The thing is, there are a lot of people who are too ignorant to actually switch - just like you said. Word of mouth is powerful, but these people will download something use it for 2 weeks and switch back because it doesn't have the "same" features and doesn't have the same bookmarks, certain websites (which are programmed badly) don't look the same, etc...
While 1% doesn't look like a lot, it is in this case, but I don't see it lasting long at all. There are too many, what I call AOL'ers, out there to really sway anything. these people are described in the above paragraph. Watch the numbers, I'm sure in 2 weeks, they'll go right back up 1%...
Some places in the US do this as well. While the system can be good, it isn't exactly fair for people that are always over the alloted 40/hrs a week. The last place that I worked that had implemented the system would give overtime for most of the work and occasionally give you extra time to take off every once in a while. They also wouldn't complain much when you wanted to take the time because they have to pay you for whatever you accumulate in the states. They liked to fire people all the time and they didn't want to pay someone $3000+ for the pleasure...
I've got to half agree to some of this - rest, I'm just not that old, sorry;). I was "let go" from major ISP and we did our cross site development work via IRC and a web based document center. We had upwards of 7 call centers and IRC on a central server seemed to work the best.
To comment on moving people from ASP to PHP - doesn't really work that way. Waaay back when I first started learning PHP, I decided that I should go with PHP because it was faster and had less security problems and that most businesses would realize this.
I have come to notice that I was wrong - businesses are still as dumb as they where years ago and they still trust MSFT. Now, I realize that some of you are forced to do what the bosses say, but as always, the people that having nothing to do with a project shouldn't be making the main choices.
I *almost* forced myself to learn ASP.Net then decided I wasn't that low. Besides, I'm too lazy to write instead of
I grew up on several bases as well and remember these signs. I'm still on bases as an adult and these signs are no longer around. Odd thing is, I spent 6 months at Norfolk VA and my remote would go haywire every few days... Its all starting to make sense.
I wasn't that brave with them, but the religious wife had a problem with it. All in all, she calls it linux and I don't argue with her - its safer for me that way since she wears combat boots and carries and M16...
Palms are a little too small for your average fan. The older ones will complain they can't see the screen and the younger ones will complain that there isn't enough room for extras on the screen. They also suffer from people pressing too hard on the screen - heck - a lot of JCPenny stores use them for their gift registry and they can't keep them up because people just press too hard. Other than that, they can be very rugged. The other thing is, by the time you pop the WiFi card in and go, I'm sure the palm wouldn't last through a whole game. If the battery runs all the way out - it does a factory reset requiring a hotsync to reinstall the software.
I was in OR and my programming business just wasn't going anywhere. About a week ago, I jumped ship, put everything in storage and moved. 5 days in the car (3 days travel and 2 days looking for a place to live) and I'm getting a restart on my life. Now I'm in VA outside of Norfolk and they're hiring CS reps to start at 12-13/hr... Now, I just gotta start getting some contracts coming in and I'll be completely happy. At least I know if I have problems with contracting I can do ccc-call center work (gag)
Word of advice - get yourself out of OR ASAP. Heck, the DC metro area is just booming with jobs in this economy. As soon as I got out of OR, everyone was hiring...
At one point I was considering this. You need to know that you will live WHEREVER they tell you, have to go through basic, etc. Other point you should note, they have rules against allowing people to inlist that have poor vision. (Blind as a bat? Keep moving.) Aside from that, and if you're willing to be shot at, and go wherever you're told. They have jobs for you.
As always, these statements are not entirely true. If you go in with the Army, you usually get 3 choices as to where you can go. Sometimes you get more. My fiance got 3 choices originally and I would have ended up in El Paso. They delayed her due to a medical issue and we ended up getting 6 choices. Now we're getting what we want and going to Germany. The Air Force, Marines, and Navy don't give you choices. You show up, take the tests and they hand you a job...
As for those that say that you don't get to choose what you do - the Army can whittle that down to a decent MOS as long as your testing says you can handle it. If you want to be a grunt, its easy to get in. The Army isn't like the Air Force where they advertise that most of their people are pilots...
Medical rules? Sure, everyone has some sort of rules. It just so happens that the Army is the best in terms of them, the Air Force is the worst. Vision can be a problem, but weight is normally the biggest problem for everyone, but in most cases you can move your fat butt away from the computer and lose it. I've seen people that got in with just one nut, so don't disqualify yourself without checking first.
