Why the hell would we waste nuclear fulel on making H2?
We're NEVER going to be usiung H2 directly in cars on any large scale. Beyond the inefficiencies and cost, it's simply too dangerous, and our infrastructure (and any that's been proposed) is woefully inadaquate to support H2 as a fuel option.
If we're going to make H2 (which we should, but not for burning directly), we should be using off-peak wind energy. It's practically free (in some places and times of the day they'll PAY you to take excess wind energy), and it's infinite. Nuclear fuel, though not nearly as much as oil, is still a limited resource, and is best used for making power directly, at least for the next 50-100 years until we have a better option.
The solution for H2 is WindFuels (dotyenergy.com). Use electrolisys (driven by wind energy) to make H2 and O2. Take waste CO2 and the H2, and some water, and you can make any hydrocarbon you want, without the sulfer offgasing and other hazardous byproducts. We can make extremely high quality clean fuels, in any grade, plus a whole slew of oil based products and greases, for about $60/bbl. This fuel, since it's already recycled CO2 for the most part, puts 40% less CO2 in the air. Combine that with cleaner vehicles and in 30 years our cars will be putting off 75% less CO2 than today.
Is this a final solution? no. But, it gives us 30-50 years to make better batteries and make all-electric cars a reality, plus expand the electric grid and power production to levels that can actually support it.
I've never seen a controller/MB based controller failure cause data loss. Every controller/board I've uver used stores bits of information on the disks that help a new replacement card/board identify how the old board had mapped the disk configuration. Even plugging them into different ports on the new board/controller should not be of issue...
I've replaced hundreds of boards in commercial servers and home computers alike. As long as the make/model is the same when replacing, you're good, otherwise backups are required.
Naturally, you're still at risk if you loose more than 1 drive in a RAID 5 array, and storage assignment is an issue if the drives are not identical size (though some controllers will alolow you to assign partitions in the unusable RAID spaces) Plus performance can be an issue if they're not identical in spindles/speeds/cache. But most boards support RAID 6 now. If you're real concerned, RAID 1/0 is always an option on after market cards, but at that point having 2 RAID 5s, one live, one backup, may be a better way to go.
An external NAS, running RAID5, backs up my internal RAID5 (data volume). I use RAID0 for the OS/app drives, and keep regular BareMetal images of that. I have to loose 4 drives across 2 different devices to risk data loss, and 3 drives across 2 systems to be forced to reinstall my OS. I use 2 very high speed 2.5" HDDs for the OS and 4 high performance 500GB drives for the RIAD5 for data. The NAS uses 4 el-cheapo high capacity disks. (it also backs up my Linux station and my wife's notebook). I also have a few critical folders I use SyncToy to replicate from the NAS to 2 portable drives I swap back and forth at my father's house when I see him every few weeks, giving me an offsite copy.
It's actually far more important for the temperature to remain relatively constant (a 10F degree range or so) than it is to remain under a certain temp. your closet isn't going to get anywhere near 158 degrees, or more than 40 below zero... Even when spinning HDDs are acceptable up to quite uncomfortable for human temperatures! at idle the range increases quite a bit. However, a poorly insulared closet could fluctuate 30 degrees or more, and on a daily basis, that couold cause a lot of damage. Keeping your PC powered on helps maintain HDD life by keeping a slightly more contact temp (this used to be to avoid chip creap in the old days, but now it's about the PS and HDD).
Also, 300G shocks are within the "normal" range for a non-spinning disk. Shock absorption is not a requirement unless you plan to ship it. I think it was Seagate who used to have a commercial where they froze a HDD in a block of ice, played hockey with it, then thawed it out and it worked...
It's not about what happens inside the classroom... If the prof coudn't handle it I'd be offended. It's about the politics of the thing; paying the school to sit there and learn little to nothing, plus often being asked by the prof, or challenged back, to add something TO the class, basically becoming a second teacher who's paying instead of being paid to be there. There's also the disruption factor. Many times the prof's material is either outdated by months or years, or his own lack of real world expertise may irritate a seasoned worker, especially one who really does know a lot more than the prof...
Also, students in their 40s or later with long field experience also tend to place a drain on the professor outside of class. Some do this because they'll frequently miss classes due to jobs interfering and then lean on the prof to cath up, some do this because the prof treats them more as a collegue and less as a student (which also introduces fears of favoritism in other students, and can be a morale issue, whether favoritism is actually occuring or not!). In either case, the person who doesn't need the resource is using it up and studetns who can really use the professors out-of-class time have more trouble accessing him.
There are a lot of other reasons too, but in a nutshell, it comes down to this: Universities exists 1) to teach the young, to educate, to mold the mind. 2) to recognize a mind that has been properly molded and provide acredited certification of such. If you have the experience, putting you through the class is a waste of time. Universities and professors alike recognize this. No, you can't exempt every class, and you can't expemt most of tho work even from classes you may be able to exempt (you may still be required to do some papers, programming, large projects, etc, to validate you do in fact have the knowledge) Sitting through the lectures, in most cases that's unnecessary (and a waste of a seat someone else could be sitting in).
What universities do I know for a fact have done this for students? Well, I know for certain several of my collegues have attended Clemson, USC, Laffayette, Hofstra, UT, UM, Hartford, Miami, MIT, and that's a short list. None of them were under 40 when they received their masters, most were masters of business administration though a few were in specialty IT, and all of them attended at least some classes, and did an immense amount of work and study, but putting in the equivalent of 2 full time years? at best they put in half that time...
Also, don;t forget that many universities will recognize some industry certifications as course equivalent. Few people are high enough certified that those count for masters credit calsses, but microsoft does have high level certifications that reach that point, other people have simply been lead designers on industry changing products, and the work alone qualifies them to the masters level in many universities eyes. I dont's know any of these people personally, but I've met several of them...
Actually, why not configure them to a base setting, then "calibrate" the range. This could easily be done by connecting over wifi to the base station, open a web page and turn on configure mode, then walk to every room in your house and everywhere outside you need signal. The base station could simply adjust the signal strength to maintain quality connection as you go.
Corporate wifi base stations, like the ones from HP, do this automatically for authenticated users. Home units could jsut as easy, but I'd prefer manual "tuning" to automatic, and leave the default on just enough to penetrate 1 common home wall in each direction.
Better systems (like Apple's Airport Extreme) at least do automatic chanel avoidance. The base station should also preference 5GHz over 2.4 if it supports the 5GHz range. Most turn BOTH on by default.
There are many court opinions that provide for the "subject of interest" classification of someone who "might or might not" be a suspect, but who is however related in some way to an active case.
The police do not need to obtain a warant, but to avoid prosecution themseleves for invasion of privacy, they would need to be able to provide evidence to a court liazon or to a judge validating that they did have probable cause to perform such monitoring.
Also, in nearly every state, or at least the one's I've lived in, cops can only follow you for X miles before they are not permitted to ticket you. It falls under entrapment. If they're monitoring your car via GPS, and you commit a crime (speeding, run a stop sign, etc), I'm sure entrapment would be eazsy to prove there as well.
I'm not saying there's not work involved, but getting course credit is relatively easy to accomplish when you have 10+ documented years of experience in the field, and can prepare a simple paper and pass an exit exam. Simply sitting in the classroom is not required. Doing the work, or at least proving you have the knowledge may still very well be a requirement.
I'm also not saying there's no value in sitting through the classes. You are bound to learn SOMETHING, but the value of the time speant is greatly diminished when you've already learned most of the lesson doing it every day. MANY professors recognize this.
