By using Linux, I'm saving money on installation costs, CACLs and registration fees. I've trimmed down my development costs by using eclipse. No more helpdesk ADO/MDAC version issues that cost money to support.
I've also saved a boatload of cash by switching the sales/marketing team to OpenOffice. We output all our client documentation using the OpenOffice PDF print driver.
With the savings, we hired two new programmers and have doubled our marketing budget so more people know about our products. We have one Windows machine left in accounting for Quicken:(
maybe I won't be upgrading to FIOS. The county commission just approved the request for Verizon to offer television services for a portion of the county.
I'm going to go ahead and forward this article to all the county commissioners. Verizon will have some explaining to do when they ask public "right of way" for the rest of the county. Too bad this article didn't come sooner when they dug up my front yard and cut my Adelphia coax.
The internet is just like a long distance phone provider/company. Verizon owes the customer the same level of quality, whether they choose Verizon or AT&T/MCI/Sprint for long distance service, Verizon was granted "right-of-way" to provide a service. If they don't provide that service then the franchise should be revoked.
So because an internal project at your company is failing, the entire south florida market is against c#? Not at all. I think its just a demostration of the maturity of the language. Java has a decade of development behind it. C# is at version 2.0 and in a few more years who knows where the language will end up. Just an observation.
Not here in the South Florida market. Still C++/Java. Our internal C# project sucks/failing because of speed and complexity. Twice as slow as Java. Three times slower than C/C++. CNN might be wrong here.
Just because you disagree with me doesn't make me a troll. I noticed you didn't refute the evidence of my 1993 computer list.
"The Altair was featured on the cover of Popular Electronics for January 1975. It was the world's first mass-produced personal computer kit, as well as the first computer to use an Intel 8080 processor."
Im gonna have to pull out my 250-in-1 Radio Shack kit from the attic for you. In 1973 I could have programmed the intel 4004 chip via switches. It's in a wooden box, and if time has treated it well, you will be mistaken again. Was the first PC a kit or a complete machine?
They had a majority marketshare much earlier than 1996, more like 1986-89 as the PC started to marginalize competing architectures.
Your wrong. I have a OMNI Magazine dated October 1993 to prove it. The top 5 computers were in 1993:
1) Commodore 64. 2) Apple IIe 3) Dell 4) Commodore 128. 5) Apple IIgs
Of those, I own four. Hell, in 1986-89 you couldn't walk into any computer store and buy IBM/DOS programs (I still have a working original IBM XT). I have computer trade magazines from the era to prove it (Compute/Incider/Byte/Dr Dobbs). PC's in the day were less expensive than the Mac, but twice the cost of an Atari/Apple II/Commodore. Stop re-writing history.
They wrote a BASIC interpreter for the Altair, which was the first real personal computer. Hardly anyone had a personal computer, and hardly any software existed for them. The Altair was a computer, but hardly the first real personal computer. In 1975 the two Steves founded Apple. April 1 1976 was the first personal computer. Put it in perspective, Atari released PONG in 1972. Again stop re-writing history.
No its not. He took a public domain language and sold the interpreter.
At the time he had a small company with an honest mission, and it's hard not to feel a little bit bad about how everyone was using his software but hardly anybody was paying him for it. Gates and Allen bankrupted the company they stole the DEC-PDP10 time from to write thier interpeter. What were you saying about honesty?
That being said, there is a fundamental truth to Gates' words: successful pioneers deserve to be paid.
That depends on your perspective. They didn't author BASIC, just wrote a new interpreter for it. No one else did it at the time which is commendable. The WOZ didn't like Microsofts version so he wrote Apple integer basic from scratch. A much better BASC by all accounts. Where is his credit or his billions?
Microsoft got the billions by locking competitors out of the Market. Go read the monopoly trial transcripts sometime. They didn't even have majority market share until 1996.
if windows would have been free open source, he probably wouldnt be as rich as he is now. And in the end, thats all that matters!
