Orcmid's Lair |
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2003-04-28The Nando Times: As software bugs multiply, questions arise. This article is about the problems of liability and the increasing failure of household products and other devices that now have embedded computers, their software, and their bugs. Every so often the only way to be able to find phone numbers in my Nokia 9001i is to occasionally remove the battery and start the machine up again from a full reset. Then the keyboard starts working the way it is supposed to, again. There are two issues: Why do we depend on something that is inherently untrustworthy, and why do people keep producing such things. Computing MilieuOminous Trends for ITSo, will you code for food?Computerworld Forums -- IT Workers on strike. Here is a pretty representative discussion group on the pros and cons of IT unionization. It has not gone without notice that IT workers in the past have presented pretty conservative and libertarian ideas (at least in the US), but that there is screaming for protection (remember Buy American from the auto-workers?) and proclamation of the IT worker as victim of evil management. The last does not get much sympathy for IT workers and their fabled salaries from the general public -- it is seen perhaps as somewhere like major league baseball "job actions" and perhaps a demonstration of karma for those people who have been automating everyone else's jobs into oblivion, drudgery, or both. Bank of Ireland IT workers threaten strike - Computerworld. It happens that many of the staffers are members of the Irish Bank Officials' Association, a guild. The bank has this clever device for keeping the union at bay until they have selected a preferred provider for outsourcing. Heh, heh. That's like Bush saying there's nothing irreversible about having all of those troops pre-deployed in the Middle East. Right. Monster pulls job listings, resumes for nations on U.S. sanctions list - Computerworld. And here we have situations, with respect to globalization, that run afoul of foreign policy and government regulations. In the listed case, Monster.com, a US organization that provides for matching of employment and contracting openings with applications, has concluded that posting opening or resumes from individuals and companies in U.S. government sanctioned nations is inappropriate, because it constitutes illegal trade. (It is interesting that the list seems to be stabilized at 7 nations, but I must be behind on my awareness of world affairs -- wnen did Burma/Myanmar make the list, and why?). The US is not the only place where globalization is often in conflict with foreign policy. I love it about people who have two passports so that they can travel in arab states without having it be apparent that they were just in Tel Aviv. Wink, Wink. 2003-04-27Report: College grads will suffer from high-tech job slowdown - Computerworld I wonder about this passage: «Once employers considered college graduates to be the key to their companies' futures, because they were able to grasp the ins and outs of new technology faster than older workers, said Challenger's CEO, John Challenger. "Now, the demand for new graduates has fallen off significantly," he said. "Because of major cost-cutting, companies are not updating their technology as quickly. What they updated at the time of Y2k will hold them for a while, at least until the economy turns up.» BS/CIS - Degree Requirements, Professional IT Certification Exams. Excelsior College, my alma mater, is now granting collegiate credit for a variety of Microsoft Certification Examinations. This is an odd event in the development of collegiate curricula for technologies. It certainly fits with the movement of programming and system administration into crafts, but I have to wonder about product specific knowledge -- whether Microsoft's, Sun's, Novell's or anyone elses.
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