Social security has no money...just bonds which are nothing by IOU's. It is a huge ponzi scheme. All excess funds (from the baby boomers in their peak earning years) go into the general fund to be wasted (spent) by our congress critters. Expect a quick decision on SCO:).
I am warning you if you advertise a highly technical IT position expect hundreds of resumes to start flooding you. Most of these will be from highly qualified people. The first task is to "weed" through them. Pick out just those with M.S. or pH.D's and lots of certs. Then from those pick out one who have relevent real-world experience and now you have a stack that you can work with. Oh yeah, they might want more than $10,000 a year so I guess I see Bill's point.
I teach computer programming part time at a local college - when students sign-up:(. 50% of their grade is based on their comments. I have spent too many years in industry to dismiss that value of good comments in code. Commenting first helps you think through your solution then you stomp down your code and clean-up your comments. Time and again this will take you LESS time and produce higher quality code then just banging away.
We WinRunner and TestDirector for this at work. We built a WinRunner framework so that business analysts can basically "script" the test using excel data sheets. We run at night using TestDirector and review the results in the morning. There is a lot of up front work but once you get everything working it is pretty easy to maintain and use with minimal resource expense. Of course any major change in the application will break things. It is no panacea but we are having decent results.
I teach part time at a community college and we have courses that transfer and courses that do not. The ones I teach all transfer to the big schools so students can save a bit of money getting the lower division course work out of the way. We work closely with the larger universities in the area to ensure that we cover all the required material so that our students are properly prepared when they transfer.
Most employers will not give you 5 minutes notice. I work in PA which is an "at will" State, which means that legally no notice or reason is legally required. You simply give you employer back any property that belongs to them and walk out. They call that burning bridges but almost every company that I ever worked for and gave "professional" notice to had a policy of never hiring back a person who leaves no matter what. Screw them. They certainly will screw you when the time is right.
This is the best argument I have heard on this board. I do not believe in global warming at all. Years ago it was the coming ice age. The world functions on long-term cycles. Anyway, you are right about our energy consumption. Our most vulnerable area is resource consumption (not just oil) in general...there will be a day of reckoning and it will be very painful. I doubt that our current attempt to control the world's oil supply is going to buy us much time...in fact it could precipitate a few more wars which we are not prepared to handle, quite frankly.
When I was in high school pollution was causing the next "ice age." You know, global cooling. Well, that failed so they jumped on global warming. In about 10 to 20 years it will be the coming ice again. This is a normal cycle. Not to say pollution is not bad, but Kyoto was specifically designed to destroy the economic power of the USA. By letting China, Mexico, et al pollute all they want negates the intent anyway. We called them on their little ruse to destroy us. They have to go back to the drawing board now. As soon as Canada and Europe discover how stupid they have been they will abandon it too. What we need is a global treaty that EVERYBODY follows.
I read that she is receiving a "paltry" 21 million dollars for leaving. Add that on top of the booty for destroying Compaq and I have to say what value is there in coming to work and trying to do a good job? She has totally hosed the company and I doubt (but hope) that they will be able to turn-around the disaster. Her next statement will be something like, "I am leaving to spend time with my family." That is the usual CEO line for "I just got fired." Instead of rewarding Carly, they should file suit against her for her botched management of the company.
Who would buy a product like this? Are we going to wear little radio transmitters that friendly devices pick-up and decide that we need our privacy? Yeah, right. Don't worry, Patriot Act III will over-rule any privacy fantisies that you may have had anyway...comrade.
Dude, do you work at my company? We bought a COTS product and then set out to customize it to the nth degree. Nobody EVER asked the business if they could change their processes. Now our "ship" is sinking into the continental shelf. The project manager quit, the lead architect quit, the business manager quit,... I shall stop there. Basically, software project fail because of clueless management. People get promoted into IT management and demonstrate utter incompetence. They compensate by firing scapegoats. Two so far in my group.
BE shocked, be very shocked. There is NO MONEY in the social security trust fund. That "lock box" is full of IOU's from the same government that is running massive deficits just to wage war in the Middle East - our SUV's need the oil, I guess.
Anyway, I think we are presently "takiing care" of social security right now through a continued devaluation of the dollar. Someday you will get every penny...it just won't buy you anything.