As for Basic, its not the complete hell that everyone talks about. While you have to do a little pushups (the phrase "get strong" is heavily used) and sure, you've got to march with blisters and sand in places it was never meant to go, there are still the good side of things. You get to play with things (guns, grenades, grenade launchers, claymore mines, RGP's, etc.), you get to meet people from all walks of life, and mostly, you get to push yourself to limits that you never thought possible. I don't know about the rest of you, but sometimes sitting behind a keyboard getting fat just isn't something that I really want to do the rest of my life.
Like the parent of the original post, I'm thinking about what MOS I want to go in as. 3 strike me as possibilities. 1. MP 2. Unmanned Vehicle Operator 3. IT Specialist - For those that took notes, theres 1 grunt position, 1 interesting position that can really make an interesting job with the FBI/CIA and 1 position that everyone agrees is crap compared to the civilian world. Honestly, the main thing I'm interested in is the security clearance for whenever I get out - whenever that may be.
Oh, and for the "pay sucks" argument - think about it for a minute. You're not paying for food, rent, entertainment in barracks (movies on post are normally $1) and I could list a lot more, but its not worth my time. The point is, if you're not paying for anything, that money just sits in the bank for a rainy day. Do you all know how many people there are wondering around out in the field with laptops watching DVD's? Do you all have a clue on how much money these guys put into their cars just because they have the money to do it and they're not spending it on anything else? You've got to start thinking around the whole picture instead of immediately complaining about the pay. In the civilian life, you have to pay for anything you do, not so in the military. Besides, for those of you that are in my shoes, you can't lose your job to an outsourced "idiot" again...
And for those that complain that they have to take orders from idiots that shouldn't have a job...how is this different than civilian life? It isn't so stop your bitchin.
Just do your homework and think about the whole picture before you make your decision, wherever you go.
1 a minute? I wish! Currently, due to some mailing lists I'm on, I'm grabbing about 3 a minute. Once in awhile I get lucky and a 3 min window goes by without any.
Speed wise, I haven't slowed down too much though. I guess all the tree huggers are asleep here in OR. I'm currently at 1725/248, AIM hasn't died in hours - life is good!
My girlfriend and I take weekend vacations where the most technology we use is the car to get to the camp site and our watches/flashlights. While we're there, we don't touch the car or anything else related to technology. I think its time for another REAL soon.
My soon to be father in law actually goes out and maps the serious LAN & WAN setups for hospital systems and recommends changes for both security and long term growth. You would be amazed at some of the issues that he runs across.
The last contract had over 32 exchange servers on one the network - every dept had their own and each had its own configuration as well as security flaws.
The other big aspect he runs across are shitty net admins that argue about the setups of the network. Most recently, after a week of arguing with his workers with contractors in the room, a manager proudly presented a map of his department's network and said that his area didn't need to be touched by contractors that just wanted to spend money. Too bad what he had mapped out couldn't even work in the real world.
And a major issue that he runs into are the network admins that leave the RAS ports open for vendor updates. These people just turn them on and walk away allowing any vendor and god knows who else access to 'update software on the fly'.
Hospitals are no different than any other company out there. They pull people in at the lowest price to put the cheapest stuff together to make sure it saves lives. Figure that one out.
Now see, what you do is take a whole bunch of these one liners and put them on the paper/stick signs. Once you have about 200+ signs, a group visits the company lawn in the middle of the night. Employees show up a few hours later with hundreds of signs everywhere. You call the news just after you do this so they cover the "blatant trespassing and defacement of property!" while all the geeks in the world laugh at the site of hundreds of signs strewn about the corporate lawn of SCO. I'm sure RedHat and IBM would piss themselves laughing if this happened.
I'd be more than happy to take part in this, but I'm just too damn far away...
I'm actually a dropout too. In high school, I wasn't interested in the boring days of the teachers trying to cram things into others heads when I already knew what was going on. Things where pretty much boring to me all the way around. The only class that wasn't boring had to do programming. When I had the chance, I jumped ship and went to work for a decent size ISP doing TS. Within 2 years, I was making 26k without a GED. I finally got that after a lot of procrastination and got bumped up to 32k and a senior team lead just before I was laid off about a year ago. Now I own my own programming business and am looking at the possibility of selling specific products for several hundred thousand dollars to a niche market.
I would honestly like to know the amount of successful dropouts out there. Other than naming some of the more "evil" people in computer industry who where dropouts, anyone like me dropout and end up "normal" or successful? A lot of people think dropouts are deadheads with no goals in life, some situations like mine prove that idea wrong. Its truly amazing to be talking with a client and develop something for them and have them ask where I went to college to learn everything. The look on their face when I tell them I'm a dropout is priceless.
