It's slightly off-topic, but I've found Xplanner not very impressive/useful, though being free is a significant upside, and maybe you find the simplicity a bonus and not a downside
That was a polite/flame-avoidant way of saying I hated using Xplanner and found it very lacking, though I programmed an extension and even got help from Jaques Morel (one thing I can endorse from Xplanner is that it is used and has support). Of course I use a custom-made tracking program at work coupled with Excel, which means the company spent some resources we could have avoided had we used Xplanner.
To make the answer a little on-topic: 1) I'm not a manager, my manager checks e-mail and said tracking program. When I was a sysadmin, I checked the backups and wrote the result on a paper log as well as electronic one (to comply with some ISO 9000 procedures), then I checked the e-mail and to-do tasks (integrated into Outlook).
Now I'm a developer (kind of career change) so I skip the 1st step and often the 2nd and 3rd if I have work in the backlog from the day before (time tracking entry and planning takes place in the afternoons before leaving).
Thanks for sharing your story (and your link showed I definitely have an avoidant lifestyle - not disorder). I'm still in my 20's but I've had 3 fewer girlfriends than you:S
The US so far hasn't been doing much in this area and it certainly high time we start. $1 entrance fee would easily pay for lots and lots of border inspectors. Oh, I see... you don't know that the fee for a US Visa (at least in Uruguay) is a hundred freaking dollars? And that you need a visa for a plane IN TRANSIT in the US? (That is, if like me, you don't have a particular interest in visiting the US but want to go to Canada for example and the plane stops in Chicago or wherever).
Air Canada got my custom this year, I'll sadly probably skip an event in New York later; I couldn't visit the US side of the Niagara Falls with a valid Canadian visa... I hope I'm not the only one and that they're losing billions in tourism. The sad thing is, I like the US and would like to visit.
If only the treasury had been using Vista, at least someone would have been to blame for clicking "Accept". In this case no-one could admit ignorance by saying the keylogger just slipped through the net; SOMEONE would have had to click that damn button. That damn Accept button will be the ultimate CYA for Microsoft.
Vista asks you so many times (if you do interesting stuff, at least), that you have to either disable the UAC or pressing "Accept" will become a reflex. Of course, I don't use Vista, I only install and troubleshoot it, so my view is skewed (you won't have to press Accept to use Word too often).
All the opponent has to do is to point out that if she hadn't been browsing porn/warez sites in the first place she wouldn't have got a trojan on her computer. I think that particular misconception has been cleared here before - not that browsing porn/warez sites won't get you infected, but that you can't get it any other way. I was a network admin, and the largest spyware infection we had was with a weather toolbar which a user downloaded and shared (everyone has local admin privileges here).
My work doesn't have that much sensitive information (and we use the "default trust" approach with our employees), but, unlike her work, but you could conceivably allow laptops on the corporate net, as long as they pass an audit (that's what we do here). When handling sensitive information / money, I agree there should be a separate network for guests and laptop access.
I have every password needed on the system written down. That piece of paper is in a fireproof safe accessible by me and the head honcho. Ditto. That's company policy where I work for, we have to change the critical passwords every 6 months - and that's quite lenient, but reasonable considering it's a day of work just changing every badly programmed system that has sensitive passwords hardcoded, and that's AFTER we documented where they have to be changed.
Seconded. You can also set a second Group Policy that overrides the default Group Policy that overrides the default Group Policy for a child domain or OU (I'm not certain if the password policy in particular can be overriden, which might be what the GP was talking about).
You can't walk into a store and say "I want X" and get it if they don't have any. That might be true for Best Buy, but for many stores I've shopped in, if they don't have a particular item in store, they check the inventory at nearby stores and have the item delivered from there or have you go there (previously marking that item as "reserved" or such).
As an interview question I think it's ok (I definitely wouldn't hire someone who gives that answer), but I've known a few good programmers that don't want to go back to their homes and tinker with their computers there too... they buy a good computer and keep it at that (they all have the best flatscreen they can afford, though).
Me, I have a 1,6 Ghz AMD Sempron w/1 Gb RAM - before you blast me, consider that I live in Uruguay, and it really does all I need. I bought a decent video card at the time (Nvidia GeForce 6600) but I never have the time to actually use it, and neither do most of the people I work with.
I guess it also depends on the position, our architect doesn't care about his graphics card as long as he has 2+ GB of RAM and enough CPU to run his programs. The current network-admin-in-training, on the other hand, will debate with you the merits of the newest 9XXX Nvidia GPU and his case mods and how much % better is the Core 2 Duo whatever over the slightly older one.
I think it's a little unfair to have managers who have little or no experience in the respective field.
