They might try to sue you for defamation of character or something.
That is why I never post the employer's name on public forums. I just say the company that I work for, or used to work for.
I had a friend work for your former employer. Basically they replaced him with an H1B Visa worker that could work for less money.
Never assume that the firm is your friend, because that is the time that they will screw you over like a 25 cent whore. Never trust them, as they only look out for what is best for the firm. Not what is best for the employee, employee's family, employee's health, the environment, the government, the economy, charities, etc. Imagine that the firm is an entity with no soul. Work as hard as you can, but not to the point of effecting your health, family, etc. If that starts to happen, look for another employer because you are about to get screwed.
Even if they are a bunch of PHBs, tell other employers that they were nicely saints and that you learned a lot from the job and gained a lot of valuable experience. It may be a load of BS, but at least it makes you look better by not trashing them after they unfairly let you go.
That is the advice someone who was very wise had told me on another forum.
It is not your bosses job to stand up for you, but to hear complaints and try to reduce them and work you to your full potential.
My former boss just couldn't say "no" to any department no matter how insane their demands for projects were. I had at least 34 projects at any one given time, as many as 100. The first two years I worked there I had 12 or fewer tasks at a time. They increased my workload and it still wasn't good enough for them. Other coworkers had my boss re-assign their projects to me, because they didn't want to do them. So I got stuck with more projects than I could handle. When I asked for help, I got told that no help was available. This lead me to get stressed out and depressed and very sick at times. My boss told me to "just snap out of it", he had no idea how depression worked. In a way I am glad to be gone now, but one of my concerns is that my coworkers now have extra projects to do, and the same thing could be happening to them. The mental and emotional abuse of the firm does create problems with the employees. If they don't fix it, more of the same will happen.
what really matters in the workplace is how much you brownnose and whose's rear end you have to kiss on a daily basis to keep your job. Also what part of office politics you play in, if you keep the right group happy you keep your job. Tick off the wrong group and you are so fired. It doesn't matter if you goof off, make mistakes, or are plain incompetant, as long as you get the right political favors and try to make up stuff about the other guys, then you are bound to keep your job. Those that do not play that game are let go in some companies.
Microsoft has major marketshare, isn't that proof enough that the best product/producer hardly ever wins? It is all in the marketing, the politics, and brownnosing.
At age 14 some kids are forming their own kiddie corporations and have their own websites. They are learning to program by age 9 in the schools now.
My son is 3 years old and already uses the computer. I learned when I was 12 about 20 years ago, back in the 8-bit days.:) When I was older I did volunteer work for the local museum of science and natural history showing people how to use a VIC-20 and 300 Baud Vicmodem to get on CompuServe and chat with other museums.
Some kids are helping teachers run computer labs on a part-time basis as part of extra-credit.
These things are possible these days. Maybe he did earn some experience since he was 14?
1> In most companies, Management and Accounting see IT as an expense instead of an income. It is true that IT can cut expenses and increase productivity but the bottom line is still "How much money are we spending?". The less they spend, the more profit they make. When they have to cut back, IT is almost always the first to go.
2> In 1997 there was a shortage of people to fill jobs due to the Y2K issues and companies requiring more and more skills than had been needed for the job previously. A "programmer / analyst" job that only required a two year degree with 3 years of experience now needs a four year degree with 5-10 years experience, and DBA skills, and Web skills, and object oriented programming skills, etc. The requirements to do the job got done.
3> The H1B Work Visa quotas got almost tripled since 1997. Even now as there is no more shortage of IT workers, the H1B Visa workers keep on coming in. The result is too many IT workers looking for work. This gives the Firms the advantage to hire for less money, less benefits, and make up BS excuses to get rid of the high paid IT people and replace them with lower paid workers. Nothing against H1B Visa workers, but firms abuse them too.
4> Since 1997, IT workers are going on five years. If the firm allows them to keep their jobs, they have to pay a pension after five years. If they can find some BS reason to get rid of them before the five years come up, they can avoid paying them a pension.
5> Microsoft seems to keep on changing the technology that the Microsoft shops are using..NET is the latest trend. It is still in beta testing, yet IT workers are claiming to be "experts" in it. Management wants to get rid of the workers who know the old way, and hire the ".NET Experts" in place of them. Management sees that training the existing employees is a waste of money if they can hire someone at a lower salary that claims to be an expert in that area. So they make up a BS excuse to get rid of the existing employees.
6> It really is a "Dilbert" world. The liars, cheats, and frauds get promoted while the knowledgeable workers get the boot. If you are too good at your job, they won't promote you because you can do better work as a Peon rather than a supervisor or manager.
