Once upon a time, being a "salary guy" was a badge of honour to aimed for. You got well paid, while being expected to take on extra work/hours when needed for the benefit of company as a whole and therefore yourself. Over time, this is degenerated into what we have today. An expectation of putting in many extra hours purely as a matter of course, and the salary isn't that great anyway. In many cases, being a "salary guy" is the last thing anyone wants!
Posts by John Brown (no body)
25355 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2010
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Dell trials 4-day workweek, massive UK pilot of shortened week begins
Re: There s no way to buy more time
"let's see if In July they'll come up with a damage-control counter offer"
If it;s already a 2 hour each way commute, it'd make sense to maybe do a longer day 4 days per week.
Although I was a little concerned at the articles reference to a 40 hour week. I've not had a contracted 40 week for about 40 years. It dropped from 40 to 39 in the first couple years of my working life and has been 37.5 for at least the last 25 years. In one of my early jobs, a 4 day working week of 2x9 + 2x9.5hrs was negotiated with an "interesting" shift pattern based on 4 days out of 6 such that every 5-6 weeks the days off would be Fri, Sat, Sun of one week and Mon, Tues, Sun of the next, almost like having a week off every 6 weeks. Something weird with overtime rates crept in too such that if asked to work on days off (never a Sunday), day 1 was paid at double time and day 2 at time and half, which was nice, since about 4 out of 6 shift patterns included Saturday working which was paid at time and half anyway. I never did find out if the union made a great deal or if the Local Council were just crap at negotiating. No strikes, work to rule or other staff action involved.
Re: There s no way to buy more time
I hadn't realised the EU "freedom of movement" was restricted in that way. In this day and age of computers for calculating wages and taxes, it really shouldn't be an issue. Of course, there's no EU-wide income tax system or tax allowances. On the other hand, I suppose the USA has had this problem and dealt with it years ago with various city, state and federal tax systems all wanting their "proper" share of the employees taxes, especially in State border areas and WFH happening.
PC sales start to ebb as pandemic buying spree ends: IDC
Re: Interesting times...
"Meanwhile, I'm also seeing companies selling off desktops - still with the plenty of life left in them and replacing them with laptops (or going BYOD) to accommodate a shift to WFH."
I was seeing that happen with Local Authorities about a year BC (Before Covid). Although they weren't selling off "good" kit, it was just their normal refresh cycle of 3,4 or 5 years. On the other hand, some of that kit was still "good" kit from other users point of view. Some LAs were already going "work from anywhere" and selling off buildings. The pandemic has accelerated that move. Offices are full of screens and docking station now and many are either staying at home or only coming into offices now and then. Our own company has got pretty much everyone back in the office now, despite all the good noises about hybrid working etc. I'm not office based anyway, so I'm not sure if people want to be in the office, feel the need to be in the office or if there may be subtle management pressure to get them in the office.
US Army to build largest 3D-printed structures in the Americas
Re: I wonder if it would be simpler
Most or your points would just as easily apply to a robot using bricks and mortar. The *proprietary* "sludge" is just as heavy as the bricks and mortar in terms of transport and still needs people to there to feed it to the robot. Likewise, the robot can work 24/7 with just a small barely trained crew to feed the bricks and mortar into the hoppers and the robot can build to plan and repeat easily. It's a robot :-)
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, just wondering out loud if anyone has actually tried robot building the way I suggest. I'm guessing not, since "designing and building a robot to replace human brickies" is not going to get the investment that "WOW! WE CAN 3D PRINT A BUILDING!!!"
On the other hand, looking at local tradition building projects, once planning has been approved, it seems to take forever to prepare the land, utilities and foundations, then the brickies come in and the houses go up so quickly it's almost undeliverable. Then it seem to take ages for the fit out and finishing, plastering, wiring, windows and doors, roofs etc before the residents move in.
Re: Labour saving?
On the other hand, most of military life is either sitting around doing nothing or training. Having skills useful in civvy life when they leave, even the "cannon fodder", would be useful. The majority of any military force are "grunts" who's training makes them good at security and...erm...maybe other stuff like "private armies" labelled as security.
Re: I wonder if it would be simpler
Yeah, but a 46' wide, 15' tall printing robot sounds big and expensive.
I wonder how much it would take to build a robot to place and mortar in bricks and/or breeze blocks (Cinder blocks) with pipes for the mortar, conveyors for the blocks? Is 3D printing actually better? Or has no one actually tried an alternative robot working with existing "traditional" building materials?
3D printing as a solution is starting to seem a little like blockchain. It's a solution for some problems, but not a silver bullet.
What do you do when all your source walks out the door?
Re: Never get the chance to do it again
I've done the occasional job that involved MoD computers and yes, they tend to err on the side of caution and assume anything with storage may have been used for "secret stuff" at some stage in its life. They even pay for manufacturer warranty parts because the faulty parts have to be retained for destruction rather than exchanged. Most parts have updateable firmware so could be used to exfiltrate data if allowed off site.