Thats an irresposible comment. Microsoft wouldn't be as rich if they hadn't locked other software vendors out of shipping thier products on a generic PC. It's been proven in court. Go read the trial transcripts sometime. Believe what you want to believe but Microsoft didn't get rich because Windows was superior.
In this light, it certainly took Bill a lot of time to get there.
Not really. The HAL layer/model in NT 3.0 was the first PC lock-out. Back then they provided the DDK for free. Once they killed OS/2 they started charging monopoly prices (at the time) for the DDK and the MSDN subscription.
Fast forward ten years and now they give away the MSDN/Application layer while still holding on tightly to the HAL (DDK) layer..Net and C# are supposed to insulate us even more from the hardware. Linux must really piss them off.
Visual Studio Express is free, and so are fully functioning versions fo SQL Server 200 and 2005.
Let me see you write a new PCI Bus driver using that package. Better yet, access any of the built in I/O routines your PC has. Do you know the difference between computer programming and Windows programming? Just curious.
Verizon's FIOS is a private network just like the cable companies COAX. There are four fiber lines in the cable. 1 for video, 1 for voice, 1 for internet and 1 for future use. Unless the author means Verizon is hogging the public internet bandwidth (backbone), then this article is completely false. Even then, I believe Verizon is streaming the content from thier own equipment on the FIOS network, not the public BBN.
have done had DEC locked the system from hobbyist?
The first computer he used was a DEC PDP-10 that was owned by General Electric. His high school paid General Electric for time that the students could use to program the computer. Bill Gates and his friend Paul Allen spent many hours at the computer, eventually causing their grades to suffer from skipped classes and late homework. When they were given a new system to work with, they hacked into the system to make it so that the computer did not record the time that they spent on it, causing them to be banned from it for weeks.
but a WYSIWYG html editor with syntax highlighting of PHP for my initial development efforts would be kind of handy for working on my local machine. Do either of these editors happen to include that feature?
This is not like the EOLAS plugin patent. This is an idea that Microsoft STOLE and got rich with. Microsoft is the one to blame, not Carlos Amado. (They could as well have licensed his technology or simply use an alternative, but did they?)
I don't think so. Appleworks had this feature via a shared memory segment first back in the mid-80's. Is the Carlos Amado method unique? Maybe, but Appleworks is prior art and therefore not a new idea.
I can't believe a mega-corporation with an army of lawyers didn't bring this up in the trial. Is Microsoft that incompetent or is this a way to pressure the zillions of Office 97 owners into upgrading?
I need to write a fairly simple application which will need to display data received from a serial port in a decoded (and graphical) form via a Windows GUI.
Write a simple Win32 program that uses a dialog class has its main window. Depending on how many elements your dialog needs to display, you could probably wirte this in less than two hundred lines of code. There are plenty examples on the internet to get you started. The result will be a small, tight and fast program that uses very little memory. As a bonus, your program will run on all 9x/NT versions of windows without extra dependencies, unlike the MFC/VB/C#/Wx/java frameworks other people are advising you to use.
Isn't going to happen until Microsoft starts being a platform neutral software company again. I have an older pre-Microsoft version and it rocked. Too bad Microsoft killed (oops, integrated) it with Office.
Hey Microsoft/. patrollers, ask upper management if its worth selling me nothing or selling me a $40-$100 standalone version of Visio for Linux? I'm not a thief and I won't upload my copy.
I will be equally blunt. It appears that you're doing your job wrong. Having to work overtime on a regular basis implies poor planning or lack of focus.
Sir, what is your job and what tools do you use to accomplish it? Programmers from Microsoft, IBM, HP, SUN, and Symantec all work overtime when project deadlines aren't met (I work/worked for two of the companies listed). There are always external forces interfering with project deadlines. Accusing me of doing my job wrong when you have no idea what it is I do is very unprofessional.
Of course, if you're using that overtime to improve your skills, I withdraw my comment. I just hope that you're not charging for that time:).
I learn on my own time without monetary reward, don't you? In my current company I get compensated for work related training. How I received the training to get my current job was paid for by myself. I enjoy learning new things and I won't get compensation for learning OCAML on my own.
