What my parents told me growing up comes to mind: http://biblehub.com/numbers/32... - "...you may be sure that your sin will find you out." At least anyone with fear of finally being exposed as dishonest has a warning sign to make amends with their partner. No one can fault you for the truth, although there may be consequences for the truth.
Mikogo is the only "Gotomeeting" software that I know of that works well on Linux. That will allow you to switch between presenting your desktop or flip to allow viewing of their Windows desktop. Skype works okay for conversations, but I would probably buy a VoIP box to carry around like iTalkBB www.italkbb.com or the one from Vonage for telephone stuff.
New guys do not get senior pay. People with experience usually command higher wages. You can get people out of school fairly priced to their abilities. That fair price can be significantly under what an accomplished senior engineer will make.
The best question is, "Who are you fishing for and why?"
Hopefully your company is willing to spend the coin for the experience implied by this article. If not, your company may see the time slow down as worth it. From an investment side, management must consider timing of future cashflows and likelihood they will arrive (risk). Slow and steady can win the race, despite how frustrating it can be to 'bring someone else up to speed.'
When I observe this situation, usually a pattern emerges where a developer is hired during the expansion of a project or other effort. In other words, someone is hired to fill a gap. Usually I have not seen an ongoing effort by the person hired to discover how they 'do' provide extra value in a tangible way and advertise that. Some companies have internal job postings which should allow the switching of jobs to happen where pay raises can come into question. Those that do not really need their technical staff to venture out and try to cross train with the business folk they serve. It's a good way to 'discover need' and then figure out how to provide. The new hire is the only person selling themselves during the moment. Most IT departments I have seen are very passive in terms of aggressively seeking out ways to solve problems of the businesses that pay them. That is not saying they do not do a fantastic job at what they currently do, but business people have new challenges every day.
The theme here is focusing on meaningful problems and communicating the ability to solve them to people who need the problem solved and are able to pay. Not rocket science.
ALL business problems have one of two outcomes. They affect revenue or expenses. If developers understand that and figure out which direction of those two their contribution influences, it becomes a selling tool or redirection of effort tool.
Just my two cents..
When I lived in China, I subscribed to a SSH tunnel service. I would setup a small application on my machines that would open a tunnel and funnel that traffic out from America.
Be careful trying things like Onion. My financial trading software blocked me when their IT department detected requests shifting from IP to IP from various countries. It looks very suspicious.
It's worth the fee paid to the SSH tunnel operators because you don't have to pay for a network connection in the US and they handle all the technical junk on the backend. Also since these service offerings are not super clear on China's Radar, chances of getting the IPs and ports blocked are really small.
There is an advantage to being a small fish.
I'm currently living in China and have been for the last year and a half. I haven't experienced any kinds of slow downs with Google. My girlfriend does go to google.cn, but I think that's used by Google themselves. Another thing about financials.... if you haven't checked the ADR for Baidu (BIDU), is at $314 per share with a PE of 152.28. I remember when I checked this in I think September at ~$230 per share with a PE of ~230ish. They apparently had some super earnings growth. Any way you look at it, this is a huge financial gain for Google if they do still own shares, even a small amount. Their earnings would be further propped up buy having Baidu's revenues in RMB. (Dollar has declined somewhere in the 9% range this year).
If you think BIDU can actually get a 1 up on Google, then buy the ADR.
I have not taken a look at either company's 10-K yet to answer all the w-questions.
In a general sense, every major country has business investments here earning money for Chinese people, not just their respective home nations. There is no doubt in my mind that China wants to lead and have its local companies move to a number 1 standing in the world. There is a balance there and the big investment players in China are too big to be messed with in a meaningful sense of the word. If China were to undermine some large multinationals, many other multinationals would re-assess their risk and there would be higher cost of doing business in China as apposed to somewhere else.
As an American, it worries me that many of the news broadcasts from Bloomberg and others mention such and such a company earning 50% of it's profits from developing and emerging markets. This worries me because in a sense it says, the value for the company is being created outside of the United States. Those people in America who are part of that value creation process by the wise allocation of capital resources will be safe from job cuts, but the others are in danger of restructuring. (Please excuse getting a bit off topic here).
Only given the slimmest chance that the populous of the world gains control over their currencies, banks will rule the world. They will refuse to give loans to corporations might threaten their power, and shrink the money supply (depressions) to scoop up the assets of the people servant to their debt to build power. Patents allow the creations of man to be controlled, and debt controls man. It's pretty obvious how this will play out.
