This still means the critical systems crew is reduced, that they pay you for time you don't spend working, or that they are deferring R&D/production resources to maintenance in place of the absent employee. They are under-manned, instead of over-manned. That may create some risk. The time of training is pure loss, and afterwards they have to pay you as much as they would pay your replacement anyway.
If the systems are critical, they're likely quite complex and require expert knowledge. You may know the bare bones and be capable to run them at low extent, but a trained expert is required to unleash the full power. Or they are obsolete and are to be replaced completely by the expert. Or, if training a new employee to service them takes obscene amount of time and resources, they need to be re-engineered, documented and made easy to learn - this kind of "job security through system obscurity" is frowned upon by every employer worth their salt. Especially if the systems are critical - you have an accident, production stops. No, you MUST train a "backup operator", someone to take your place in case you "fail" whatever mode of failure it is. And if you make this difficult, all the more reason to replace you.
Oh, no, you're not training someone to take over when you're fired, you're training someone to take over in case you get sick or have an accident. You can't legally refuse that - you would be endangering critical systems by making yourself irreplaceable. The system is getting a double. Then when the place runs smoothly for a couple of weeks they decide the system is over-manned, and fire the "less qualified" of the two operators.
Depends. Usually in-house training for internal systems is still cheaper than some CISCO certs and the likes. And the cost of inefficiency and fuck-ups? That's your salary until you leave. You are there to train your replacement. The total amount will be probably still less than training you, and at no point the systems remain unmaintained (which would happen if you were to take the training, sometimes a couple weeks full-time, meaning you're absent from work for prolonged periods of time.)
The problem is not about getting you trained in using an obscure piece of hardware from an obscure vendor. The fear is once you receive valuable training, you will move on to greener pastures. The investment in you will be lost, and since your demands would then rise (because you're trained/certified) retaining you with the same salary would be harder.
Think about the people your company was hiring from outside. Where did they get their skills and knowledge? On what basis were they able to demand on startup more than a seasoned in-house employee?
The answer is some other company tried to save money on hiring highly trained staff - they hired unexperienced people just after studies instead, for quite low salaries, then sent them to expensive, extensive training courses. Which would result in highly-trained employees with quite low salaries. Except they decided their value has risen and left for employer that was willing to pay them their new worth. And while you'd be still needed on your lowly tech position, hiring an expert would be cheaper than training you.
costly training + low salary = 100% loss, employee leaves for greener pastures. expensive expert with high salary = costly but acceptable. costly training + high salary = costlier, you pay the salary AND training costs.
Sometimes you go "OMG this is retarded." When they describe something you know and make some fundamental errors. Or some tricky errors. Or some naive errors. Then you lose respect to the whole and don't trust the parts you need to learn.
Maybe they are experts on the essence of things and just botched the domain you excel in. Still the mistrust remains. If they teach me THIS wrong, can I trust them on THAT?
As others pointed out, Ubuntu+Ubiquity has superior hardware detection and support, is generally better polished and fault-proof. Listen to multiple opinions on Kubuntu, people complain a whole lot about various faults of the OS side of things. KDE as desktop, on top of Ubuntu as OS seems simply better.
It's not the problem of getting to the moon. It's a problem of building an automated mine, processing facility and a transport fleet that makes shipping He-3 to Earth economically viable.
You're forgetting the last trip to the moon was a cold-war space race where the budget was a low-priority problem. This is not just about getting to the Moon, it's about actually making money off getting there. You can't throw as much resources and people at it as you wish any more.
...because it's at least 20 years until the mining operation will be possible to start.
Also, think of all the nice things we got as a total by-product of the space race. Helium-3 is the tip of an iceberg. Permanent moon base, self-sustainable spacecraft to travel earth-moon on routine route, possibly fusion spacecraft propulsion, humans not only getting to the moon but going there routinely, experience in space mining in general (asteroid belt anyone?) and generally a significant leap towards making space travel easy and common.
It doesn't even have to be really profitable. It would be nice if the helium-3 deposits paid for the investment, but it's all the tech developed to get this to work, where all the REAL profit would happen.
...and the problem with light items. I bought 3 small, simple plastic pencil sharpeners. The items must have weighted less than 3 grams each, packaging included. And the checkout weight simply couldn't recognize it, requesting me to place the item on the scale when I had placed it already. When you need to call assistance (and then they struggle with the machine trying to force it to acknowledge the item) any perceived wait time reduction is lost.