That is the one of the large differences between your situation and mine. We are a one car family, and my husband works a long train ride away from home. Therefore, anything related to household issues that comes up during the week falls into my lap as I am the most mobile and the closest to home. My husband helps out where he can, but given that he leaves at 6:00 am and returns at 8:00 pm, he is understandably exhausted by the time the work day is through.
Right now, I would say we are in the struggling phase you mentioned above. He has gone through a bunch of job transitions and an attempt at re-education while I have persevered with my current position to keep our finances out of bankruptcy. He is now working to move up where he is at, but it has been a long, slow process fraught with corporate doublespeak and political BS.
Not really a difference, no comparison. My wife was told to do absolutely nothing or we would loose the baby. We immediately went from a co-operative two income household to one with a single paycheck and one person doing everything. Its just the two of you, we had kids. My paycheck at this time only allowed me to cover the auto payment, groceries and mortgage. I defaulted on the credit cards and finally after ten years I've paid them off. I never declared bankruptcy. We had collection agencies calling for years but after a while you get used to it (Yoda voice: paid them $10 I did when I promised $100 umm).
I don't know the job market where you live, but if your husband has to deal with any middle management corporate types I would look for a new job (Remember the old IBM commericials with the kids... "I want to work my way to middle management").
I haven't broached that option with my manager yet; we have three IT departments and only one of those three would allow me to maintain my current salary if I were to transfer. I don't belive they have any openings. I did ask what my options were in terms of a flexible schedule, but whatever gains came of the meeting were reversed when my manager learned that it would inconvenience him.
I worked for a fortune 100 company. I was unique in the fact that my status was new products developer (say Beta and production programmer). I had two, sometimes three managers at the same time. I found a sadistic pleasure on playing the managers off on each other on the tasks I was supposed to accomplish for each of them.
Anyway, be subtle and get the manager of the group you want to transfer into in a dialog with your current manager about your status. If nothing else, its always fun to watch a middle manager power struggle. As far as the pay, I took a salary cut to work at my current job (a small niche firm). After two years I'm making more money than I was with the fortune 100 company and I'm not in a rut anymore. Job satisfaction is more valuable too me than money.
Again I wish you and your husband the best. This isn't advice, just one part of my lifes story of overcoming seemingly insermountable problems without any help. Your mileage may vary. BTW: I'm the weirdo who teaches kids "there is no can't, only do".
Yesterday in one of my law classes we had a discussion (related to the discovery process) about the DOJ's subpoena of Google. More than one of my fellow students stated that expecting any sort of privacy on the Internet was absurd.
Curious,
How is this not like the current telecommunication laws where records of who you called are public but the conversation is private? Why should I not feel the activity between myself and Google isn't private once I arrive at thier IP address? How do your classmates feel about the communications that occur over the internet between themselves and thier Doctor? Private or Public? I'm not trying to argue one way or another, just curious.
Does your wife work? I'm not asking as a retort but as a genuine question. She used to but due to complications with our third child she had to quit. We struggled for five years before regaining control of our finances. She now has a career consisting of sibling transportation, household CEO, and full time referee.
I have serious health issues. I didn't include this in my original question, as I thought the explanation of such health issues would take up valuable space. In the past I ignored said issues to fufill the demands of my job, but it's gotten to a point where I need a clear demarcation between work life and home life in order to keep up with the work I need to do at my job. I'm truly sorry to hear that. I would not have been so harsh in my response had you mentioned this in your original post. I apologize. Does your employer offer you the chance to transfer to another department within the company? Obviously your health should come first but without the resources to address the issue I can understand why your hesitant.
This is not a flamebait response, but most moderators will treat it so. "I'm currently working as a Microsoft Systems Administrator. Through a series of bungled management decisions, have found myself responsible for a Windows Server 2003 Active Directory network, that I know nothing about (the person who was sent for training was: not the Microsoft point person, as I was; and left the company, soon after the domain upgrade).
Your a Microsoft Adminstrator but you know nothing of AD services. Your on Par with most MCSE/MSVP/PMS/MS whatever certificate holding persons. Your fine, it's just that most of what you need to know is buried in Microsofts SDK documentation.