I did not say the professors fealt threatened. I'm not saying they don't want you to come to class because they fear what you'll bring to it. I'm saying they generally recognize the futility of the effort for the value earned. Also, working class people who atend evening classes and DO make the effort are usually a drain on the professor's time to assist other students as they frequently miss those classes do to LIFE when it can not be avoided, and they typically feel compelled to make up the missed information via the professor. They're not 20-something kids, they're experienced collegues, and they tend to get off topic very easily and detract from other efforts the professor needs to attend to.
A diloma is validation of knowledge achieved. It truly matters not how that knowledge is earned, only that we recognize that you have it. Though there are some schools that provide diplomas like grandmothers hand out tissues, and they ARE a bane on the institution, most reputable (acredited) schools will recognize experience earned and honor it. They don't do it for free, and they don;t do it without significant effort on your part (500 - 1500 hours of effort I have seen to be typical), but they do offer such an option to those who seek it.
I live near USC, and know many people in several industries who have taken this path with that institution, Clemson, Furman, and others. You're not going to get a Doctoral degree that way, not anything other than "Doctor of Humanities", but Master's degrees? Yea, it happens one Saturday each Spring and Fall...
Most times they'll make you take at least a few courses. The degree usually encompases more than your job experience can cover, but odds are 10+ years in the industry will get you out of at least half of your credits, most for nothing more than taking the final exam in the prof's office on the first day of class, or doing a short thesis.
It's no secret that 2.4G and 5GH devices screw with wireless networks... heck, I bet they also found that in dense areas, WIRELESS NETWORKS EFFECT THE PERFORMANCE OF WIRELESS NETWORKS! Guess what, so do microwaves!
Network and other data devices should 1) be relegated to dedicated frequencies, like TVs, radio, and phones already are. Restrict only data systems to that band. 2) narrower band restrictions should be employed (or expanded ranges) to allow more chanels to agregate in the same space. 11 chanels, including the crossover which really leaves us with 5-6 viable chanels, is not NEARLY enough... 3) Portable household devices (like phones, monitors, etc) and other wireless systems (home theatre speakers, game remotes, etc) should be relegated to their own bands not used for network/data.
I just moved into a new house. I bought a lot of new equipment to go in it. My new wireless phones are 8.2GHz. My HT rear speakers run on line-of-sight, not 2.4GHz like most. My Wifi runs on 5GHz (and also 2.4, but that's reserved for the guest network SSIDs which are disabled completely unless I have a guest). My baby monitors run in the 900MHz range. Everything that COULD be wired IS wired. As a coutesy, on the devices I can, I have turned down the gain so the signal is only clear to the distances required. (my wifi penatrates all my rooms at 4 or 5 bars at only 60% signal strenght, i have no need to be on wifi 250 feet from my house...).
Actually no. Thanks to the Kindle's DRM, documents can't be shared, they have to be purchaased... This MIGHT work in college, where students are already expected to pay for their textbooks, but also remember half the value of a solid textbook is in the images, charts, and other grapfics, which are lost on the Kindle and other e-book readers.
Also, ketting all students to maintain (and OWN!) a functional and compatible device is problematic, as is the expense and complexity of electronic distribution. Further, paper always would have to be available anyway to handle students who don't have a device or don;t have a working one. Also, forms requiring a signature still need to be kept and maintained, and PDFs can't be signed easily and in most states don't constitute legal signatures.
Paper may not be ideal, but many will argue it's not only still cheaper, but it's also an infinite resource... We do NOT have a tree shortage, and there are more applications on the books for landfill space than we have trash to put in for the next 300 years... It will take decades just to fill what we've already comissioned.
OK, jackass, you missed the point entirely. Of COURSE they learn new things to teach. In fact, to maintain the certification to teach in SC you're required to take 12 semester hours of classes every 5 years. That does not include manditory teacher learning sessions, seminars, and other training they receive outside of traditional universities.
It's not that they're not continually learning new things, but lets face it, how much NEW stuff comes out each year to include in an elementary school education? I think we've pretty much nailed down what the content is by this point... Yes, continual evolution in the WAY that information is taught is crucial, and especially in the history classroom there's new material to teach on a regular basis, but integrating that information is relatively easy, and does not require dramatic augmentation of the lesson plan.
Even when Smartboards were added to the classrooms, the lesson plan did not change much. Most teachers simply replaced the overhead projector with a computer program (easy), and then as time went on more and more programs for unique lessons became available. However, forcing the teacher to adapt to not only a new technology, but one distinctly different from anything used in daily life outside of the school, and on top of that adding dramatic costs to the school's IT department, and the device itself not being much more than a word processor, simple encyclopedia, and a chat program, it;s value in the classroom is if not near zero actually a DRAIN on the education value.
Why should we be forced to teach our kids how to use something that is not a device they'll use after they're 10? Wh6y should we be forced to adapt a lesson plan to include a device simply for it;s political motivations? Why should we be forced to bring something intop the classroom that can just as easily teach the same skills taught in the EXISTING COMPUTER LAB? Why should we be forced to teach students in elementary school how to use a computer when at this poiint most of them KNOW MORE THAN THE TEACHER about computers!
I was using high capacity laser for a while, but after having 4 used printers die on me in 2 years we finally broke down and bought a new one with a waranty. It only takes a 6K page cartridge, which I can get "refilled/recycled" cartriges for, but they're still $60... I have not found a decent, high speed, high capacity printer on the market under $600 that takes user refillable cartiges (and you still need to replace it every 2-3 refills anyway unless you also have a really big printer with an overflow toner tank).
We use inkjet in her classroom as there's nowhere to put a big laser.
I saw both movies yesterday. Wolverine was good, but more drama than action honestly. It was a good story, and entertaining, but did not hold a candle to Star Trek. trek also has a much larger fan base.
For a non-3 day weekend, non-summer opening, Trek did very well, Most theatres were completely sold out. those that were not sold out Sunday can mostly be attributed to Mother's Day. It's hard to measure it's success vs Wolverine's opening week since the 2 weekends can not be compared.
I'm here at work telling everyone, if you have to choose one or the other, choose Trek...
Wolverine had no competition it;s opening weekend, Trek not only has competiition, but it also has 2 more big releases following it. It's going to have softer than WE expect numbers for several weeks, but don;t be surprised if it;s still kicking 20 million weekends 4-5 weeks from now. This moview will likely cross 300 million domestic.
"IT people are always the first ones to have their heads put on the block, then get chopped. " I strongly disagree. 3 of the 4 fortune 1000 companies I have worked for have gone through layoff cycles (as well as more than a dozen of those I've contracted for). IT staff have typically been considdered some of the most imporant, and generally immune from layoff.
That's not to say helpdesk staff didn't get cut besed on diminished user loads, it's not to say that IT budgets didn't get cut dramatically, leaving some deployment staff with nothing to deploy, but most companies know a few things; 1) staff cuts are generally temporary, but the servers and systems already in place need to stay in place, and continue to be maintained until staff can be increased again (unless the cut is permanant, but then systems generally need to be consolodated for cost which may actually require more IT staff in the short term). 2) IT people who question their job stability are a major risk. It's unlikely they'll damage systems, or steal data, but it is likely they'll let systems "slip" and even short disruptions to operation are a major issue. 3) most IT departments are grossly underdocumneted. Loosing a few people means loosing valuable knowledge about the infrastructure, lessons learned in system integration for that environment, or something passwords to long unused systems. Key administrative controlls are easily passed on to a new admin our outsourced agency, but do YOU know the ADSR passwords to each of your domain controllers, even the ones installed 5 years ago? 4) vendors have strong relationships with IT staff. Rebuilding those relationships can be costly.