7> Big Business backs up G.W. Bush, Gore was more for the working man. 'Nuff said on that.
8> IT is migrating towards a "Fast Food" mentality. Projects that used to take months to complete now have to take weeks or days. As a result sloppy work is done which needs more support and debugging. The workers that produce rock solid code take months, and hence get told that their productivity is down. The ones that write sloppy code get kept, while the ones that write rock solid code get the boot.
9> The economy, it tanked a bit. Management is now taking it out on the IT department to cut expenses.
10> The Sept 11th attacks got everyone spooked. So there is plenty of discrimination, not just in IT but the rest of the company. All they have to do is suspect you of doing something and you are out of there, no evidence needed. Everyone is afraid that the guy/gal in the next cubical may have Taliban ties, or is a loony, terrorist, alien, etc. It is the Salem Witch Hunt or McCarthyism all over again!
My boss had good things to say about me, and did tell me that the decision came from above his head. My coworkers liked me, with a few exactions, but then those exceptions didn't like hardly anybody.
On the day I was let go, my boss had a look on his face like he lost his best friend or best worker. he was really depressed. The HR director had a smile on her face. I wonder which one had made the decision to get rid of me?
Like I said if I had stayed for half a year more, I would have started to collect a pension. It would have been five years.
Some things that got exagerated or lied about:
My doctor excuse notes got missing from my HR file and they held the days I missed against me despite the fact that I worked extra hours to make them up. They also claimed they didn't know about my medical conditions despite the fact that I gave them doctor notes and documented it myself. Now I ask you, how could information go missing from my file?
My wife called me when she and my son got the flu and she asked me to pick up medicine on the way home. Total time on the phone, 30 seconds, yet it got counted against me as personal use. Yet the Duffer next to my cubical was able to talk to his Golf buddies 40 minutes or more a day and get away with it Scott Free. He laughs, has the speakerphone on a high volume, and our bosses ignored it and let him get away with it.
I visited ASPtoday.com, msdn.microsoft.com, 4guysfromrolla.com and other job related web sites. Yet I get dinged for Internet use, despite my needing to visit these sites for help, and told to visit them by my immediate boss. But the old Duffer next to me visits Sports Offical web sites and prints them out and nothing gets done about it.
I never got it written on paper just why they fired me. Except for the reason that Unemployment said they gave. Not that they said they had proof that I did any of those things, just that they "believed" that I did. Apparently hard evidence and reasonable doubt does not apply to employee termination? I asked them for evidence and they could not provide it on the day I was let go. If you ask me, they made a mountain out of a mole hill.
Not all companies are like that, nor are all people over 40 like that either. I hope to find a company that at least has a soul and an idea of what fairness is that doesn't play favoritism.
People liked me at the other places that I worked at. Plus I had over four years with the company that let me go. Other people at work, even those over 40, had serious attutide problems and behavior problems yet got to keep their jobs. They caused problems with other employees, interrupted my work and the work of others by doing things like playing MP3 songs, snapping fingers as they walked by our cubicals, adjusting our chairs to a lower setting while we were at lunch or before we came into work, and printing out modified pictures in Photoshop and leaving them on our chairs. Management for some reason ignored our complaints and then eventually came up with a "Zero Tolerance" towards complaining.
Everwhere else I worked, they liked me. Not until this current job that I lost did I get negative feedback. Mostly gross exagerations and outright lies. Before that a series of broken promises from management. Like I would get DBA certification if I signed on for six more months. I stayed on for six more months and rejected job offers from other companies, but they broke their promise and didn't give me the training. Then they gave the DBA promotion to a Technician instead who was older than me and barely knew how to write a SQL query. Figure that one out!
Employers are funny, if they believe you are doing something, they can fire you for believing that you did something without any evidence to back it up.
Like they believed you were hacking, which you were not. Either a coworker started a rumor on you, or someone was hacking and they didn't know who so they blamed it on you.
You can try a lawsuit, maybe against the company and your ex-boss. I used to work for lawyers, but in our state they can fire you for any reason or no reason at all. If they believe you were hacking, doing personal business at work, surfing the web, talking to coworkers, goofing off, or any other thing but they don't have the hard evidence they will let you go on suspition. If someone has it in for you, and starts telling management that you are doing stuff you shouldn't be doing, the management will most likely believe the rumors over the facts or lack thereof.
It happened to me, my friend. Coworkers older than me that had less talent than me, decided to become tattletales and make up stories about me to management. It was a political move to get rid of me. Nothing I could do about it. They have the best lawyers in town, being a large law firm. So even if I did sue, the legal fees would be hefty. False witnesses, you'd think that they would at least have a conscience that bothered them about becoming false witnesses and making stuff up. But it seems that the bad ones get to keep their jobs and keep getting promoted. bad ones come in all ages, not just over 40, trust me on that.