It doesn't look as though training will be forthcoming, and I've just been moved from the lab, where I was training myself while simultaneously handling the domain. I've got the MCSA/MCSE Training Kit, but recently I've found numerous errors, so many that I was sent a free Press Kit book, for submitting all of the errors I had found. Between management's reluctance to shell out for training, and being moved from the lab, I'm getting the distinct sense that training is something I'm expected to take care of, on my own time. Is this the de-facto standard within IT, and for all jobs within IT?
Is it your career or mangements career? Who trained Bill Gates or Wozniak? Its up to you to figure stuff out. If your into computers why should you care about the platform? Your next job could be Windows/AIX/AS400/Linux whatever. Always be ready for the next career jump.
If so, how do you Slashdot readers keep up with your continuing education, while still maintaining a personal life? Is it naive to try to leave my work at work?" "I'm especially interested in hearing from the Slashdot readers of the female persuasion, as I have a husband, a dog, and a household to keep up with (no kids by choice, but I wouldn't have the time to take care of them, even if I wanted to).
I'm male. I have a wife and three kids, one dog and one cat and a habitat they all call home. Yes I work overtime most/sometimes. We do family things on the weekends. I'm currently learning OCAML in my private time (I get up early on weekends, have coffee and learn something new). Whats your problem?
I also have the added responsibility of being the primary breadwinner. My free time is valuable in that it allows me to take care of that which I can't during the day (grocery shopping, dog responsibilities, cleaning, etc), and decompress/de-stress in order to prepare for the next day's work. I like tinkering with computers and learning new stuff, but I fear that if I'm expected train myself, outside of work, I may need to consider a different career.
You may need a new significant other if he/she is not willing to share (along with his/hers) in the responsibilties of your lifes vision quest. I have time to play network games with my kids, satisfy my wife, work (+- 50 hours), play with my dog, and clean house when my wife is too busy.
Without trying to sound mean, whats your problem? Is everything supposed to be given to you?
I like computers, its a life choice for me. Maybe you don't. My advice? Use common sense and choose your own path.
AOL spokesman Andrew Weinstein confirmed that the company received a subpoena from the DOJ but said the information from the ACLU was not accurate. "We did not and would not comply with such a subpoena. We gave (the DOJ) a generic list of aggregate and anonymous search terms, and not results, from a roughly one day period. There were absolutely no privacy implications," Weinstein said. "There was no way to tie those search terms to individuals or to search results." He declined to elaborate.
Yahoo response...
Yahoo acknowledged on Thursday that it complied with the Justice Department's request but said no personally identifiable information was handed over. "We are vigorous defenders of our users' privacy," said Yahoo spokeswoman Mary Osako. "We did not provide any personal information in response to the Justice Department's subpoena. In our opinion this is not a privacy issue."
MSN response.... ?????
Please don't let the details hit you in the ass in reguards to AOL/Yahoo. Enjoy,
There are dozens of products out there to do this. Linksys alone makes several. You obviously didn't search slashdot, google, etc. The fact this article got accepted... Words fail me.
Chill. This is meant to be a discussion thread. In other words, what do most other slashdot readers use to centrally store data on thier home network.
If you had a choice what would you rather do when making a purchase? Buy into the manufacturers BS or ask some knowledgeable/. readers.
Slashdot Mirror
By using Linux, I'm saving money on installation costs, CACLs and registration fees. I've trimmed down my development costs by using eclipse. No more helpdesk ADO/MDAC version issues that cost money to support.
:(
I've also saved a boatload of cash by switching the sales/marketing team to OpenOffice. We output all our client documentation using the OpenOffice PDF print driver.
With the savings, we hired two new programmers and have doubled our marketing budget so more people know about our products. We have one Windows machine left in accounting for Quicken
Food for thought.
Enjoy.
maybe I won't be upgrading to FIOS. The county commission just approved the request for Verizon to offer television services for a portion of the county.
r elease.vtml?id=93233
http://newscenter.verizon.com/proactive/newsroom/
I'm going to go ahead and forward this article to all the county commissioners. Verizon will have some explaining to do when they ask public "right of way" for the rest of the county. Too bad this article didn't come sooner when they dug up my front yard and cut my Adelphia coax.