I'm 34. I've been in IT for 14 years. I have not yet hit my pay grade ceiling, though I'm getting close.
I'm not worried. At my current pay grade in 4 more years my wife and I will have no more debt except our house. I'll have pleanty of cash to go back to school and get that masters at that point. Based on my collection of certifications, many of the courses i'll need I can automatically exempt out of, many more I can take 1 test and pass the class, and several others my nearly 20 years of business expereince will expempt me out of. This assumes I'll actually take some classes...
Universities are typically more interested in simply getting your tuition, and if you qualify, and are above 30 years old, they'll typically be more than willing to take your money and still sell your seat in the class to another applicant. Universities generally don;t like putting highly expereinced business people in classrooms where their woried the student actually trumps the professor in knowledge. Many professors who recognize this where the university doesn't will simply give you the 4.0 for the promise you don't show up to class... Some universities will simply give you a masters in BA simply for having worked in management that long (and for a generous donation to the university of $30-50K).
Get your masters later, get the money now. Keep in mind, it;s not just the pay level now, it;s also that much more interest you won't be paying down later...
If you're persuing upper management in IT (direcors positions) a masters will help, but you'll also need 5-10 years in the server room to get to that point (or similar experience writing code). You can easily get your masters after hours over that time period, and it should be in business administration, not IT related fields.
Right now, starting in the industry, work experience is by far the most important. IT admins (the people who will really be hiring you, not the folks in HR who simply approve of your resume to give to a real manager), know that what you learn in school is at best 2 years behind what's in the field, if not worse, and they also know that only 10% of what you were taught will apply to their network. Having hands on experience in the specific field of CS you're persuing will likely mean a $5K annual raise for your first 5 years.
If you plan is to do true systems engineering (chip design, manufacturing design, etc) or work in high tech aspects of IT, then a masters in both CS and math should be persued, with minors in physics or drafting/engineering design as appropriate. Get an internship as soon as one is available. You should internt not less than 2 years with a fortune 500 company if possible.
If your intent is to work in IT, forget the masters... Start taking every certification test you can as fast as you can pass them NOW, while you are still in school. Start with CompTIA, then do your basic M$ and Cisco stuff, then some Unix/Linux certifications, then go back and finish off M$'s and Cisco's more advanced certifications.
Also, GET A JOB IN IT or an internship in the industry NOW!
Everyone posting here is right, ESPECIALLY in the first 5 years, experience means everything. Don't be fooled, the certifgications and degrees are still important (HR is told to look for certain things; MCSE, A+, etc). If you don't have the paper, they won;t even look at your application, but your pay grade is almost exclusively based on your field experience, how relevent that experience is to the job you are applying for, and how well you interview.
You'll probably be lucky to get $30K your first year out. You'll add $5K to that changing jobs 12-24 mnonths later. By year 5, with the right effort and certifications you can make analyst level in IT and be making $60K plus easy. It you're taking the IT track, keep your hands on SERVERS, not phones (stay off the helpdesk). Experience in IT is not measuered by years on the job, it;s measuered in years of hands on specific technologies. My current job asked me to detail my number of years of experience in 17 different IT aspects (Windows servers, AD, Cisco, DOD STIG, Linux, VMWare, Visio, Network Security, and more).
My wife teachers here in SC, 3rd grade. I PRAY they don't try to incliude these things in lessons in any way!!! A BEST these would be forced into convoluded lesson plans. The applications ("activities") available on the XO are not really classroom usable. Sure, it can access Wikipedia, but that's not exactly something we need to be doing in a classroom when they typically already do that in the computer lab. These also don't run true Linux or Windows without being hacked, so using them to connect and interact with the smartboards, run applications the school curriculum teaches to, heck even using a traditional word processor is not viable.
What we're really doing here is simply giving each of these kids a basic educational toy. It;s somthing they can play with to learn on their own outside of the classroom, and to interact with other kids. They have very little interactive classroom value.
Also, advanced kids will hack them, so having them fully able to do what a teacher wants when they plan a lesson is questionable at best.
It's GREAT that they're giving these things to kids, but if the SC school board thinks they can use this as a marketing springbourd, and ask teachers to 1) learn a new OS, 2) learn the associated apps, 3) update their lesson plans to accomodate these systems (In SC each teacher writes their own plans, nothing is provided by the district or state, it's a MASSIVE amount of work!), then they're going to have a lot of teachers quit on them, or damand compensation or assistance.
The school system can NOT afford ANY increased costs. They've already lost (thank to our asshole govornor) $250 million in assistance funds, and have on top of that experinced budget cuts that care eliminating nearly all special programs, dramatically cutting field trips, and cutting 3,000 teachers. As it is, teachers are expect to buy THEIR OWN classroom supplies (glue, paper, consumables for science expereiments, etc) My wife is limited to 100 pieces of printed paper per week, but is required by state regulations to hand out nearly tripple that amount in required tests, quizzes, handouts, and communications. We go through a printer about once a year simply wearing it out. We go thorugh 300-400 pages a week printing at home, and several hundred dollar in ink anually. We do NOT get compensated for that. ($250 a year total compensation, for 2008 I have receipts for $1700 in classroom expenses we filed on ourt taxes). If they're THAT tight, how do they expect to afford the infrastructure and man power including these systems will require.
Thanks for giving me something for free that will cost me more money than not having it...
However, if that was their plan, that you would work for the competition and purposefully divulge secrets so that the competition could be sued, it won't work, since they have voluntarily and intentionally leaked the "secrets."
I thought exactly the same thing, until i started commuting by train....
My drive used to vary between 50 and 80 minutes depending on traffic, one way. The train commute (including 6 minutes to drive to the train) was 90 minutes consistantly. One could easily argue i was loosing between 20 and 80 minutes a day with my family.
However, it occurred to me after I started commuting several things: 1) the time in the morning didn't count. I actually had MORE time with my family in the mornings. How? well, I basically had to leave at the same time each morning one way or the other, since traffic could easily put me being late. This meant more often than not I got to work 20-30 minutes early. Also, since I could quite easily (and comfortably) eat breakfast on the train, I was no longer in a mad rush to get my shit together in the morning, and could spend the tome actually talking to my kids instead of barking orders and running from room to room, and cursing when i burned breakfast trying to do too much in too short a time. My whole morning was calmer and more controlled, and I not only had that time with the family, but I ENJOYED that time for once.
2) The end of the day. This was easier in many ways. First, i knew I allways had about 40 minutes on the train doing a whole lot of nothing after breakfast. Most mornings I simply read news, a book, watched a podcast, something like that. Other mornings I was actually working, preparing for my day, prepping for a meeting with a client, reading a tech manual on a new software package, something productive. This extra time meant I was also more focused at the office, and got my shit done. I found I rarely ever worked overtime anymore, and if I had some unfinished work, I did it on the train on the way home.
3) The worst part of the commute was ALLWAYS coming home, not going to work in the morning. As anyone who commutes often knows, people vary on when they go in to the office, from 7ish to closer to 9AM, but nearly every fucking one of them are on the roads at 5:15PM... and on a mission. 50-60 minutes in the morning was the norm, with the occasional bad commute. Coming home was ALLWAYS on the 80 minutes side. So I really only lost about 10 minutes on average coming home. I used to leave the house at 6:40 and get home about 6:30. While using the train I still left at 6:40AM, and usually was home at 6:45 (if I didn't hit the grocery store or something on the way back).