I just got terminated from an IS Department. They did the same thing to me, made up a lot of stuff so I'd get a bad performace review so they get an excuse to get rid of me. Wouldn't let me defend myself to the false accusations.
I am in my early 30's, guys in their 40's got to keep their jobs and got to be brownnosing the boss to make up for their faliures.
But there is no Computer Union, if there was I'd still have my job.
One guy was fired because he was young and having marriage problems with his wife. So they fired him. Replaced him with someone older.
Another guy got married to a secretary so they fired both of them. yet my boss married a woman that worked under him and they kept both of them on?
Favoritism ran rampant at that place. I got the sh*t assignments that nobody else wanted, and the good stuff got assigned to the boss' buddies. Then when they goofed it up, they gave it to me to debug and document.
I was there for four and a half years, in five years I would have been earning a pension. That is the real reason why they wanted to get rid of me.
Got a Sega Saturn emulator that isn't in development stages? One that actually works?
Or a Playstation emulator that plays 100% of the Playstation games out there?
Or an Ethernet adapter for an Amiga 500?
How about a 500Mhz used Laptop with a 6G hard drive, 64M RAM, CD-ROM, Floppy, USB port, Audio, 800x600 video (at least 8M Video RAM) for under $500? Must have an AC adapter and battery.
Anyone else think so? Remember those Tiger Game.com Pocket Pro units with the color cases? Hhmmmmm, makes me wonder if Nintendo looked at their competitors and copied some of the best features for the Game Boy Advance?
Why not call it the Super Game Boy or Ultra Game Boy or even Advanced Game Boy instead of Game Boy Advance?
I agree I bought an old Atari Lynx at a garage sale for $20 with about ten games. Also got a Gameboy and 4 games for $15.
Haven't been to flea markets yet, but maybe I will some day and see what I can pick up.
I think there are places that sell the games online, Triangle Video Games was one, but their web site is down temporaility. http://www.trianglevideogames.com they had tons of old stuff at one time.
Also K-Mart sells old NES, SNES, Genesis, and N64 and Playstation titles in a previously used box packaging.
Maybe we can go back to the old vacuum tubes and start building computers from that? Would also make nice space heaters from the tubes! Just like in the AfterY2K Comic.
The Microsoft DOJ trial is a waste of our taxpayer money. You know that Microsoft will win the appeal, and even get another trial maybe. The Microsoft employees and attorneys bungled the case so bad that they could almost delcare a "mis-trial".
Splitting up Microsoft won't work. What you need to do is get a Microsoft 32 bit Windows compatable OS into the Competitors of MS and have them compete with Microsoft. Force Microsoft to fully document the Windows API calls, or open source an older version of Windows 95/98/ME and let Microsoft keep Windows 2000/XP closed. Then let AOL, Gateway, Compaq, IBM, Intel, and others roll their own Windows 9X clone.
After the panic and stock market crash due to the loss of technology, we would start over.
I am assuming that we wouldn't lose the knowledge of making chips, that our electrical engineers will still have the knowledge in their heads on 32 bit CPU designs, etc. Give it a few years until a few factories are build, and the first CPUs start coming off the assembly lines.
The first OS, will most likely be open sourced, no commercial OS can be made that fast. Open sourced OSes will be made first because more people are working on it. Consider a reworking of OpenBSD or Linux before a MS-DOS, MacOS, or even Windows is recreated.
I'd imagine that Apple would scap the MacOS 8.X and 9.X designs for a BSD Unix based OS like OSX was. No need to worry about "Classic" mode because all the old programs got fried in the "Zero Event Flash" or whatever. Motorola, IBM, and Apple will try to reinvent the PowerPC chip.
Intel will no doubt skip over the 386, 486, Pentium, and Pentium Pro series and just try to reinvent the Celeron and Pentium III/4 chips.
Microsoft will most likely avoid reinventing MS-DOS and Windows 3.X and Windows 95/98/ME and just try to make a Windows 2000/XP type OS.
My gosh, what about the MP3 formats? A new format would have to be made! I guess all those Audio CDs are toast as well? Have to recreate them from sheet music. Say Goodbye to Elvis and Beatles recordings! It would also be a world without music until we could recreate it.
Hmm, maybe the recreated versions of OS/2, BeOS, Linux, OpenBSD, and Mac OSX will sell better than the recreated Windows 2000/XP software?;)
I'll miss all the old video game consoles, fried beyond playability. Nintendo and Sony will rush to get the first recreated video game console, and maybe Sega would be back in the game with a new console of theirs?