The internet is just like a long distance phone provider/company. Verizon owes the customer the same level of quality, whether they choose Verizon or AT&T/MCI/Sprint for long distance service, Verizon was granted "right-of-way" to provide a service. If they don't provide that service then the franchise should be revoked.
Enjoy,
So because an internal project at your company is failing, the entire south florida market is against c#?
Not at all. I think its just a demostration of the maturity of the language. Java has a decade of development behind it. C# is at version 2.0 and in a few more years who knows where the language will end up. Just an observation.
Enjoy,
Not here in the South Florida market. Still C++/Java. Our internal C# project sucks/failing because of speed and complexity. Twice as slow as Java. Three times slower than C/C++. CNN might be wrong here.
Enjoy,
I'm beginning to think you are just a troll.
Just because you disagree with me doesn't make me a troll. I noticed you didn't refute the evidence of my 1993 computer list.
"The Altair was featured on the cover of Popular Electronics for January 1975. It was the world's first mass-produced personal computer kit, as well as the first computer to use an Intel 8080 processor."
Im gonna have to pull out my 250-in-1 Radio Shack kit from the attic for you. In 1973 I could have programmed the intel 4004 chip via switches. It's in a wooden box, and if time has treated it well, you will be mistaken again. Was the first PC a kit or a complete machine?
Enjoy,
They had a majority marketshare much earlier than 1996, more like 1986-89 as the PC started to marginalize competing architectures.
Your wrong. I have a OMNI Magazine dated October 1993 to prove it. The top 5 computers were in 1993:
1) Commodore 64.
2) Apple IIe
3) Dell
4) Commodore 128.
5) Apple IIgs
Of those, I own four. Hell, in 1986-89 you couldn't walk into any computer store and buy IBM/DOS programs (I still have a working original IBM XT). I have computer trade magazines from the era to prove it (Compute/Incider/Byte/Dr Dobbs). PC's in the day were less expensive than the Mac, but twice the cost of an Atari/Apple II/Commodore. Stop re-writing history.
They wrote a BASIC interpreter for the Altair, which was the first real personal computer. Hardly anyone had a personal computer, and hardly any software existed for them.
The Altair was a computer, but hardly the first real personal computer. In 1975 the two Steves founded Apple. April 1 1976 was the first personal computer. Put it in perspective, Atari released PONG in 1972. Again stop re-writing history.
Enjoy.
No its not. He took a public domain language and sold the interpreter.
At the time he had a small company with an honest mission, and it's hard not to feel a little bit bad about how everyone was using his software but hardly anybody was paying him for it.
Gates and Allen bankrupted the company they stole the DEC-PDP10 time from to write thier interpeter. What were you saying about honesty?
That being said, there is a fundamental truth to Gates' words: successful pioneers deserve to be paid.
That depends on your perspective. They didn't author BASIC, just wrote a new interpreter for it. No one else did it at the time which is commendable. The WOZ didn't like Microsofts version so he wrote Apple integer basic from scratch. A much better BASC by all accounts. Where is his credit or his billions?
Microsoft got the billions by locking competitors out of the Market. Go read the monopoly trial transcripts sometime. They didn't even have majority market share until 1996.
Enjoy.
if windows would have been free open source, he probably wouldnt be as rich as he is now. And in the end, thats all that matters!
Thats an irresposible comment. Microsoft wouldn't be as rich if they hadn't locked other software vendors out of shipping thier products on a generic PC. It's been proven in court. Go read the trial transcripts sometime. Believe what you want to believe but Microsoft didn't get rich because Windows was superior.
Enjoy.
In this light, it certainly took Bill a lot of time to get there.
.Net and C# are supposed to insulate us even more from the hardware. Linux must really piss them off.
Not really. The HAL layer/model in NT 3.0 was the first PC lock-out. Back then they provided the DDK for free. Once they killed OS/2 they started charging monopoly prices (at the time) for the DDK and the MSDN subscription.