Then, there's overtime. As i already mentioned, i worked a LOT less of it. When i did, it was on the train, or just a few quick e-mails from home (unless some server blew up). Coming in the door I didn't have a head full of crap to do. i used to walk in the door, scream hello, go right to the office, and sit there for an hour smelling food I was expecting to eat cold later. Using the train i came home, sat down, and spent family time with the family far more often than the prior situation. Yes I got home 20-30 minutes later on average, but I EARNED 30 minutes with my family I never used to get anyway!
Also, driving is streessful. Many nights the fise and I got in fights over stupid stuff just because I was in a mood to fight. With the train ride to calm me down, even the side effects of a horrible day at the office never made it back to the house. ALL my family time was FAR more valuable too me, not to mention having more of it.
Would I have prefered to work a lot closer to home and avoid the commute completely? Well, yea, sure. That is, if I could have had a comperable salry and work for a comperable company and earn comperable experience. unfortunately, that simply wasn't possible. My commute, saccrificing what an hour a day, earned my family a nice big house in a great neighborhood. We sold that house, moved south, and I now make a VERY comfortable living at another comperable company in a job my experiences earned me, and we have an even more massive house in a nicer neighborhood, and the money to have truly quality time together. I
Actually, your argument falls to to your job expereicen and knowledge, not the company's experience. If you fumble through a project and have some lessons learned, the next project you did for that or any other company would include you using that knowledge. This is why you get paid more and more with each year of experience. When the new company hires you at a statrting slary equal to a 10 year veteran employee, they're expecting you to come with this type of knowledge. When the first company chose not to counter offer (or improve some other work releated thing that caused you to quit, or decided you were not worth your salary and fired you) they were in essence stating that your experience was not of value to the company.
Now, if you took knowledge of the applications that used MySQL to the competitor, and assisted them in writing their own app that not only resembled the first company's app, but the nature of that application included patented or trademarked processes, then you might be subject to legal action under non-disclosure...
When your current employer holds your raise, or your continued employment hostage pending your release of details that can help them compete, then most people will divulge at least SOME information.
Howver, that's no defense of non-competes, as you could easily just wait 1 year and then divulge it anyway, perfectly legally, unless they also have a binding and continuing non-disclosure agreement with you. however, if you;re already bound by non-disclosure, then what is the non-compete for???
Plus, even if you squeal and give them trade secrets, what can they actually DO with those trade secrets without becoming subject to multi-million dollar patent lawsuits (since any idea worth money is worth patenting, and should have been by your previous employer).
LETTING you work for the competition could very well be the most profitable decision they make...
However, that has no impact on IP developed by someone ELSE at the company, where an executive or other employee has exposure to the technical details of that IP, intimate knowledge of company processes, details of contracts or other legal agreements bound by non-disclosure, and more.
Hell, even here at my job, where all I do is design server infrastructure to support somebody else's applications, I have intimate knowledge of the inner workings of my company, knowledge that would help other firms who compete on the same government contacts to compete better. If i was to go work for a competitior in ANY similar field, it would be entirely on ME to not reveal information that would assist that new employer, and my new employer would KNOW i had this knowledge and could very well use my employment as leverage to get the knowledge out of me.
That said, i don't think non-competes are the way to go, and i strictly disagree with their use. Having a more efficient IT environment is not a trade secret. It's not independelty developed knowledge, but simply the application of IT skills improving one's experience in the market and making them a more valuable analyst. That's what an analyst does...
By simply stating "you can't work for our competition" should be illegal. However, stating that "should you share a trade secret, or other registered copywrite, intimate internal knweledge of our company, detail of software or product design that makes that product unique and competitive, or any other confidential information you gather in the course of doing your job that could be of value to our competition specific to our products, manufacturing methods, unique policies, or anything that could be patented, trademarked, or registered as IP of this firm, then you retroactively saccrife all pay received from this firm and could be subject to additional civil action up to 3 times the court determined value of that knowledge."
There. Now, you can go work for the competition, but if you share something of value to from the first company, something identifyable by a court as unique to their product or way of doing buiness, or other confidential information, the cost to you could be massive, so don't do that!
Lets face it, in the world of massive patent suits, and huge corporate payouts, letting you work for the competition is a slight risk that the competition may learn something of some value that you can't be sued for (something they'll just as likely learn from anyone else in the business with experience, because lets face it, if I wait a year, that information is still likely just as valuable), but if the second company learns something of any real value, and then act on it by releasing a product, they'd be sued for tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. Letting you work for the competition in today market could be the most profitable thing your company does!
First: torture in public schools? Physical abuse? You might want to put some numbers behind that. I don't know what public school systems you've seen, but shit like that doesn't happen here, or in any school my wife has tought in or that I've been a part of the PTA for. Also, are you a racist? "12 kids on a 40 IQ and government handouts," where the fuck do you live??? There may be some dumb fuck parents out there, but inside the public schools, little of that translates to the kids.
Have YOU been in a public school lately is the question for you... My wife has tought in 4 buildings in 3 districts, and I've been in HUNDREDS of schools in SC, CT, NY, PA, NC, and Georgia for network services. I've never been in ONE that didn't have both computer, biology, and physical labs for kids. Elementary schools no, but honestly you won't have 9 year olds running bunson burners in any safe environment. My wife is a SCIENCE TEACHER in 3rd grade, and she (and every teacher in every school she's taught in, and every school I've been in) are REQUIRED to do experiments BY LAW, and by state education requirements, for EVERY science subject. She spends about $900 a year on crap she brings to school to provide for those experiments. Even in the 2nd poorest district in SC (one of the poorest states), they're doing more experiments and working hands on with more materials that I did 20 years ago in COLLEGE...
I don'tt know what community you live in or where you come from, but in the south, and in Connecticut both, I've see 30+ "home schooled" kids come through the schools. NOT ONE has been able to function in a classroom. NOT ONE has been anything more than a walking encyclopedia, completely devoid of common sense, social skills, or the ability to work in a team. Statistics back that up. Yes, there are some smart kids that come from home schooling (on paper), but they have FAR higher per capita serious psychoological issues than kids in public schools. You're watching too much TV and listeing to too many evangelists man. Do some reasearch, look at some facts. There are a good number of home school parents who work hard, but the VAST majority are the fuckers with 12 kids you're talking about using the "home schooling" line as a weay to get more liquer money out of the government. Orphanages and battered kids homes are FULL of these kids!!!
Most kids actually ENJOY school. Sure, a few are pressured by peers, (you must have been one who was particualrly tortuered), but that's actually fairly low key at this point. The numbers of serious issues reported by parents in schools is surprisingly low. But I'll also say, exposure to that is IMPORTANT as well. How can your child cope if they've never experienced fear, never been let down by someone, never been in a fight. How can they appreciate what they have if they don;t have a chance to loose it.
A fight here, some pranklike harrasment there, it's part of life. I was not a jock, far from it. I was teased all the way through school. If not for that, I'd be the same quivvering coward I was in my youth, and not a department leader and public speaker.
True abuse? it happens inside the home FAR more frequently than in school. And in school, when true abuse happens, SOMETHIGN GETS DONE ABOUT IT. There's accountability in that building. For fuck's sake, there is armed security in that building... Your child is more likely to be beaten and abused on a public park playground than in a school playground.
I know VERY WELL what goes on in schools. My wife teaches there, I volunteer there, I am constantly in and out of school performing network upgrades, selling smartboards, selling the voice and security monitoring systems, Those buildings are more technically advanced than my own home. Cameras in the halls, sometimes even in the classroom. NOTHING gets by the administration. students harassing students is rare, and swiftly dealt with.
Teacher's harassing students is extremely rare, and actually LESS LIKELY THAN YOUR SUNDAY SCHOOL P
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Why the hell would we waste nuclear fulel on making H2?
