I've actually started migrating-away from Amazon. They have a local presence and I get charged local sales tax if I buy from them. It makes more sense to buy from other vendors that don't have such a presence if I'm doing catalog purchases, especially if those other vendors also offer free shipping.
When I was an adolescent we had ATVs to ride, and it was common to ride the rural powerline maintenance "roads". These were little more than two-track ruts that followed the path that the power lines took, and for those few times we saw maintenance trucks out there, they were always 4x4 or 6x6 and specially built for the application.
Even the municipal radio towers for city services used 4x4s, they had an older '90 or so Dodge Ramcharger that had upgraded transfer case and differentials for climbing to the top of the various buttes and mountains to allow a technician to service the radio equipment. A friend of mine ended up buying it after they surplused it, makes for a nice offroad rig.
It's no surprise that in even worse terrain they'd resort to animals, as lacking drive wheels the animals can cross terrain that would thwart wheeled or tracked vehicles without entirely destroying it in the process. So long as they don't need heavy equipment for what they're doing then it's probably cheap. I expect even helicopters would cost more.
It doesn't mean that a company is employee-focused. It means that a company understands that it lives and dies by the capabilities of its employees, so it's in the company's interest to figure out what it takes to keep their workforce productive, possibly to even expand their productivity.
They've already done this in Moscow. There are blue-designated center lanes that were apparently originally for Party officials, required a blue light on the top of the car. With the fall of the Soviet Union these essentially got turned into pay-to play lanes, and rich people bought permission to use these lanes and to have the blue lights on their cars.
Comey is apparently a poor student of history, there are lots of examples of kingmakers being destroyed by the kings they've made. Oldest example I can immediately think of is Claudius having the men of the Praetorian Guard that killed Caligula and put him into power, and I'm sure that there are examples older than that. In many revolutions this also happens; the French had a degree of it in their revolution, the Russians had plenty that were eventually killed by Lenin's regime, etc.
If you put someone into power through some kind of nefarious means then you are a threat to them once they're in power. As they will take steps to cement their power, you will come on the chopping-block in-time. It was Comey's turn.
then how did you get into the building in the first place? Or did they just let you in so that you could clean up your desk yourself instead of them having to pack everything up for you?
Most of the Catalyst switches are made in China. The 2960 series, 3560 series, 3600 series, 3750 series, and 3800 series are all made in China. The 4500 series are made in Mexico. You'd be hard-pressed to find a conventional L3 switch not manufactured outside of the United States, and I would be amazed if any L2 switches are made in the US.
Many companies do look at the production that the employee brings as an asset, rather than only looking at the cost in wages that an employee draws as a detriment. Since the corporate structure between the end-worker and the top people doesn't usually itself produce anything profit-making, it is in the company's interest to attempt to mentor employees. It makes the employees feel more valued. It may provide more skill to the employee so they produce disproportionately more than it costs to train or mentor. It may help the organization evaluate if an employee can provide even more value if duties are tailored to that employee's strengths, if the organization can afford to make such structural changes.
Those workplaces have built those structures to reduce the human element from the managerial process. The manager's personal feelings are diminished, the employee's productivity and how it's documented decides the pay. That doesn't mean that a manager can't influence the process, but if the review numbers are too far out-of-whack then they're subject to review. Thus person that doesn't meet expectations or is otherwise lackluster might get cost-of-living increases if any. Person that meets expectations gets cost-of-living and a tiny bit extra. Person that exceeds expectations gets bigger bump, plus gets points toward moving to next level title and pay.
When operated right I actually like those procedures better than the having to go ask method. I can agree to goals, can work toward those goals and can figure out where I need to focus extra attention to exceed expectations.
I've worked for a number of small businesses over the years. Even they do not necessarily struggle to hire if they either take young upstarts in the field and employ them where the new person feels they have the ability to grow, or else they manage to figure out how to pay enough to find someone.
Actually I do have a lot of relatives, like my dad was from a family of the better part of twenty children (guess that since the farm didn't have electricity my grandparents found other ways to keep themselves occuppied) but most of them have other things to do with their time besides video-chat.
My wife could benefit from video chat with her parents, but they don't even have a computer let alone Internet service, and aren't about to pay for a service like that. They only barely use the simplified phone with huge buttons. They have no reason to spend the money for the Internet connection when it won't really be used.