I am constantly surprised by all of the security efforts and fads that come and go. I have observed that security is usually lighter where people know and trust each other and is more complex where people do not know each other. Perhaps security experts would do well to consider how we could improve the relationships we have with people around us.
mp3.baidu.com or just Baidu.com lists MP3s right at the top. I am really surprised this hasn't happened earlier. It would seem that Google would be very careful about it's relationship to a company who has music piracy on it's main menu.
I don't know a whole lot about international law, but I've heard "Affirmatively seeking to do business in location X" is a key phrase that allows the law to jump state borders for liability etc. I wouldn't be surprised if it is patterned off of internationally accepted legislation.
Steve might say, let's run a query on our sales database and find all combinations of people who purchased say:
~900 songs
2 iPods
1 iPod Photo
1 G5
1 G4 Powerbook.
I'm under the very naive assumption that this is a unique pattern for customers, but it's an interesting and funny idea to me.:)
To address your questions, I thought it would be helpful to post some notes about contract law in the US. There are some exceptions and other little wierd quirks, but I think you'll find it pretty straight forward. I've seen that this is generally the same in other contries as well.
The law provides few barriers to contract formation. The law assumes that the parties contracting are of similar bargaining power. Not only that, but it also supports your freedom to, when in doubt, ask questions! There are few essential terms (subject matter, etc.) and the parties' conduct is often evidence of an existing contract. To be a contract, an agreement must be based on mutual assent. The standard used to determine whether the parties have met this requirement is objective, that is: Each party must, through her words and conduct, lead the other to believe that she wants to contract. We use a "reasonable person" standard here.
That's the basis, then you have:
The Offer: Usually a contract begins with a proposal, called an offer, which is a serious expression by an offeror to form a contract with another, called the offeree.
For example, purchase orders used by buyers to purchase goods to be resold are typically offers. For a communication to be an offer, it:
1. Must manifest contractual intent - using objective test, the offer must lead a reasonable offeree to believe that the offeror wishes to contract; 2. Must include essential terms (common law: subject matter and price/UCC: subject matter and quantity); and 3.Must be communicated to Oee. An offeree cannot accept an offer of which he has no notice.
You both will probably have some idea about 'Duration' which is pretty straight forward. - Unless otherwise stated, an offer is open for a reasonable period of time.
An offeror can revoke the offer at any time before acceptance. This included those cases in which the Oor tells the Oee that the offer is open for a specified time. Exceptions:
1.Firm offers (UCC 2-205) - offer in writing and signed by merchant giving assurance that offer will be open for stated or reasonable time.
2.Offer to enter into unilateral contract - Oor can't revoke once Oee begins performance.
3.Option - Oee pays Oor to keep offer open for defined period.
Acceptance of the Offer Having general rules:
1.Occurs in any manner reasonable under circumstances; 2.Must be communicated to Oor 3.Must mirror offer- if attempted acceptance doesn't mirror offer, then is counteroffer.
One thing that is vital in a contract is what's called consideration
Generally this is what is required to observe to see if you actually have consideration. 1.Consideration is the legal benefit or detriment flowing from each side of the agreement to the other. 2.Must be a bargained-for exchange of promises (bilateral agreement) or a promise for performance (unilateral agreement). 3.Freedom of Contract: Adequacy is not issue; i.e. assuming a bargained-for exchange, the court will not examine the relative worth of the exchanged considerations. 4.In determining whether consideration exists, courts should look only at the agreement (and time of agreement), not to pre or post agreement happenings.
For example, my promise to give you $100 dollars because you were nice to my child is not enforceable because you have given no consideration in exchange for my promise.
The term Legal Detriment is a promise or performance in which a person forbears doing something she has legal right to do. If bargained for by other side, it is consideration.
You would have to prove that you actually formed a contract with the other person. The potential employer is probably doing something the law might see closer to advertising than actually offering something. Your actual contract with an employer probably starts with an employment agreem
I do not agree with Steve's assertion about lower cost hardware making piracy less desireable. I sure don't see any Microsoft related hardware that is priced much lower than competing products. I've always seen people who are able purchase hardware that is better than Software in terms of capability because software just passes away so quickly at times.
[There are healthy margins out there though]
I realize that this is not a main part of a computer, but I think there is a large enough price disparity to wonder about cheaper hardware.