We're NEVER going to be usiung H2 directly in cars on any large scale. Beyond the inefficiencies and cost, it's simply too dangerous, and our infrastructure (and any that's been proposed) is woefully inadaquate to support H2 as a fuel option.
If we're going to make H2 (which we should, but not for burning directly), we should be using off-peak wind energy. It's practically free (in some places and times of the day they'll PAY you to take excess wind energy), and it's infinite. Nuclear fuel, though not nearly as much as oil, is still a limited resource, and is best used for making power directly, at least for the next 50-100 years until we have a better option.
The solution for H2 is WindFuels (dotyenergy.com). Use electrolisys (driven by wind energy) to make H2 and O2. Take waste CO2 and the H2, and some water, and you can make any hydrocarbon you want, without the sulfer offgasing and other hazardous byproducts. We can make extremely high quality clean fuels, in any grade, plus a whole slew of oil based products and greases, for about $60/bbl. This fuel, since it's already recycled CO2 for the most part, puts 40% less CO2 in the air. Combine that with cleaner vehicles and in 30 years our cars will be putting off 75% less CO2 than today.
Is this a final solution? no. But, it gives us 30-50 years to make better batteries and make all-electric cars a reality, plus expand the electric grid and power production to levels that can actually support it.
I've never seen a controller/MB based controller failure cause data loss. Every controller/board I've uver used stores bits of information on the disks that help a new replacement card/board identify how the old board had mapped the disk configuration. Even plugging them into different ports on the new board/controller should not be of issue...
I've replaced hundreds of boards in commercial servers and home computers alike. As long as the make/model is the same when replacing, you're good, otherwise backups are required.
Naturally, you're still at risk if you loose more than 1 drive in a RAID 5 array, and storage assignment is an issue if the drives are not identical size (though some controllers will alolow you to assign partitions in the unusable RAID spaces) Plus performance can be an issue if they're not identical in spindles/speeds/cache. But most boards support RAID 6 now. If you're real concerned, RAID 1/0 is always an option on after market cards, but at that point having 2 RAID 5s, one live, one backup, may be a better way to go.
An external NAS, running RAID5, backs up my internal RAID5 (data volume). I use RAID0 for the OS/app drives, and keep regular BareMetal images of that. I have to loose 4 drives across 2 different devices to risk data loss, and 3 drives across 2 systems to be forced to reinstall my OS. I use 2 very high speed 2.5" HDDs for the OS and 4 high performance 500GB drives for the RIAD5 for data. The NAS uses 4 el-cheapo high capacity disks. (it also backs up my Linux station and my wife's notebook). I also have a few critical folders I use SyncToy to replicate from the NAS to 2 portable drives I swap back and forth at my father's house when I see him every few weeks, giving me an offsite copy.
My master backup is about 1.2TB...
It's actually far more important for the temperature to remain relatively constant (a 10F degree range or so) than it is to remain under a certain temp. your closet isn't going to get anywhere near 158 degrees, or more than 40 below zero... Even when spinning HDDs are acceptable up to quite uncomfortable for human temperatures! at idle the range increases quite a bit. However, a poorly insulared closet could fluctuate 30 degrees or more, and on a daily basis, that couold cause a lot of damage. Keeping your PC powered on helps maintain HDD life by keeping a slightly more contact temp (this used to be to avoid chip creap in the old days, but now it's about the PS and HDD).
Also, 300G shocks are within the "normal" range for a non-spinning disk. Shock absorption is not a requirement unless you plan to ship it. I think it was Seagate who used to have a commercial where they froze a HDD in a block of ice, played hockey with it, then thawed it out and it worked...
It's not about what happens inside the classroom... If the prof coudn't handle it I'd be offended. It's about the politics of the thing; paying the school to sit there and learn little to nothing, plus often being asked by the prof, or challenged back, to add something TO the class, basically becoming a second teacher who's paying instead of being paid to be there. There's also the disruption factor. Many times the prof's material is either outdated by months or years, or his own lack of real world expertise may irritate a seasoned worker, especially one who really does know a lot more than the prof...
Also, students in their 40s or later with long field experience also tend to place a drain on the professor outside of class. Some do this because they'll frequently miss classes due to jobs interfering and then lean on the prof to cath up, some do this because the prof treats them more as a collegue and less as a student (which also introduces fears of favoritism in other students, and can be a morale issue, whether favoritism is actually occuring or not!). In either case, the person who doesn't need the resource is using it up and studetns who can really use the professors out-of-class time have more trouble accessing him.
There are a lot of other reasons too, but in a nutshell, it comes down to this: Universities exists 1) to teach the young, to educate, to mold the mind. 2) to recognize a mind that has been properly molded and provide acredited certification of such. If you have the experience, putting you through the class is a waste of time. Universities and professors alike recognize this. No, you can't exempt every class, and you can't expemt most of tho work even from classes you may be able to exempt (you may still be required to do some papers, programming, large projects, etc, to validate you do in fact have the knowledge) Sitting through the lectures, in most cases that's unnecessary (and a waste of a seat someone else could be sitting in).
What universities do I know for a fact have done this for students? Well, I know for certain several of my collegues have attended Clemson, USC, Laffayette, Hofstra, UT, UM, Hartford, Miami, MIT, and that's a short list. None of them were under 40 when they received their masters, most were masters of business administration though a few were in specialty IT, and all of them attended at least some classes, and did an immense amount of work and study, but putting in the equivalent of 2 full time years? at best they put in half that time...
Also, don;t forget that many universities will recognize some industry certifications as course equivalent. Few people are high enough certified that those count for masters credit calsses, but microsoft does have high level certifications that reach that point, other people have simply been lead designers on industry changing products, and the work alone qualifies them to the masters level in many universities eyes. I dont's know any of these people personally, but I've met several of them...
Actually, why not configure them to a base setting, then "calibrate" the range. This could easily be done by connecting over wifi to the base station, open a web page and turn on configure mode, then walk to every room in your house and everywhere outside you need signal. The base station could simply adjust the signal strength to maintain quality connection as you go.
Corporate wifi base stations, like the ones from HP, do this automatically for authenticated users. Home units could jsut as easy, but I'd prefer manual "tuning" to automatic, and leave the default on just enough to penetrate 1 common home wall in each direction.
Better systems (like Apple's Airport Extreme) at least do automatic chanel avoidance. The base station should also preference 5GHz over 2.4 if it supports the 5GHz range. Most turn BOTH on by default.
There are many court opinions that provide for the "subject of interest" classification of someone who "might or might not" be a suspect, but who is however related in some way to an active case.
The police do not need to obtain a warant, but to avoid prosecution themseleves for invasion of privacy, they would need to be able to provide evidence to a court liazon or to a judge validating that they did have probable cause to perform such monitoring.
Also, in nearly every state, or at least the one's I've lived in, cops can only follow you for X miles before they are not permitted to ticket you. It falls under entrapment. If they're monitoring your car via GPS, and you commit a crime (speeding, run a stop sign, etc), I'm sure entrapment would be eazsy to prove there as well.
I think one could infer the data from the GPS equipped bra could be for purposes that would clearly be in violation of privacy. :)
I'm not saying there's not work involved, but getting course credit is relatively easy to accomplish when you have 10+ documented years of experience in the field, and can prepare a simple paper and pass an exit exam. Simply sitting in the classroom is not required. Doing the work, or at least proving you have the knowledge may still very well be a requirement.
I'm also not saying there's no value in sitting through the classes. You are bound to learn SOMETHING, but the value of the time speant is greatly diminished when you've already learned most of the lesson doing it every day. MANY professors recognize this.
