Job hunting is all about the filters, whether Monster.com literal ones or HR dumping resumes in the trash based on an arbitrary set of written requirements from some one else. I've rarely seen a position that states a specific degree is a requirement, unless you're trying to get into a highly technical field (engineering, medical practice, etc). A degree (of any kind) plus relevant experience is usually sufficient to make it past HR and get the interview. In this case, highlight all the open source work and everything you've been doing, and downplay they KIND of degree you have. Be prepared to answer a lot of questions in the interview about why you chose the degree you did, and what that gains the prospective employer, but you're already 50% of the way there.
...but if you wipe the drive and install your own OS, or alter the machine in any way, you will be (a) fired, (b) sued, or in the case of some government agencies, (c) jailed.
What part of "Company Issued" do you not understand? IT IS NOT YOURS. Don't mess with it, if you'd like to keep your job and your freedom.
If the company/agency you work for is encrypting the hard drive, you're not working in a place that will tolerate ANY kind of tampering, even dual-boot. This may be for some combination of paranoia, trade secrets, legally-sensitive data, or national security. In any case, don't mess with it. Accept it and move on as a term of employment/
Get yourself a personal netbook, tablet, or smartphone and live with it. Or, go find yourself another job - one that allows you to hack company-issued hardware.
Believe it or not, BMI and ASCAP are not too much of a problem here - they are willing to negotiate fairly easily when it comes to things like this (if you're willing to just pay a percent of revenue). The real issue is SoundExchange - the government-created entity for compensating songwriters (BMI/ASCAP compensate the performers). Their terms are federal law, and there's no negotiating at all. The definitions are all stuck in "radio land" terms, and are priced to remain so. Providing alternatives (like an online CD jukebox) gets really expensive really fast - so much so that it becomes cost prohibitive unless your user base is willing to pay higher-than-CD rates just to stream a song. It's actually cheaper in those cases to negotiate a distribution license and have your users buy the whole damn track.
We are using a VPS for our main pages. What we're looking for is additional separate storage and bandwidth for the music files themselves. Keep the heavy bandwidth off my main box, and everyone is happier:D
We asked the mafia to cracked down on organized crime, and we should not be so naive as to think that they would actually accomplish anything.
The Mafia would at least take the time to eliminate the competition under the guise of a "crackdown". These guys already own the town outright and will thus do nothing.
Subject: Why We Cannot comment on Investigating Former Sen. Dodd for Criminal Activity
All criminal investigations are not announced, confirmed, nor denied to prevent contamination of the evidence, jury pool, and our campaign contribution stream. This is the final response on this matter.
Do you have the money to rent an appropriate space inside the Beltway? To essentially purchase the Congressperson's time? Or even their staffers time? Getting the resources in place to do an extended (more than 2-5 day) lobbying effort requires a great deal of investment in both time and cash. And lets face it, do you pay more attention to your co-worker who you see every day, a friend you go drinking with, or to the person behind you at the grocery checkout line (who you will probably never see again)? Getting serious consideration (not just a wave in the distance) in that world is an entirely different level of action that requires a full-time job with a huge expense account just to get in the door. After that, the real bidding wars for the actual votes begin.
I second this. Running a small business is a different animal altogether. Unless you can make enough to support hiring someone to do your marketing and accounting, don't go here. It's a world of pain if you screw things up (especially from a tax perspective). In addition, if you're having trouble getting a job, it's going to be just as hard (if not harder) to develop a client base to support a small business.
Oh, and I assume the reason you're looking for work is to get money in your pocket. If you start a business, be prepared to lose money (and potentially lots of it) in the first several years while you get your name established.
If you go the independent contractor route, be aware that a lot of businesses are getting really picky about independent contractors as states begin to crack down. I've had several friends lose their gigs because the business says that they don't meet the stringent "requirements" in the law for being classified as an independent contractor and the business could be fined severely for "misclassification of employees" (note that this applies to the US, your locality may vary).
