In quite a few countries in Africa it is common to be returned to the end of the line at the border because you have a missing page in your passport. The "missing page" is some paper currency. So, if you are entering countries like Nigeria or Kenia be sure to add that extra "page" in your passport.
I agree with you. Also, if you are a sniper you are handloading your rounds to get extreme accuracy. There are tons of different tips, powder, primers and loads that can be used in the cartridge and you can also vary the barrel length of the rifle. There are way too many variables to determine this accurately.
The only possible way this could work would be on amateur "snipers". They would most likely have an easily available rifle like the AK-47 custom modified with a scope on it and are taking pot shots at troops from maximum 200 meters. You can then tune the robot to just listen for an AK-47 since they will probably not be using custom ammunition in any case.
I have not seen one post about that. If I was a cop I would hate it knowing someone else sees everything I do.
What if you have to take a leak ? "Dispatch, please suspend my headgear for 5 minutes , I'm going to the toilet". This brings up my next point, does this mean they have to permanently wear their helmets? What if the cop is on his lunch break and he steps into the donut shop without his helmet? What if it's 100F outside?
I have to agree that US companies are very greedy. I worked on an H1-B in the USA from 1999-2004. I worked as a Software Engineer in Colorado and California.
In the early days before the dotcom bubble (1999-2001) I was being pimped out by three companies. My rate was $27 per hour but I was being billed out at $75 per hour.
I started working at a major company in San Jose in 2001 and got a cost of living increase to $32 per hour. (At that point my rent was $1325 per month for a studio apartment in Sunnyvale so the increase did not help much). The market was getting tougher and companies started to realize that there were two or three companies on most contractors. I managed to keep my contract until 2004.
The reason they ended my contract in 2004 was because of my rate. The two companies that were pimping me out at that point could not come to an agreement to cut their rate since they were already struggling to survive.
To summarize , I agree that a lot of the problems in the USA job market are caused by greedy US contract companies, not necessarily USA employers. The contract companies feel they have more risk since they hold the visa and therefore should charge more money. I agree with that but too many of them are ripping off USA employers and H1-B contractors. The result is that salaries of IT workers are overinflated. Companies struggle to find a good properly priced employee and employees struggle to find a job paying a decent salary.
You sound very uncertain of your beliefs. I think you are struggling with the fact that God loves all of us (including you) and you cannot comprehend the concept of such unselfish love.
Before you start ranting and raving about what an idiot I am take a look at your own words :
....MOST LIKELY NEVER EXISTED, certainly not in the way your institutions are attempting to teach you.
.. that most certainly doesn't exist, definitely not in the way they envision, in which case if he DID exist,...
Both of these statements clearly show that you do believe in a god of some sort, but it's somehow different than what institutions are teaching or the way you envision it.
The great thing about believing in God is that you can find your own image of what God is to you. It's OK to feel uncomfortable with various types of religion. Find your own image/view of God and speak to God, it's as simple as that.
Just speak to God and say "thank you God for understanding me and loving me. I want you to be a part of my life. Please help me to learn more about you.".
I have been working in the Software Industry as a developer and team leader for the past 11 years. I have the following recommendations:
1. Team Dynamics
Communication is extremely important. Very few new recruits understand the concept of working in large teams. You have to inform people of actions that potentially can hamper their work.
Use email, the phone or get up and tell the person your are bringing a database down, checking in code , doing a build. I found that lots of problems occur due to bad or no communication between team members.
2. Tools
Teach people to use the proper tools to help facilitate proper communication in teams. Also, teach tool scenarios in which a real world team can be simulated. I currently work only on Microsoft platforms and can recommend the following tools that any new recruit should know or at least have an understanding off.
- Sharepoint Portal Services or other portal software allowing project documents to be accesible by all team members.
- Source control software such as Perforce or SourceSafe allowing code to be versioned and changes to be tracked.
- QA is crucial on large projects and and understanding of bug tracking software such as TeamTrack is a must.
- A project management tool such as MS Project. At least the ability to interpret a project plan that is posted on the portal site allowing all team members to see proper milestones and understand dependancies on deliverables, again helping communication between team members.
