
If I had the points, I would mod you up.
Even if the IP thing is a red hearing, even if Microsoft meant it, and it is now pretty much tossed out by the Supreme Court. Novell having a deal with Microsoft AND now being the only official version of linux to work with Microsoft products AND now having DELL load SUSE on servers. I would say Microsoft has finally found a way to survive in a linux world.
As long as Novel and Microsoft has a deal, Microsoft provides support and the big boys DELL/HP only sell servers preloaded with SUSE. Both Novel and Microsoft seem to have a long and proserous business in the Linux Market.
Also it looks like Novel with SUSE, MOMO, Gnome and their exchange replacement project, may have by dumb luck, known what they were doing.
Close enough for me. I won't work for someone who automatically say about any idea "It's the dumbest f*cking thing I have every heard"
I have no problem defending my ideas, but I have better things to do with my life than have a pissing contest with my supervisor.
Consider it a lifestyle choice on my part. I am 40 years old, and have have worked for enough people. I know the kind of person and company I want to work for. I won't settle for less, I won't be happy and the company won't be happy with me. I won't do that to me, and I won't waste someone elses time either.
It is abuse....period
I have worked with several types of managers over the years. It may be my own personal preferences, but I WILL NOT work in that kind of environment. It is one thing to sit around with friends, and have them kick your idea to the curb and having to defend it. It is another thing all together when someone you are working for who is inscrutable pulls that on you.
I have worked for a boss like that. He would look at you with the cold dead snake eyes, and ask you a question. He has already decided in his mind what response he wanted, and if you did not give it, you were demoted or fired. The problem was, he would either ask you question a) something he believed in and wanted you to champion the idea to him, or b) some straw man, which you had to strongly disagree with. He was always very quiet and never let anyone in on where the company was going or what he was thinking, everyone was always having to take the multiple choice quiz. There was only one manager that had been with him 15 years, everyone else was 5 years or less.
For me, that did not work. I like having an idea what the boss is thinking. Being able to get my job done, not having to ask stupid questions, and then being able to anticipate what they might need in the future and providing that for them. Quite frankly between working at a place where any question could be my demise, and my employer is thinking, well a new higher will make $2.00 less an our. Or a job where they apologize for giving you a 25% raise the first year you are there, because it is not any larger than that. I will take the second job. Which by the way, does not come with the boss who is a bully.
On the plus side, yes Windows is the monopoly that it is today. On the downside, they have championed legacy compatibility at the cost of security. Finally we arrive at Vista, a prodcut that is out of touch with it users. Who needs it? Businesses? Home users? What is it's target audience? What does it do better than XP? Vista is like a car that costs 4 times as much as last years model, is larger, gets less than half of the mpg of last years model. It has less trunk space but "a bitching dashboard", with all of the controls and readouts moved from what everone else has used in the industry for the last 50 years.
What kind of thinking do you think it took to make that product, what kind of leadership. What items were championed into the prodcut, and what items where championed and pushed the backer of it out the door? By which I mean, this bully attitude is NOT working for Microsoft. They are not going to stay "an industry leader" if they keep working that way.
Seeing that Michael Dell uses Automatix2, I am sure he has had it vetted by his lawyers. It is nice to know all the codecs and software in it are legal to download and run in the United States
Yes that was meant to be funny.
I think it has to do with customer expectations.
/. knew what was going to happen with the bait and switch. Meanwhile Joe Sixpack had no idea.
If your computer came with a coupon for "duke nukem forever", that said "duke nukem ready" and they showed the game with beautiful 3d rendered graphics, and when you get the game, you get 2fps, and have to go to "stick figure buddy" mode to get 30fps, you would feel that they were not honest with you. Especially if the "duke numkem ready" is part of what enticed you into buying the computer today, instead of in the future.
With all ads showing Aero doing it's thing and being called Vista, and knowing how Windows has worked in the past. I.E. If you had 98 on it, and you loaded XP, it may have been slow, but all the features were there. You would expect that "Vista Ready" would mean that all of vista would run on your machine.
Things like drivers not being available, BIOS needing updates, not enough hardware to run Aero. Are all things that an average user would not expect.
It would be like buying a new TV set with a coupon that says it is "flat pannel" ready. Then it turns out that yes, a 21" CRT will convert to a 15" flat panel. That all CRT's 29" and under, lose 25% of their display size in conversion, but sets 30" or more in size, maintain it. All the commercials show 40" flat panels' never what a 15" conversion will look like.
Anyone reading
My wife is a non techie. Her new laptop came with Vista. She tried it for 2 weeks. After that, it was back to the good ol' days. Linux for day to day stuff and Windows XP for her games.