A degree isn't only about training. It is just as much evidence that you can set a long term goal and achieve it, and jump through all of the hoops necessary along the way.
Not having a degree myself, I find this answer patronizing and just plain wrong. There are many circumstances whee not having a degree is no fault of your ow (including lack of funds/loans, better opportunities, etc). At this point in time, a degree is simply a "checkbox" item for HR to use to filter candidates. No degree, no chance as HR tosses your resume before it gets to anyone doing the actual hiring. So the real problem for you is how to get through the HR filter.
The real trick to landing a job in this situation is who you know. Get out there and talk to people. Show your skills in a way non-tech people can "get". Impress the right people, and keep them in your back pocket. Every decent job I've had has come by impressing the right people and having them think of me when they see a need. By doing this, they are willing to stick their neck out and tell HR "Interview this guy, regardless of resume".
So while a portfolio is helpful, getting your face out there, having conversations, and attending conferences are all part of getting a name/face for yourself. I got my first real job by refusing to sell someone a product they didn't understand. They ended up hiring me because of my honesty and the fact I was willing to say "no this isn't what you're looking for".
The browser that best supports the standards will be the one that wins.
Wrong. The browser that the corporate IT organizations use wins. Period. If some giant corp requires the use of IE6, you will code to that because they will not allow you to dictate the internal "approved" infrastructure because you want something fancy like proper DIV handling or modern security. The larger the company, the more it becomes "the devil you know".
To misread this as "Alderaan Robotics" in the title and think they they were destroyed along with millions of other voices? Good thing they're open-sourcing their control code. Hate to see that get destroyed too.
...This portion of the Glenn Beck program brought to you by Yahoo! Trust all your searches to us, cause we're not Google (and we paid Beck a million to day Google is evil)!
That's why you'll seldom hear an entire record played on talk radio. The syndicators don't want to pay license fees.
That is actually not true. There is a separate payment structure for short clips used in a blog or talk radio format as opposed to a full-song radio playback of the same songs. There are still rights payments for even short clips, but it is a heck of a lot cheaper (by a factor of 10 or more depending on revenue and profits of the licensing organization).
The problem with this entire scheme is that there seems to be no way to say "I've paid the required fees not let me use the dang song". This kills even legal use of music. Not to mention that there is also no talk about "I'm the author dammit" option.
As weird as this seems, the use of an external entity by a college or university to run their network might be a bypass to these requirements. The external entity would be responsible for the public computer labs and networks in the dorms, and would operate as a standalone ISP. This would put the network firmly in the hands of DMCA safe harbor provisions.
The school could then operate their own network for teachers and approved research departments (possibly tunneling over the ISP's network between buildings, etc), and would allow the school to put in a firewall between the two networks and wash their hands of this sillyness.
How many times do we need to say the same thing before people start listening? Oh, that's why we still have STDs. Because people don't take basic steps to reduce risk by orders of magnitude.
I hate this phrase. Is the service class they are getting First Class, Coach, or Baggage? Every MarketingDroid who uses this phrase never says which one...
The issue is not the ownership or contributing membership of the individual projects. The issue is that by hosting, a copy of the software is being maintained under the control of whomever owns and/or controls the hosting servers. In the case of software hosted by a US company or person, that company or person is held responsible for ensuring that the content of that server follows applicable US and/or state law. This includes export laws. So, by you uploading something to their server, they are instantly liable for that. And for every transmission, that is one export, so charge counts, and thus fines add up fast. To ensure that they exist as a company tomorrow, they have to take this step (as crappy as it seems).
Oh and to those of you suggesting to move the hosting servers, that does not remove you from legal liability. If the servers are under your control, and you live in the US, you still have to follow US export laws. So, just by setting up a mirror server in another country that's on the export list, you're violating the law.