Perhaps the current generation in their 40s will be the first to retire and then heavily use video chat as a matter of course. They'll have reached retirement age knowing the feature exists and is not unaffordable and they'll be accustomed to paying for the necessary service in order to use it.
I went to Kyocera to replace my Galaxy SII. It's not the brand-new-bells/whistles phone, but at some point I realized I didn't really need or even want all of the latest bells and whistles, I wanted a durable, reliable phone that just always works.
Good luck finding a competent replacement for me once word gets out.
While I can appreciate your sentiment that a boss is just as replaceable as an employee, you're flat-out incorrect about your being able to make an appreciable dent in the employer's ability to find perspective employees, and keeping this mindset is to your detriment.
There are a lot of people that work in technical industries at capacities below their capabilities. Those people would gladly step into your job and I'm sure that the boss could find someone else that could do the job. Might not be the first candidate or even the fifth, but don't assume that you're special or that you hold some power that you really don't have.
Having played just a bit lately with ChromeOS, I suspect that a true cloud platform would be better if stripped-down to essentials, especially if the point is to spin-up VMs at-will. An OS like ChromeOS, built on Linux Kernel and with only the daemons and permissions needed to do whatever cloud function is demanded, makes more sense than having a GUI-based, multipurpose server. ChromeOS obviously still has a GUI as it's tailored toward being an end-user frontend for web-delivered content, but it's been pared-back to the point that it only has on it what it needs and has permisisons that are intended to keep the user out of the system. If a cloud application is properly written then such permissions would probably work well to keep the system secure against both user and exterior threat so that it remains manageable through whatever management system is written for it.
Unity and Ubuntu are basically the opposite. Designed as both a full-service server and as a GUI, it hasn't been tailored for this. Using dpkg-based package management works great when setting up a static server but is not really suited to spontaneously spinning up additional instances, it would take too long to customize to the specific application.
I've tried twice to use Unity as a windowmanager, and both times I've found a friggin' Microsoft UI to be more useful for managing the way I use Linux (ie, lots and lots of consoles for SSH) than Unity. I've used MS-DOS, Windows 3.1, CDE on HPUX and SunOS, Enlightenment, KDE, Gnome, xfce, fvwm, classic MacOS, OSX, and even twm, tab window manager, and all are more intuitive to use than Unity.
The only OS that I've had a harder time with was the command line on the Apple II, but that's because I have no idea what the commands are on an Apple II CLI. Even then though, I knew that I didn't know the commands, so my frustration was based on not having the literature. Unity seems like it should be familiar, it seems like it should work like modern GUIs, but it doesn't behave the same. Clicking and right-clicking do not do the same things. It's not obvious how to get to my applications, they don't seem to appear in any kind of sane heirarchical menu system. It just doesn't make any sense. When twm is easier to use then you know there's a problem.
It's funny, Back as far as the 1960s we saw previews for video phones, but reaction has almost always been flat. Initially it certainly would have been expensive, but had video phones become popular the sheer economy of scale probably would have brought prices down.
The only time I've seen video phones regularly used has been in the workplace, and basically as a test/pilot. Instead of conventional VOIP voice-only phones, a few employees were provided with models that could also do video. Even with this capability though, it's pretty rare that video conveys any additional useful information compared to just audio. Both callers are acquainted with the other so it's not like it's some kind of get-to-know-you exercise, and often the brief phone call is there to clarify something that was discussed by e-mail, where it's simpler to have the back-and-forth exchange to quickly clarify the matter.
The home might actually be a better medium for video chat, especially for loved-ones that are long-distance to each other and rarely get to see each other, but in the home the use of the video call requires the parties to maintain the level of decency that they feel is appropriate for being seen, while audio-only doesn't have that restriction. That's before even considering the privacy issues.
We've had laptops with the capability for a decade, we've had broadband market penetration for fifteen years, but apparently people don't want to appear on-camera to other people or else they want control more than the vendors are willing to provide.
"No feedback," means something different to every relationship at work and is based on the nature of both the superior and the subordinate.
Terrible manager, no feedback could mean that the manager doesn't actually want to do their job. I've seen this firsthand, and the problem lingered for many years. It was made worse because the manager was friends with his boss, so his boss didn't bother to push to uncover what was going on in the section.