I think Microsoft is going to find it harder to push Vista on the masses. The average user hates the LUA in Vista, and turning it off leaves you with a computer that runs slower than XP but has that "glass look to it". Hardly a reason to upgrade from XP.
Once again, Microsoft competes against itself.
If he owns a zune, he can squirt them to all of his friends.
Since this seems to be a story about the bare essentials. Once, back in 96 to impress a friend and and show him what this internet thing is about. I went over to his place with a bunch of floppies.
I had a local dialup account. He had some old computer parts:
1. Low end VGA monitor
2. VGA card capable of 16 colors at 640x480
3. 2 Megs of Ram
4. 20 Meg Hard Drive
5. 1200 baud modem
6. 1.2m floppy dirve
7. A 386-SX motherboard with a lowend 16hmz CPU
On this sweet box, I was able to install a striped down DOS 6.22, a bare install of Windows 3.11, trumpet winsock (1.x series I belive), and the Opera Web Browser (3.x) series.
I had to practically perform a seance to get MEMMAKER to give the MGA adapter memory over for use to bump the DOS 640k limit.
It was painful, but I was able to get a graphic dial up connection at 1200 baud, 16 color 640x480 resolution and show my friend this brave new world of the internet.
Of course this system operated with the rock soild reliability we have all come to know and trust from Mircosoft.
The sad thing is. It probably took less time to build this box AND install all the software than it takes to do a VISTA install nowdays.
Well, as for hiring him.
There was company A. It made several products. It is then purchased by company X. At some point, they dropped a product line. One of the original founders of company A, gets the rights to the dropped product line, and starts company B. As time goes on, company A gets back into the market that B is in. Well, Company X decides that does not care to be in the business any more.
Well, the owner of company B, meets the guy who owns company Y, they chat about company A, and that it is quite a find. Well, company Y buys company A from company X. Now company Y tries to sue company B for having derived their product from company A.
So the owner of B, having been dorked by Company Y, now owner of Company A. So when my friend went over to company B, after getting dorked by Company Y, did not mind AT ALL. As a matter of fact, they understood very well wanting to take a shot below the belt at company Y.
He was not shooting for moral high grounds. Just following his own ethics. Hey, give notice, get paid what I am owed. He always gave 100% for what he was paid. Once it was well known that what he was worth was double what he was being paid, or more. He decided he would seek work elsewhere. He would have left his old customer base alone, unless they had specifically went looking for him. But being cussed at, fired, and finally, being cheated out of $250.00 worth of commissions, was just to much for him. At that point, he thought that was the best way to make a statement.
What was even funnier, was that both companies needed a part that was only made by one company in the world. Well, they bought out that company. So now, his old employer, has to call him, every time they need more of that part. No one else sells it, and they can't afford to be shut down as long as it would take to get a suitable alternative.
The CEO believed that there was not a salesman on the planet worth more than $40,000.00 per year in pay, perks, and commissions. No matter how much they sold.
In the rest of the company he believed in the "Wally Factor". Don't hire a high priced, highly skilled "Dilbert" to do a job. They keep getting raises, and you always have to replace them with more high priced, skilled labor.
Hire a "Wally", just pay them a little bit over minimum wage. Teach them how to do whatever is just in front of them. It only takes a day to train them, and the can replaced in a matter of minutes. Due to the lack of skill, you can pay them nothing.
The drawback, is all the understand is "plug these two parts together". They can't tell if the parts are broke or not, they don't even know if they did a good job at putting the parts together. But they don't care, they are paid $7.50 an hour to do it, so they do it.
The company has saved TONS of money. Now they pay $7.50 per hour instead of $22.00 per hour for someone to put the instrument together. Also, instead of a Chemist spending 2 days on site to set up and train on a new system. They now have the Chemist there for an average of 7 days. Waiting for parts to arrive from the factory and for the chemist to install them. Because all the Wallies at the factory could not tell they were shipping a defective unit.
There is a lot of incest in the local job market -- anyone who leaves would almost be expected to take some underlings and accounts with them. That is why -- again, generally -- I must get people out of the office as soon as I know they have another job.
Now I can tell you the parable of the $22 commission.
There was a company. The sold big dollar equipment. $30,000 or more per sale. They had 5 or 6 people in the filed. And back at the company. They had one guy who handled all the after market stuff. They sold about $350,000 a year in after market stuff.