Because they are based in the US, and they are owned by a company that is based in the US. US export laws apply to both the parent company as well as the child, and sanctions for violating the export laws are severe. Relocating to another country is a possibility, but they would have to start over. The company taking assets (or assets under corporate supervision) to another country would also fall under the same law. So, there's the chicken and the egg problem. Also, most of the countries on the US list are also on similar lists in the rest of the world due to treaties, etc. I'm sure there are some countries out there that would be happy to have you host there and export without limitation (and possibly break copyright laws too). But as the Pirate Bay is finding, those places are fewer and fewer these days.
Oh, and if you're planning on staying in the US and not moving to the country you host in, you're still under the US export laws, as your location is in their jurisdiction. Even if you can find a lawyer to make the argument, plan on spending a ton of money on the defense. And if you have that much money to start with, you wouldn't be reading this:)
The state legislature is currently debating the proposed extension of the operating license of this facility. Given the track record of shoddy inspection processes, cost-cutting measures at the expense of safety, and not properly contributing to the decommissioning funds needed to safely close the plant, Entergy should not be allowed to continue the farce of safety for another 20 years. The linked article shows not only a disregard for the safety and long-term survival of the facility by not exploring a possible leak for months, but it also shows how little regard safety warnings are. Ignoring a low oil warning in a car would make me cringe - but not fixing a warning system and "closely monitoring the pump" instead in an facility that can cause mass destruction and death if failure occurs smacks of disregard for safety and human life to get things back to making money again.
And having labor unions pushing to keep this facility open, and bending all their political influence on this? They should be ashamed of themselves. Who will be hired to clean up once the facility is being closed? Union labor. And all for a few bucks while Vermont burns in a nuclear fire due to neglect and mismanagement.
Please contact your legislator and tell them to vote NO to the operating license renewal.
Slashdot Mirror
Job hunting is all about the filters, whether Monster.com literal ones or HR dumping resumes in the trash based on an arbitrary set of written requirements from some one else. I've rarely seen a position that states a specific degree is a requirement, unless you're trying to get into a highly technical field (engineering, medical practice, etc). A degree (of any kind) plus relevant experience is usually sufficient to make it past HR and get the interview. In this case, highlight all the open source work and everything you've been doing, and downplay they KIND of degree you have. Be prepared to answer a lot of questions in the interview about why you chose the degree you did, and what that gains the prospective employer, but you're already 50% of the way there.
Good luck with the hunt!
...but if you wipe the drive and install your own OS, or alter the machine in any way, you will be (a) fired, (b) sued, or in the case of some government agencies, (c) jailed.
What part of "Company Issued" do you not understand? IT IS NOT YOURS. Don't mess with it, if you'd like to keep your job and your freedom.
If the company/agency you work for is encrypting the hard drive, you're not working in a place that will tolerate ANY kind of tampering, even dual-boot. This may be for some combination of paranoia, trade secrets, legally-sensitive data, or national security. In any case, don't mess with it. Accept it and move on as a term of employment/
Get yourself a personal netbook, tablet, or smartphone and live with it. Or, go find yourself another job - one that allows you to hack company-issued hardware.
Believe it or not, BMI and ASCAP are not too much of a problem here - they are willing to negotiate fairly easily when it comes to things like this (if you're willing to just pay a percent of revenue). The real issue is SoundExchange - the government-created entity for compensating songwriters (BMI/ASCAP compensate the performers). Their terms are federal law, and there's no negotiating at all. The definitions are all stuck in "radio land" terms, and are priced to remain so. Providing alternatives (like an online CD jukebox) gets really expensive really fast - so much so that it becomes cost prohibitive unless your user base is willing to pay higher-than-CD rates just to stream a song. It's actually cheaper in those cases to negotiate a distribution license and have your users buy the whole damn track.
We are using a VPS for our main pages. What we're looking for is additional separate storage and bandwidth for the music files themselves. Keep the heavy bandwidth off my main box, and everyone is happier :D
I had considered dropping the site name, but the site would probably be offline within the hour. :)
Thanks everyone for the responses - looks like for the price we're talking about, going to a Colo is the better solution.
We asked the mafia to cracked down on organized crime, and we should not be so naive as to think that they would actually accomplish anything.