Elon Musk won't join Twitter's board after all
IBM deliberately misclassified mainframe sales to enrich execs, lawsuit claims
"but it seems the upper echelons said one thiing, and did another."
What? You think those people do the courses too? HR mandate the course because either they have to by law or because it looks good to the outside world. I very much doubt anyone from salaried senior managers and up do any of the courses.
Re: Wasn't "maximize shareholder value" idea thought to hinder this?
"The real outcome is that bad executives will always find a way to game the system."
I wonder what happened to the incentive bonuses of the people in charge of the areas the money was transferred from? Surely they'd be fighting tooth and claw to NOT transfer the money over?
Union rejects latest BT pay offer, calls for ballot on industrial action
European Right to Repair resolution headed for vote
Re: (Yet) another regulation the UK will need to abide by
"So fairly or unfairly that also applied to the referendum* meaning expats not being registered could not vote."
But it didn't have to work that way, a referendum is not an election. That was a choice made by the Government. eg the last Scottish "Should I stay or should I go" referendum, just as important as the Brexit vote, allowed for 16 & 17 year olds to vote despite not being eligible to vote in elections.
I suspect if the Brexit vote used the same voting eligibility criteria as the Scotxit, the result might have been different.
Re: (Yet) another regulation the UK will need to abide by
According to The Indy, one single cheese manufacture lost about £180,000 worth of exports in the aftermath of Brexit. The total across the industry was a 64% drop. I suspect there's not a lot of wine exports to the EU, but they were a major consumer of UK dairy products and that industry has been devastated by Brexit.
Ironically, prior to Brexit, almost every farmer interviewed about Brexit was in favour of it.
Re: (Yet) another regulation the UK will need to abide by
This is where the "reasonable expected lifetime" of a product comes into play in the UK at the least, may not in the EU, not sure about that. If a product fails during its lifetime, but outside of warranty, you may be entitled to a repair or replacement pro-rata based on age, parts likely free but probably charged for labour. It can be a bit of a grey area, but I think there's a gov.uk website listing various types of products and what is the "reasonable expected lifetime".
SpaceX launches first totally private mission to the International Space Station
Fish mentality: If The Rock told you to eat flies, would you buy my NFT?
Buying a USB adapter: Pennies. Knowing where to stick it: Priceless
Re: Television repair
"If he followed Sony's documented testing & repair procedure it would have taken two hours."
Same for brand name latops, and by extension, most/all brand name kit where you are supposed to carefully follow the official procedures. eg, one particular manufacture of laptops I deal with, the official way to replace a broken LCD panel is to strip half the laptop down, separate the screen from the base before removing the bezel to get the screen out. Anyone with a bit of experience soon finds they can do the job in 5-10 mins rather than nearly an hour once you figure out the "trick" to removing and putting the bezel back on properly while the screen is still attached to the base. There are hard to reach plastic tabs at the bottom in the gap between the base and screen which needs pressure applying "just right" to click them in with a nice bit of rigid plastic as a lever.
Re: Lost dog pictures
The hole doesn't open the inside to the outside quite like that. You don't want debris getting into the mechanism. Usually there will be at the very least a filter inside, more likely, especially on modern drives a rubber/latex membrane. It's primarily to allow for ambient pressure changes, not ventilation.
Direct lithium extraction technique for greener batteries gains traction
Raspberry Pi OS update beefs up security
Re: Is root the same as Administrator?
root is UID 0
User account names start at 1000 and increment as new ones are added. System accounts start from 1 and increment from there.
If you are logged in, depending on the "hardness" of the OS install, you can just
cat /etc/passwd
to see the list. (FreeBSD here. Linux, esp. SystemD based ones, might be different)
Re: Linux and security
I agree that the pi/pi default credentials should have been dealt with a long time ago but on the other hand, the Pi was designed as a cheap educational toy. It's growed and growed since that early concept in what back then were undreamed of production levels and use case.
First Light says it's hit nuclear fusion breakthrough with no fancy lasers, magnets
Or El Reg goodies for sale. ISTR the El Reg shop, Cash'n'Carrion, used to sell Tritium based light thingies. And here's the Health & Safety article they produced relating to the sale of Radioactive Tritium-based goodies.
Russia (still) trying to weaponize Facebook for spying, Ukraine-war disinfo
Re: Imagine for a moment
"How would we fare in understanding eachother? (taking into consideration our inability to communicate generally with eachother)"
Luckily for us, various governments will create a committee of experts to deal with the issue and it won't be some random collection of Facebookerati :-)
Happy birthday Windows 3.1, aka 'the one that Visual Basic kept crashing on'
South Yorkshire to test fiber broadband through water pipes
Re: OMG
Because they have the best Tea. And you know how much Tea is consumed at the sharp end of British infrastructure jobs, especially if it involves digging trenches. And in this specific project, there'll be no shortage of water for the kettle while the job is ongoing. I suspect we can expect this job to to take quite some time!
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