You're right - I much preferred the previous layout where everything was on a single page and you had to scroll *forever* to find something. The old (current) design was beginning to look like MySpace with badges of flair; the new design helps fix that.
Re:Well, you are wrong in so many ways.
on
Should IT Unionize?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Hmmmm....so my earlier comment got Troll-modded....whoa. Just thought I'd address some more specific points...
What I do want is a bunch of senior people telling the company management exactly how long my shift should be, exactly when it starts and ends, exactly how much overtime I get for which extra days and hours.
I don't why this can't be individually negotiated between you and your management. If you don't like the working conditions, find a new job. I *don't* want senior people who think they know everything feeling like they can bully whomever into fitting into whatever ideal they believe in.
You know what the Teamsters still have that IT workers at Enron didn't? Guess. I'll make it easy for you. The answer is a secure retirement.
I've already stated my opinion on businesses having to support retirees. Pensions or retirement accounts can be nice, but they are hardly rights. You should trust only one person in this life, and I think you know who that is. Forcing a company to financially support an evergrowing population of retirees is a losers bet at best. Look at GM.
How do you explain all the IT offshoring that already happened? The overwhelming presence of the union? What drove all those call centers offshore? It wasn't the union.
The free market has placed work offshore, and having Unions or anything else artificially keep those jobs "local" would just mess things up more. I've actually been directly impacted by jobs moving across the globe, but I believe that the market will even things out - I truly believe that the foreign development going on now is lesser quality than an in-house IT staff, and in 5-10 years businesses here will realize there is nobody within 1000 miles that has any idea how their stuff works. And the people that did have some sort of idea are long gone (turnover, anyone?). We can offer incentives to keep work locally, but if you're good at what you do, you'll find work.
Here's a list of people doing well in unions...
Cops
Teachers
Truck Drivers
Carpenters
Plumbers
Actors
Screenwriters
Every one of those professions keeps people around who are not good at their jobs, and the only "benefit" they have is they have managed to stay around long enough to be part of the system. There are tons of bad teachers and profs with tenure, bad cops who can't be fired, and don't even get me started on actors and screenwriters unions. Oooooo you have it so tough, providing entertainment for money!
Here's one more thing an IT union would be able to do. It could help define best practices. As in "Nope, that software is not union-spec. If you want our guys to use it you're going to have to pay for their training." Then the union membership (IT workers) would have some say over whether or not non-standard or poorly written software gets union support. As union members we would be protected from having the blame on us for every piece-o-shit software.
What company blames it's employees and crappy software that those employees didn't create? Any good company will listen to its employees, get feedback, and implement as such. Communication, ever heard of it?
I think unions did have their place - they can be used for workers to join together and have some leverage to take to management. Better pay and non-hazardous work conditions are indeed noble points. But I think the bulk of that work has been done and they have lost their relevance for the most part.
Working long hours and overtime at a tech job is hardly harsh working conditions, and the beauty of it is that you are free to find ANOTHER job elsewhere where you are more appreciated (and usually better pay!). Too often these days it seems unions aren't doing good, but instead are guaranteeing that unqualified employees continue to work, taking money from both employees and the company.
Re:Well, you are wrong in so many ways.
on
Should IT Unionize?
·
· Score: 1, Troll
Can you explain to me why a company should continue to pay me long after I choose to stop working for them (retire)? Proper savings and spending while I am able to work should guarantee my retirement income; it should be up to myself to take care of myself
...but a newly inherited website (thank you, mergers!) *barely* works on IE7.....they recommend IE6 for everything (oh, and it uses client-side vbscript so its navigation doesn't work in anything but IE). Maybe I'll try a virtual machine or something.
I don't know if this is because of Flash 9 or my hardware....I just moved to Ubuntu full time with Hardy, on a stock Dell Inspiron 600m. It has onboard graphics, but I'm pretty sure flash videos worked fine back on XP. I don't get crashes, but most videos (youtube, etc.) can get a little choppy at some times. The audio is usually ok, though, I think.
I did enable all the compiz stuff, though. I wonder if I upgraded the RAM (only have 512MB currently), or tried the new v10 if it would be any better?
Start up a blog, call it TakeMyTech, and post each item you have for up grabs. Say you'll take the first 100 comments in each post/item, randomly choose one poster (one entry per person!), and ship them whatever random crap they "won". Pay for shipping, and a small profit, with advertising!
I'm glad I live in a walled garden where I can only play with the bunny rabbits that Lord Jobs has deemed safe and worthy. Hopefully next they'll come up with an Internet mirror...maybe call it something like Apple OnLine (AOL for short), and protect me from doing what I may do with a computer. Because they obviously know best what the Internet experience should be.