It's much easier to respect a manager who knows her stuff and understands the work well rather than a fresh-out-of-college MBA. I've never had the chance to work with a fresh-out-of-college MBA as a boss, but I hope you aren't implying women can't have no experience in the field... my boss is a woman, and she has a degree in Engineering (she's also the best boss I've had in my three jobs so far).
'making an example' out of the first person to do it and then lightening off all the subsequent offenders is the definition of arbitrary punishment and it's bad bad bad.(snipped) Punishing one person harshly and everyone else lightly is no better than selective enforcement Isn't Punitive Damages / Exemplary Damages a basis of the US legal system? Yes I realize it should ideally not be selective (although the article says "punitive damages are awarded only in special cases, usually under tort law", but it is overly harsh, and it does seem like 'making an example' to me (our local Spanish-based law system doesn't have that concept).
BTW 'Punitive Damages' make for great headlines and are often selectively shown here as an example of the foolishness and litigiousness (?) prevalent in the US (I'm not saying it is so, only that it looks that way).
Negroponte's upset that Intel has been sniping out the specific countries that OLPC is targeting, telling governments to hold off until Intel's offering is ready, publishing material like "the shortcomings of the One Laptop per Child approach," etc. Intel has been trying to get into the Uruguayan OLPC rollout for a while now, as mentioned in this slashdot story I submitted. From that story: "Intel manager for the southern cone Esteban Galluzzi went as far as to compare the XO to a Pentium II, and stressed that the Classmate is able to run Windows XP".
No. Intel and Microsoft are interested in replacing the OLPC (small, light, huge battery life, open, safe) with little shrunken down normal laptops. With the OLPC you get the great battery life, all the programs (and programming languages) designed to encourage learning. With the Classmate you get... Windows. And Windows software.
(shameless plug) At the unofficial blog of the OLPC Uruguay rollout, we had this article yesterday, which higlighted how impressed the headmaster was with the hardware:
"Villa Cardal lives the Ceibal project with enthusiasm"
Excerpt from a press article from the El Observador newspaper:
"The 160 children making up the pilot project are learning to use the computers. They already use them to study, but they have also integrated them into their private lives. The teachers have been up to the challenge and the parents are pleased"
I wanted to single out some especially interesting paragraphs:
The laptops, however, have already transformed the classroom at Villa Cardal. "The power of these machines is impressive" school headmaster Marcelo Galain pointed out, singling out the battery duration of 12 hours.
Thanks to all the hardware innovations, the laptop has a really low power consumption (something that we expect to see in the near future in all the new commercial laptops)
The headmaster pointed out that the students received their computers a day before a national holiday, but went to classes the holiday to start using them.
I would have done the same;-)
"There were some minor technical difficulties, but although none of the teachers had much experience with them, they soon realized that children whose names had accents had problems with logging into the system, and the problem was soon solved."
Interesting. Those are the kind of problems that are expected to surface during a pilot project... to see which problems will be found outside of laboratory conditions and see the solutions that can be implemented.
The portable computers speak to each other automatically, they have voice chat, they can share files and all that without need for the Internet, Bender pointed out when talking about their design. He also added that if any of those computers get Internet access, all the others get to share it.
This is the part I most like about the project, how well the communication between the children has been thought out, letting them communicate among themselves without need of Internet access. They can even do a videoconferencing of sorts without additional infrastructure.
Galain pointed out that he now sees students more involved in learning than before
"Some of the children that showed little interest in writing are now getting used to a word processor" he added.
While he pointed out that they still need to learn to write with pen and paper, this new tool lets them into a world with infinite possibilities to explore. At the very least, they will not be surprised by a computer again, and will start to understand some concepts about wireless networks for example, and learning user communities that will be able to share their knowledge without being labeled as pirates.
Re:This guy may be a sleazeball...
on
The HP Way 2.0
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Indeed. I read the linked "ire of a judge" article, and Mr Hyatt's case does come across as heartless, but not something he can't have learned from.
Summarizing TFA:
- the fired person, Clarence Cain, was the head of the Philadelphia office, until he contracted AIDS. He was a gay African-American, so he was in the danger population for the disease. Mr Hyatt pointed out that he actually hired a gay in the first place, so I don't understand why it's discriminatory to fire him.