Fast forward ten years and now they give away the MSDN/Application layer while still holding on tightly to the HAL (DDK) layer.
Enjoy.
Visual Studio Express is free, and so are fully functioning versions fo SQL Server 200 and 2005.
Let me see you write a new PCI Bus driver using that package. Better yet, access any of the built in I/O routines your PC has. Do you know the difference between computer programming and Windows programming? Just curious.
Enjoy,
Verizon's FIOS is a private network just like the cable companies COAX. There are four fiber lines in the cable. 1 for video, 1 for voice, 1 for internet and 1 for future use. Unless the author means Verizon is hogging the public internet bandwidth (backbone), then this article is completely false. Even then, I believe Verizon is streaming the content from thier own equipment on the FIOS network, not the public BBN.
0 -1034_3-5275171.html.
Article on FIOS here - http://news.com.com/Verizons+fiber+race+is+on/210
Enjoy.
have done had DEC locked the system from hobbyist?
7
The first computer he used was a DEC PDP-10 that was owned by General Electric. His high school paid General Electric for time that the students could use to program the computer. Bill Gates and his friend Paul Allen spent many hours at the computer, eventually causing their grades to suffer from skipped classes and late homework. When they were given a new system to work with, they hacked into the system to make it so that the computer did not record the time that they spent on it, causing them to be banned from it for weeks.
Excerpt from here, http://www.freeinfosociety.com/site.php?postnum=9
Bill Gates would not be where he is today if it weren't for open systems.
Enjoy,
but a WYSIWYG html editor with syntax highlighting of PHP for my initial development efforts would be kind of handy for working on my local machine. Do either of these editors happen to include that feature?
Try Bluefish
http://bluefish.openoffice.nl/index.html
Enjoy,
This is not like the EOLAS plugin patent. This is an idea that Microsoft STOLE and got rich with. Microsoft is the one to blame, not Carlos Amado. (They could as well have licensed his technology or simply use an alternative, but did they?)
I don't think so. Appleworks had this feature via a shared memory segment first back in the mid-80's. Is the Carlos Amado method unique? Maybe, but Appleworks is prior art and therefore not a new idea.
I can't believe a mega-corporation with an army of lawyers didn't bring this up in the trial. Is Microsoft that incompetent or is this a way to pressure the zillions of Office 97 owners into upgrading?
Food for thought, enjoy.
I need to write a fairly simple application which will need to display data received from a serial port in a decoded (and graphical) form via a Windows GUI.
Write a simple Win32 program that uses a dialog class has its main window. Depending on how many elements your dialog needs to display, you could probably wirte this in less than two hundred lines of code. There are plenty examples on the internet to get you started. The result will be a small, tight and fast program that uses very little memory. As a bonus, your program will run on all 9x/NT versions of windows without extra dependencies, unlike the MFC/VB/C#/Wx/java frameworks other people are advising you to use.
Enjoy,
Unfortunately, Dia just isn't quite there yet. :)
I know, thats why I offered to pay Microsoft a fee for a Linux version. Wishfull thinking
Enjoy,
Isn't going to happen until Microsoft starts being a platform neutral software company again. I have an older pre-Microsoft version and it rocked. Too bad Microsoft killed (oops, integrated) it with Office.
/. patrollers, ask upper management if its worth selling me nothing or selling me a $40-$100 standalone version of Visio for Linux? I'm not a thief and I won't upload my copy.
Dia http://www.gnome.org/projects/dia/ as replacement works for me. Windows port available.
Hey Microsoft
Enjoy,
I will be equally blunt. It appears that you're doing your job wrong. Having to work overtime on a regular basis implies poor planning or lack of focus.
:).
Sir, what is your job and what tools do you use to accomplish it? Programmers from Microsoft, IBM, HP, SUN, and Symantec all work overtime when project deadlines aren't met (I work/worked for two of the companies listed). There are always external forces interfering with project deadlines. Accusing me of doing my job wrong when you have no idea what it is I do is very unprofessional.