Other tools and concepts I found useful :
- Virtual Machine software (VMware, Virtual PC) makes it easy to quickly setup a dev. / QA environment.
- Remote Connections (VNC, Remote Desktop Connection)
As you can see my recommendations are on a technical level but I feel any CS graduate interested in being a developer/team leader/project manager/DBA/IT manager should have a good grasp of all these tools to have the ability to integrate faster into the corporate environment.
I totally agree. I used to be responsible for a QA lab. running about 5 OS flavors. It works great.
The only downside I could see from using it in a school setup is that what if the machine gets screwed up during every class. Everytime you start a class you would have to reload the image. It does not take that long though, I think it took about 5-8 minutes for an XP image to load.
You Sir, are aboslutely right! I was fortunate enough to be able to live and work in the USA for six years. I spent 4 years working in San Jose, California. (It was during the whole power problem around 2003, if I remember correctly)
I thought to myself, "These Californians are a weird bunch, why not just drop a reactor right here in the San Fransisco Bay ?". The bay is perfectly situated and a plant there would be able to power probably the whole bay area.
For all the technology they have in the bay area I cannot believe people are so afraid of nuclear power. It's just another technology that can and have been mastered.
"This hypothesis compares Mars with South Africa". Being from South Africa I take offense at this. How can you compare a dry harsh violent place such as Mars to our country ? Oh , wait...nevermind.
Down here in South Africa we had a discussion the other day regarding mosquito evolution. The buggers here are now able to sting through clothing. They still concentrate mainly on exposed ankles but if you sit quietly every now and then you will find that one comes and sits on a covered area and proceeds to try and sting through it. I have found that they can sting through thin socks or thin t-shirt material. It's best to wear tall boots since they find ankles still most attractive.
Here in South Africa we use an ID number which is the equivalent of a social security numnber. Recently quite a few cases have been reported where women wanting to get married find out that they are already married when they try to register to get a new ID document issued with their new surname.
They found that they were already registered as married to a foreigner, mostly from Nigeria. Once the Nigerian obtains the ID number of a suitable "wife" he proceeds to file a marriage certificate. He then applies for South African citizenship showing he is married to a South African woman.
It has become such a problem that the South African government has provided a feature on their website where you can check if you are married or not by providing your ID number.
When I was living in the USA I made sure to shred all credit card statements and to get a credit report every year. I think that at least are basic precautions anyone should take.
Being from Africa (South Africa to be precise) I feel compelled to add some perspective. South Africa is considered to be the most advanced country on the continent and we have access to all Microsoft products.
There is a Microsoft regional office here that provides training and seminars. We even have a launch event scheduled for VS 2005. The point is we have most infrastrcuture in place.
The biggest problem that is holding us and other African countries back is internet connection speed and connectivity in general. Even here in technologically advanced South Africa ADSL is ridiculously expensive. Currently a 512k connection costs roughly the equivalent of $100/month plus the line is capped at 3GB.
Getting to online training sessions and even just MSDN is a major problem for most rural communities that still use modem connections since our main telecomunnications provider (Telkom) http://www.telkom.co.za/ also charges per minute for phone calls.
I think to help with training and advance Africa a better option would be to help local telecommunication companies reduce costs so that internet connections can become cheaper.
The bank i'm with uses SMS to send a code to your cellphone whenever you want to make profile changes to your account. I believe this is a bit more secure and more reliable than email.
For example a profile change would be to add a new beneficiary. I would type a description for the beneficiary and the account number. At that point the SMS is sent and within 2-3minutes I type in the code and the process is complete.
You can also turn on SMS notification on any account payments. Once any payment is taken from your account you get an SMS. This could get a bit irritating when you have lots of transactions but still a very useful feature.
Slashdot Mirror
What about a bunker in the basement of a skyscraper?
Are you suggesting we shoot her in the head with the i-ball grenade launcher?
Let's make it clear, it was a "mechanical" problem. This was not during a "test" of some new technology but during a live fire exercise done yearly.
Proper facts from South African newspapers :
http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/News/0,,2-7-1442_2201429,00.html
Link to search on the "Lohatla incident" :
http://search.news24.com/search?s=NWS&ref=NWS&q=Lohatla+accident&x=41&y=13&sit=&sn=
In quite a few countries in Africa it is common to be returned to the end of the line at the border because you have a missing page in your passport. The "missing page" is some paper currency. So, if you are entering countries like Nigeria or Kenia be sure to add that extra "page" in your passport.