The Mafia would at least take the time to eliminate the competition under the guise of a "crackdown". These guys already own the town outright and will thus do nothing.
The White House response:
Subject: Why We Cannot comment on Investigating Former Sen. Dodd for Criminal Activity
All criminal investigations are not announced, confirmed, nor denied to prevent contamination of the evidence, jury pool, and our campaign contribution stream. This is the final response on this matter.
Do you have the money to rent an appropriate space inside the Beltway? To essentially purchase the Congressperson's time? Or even their staffers time? Getting the resources in place to do an extended (more than 2-5 day) lobbying effort requires a great deal of investment in both time and cash. And lets face it, do you pay more attention to your co-worker who you see every day, a friend you go drinking with, or to the person behind you at the grocery checkout line (who you will probably never see again)? Getting serious consideration (not just a wave in the distance) in that world is an entirely different level of action that requires a full-time job with a huge expense account just to get in the door. After that, the real bidding wars for the actual votes begin.
I second this. Running a small business is a different animal altogether. Unless you can make enough to support hiring someone to do your marketing and accounting, don't go here. It's a world of pain if you screw things up (especially from a tax perspective). In addition, if you're having trouble getting a job, it's going to be just as hard (if not harder) to develop a client base to support a small business.
Oh, and I assume the reason you're looking for work is to get money in your pocket. If you start a business, be prepared to lose money (and potentially lots of it) in the first several years while you get your name established.
If you go the independent contractor route, be aware that a lot of businesses are getting really picky about independent contractors as states begin to crack down. I've had several friends lose their gigs because the business says that they don't meet the stringent "requirements" in the law for being classified as an independent contractor and the business could be fined severely for "misclassification of employees" (note that this applies to the US, your locality may vary).
A degree isn't only about training. It is just as much evidence that you can set a long term goal and achieve it, and jump through all of the hoops necessary along the way.
Not having a degree myself, I find this answer patronizing and just plain wrong. There are many circumstances whee not having a degree is no fault of your ow (including lack of funds/loans, better opportunities, etc). At this point in time, a degree is simply a "checkbox" item for HR to use to filter candidates. No degree, no chance as HR tosses your resume before it gets to anyone doing the actual hiring. So the real problem for you is how to get through the HR filter.
The real trick to landing a job in this situation is who you know. Get out there and talk to people. Show your skills in a way non-tech people can "get". Impress the right people, and keep them in your back pocket. Every decent job I've had has come by impressing the right people and having them think of me when they see a need. By doing this, they are willing to stick their neck out and tell HR "Interview this guy, regardless of resume".
So while a portfolio is helpful, getting your face out there, having conversations, and attending conferences are all part of getting a name/face for yourself. I got my first real job by refusing to sell someone a product they didn't understand. They ended up hiring me because of my honesty and the fact I was willing to say "no this isn't what you're looking for".
The next release of Max OS (Lion) includes server functions as an optional install at no additional cost.
The browser that best supports the standards will be the one that wins.
Wrong. The browser that the corporate IT organizations use wins. Period. If some giant corp requires the use of IE6, you will code to that because they will not allow you to dictate the internal "approved" infrastructure because you want something fancy like proper DIV handling or modern security. The larger the company, the more it becomes "the devil you know".
To misread this as "Alderaan Robotics" in the title and think they they were destroyed along with millions of other voices? Good thing they're open-sourcing their control code. Hate to see that get destroyed too.
...This portion of the Glenn Beck program brought to you by Yahoo! Trust all your searches to us, cause we're not Google (and we paid Beck a million to day Google is evil)!
Citation needed.
What do you think this is, Wikipedia? Welcome to slashdot.
Slashdot is getting so slow on news that it's going backwards. Current -6 days. Methinks ./ is now nuked from my daily check.
That's why you'll seldom hear an entire record played on talk radio. The syndicators don't want to pay license fees.