I did not say the professors fealt threatened. I'm not saying they don't want you to come to class because they fear what you'll bring to it. I'm saying they generally recognize the futility of the effort for the value earned. Also, working class people who atend evening classes and DO make the effort are usually a drain on the professor's time to assist other students as they frequently miss those classes do to LIFE when it can not be avoided, and they typically feel compelled to make up the missed information via the professor. They're not 20-something kids, they're experienced collegues, and they tend to get off topic very easily and detract from other efforts the professor needs to attend to.
A diloma is validation of knowledge achieved. It truly matters not how that knowledge is earned, only that we recognize that you have it. Though there are some schools that provide diplomas like grandmothers hand out tissues, and they ARE a bane on the institution, most reputable (acredited) schools will recognize experience earned and honor it. They don't do it for free, and they don;t do it without significant effort on your part (500 - 1500 hours of effort I have seen to be typical), but they do offer such an option to those who seek it.
I live near USC, and know many people in several industries who have taken this path with that institution, Clemson, Furman, and others. You're not going to get a Doctoral degree that way, not anything other than "Doctor of Humanities", but Master's degrees? Yea, it happens one Saturday each Spring and Fall...
Most times they'll make you take at least a few courses. The degree usually encompases more than your job experience can cover, but odds are 10+ years in the industry will get you out of at least half of your credits, most for nothing more than taking the final exam in the prof's office on the first day of class, or doing a short thesis.
It's no secret that 2.4G and 5GH devices screw with wireless networks... heck, I bet they also found that in dense areas, WIRELESS NETWORKS EFFECT THE PERFORMANCE OF WIRELESS NETWORKS! Guess what, so do microwaves!
Network and other data devices should 1) be relegated to dedicated frequencies, like TVs, radio, and phones already are. Restrict only data systems to that band. 2) narrower band restrictions should be employed (or expanded ranges) to allow more chanels to agregate in the same space. 11 chanels, including the crossover which really leaves us with 5-6 viable chanels, is not NEARLY enough... 3) Portable household devices (like phones, monitors, etc) and other wireless systems (home theatre speakers, game remotes, etc) should be relegated to their own bands not used for network/data.
I just moved into a new house. I bought a lot of new equipment to go in it. My new wireless phones are 8.2GHz. My HT rear speakers run on line-of-sight, not 2.4GHz like most. My Wifi runs on 5GHz (and also 2.4, but that's reserved for the guest network SSIDs which are disabled completely unless I have a guest). My baby monitors run in the 900MHz range. Everything that COULD be wired IS wired. As a coutesy, on the devices I can, I have turned down the gain so the signal is only clear to the distances required. (my wifi penatrates all my rooms at 4 or 5 bars at only 60% signal strenght, i have no need to be on wifi 250 feet from my house...).
Actually no. Thanks to the Kindle's DRM, documents can't be shared, they have to be purchaased... This MIGHT work in college, where students are already expected to pay for their textbooks, but also remember half the value of a solid textbook is in the images, charts, and other grapfics, which are lost on the Kindle and other e-book readers.
Also, ketting all students to maintain (and OWN!) a functional and compatible device is problematic, as is the expense and complexity of electronic distribution. Further, paper always would have to be available anyway to handle students who don't have a device or don;t have a working one. Also, forms requiring a signature still need to be kept and maintained, and PDFs can't be signed easily and in most states don't constitute legal signatures.
Paper may not be ideal, but many will argue it's not only still cheaper, but it's also an infinite resource... We do NOT have a tree shortage, and there are more applications on the books for landfill space than we have trash to put in for the next 300 years... It will take decades just to fill what we've already comissioned.
OK, jackass, you missed the point entirely. Of COURSE they learn new things to teach. In fact, to maintain the certification to teach in SC you're required to take 12 semester hours of classes every 5 years. That does not include manditory teacher learning sessions, seminars, and other training they receive outside of traditional universities.
It's not that they're not continually learning new things, but lets face it, how much NEW stuff comes out each year to include in an elementary school education? I think we've pretty much nailed down what the content is by this point... Yes, continual evolution in the WAY that information is taught is crucial, and especially in the history classroom there's new material to teach on a regular basis, but integrating that information is relatively easy, and does not require dramatic augmentation of the lesson plan.
Even when Smartboards were added to the classrooms, the lesson plan did not change much. Most teachers simply replaced the overhead projector with a computer program (easy), and then as time went on more and more programs for unique lessons became available. However, forcing the teacher to adapt to not only a new technology, but one distinctly different from anything used in daily life outside of the school, and on top of that adding dramatic costs to the school's IT department, and the device itself not being much more than a word processor, simple encyclopedia, and a chat program, it;s value in the classroom is if not near zero actually a DRAIN on the education value.
Why should we be forced to teach our kids how to use something that is not a device they'll use after they're 10? Wh6y should we be forced to adapt a lesson plan to include a device simply for it;s political motivations? Why should we be forced to bring something intop the classroom that can just as easily teach the same skills taught in the EXISTING COMPUTER LAB? Why should we be forced to teach students in elementary school how to use a computer when at this poiint most of them KNOW MORE THAN THE TEACHER about computers!
posted from my mobile phone... sorry, no spell check.
I was using high capacity laser for a while, but after having 4 used printers die on me in 2 years we finally broke down and bought a new one with a waranty. It only takes a 6K page cartridge, which I can get "refilled/recycled" cartriges for, but they're still $60... I have not found a decent, high speed, high capacity printer on the market under $600 that takes user refillable cartiges (and you still need to replace it every 2-3 refills anyway unless you also have a really big printer with an overflow toner tank).
We use inkjet in her classroom as there's nowhere to put a big laser.
I saw both movies yesterday. Wolverine was good, but more drama than action honestly. It was a good story, and entertaining, but did not hold a candle to Star Trek. trek also has a much larger fan base.
For a non-3 day weekend, non-summer opening, Trek did very well, Most theatres were completely sold out. those that were not sold out Sunday can mostly be attributed to Mother's Day. It's hard to measure it's success vs Wolverine's opening week since the 2 weekends can not be compared.
I'm here at work telling everyone, if you have to choose one or the other, choose Trek...
Wolverine had no competition it;s opening weekend, Trek not only has competiition, but it also has 2 more big releases following it. It's going to have softer than WE expect numbers for several weeks, but don;t be surprised if it;s still kicking 20 million weekends 4-5 weeks from now. This moview will likely cross 300 million domestic.
"IT people are always the first ones to have their heads put on the block, then get chopped.
"
I strongly disagree. 3 of the 4 fortune 1000 companies I have worked for have gone through layoff cycles (as well as more than a dozen of those I've contracted for). IT staff have typically been considdered some of the most imporant, and generally immune from layoff.
That's not to say helpdesk staff didn't get cut besed on diminished user loads, it's not to say that IT budgets didn't get cut dramatically, leaving some deployment staff with nothing to deploy, but most companies know a few things; 1) staff cuts are generally temporary, but the servers and systems already in place need to stay in place, and continue to be maintained until staff can be increased again (unless the cut is permanant, but then systems generally need to be consolodated for cost which may actually require more IT staff in the short term). 2) IT people who question their job stability are a major risk. It's unlikely they'll damage systems, or steal data, but it is likely they'll let systems "slip" and even short disruptions to operation are a major issue. 3) most IT departments are grossly underdocumneted. Loosing a few people means loosing valuable knowledge about the infrastructure, lessons learned in system integration for that environment, or something passwords to long unused systems. Key administrative controlls are easily passed on to a new admin our outsourced agency, but do YOU know the ADSR passwords to each of your domain controllers, even the ones installed 5 years ago? 4) vendors have strong relationships with IT staff. Rebuilding those relationships can be costly.