I just paid cash for a Cadillac Escalade EXT. My next purchase will be a house in cash. So yes it is possible to pay for things in cash.
...and posting as AC? Are you some kind of drug dealer? Most people pay for such stuff with a money/bank transfers, cheques, a credit/debit card and the likes. Considering the highest USD note in common circulation is $100, payment for a house in cash must involve a small briefcase filled with notes. Very mafia-like.
I think RMS would like to have a word or two with you about that, e.g. what comprises the GNU OS running with the Linux kernel.
I assure you the differences are huge. Starting with what compile options given kernel uses, init scripts SysVInit or alternative startup environments, hardware detection/autoconfiguration, module management, software package system, updates system, network settings storage and management, default security policies,/dev entries management, partition/filesystems/mount points layout, firewall management, the set of system daemons and their configuration... this all is invisible to a "desktop linux user". And these make a huge difference.
Bare bones server system refused to install due to lack of network connectivity. I had to install desktop from live instead, because live can connect to wifi and the graphical installer seems to recognize boot medium correctly too.
Touchpad options tab seems to have completely vanished from the input options for me - are you sure you did a clean install, not dist-upgrade? Meanwhile, KDE has this all and much more, in the synaptiks package.
Nope. I tried several times to get the system to install without network connectivity, preparing install pendrive using the official Ubuntu help - no CD drive in the system. No way, no option to skip it. You may set up ethernet link and fail to connect for updates, or skip network config and fail to connect for updates. There is no option to proceed from there.
The method, supposedly, is to drop to shell, edit/etc/apt/sources.list, manually add the removable medium, remove all network sources and then return to installer.
And 600MB is much more than enough for a bare bones server system. I would be totally satisfied with a working blank desktop with only ability to add these extras over the net, once I set up the net instead of requiring them at install time, and insisting on ethernet or GTFO.
As for multitouch, two-finger tap and three-finger tap are working opposite than in the rest of the world. (2-f is right-click, 3-f is middle-click). The OS provides no interface to modify it, whatsoever. xset command works until next power state change (like sleep on lid close, blank screen on idle). All help entries on Ubuntu forums on this topic are obsolete. 2-finger scroll didn't work either, and the option to enable it has vanished from the UI since 9.x
Sorry, but recently I had the displeasure of working with new SUSE at work. The KDE may be more polished but the "engine under the hood" is limping.
sshd refusing to start at boot-up despite all things set up in rc.d (manual "/etc/init.d/sshd start" worked fine.) nfs working on only one of two network interfaces correctly yum being mostly oblivious of importance of having two network cards, mixing them up at random
Yesterday I finally replaced ancient XP with Ubuntu on one of my machines. The first impressions were "it's retarded." The install required to connect to the net to download required packages (over ethernet, while I only had wifi) despite running off 600MB install disk. I finally managed to install from 'live' and was not impressed - the Unity interface was so dumbed down that it was beyond useless - multitouch touchpad support broken, power managment disabling all the options I needed, gedit unable to load files containing unprintable characters and so on. At first I thought "That's it, Ubuntu has jumped the shark. I need to look for a different distro.
Then I thought "let's see, maybe KDE is still usable." Of course none in the default, but simple apt-get install kde-plasma-desktop loaded it just fine. Log out, session: KDE, log in, done. And then I decided I'm quite happy with Ubuntu. The OS under the hood is actually pretty good, and once you replace the desktop manager, it's quite a nice OS to use.
So, install KDE and stop complaining. sudo apt-get install kde-plasma-desktop It's that easy,
fortunately you'll have a plenty of time for all the better things to do, considering that installing gnome will be as hard as typing sudo apt-get install gnome-desktop
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This still means the critical systems crew is reduced, that they pay you for time you don't spend working, or that they are deferring R&D/production resources to maintenance in place of the absent employee. They are under-manned, instead of over-manned. That may create some risk. The time of training is pure loss, and afterwards they have to pay you as much as they would pay your replacement anyway.