As for anyone thinking about taking this kind of a path, think long and hard before doing so. Guidance counselors almost always say the GED is the same as a diploma, its not in anyway shape or form. After I got laid off, I spent 7 months looking for a decent job before starting my business and almost all of the denials where due to the 'edjamacation' aspect of things. I got job offers just after I started my business in the form of building and airport security. Just because you're bored in school and think you know everything, you won't be successful at anything unless you work hard.
Try 4 people w/ medical issues. Somehow, I'm the only one in the family thats not a walking drugstore. Lets see, Dad has Parkinsons, 2 twin sisters that had a lot of complications when they where born mixed with a little ADHD and the other parental unit has all kinds of issues including (but not limited to) Migraines, arthritis, bad knee, etc... On top of all that, past medical bills due to sisters having medical complications throughout their lives.
As for how much they're pulling in, it's roughly half of what you came up with as contract work isn't always 40/hrs a week, but if you add the medical support in, that's about right.
There's more that causes problems with financial aid, but hey, I'm not giving away my whole life story.
I just used MIT as an example as it was better than "Joe Community College". Of course, some opinions might differ on that last statement too. I know my moms opinion is that I should quit my job, and truck on down to the local community college to enroll in their crappy Comp Ed. classes - but that just isn't going to happen.
While I do have a car loan, to me, going full time contracting making $80 an hour vs. going to school for 4+ years is just too much lost income. I'd rather make money now and go to school later to earn my degree in Comp Sci/Business while I have the time to just sit and relax and not have to work out full time.
I've also researched MIT(I'm not totally 'ignant'). They'd take my parents for everything they have and due to certain situations, that can't happen as they save even less money than me but make 3 times more. So the situation is really pointless for financial aid.
I completely refuse to get a student loan to go to school. Never mind the fact that every place I tried to has listed me as "unedjamacated"... I just decided to go into business for myself and screw them. Its really not worth getting into $100,000++ worth of debt for a degree now days.(and I'm referring to going to a decent tech school like MIT)
Slashdot Mirror
The thing is, there are a lot of people who are too ignorant to actually switch - just like you said. Word of mouth is powerful, but these people will download something use it for 2 weeks and switch back because it doesn't have the "same" features and doesn't have the same bookmarks, certain websites (which are programmed badly) don't look the same, etc...
While 1% doesn't look like a lot, it is in this case, but I don't see it lasting long at all. There are too many, what I call AOL'ers, out there to really sway anything. these people are described in the above paragraph. Watch the numbers, I'm sure in 2 weeks, they'll go right back up 1%...
I'm sorry, but 1% isn't that much when you consider how many windows boxen there are...
The madness will continue for years to come...
Some places in the US do this as well. While the system can be good, it isn't exactly fair for people that are always over the alloted 40/hrs a week. The last place that I worked that had implemented the system would give overtime for most of the work and occasionally give you extra time to take off every once in a while. They also wouldn't complain much when you wanted to take the time because they have to pay you for whatever you accumulate in the states. They liked to fire people all the time and they didn't want to pay someone $3000+ for the pleasure...
I've got to half agree to some of this - rest, I'm just not that old, sorry ;). I was "let go" from major ISP and we did our cross site development work via IRC and a web based document center. We had upwards of 7 call centers and IRC on a central server seemed to work the best.
Sametime actually isn't that good - you're better off with Jabber - especially if cost is an issue.
The other thing is that Sametime tends to be packaged with Lotus Notes
To comment on moving people from ASP to PHP - doesn't really work that way. Waaay back when I first started learning PHP, I decided that I should go with PHP because it was faster and had less security problems and that most businesses would realize this.
I have come to notice that I was wrong - businesses are still as dumb as they where years ago and they still trust MSFT. Now, I realize that some of you are forced to do what the bosses say, but as always, the people that having nothing to do with a project shouldn't be making the main choices.
I *almost* forced myself to learn ASP.Net then decided I wasn't that low. Besides, I'm too lazy to write instead of
I grew up on several bases as well and remember these signs. I'm still on bases as an adult and these signs are no longer around. Odd thing is, I spent 6 months at Norfolk VA and my remote would go haywire every few days... Its all starting to make sense.
The sad part is, MSFT is just using the Slashdot crowd as real life load testing...
I'd be interested in seeing the scripts you have setup for a project I'm involved with. Any thought of sharing?
I wasn't that brave with them, but the religious wife had a problem with it. All in all, she calls it linux and I don't argue with her - its safer for me that way since she wears combat boots and carries and M16...
sheesh... It must be a thing most parents ask.
Mine got upset when I said I used the one with the little "devil", as they put it.