Even the digital watches would be fried! Nooooooooooo! Even the calculators, microwave ovens, TV sets, aaarrrggghhh! All the consumer electrics would be toast. Darn you, darn you all, you manics, you blew it all up!:)
If all else fails and we cannot recreate technology, we can always join the Amish and raise up barns at 3am in the morning!:)
If you cannot attract talent to the firm, move the firm near the talent.
Utah isn't a good place for a technology firm IMHO. Even Rolla, Missouri is a better location. Got a college nearby to hire engineers from. Big "party" town on St. Patrick's day.
But hey, if you just want to hire people who are like me and are dull and boring and don't drink or smoke, then go right ahead. But you won't find very many of us out there. Most of the talent likes to live it up, some like me don't like to live it up and would rather do other things.
I feel like Motzart, my code will never be appreciated until 100+ years after I am dead.:(
Trying to please pointy haired bosses and other management types while trying to also write good code to avoid memory leaks and sluggishness is an artform in itself. I am one of those rare individuals that can do it.
The ones that can code faster than me, write sloppy code and provide no comments. They get praise for finishing before deadlines and make the rest of us coders look bad when they tally up how long it takes to work on a project. Thing is, I don't have to go back and correct my code 12 times before I get it working the way they want it like the other programmers do. Yet it seems my employer likes the fast and sloppy style because they can get more done in less time. Forget that it leaks memory worse than a Microsoft operating system, and no other programmer can figure it out because they didn't document it at all. At least with my code, someone can figure out what I was doing because I use naming conventions and source code comments and write documents on what the program is supposed to do.
So what should we call the quick and dirty programmers that management seems to like so much? They aren't really artists, unless they are the Jackson Pollocks of the programmer set?;) Code Monkeys? Spaghetti Programmers? Virtual Developers? What?
Apple should just release an OpenStep implementation for Darwin. Remember NeXTStep for Intel systems? Sort of base it on that. Either that or work with the GNUStep people to couple GNUStep with Darwin to get a Pseudo-OSX type OS for WINTEL systems minus Aqua and other OSX-only features. Let the GNUStep people enhance the GUI to Apple's guidelines.
I guess if they plugged the Windows version into.Net it can run VBScripts and other languages? But then it would be hard to port that code. Better stick to general, open source solutions for now.
But I would like to see it get the NT Challenge Response Domain Login support so that it can be used on Corp Intranets that use IIS and NT/W2K with login security. Then it can be a browser Intranets can use, and then eventually they can ween themselves off IIS and NT/W2K for another solution. IE is only used by our Intranets because of the NT Domain login stuff and the ActiveX support because we use ActiveX objects on our web pages (Because a PHB told us to, not because we deicided to).
My only complaint about Mozilla, is the frequent updates and me with my 56K modem and ISP that gives me 16.8K bandwidth. It makes getting updates very slow. But if my local phone company would get off their *ss and get me DSL support in my area, I'd be a happy camper.
The thing is that Apple buying up NeXT to get MACH+*BSD+OpenStep shows that Apple knows the old MacOS is an evolutionary dead-end. Eventually the old MacOS will be phased out (5 to 10 years, tops) and the OSX (or whatever they will call it, I wonder if version 11 will be OSXI?) model is the new way to do things.
Face it, the thought of running both Unix and Mac programs on the same box has potential. I was about one of the hardest Apple Critics as they came, but I must say that moving to Unix may be the right thing to do. At least they allowed Darwin and *BSD Developers at the latest conference. Maybe next year they can invite Linux and BeOS developers?;)
Anyway the only way for Apple to get it back, would be to develop at least a version of OSX for other platforms. Or at least give Darwin more features like OSX has. Once Apple's OS goes multi-platform, they can get back the marketshare that they keep on losing.
Someone offered to sell me a used Grape iMac for a reasonable price. I might just take them up on it, upgrade the RAM, buy OSX, and see what the fuss is about.
How long before they can make a working Nanosuit that you can wear and it can monitor your health? Change the color of your clothes, stitch up any cuts, etc?
It seems if you run an ethical small shop, you are most likely to go out of business. The unethical ones make the money by gouging the customer as much as they can and hope the customer doesn't notice it.
Microsoft products for example, require the most maintenance. Sell or request that the client use Microsoft products, and you will also win a "Maintenance" contract. Use something else like Linux and Apache, and expect to set up the server and never to be heard from again until it needs upgrading. Trust me, been there, done that, with a small company I founded, went out of business because the customers are happy running a stable product and don't need my company's services anymore.