I'm 34. I've been in IT for 14 years. I have not yet hit my pay grade ceiling, though I'm getting close.
I'm not worried. At my current pay grade in 4 more years my wife and I will have no more debt except our house. I'll have pleanty of cash to go back to school and get that masters at that point. Based on my collection of certifications, many of the courses i'll need I can automatically exempt out of, many more I can take 1 test and pass the class, and several others my nearly 20 years of business expereince will expempt me out of. This assumes I'll actually take some classes...
Universities are typically more interested in simply getting your tuition, and if you qualify, and are above 30 years old, they'll typically be more than willing to take your money and still sell your seat in the class to another applicant. Universities generally don;t like putting highly expereinced business people in classrooms where their woried the student actually trumps the professor in knowledge. Many professors who recognize this where the university doesn't will simply give you the 4.0 for the promise you don't show up to class... Some universities will simply give you a masters in BA simply for having worked in management that long (and for a generous donation to the university of $30-50K).
Get your masters later, get the money now. Keep in mind, it;s not just the pay level now, it;s also that much more interest you won't be paying down later...
If you're persuing upper management in IT (direcors positions) a masters will help, but you'll also need 5-10 years in the server room to get to that point (or similar experience writing code). You can easily get your masters after hours over that time period, and it should be in business administration, not IT related fields.
Right now, starting in the industry, work experience is by far the most important. IT admins (the people who will really be hiring you, not the folks in HR who simply approve of your resume to give to a real manager), know that what you learn in school is at best 2 years behind what's in the field, if not worse, and they also know that only 10% of what you were taught will apply to their network. Having hands on experience in the specific field of CS you're persuing will likely mean a $5K annual raise for your first 5 years.
If you plan is to do true systems engineering (chip design, manufacturing design, etc) or work in high tech aspects of IT, then a masters in both CS and math should be persued, with minors in physics or drafting/engineering design as appropriate. Get an internship as soon as one is available. You should internt not less than 2 years with a fortune 500 company if possible.
If your intent is to work in IT, forget the masters... Start taking every certification test you can as fast as you can pass them NOW, while you are still in school. Start with CompTIA, then do your basic M$ and Cisco stuff, then some Unix/Linux certifications, then go back and finish off M$'s and Cisco's more advanced certifications.
Also, GET A JOB IN IT or an internship in the industry NOW!
Everyone posting here is right, ESPECIALLY in the first 5 years, experience means everything. Don't be fooled, the certifgications and degrees are still important (HR is told to look for certain things; MCSE, A+, etc). If you don't have the paper, they won;t even look at your application, but your pay grade is almost exclusively based on your field experience, how relevent that experience is to the job you are applying for, and how well you interview.
You'll probably be lucky to get $30K your first year out. You'll add $5K to that changing jobs 12-24 mnonths later. By year 5, with the right effort and certifications you can make analyst level in IT and be making $60K plus easy. It you're taking the IT track, keep your hands on SERVERS, not phones (stay off the helpdesk). Experience in IT is not measuered by years on the job, it;s measuered in years of hands on specific technologies. My current job asked me to detail my number of years of experience in 17 different IT aspects (Windows servers, AD, Cisco, DOD STIG, Linux, VMWare, Visio, Network Security, and more).
My wife teachers here in SC, 3rd grade. I PRAY they don't try to incliude these things in lessons in any way!!! A BEST these would be forced into convoluded lesson plans. The applications ("activities") available on the XO are not really classroom usable. Sure, it can access Wikipedia, but that's not exactly something we need to be doing in a classroom when they typically already do that in the computer lab. These also don't run true Linux or Windows without being hacked, so using them to connect and interact with the smartboards, run applications the school curriculum teaches to, heck even using a traditional word processor is not viable.
What we're really doing here is simply giving each of these kids a basic educational toy. It;s somthing they can play with to learn on their own outside of the classroom, and to interact with other kids. They have very little interactive classroom value.
Also, advanced kids will hack them, so having them fully able to do what a teacher wants when they plan a lesson is questionable at best.
It's GREAT that they're giving these things to kids, but if the SC school board thinks they can use this as a marketing springbourd, and ask teachers to 1) learn a new OS, 2) learn the associated apps, 3) update their lesson plans to accomodate these systems (In SC each teacher writes their own plans, nothing is provided by the district or state, it's a MASSIVE amount of work!), then they're going to have a lot of teachers quit on them, or damand compensation or assistance.
The school system can NOT afford ANY increased costs. They've already lost (thank to our asshole govornor) $250 million in assistance funds, and have on top of that experinced budget cuts that care eliminating nearly all special programs, dramatically cutting field trips, and cutting 3,000 teachers. As it is, teachers are expect to buy THEIR OWN classroom supplies (glue, paper, consumables for science expereiments, etc) My wife is limited to 100 pieces of printed paper per week, but is required by state regulations to hand out nearly tripple that amount in required tests, quizzes, handouts, and communications. We go through a printer about once a year simply wearing it out. We go thorugh 300-400 pages a week printing at home, and several hundred dollar in ink anually. We do NOT get compensated for that. ($250 a year total compensation, for 2008 I have receipts for $1700 in classroom expenses we filed on ourt taxes). If they're THAT tight, how do they expect to afford the infrastructure and man power including these systems will require.
Thanks for giving me something for free that will cost me more money than not having it...
However, if that was their plan, that you would work for the competition and purposefully divulge secrets so that the competition could be sued, it won't work, since they have voluntarily and intentionally leaked the "secrets."
agreed.
I thought exactly the same thing, until i started commuting by train....
My drive used to vary between 50 and 80 minutes depending on traffic, one way. The train commute (including 6 minutes to drive to the train) was 90 minutes consistantly. One could easily argue i was loosing between 20 and 80 minutes a day with my family.
However, it occurred to me after I started commuting several things:
1) the time in the morning didn't count. I actually had MORE time with my family in the mornings. How? well, I basically had to leave at the same time each morning one way or the other, since traffic could easily put me being late. This meant more often than not I got to work 20-30 minutes early. Also, since I could quite easily (and comfortably) eat breakfast on the train, I was no longer in a mad rush to get my shit together in the morning, and could spend the tome actually talking to my kids instead of barking orders and running from room to room, and cursing when i burned breakfast trying to do too much in too short a time. My whole morning was calmer and more controlled, and I not only had that time with the family, but I ENJOYED that time for once.
2) The end of the day. This was easier in many ways. First, i knew I allways had about 40 minutes on the train doing a whole lot of nothing after breakfast. Most mornings I simply read news, a book, watched a podcast, something like that. Other mornings I was actually working, preparing for my day, prepping for a meeting with a client, reading a tech manual on a new software package, something productive. This extra time meant I was also more focused at the office, and got my shit done. I found I rarely ever worked overtime anymore, and if I had some unfinished work, I did it on the train on the way home.
3) The worst part of the commute was ALLWAYS coming home, not going to work in the morning. As anyone who commutes often knows, people vary on when they go in to the office, from 7ish to closer to 9AM, but nearly every fucking one of them are on the roads at 5:15PM... and on a mission. 50-60 minutes in the morning was the norm, with the occasional bad commute. Coming home was ALLWAYS on the 80 minutes side. So I really only lost about 10 minutes on average coming home. I used to leave the house at 6:40 and get home about 6:30. While using the train I still left at 6:40AM, and usually was home at 6:45 (if I didn't hit the grocery store or something on the way back).