Could easily also mean that the manager is scared of repercussions for doing the job, or feels that it's just easier to ignore the problems. This can be the end-result when the previous kind of terrible manager doesn't document or do honest evaluations of employees. It can also play into problems with employees that belong to suspect classes- if the boss doesn't document problems with employees generally, then it's much harder to get rid of problem employees, and it's even harder if the problem employee happens to belong to a suspect class. That documentation on employee performance and a paper-trail of guidance and review is what allows an employer to promote or terminate without having to face accusations of discrimination.
There's only so much an employee can do to get feedback, and the myriad of factors (everything from the nature of the job to the physical layout of the employee work area relative to the boss) determines what that employee can try. I know I can walk over to my boss' office to talk, and I usually do talk a couple of times a week to go over projects and timetables, etc. I also document by-email, we're required to submit status logs of what we've been doing anyway so I just fill mine out stream-of-consciousness as I work and edit down to something usable at the end of the week, keeps him informed so he knows what's going on.
Try to communicate with the boss, but it's as much on the boss as it is on the worker.
The court may be independent, but the prosecutor works for the Executive Branch. The Legislative Branch writes the laws, the Executive enforces an interpretation of the laws, and the Courts rule on the law and its interpretation.
If she's not being charged with a crime when the Executive Branch and Legislative Branches are both controlled by those who strongly and passionately oppose her, then it's probably because they cannot prove that she has committed a crime.
TV stations have run images they pulled from the internet, like the now-infamous Krispy Kreme image with, "so good, you'll suck dick!" under the company logo.
Or they've released the "names" of the Chinese flight crew that were involved in an airliner tail-strike crash, names like, "Mi Too Lo," and, "Ho Lee Fuk," reading them out on the air without questioning the veracity of their information.
Unfortunately I do not know of an inexpensive way of fighting against the collective derp other than fundamentally changing democracy, and as we've seen in the past, filtering on who gets to vote doesn't work when those who control the filters have their own interests in mind to the detriment of those they prevent from voting.
Slashdot Mirror
I've actually started migrating-away from Amazon. They have a local presence and I get charged local sales tax if I buy from them. It makes more sense to buy from other vendors that don't have such a presence if I'm doing catalog purchases, especially if those other vendors also offer free shipping.
When I was an adolescent we had ATVs to ride, and it was common to ride the rural powerline maintenance "roads". These were little more than two-track ruts that followed the path that the power lines took, and for those few times we saw maintenance trucks out there, they were always 4x4 or 6x6 and specially built for the application.
Even the municipal radio towers for city services used 4x4s, they had an older '90 or so Dodge Ramcharger that had upgraded transfer case and differentials for climbing to the top of the various buttes and mountains to allow a technician to service the radio equipment. A friend of mine ended up buying it after they surplused it, makes for a nice offroad rig.
It's no surprise that in even worse terrain they'd resort to animals, as lacking drive wheels the animals can cross terrain that would thwart wheeled or tracked vehicles without entirely destroying it in the process. So long as they don't need heavy equipment for what they're doing then it's probably cheap. I expect even helicopters would cost more.
It doesn't mean that a company is employee-focused. It means that a company understands that it lives and dies by the capabilities of its employees, so it's in the company's interest to figure out what it takes to keep their workforce productive, possibly to even expand their productivity.
They've already done this in Moscow. There are blue-designated center lanes that were apparently originally for Party officials, required a blue light on the top of the car. With the fall of the Soviet Union these essentially got turned into pay-to play lanes, and rich people bought permission to use these lanes and to have the blue lights on their cars.
After all it was Comey who got him elected.
Comey is apparently a poor student of history, there are lots of examples of kingmakers being destroyed by the kings they've made. Oldest example I can immediately think of is Claudius having the men of the Praetorian Guard that killed Caligula and put him into power, and I'm sure that there are examples older than that. In many revolutions this also happens; the French had a degree of it in their revolution, the Russians had plenty that were eventually killed by Lenin's regime, etc.
If you put someone into power through some kind of nefarious means then you are a threat to them once they're in power. As they will take steps to cement their power, you will come on the chopping-block in-time. It was Comey's turn.
then how did you get into the building in the first place? Or did they just let you in so that you could clean up your desk yourself instead of them having to pack everything up for you?
The two are not mutually exclusive you know.
Chips?
