That's good advice. My intention is to add a full room above the garage (2.5 car) which will slightly more than double the room I have now. With that I can have 2 vocal isolations, one drum isolation, a grandroom, and a console room. Hopefully that'll do me for the long run. But yeah, not having to have adats and tape reels will save some space.
I suppose I ought to consider some closets for the multitudes of guitars, basses, fiddles, etc... that I've collected over the years. I'm just not looking forward to all the saudering...
The best advice I can give you for a starter would be to spend the few extra dollars on 24/96 audio cards. I have yet to settle on a software package, but have used Cakewalk and ProTools so far. ProTools for the PC forces you to use ProTools hardware (that was at least a year ago, maybe they've changed since then, but I won't go back to 'em), but the Mac version doesn't have that problem. I like Cakewalk... hopefully someone with more software experience will reply to you though.
Otherwise, here's a decent link from Harmony-Central that might help.
I did like when the articled mentioned using the laptop for edits. Of course, the tracks are already recorded at that point. Having gone to both UNT and Belmont (although I didn't finish at either) I wouldn't say Berkely in Boston is the forecaster of things to come in studios.
One brag, we've decided to sell our house and have one built... so I finally get my own room (large enough too) for a studio. I've already started picking out woods for the isolation booths.
Actually, professional recording studios still cost quite a bit to build. Isolation booths with different kinds of hardwoods for different timbres, extremely high end consoles, seperate mixers for each musician in the grandroom for their own monitor mix, etc... all adds up. If I were to show up for session work in somebody's garage, I would expect garage quality, and be pleasantly surprised by anything better (which is what this article eludes to). But if I were to pay $85+/hr for a studio, and $85+/hr for an engineer, I would expect an extremely professional studio with all the trimmings. Just expereince talking...
That being said, there is still no reason for the high price of CD's these days, but this article isn't justification to lower them.
What about 24/96 audio cards though? I use a PC for recording at home, with 3 Lynx2's (4 balanced/unbalanced inputs for 12 realtime channels), all PCI inputs. Can you stuff that into laptops? I'd like to add 3 more cards, and will soon, for 24 tracks at a time, all 24/96.
Is it just the notion that you can do more demo quality recording and be mobile? I just wouldn't think you can get the same quality and the same full feature with a laptop.
Ahhhh, finally someone who read the press release. This guy's arguement is not to toss Linux out as a candidate, but to keep from locking Linux in instead. Bidding from contractors should be open. If someone wants to implement a BSD system, a Mac system, a Windows system, a 390, whatever... the bidding should be open to all choices. It's up to the folks in charge of their own systems to determine their needs.
My fiance is a police officer, and right now her PD is tied to a really crappy reporting system, because someone in the state's capital decided they had to stick with an as/400 (not that as/400's suck, but there's not a lot of choice out there in tools for PD's on that platform, nor bids to write code). They suffer because some beurocrat decided to lock them into a particular system.
Didn't you watch Dragnet? Ignorance of the law is no excuse.
TvLand jokes aside, it's true that ignorance of the law is no excuse. However, ignorance of the action (as I think you're suggesting) of a law being broken could be. I would liken it to a car accident happening behind you that you don't see. If you do see an accident and fail to stop and render aid, you've broken a law. But if you didn't see it happen, you haven't broken any laws.
However, like someone posted earlier, the sad truth is it all comes down to whose lawyer is better/costs more, especially in civil cases, where it's the preponderance of the evidence.
You're right. I've seen corporate IP lawsuits 3 times in my career (none that I was directly involved in other than being an expert witness) and all three times the employee won. The company can only legally claim the work you've done for them, while at work, and only if it's explicitly detailed in the contract.
The only unfair dismissals are found under EEOC, OSHA, etc... guidelines. An employer can fire you because they don't like the color of your hair. Believe me, this is not guessing, it's something I know very well, as I've written code for human resources departments for the last 9 years.
I suppose you're right. But a 15% premium isn't a lot to a company for a warm body, at least for mid siezed and above.
Here's another way I look at it. Hiring is typically cyclical (down in the cycle right now). You can
demand more of the managers that are hiring by having them dive through the mess of resumes, maybe spend money on testing quite a few of them that seem to match, spend time interviewing them, etc..
hire more staff in HR to handle that for the managers (either experts in each field, or you get a non-IT person weeding through IT resumes... we all know how successful that would be)
use a headhunter
Option 3 keeps the company headcount down when the cycle is at the bottom, as we're seeing now. You might pay $10k per employee, spending $120k/yr, but you also might be paying your own workforce more than $120k in added hours, added staff, or loss of productivity to manage all of that.