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They might try to sue you for defamation of character or something.
That is why I never post the employer's name on public forums. I just say the company that I work for, or used to work for.
I had a friend work for your former employer. Basically they replaced him with an H1B Visa worker that could work for less money.
Never assume that the firm is your friend, because that is the time that they will screw you over like a 25 cent whore. Never trust them, as they only look out for what is best for the firm. Not what is best for the employee, employee's family, employee's health, the environment, the government, the economy, charities, etc. Imagine that the firm is an entity with no soul. Work as hard as you can, but not to the point of effecting your health, family, etc. If that starts to happen, look for another employer because you are about to get screwed.
Even if they are a bunch of PHBs, tell other employers that they were nicely saints and that you learned a lot from the job and gained a lot of valuable experience. It may be a load of BS, but at least it makes you look better by not trashing them after they unfairly let you go.
That is the advice someone who was very wise had told me on another forum.
It is not your bosses job to stand up for you, but to hear complaints and try to reduce them and work you to your full potential.
My former boss just couldn't say "no" to any department no matter how insane their demands for projects were. I had at least 34 projects at any one given time, as many as 100. The first two years I worked there I had 12 or fewer tasks at a time. They increased my workload and it still wasn't good enough for them. Other coworkers had my boss re-assign their projects to me, because they didn't want to do them. So I got stuck with more projects than I could handle. When I asked for help, I got told that no help was available. This lead me to get stressed out and depressed and very sick at times. My boss told me to "just snap out of it", he had no idea how depression worked. In a way I am glad to be gone now, but one of my concerns is that my coworkers now have extra projects to do, and the same thing could be happening to them. The mental and emotional abuse of the firm does create problems with the employees. If they don't fix it, more of the same will happen.
what really matters in the workplace is how much you brownnose and whose's rear end you have to kiss on a daily basis to keep your job. Also what part of office politics you play in, if you keep the right group happy you keep your job. Tick off the wrong group and you are so fired. It doesn't matter if you goof off, make mistakes, or are plain incompetant, as long as you get the right political favors and try to make up stuff about the other guys, then you are bound to keep your job. Those that do not play that game are let go in some companies.
Microsoft has major marketshare, isn't that proof enough that the best product/producer hardly ever wins? It is all in the marketing, the politics, and brownnosing.
At age 14 some kids are forming their own kiddie corporations and have their own websites. They are learning to program by age 9 in the schools now.
:) When I was older I did volunteer work for the local museum of science and natural history showing people how to use a VIC-20 and 300 Baud Vicmodem to get on CompuServe and chat with other museums.
My son is 3 years old and already uses the computer. I learned when I was 12 about 20 years ago, back in the 8-bit days.
Some kids are helping teachers run computer labs on a part-time basis as part of extra-credit.
These things are possible these days. Maybe he did earn some experience since he was 14?
1> In most companies, Management and Accounting see IT as an expense instead of an income. It is true that IT can cut expenses and increase productivity but the bottom line is still "How much money are we spending?". The less they spend, the more profit they make. When they have to cut back, IT is almost always the first to go.
.NET is the latest trend. It is still in beta testing, yet IT workers are claiming to be "experts" in it. Management wants to get rid of the workers who know the old way, and hire the ".NET Experts" in place of them. Management sees that training the existing employees is a waste of money if they can hire someone at a lower salary that claims to be an expert in that area. So they make up a BS excuse to get rid of the existing employees.
2> In 1997 there was a shortage of people to fill jobs due to the Y2K issues and companies requiring more and more skills than had been needed for the job previously. A "programmer / analyst" job that only required a two year degree with 3 years of experience now needs a four year degree with 5-10 years experience, and DBA skills, and Web skills, and object oriented programming skills, etc. The requirements to do the job got done.
3> The H1B Work Visa quotas got almost tripled since 1997. Even now as there is no more shortage of IT workers, the H1B Visa workers keep on coming in. The result is too many IT workers looking for work. This gives the Firms the advantage to hire for less money, less benefits, and make up BS excuses to get rid of the high paid IT people and replace them with lower paid workers. Nothing against H1B Visa workers, but firms abuse them too.
4> Since 1997, IT workers are going on five years. If the firm allows them to keep their jobs, they have to pay a pension after five years. If they can find some BS reason to get rid of them before the five years come up, they can avoid paying them a pension.
5> Microsoft seems to keep on changing the technology that the Microsoft shops are using.
6> It really is a "Dilbert" world. The liars, cheats, and frauds get promoted while the knowledgeable workers get the boot. If you are too good at your job, they won't promote you because you can do better work as a Peon rather than a supervisor or manager.