This guy, had a sick relative in the area, had just moved to town, and was willing to work for anything. So they started him out at $22,000.00 a year. He told them he would work hard, and talk about salary after a year. He went to work, went through 20 file cabinets of old records and cold called everyone who had ever bought a piece of equipment from the company. Asked them if they still had it around or used it. Got some of them to start using it. Would call some people and say "hey, it has been 3 months since you ordered, I am having a slow week, help me out."
Bottom line, after 3 months, he outsold, everyone out in the filed, by selling $300.00 of stuff at a time. He also sold 10 or 11 systems in that time...but he did not get credit for those, only the "in the field" reps got credit. Turned after market from $350,000 into better than $1,100,000. Not bad work for the year.
So the year is up, they offered him a raise, of 50 cents. Yes, from $22,000.00 a year to $23,000.00 though he could demonstrate that he made the company an extra million a year in after market and equipment sales.
So a competitor heard about him, and offered him $36,000.00 per year starting pay, promised to have him at $48,000.00 inside of two years, PLUS profit sharing and his commissions. He took it. Gave two weeks notice and offered to train his replacement. Well, they fired him on the spot.
You know what, he was cool with that. So he got his pay, But for what he sold that month, he should of had a commission check of about $270.00. We had talked, and he was going to leave his old customers alone, and just build his business by cold calling from their old files at the new company.
Well, they sent him a commission check of $22.00. When he complained that he sold "x" that month and it should be about $270.00 they told him he did not work there any more and that was just to bad....
At that point, he decided, Over that $250.00 he would take every customer he could. Now I will note, he had almost a photographic memory. he Knew all the prices on the products, what the markups were, and most of his own customers. He had no problem at all moving them over.
So the company he had worked for, in addition to losing him, by being cheap. Also lost, what has amount to several million dollars in sales over the course of a few years, because they thought screwing him out of $250.00 was a funny thing to do. And make no mistake, if they would have given him that $250.00, he would have left them alone. It went from "ethical" to "personal" with the way they had treated him at that point.
Hey, I was nice, I gave two weeks notice at a job where the training program is a week long for a replacement. So that would be one week to find a replacement and one week to train them. They ASKED me to stay.
So I did, and I gave it my all during those two weeks. I could of started working my new job the day I left, I put it off two weeks for them out of kindness to help them out. I had a good manager. He appreciated my work, he trusted that my work would not suffer during those two weeks and he appreciated that I helped him out of a bind.
I don't know what type of work force you manage, but I find it sad either that a) truthfully, the job you offer is so bad, that anyone who has given notice, would "mentally check out" once they see the light of day or b) that you have such a dim view of people.
However, I do have to say, paying for the rest of the week, is just plain decent of you.
I have been around the block a few times. I have worked for companies where during a downsize, they gave everyone a minimum of 6 months pay, retraining, and have an employment agency work with you.
I have also been at jobs, where in the middle of a document window reboots, and while you are trying to sign back in, and think you got your password wrong, security shows up and escorts you from the building.
With that being said, what terms I will accept when I start a new job or project. And on what terms I will leave. Depends on how the employer treats their employees.
If I am working at a place, where one day, mid day they will walk in, and dismiss me, and I have seen it happen all around me. They get ZERO notice. Period. If I am nice, I will show up, and quit. If I am not nice, I will work part of a day, and walk out.
If a company, gives the employee a notice of two or four weeks (and I have seen that), or gives them pay AFTER they have been terminated or fired. For such a company, I would give notice, and tell my new employer that they will have to wait 2 weeks or 4 weeks for me to start.
My duty to the company is as strong as the duty of the company is to me.
Now if it only had a dock. I could leave my beloved fluxbox and still keep all my cool dock apps.
So when it is livestock and being worked by the low class English slave, it is COW and PIG, but when it is served to the Norman conquerors it is BEEF and PORK.
Amazing what you can learn from reading the first two pages of IVANHO (and not the rest of the book)
With that being said,
I find leaving most folks over 50 or under 20 with a computer running windows is like sitting around and watching someone club a baby seal to death.
Spyware, popups, etc. They just could not stop themselves from downloading that cute new screen saver.
These people don't like learning about computers and have learned just enough about windows to get by on a clean running system...which won't stay that way for long.
They don't want to learn how to run on a non-admin account. They don't want to learn how to keep their antivirus and spyware software up to date, and they expect that anyone that knows anything about computers will download scads of pirated software for them.
They don't want to use linux, because it is different from what they already know, and it would take the same personal responsibilty they would have to have to run on a non-admin account.
So every three months, their system is slagged by all the junk running on it.
Like I said, it is like watching a baby seal being clubbed to death.