Of course, if you're using that overtime to improve your skills, I withdraw my comment. I just hope that you're not charging for that time
I learn on my own time without monetary reward, don't you? In my current company I get compensated for work related training. How I received the training to get my current job was paid for by myself. I enjoy learning new things and I won't get compensation for learning OCAML on my own.
What is your question again?
Enjoy.
That is the one of the large differences between your situation and mine. We are a one car family, and my husband works a long train ride away from home. Therefore, anything related to household issues that comes up during the week falls into my lap as I am the most mobile and the closest to home. My husband helps out where he can, but given that he leaves at 6:00 am and returns at 8:00 pm, he is understandably exhausted by the time the work day is through.
Right now, I would say we are in the struggling phase you mentioned above. He has gone through a bunch of job transitions and an attempt at re-education while I have persevered with my current position to keep our finances out of bankruptcy. He is now working to move up where he is at, but it has been a long, slow process fraught with corporate doublespeak and political BS.
Not really a difference, no comparison. My wife was told to do absolutely nothing or we would loose the baby. We immediately went from a co-operative two income household to one with a single paycheck and one person doing everything. Its just the two of you, we had kids. My paycheck at this time only allowed me to cover the auto payment, groceries and mortgage. I defaulted on the credit cards and finally after ten years I've paid them off. I never declared bankruptcy. We had collection agencies calling for years but after a while you get used to it (Yoda voice: paid them $10 I did when I promised $100 umm).
I don't know the job market where you live, but if your husband has to deal with any middle management corporate types I would look for a new job (Remember the old IBM commericials with the kids... "I want to work my way to middle management").
I haven't broached that option with my manager yet; we have three IT departments and only one of those three would allow me to maintain my current salary if I were to transfer. I don't belive they have any openings. I did ask what my options were in terms of a flexible schedule, but whatever gains came of the meeting were reversed when my manager learned that it would inconvenience him.
I worked for a fortune 100 company. I was unique in the fact that my status was new products developer (say Beta and production programmer). I had two, sometimes three managers at the same time. I found a sadistic pleasure on playing the managers off on each other on the tasks I was supposed to accomplish for each of them.
Anyway, be subtle and get the manager of the group you want to transfer into in a dialog with your current manager about your status. If nothing else, its always fun to watch a middle manager power struggle. As far as the pay, I took a salary cut to work at my current job (a small niche firm). After two years I'm making more money than I was with the fortune 100 company and I'm not in a rut anymore. Job satisfaction is more valuable too me than money.
Again I wish you and your husband the best. This isn't advice, just one part of my lifes story of overcoming seemingly insermountable problems without any help. Your mileage may vary. BTW: I'm the weirdo who teaches kids "there is no can't, only do".
Enjoy,
Yesterday in one of my law classes we had a discussion (related to the discovery process) about the DOJ's subpoena of Google. More than one of my fellow students stated that expecting any sort of privacy on the Internet was absurd.
Curious,
How is this not like the current telecommunication laws where records of who you called are public but the conversation is private? Why should I not feel the activity between myself and Google isn't private once I arrive at thier IP address? How do your classmates feel about the communications that occur over the internet between themselves and thier Doctor? Private or Public? I'm not trying to argue one way or another, just curious.
Enjoy,
Does your wife work? I'm not asking as a retort but as a genuine question.
She used to but due to complications with our third child she had to quit. We struggled for five years before regaining control of our finances. She now has a career consisting of sibling transportation, household CEO, and full time referee.
I have serious health issues. I didn't include this in my original question, as I thought the explanation of such health issues would take up valuable space. In the past I ignored said issues to fufill the demands of my job, but it's gotten to a point where I need a clear demarcation between work life and home life in order to keep up with the work I need to do at my job.
I'm truly sorry to hear that. I would not have been so harsh in my response had you mentioned this in your original post. I apologize. Does your employer offer you the chance to transfer to another department within the company? Obviously your health should come first but without the resources to address the issue I can understand why your hesitant.
Good Luck,
Enjoy.
This is not a flamebait response, but most moderators will treat it so.