I do understand it's callous and insensitive to fire someone who has a terminal illness without trying to offer help or a compromise. I don't know what's the standard procedure in those cases, but it's clear that Mr Cain was unfit to continue working (not because of AIDS per se, but because of the physical condition he was in from all the associated diseases - the article describes him during the trial:
"the 38-year-old Mr. Cain, draped in an old suit several sizes too large, testified. His voice was weak, his gait halting, his features emaciated"
TFA also mentions Mr Hyatt and Mr Cain didn't get along too well before his illness:
Even before he became ill, Mr. Cain fought with his superiors. Once he uttered obscenities about Mr. Hyatt at a firm dinner. But he lost his post only after the AIDS diagnosis in July 1987.
Something that surprises me, but I guess it shouldn't considering the nature of US healthcare, was the sharp decline in his living conditions following his illness. Either he had nothing saved up or he spent everything on healthcare, but I wouldn't blame that on Mr Hyatt as the article does (I do think they should have offered help, but it's not his responsibility).
The callous bit is this Mr. Cain was offered an entry-level position at half the pay or a $12,000 severance package (Is severance not regulated as it is in my home country, where it is a percentage of earnings up to the point?).
I'm not happy at all with HP lately (I work with a local HP partner) but this guy doesn't came across as particularly worse than usual. It does turn on some warning lights (this kind of person has the makings of a sociopath).
"peones" es el nombre que se les da a los trabajadores, por lo menos en el sureste de México (península de Yucatán). "Peones" (pawns/peons?) is also the name given in Uruguay and Argentina. It's an America-wide definition. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peonage . And to the GP, there are still a lot of absentee landowners here and in Argentina and Brazil that suspiciously resemble those 19th century landlords you spoke of.
To be a little on topic, most of the peons are barely literate (in Uruguay surprisingly 99% of the population can read, but they don't have much of a signature) and fingerprinting is widely used. Many jobs require a criminal background check (it's a standard administrative procedure done by the police) which relies on fingerprinting, our national ID card has the fingerprint on the back side, so we're somewhat used to fingerprinting.
Where the heck do you live? I've never seen anywhere (except for Germany) where pedestrians obey walk signals. In Uruguay we mostly do. My first visit to Argentina I was almost ran over like three times before I realized cars there did not respect zebra crossings.
I guess there are people out there who are inexperienced enough to think that "connections" are actually valuable.
Trading in "connections" is the kind of ivy league old-school, old-economy BS that we have gotten past. I don't live in the US, but while I hope that connections aren't as valuable as they used to be, I wouldn't underrate them if I were you.
Personally, I wouldn't know where to start if I wanted to get a foot on the door of a mid-sized or large company, which are the ones you want to sell to (assuming you have a decent product/service).
The value of each additional connection after the first one drops off because once you have a large satisfied customer, you can leverage that since other companies think that if you're good enough for "Y", you're good enough for them.
Having connections (in a good sense, I'm not thinking shady dealings) is so valuable because the only other way you could grab customers is by advertising (and you know how expensive that is).
"And in breaking news, it appears that Uruguay is now the #1 place to outsource technology jobs." 2012?? It's the place to outsource to right now! You won't believe this, but the Indians are outsourcing to _us_ (that means our IT professionals are dirt cheap at the moment).
Thanks for the translantion. I just wanted to point out that president Vazquez is a he:) and that the school's name is "Italy" not an italian school (many schools are named after a country here)
Umm.. I never thought I would see competition for supplying education to the poor. Yet that is what is happening in my country. We're starting to test the OLPC project, and Intel and an Israeli company want their educational PC to be chosen over the XO. I actually submitted a story on the subject yesterday, but I'll post the details later from home.
I've found that I can't breathe a word against Linux without some sort of venom spat at me, and the same went for saying anything against Apple as a corporation. Odd, I think Slashdot readers are quite rational on average on that respect, and whenever I've pointed a valid complaint about Linux/Apple/whatever, I've seen replies mostly agreeing with me, or intelligent responses on why my point isn't valid.
Slashdot Mirror
It's slightly off-topic, but I've found Xplanner not very impressive/useful, though being free is a significant upside, and maybe you find the simplicity a bonus and not a downside
That was a polite/flame-avoidant way of saying I hated using Xplanner and found it very lacking, though I programmed an extension and even got help from Jaques Morel (one thing I can endorse from Xplanner is that it is used and has support). Of course I use a custom-made tracking program at work coupled with Excel, which means the company spent some resources we could have avoided had we used Xplanner.
To make the answer a little on-topic: 1) I'm not a manager, my manager checks e-mail and said tracking program. When I was a sysadmin, I checked the backups and wrote the result on a paper log as well as electronic one (to comply with some ISO 9000 procedures), then I checked the e-mail and to-do tasks (integrated into Outlook).
Now I'm a developer (kind of career change) so I skip the 1st step and often the 2nd and 3rd if I have work in the backlog from the day before (time tracking entry and planning takes place in the afternoons before leaving).