I agree with you. Also, if you are a sniper you are handloading your rounds to get extreme accuracy. There are tons of different tips, powder, primers and loads that can be used in the cartridge and you can also vary the barrel length of the rifle. There are way too many variables to determine this accurately.
The only possible way this could work would be on amateur "snipers". They would most likely have an easily available rifle like the AK-47 custom modified with a scope on it and are taking pot shots at troops from maximum 200 meters. You can then tune the robot to just listen for an AK-47 since they will probably not be using custom ammunition in any case.
Overloads man, Overloads! :-)
I have not seen one post about that. If I was a cop I would hate it knowing someone else sees everything I do.
What if you have to take a leak ? "Dispatch, please suspend my headgear for 5 minutes , I'm going to the toilet". This brings up my next point, does this mean they have to permanently wear their helmets? What if the cop is on his lunch break and he steps into the donut shop without his helmet? What if it's 100F outside?
Not a good plan in my opinion.
I have to agree that US companies are very greedy. I worked on an H1-B in the USA from 1999-2004. I worked as a Software Engineer in Colorado and California.
In the early days before the dotcom bubble (1999-2001) I was being pimped out by three companies. My rate was $27 per hour but I was being billed out at $75 per hour.
I started working at a major company in San Jose in 2001 and got a cost of living increase to $32 per hour. (At that point my rent was $1325 per month for a studio apartment in Sunnyvale so the increase did not help much). The market was getting tougher and companies started to realize that there were two or
three companies on most contractors. I managed to keep my contract until 2004.
The reason they ended my contract in 2004 was because of my rate. The two companies that were pimping me out at that point could not come to an agreement to cut their rate since they were already struggling to survive.
To summarize , I agree that a lot of the problems in the USA job market are caused by greedy US contract companies, not necessarily USA employers. The contract companies feel they have more risk since they hold the visa and therefore should charge more money. I agree with that but too many of them are ripping off USA employers and H1-B contractors. The result is that salaries of IT workers are overinflated. Companies struggle to find a good properly priced employee and employees struggle to find a job paying a decent salary.
You are doing it to yourselves!
You sound very uncertain of your beliefs. I think you are struggling with the fact that God loves all of us (including you) and you cannot comprehend the concept of such unselfish love.
....MOST LIKELY NEVER EXISTED, certainly not in the way your institutions are attempting to teach you.
.. that most certainly doesn't exist, definitely not in the way they envision, in which case if he DID exist, ...
Before you start ranting and raving about what an idiot I am take a look at your own words :
Both of these statements clearly show that you do believe in a god of some sort, but it's somehow different than what institutions are teaching or the way you envision it.
The great thing about believing in God is that you can find your own image of what God is to you. It's OK to feel uncomfortable with various types of religion. Find your own image/view of God and speak to God, it's as simple as that. Just speak to God and say "thank you God for understanding me and loving me. I want you to be a part of my life. Please help me to learn more about you.".
I have been working in the Software Industry as a developer and team leader for the past 11 years. I have the following recommendations:
1. Team Dynamics
Communication is extremely important. Very few new recruits understand the concept of working in large teams. You have to inform people of actions that potentially can hamper their work.
Use email, the phone or get up and tell the person your are bringing a database down, checking in code , doing a build. I found that lots of problems occur due to bad or no communication between team members.
2. Tools
Teach people to use the proper tools to help facilitate proper communication in teams. Also, teach tool scenarios in which a real world team can be simulated. I currently work only on Microsoft platforms and can recommend the following tools that any new recruit should know or at least have an understanding off.
- Sharepoint Portal Services or other portal software allowing project documents to be accesible by all team members.
- Source control software such as Perforce or SourceSafe allowing code to be versioned and changes to be tracked.
- QA is crucial on large projects and and understanding of bug tracking software such as TeamTrack is a must.
- A project management tool such as MS Project. At least the ability to interpret a project plan that is posted on the portal site allowing all team members to see proper milestones and understand dependancies on deliverables, again helping communication between team members.