I swear I had wrote this in my sleep or something... Same age, recently married, web developer...creepy.
Palms are a little too small for your average fan. The older ones will complain they can't see the screen and the younger ones will complain that there isn't enough room for extras on the screen. They also suffer from people pressing too hard on the screen - heck - a lot of JCPenny stores use them for their gift registry and they can't keep them up because people just press too hard. Other than that, they can be very rugged. The other thing is, by the time you pop the WiFi card in and go, I'm sure the palm wouldn't last through a whole game. If the battery runs all the way out - it does a factory reset requiring a hotsync to reinstall the software.
I was in OR and my programming business just wasn't going anywhere. About a week ago, I jumped ship, put everything in storage and moved. 5 days in the car (3 days travel and 2 days looking for a place to live) and I'm getting a restart on my life. Now I'm in VA outside of Norfolk and they're hiring CS reps to start at 12-13/hr... Now, I just gotta start getting some contracts coming in and I'll be completely happy. At least I know if I have problems with contracting I can do ccc-call center work (gag)
Word of advice - get yourself out of OR ASAP. Heck, the DC metro area is just booming with jobs in this economy. As soon as I got out of OR, everyone was hiring...
At one point I was considering this. You need to know that you will live WHEREVER they tell you, have to go through basic, etc. Other point you should note, they have rules against allowing people to inlist that have poor vision. (Blind as a bat? Keep moving.) Aside from that, and if you're willing to be shot at, and go wherever you're told. They have jobs for you.
As always, these statements are not entirely true. If you go in with the Army, you usually get 3 choices as to where you can go. Sometimes you get more. My fiance got 3 choices originally and I would have ended up in El Paso. They delayed her due to a medical issue and we ended up getting 6 choices. Now we're getting what we want and going to Germany. The Air Force, Marines, and Navy don't give you choices. You show up, take the tests and they hand you a job...
As for those that say that you don't get to choose what you do - the Army can whittle that down to a decent MOS as long as your testing says you can handle it. If you want to be a grunt, its easy to get in. The Army isn't like the Air Force where they advertise that most of their people are pilots...
Medical rules? Sure, everyone has some sort of rules. It just so happens that the Army is the best in terms of them, the Air Force is the worst. Vision can be a problem, but weight is normally the biggest problem for everyone, but in most cases you can move your fat butt away from the computer and lose it. I've seen people that got in with just one nut, so don't disqualify yourself without checking first.
As for Basic, its not the complete hell that everyone talks about. While you have to do a little pushups (the phrase "get strong" is heavily used) and sure, you've got to march with blisters and sand in places it was never meant to go, there are still the good side of things. You get to play with things (guns, grenades, grenade launchers, claymore mines, RGP's, etc.), you get to meet people from all walks of life, and mostly, you get to push yourself to limits that you never thought possible. I don't know about the rest of you, but sometimes sitting behind a keyboard getting fat just isn't something that I really want to do the rest of my life.
Like the parent of the original post, I'm thinking about what MOS I want to go in as. 3 strike me as possibilities. 1. MP 2. Unmanned Vehicle Operator 3. IT Specialist - For those that took notes, theres 1 grunt position, 1 interesting position that can really make an interesting job with the FBI/CIA and 1 position that everyone agrees is crap compared to the civilian world. Honestly, the main thing I'm interested in is the security clearance for whenever I get out - whenever that may be.
Oh, and for the "pay sucks" argument - think about it for a minute. You're not paying for food, rent, entertainment in barracks (movies on post are normally $1) and I could list a lot more, but its not worth my time. The point is, if you're not paying for anything, that money just sits in the bank for a rainy day. Do you all know how many people there are wondering around out in the field with laptops watching DVD's? Do you all have a clue on how much money these guys put into their cars just because they have the money to do it and they're not spending it on anything else? You've got to start thinking around the whole picture instead of immediately complaining about the pay. In the civilian life, you have to pay for anything you do, not so in the military. Besides, for those of you that are in my shoes, you can't lose your job to an outsourced "idiot" again...
And for those that complain that they have to take orders from idiots that shouldn't have a job...how is this different than civilian life? It isn't so stop your bitchin.
Just do your homework and think about the whole picture before you make your decision, wherever you go.
1 a minute? I wish! Currently, due to some mailing lists I'm on, I'm grabbing about 3 a minute. Once in awhile I get lucky and a 3 min window goes by without any.
Speed wise, I haven't slowed down too much though. I guess all the tree huggers are asleep here in OR. I'm currently at 1725/248, AIM hasn't died in hours - life is good!