Also, go read-up on what a ponzi scheme is and ask youself why our government is not arresting and prosecuting itself. The only crisis is social security is the stupid peasants who can't think and will get what they deserve - screwed!
There is a shortage...of workers willing to work 60 hour weeks for $15,000 / year. Truly, there is a shortage in that context. Also, by not being able to find "qualified" workers the backsides of incompetent middle-managers is kept nicely covered:).
Steve is not stupid by any means. He knew full well that he was lying. As we all know in business, the liars typically get away with their lies. Steve is scaring his audience into sticking with the devil they know. In the 1980's you could not get fired for sticking with IBM regardless of whether the product worked or not. That is how things are now. Just stick with Micro$oft and you keep your job. Whether your products work or not is not relevant.
Essentially, Balmer is stating that the United States will eventually go after them. Given our recent escapades invading Countries with no pretense, I am sure places like Singapore are plenty scared. Sure he lied, but his audience will accept it hook, line and sinker.
You poor people. I have a stone, that's right, stone hot water heater put in my house when it was built in 1954. It may never leave my basement because of the weight, but it is cold to touch on the outside and the water is kept at 140 F inside. So I guess that makes it 50 years old with only a couple of replacement heating elements. I can't think of any hot water heater made today that would last that long. It is only a single element so it is not as efficient as it could be I suppose.
The government does not have the stomach to stop it's ponzi scheme. When the proverbial shit hits the fan people will still receive their "entitlement." It just won't be worth anything. The sitting President will have to go to war (wag the dog) as long as the countries who design our weapons systems let him:).
I started out "life" as an engineer. By the early nineties that was pretty much gone. I don't know if it was outsourcing or what - just companies going out of business or downsizing. I was always good with computers so I focused on that aspect of my career. Frankly, programming seemed to be what I was doing the most of as an engineer anyway.
With computer technology on the "outs" in the U.S. there is little for technically-minded people to do. You can spend 100k on college and work at a grocery store, but I would think that is "a bit" of a disappointment. I teach at the college level part time and we are still seeing a continued drop-off in technical courses. I am surprised that I am still teaching this term. Nevertheless, people go to college to try to obtain decent jobs. So students will gravitate toward those areas that have the best pay / interest for them.
What I worry about is what I may have to do next. I have a lot of un / under employed colleagues. I know many people who have switched careers (Real Estate, etc.). Seriously, I would consider becoming an automobile mechanic or residential electrician. Let's see, and auto mechanic with a P.E. license or an electrician with a BSEE. With IT salaries falling these are viable options in America. I just think it would be funny that the grease monky who works on your car has a master's degree, makes more money and works less hours than his previous corporate job.
The fact is the developing countries can produce perfectly good engineers which means that all engineers have to compete with them. I do not believe that anybody can stop the world economy. I don't believe in "zero-sum" economics, but in the short term there is going to be a lot of pain from the richer / costlier countries. Also, let's hope the Chinese and Russians do a nice job designing our next generation military systems so that we can continue picking on people we don't like...or vote Bush out.
Let's see, we want to attrach women into a contracting field field where if you are lucking you have the career lifetime of a sports figure but without the money. So why would any women (or man) want to enter this field again? I am not getting it.
Isn't that really just format c: at the DOS prompt? I think Windows qualifies as a virus by itself. Including anti virus software with Windows would have to render it more useless or better yet simply uninstall it.
Perhaps select "flavors" of Linux could be marketed as "Windows Anti-Virus" software. It makes sense to me.
I used to own a 1991 Stealth R/T. I purchased the Mitsubishi factory repair manual for it. Not the crap from Pep Boys, but one from the dealer. I could read back ALL of my computer codes using a simple VOM. The manual also included instructions on how to calibrate various sensors using standard shop tools. I managed to perform my own sensor replacement and repair operations myself. The timing belt, clutch, etc. were definitely reserved for the dealer. I doubt you can still do this these days.