Other tools and concepts I found useful : - Virtual Machine software (VMware, Virtual PC) makes it easy to quickly setup a dev. / QA environment.
- Remote Connections (VNC, Remote Desktop Connection)
As you can see my recommendations are on a technical level but I feel any CS graduate interested in being a developer/team leader/project manager/DBA/IT manager should have a good grasp of all these tools to have the ability to integrate faster into the corporate environment.
The only downside I could see from using it in a school setup is that what if the machine gets screwed up during every class. Everytime you start a class you would have to reload the image. It does not take that long though, I think it took about 5-8 minutes for an XP image to load.
Are there plans to add native XAML support to IE7 ? (Perhaps via a future IE7 update?)
You Sir, are aboslutely right! I was fortunate enough to be able to live and work in the USA for six years. I spent 4 years working in San Jose, California. (It was during the whole power problem around 2003, if I remember correctly) I thought to myself, "These Californians are a weird bunch, why not just drop a reactor right here in the San Fransisco Bay ?". The bay is perfectly situated and a plant there would be able to power probably the whole bay area. For all the technology they have in the bay area I cannot believe people are so afraid of nuclear power. It's just another technology that can and have been mastered.
"This hypothesis compares Mars with South Africa". Being from South Africa I take offense at this. How can you compare a dry harsh violent place such as Mars to our country ? Oh , wait...nevermind.
Down here in South Africa we had a discussion the other day regarding mosquito evolution. The buggers here are now able to sting through clothing. They still concentrate mainly on exposed ankles but if you sit quietly every now and then you will find that one comes and sits on a covered area and proceeds to try and sting through it. I have found that they can sting through thin socks or thin t-shirt material. It's best to wear tall boots since they find ankles still most attractive.
What about making a teenager version? They can call it Whatever.
Transgenic Fluorescent Green Pigs
I say old chap it's a wee bit chilly on the willy.
Not very creative. I would have done an image of Eve holding the apple (logo).
Here in South Africa we use an ID number which is the equivalent of a social security numnber. Recently quite a few cases have been reported where women wanting to get married find out that they are already married when they try to register to get a new ID document issued with their new surname.
They found that they were already registered as married to a foreigner, mostly from Nigeria. Once the Nigerian obtains the ID number of a suitable "wife" he proceeds to file a marriage certificate. He then applies for South African citizenship showing he is married to a South African woman.
It has become such a problem that the South African government has provided a feature on their website where you can check if you are married or not by providing your ID number.
When I was living in the USA I made sure to shred all credit card statements and to get a credit report every year. I think that at least are basic precautions anyone should take.
Being from Africa (South Africa to be precise) I feel compelled to add some perspective. South Africa is considered to be the most advanced country on the continent and we have access to all Microsoft products.
There is a Microsoft regional office here that provides training and seminars. We even have a launch event scheduled for VS 2005. The point is we have most infrastrcuture in place.
The biggest problem that is holding us and other African countries back is internet connection speed and connectivity in general. Even here in technologically advanced South Africa ADSL is ridiculously expensive. Currently a 512k connection costs roughly the equivalent of $100/month plus the line is capped at 3GB.
Getting to online training sessions and even just MSDN is a major problem for most rural communities that still use modem connections since our main telecomunnications provider (Telkom) http://www.telkom.co.za/ also charges per minute for phone calls.
I think to help with training and advance Africa a better option would be to help local telecommunication companies reduce costs so that internet connections can become cheaper.
No we already use bittorrent to download SciFi TV series from the US such as Stargate.
The bank i'm with uses SMS to send a code to your cellphone whenever you want to make profile changes to your account. I believe this is a bit more secure and more reliable than email.
For example a profile change would be to add a new beneficiary. I would type a description for the beneficiary and the account number. At that point the SMS is sent and within 2-3minutes I type in the code and the process is complete.
You can also turn on SMS notification on any account payments. Once any payment is taken from your account you get an SMS. This could get a bit irritating when you have lots of transactions but still a very useful feature.
I think the whole concept of a honeypot is not to tell anyone about it. So how do know Microsoft does not currently have a honeypot set up ?
Man, that's a good one. Thanks for the laugh.