I don't have any empirical data to prove any of that... it's all just my guesses. But, given that the headhunting industry is as large as it is, I'd imagine that the numbers are fairly close.
You're missing the point. If I were an employer and I had an employee that hurt a business relationship by using their status as a security expert (which either the got from my company or perpetuated through my company), I would fire them on the spot.
Similar to the hollywood elite who use their status as a public figure to soapbox their own personal beliefs. They have an advantage by being public figures that you and I don't have... free access to the media. However, you can bet that if one of them got on TV and said "Everyone should download movies for free, rather than buy them from MGM" that they wouldn't work for MGM again.
The key was informed general public. Most people could care less about security consultants. The informed general public could be potential clients of this company. They're the ones who should be concened with this company's reputation. Current clients also, but they obviously aren't that informed since they signed on with them anyway.
Gheez!!! Why is everyone else, who has no involvement with this company, saying what they're supposed to do, and how they're supposed to act? This is America, and that company broke exactly zero laws. While most of us will disagree with their reasoning behind it, that company is not "supposed" to do anything.
While this hurts their reputation with the informed general public, nothing wrong, according to US law, happened.
When you do something on your own time and dime, and you're a leading expert at a company in the same field as your comments were made, you may have just damaged the company's relationship with another. While that's fine and dandy, the company loses money. Maybe the should. Maybe their relationship is a distasteful one anyway. But the bottom line is, when someone causes a company that kind of stress, they generally get let go.
You don't own your job, your company does. All you own is your career.
This has nothing to do with libel, or slander for that matter. It has everything to do with the idea that an employer does not have to retain anyone on it's payroll for any reason whatsoever. If I have a company, you cannot force me to keep someone under my employ that I don't want to (other than the OSHA, EEOC type laws here in the US). That's absurd!
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Where does that say anything about being able to keep your job when you exercise your right to say what you want? He didn't go to jail, so freedom of speech was upheld.
You seem to be implying that the boss is doing a favour to the workers by giving them a job, rather than the way it really is. The workers' labour is worth more to the company than the company's wages are to the workers.
That's extremely arrogant. While I take pride in myself and my work, and would not compromise myself, my morals, ethics, or my beliefs for an employer, I am fully aware that any of those can get me terminated from this company at any time. My company has a dress code, and I abide by it. My company has policies about timekeeping, and I abide by them. If I don't like them, then I don't have to work here.
I liken it to the Jewish man who had his son join the Boy Scouts of America (a Christian organization), then sued them for saying a Christian prayer before every meeting (he lost). There is no law saying that any private organization has to allow freedom of any kind in their arena. If a company says you have to wear blue suits (old IBM) then either you do, or you leave.
While I don't really like the idea of someone getting let go for speaking their mind, what's unfair about it? His company clearly has ties to MS, and he jeopardized those ties with his statements. If it were his own company, he could have felt free to say anything about anyone he wanted to, and dealt with the aftermath of his comments on his own. But it was someone elses company... someone who was (yuck) concerned about their business relationship with Microsoft.
While the first amendment gives every American the freedom to express their beliefs/thoughts and guarantee no retribution from the government, it gives us no protection from employers.
Here's a proof. Go to your boss. Call that boss every foul word you can think of, and then say you were exercising your freedom of speech. Better yet, do it over an intercom at work, broadening your audience. You will probably be fired, but not wind up in court.
When you work for someone else, you have to play by their rules. Sometimes those rules allow for changes to be made by going through said company's proper channels, sometimes there is no room for discussion at all. Any way you look at it, they are the ones who have bestowed the job.... not the other way around.
I think the problem this guy ran into was the size of his audience. Maybe when he spoke at conferences about security and Windows (oxymoron that it is), his user base was a select group, and small by comparison. But in print, your audience can be unlimited, and so can the damages of your statement.
It might take a lot longer to fill the position if you don't...
There are often times (especially here, we're a chemical manufacturing company) when you don't have the luxury of waiting to find that fit on your own. It's just the nature of the business.
You're right, though, about the contractor temporarily filling the position. Most companies I've dealt with in the last few years do a contract-to-hire position. It gives them a chance to see if you're going to fit the position, AND it gives you a chance to see if you want it.
Even with that temporary contractor method, you'd still need to deal with the headhunters though. They've really wedged themselves into the IT world, at least in my experience.