"I'm currently working as a Microsoft Systems Administrator. Through a series of bungled management decisions, have found myself responsible for a Windows Server 2003 Active Directory network, that I know nothing about (the person who was sent for training was: not the Microsoft point person, as I was; and left the company, soon after the domain upgrade).
Your a Microsoft Adminstrator but you know nothing of AD services. Your on Par with most MCSE/MSVP/PMS/MS whatever certificate holding persons. Your fine, it's just that most of what you need to know is buried in Microsofts SDK documentation.
It doesn't look as though training will be forthcoming, and I've just been moved from the lab, where I was training myself while simultaneously handling the domain. I've got the MCSA/MCSE Training Kit, but recently I've found numerous errors, so many that I was sent a free Press Kit book, for submitting all of the errors I had found. Between management's reluctance to shell out for training, and being moved from the lab, I'm getting the distinct sense that training is something I'm expected to take care of, on my own time. Is this the de-facto standard within IT, and for all jobs within IT?
Is it your career or mangements career? Who trained Bill Gates or Wozniak? Its up to you to figure stuff out. If your into computers why should you care about the platform? Your next job could be Windows/AIX/AS400/Linux whatever. Always be ready for the next career jump.
If so, how do you Slashdot readers keep up with your continuing education, while still maintaining a personal life? Is it naive to try to leave my work at work?"
"I'm especially interested in hearing from the Slashdot readers of the female persuasion, as I have a husband, a dog, and a household to keep up with (no kids by choice, but I wouldn't have the time to take care of them, even if I wanted to).
I'm male. I have a wife and three kids, one dog and one cat and a habitat they all call home. Yes I work overtime most/sometimes. We do family things on the weekends. I'm currently learning OCAML in my private time (I get up early on weekends, have coffee and learn something new). Whats your problem?
I also have the added responsibility of being the primary breadwinner. My free time is valuable in that it allows me to take care of that which I can't during the day (grocery shopping, dog responsibilities, cleaning, etc), and decompress/de-stress in order to prepare for the next day's work. I like tinkering with computers and learning new stuff, but I fear that if I'm expected train myself, outside of work, I may need to consider a different career.
You may need a new significant other if he/she is not willing to share (along with his/hers) in the responsibilties of your lifes vision quest. I have time to play network games with my kids, satisfy my wife, work (+- 50 hours), play with my dog, and clean house when my wife is too busy.
Without trying to sound mean, whats your problem? Is everything supposed to be given to you?
I like computers, its a life choice for me. Maybe you don't. My advice? Use common sense and choose your own path.
Enjoy,
Quotes from the article here: http://news.com.com/Feds+take+porn+fight+to+Google /2100-1030_3-6028701.html?tag=nefd.lede
AOL response...
AOL spokesman Andrew Weinstein confirmed that the company received a subpoena from the DOJ but said the information from the ACLU was not accurate.
"We did not and would not comply with such a subpoena. We gave (the DOJ) a generic list of aggregate and anonymous search terms, and not results, from a roughly one day period. There were absolutely no privacy implications," Weinstein said. "There was no way to tie those search terms to individuals or to search results." He declined to elaborate.
Yahoo response...
Yahoo acknowledged on Thursday that it complied with the Justice Department's request but said no personally identifiable information was handed over. "We are vigorous defenders of our users' privacy," said Yahoo spokeswoman Mary Osako. "We did not provide any personal information in response to the Justice Department's subpoena. In our opinion this is not a privacy issue."
MSN response.... ?????
Please don't let the details hit you in the ass in reguards to AOL/Yahoo.
Enjoy,
There are dozens of products out there to do this. Linksys alone makes several. You obviously didn't search slashdot, google, etc. The fact this article got accepted... Words fail me.
/. readers.
Chill. This is meant to be a discussion thread. In other words, what do most other slashdot readers use to centrally store data on thier home network.
If you had a choice what would you rather do when making a purchase? Buy into the manufacturers BS or ask some knowledgeable
Enjoy,
Mr PotatoHead, Mr PotatoHead...