Let's not forget how hard it is to find a job in the sciences. I started out life as a controls engineer (p.e. license, etc.) I then went into computing since all the companies I worked for failed. With computing failing I work for a mortgage company. I have an MSCS and I teach college as an adjunct at night. We just hired a chemical engineer to be a business analyst. He is only a couple years out of college and could not find work. So tell me, why would anybody want to pursue the sciences in the U.S. Oh yeah, I did the defense thing for awhile but I did not like having to falsify documents. They told me I would be fired for accurate reporting so I quit.
I switched to TaxCut when they pulled these shenanigans and I am quite happy with the program. The only down side is I have to run it on an old Windoze computer. Perhaps someday they will have a Linux port. Anyway, so long Intuit. You blew it and I am not coming back!
My brother is a doctor and all of his transcription is done in India over night. He has his completed transcriptions in his e-mail in box the next morning when he comes in. I ask:
Is the e-mail encrypted? I doubt it.
Does India or any other country really care about U.S. privacy law? No.
What will happen when all of our financial information is "off-shored"? They may own us.
Blaming schools is nothing more than a cop out. It is all about the money. You can argue that Americans earn too much. That may be true and time will make any necessary adjustments. We have much higher costs than many other countries. We can no longer dump our waste into our rivers - at least not as easily as before. We are not allowed to force our prisoners to work which I would like to change. Though not as strong as Europe we have many environmental and worker's rights laws which simply make us a high cost nation.
Add to that a very expensive and over-priced higher education system and I guess we are screwed! When somebody shells out 100k for an engineering degree they just "might" expect a reasonable salary and career. Why spend all that money and go through the effort for poor job prospects, no respect and a mid-life career change? I should know: B.S. Univ. of CA in Engineering, P.E. license, M.S. in C.S. I am a part time C.S. instructor but class size is dropping 20% a semester so I am probably about finished with that as well.
Just why go through the effort and expense of engineering / C.S. to have a less than satisfying career...if any at all? Drink your way through college and become a lawyer, I say. Then you can sue your way to riches, right? They seem to be the only ones "winning" right now.
Remember, accountants are next. Virtually any job that requires computational competence is destined to be sent outside of the U.S. That is why "smart" kids do not pursue education and careers in math and science. Do we need engineers in the United States? Apparently not!
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Social security has no money...just bonds which are nothing by IOU's. It is a huge ponzi scheme. All excess funds (from the baby boomers in their peak earning years) go into the general fund to be wasted (spent) by our congress critters. Expect a quick decision on SCO :).
I am warning you if you advertise a highly technical IT position expect hundreds of resumes to start flooding you. Most of these will be from highly qualified people. The first task is to "weed" through them. Pick out just those with M.S. or pH.D's and lots of certs. Then from those pick out one who have relevent real-world experience and now you have a stack that you can work with. Oh yeah, they might want more than $10,000 a year so I guess I see Bill's point.
I teach computer programming part time at a local college - when students sign-up :(. 50% of their grade is based on their comments. I have spent too many years in industry to dismiss that value of good comments in code. Commenting first helps you think through your solution then you stomp down your code and clean-up your comments. Time and again this will take you LESS time and produce higher quality code then just banging away.
We WinRunner and TestDirector for this at work. We built a WinRunner framework so that business analysts can basically "script" the test using excel data sheets. We run at night using TestDirector and review the results in the morning. There is a lot of up front work but once you get everything working it is pretty easy to maintain and use with minimal resource expense. Of course any major change in the application will break things. It is no panacea but we are having decent results.
I teach part time at a community college and we have courses that transfer and courses that do not. The ones I teach all transfer to the big schools so students can save a bit of money getting the lower division course work out of the way. We work closely with the larger universities in the area to ensure that we cover all the required material so that our students are properly prepared when they transfer.
Most employers will not give you 5 minutes notice. I work in PA which is an "at will" State, which means that legally no notice or reason is legally required. You simply give you employer back any property that belongs to them and walk out. They call that burning bridges but almost every company that I ever worked for and gave "professional" notice to had a policy of never hiring back a person who leaves no matter what. Screw them. They certainly will screw you when the time is right.
This is the best argument I have heard on this board. I do not believe in global warming at all. Years ago it was the coming ice age. The world functions on long-term cycles. Anyway, you are right about our energy consumption. Our most vulnerable area is resource consumption (not just oil) in general...there will be a day of reckoning and it will be very painful. I doubt that our current attempt to control the world's oil supply is going to buy us much time...in fact it could precipitate a few more wars which we are not prepared to handle, quite frankly.