Thanks for sharing your story (and your link showed I definitely have an avoidant lifestyle - not disorder). I'm still in my 20's but I've had 3 fewer girlfriends than you :S
Air Canada got my custom this year, I'll sadly probably skip an event in New York later; I couldn't visit the US side of the Niagara Falls with a valid Canadian visa... I hope I'm not the only one and that they're losing billions in tourism. The sad thing is, I like the US and would like to visit.
Vista asks you so many times (if you do interesting stuff, at least), that you have to either disable the UAC or pressing "Accept" will become a reflex. Of course, I don't use Vista, I only install and troubleshoot it, so my view is skewed (you won't have to press Accept to use Word too often).
I think that particular misconception has been cleared here before - not that browsing porn/warez sites won't get you infected, but that you can't get it any other way. I was a network admin, and the largest spyware infection we had was with a weather toolbar which a user downloaded and shared (everyone has local admin privileges here).
My work doesn't have that much sensitive information (and we use the "default trust" approach with our employees), but, unlike her work, but you could conceivably allow laptops on the corporate net, as long as they pass an audit (that's what we do here). When handling sensitive information / money, I agree there should be a separate network for guests and laptop access.
Seconded. You can also set a second Group Policy that overrides the default Group Policy that overrides the default Group Policy for a child domain or OU (I'm not certain if the password policy in particular can be overriden, which might be what the GP was talking about).
As an interview question I think it's ok (I definitely wouldn't hire someone who gives that answer), but I've known a few good programmers that don't want to go back to their homes and tinker with their computers there too... they buy a good computer and keep it at that (they all have the best flatscreen they can afford, though).
Me, I have a 1,6 Ghz AMD Sempron w/1 Gb RAM - before you blast me, consider that I live in Uruguay, and it really does all I need. I bought a decent video card at the time (Nvidia GeForce 6600) but I never have the time to actually use it, and neither do most of the people I work with.
I guess it also depends on the position, our architect doesn't care about his graphics card as long as he has 2+ GB of RAM and enough CPU to run his programs. The current network-admin-in-training, on the other hand, will debate with you the merits of the newest 9XXX Nvidia GPU and his case mods and how much % better is the Core 2 Duo whatever over the slightly older one.
It's much easier to respect a manager who knows her stuff and understands the work well rather than a fresh-out-of-college MBA. I've never had the chance to work with a fresh-out-of-college MBA as a boss, but I hope you aren't implying women can't have no experience in the field... my boss is a woman, and she has a degree in Engineering (she's also the best boss I've had in my three jobs so far).
I agree with the second sentence, though.
BTW 'Punitive Damages' make for great headlines and are often selectively shown here as an example of the foolishness and litigiousness (?) prevalent in the US (I'm not saying it is so, only that it looks that way).
In our unofficial blog of the project we have a (bad) english translation of the situation here in Uruguay, what will happen is a bid for 100.000 systems.
No. Intel and Microsoft are interested in replacing the OLPC (small, light, huge battery life, open, safe) with little shrunken down normal laptops. With the OLPC you get the great battery life, all the programs (and programming languages) designed to encourage learning. With the Classmate you get... Windows. And Windows software.
(shameless plug) At the unofficial blog of the OLPC Uruguay rollout, we had this article yesterday, which higlighted how impressed the headmaster was with the hardware: "Villa Cardal lives the Ceibal project with enthusiasm"Excerpt from a press article from the El Observador newspaper:
"The 160 children making up the pilot project are learning to use the computers. They already use them to study, but they have also integrated them into their private lives. The teachers have been up to the challenge and the parents are pleased"
I wanted to single out some especially interesting paragraphs:
The laptops, however, have already transformed the classroom at Villa Cardal. "The power of these machines is impressive" school headmaster Marcelo Galain pointed out, singling out the battery duration of 12 hours.
Thanks to all the hardware innovations, the laptop has a really low power consumption (something that we expect to see in the near future in all the new commercial laptops)
The headmaster pointed out that the students received their computers a day before a national holiday, but went to classes the holiday to start using them.
I would have done the same
"There were some minor technical difficulties, but although none of the teachers had much experience with them, they soon realized that children whose names had accents had problems with logging into the system, and the problem was soon solved."
Interesting. Those are the kind of problems that are expected to surface during a pilot project... to see which problems will be found outside of laboratory conditions and see the solutions that can be implemented.
The portable computers speak to each other automatically, they have voice chat, they can share files and all that without need for the Internet, Bender pointed out when talking about their design. He also added that if any of those computers get Internet access, all the others get to share it.