Then, there's overtime. As i already mentioned, i worked a LOT less of it. When i did, it was on the train, or just a few quick e-mails from home (unless some server blew up). Coming in the door I didn't have a head full of crap to do. i used to walk in the door, scream hello, go right to the office, and sit there for an hour smelling food I was expecting to eat cold later. Using the train i came home, sat down, and spent family time with the family far more often than the prior situation. Yes I got home 20-30 minutes later on average, but I EARNED 30 minutes with my family I never used to get anyway!
Also, driving is streessful. Many nights the fise and I got in fights over stupid stuff just because I was in a mood to fight. With the train ride to calm me down, even the side effects of a horrible day at the office never made it back to the house. ALL my family time was FAR more valuable too me, not to mention having more of it.
Would I have prefered to work a lot closer to home and avoid the commute completely? Well, yea, sure. That is, if I could have had a comperable salry and work for a comperable company and earn comperable experience. unfortunately, that simply wasn't possible. My commute, saccrificing what an hour a day, earned my family a nice big house in a great neighborhood. We sold that house, moved south, and I now make a VERY comfortable living at another comperable company in a job my experiences earned me, and we have an even more massive house in a nicer neighborhood, and the money to have truly quality time together. I
Actually, your argument falls to to your job expereicen and knowledge, not the company's experience. If you fumble through a project and have some lessons learned, the next project you did for that or any other company would include you using that knowledge. This is why you get paid more and more with each year of experience. When the new company hires you at a statrting slary equal to a 10 year veteran employee, they're expecting you to come with this type of knowledge. When the first company chose not to counter offer (or improve some other work releated thing that caused you to quit, or decided you were not worth your salary and fired you) they were in essence stating that your experience was not of value to the company.
Now, if you took knowledge of the applications that used MySQL to the competitor, and assisted them in writing their own app that not only resembled the first company's app, but the nature of that application included patented or trademarked processes, then you might be subject to legal action under non-disclosure...
When your current employer holds your raise, or your continued employment hostage pending your release of details that can help them compete, then most people will divulge at least SOME information.
Howver, that's no defense of non-competes, as you could easily just wait 1 year and then divulge it anyway, perfectly legally, unless they also have a binding and continuing non-disclosure agreement with you. however, if you;re already bound by non-disclosure, then what is the non-compete for???
Plus, even if you squeal and give them trade secrets, what can they actually DO with those trade secrets without becoming subject to multi-million dollar patent lawsuits (since any idea worth money is worth patenting, and should have been by your previous employer).
LETTING you work for the competition could very well be the most profitable decision they make...
However, that has no impact on IP developed by someone ELSE at the company, where an executive or other employee has exposure to the technical details of that IP, intimate knowledge of company processes, details of contracts or other legal agreements bound by non-disclosure, and more.
Hell, even here at my job, where all I do is design server infrastructure to support somebody else's applications, I have intimate knowledge of the inner workings of my company, knowledge that would help other firms who compete on the same government contacts to compete better. If i was to go work for a competitior in ANY similar field, it would be entirely on ME to not reveal information that would assist that new employer, and my new employer would KNOW i had this knowledge and could very well use my employment as leverage to get the knowledge out of me.
That said, i don't think non-competes are the way to go, and i strictly disagree with their use. Having a more efficient IT environment is not a trade secret. It's not independelty developed knowledge, but simply the application of IT skills improving one's experience in the market and making them a more valuable analyst. That's what an analyst does...
By simply stating "you can't work for our competition" should be illegal. However, stating that "should you share a trade secret, or other registered copywrite, intimate internal knweledge of our company, detail of software or product design that makes that product unique and competitive, or any other confidential information you gather in the course of doing your job that could be of value to our competition specific to our products, manufacturing methods, unique policies, or anything that could be patented, trademarked, or registered as IP of this firm, then you retroactively saccrife all pay received from this firm and could be subject to additional civil action up to 3 times the court determined value of that knowledge."
There. Now, you can go work for the competition, but if you share something of value to from the first company, something identifyable by a court as unique to their product or way of doing buiness, or other confidential information, the cost to you could be massive, so don't do that!
Lets face it, in the world of massive patent suits, and huge corporate payouts, letting you work for the competition is a slight risk that the competition may learn something of some value that you can't be sued for (something they'll just as likely learn from anyone else in the business with experience, because lets face it, if I wait a year, that information is still likely just as valuable), but if the second company learns something of any real value, and then act on it by releasing a product, they'd be sued for tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. Letting you work for the competition in today market could be the most profitable thing your company does!
First: torture in public schools? Physical abuse? You might want to put some numbers behind that. I don't know what public school systems you've seen, but shit like that doesn't happen here, or in any school my wife has tought in or that I've been a part of the PTA for. Also, are you a racist? "12 kids on a 40 IQ and government handouts," where the fuck do you live??? There may be some dumb fuck parents out there, but inside the public schools, little of that translates to the kids.
Have YOU been in a public school lately is the question for you... My wife has tought in 4 buildings in 3 districts, and I've been in HUNDREDS of schools in SC, CT, NY, PA, NC, and Georgia for network services. I've never been in ONE that didn't have both computer, biology, and physical labs for kids. Elementary schools no, but honestly you won't have 9 year olds running bunson burners in any safe environment. My wife is a SCIENCE TEACHER in 3rd grade, and she (and every teacher in every school she's taught in, and every school I've been in) are REQUIRED to do experiments BY LAW, and by state education requirements, for EVERY science subject. She spends about $900 a year on crap she brings to school to provide for those experiments. Even in the 2nd poorest district in SC (one of the poorest states), they're doing more experiments and working hands on with more materials that I did 20 years ago in COLLEGE...
I don'tt know what community you live in or where you come from, but in the south, and in Connecticut both, I've see 30+ "home schooled" kids come through the schools. NOT ONE has been able to function in a classroom. NOT ONE has been anything more than a walking encyclopedia, completely devoid of common sense, social skills, or the ability to work in a team. Statistics back that up. Yes, there are some smart kids that come from home schooling (on paper), but they have FAR higher per capita serious psychoological issues than kids in public schools. You're watching too much TV and listeing to too many evangelists man. Do some reasearch, look at some facts. There are a good number of home school parents who work hard, but the VAST majority are the fuckers with 12 kids you're talking about using the "home schooling" line as a weay to get more liquer money out of the government. Orphanages and battered kids homes are FULL of these kids!!!
Most kids actually ENJOY school. Sure, a few are pressured by peers, (you must have been one who was particualrly tortuered), but that's actually fairly low key at this point. The numbers of serious issues reported by parents in schools is surprisingly low. But I'll also say, exposure to that is IMPORTANT as well. How can your child cope if they've never experienced fear, never been let down by someone, never been in a fight. How can they appreciate what they have if they don;t have a chance to loose it.
A fight here, some pranklike harrasment there, it's part of life. I was not a jock, far from it. I was teased all the way through school. If not for that, I'd be the same quivvering coward I was in my youth, and not a department leader and public speaker.
True abuse? it happens inside the home FAR more frequently than in school. And in school, when true abuse happens, SOMETHIGN GETS DONE ABOUT IT. There's accountability in that building. For fuck's sake, there is armed security in that building... Your child is more likely to be beaten and abused on a public park playground than in a school playground.
I know VERY WELL what goes on in schools. My wife teaches there, I volunteer there, I am constantly in and out of school performing network upgrades, selling smartboards, selling the voice and security monitoring systems, Those buildings are more technically advanced than my own home. Cameras in the halls, sometimes even in the classroom. NOTHING gets by the administration. students harassing students is rare, and swiftly dealt with.
Teacher's harassing students is extremely rare, and actually LESS LIKELY THAN YOUR SUNDAY SCHOOL P