When I was in high school pollution was causing the next "ice age." You know, global cooling. Well, that failed so they jumped on global warming. In about 10 to 20 years it will be the coming ice again. This is a normal cycle. Not to say pollution is not bad, but Kyoto was specifically designed to destroy the economic power of the USA. By letting China, Mexico, et al pollute all they want negates the intent anyway. We called them on their little ruse to destroy us. They have to go back to the drawing board now. As soon as Canada and Europe discover how stupid they have been they will abandon it too. What we need is a global treaty that EVERYBODY follows.
I read that she is receiving a "paltry" 21 million dollars for leaving. Add that on top of the booty for destroying Compaq and I have to say what value is there in coming to work and trying to do a good job? She has totally hosed the company and I doubt (but hope) that they will be able to turn-around the disaster. Her next statement will be something like, "I am leaving to spend time with my family." That is the usual CEO line for "I just got fired." Instead of rewarding Carly, they should file suit against her for her botched management of the company.
Who would buy a product like this? Are we going to wear little radio transmitters that friendly devices pick-up and decide that we need our privacy? Yeah, right. Don't worry, Patriot Act III will over-rule any privacy fantisies that you may have had anyway...comrade.
Dude, do you work at my company? We bought a COTS product and then set out to customize it to the nth degree. Nobody EVER asked the business if they could change their processes. Now our "ship" is sinking into the continental shelf. The project manager quit, the lead architect quit, the business manager quit, ... I shall stop there. Basically, software project fail because of clueless management. People get promoted into IT management and demonstrate utter incompetence. They compensate by firing scapegoats. Two so far in my group.
BE shocked, be very shocked. There is NO MONEY in the social security trust fund. That "lock box" is full of IOU's from the same government that is running massive deficits just to wage war in the Middle East - our SUV's need the oil, I guess. Anyway, I think we are presently "takiing care" of social security right now through a continued devaluation of the dollar. Someday you will get every penny...it just won't buy you anything. Also, go read-up on what a ponzi scheme is and ask youself why our government is not arresting and prosecuting itself. The only crisis is social security is the stupid peasants who can't think and will get what they deserve - screwed!
There is a shortage...of workers willing to work 60 hour weeks for $15,000 / year. Truly, there is a shortage in that context. Also, by not being able to find "qualified" workers the backsides of incompetent middle-managers is kept nicely covered :).
Steve is not stupid by any means. He knew full well that he was lying. As we all know in business, the liars typically get away with their lies. Steve is scaring his audience into sticking with the devil they know. In the 1980's you could not get fired for sticking with IBM regardless of whether the product worked or not. That is how things are now. Just stick with Micro$oft and you keep your job. Whether your products work or not is not relevant. Essentially, Balmer is stating that the United States will eventually go after them. Given our recent escapades invading Countries with no pretense, I am sure places like Singapore are plenty scared. Sure he lied, but his audience will accept it hook, line and sinker.
You poor people. I have a stone, that's right, stone hot water heater put in my house when it was built in 1954. It may never leave my basement because of the weight, but it is cold to touch on the outside and the water is kept at 140 F inside. So I guess that makes it 50 years old with only a couple of replacement heating elements. I can't think of any hot water heater made today that would last that long. It is only a single element so it is not as efficient as it could be I suppose.
The government does not have the stomach to stop it's ponzi scheme. When the proverbial shit hits the fan people will still receive their "entitlement." It just won't be worth anything. The sitting President will have to go to war (wag the dog) as long as the countries who design our weapons systems let him :).