This is the part I most like about the project, how well the communication between the children has been thought out, letting them communicate among themselves without need of Internet access. They can even do a videoconferencing of sorts without additional infrastructure.
Galain pointed out that he now sees students more involved in learning than before "Some of the children that showed little interest in writing are now getting used to a word processor" he added.
While he pointed out that they still need to learn to write with pen and paper, this new tool lets them into a world with infinite possibilities to explore. At the very least, they will not be surprised by a computer again, and will start to understand some concepts about wireless networks for example, and learning user communities that will be able to share their knowledge without being labeled as pirates.
Summarizing TFA:
- the fired person, Clarence Cain, was the head of the Philadelphia office, until he contracted AIDS. He was a gay African-American, so he was in the danger population for the disease. Mr Hyatt pointed out that he actually hired a gay in the first place, so I don't understand why it's discriminatory to fire him.
I do understand it's callous and insensitive to fire someone who has a terminal illness without trying to offer help or a compromise. I don't know what's the standard procedure in those cases, but it's clear that Mr Cain was unfit to continue working (not because of AIDS per se, but because of the physical condition he was in from all the associated diseases - the article describes him during the trial: "the 38-year-old Mr. Cain, draped in an old suit several sizes too large, testified. His voice was weak, his gait halting, his features emaciated"
TFA also mentions Mr Hyatt and Mr Cain didn't get along too well before his illness: Even before he became ill, Mr. Cain fought with his superiors. Once he uttered obscenities about Mr. Hyatt at a firm dinner. But he lost his post only after the AIDS diagnosis in July 1987.
Something that surprises me, but I guess it shouldn't considering the nature of US healthcare, was the sharp decline in his living conditions following his illness. Either he had nothing saved up or he spent everything on healthcare, but I wouldn't blame that on Mr Hyatt as the article does (I do think they should have offered help, but it's not his responsibility).
The callous bit is this Mr. Cain was offered an entry-level position at half the pay or a $12,000 severance package (Is severance not regulated as it is in my home country, where it is a percentage of earnings up to the point?).
I'm not happy at all with HP lately (I work with a local HP partner) but this guy doesn't came across as particularly worse than usual. It does turn on some warning lights (this kind of person has the makings of a sociopath).
To be a little on topic, most of the peons are barely literate (in Uruguay surprisingly 99% of the population can read, but they don't have much of a signature) and fingerprinting is widely used. Many jobs require a criminal background check (it's a standard administrative procedure done by the police) which relies on fingerprinting, our national ID card has the fingerprint on the back side, so we're somewhat used to fingerprinting.
Trading in "connections" is the kind of ivy league old-school, old-economy BS that we have gotten past. I don't live in the US, but while I hope that connections aren't as valuable as they used to be, I wouldn't underrate them if I were you.
Personally, I wouldn't know where to start if I wanted to get a foot on the door of a mid-sized or large company, which are the ones you want to sell to (assuming you have a decent product/service).
The value of each additional connection after the first one drops off because once you have a large satisfied customer, you can leverage that since other companies think that if you're good enough for "Y", you're good enough for them.
Having connections (in a good sense, I'm not thinking shady dealings) is so valuable because the only other way you could grab customers is by advertising (and you know how expensive that is).
"And in breaking news, it appears that Uruguay is now the #1 place to outsource technology jobs." 2012?? It's the place to outsource to right now! You won't believe this, but the Indians are outsourcing to _us_ (that means our IT professionals are dirt cheap at the moment).
According to renowned journalist Thomas Friedman, Uruguay is India's India:
http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article
See also this Latin Trade article http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BEK/is_1_
The blog http://olpc-ceibal.blogspot.com/ has posted an article in English now in response to being Slashdotted.
Some updates to the story:
o psEnVillaCardal
in response to being linked to by Slashdot the blog, the blogger has included some content in English
and second, blogger Pablo Flores who was in the event, has published the pictures of the event in Picasa:
http://picasaweb.google.es/pflores2/EntregaDeLapt
Thanks for the translantion. I just wanted to point out that president Vazquez is a he :) and that the school's name is "Italy" not an italian school (many schools are named after a country here)
References please?
I'm not the OP, but sure, you only have to google around for a bit:
"Teens Need Access to Contraceptives, Not Abstinence Messages, To Reduce Pregnancy, STD Rates, AAP Report Says" (AAP: American Academy of Pediatrics). http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?n
Original report here:
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content
Yet that is what is happening in my country. We're starting to test the OLPC project, and Intel and an Israeli company want their educational PC to be chosen over the XO. I actually submitted a story on the subject yesterday, but I'll post the details later from home.