When I was in Beijing this Summer, I picked up a Logitec Orbit Webcam for about $13 US. On Pricewatch was Logitech QuickCam Orbit Webcam 961310-0403 Retail for $109.00. The cheapest webcams I've found anywhere here in the US is $16 on Pricewatch and certainly NOT anywhere close to the quality I have.
If regulation happens a certain firm with cash may jump in and say "REGULATE ME PLEASE!!!" because they are closer to conforming with whatever regulations will be passed. This will create a barrier to entry for small guys because they can't afford to comply. Goodbye competition.
This happened with the Tabacco companies. Let's see what happens here.
I'm certainly glad that it was detected and responded to. I hope the spectrum doesn't get too messy and create this situation often, but it does show that someone is paying attention when there is a cry for help. (Thinking out in the ocean here).
IT isn't just information technology, or messing with machines, installs, networks or databases. Being an IT professional means that you connect with others in the organization and not just get stuck in a corner. There is a fair amount of work to be done, but most of the work probably should deal with your relationship with your co-workers or bosses. You have to work into position of being an allie and have them be open to becoming educated. If you treat people intelligently and inform your bosses of progress that's been made with their other employees it will shine for you. When you are out of the loop, you become some foreign fire fighter that's just a 911 page away to serve up answers quick and disappear into the wood work.
It's people politics and selling yourself. Don't see anthing as an end, but a means. Each day you can empower others and develop good relationships where they can pull you up with them because you're an asset and not a service. Anyone can learn to fix a machine or crimp CAT-5, but a wise worker will see past the duty and see the big picture.
The loathed incompetent managers that I've seen some posts refer to, may be people with people skills who became something more outstanding in their superiors' eyes than just a misunderstood and underappreciated fire fighter.
Most of the comments I've read seem pretty negative in nature. Looking at all the bad parts of this situation.
Privacy has a context. It is, something that you don't want other people to know.
Why do things that you should feel the need to hide from public view?
It just comes down to an attention factor after that. A seemingly unimportant event normally, gains great publicity. Was it really the event that was the problem, or the publicity it received.
If you believe there is a God, everything is seen. If you don't believe in a God, everything can be found out.
Slashdot Mirror
What my parents told me growing up comes to mind:
http://biblehub.com/numbers/32... - "...you may be sure that your sin will find you out."
At least anyone with fear of finally being exposed as dishonest has a warning sign to make amends with their partner.
No one can fault you for the truth, although there may be consequences for the truth.
Mikogo is the only "Gotomeeting" software that I know of that works well on Linux. That will allow you to switch between presenting your desktop or flip to allow viewing of their Windows desktop.
Skype works okay for conversations, but I would probably buy a VoIP box to carry around like iTalkBB www.italkbb.com or the one from Vonage for telephone stuff.
New guys do not get senior pay. People with experience usually command higher wages.
You can get people out of school fairly priced to their abilities. That fair price can be significantly under what an accomplished senior engineer will make.
The best question is, "Who are you fishing for and why?"
Hopefully your company is willing to spend the coin for the experience implied by this article.
If not, your company may see the time slow down as worth it. From an investment side, management must consider timing of future cashflows and likelihood they will arrive (risk). Slow and steady can win the race, despite how frustrating it can be to 'bring someone else up to speed.'
When I observe this situation, usually a pattern emerges where a developer is hired during the expansion of a project or other effort. In other words, someone is hired to fill a gap. Usually I have not seen an ongoing effort by the person hired to discover how they 'do' provide extra value in a tangible way and advertise that. Some companies have internal job postings which should allow the switching of jobs to happen where pay raises can come into question. Those that do not really need their technical staff to venture out and try to cross train with the business folk they serve. It's a good way to 'discover need' and then figure out how to provide. The new hire is the only person selling themselves during the moment. Most IT departments I have seen are very passive in terms of aggressively seeking out ways to solve problems of the businesses that pay them. That is not saying they do not do a fantastic job at what they currently do, but business people have new challenges every day. The theme here is focusing on meaningful problems and communicating the ability to solve them to people who need the problem solved and are able to pay. Not rocket science. ALL business problems have one of two outcomes. They affect revenue or expenses. If developers understand that and figure out which direction of those two their contribution influences, it becomes a selling tool or redirection of effort tool. Just my two cents..