If the systems are critical, they're likely quite complex and require expert knowledge. You may know the bare bones and be capable to run them at low extent, but a trained expert is required to unleash the full power. Or they are obsolete and are to be replaced completely by the expert. Or, if training a new employee to service them takes obscene amount of time and resources, they need to be re-engineered, documented and made easy to learn - this kind of "job security through system obscurity" is frowned upon by every employer worth their salt. Especially if the systems are critical - you have an accident, production stops. No, you MUST train a "backup operator", someone to take your place in case you "fail" whatever mode of failure it is. And if you make this difficult, all the more reason to replace you.
Oh, no, you're not training someone to take over when you're fired, you're training someone to take over in case you get sick or have an accident. You can't legally refuse that - you would be endangering critical systems by making yourself irreplaceable. The system is getting a double. Then when the place runs smoothly for a couple of weeks they decide the system is over-manned, and fire the "less qualified" of the two operators.
He would find a job at Aperture Science any day.
Depends. Usually in-house training for internal systems is still cheaper than some CISCO certs and the likes. And the cost of inefficiency and fuck-ups? That's your salary until you leave. You are there to train your replacement. The total amount will be probably still less than training you, and at no point the systems remain unmaintained (which would happen if you were to take the training, sometimes a couple weeks full-time, meaning you're absent from work for prolonged periods of time.)
The problem is not about getting you trained in using an obscure piece of hardware from an obscure vendor. The fear is once you receive valuable training, you will move on to greener pastures. The investment in you will be lost, and since your demands would then rise (because you're trained/certified) retaining you with the same salary would be harder.
Think about the people your company was hiring from outside. Where did they get their skills and knowledge? On what basis were they able to demand on startup more than a seasoned in-house employee?
The answer is some other company tried to save money on hiring highly trained staff - they hired unexperienced people just after studies instead, for quite low salaries, then sent them to expensive, extensive training courses. Which would result in highly-trained employees with quite low salaries. Except they decided their value has risen and left for employer that was willing to pay them their new worth. And while you'd be still needed on your lowly tech position, hiring an expert would be cheaper than training you.
costly training + low salary = 100% loss, employee leaves for greener pastures.
expensive expert with high salary = costly but acceptable.
costly training + high salary = costlier, you pay the salary AND training costs.
Sometimes you go "OMG this is retarded." When they describe something you know and make some fundamental errors. Or some tricky errors. Or some naive errors. Then you lose respect to the whole and don't trust the parts you need to learn.
Maybe they are experts on the essence of things and just botched the domain you excel in. Still the mistrust remains. If they teach me THIS wrong, can I trust them on THAT?
Definitely not.
As others pointed out, Ubuntu+Ubiquity has superior hardware detection and support, is generally better polished and fault-proof. Listen to multiple opinions on Kubuntu, people complain a whole lot about various faults of the OS side of things. KDE as desktop, on top of Ubuntu as OS seems simply better.
Oh, it's not all that bad at all.
Day 3. Sneak into the office. Check if nobody's looking. Lock the door, disable the cameras. Install Cygwin on all machines, laughing maniacally.
Day 4. Come to work whistling cheerfully and do all the overdue work in 2 hours. Spend the rest of the time playing Nethack.
What clones?
It's the Worm that they really have to worry about.
It's much easier to lie belly up and be entertained. What's the point of progress anyway?
It's not the problem of getting to the moon.
It's a problem of building an automated mine, processing facility and a transport fleet that makes shipping He-3 to Earth economically viable.
You're forgetting the last trip to the moon was a cold-war space race where the budget was a low-priority problem. This is not just about getting to the Moon, it's about actually making money off getting there. You can't throw as much resources and people at it as you wish any more.
...because it's at least 20 years until the mining operation will be possible to start.
Also, think of all the nice things we got as a total by-product of the space race. Helium-3 is the tip of an iceberg. Permanent moon base, self-sustainable spacecraft to travel earth-moon on routine route, possibly fusion spacecraft propulsion, humans not only getting to the moon but going there routinely, experience in space mining in general (asteroid belt anyone?) and generally a significant leap towards making space travel easy and common.
It doesn't even have to be really profitable. It would be nice if the helium-3 deposits paid for the investment, but it's all the tech developed to get this to work, where all the REAL profit would happen.
5. You're buying something light. A tiny gizmo of 3 grams or so is guaranteed to fail to register on the weight and require attendant help.
...and the problem with light items.