I suppose the demeaning tone was for a humor mod, but in case you were wondering, Java is actually on my resume, along with C, C++, C++ with MFC, Perl, and (don't hate me) even Visual Basic. What this guy wanted was PowerBuilder, which is a Basic language, but not one I've ever used. It was also for a turnkey program. They wanted PowerBuilder because that's what all the other current apps were written in.
If I'm going to sell myself, or allow a headhunter to sell me, as a programmer in a particular language, I need to have a handle on that language first. If not, I'm just as dishonest as the headhunter.
I do, actually. But generally headhunters sell candidates based on their experience with the tools used at the site. And these days, nobody pays to wait for you to get up to speed. My resume has all of the tools/languages that I know very well on it, and when I get up to speed on one, I add it.
I write code for an HR group at a large company, and I can tell you why. Companies don't want to weed through the 300 resumes they get for one position. Quite honestly, they don't have the time. So they trust (at their own peril) a recruiting firm to handle the legwork for them, and narrow it down to a reasonable number.
For that, they don't mind paying a fee. It does save time and money for the company. Unfortunately, they can get screwed on that deal by a flesh-pimp-headhunter. That will only happen once, though, and most companies (at least this one) won't deal with that agency again.
I have, but it was deep into my career as a developer before I found one.
Most seem to be flesh pimps... put a warm body in a seat... as long as they get their check. That can not only ruin their reputation with companies out there, but can ruin a developer's career and self esteem.
I have to wonder, in retrospect, if part of the problem was me though. I now know exactly how to talk with head hunters, and think I am pretty good at getting a feel for what they're actually about. I have no problem telling them when they're wrong, and when I think they're trying to pimp me out.
I have a good working relationship with two head hunters now, and they know my skillset very well. I haven't had a problem with the flesh pimps (other than the usual cold calls) in some time.
I did, once, have one ask me how long it would take for me to learn a particular language that wasn't on my resume. I asked him how long it would take him to learn Portugese. He got the message.
Slashdot Mirror
That's good advice. My intention is to add a full room above the garage (2.5 car) which will slightly more than double the room I have now. With that I can have 2 vocal isolations, one drum isolation, a grandroom, and a console room. Hopefully that'll do me for the long run. But yeah, not having to have adats and tape reels will save some space.
I suppose I ought to consider some closets for the multitudes of guitars, basses, fiddles, etc... that I've collected over the years. I'm just not looking forward to all the saudering...
The best advice I can give you for a starter would be to spend the few extra dollars on 24/96 audio cards. I have yet to settle on a software package, but have used Cakewalk and ProTools so far. ProTools for the PC forces you to use ProTools hardware (that was at least a year ago, maybe they've changed since then, but I won't go back to 'em), but the Mac version doesn't have that problem. I like Cakewalk... hopefully someone with more software experience will reply to you though.
Otherwise, here's a decent link from Harmony-Central that might help.
Hey, that's cool! Who makes that one, and would you buy it again?
I did like when the articled mentioned using the laptop for edits. Of course, the tracks are already recorded at that point. Having gone to both UNT and Belmont (although I didn't finish at either) I wouldn't say Berkely in Boston is the forecaster of things to come in studios.
One brag, we've decided to sell our house and have one built... so I finally get my own room (large enough too) for a studio. I've already started picking out woods for the isolation booths.
Actually, professional recording studios still cost quite a bit to build. Isolation booths with different kinds of hardwoods for different timbres, extremely high end consoles, seperate mixers for each musician in the grandroom for their own monitor mix, etc... all adds up. If I were to show up for session work in somebody's garage, I would expect garage quality, and be pleasantly surprised by anything better (which is what this article eludes to). But if I were to pay $85+/hr for a studio, and $85+/hr for an engineer, I would expect an extremely professional studio with all the trimmings. Just expereince talking...
That being said, there is still no reason for the high price of CD's these days, but this article isn't justification to lower them.
What about 24/96 audio cards though? I use a PC for recording at home, with 3 Lynx2's (4 balanced/unbalanced inputs for 12 realtime channels), all PCI inputs. Can you stuff that into laptops? I'd like to add 3 more cards, and will soon, for 24 tracks at a time, all 24/96.
Is it just the notion that you can do more demo quality recording and be mobile? I just wouldn't think you can get the same quality and the same full feature with a laptop.