When I lived in China, I subscribed to a SSH tunnel service. I would setup a small application on my machines that would open a tunnel and funnel that traffic out from America. Be careful trying things like Onion. My financial trading software blocked me when their IT department detected requests shifting from IP to IP from various countries. It looks very suspicious. It's worth the fee paid to the SSH tunnel operators because you don't have to pay for a network connection in the US and they handle all the technical junk on the backend. Also since these service offerings are not super clear on China's Radar, chances of getting the IPs and ports blocked are really small. There is an advantage to being a small fish.
I'm currently living in China and have been for the last year and a half. I haven't experienced any kinds of slow downs with Google. My girlfriend does go to google.cn, but I think that's used by Google themselves. Another thing about financials.... if you haven't checked the ADR for Baidu (BIDU), is at $314 per share with a PE of 152.28. I remember when I checked this in I think September at ~$230 per share with a PE of ~230ish. They apparently had some super earnings growth. Any way you look at it, this is a huge financial gain for Google if they do still own shares, even a small amount. Their earnings would be further propped up buy having Baidu's revenues in RMB. (Dollar has declined somewhere in the 9% range this year).
If you think BIDU can actually get a 1 up on Google, then buy the ADR.
I have not taken a look at either company's 10-K yet to answer all the w-questions.
In a general sense, every major country has business investments here earning money for Chinese people, not just their respective home nations. There is no doubt in my mind that China wants to lead and have its local companies move to a number 1 standing in the world. There is a balance there and the big investment players in China are too big to be messed with in a meaningful sense of the word. If China were to undermine some large multinationals, many other multinationals would re-assess their risk and there would be higher cost of doing business in China as apposed to somewhere else.
As an American, it worries me that many of the news broadcasts from Bloomberg and others mention such and such a company earning 50% of it's profits from developing and emerging markets. This worries me because in a sense it says, the value for the company is being created outside of the United States. Those people in America who are part of that value creation process by the wise allocation of capital resources will be safe from job cuts, but the others are in danger of restructuring. (Please excuse getting a bit off topic here).
Just a totally random comment, but Penryn, sounds a lot like "Pianren" in Chinese, which means to Cheat People.
Only given the slimmest chance that the populous of the world gains control over their currencies, banks will rule the world. They will refuse to give loans to corporations might threaten their power, and shrink the money supply (depressions) to scoop up the assets of the people servant to their debt to build power. Patents allow the creations of man to be controlled, and debt controls man. It's pretty obvious how this will play out.
I am constantly surprised by all of the security efforts and fads that come and go. I have observed that security is usually lighter where people know and trust each other and is more complex where people do not know each other. Perhaps security experts would do well to consider how we could improve the relationships we have with people around us.
mp3.baidu.com or just Baidu.com lists MP3s right at the top. I am really surprised this hasn't happened earlier. It would seem that Google would be very careful about it's relationship to a company who has music piracy on it's main menu. I don't know a whole lot about international law, but I've heard "Affirmatively seeking to do business in location X" is a key phrase that allows the law to jump state borders for liability etc. I wouldn't be surprised if it is patterned off of internationally accepted legislation.
Steve might say, let's run a query on our sales database and find all combinations of people who purchased say: ~900 songs 2 iPods 1 iPod Photo 1 G5 1 G4 Powerbook. I'm under the very naive assumption that this is a unique pattern for customers, but it's an interesting and funny idea to me. :)
I've read that a version of Windows IS making its way into cars.
What service pack would you like today?
Japan does other weird things like splitting books into two halves. I'm not sure what purpose this serves, since usually they're sold together.
How often do you read a whole book in one sitting, compared to the rest of the population?
If lightweight pocket Dictionaries were sold this way in Japan, it would seem to be a counter productive product.
The law provides few barriers to contract formation. The law assumes that the parties contracting are of similar bargaining power. Not only that, but it also supports your freedom to, when in doubt, ask questions! There are few essential terms (subject matter, etc.) and the parties' conduct is often evidence of an existing contract. To be a contract, an agreement must be based on mutual assent. The standard used to determine whether the parties have met this requirement is objective, that is: Each party must, through her words and conduct, lead the other to believe that she wants to contract. We use a "reasonable person" standard here.
That's the basis, then you have:
The Offer: Usually a contract begins with a proposal, called an offer, which is a serious expression by an offeror to form a contract with another, called the offeree.
For example, purchase orders used by buyers to purchase goods to be resold are typically offers. For a communication to be an offer, it:
1. Must manifest contractual intent - using objective test, the offer must lead a reasonable offeree to believe that the offeror wishes to contract;
2. Must include essential terms (common law: subject matter and price/UCC: subject matter and quantity); and
3.Must be communicated to Oee. An offeree cannot accept an offer of which he has no notice.