Where might I find laws pertain to non-compete clauses in other states? And how does it work if your employer is in another state (with possibly different laws altogether?)
Ugh....we've inherited a site that does just that. Granted, we run a classic ASP main site that uses VBScript on the server side, but I never even know there was client-side VBScript. Their whole damn website is non-functional in anything but IE...hell, they even have corresponding Javascript in some of the pages commented out, replaced by clientside VBScript!
Granted, sort of. Reading that, I would assume Grandma would have installed SP2 a few years ago, and suddenly her video uploads from her camera to her PC would be going *slower*, but they would still be working. I don't know for sure, but is the KB Update that is available to download (says released Dec 17, 2004) pushed out as a regular Windows Update? If that's the case, then there's still no problem. All if this assuming that Grandma has a video camera that she is connecting via Firewire, notices that uploads have become slow, and investigates why in the first place!
I still can't think of any legitimate scenario in years of working with and administering and troubleshooting Windows PCs where I've had to muck around in the registry to do something that wasn't a fringe case. Maybe I'm just lucky... [shrug]
I've never, in all the years I've used Windows, had to edit the registry to accomplish some "ordinary" task. The only times I've had to edit the registry were "hacks" to accomplish something that I don't think would ever apply to an ordinary user.
What scenario would Grandma Maybel need to even know about the registry?
Ummm...don't buy from them? Honestly I've never heard of Foxconn....does nobody buy Asus or Gigabyte or any number of "brand name" motherboard anymore?
Why all the fuss about buying a new computer with XP preinstalled? To anyone who actually cares about XP vs Vista (Joe Consumer is probably just going to take Vista or whatever, and doesn't care), don't you already have tons of copies of XP already around?
Why not just order a boxed retail copy of XP and be done with it? You can always install it on whatever PC you have at the moment (as long as it's your only PC with it installed, right?), and you don't have to care about what comes preinstalled ever again.
Isn't there rampant closed-circuit video surveillance of pretty much everywhere? Total and complete monitoring of it's citizens? I guess across the pond they don't pussyfoot around and admit it for what it is; whereas here no one at all admits there's a problem.
Slashdot Mirror
You're right - I much preferred the previous layout where everything was on a single page and you had to scroll *forever* to find something. The old (current) design was beginning to look like MySpace with badges of flair; the new design helps fix that.
What I do want is a bunch of senior people telling the company management exactly how long my shift should be, exactly when it starts and ends, exactly how much overtime I get for which extra days and hours.
I don't why this can't be individually negotiated between you and your management. If you don't like the working conditions, find a new job. I *don't* want senior people who think they know everything feeling like they can bully whomever into fitting into whatever ideal they believe in.
You know what the Teamsters still have that IT workers at Enron didn't? Guess. I'll make it easy for you. The answer is a secure retirement.
I've already stated my opinion on businesses having to support retirees. Pensions or retirement accounts can be nice, but they are hardly rights. You should trust only one person in this life, and I think you know who that is. Forcing a company to financially support an evergrowing population of retirees is a losers bet at best. Look at GM.
How do you explain all the IT offshoring that already happened? The overwhelming presence of the union? What drove all those call centers offshore? It wasn't the union.
The free market has placed work offshore, and having Unions or anything else artificially keep those jobs "local" would just mess things up more. I've actually been directly impacted by jobs moving across the globe, but I believe that the market will even things out - I truly believe that the foreign development going on now is lesser quality than an in-house IT staff, and in 5-10 years businesses here will realize there is nobody within 1000 miles that has any idea how their stuff works. And the people that did have some sort of idea are long gone (turnover, anyone?). We can offer incentives to keep work locally, but if you're good at what you do, you'll find work.
Here's a list of people doing well in unions... Cops Teachers Truck Drivers Carpenters Plumbers Actors Screenwriters
Every one of those professions keeps people around who are not good at their jobs, and the only "benefit" they have is they have managed to stay around long enough to be part of the system. There are tons of bad teachers and profs with tenure, bad cops who can't be fired, and don't even get me started on actors and screenwriters unions. Oooooo you have it so tough, providing entertainment for money!
Here's one more thing an IT union would be able to do. It could help define best practices. As in "Nope, that software is not union-spec. If you want our guys to use it you're going to have to pay for their training." Then the union membership (IT workers) would have some say over whether or not non-standard or poorly written software gets union support. As union members we would be protected from having the blame on us for every piece-o-shit software.
What company blames it's employees and crappy software that those employees didn't create? Any good company will listen to its employees, get feedback, and implement as such. Communication, ever heard of it?
I think unions did have their place - they can be used for workers to join together and have some leverage to take to management. Better pay and non-hazardous work conditions are indeed noble points. But I think the bulk of that work has been done and they have lost their relevance for the most part.
