who ever said 'unskilled labor'?

all I was talking about is hiring older guys who DO have tons of experience.

if you are not skilled, fine. no one is asking for a 'gift' but by the same token, a guy with decades of relevant computer and networking experience should not be passed over simply because he won't play nerf football in the hallways with the other children^Hworkers.

I'm hearing people say to delete my valuable experience simply because it was more than 10 yrs ago.

I have a problem with that. some of my best lessons or experiences have been 'that long ago' and they are still relevant.

I worked hard to build a killer experience base. it seems wrong, to me, to remove experience that makes me valuable! just to show that I'm not an older guy, which I actually am?

are you going to suggest I dye my hair, too, to hide my age? I can only go so far to pull off this charade.

it bugs me that people say I should remove older experience. the whole point of wisdom (not intelligence, but wisdom) is that you learn things over time that you can't get otherwise. time is valuable and time spent in your field should never be 'trimmed' just for appearance sake.

if you are transitioning from one skill/job to, say, software, you'll probably be over 30, and maybe over 40.

just tell me this: who would hire an aging programmer, just starting out, when you can more easily abuse immigrants and h1b's who are young and will work overtime for free and deny the value of a personal life?

we have a major problem with companies not being socially responsible. they don't care that an aging population is being wholesale REJECTED by corporate america and worse than that, local US born and raised citizens are second class, now; with imported labor or outsourced labor being first class.

an idea: give tax incentives or other incentives for companies that go out of their way to hire locals/americans and even bigger bonuses to companies that go out of their way to hire older (over 35, cough) people. not saying you punish those companies who don't; but you give them extra benefits so as to motivate them.

companies only look out for their bottom line. they would sell their mother into slavery for a higher share price. the only way to keep a balance of social responsibility and prosperity is to give incentives, to guide better behavior.

(I'm over 50, have been looking for work for a while now, and I'm getting nothing; no interviews and certainly no offers. I have a lot of experience and a good work ethic, but it does no one any good if the companies routinely dismiss anyone with more than 2 pages of resume experience, since they are seen as 'too expensive' to hire).

my neighbor's dog is quite loud, so I'm not sure I would notice the difference.

after the initial explosion, though, at least it would be quieter around here and I would not have to be so careful where I walk.

if god is our programmer, then its just a real shame the whole job was outsourced to a low quality job-shop...

this life is quite shitty and yes, I could easily design a better and more just system if I was omni-powerful, as god is attributed.

I like woody allen's quote 'god was an under-achiever'.

we do it just to bug YOU, cold fnord.

we know it pisses you off to have your boys look bad.

DEAL WITH IT. or just leave. either is fine with most of us.

for some, its about getting insurance AT ALL if you want it.

pre-existing bullshit was one thing that needed fixing and its fixed.

SOME discount if you are a single buyer (not group plan based) is also there. in fact, it can be lower than cobra payments.

so, there was some benefit.

I'm unlucky in that my cobra payment is about as bad as my pre-obamacare non-group policy. I was unemployed with single policy for a while, then went contract and had a better pkg, then went full time and had a pretty decent pkg, now I'm laid off, on cobra and its back to non-group level monthly premiums that I was doing before I had that last job.

the insurance companies are raping us again, and using this as an excuse. nothing I'm doing has anything to do with obamacare but my rates went up a lot over the last yr or two and the 'discounts' are not really discounts that I can see.

but still, they can't cancel you for having pre-existing stuff and they can't totally deny you, either. those were 2 major evils pre-obama.

win7 32bit works so-so on old hardware (based on drivers). win7-64 is shitty as many things will not (ever) work.

a bog-standard usb/spdif dongle that I own and use from time to time won't work on win7/64. no driver on earth for it. 32bit, yes. 64, no.

other hardware is the same story.

next time I do an install, I'll go out of my way to avoid 64bit windows. its just not worth the hassle and I don't NEED the full ram space. it would be nice, but I don't need it; whereas I do need all drivers to work! throwing away working hardware is a sin.

disagree about carelessness.

I believe products should be designed (over-designed) so that even if users are not operating fully as planned, you should still have a safety margin to protect them.

its typical german (old school; not sure about now) engineering design. don't just do the job barely; OVER do it. just in case.

having protection down there makes uber sense ;) not having it is a weakness. this should have been there on day-0 and I'm very surprised that they didn't.

when making a brand new product, its best to over-plan for disaster and mitigate as much as you can, in advance, via over-design and better parts quality than you thought you might need. you get only a short window to prove yourself to the world, might as well do all you can to make that big splash work for you and not against you.

to contrast, the chinese way (sigh) is all about just barely having enough headroom to support use-cases. they will put lower voltage capacitors on a circuit thinking 'this is good enough for our foreign users; if the circuit blows up, who cares, we already got their money'. this is why so many people are going out of their way to avoid chinese junk electronics. their design mindset is ALL WRONG and actually dangerous.

I'd like to see more of a return to overdesign and thoughts about customer safety and product longevity. this throw-away culture really pisses me off.

I worked at SGI for a short whole, at the mtn view campus. before it was infested and taken over by google...

SGI was one of the coolest companies in the bay area, or even the world. I can't begin to describe the joy of working there and of just *being* there.

really sad when they closed down. also sad when Sun closed down (I also worked there, too).

why do we lose good companies and piece-of-shit things like facebook and twitter are the 'new computer economy'. we went backwards quite a bit, it seems. don't design hardware, just try to be a mega-marketing firm, which is all social networking is, at its core. don't build computer, send more ADVERTISING and do more SPYING on users. yeah, great going, silicon valley... ;(

And if your union doesn't pull its weight, find another one that does. Failing that, resign and get a more fulfilling job!

yup, its just that easy. there are so many jobs out there, so many employers who will treat you well. yeah, uhuh. right. the job market is looking for people to hire since there are simply not enough workers, anywhere!

(facepalm)

the term is called 'exempt' and if you think for a living (you have control over the process in how you solve your work day issues) then overtime 'is on you' and not the boss' problem.

otoh, if your job is a simple typist (say) and the boss gave you extra pages to type in that could not be done in the same day, you CAN charge for overtime in that kind of job.

but engineers are 'exempt' since 'its their fault' (???) that the job took longer than bossman thought it should.

yes, IBM AND THOSE GUYS FUCKED US ALL OVER.

they used us and made us into essentially slaves to do their bidding and without any extra pay!

fucking evil shit, man. read up on 'exempt'. I was contracting and also doing fulltime work so I got stung by both. even on contract, I could not charge 1.5x or 2x since I'm 'exempt' even as a contractor.

and that story was translated from a yet unwritten story, that was found embedded on an uncooked russian sock.

without the Pope renouncing God or the bible

nuns could run bald through Vatican halls, pregnant, pleading Immaculate Conception; and they'd still not renounce god or the bible.

never let them see you sweat. even if they don't believe their own BS, they won't ever admit it. bad for 'business'.

you mean you DON'T believe in talking snakes and the fact that eve was made out of adam's rib; hence, she was made from 'cheap cuts of meat' ?

what's not to believe about that? sounds pretty legit to me.

(rolls eyes)