If it were up to me, we wouldn’t see nearly as many Windows machines in schools. The grade schools in the area use Macs with Safari, so why not the colleges? Why not have an equal share of Linux PCs, Macs, and Windows PCs? After all, your employer could choose any one of the three platforms, so students should get used to all three.

Realistically though, popups can affect all browsers, but no other OS/browser combo is affected by spyware more than IE.

I have been fortunate in that I have only worked for engineers and programmers, though one was a programmer/former psychologist which was interesting.

Certainly these behaviors betray that the company understands their employees may have good reason to want to sabotage them, thus addressing the symptom and not the problem.

If you have no or little work experience certs may help a little. Experience working for the university counts as “no work experience” when you enter the job world.

My employer is hot for certs mostly because we’ve got to maintain “gold partner” blah blah crap.

I left the university for employment with a contracting firm. The contracting firm is all about educational advancement (they pay for training, certifications, professional societies and university courses, etc.). Contracting firms don’t see an educated workforce as a threat because they understand not only because it make the employee more marketable, it makes THEM more marketable. I dislike contracting for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that contracting is not a cheap way to get a job done. I don’t care how you slice it, but at least contracting firms have their heads screwed on right when it comes to continuing education.

This is why I think you see a continuing trend to outsourcing IT/Engineering/technical work, whether to India or America. Corporate entities just don’t seem to get it.

Unfortunately contracting firms can forget that you are more marketable unless you remind them. After a certification or two it’s time to remind them that you are bringing more to the company…provided that you are of course.

Full disclosure: The only way I’ve ever recieved a raise larger than 5% is job-hopping. It’s unfortunate, but true.

Your plan to tie up all of the self checkout lanes is nothing but business terrorism.

Yeah, please use the word “terrorism” to describe a peaceful protest. Thanks.

If you don’t like the self checkout lanes you don’t have to use them.

You missed the point. It appears another poster saw that you missed the point too – see the comment by keepitgreen77. I’m perfectly capable of using the self checkout lanes.

By the way, are you also a religious zealot … you sure advocate policies and plans like a zealot.

Ok, Mr. “You must be a terrorist”. If you must know, I’m not very religious at all. What exactly does it matter anyway? It has nothing to do with anything discussed in this thread.

ie: I don’t like it … so I’ll do everything in my power to push my beliefs down the throats of those who don’t believe as I do and deny you your chance to exercise your rights.

Nobody has a “right” to be in a store – it’s a privelege since it’s technically private property. They can kick you out just like they can kick me out. However, I do have a right to peacefully protest a company’s behavior.

You can protest that you are against self checkout lanes … but … you don’t have the right to deny their use to others.

Denying use to others would be taking a baseball bat to the self-checkout machine and beating it into oblivion. Leaving my stuff there would be no different than if I did so in a regular lane – it would tie up that lane(s) and people would use another lane.

Hi Josh,

Thanks for the feedback. I see your point on some items, but find that they’re not exactly the best comparison. Let me explain…

I just see it as the way things are going. Full service gas, gone (except in Joisey!) Automatic teller machines. Fill your own drinks at McDonalds.

Full service gas is gone and part of that might be because of liability reasons. I’m unsure though. Gas prices certainly didn’t go down because of it though

The automatic teller machines are, I believe, a service to the customer for when the banks aren’t open. They’re not outright replacing the bank tellers, but rather allowing people to access their funds outside of banking hours.

Filling my own drinks at McDonalds isn’t so bad either. I’d rather get faster service by actually getting my food rather than having people interrupt the processing of my order so they can get a refill. Again, McDonald’s isn’t outright replacing the cashiers.

I get what you’re saying, but we, as consumers, shouldn’t have to do more work for a service we’re paying for. Think of it as having to process all of your own bank statements, or having to process all of your medical expenses even though you pay $200.00+ month in health care premiums. That’s the way things are headed…and that’s a problem.

Corporations are pushing work off on us consumers constantly just so their shares can continually increase. Then all in the same motion they throw their hands up in the air when they lose the credit card accounts of 40 million people due to their incompetence. “Sorry, but you’re out of luck” is all they have to say. Meanwhile, you’re left to pick up the pieces.