My girlfriend and I take weekend vacations where the most technology we use is the car to get to the camp site and our watches/flashlights. While we're there, we don't touch the car or anything else related to technology. I think its time for another REAL soon.
My soon to be father in law actually goes out and maps the serious LAN & WAN setups for hospital systems and recommends changes for both security and long term growth. You would be amazed at some of the issues that he runs across.
The last contract had over 32 exchange servers on one the network - every dept had their own and each had its own configuration as well as security flaws.
The other big aspect he runs across are shitty net admins that argue about the setups of the network. Most recently, after a week of arguing with his workers with contractors in the room, a manager proudly presented a map of his department's network and said that his area didn't need to be touched by contractors that just wanted to spend money. Too bad what he had mapped out couldn't even work in the real world.
And a major issue that he runs into are the network admins that leave the RAS ports open for vendor updates. These people just turn them on and walk away allowing any vendor and god knows who else access to 'update software on the fly'.
Hospitals are no different than any other company out there. They pull people in at the lowest price to put the cheapest stuff together to make sure it saves lives. Figure that one out.
Now see, what you do is take a whole bunch of these one liners and put them on the paper/stick signs. Once you have about 200+ signs, a group visits the company lawn in the middle of the night. Employees show up a few hours later with hundreds of signs everywhere. You call the news just after you do this so they cover the "blatant trespassing and defacement of property!" while all the geeks in the world laugh at the site of hundreds of signs strewn about the corporate lawn of SCO. I'm sure RedHat and IBM would piss themselves laughing if this happened.
I'd be more than happy to take part in this, but I'm just too damn far away...
I'm actually a dropout too. In high school, I wasn't interested in the boring days of the teachers trying to cram things into others heads when I already knew what was going on. Things where pretty much boring to me all the way around. The only class that wasn't boring had to do programming. When I had the chance, I jumped ship and went to work for a decent size ISP doing TS. Within 2 years, I was making 26k without a GED. I finally got that after a lot of procrastination and got bumped up to 32k and a senior team lead just before I was laid off about a year ago. Now I own my own programming business and am looking at the possibility of selling specific products for several hundred thousand dollars to a niche market.
I would honestly like to know the amount of successful dropouts out there. Other than naming some of the more "evil" people in computer industry who where dropouts, anyone like me dropout and end up "normal" or successful? A lot of people think dropouts are deadheads with no goals in life, some situations like mine prove that idea wrong. Its truly amazing to be talking with a client and develop something for them and have them ask where I went to college to learn everything. The look on their face when I tell them I'm a dropout is priceless.
As for anyone thinking about taking this kind of a path, think long and hard before doing so. Guidance counselors almost always say the GED is the same as a diploma, its not in anyway shape or form. After I got laid off, I spent 7 months looking for a decent job before starting my business and almost all of the denials where due to the 'edjamacation' aspect of things. I got job offers just after I started my business in the form of building and airport security. Just because you're bored in school and think you know everything, you won't be successful at anything unless you work hard.
Try 4 people w/ medical issues. Somehow, I'm the only one in the family thats not a walking drugstore. Lets see, Dad has Parkinsons, 2 twin sisters that had a lot of complications when they where born mixed with a little ADHD and the other parental unit has all kinds of issues including (but not limited to) Migraines, arthritis, bad knee, etc... On top of all that, past medical bills due to sisters having medical complications throughout their lives.
As for how much they're pulling in, it's roughly half of what you came up with as contract work isn't always 40/hrs a week, but if you add the medical support in, that's about right.
There's more that causes problems with financial aid, but hey, I'm not giving away my whole life story.
I just used MIT as an example as it was better than "Joe Community College". Of course, some opinions might differ on that last statement too. I know my moms opinion is that I should quit my job, and truck on down to the local community college to enroll in their crappy Comp Ed. classes - but that just isn't going to happen. While I do have a car loan, to me, going full time contracting making $80 an hour vs. going to school for 4+ years is just too much lost income. I'd rather make money now and go to school later to earn my degree in Comp Sci/Business while I have the time to just sit and relax and not have to work out full time. I've also researched MIT(I'm not totally 'ignant'). They'd take my parents for everything they have and due to certain situations, that can't happen as they save even less money than me but make 3 times more. So the situation is really pointless for financial aid.
I completely refuse to get a student loan to go to school. Never mind the fact that every place I tried to has listed me as "unedjamacated"... I just decided to go into business for myself and screw them. Its really not worth getting into $100,000++ worth of debt for a degree now days.(and I'm referring to going to a decent tech school like MIT)