I bought 3 small, simple plastic pencil sharpeners. The items must have weighted less than 3 grams each, packaging included. And the checkout weight simply couldn't recognize it, requesting me to place the item on the scale when I had placed it already. When you need to call assistance (and then they struggle with the machine trying to force it to acknowledge the item) any perceived wait time reduction is lost.
I wish I could have your level of belief in people's inability to accurately forge signatures, and the accuracy and reliability of graphology.
I just paid cash for a Cadillac Escalade EXT. My next purchase will be a house in cash. So yes it is possible to pay for things in cash.
...and posting as AC?
Are you some kind of drug dealer? Most people pay for such stuff with a money/bank transfers, cheques, a credit/debit card and the likes. Considering the highest USD note in common circulation is $100, payment for a house in cash must involve a small briefcase filled with notes. Very mafia-like.
Oh, c'mon, about all of this "western technology" has been manufactured in Far East.
"Oh c'mon, there's no way he would be hiding there! That place is on Google Maps Street View for pete's sake!"
This is Idle.
Idle is all about non-newsworthy stuff.
I think RMS would like to have a word or two with you about that, e.g. what comprises the GNU OS running with the Linux kernel.
I assure you the differences are huge. Starting with what compile options given kernel uses, init scripts SysVInit or alternative startup environments, hardware detection/autoconfiguration, module management, software package system, updates system, network settings storage and management, default security policies, /dev entries management, partition/filesystems/mount points layout, firewall management, the set of system daemons and their configuration... this all is invisible to a "desktop linux user". And these make a huge difference.
Bare bones server system refused to install due to lack of network connectivity. I had to install desktop from live instead, because live can connect to wifi and the graphical installer seems to recognize boot medium correctly too.
Touchpad options tab seems to have completely vanished from the input options for me - are you sure you did a clean install, not dist-upgrade? Meanwhile, KDE has this all and much more, in the synaptiks package.
Nope. I tried several times to get the system to install without network connectivity, preparing install pendrive using the official Ubuntu help - no CD drive in the system. No way, no option to skip it. You may set up ethernet link and fail to connect for updates, or skip network config and fail to connect for updates. There is no option to proceed from there.
The method, supposedly, is to drop to shell, edit /etc/apt/sources.list, manually add the removable medium, remove all network sources and then return to installer.
And 600MB is much more than enough for a bare bones server system. I would be totally satisfied with a working blank desktop with only ability to add these extras over the net, once I set up the net instead of requiring them at install time, and insisting on ethernet or GTFO.
As for multitouch, two-finger tap and three-finger tap are working opposite than in the rest of the world. (2-f is right-click, 3-f is middle-click). The OS provides no interface to modify it, whatsoever. xset command works until next power state change (like sleep on lid close, blank screen on idle). All help entries on Ubuntu forums on this topic are obsolete. 2-finger scroll didn't work either, and the option to enable it has vanished from the UI since 9.x
Sorry, but recently I had the displeasure of working with new SUSE at work.
The KDE may be more polished but the "engine under the hood" is limping.
sshd refusing to start at boot-up despite all things set up in rc.d (manual "/etc/init.d/sshd start" worked fine.)
nfs working on only one of two network interfaces correctly
yum being mostly oblivious of importance of having two network cards, mixing them up at random
except for KDE.
( sudo apt-get install kde-plasma-desktop )
Yesterday I finally replaced ancient XP with Ubuntu on one of my machines.
The first impressions were "it's retarded." The install required to connect to the net to download required packages (over ethernet, while I only had wifi) despite running off 600MB install disk. I finally managed to install from 'live' and was not impressed - the Unity interface was so dumbed down that it was beyond useless - multitouch touchpad support broken, power managment disabling all the options I needed, gedit unable to load files containing unprintable characters and so on. At first I thought "That's it, Ubuntu has jumped the shark. I need to look for a different distro.
Then I thought "let's see, maybe KDE is still usable." Of course none in the default, but simple apt-get install kde-plasma-desktop loaded it just fine. Log out, session: KDE, log in, done.
And then I decided I'm quite happy with Ubuntu. The OS under the hood is actually pretty good, and once you replace the desktop manager, it's quite a nice OS to use.
So, install KDE and stop complaining.
sudo apt-get install kde-plasma-desktop
It's that easy,
fortunately you'll have a plenty of time for all the better things to do, considering that installing gnome will be as hard as typing sudo apt-get install gnome-desktop