7> Big Business backs up G.W. Bush, Gore was more for the working man. 'Nuff said on that.
8> IT is migrating towards a "Fast Food" mentality. Projects that used to take months to complete now have to take weeks or days. As a result sloppy work is done which needs more support and debugging. The workers that produce rock solid code take months, and hence get told that their productivity is down. The ones that write sloppy code get kept, while the ones that write rock solid code get the boot.
9> The economy, it tanked a bit. Management is now taking it out on the IT department to cut expenses.
10> The Sept 11th attacks got everyone spooked. So there is plenty of discrimination, not just in IT but the rest of the company. All they have to do is suspect you of doing something and you are out of there, no evidence needed. Everyone is afraid that the guy/gal in the next cubical may have Taliban ties, or is a loony, terrorist, alien, etc. It is the Salem Witch Hunt or McCarthyism all over again!
My boss had good things to say about me, and did tell me that the decision came from above his head. My coworkers liked me, with a few exactions, but then those exceptions didn't like hardly anybody.
On the day I was let go, my boss had a look on his face like he lost his best friend or best worker. he was really depressed. The HR director had a smile on her face. I wonder which one had made the decision to get rid of me?
Like I said if I had stayed for half a year more, I would have started to collect a pension. It would have been five years.
Some things that got exagerated or lied about:
My doctor excuse notes got missing from my HR file and they held the days I missed against me despite the fact that I worked extra hours to make them up. They also claimed they didn't know about my medical conditions despite the fact that I gave them doctor notes and documented it myself. Now I ask you, how could information go missing from my file?
My wife called me when she and my son got the flu and she asked me to pick up medicine on the way home. Total time on the phone, 30 seconds, yet it got counted against me as personal use. Yet the Duffer next to my cubical was able to talk to his Golf buddies 40 minutes or more a day and get away with it Scott Free. He laughs, has the speakerphone on a high volume, and our bosses ignored it and let him get away with it.
I visited ASPtoday.com, msdn.microsoft.com, 4guysfromrolla.com and other job related web sites. Yet I get dinged for Internet use, despite my needing to visit these sites for help, and told to visit them by my immediate boss. But the old Duffer next to me visits Sports Offical web sites and prints them out and nothing gets done about it.
I never got it written on paper just why they fired me. Except for the reason that Unemployment said they gave. Not that they said they had proof that I did any of those things, just that they "believed" that I did. Apparently hard evidence and reasonable doubt does not apply to employee termination? I asked them for evidence and they could not provide it on the day I was let go. If you ask me, they made a mountain out of a mole hill.
Not all companies are like that, nor are all people over 40 like that either. I hope to find a company that at least has a soul and an idea of what fairness is that doesn't play favoritism.
People liked me at the other places that I worked at. Plus I had over four years with the company that let me go. Other people at work, even those over 40, had serious attutide problems and behavior problems yet got to keep their jobs. They caused problems with other employees, interrupted my work and the work of others by doing things like playing MP3 songs, snapping fingers as they walked by our cubicals, adjusting our chairs to a lower setting while we were at lunch or before we came into work, and printing out modified pictures in Photoshop and leaving them on our chairs. Management for some reason ignored our complaints and then eventually came up with a "Zero Tolerance" towards complaining.
Everwhere else I worked, they liked me. Not until this current job that I lost did I get negative feedback. Mostly gross exagerations and outright lies. Before that a series of broken promises from management. Like I would get DBA certification if I signed on for six more months. I stayed on for six more months and rejected job offers from other companies, but they broke their promise and didn't give me the training. Then they gave the DBA promotion to a Technician instead who was older than me and barely knew how to write a SQL query. Figure that one out!
Like they believed you were hacking, which you were not. Either a coworker started a rumor on you, or someone was hacking and they didn't know who so they blamed it on you.
You can try a lawsuit, maybe against the company and your ex-boss. I used to work for lawyers, but in our state they can fire you for any reason or no reason at all. If they believe you were hacking, doing personal business at work, surfing the web, talking to coworkers, goofing off, or any other thing but they don't have the hard evidence they will let you go on suspition. If someone has it in for you, and starts telling management that you are doing stuff you shouldn't be doing, the management will most likely believe the rumors over the facts or lack thereof.
It happened to me, my friend. Coworkers older than me that had less talent than me, decided to become tattletales and make up stories about me to management. It was a political move to get rid of me. Nothing I could do about it. They have the best lawyers in town, being a large law firm. So even if I did sue, the legal fees would be hefty. False witnesses, you'd think that they would at least have a conscience that bothered them about becoming false witnesses and making stuff up. But it seems that the bad ones get to keep their jobs and keep getting promoted. bad ones come in all ages, not just over 40, trust me on that.