You both will probably have some idea about 'Duration' which is pretty straight forward. - Unless otherwise stated, an offer is open for a reasonable period of time.
An offeror can revoke the offer at any time before acceptance. This included those cases in which the Oor tells the Oee that the offer is open for a specified time. Exceptions: 1.Firm offers (UCC 2-205) - offer in writing and signed by merchant giving assurance that offer will be open for stated or reasonable time. 2.Offer to enter into unilateral contract - Oor can't revoke once Oee begins performance. 3.Option - Oee pays Oor to keep offer open for defined period.
Acceptance of the Offer
Having general rules:
1.Occurs in any manner reasonable under circumstances;
2.Must be communicated to Oor
3.Must mirror offer- if attempted acceptance doesn't mirror offer, then is counteroffer.
One thing that is vital in a contract is what's called consideration
Generally this is what is required to observe to see if you actually have consideration.
1.Consideration is the legal benefit or detriment flowing from each side of the agreement to the other.
2.Must be a bargained-for exchange of promises (bilateral agreement) or a promise for performance (unilateral agreement).
3.Freedom of Contract: Adequacy is not issue; i.e. assuming a bargained-for exchange, the court will not examine the relative worth of the exchanged considerations.
4.In determining whether consideration exists, courts should look only at the agreement (and time of agreement), not to pre or post agreement happenings.
For example, my promise to give you $100 dollars because you were nice to my child is not enforceable because you have given no consideration in exchange for my promise.
The term Legal Detriment is a promise or performance in which a person forbears doing something she has legal right to do. If bargained for by other side, it is consideration.
You would have to prove that you actually formed a contract with the other person. The potential employer is probably doing something the law might see closer to advertising than actually offering something. Your actual contract with an employer probably starts with an employment agreem
I do not agree with Steve's assertion about lower cost hardware making piracy less desireable. I sure don't see any Microsoft related hardware that is priced much lower than competing products. I've always seen people who are able purchase hardware that is better than Software in terms of capability because software just passes away so quickly at times. [There are healthy margins out there though] I realize that this is not a main part of a computer, but I think there is a large enough price disparity to wonder about cheaper hardware. When I was in Beijing this Summer, I picked up a Logitec Orbit Webcam for about $13 US. On Pricewatch was Logitech QuickCam Orbit Webcam 961310-0403 Retail for $109.00. The cheapest webcams I've found anywhere here in the US is $16 on Pricewatch and certainly NOT anywhere close to the quality I have.
If regulation happens a certain firm with cash may jump in and say "REGULATE ME PLEASE!!!" because they are closer to conforming with whatever regulations will be passed. This will create a barrier to entry for small guys because they can't afford to comply. Goodbye competition.
This happened with the Tabacco companies. Let's see what happens here.
I'm certainly glad that it was detected and responded to. I hope the spectrum doesn't get too messy and create this situation often, but it does show that someone is paying attention when there is a cry for help. (Thinking out in the ocean here).
IT isn't just information technology, or messing with machines, installs, networks or databases. Being an IT professional means that you connect with others in the organization and not just get stuck in a corner. There is a fair amount of work to be done, but most of the work probably should deal with your relationship with your co-workers or bosses. You have to work into position of being an allie and have them be open to becoming educated. If you treat people intelligently and inform your bosses of progress that's been made with their other employees it will shine for you. When you are out of the loop, you become some foreign fire fighter that's just a 911 page away to serve up answers quick and disappear into the wood work. It's people politics and selling yourself. Don't see anthing as an end, but a means. Each day you can empower others and develop good relationships where they can pull you up with them because you're an asset and not a service. Anyone can learn to fix a machine or crimp CAT-5, but a wise worker will see past the duty and see the big picture. The loathed incompetent managers that I've seen some posts refer to, may be people with people skills who became something more outstanding in their superiors' eyes than just a misunderstood and underappreciated fire fighter.
Most of the comments I've read seem pretty negative in nature. Looking at all the bad parts of this situation. Privacy has a context. It is, something that you don't want other people to know. Why do things that you should feel the need to hide from public view? It just comes down to an attention factor after that. A seemingly unimportant event normally, gains great publicity. Was it really the event that was the problem, or the publicity it received. If you believe there is a God, everything is seen. If you don't believe in a God, everything can be found out.