I started out "life" as an engineer. By the early nineties that was pretty much gone. I don't know if it was outsourcing or what - just companies going out of business or downsizing. I was always good with computers so I focused on that aspect of my career. Frankly, programming seemed to be what I was doing the most of as an engineer anyway. With computer technology on the "outs" in the U.S. there is little for technically-minded people to do. You can spend 100k on college and work at a grocery store, but I would think that is "a bit" of a disappointment. I teach at the college level part time and we are still seeing a continued drop-off in technical courses. I am surprised that I am still teaching this term. Nevertheless, people go to college to try to obtain decent jobs. So students will gravitate toward those areas that have the best pay / interest for them. What I worry about is what I may have to do next. I have a lot of un / under employed colleagues. I know many people who have switched careers (Real Estate, etc.). Seriously, I would consider becoming an automobile mechanic or residential electrician. Let's see, and auto mechanic with a P.E. license or an electrician with a BSEE. With IT salaries falling these are viable options in America. I just think it would be funny that the grease monky who works on your car has a master's degree, makes more money and works less hours than his previous corporate job. The fact is the developing countries can produce perfectly good engineers which means that all engineers have to compete with them. I do not believe that anybody can stop the world economy. I don't believe in "zero-sum" economics, but in the short term there is going to be a lot of pain from the richer / costlier countries. Also, let's hope the Chinese and Russians do a nice job designing our next generation military systems so that we can continue picking on people we don't like...or vote Bush out.
Let's see, we want to attrach women into a contracting field field where if you are lucking you have the career lifetime of a sports figure but without the money. So why would any women (or man) want to enter this field again? I am not getting it.
Isn't that really just format c: at the DOS prompt? I think Windows qualifies as a virus by itself. Including anti virus software with Windows would have to render it more useless or better yet simply uninstall it. Perhaps select "flavors" of Linux could be marketed as "Windows Anti-Virus" software. It makes sense to me.
I used to own a 1991 Stealth R/T. I purchased the Mitsubishi factory repair manual for it. Not the crap from Pep Boys, but one from the dealer. I could read back ALL of my computer codes using a simple VOM. The manual also included instructions on how to calibrate various sensors using standard shop tools. I managed to perform my own sensor replacement and repair operations myself. The timing belt, clutch, etc. were definitely reserved for the dealer. I doubt you can still do this these days.
Let's not forget how hard it is to find a job in the sciences. I started out life as a controls engineer (p.e. license, etc.) I then went into computing since all the companies I worked for failed. With computing failing I work for a mortgage company. I have an MSCS and I teach college as an adjunct at night. We just hired a chemical engineer to be a business analyst. He is only a couple years out of college and could not find work. So tell me, why would anybody want to pursue the sciences in the U.S. Oh yeah, I did the defense thing for awhile but I did not like having to falsify documents. They told me I would be fired for accurate reporting so I quit.
I switched to TaxCut when they pulled these shenanigans and I am quite happy with the program. The only down side is I have to run it on an old Windoze computer. Perhaps someday they will have a Linux port. Anyway, so long Intuit. You blew it and I am not coming back!
My brother is a doctor and all of his transcription is done in India over night. He has his completed transcriptions in his e-mail in box the next morning when he comes in. I ask:
Is the e-mail encrypted? I doubt it.
Does India or any other country really care about U.S. privacy law? No.
What will happen when all of our financial information is "off-shored"? They may own us.
Blaming schools is nothing more than a cop out. It is all about the money. You can argue that Americans earn too much. That may be true and time will make any necessary adjustments. We have much higher costs than many other countries. We can no longer dump our waste into our rivers - at least not as easily as before. We are not allowed to force our prisoners to work which I would like to change. Though not as strong as Europe we have many environmental and worker's rights laws which simply make us a high cost nation. Add to that a very expensive and over-priced higher education system and I guess we are screwed! When somebody shells out 100k for an engineering degree they just "might" expect a reasonable salary and career. Why spend all that money and go through the effort for poor job prospects, no respect and a mid-life career change? I should know: B.S. Univ. of CA in Engineering, P.E. license, M.S. in C.S. I am a part time C.S. instructor but class size is dropping 20% a semester so I am probably about finished with that as well. Just why go through the effort and expense of engineering / C.S. to have a less than satisfying career...if any at all? Drink your way through college and become a lawyer, I say. Then you can sue your way to riches, right? They seem to be the only ones "winning" right now. Remember, accountants are next. Virtually any job that requires computational competence is destined to be sent outside of the U.S. That is why "smart" kids do not pursue education and careers in math and science. Do we need engineers in the United States? Apparently not!
This service is also being bundled with naming a star after your company as well. Who cares, it is the stupid customer who ultimately pays.