Remember when Wordperfect existed for many platforms, even the Amiga?
For Unix, best you can get is get the source code to Open Office and then try a GCC compiler on it. it should work with most MS-Office file formats.
I am in my early 30's, guys in their 40's got to keep their jobs and got to be brownnosing the boss to make up for their faliures.
But there is no Computer Union, if there was I'd still have my job.
One guy was fired because he was young and having marriage problems with his wife. So they fired him. Replaced him with someone older.
Another guy got married to a secretary so they fired both of them. yet my boss married a woman that worked under him and they kept both of them on?
Favoritism ran rampant at that place. I got the sh*t assignments that nobody else wanted, and the good stuff got assigned to the boss' buddies. Then when they goofed it up, they gave it to me to debug and document.
I was there for four and a half years, in five years I would have been earning a pension. That is the real reason why they wanted to get rid of me.
Or a Playstation emulator that plays 100% of the Playstation games out there?
Or an Ethernet adapter for an Amiga 500?
How about a 500Mhz used Laptop with a 6G hard drive, 64M RAM, CD-ROM, Floppy, USB port, Audio, 800x600 video (at least 8M Video RAM) for under $500? Must have an AC adapter and battery.
Anyone else think so? Remember those Tiger Game.com Pocket Pro units with the color cases? Hhmmmmm, makes me wonder if Nintendo looked at their competitors and copied some of the best features for the Game Boy Advance?
:)
Why not call it the Super Game Boy or Ultra Game Boy or even Advanced Game Boy instead of Game Boy Advance?
All your Game Boy are belong to us!
I agree I bought an old Atari Lynx at a garage sale for $20 with about ten games. Also got a Gameboy and 4 games for $15.
Haven't been to flea markets yet, but maybe I will some day and see what I can pick up.
I think there are places that sell the games online, Triangle Video Games was one, but their web site is down temporaility. http://www.trianglevideogames.com they had tons of old stuff at one time.
Also K-Mart sells old NES, SNES, Genesis, and N64 and Playstation titles in a previously used box packaging.
Maybe we can go back to the old vacuum tubes and start building computers from that? Would also make nice space heaters from the tubes! Just like in the AfterY2K Comic.
The Microsoft DOJ trial is a waste of our taxpayer money. You know that Microsoft will win the appeal, and even get another trial maybe. The Microsoft employees and attorneys bungled the case so bad that they could almost delcare a "mis-trial".
Splitting up Microsoft won't work. What you need to do is get a Microsoft 32 bit Windows compatable OS into the Competitors of MS and have them compete with Microsoft. Force Microsoft to fully document the Windows API calls, or open source an older version of Windows 95/98/ME and let Microsoft keep Windows 2000/XP closed. Then let AOL, Gateway, Compaq, IBM, Intel, and others roll their own Windows 9X clone.
After the panic and stock market crash due to the loss of technology, we would start over.
;)
:)
:)
I am assuming that we wouldn't lose the knowledge of making chips, that our electrical engineers will still have the knowledge in their heads on 32 bit CPU designs, etc. Give it a few years until a few factories are build, and the first CPUs start coming off the assembly lines.
The first OS, will most likely be open sourced, no commercial OS can be made that fast. Open sourced OSes will be made first because more people are working on it. Consider a reworking of OpenBSD or Linux before a MS-DOS, MacOS, or even Windows is recreated.
I'd imagine that Apple would scap the MacOS 8.X and 9.X designs for a BSD Unix based OS like OSX was. No need to worry about "Classic" mode because all the old programs got fried in the "Zero Event Flash" or whatever. Motorola, IBM, and Apple will try to reinvent the PowerPC chip.
Intel will no doubt skip over the 386, 486, Pentium, and Pentium Pro series and just try to reinvent the Celeron and Pentium III/4 chips.
Microsoft will most likely avoid reinventing MS-DOS and Windows 3.X and Windows 95/98/ME and just try to make a Windows 2000/XP type OS.
My gosh, what about the MP3 formats? A new format would have to be made! I guess all those Audio CDs are toast as well? Have to recreate them from sheet music. Say Goodbye to Elvis and Beatles recordings! It would also be a world without music until we could recreate it.
Hmm, maybe the recreated versions of OS/2, BeOS, Linux, OpenBSD, and Mac OSX will sell better than the recreated Windows 2000/XP software?
I'll miss all the old video game consoles, fried beyond playability. Nintendo and Sony will rush to get the first recreated video game console, and maybe Sega would be back in the game with a new console of theirs?