Ahhhh, finally someone who read the press release. This guy's arguement is not to toss Linux out as a candidate, but to keep from locking Linux in instead. Bidding from contractors should be open. If someone wants to implement a BSD system, a Mac system, a Windows system, a 390, whatever... the bidding should be open to all choices. It's up to the folks in charge of their own systems to determine their needs.
My fiance is a police officer, and right now her PD is tied to a really crappy reporting system, because someone in the state's capital decided they had to stick with an as/400 (not that as/400's suck, but there's not a lot of choice out there in tools for PD's on that platform, nor bids to write code). They suffer because some beurocrat decided to lock them into a particular system.
Didn't you watch Dragnet? Ignorance of the law is no excuse.
TvLand jokes aside, it's true that ignorance of the law is no excuse. However, ignorance of the action (as I think you're suggesting) of a law being broken could be. I would liken it to a car accident happening behind you that you don't see. If you do see an accident and fail to stop and render aid, you've broken a law. But if you didn't see it happen, you haven't broken any laws.
However, like someone posted earlier, the sad truth is it all comes down to whose lawyer is better/costs more, especially in civil cases, where it's the preponderance of the evidence.
You're right. I've seen corporate IP lawsuits 3 times in my career (none that I was directly involved in other than being an expert witness) and all three times the employee won. The company can only legally claim the work you've done for them, while at work, and only if it's explicitly detailed in the contract.
Your darned tootin it is.... asswipe.
<\american>
The only unfair dismissals are found under EEOC, OSHA, etc... guidelines. An employer can fire you because they don't like the color of your hair. Believe me, this is not guessing, it's something I know very well, as I've written code for human resources departments for the last 9 years.
Here's another way I look at it. Hiring is typically cyclical (down in the cycle right now). You can
- demand more of the managers that are hiring by having them dive through the mess of resumes, maybe spend money on testing quite a few of them that seem to match, spend time interviewing them, etc..
- hire more staff in HR to handle that for the managers (either experts in each field, or you get a non-IT person weeding through IT resumes... we all know how successful that would be)
- use a headhunter
Option 3 keeps the company headcount down when the cycle is at the bottom, as we're seeing now. You might pay $10k per employee, spending $120k/yr, but you also might be paying your own workforce more than $120k in added hours, added staff, or loss of productivity to manage all of that.I don't have any empirical data to prove any of that... it's all just my guesses. But, given that the headhunting industry is as large as it is, I'd imagine that the numbers are fairly close.
You're missing the point. If I were an employer and I had an employee that hurt a business relationship by using their status as a security expert (which either the got from my company or perpetuated through my company), I would fire them on the spot.
Similar to the hollywood elite who use their status as a public figure to soapbox their own personal beliefs. They have an advantage by being public figures that you and I don't have... free access to the media. However, you can bet that if one of them got on TV and said "Everyone should download movies for free, rather than buy them from MGM" that they wouldn't work for MGM again.
The key was informed general public. Most people could care less about security consultants. The informed general public could be potential clients of this company. They're the ones who should be concened with this company's reputation. Current clients also, but they obviously aren't that informed since they signed on with them anyway.
True, but that's up to the company, and they'll have to live with their decision.
Gheez!!! Why is everyone else, who has no involvement with this company, saying what they're supposed to do, and how they're supposed to act? This is America, and that company broke exactly zero laws. While most of us will disagree with their reasoning behind it, that company is not "supposed" to do anything.
While this hurts their reputation with the informed general public, nothing wrong, according to US law, happened.
When you do something on your own time and dime, and you're a leading expert at a company in the same field as your comments were made, you may have just damaged the company's relationship with another. While that's fine and dandy, the company loses money. Maybe the should. Maybe their relationship is a distasteful one anyway. But the bottom line is, when someone causes a company that kind of stress, they generally get let go.
You don't own your job, your company does. All you own is your career.
This has nothing to do with libel, or slander for that matter. It has everything to do with the idea that an employer does not have to retain anyone on it's payroll for any reason whatsoever. If I have a company, you cannot force me to keep someone under my employ that I don't want to (other than the OSHA, EEOC type laws here in the US). That's absurd!
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Where does that say anything about being able to keep your job when you exercise your right to say what you want? He didn't go to jail, so freedom of speech was upheld.
You seem to be implying that the boss is doing a favour to the workers by giving them a job, rather than the way it really is. The workers' labour is worth more to the company than the company's wages are to the workers.