Most of the Catalyst switches are made in China. The 2960 series, 3560 series, 3600 series, 3750 series, and 3800 series are all made in China. The 4500 series are made in Mexico. You'd be hard-pressed to find a conventional L3 switch not manufactured outside of the United States, and I would be amazed if any L2 switches are made in the US.
Not all companies share your mindset, thank god.
Many companies do look at the production that the employee brings as an asset, rather than only looking at the cost in wages that an employee draws as a detriment. Since the corporate structure between the end-worker and the top people doesn't usually itself produce anything profit-making, it is in the company's interest to attempt to mentor employees. It makes the employees feel more valued. It may provide more skill to the employee so they produce disproportionately more than it costs to train or mentor. It may help the organization evaluate if an employee can provide even more value if duties are tailored to that employee's strengths, if the organization can afford to make such structural changes.
Those workplaces have built those structures to reduce the human element from the managerial process. The manager's personal feelings are diminished, the employee's productivity and how it's documented decides the pay. That doesn't mean that a manager can't influence the process, but if the review numbers are too far out-of-whack then they're subject to review. Thus person that doesn't meet expectations or is otherwise lackluster might get cost-of-living increases if any. Person that meets expectations gets cost-of-living and a tiny bit extra. Person that exceeds expectations gets bigger bump, plus gets points toward moving to next level title and pay.
When operated right I actually like those procedures better than the having to go ask method. I can agree to goals, can work toward those goals and can figure out where I need to focus extra attention to exceed expectations.
I've worked for a number of small businesses over the years. Even they do not necessarily struggle to hire if they either take young upstarts in the field and employ them where the new person feels they have the ability to grow, or else they manage to figure out how to pay enough to find someone.
Actually I do have a lot of relatives, like my dad was from a family of the better part of twenty children (guess that since the farm didn't have electricity my grandparents found other ways to keep themselves occuppied) but most of them have other things to do with their time besides video-chat.
My wife could benefit from video chat with her parents, but they don't even have a computer let alone Internet service, and aren't about to pay for a service like that. They only barely use the simplified phone with huge buttons. They have no reason to spend the money for the Internet connection when it won't really be used.
Perhaps the current generation in their 40s will be the first to retire and then heavily use video chat as a matter of course. They'll have reached retirement age knowing the feature exists and is not unaffordable and they'll be accustomed to paying for the necessary service in order to use it.
I went to Kyocera to replace my Galaxy SII. It's not the brand-new-bells/whistles phone, but at some point I realized I didn't really need or even want all of the latest bells and whistles, I wanted a durable, reliable phone that just always works.
Good luck finding a competent replacement for me once word gets out.
While I can appreciate your sentiment that a boss is just as replaceable as an employee, you're flat-out incorrect about your being able to make an appreciable dent in the employer's ability to find perspective employees, and keeping this mindset is to your detriment.
There are a lot of people that work in technical industries at capacities below their capabilities. Those people would gladly step into your job and I'm sure that the boss could find someone else that could do the job. Might not be the first candidate or even the fifth, but don't assume that you're special or that you hold some power that you really don't have.
Having played just a bit lately with ChromeOS, I suspect that a true cloud platform would be better if stripped-down to essentials, especially if the point is to spin-up VMs at-will. An OS like ChromeOS, built on Linux Kernel and with only the daemons and permissions needed to do whatever cloud function is demanded, makes more sense than having a GUI-based, multipurpose server. ChromeOS obviously still has a GUI as it's tailored toward being an end-user frontend for web-delivered content, but it's been pared-back to the point that it only has on it what it needs and has permisisons that are intended to keep the user out of the system. If a cloud application is properly written then such permissions would probably work well to keep the system secure against both user and exterior threat so that it remains manageable through whatever management system is written for it.
Unity and Ubuntu are basically the opposite. Designed as both a full-service server and as a GUI, it hasn't been tailored for this. Using dpkg-based package management works great when setting up a static server but is not really suited to spontaneously spinning up additional instances, it would take too long to customize to the specific application.
Our favorite local brewery was bought-out by Anheuser-Busch and they dropped the Kolsch. Dammit.
BTW, when did the ö character start working on Slashdot?
I've tried twice to use Unity as a windowmanager, and both times I've found a friggin' Microsoft UI to be more useful for managing the way I use Linux (ie, lots and lots of consoles for SSH) than Unity. I've used MS-DOS, Windows 3.1, CDE on HPUX and SunOS, Enlightenment, KDE, Gnome, xfce, fvwm, classic MacOS, OSX, and even twm, tab window manager, and all are more intuitive to use than Unity.