Even the digital watches would be fried! Nooooooooooo! Even the calculators, microwave ovens, TV sets, aaarrrggghhh! All the consumer electrics would be toast. Darn you, darn you all, you manics, you blew it all up!
If all else fails and we cannot recreate technology, we can always join the Amish and raise up barns at 3am in the morning!
If you cannot attract talent to the firm, move the firm near the talent.
Utah isn't a good place for a technology firm IMHO. Even Rolla, Missouri is a better location. Got a college nearby to hire engineers from. Big "party" town on St. Patrick's day.
But hey, if you just want to hire people who are like me and are dull and boring and don't drink or smoke, then go right ahead. But you won't find very many of us out there. Most of the talent likes to live it up, some like me don't like to live it up and would rather do other things.
Heh, anything but DirectX, right? What about OpenGL?
I feel like Motzart, my code will never be appreciated until 100+ years after I am dead. :(
;) Code Monkeys? Spaghetti Programmers? Virtual Developers? What?
Trying to please pointy haired bosses and other management types while trying to also write good code to avoid memory leaks and sluggishness is an artform in itself. I am one of those rare individuals that can do it.
The ones that can code faster than me, write sloppy code and provide no comments. They get praise for finishing before deadlines and make the rest of us coders look bad when they tally up how long it takes to work on a project. Thing is, I don't have to go back and correct my code 12 times before I get it working the way they want it like the other programmers do. Yet it seems my employer likes the fast and sloppy style because they can get more done in less time. Forget that it leaks memory worse than a Microsoft operating system, and no other programmer can figure it out because they didn't document it at all. At least with my code, someone can figure out what I was doing because I use naming conventions and source code comments and write documents on what the program is supposed to do.
So what should we call the quick and dirty programmers that management seems to like so much? They aren't really artists, unless they are the Jackson Pollocks of the programmer set?
Apple should just release an OpenStep implementation for Darwin. Remember NeXTStep for Intel systems? Sort of base it on that. Either that or work with the GNUStep people to couple GNUStep with Darwin to get a Pseudo-OSX type OS for WINTEL systems minus Aqua and other OSX-only features. Let the GNUStep people enhance the GUI to Apple's guidelines.
I guess if they plugged the Windows version into .Net it can run VBScripts and other languages? But then it would be hard to port that code. Better stick to general, open source solutions for now.
But I would like to see it get the NT Challenge Response Domain Login support so that it can be used on Corp Intranets that use IIS and NT/W2K with login security. Then it can be a browser Intranets can use, and then eventually they can ween themselves off IIS and NT/W2K for another solution. IE is only used by our Intranets because of the NT Domain login stuff and the ActiveX support because we use ActiveX objects on our web pages (Because a PHB told us to, not because we deicided to).
My only complaint about Mozilla, is the frequent updates and me with my 56K modem and ISP that gives me 16.8K bandwidth. It makes getting updates very slow. But if my local phone company would get off their *ss and get me DSL support in my area, I'd be a happy camper.
The thing is that Apple buying up NeXT to get MACH+*BSD+OpenStep shows that Apple knows the old MacOS is an evolutionary dead-end. Eventually the old MacOS will be phased out (5 to 10 years, tops) and the OSX (or whatever they will call it, I wonder if version 11 will be OSXI?) model is the new way to do things.
;)
Face it, the thought of running both Unix and Mac programs on the same box has potential. I was about one of the hardest Apple Critics as they came, but I must say that moving to Unix may be the right thing to do. At least they allowed Darwin and *BSD Developers at the latest conference. Maybe next year they can invite Linux and BeOS developers?
Anyway the only way for Apple to get it back, would be to develop at least a version of OSX for other platforms. Or at least give Darwin more features like OSX has. Once Apple's OS goes multi-platform, they can get back the marketshare that they keep on losing.
Someone offered to sell me a used Grape iMac for a reasonable price. I might just take them up on it, upgrade the RAM, buy OSX, and see what the fuss is about.
How long before they can make a working Nanosuit that you can wear and it can monitor your health? Change the color of your clothes, stitch up any cuts, etc?
It seems if you run an ethical small shop, you are most likely to go out of business. The unethical ones make the money by gouging the customer as much as they can and hope the customer doesn't notice it.
Microsoft products for example, require the most maintenance. Sell or request that the client use Microsoft products, and you will also win a "Maintenance" contract. Use something else like Linux and Apache, and expect to set up the server and never to be heard from again until it needs upgrading. Trust me, been there, done that, with a small company I founded, went out of business because the customers are happy running a stable product and don't need my company's services anymore.