That's extremely arrogant. While I take pride in myself and my work, and would not compromise myself, my morals, ethics, or my beliefs for an employer, I am fully aware that any of those can get me terminated from this company at any time. My company has a dress code, and I abide by it. My company has policies about timekeeping, and I abide by them. If I don't like them, then I don't have to work here.
I liken it to the Jewish man who had his son join the Boy Scouts of America (a Christian organization), then sued them for saying a Christian prayer before every meeting (he lost). There is no law saying that any private organization has to allow freedom of any kind in their arena. If a company says you have to wear blue suits (old IBM) then either you do, or you leave.
It's simple really. Their money, their rules.
unfair dismissal
While I don't really like the idea of someone getting let go for speaking their mind, what's unfair about it? His company clearly has ties to MS, and he jeopardized those ties with his statements. If it were his own company, he could have felt free to say anything about anyone he wanted to, and dealt with the aftermath of his comments on his own. But it was someone elses company... someone who was (yuck) concerned about their business relationship with Microsoft.
While the first amendment gives every American the freedom to express their beliefs/thoughts and guarantee no retribution from the government, it gives us no protection from employers.
Here's a proof. Go to your boss. Call that boss every foul word you can think of, and then say you were exercising your freedom of speech. Better yet, do it over an intercom at work, broadening your audience. You will probably be fired, but not wind up in court.
When you work for someone else, you have to play by their rules. Sometimes those rules allow for changes to be made by going through said company's proper channels, sometimes there is no room for discussion at all. Any way you look at it, they are the ones who have bestowed the job.... not the other way around.
I think the problem this guy ran into was the size of his audience. Maybe when he spoke at conferences about security and Windows (oxymoron that it is), his user base was a select group, and small by comparison. But in print, your audience can be unlimited, and so can the damages of your statement.
It might take a lot longer to fill the position if you don't...
There are often times (especially here, we're a chemical manufacturing company) when you don't have the luxury of waiting to find that fit on your own. It's just the nature of the business.
You're right, though, about the contractor temporarily filling the position. Most companies I've dealt with in the last few years do a contract-to-hire position. It gives them a chance to see if you're going to fit the position, AND it gives you a chance to see if you want it.
Even with that temporary contractor method, you'd still need to deal with the headhunters though. They've really wedged themselves into the IT world, at least in my experience.
I suppose the demeaning tone was for a humor mod, but in case you were wondering, Java is actually on my resume, along with C, C++, C++ with MFC, Perl, and (don't hate me) even Visual Basic. What this guy wanted was PowerBuilder, which is a Basic language, but not one I've ever used. It was also for a turnkey program. They wanted PowerBuilder because that's what all the other current apps were written in.
If I'm going to sell myself, or allow a headhunter to sell me, as a programmer in a particular language, I need to have a handle on that language first. If not, I'm just as dishonest as the headhunter.
I do, actually. But generally headhunters sell candidates based on their experience with the tools used at the site. And these days, nobody pays to wait for you to get up to speed. My resume has all of the tools/languages that I know very well on it, and when I get up to speed on one, I add it.
A good website with some of that same advice is Contract Employees Handbook. I learned quite a bit from these guys.
I write code for an HR group at a large company, and I can tell you why. Companies don't want to weed through the 300 resumes they get for one position. Quite honestly, they don't have the time. So they trust (at their own peril) a recruiting firm to handle the legwork for them, and narrow it down to a reasonable number.
For that, they don't mind paying a fee. It does save time and money for the company. Unfortunately, they can get screwed on that deal by a flesh-pimp-headhunter. That will only happen once, though, and most companies (at least this one) won't deal with that agency again.
p.s. I've had the most success with Robert Half Tech in the Houston area.
If you ever get a call from a recruiter with Beatek (also BTek), just hang up. You'll thank yourself later, even if you're flipping burgers.
I have, but it was deep into my career as a developer before I found one.
Most seem to be flesh pimps... put a warm body in a seat... as long as they get their check. That can not only ruin their reputation with companies out there, but can ruin a developer's career and self esteem.
I have to wonder, in retrospect, if part of the problem was me though. I now know exactly how to talk with head hunters, and think I am pretty good at getting a feel for what they're actually about. I have no problem telling them when they're wrong, and when I think they're trying to pimp me out.
I have a good working relationship with two head hunters now, and they know my skillset very well. I haven't had a problem with the flesh pimps (other than the usual cold calls) in some time.
I did, once, have one ask me how long it would take for me to learn a particular language that wasn't on my resume. I asked him how long it would take him to learn Portugese. He got the message.