Since most adults who have had to replace their back catalog of cassettes and records have moved to CD, who drove the huge album sales of the 90's. I am sure they will be buying plenty more new Cd's, since they care what Beyoncé, Dixie Chicks, Carrie Underwood, Corinne Bailey Rae, Gnarls Barkley et al have to say.
Also, I know the entire generation of teenagers and young adults, who grew up downloading music off of p2p networks, and find everything cool on myspace. I am sure they are convinced that they want to buy Cd's with root kits on them. That they see the value added by the RIAA and the labels. That they will continue to support the many starving artists who are rapaciously stealing from the poor record execs by taking such a large percentage of the pie from ringtone downloads.
I am sure their business model is in no danger at all. Not jeopardized in the least.
Or I could be wrong...........
It is not like I have ever seen a 70 year old woman tell me, when setting up a new computer for her, to make sure that I put Limewire on the new machine, because she does not want to be without her music.
I am sure young and old alike see the value in purchasing major label music.
Microsoft prodcuts are picky. Once upon a time, back in 2000, I had resized some partitions with a linux tool. After about the 3rd or 4th time I did this, Microsoft products would not recognize the drive or partition table.
From a boot. floppy, MS DOS 3.x 4.x 5.x 6.x, Win95 and Win98 could not do it. Win 98 on the drive, could not do it. Would lock up tight as a drum about 3 seconds into booting it up.
However Dr Dos, FreeDos and PC Dos could all boot just fine, even let you run fdisk. Microsoft fdisk would not work even after a boot from one of the working boot floppies.
I would try accessing it from Linux or a system booted of of FreeDos or PC Dos. It may be worth the effort.
I will also say there are plenty of religious people who do not think critically and do not know why they believe what they believe. They know they believe because their mother believes, but not why they believe. I have a great deal of respect for someone, even if I think they are wrong, if at least they have thought out what the believe.
Our problems aren't because evil atheists decide crimes are morally acceptable. They're usually because religious people aren't used to thinking critically and passing responsibility for their actions to some made-up framework.
To be honest, we have not had enough atheists in charge doing what they want, how they want, to see if they make more of a mess of it than someone who via no critical thinking try to follow some made-up framework. I am sure that will change soon enough, and I am pretty sure the results will not be any better.
I am not joking. Belive me, I know some lines are not real black and white. There are honest debates in all religions on where certain lines fall. There are even people that in their hearts believe a line is in a certain place, and do not like it there, and try to rationalize moving that line. "Thou shalt not commit adultery" is such a line. It is clean and simple. At the very least it is talking about not being involved in a sexual act with someone who is not your spouse. It is a line set up by someone other than yourself. So if you subscribe to that faith. That is an absolute. You can't move the line can call some adultery OK, and some not OK. All adultery is not OK. An atheist does not have any moral absolutes. Because they can pick where the line goes. Then can feel adultery is Ok this week, or not next week. Or that it is OK for them to commit adultery but not for their spouse to do such a thing. All I am doing is responding to the claim that "atheists are morally bankrupt or have no morals or lack the capacity to have morals". I am just stating that atheists have no moral absolutes, because there is no one outside of themselves who can set unmoving moral rules for them. I also stated that I have known atheists who have excellent morals, that live a more christian lifestyle than most Christians I know. So they have morals, but that is not to say they could not lower that bar, because they set the height of the bar. If you have moral absolutes, you don't get to move the bar, you can decide to aim lower or higher, you just don't get to move the bar. As an atheist, you get to move the bar
It is not that they lack the capacity for morality. The problem is they have no moral absolutes. Being free to draw the line anywhere they want. Thus depending on the person....and their willingness to move the line, making it stricter when they see something is wrong, even if it benefits them where the line is at currently OR moving it downward because it is convenient.
This will give you some atheists who will see a meat packing warehouse toss a box of meat because the corner of the box is dinged, who will immediately grab it and run it to a soup kitchen to feed the poor.
It will also give you some atheists who will tell you it is wrong to steal, but if they feel they did not get the raise they deserved, would feel it justified to steal from their job.
And yes, those are both real world examples of atheists I know.
Back in the day, when I did clerical, secretarial and data entry work, I would use that as a selling point.
"Hey, I notice you have 10 ladies working here, want to change the dynamic of your clerical staff? Add a man to it. After all when someone gets catty with me, and I ignore it, they will just think I am a man and missed it"
It has gotten me a job several times.
Wow!!! My 70 year old aunt just sent me the "Girls Gone Wild" Screensaver. That is so l33t, I have got to run it rignt now!!!!!!
Yes, they could....
If they left the money in the bank and did not spend it. Most likely what would have been the software budget, will go to something else and when that something else is purchased, the government still gets their tax money.