That is actually not true. There is a separate payment structure for short clips used in a blog or talk radio format as opposed to a full-song radio playback of the same songs. There are still rights payments for even short clips, but it is a heck of a lot cheaper (by a factor of 10 or more depending on revenue and profits of the licensing organization).
The problem with this entire scheme is that there seems to be no way to say "I've paid the required fees not let me use the dang song". This kills even legal use of music. Not to mention that there is also no talk about "I'm the author dammit" option.
As weird as this seems, the use of an external entity by a college or university to run their network might be a bypass to these requirements. The external entity would be responsible for the public computer labs and networks in the dorms, and would operate as a standalone ISP. This would put the network firmly in the hands of DMCA safe harbor provisions.
The school could then operate their own network for teachers and approved research departments (possibly tunneling over the ISP's network between buildings, etc), and would allow the school to put in a firewall between the two networks and wash their hands of this sillyness.
Ah Slashdot. Where a discussion of a portable laser being used as a weapon can devolve into a grammar and logical fallacy flamewar in 4 posts or less.
http://www.owasp.org/index.php/SQL_Injection_Prevention_Cheat_Sheet
How many times do we need to say the same thing before people start listening? Oh, that's why we still have STDs. Because people don't take basic steps to reduce risk by orders of magnitude.
they have been getting best-in-class service.
I hate this phrase. Is the service class they are getting First Class, Coach, or Baggage? Every MarketingDroid who uses this phrase never says which one...
The issue is not the ownership or contributing membership of the individual projects. The issue is that by hosting, a copy of the software is being maintained under the control of whomever owns and/or controls the hosting servers. In the case of software hosted by a US company or person, that company or person is held responsible for ensuring that the content of that server follows applicable US and/or state law. This includes export laws. So, by you uploading something to their server, they are instantly liable for that. And for every transmission, that is one export, so charge counts, and thus fines add up fast. To ensure that they exist as a company tomorrow, they have to take this step (as crappy as it seems).
Oh and to those of you suggesting to move the hosting servers, that does not remove you from legal liability. If the servers are under your control, and you live in the US, you still have to follow US export laws. So, just by setting up a mirror server in another country that's on the export list, you're violating the law.
I hope you're not living in the US, nor in a treaty signatory. Hosting location does not equal legal liability freedom.
Because they are based in the US, and they are owned by a company that is based in the US. US export laws apply to both the parent company as well as the child, and sanctions for violating the export laws are severe. Relocating to another country is a possibility, but they would have to start over. The company taking assets (or assets under corporate supervision) to another country would also fall under the same law. So, there's the chicken and the egg problem. Also, most of the countries on the US list are also on similar lists in the rest of the world due to treaties, etc. I'm sure there are some countries out there that would be happy to have you host there and export without limitation (and possibly break copyright laws too). But as the Pirate Bay is finding, those places are fewer and fewer these days.
Oh, and if you're planning on staying in the US and not moving to the country you host in, you're still under the US export laws, as your location is in their jurisdiction. Even if you can find a lawyer to make the argument, plan on spending a ton of money on the defense. And if you have that much money to start with, you wouldn't be reading this :)
The state legislature is currently debating the proposed extension of the operating license of this facility. Given the track record of shoddy inspection processes, cost-cutting measures at the expense of safety, and not properly contributing to the decommissioning funds needed to safely close the plant, Entergy should not be allowed to continue the farce of safety for another 20 years. The linked article shows not only a disregard for the safety and long-term survival of the facility by not exploring a possible leak for months, but it also shows how little regard safety warnings are. Ignoring a low oil warning in a car would make me cringe - but not fixing a warning system and "closely monitoring the pump" instead in an facility that can cause mass destruction and death if failure occurs smacks of disregard for safety and human life to get things back to making money again.
And having labor unions pushing to keep this facility open, and bending all their political influence on this? They should be ashamed of themselves. Who will be hired to clean up once the facility is being closed? Union labor. And all for a few bucks while Vermont burns in a nuclear fire due to neglect and mismanagement.
Please contact your legislator and tell them to vote NO to the operating license renewal.