Working long hours and overtime at a tech job is hardly harsh working conditions, and the beauty of it is that you are free to find ANOTHER job elsewhere where you are more appreciated (and usually better pay!). Too often these days it seems unions aren't doing good, but instead are guaranteeing that unqualified employees continue to work, taking money from both employees and the company.
Can you explain to me why a company should continue to pay me long after I choose to stop working for them (retire)? Proper savings and spending while I am able to work should guarantee my retirement income; it should be up to myself to take care of myself
I think he meant it was a "moo" point. You know, it's like a cow's opinion. It just doesn't matter. It's moo.
...but a newly inherited website (thank you, mergers!) *barely* works on IE7.....they recommend IE6 for everything (oh, and it uses client-side vbscript so its navigation doesn't work in anything but IE). Maybe I'll try a virtual machine or something.
Or you could always differentiate yourself on quality and service levels?
Ummmmm....can't the IOC affect the offending country's involvement in current and future Olympic games?
Watch it! That's a slippery slope your going down!
I don't know if this is because of Flash 9 or my hardware....I just moved to Ubuntu full time with Hardy, on a stock Dell Inspiron 600m. It has onboard graphics, but I'm pretty sure flash videos worked fine back on XP. I don't get crashes, but most videos (youtube, etc.) can get a little choppy at some times. The audio is usually ok, though, I think.
I did enable all the compiz stuff, though. I wonder if I upgraded the RAM (only have 512MB currently), or tried the new v10 if it would be any better?
Start up a blog, call it TakeMyTech, and post each item you have for up grabs. Say you'll take the first 100 comments in each post/item, randomly choose one poster (one entry per person!), and ship them whatever random crap they "won". Pay for shipping, and a small profit, with advertising!
I'm glad I live in a walled garden where I can only play with the bunny rabbits that Lord Jobs has deemed safe and worthy. Hopefully next they'll come up with an Internet mirror...maybe call it something like Apple OnLine (AOL for short), and protect me from doing what I may do with a computer. Because they obviously know best what the Internet experience should be.
Where might I find laws pertain to non-compete clauses in other states? And how does it work if your employer is in another state (with possibly different laws altogether?)
Ugh....we've inherited a site that does just that. Granted, we run a classic ASP main site that uses VBScript on the server side, but I never even know there was client-side VBScript. Their whole damn website is non-functional in anything but IE...hell, they even have corresponding Javascript in some of the pages commented out, replaced by clientside VBScript!
So it sounds like the solution is to work with the data file as an MS Word document! Sweet!
Granted, sort of. Reading that, I would assume Grandma would have installed SP2 a few years ago, and suddenly her video uploads from her camera to her PC would be going *slower*, but they would still be working. I don't know for sure, but is the KB Update that is available to download (says released Dec 17, 2004) pushed out as a regular Windows Update? If that's the case, then there's still no problem. All if this assuming that Grandma has a video camera that she is connecting via Firewire, notices that uploads have become slow, and investigates why in the first place!
I still can't think of any legitimate scenario in years of working with and administering and troubleshooting Windows PCs where I've had to muck around in the registry to do something that wasn't a fringe case. Maybe I'm just lucky... [shrug]
I've never, in all the years I've used Windows, had to edit the registry to accomplish some "ordinary" task. The only times I've had to edit the registry were "hacks" to accomplish something that I don't think would ever apply to an ordinary user.
What scenario would Grandma Maybel need to even know about the registry?
Ummm...don't buy from them? Honestly I've never heard of Foxconn....does nobody buy Asus or Gigabyte or any number of "brand name" motherboard anymore?
It's not quite as dirty as *old* Mexico!
If they called it an "ePhone", would that make it better? Maybe chrome it out a bit...put some bangles on it, too.
If anyone can get one, how do you verify whether they can be trusted or not? I thought the price put a premium on keeping out the riffraff?
Why all the fuss about buying a new computer with XP preinstalled? To anyone who actually cares about XP vs Vista (Joe Consumer is probably just going to take Vista or whatever, and doesn't care), don't you already have tons of copies of XP already around?
Why not just order a boxed retail copy of XP and be done with it? You can always install it on whatever PC you have at the moment (as long as it's your only PC with it installed, right?), and you don't have to care about what comes preinstalled ever again.
It ran through here; it sli-it slimed me!
Why does Christianity and porn have to be mutually exclusive?
Losing voters to whom? McCain? Because his views on personal privacy is so much better? They're all just more of the same Republicrats now.....
Isn't there rampant closed-circuit video surveillance of pretty much everywhere? Total and complete monitoring of it's citizens? I guess across the pond they don't pussyfoot around and admit it for what it is; whereas here no one at all admits there's a problem.