The only OS that I've had a harder time with was the command line on the Apple II, but that's because I have no idea what the commands are on an Apple II CLI. Even then though, I knew that I didn't know the commands, so my frustration was based on not having the literature. Unity seems like it should be familiar, it seems like it should work like modern GUIs, but it doesn't behave the same. Clicking and right-clicking do not do the same things. It's not obvious how to get to my applications, they don't seem to appear in any kind of sane heirarchical menu system. It just doesn't make any sense. When twm is easier to use then you know there's a problem.
It's funny, Back as far as the 1960s we saw previews for video phones, but reaction has almost always been flat. Initially it certainly would have been expensive, but had video phones become popular the sheer economy of scale probably would have brought prices down.
The only time I've seen video phones regularly used has been in the workplace, and basically as a test/pilot. Instead of conventional VOIP voice-only phones, a few employees were provided with models that could also do video. Even with this capability though, it's pretty rare that video conveys any additional useful information compared to just audio. Both callers are acquainted with the other so it's not like it's some kind of get-to-know-you exercise, and often the brief phone call is there to clarify something that was discussed by e-mail, where it's simpler to have the back-and-forth exchange to quickly clarify the matter.
The home might actually be a better medium for video chat, especially for loved-ones that are long-distance to each other and rarely get to see each other, but in the home the use of the video call requires the parties to maintain the level of decency that they feel is appropriate for being seen, while audio-only doesn't have that restriction. That's before even considering the privacy issues.
We've had laptops with the capability for a decade, we've had broadband market penetration for fifteen years, but apparently people don't want to appear on-camera to other people or else they want control more than the vendors are willing to provide.
No it doesn't.
"No feedback," means something different to every relationship at work and is based on the nature of both the superior and the subordinate.
Terrible manager, no feedback could mean that the manager doesn't actually want to do their job. I've seen this firsthand, and the problem lingered for many years. It was made worse because the manager was friends with his boss, so his boss didn't bother to push to uncover what was going on in the section.
Could easily also mean that the manager is scared of repercussions for doing the job, or feels that it's just easier to ignore the problems. This can be the end-result when the previous kind of terrible manager doesn't document or do honest evaluations of employees. It can also play into problems with employees that belong to suspect classes- if the boss doesn't document problems with employees generally, then it's much harder to get rid of problem employees, and it's even harder if the problem employee happens to belong to a suspect class. That documentation on employee performance and a paper-trail of guidance and review is what allows an employer to promote or terminate without having to face accusations of discrimination.
There's only so much an employee can do to get feedback, and the myriad of factors (everything from the nature of the job to the physical layout of the employee work area relative to the boss) determines what that employee can try. I know I can walk over to my boss' office to talk, and I usually do talk a couple of times a week to go over projects and timetables, etc. I also document by-email, we're required to submit status logs of what we've been doing anyway so I just fill mine out stream-of-consciousness as I work and edit down to something usable at the end of the week, keeps him informed so he knows what's going on.
Try to communicate with the boss, but it's as much on the boss as it is on the worker.
Well developers are a bit nuts. Maybe they could benefit from a little Shock Treatment.
the dev process has been a bit Rocky.
Well, there was that one time...
sounds like it was written by a bunch of Riff-Raff...
The court may be independent, but the prosecutor works for the Executive Branch. The Legislative Branch writes the laws, the Executive enforces an interpretation of the laws, and the Courts rule on the law and its interpretation.
If she's not being charged with a crime when the Executive Branch and Legislative Branches are both controlled by those who strongly and passionately oppose her, then it's probably because they cannot prove that she has committed a crime.
TV stations have run images they pulled from the internet, like the now-infamous Krispy Kreme image with, "so good, you'll suck dick!" under the company logo.
Or they've released the "names" of the Chinese flight crew that were involved in an airliner tail-strike crash, names like, "Mi Too Lo," and, "Ho Lee Fuk," reading them out on the air without questioning the veracity of their information.
Unfortunately I do not know of an inexpensive way of fighting against the collective derp other than fundamentally changing democracy, and as we've seen in the past, filtering on who gets to vote doesn't work when those who control the filters have their own interests in mind to the detriment of those they prevent from voting.