To Companies that use Taleo as a ‘Careers’ Host

February 22nd, 2013

Why do you use Taleo?  It is at the top of the list for the biggest clusterfuck in whole arena of job applications.  Number 1 from an applicants point of view.

While someone can apply for a job on many of the job boards with one click, and answer a few questions about skills or relocation (if defined by the company), Taleo, on the other hand, inevitably turns into a 3 hour exercise in frustration.  I know I am not alone in this opinion.

I no longer bother with anything on Taleo.  It shows that you, the company, are willing to torture the applicants.

This doesn’t weed out the non-serious, it weeds out the non-desperate (which is different).  It weeds out the people who innovate, the people who don’t accept nonsense.  And Taleo is nonsense.

Hosting your career section on Taleo tells us that you are a large company with an ocean of red tape, that you are about a decade behind the times, and that your human resources department is verging on sadistic.

Tell me this: On Taleo, why do I have to turn javascript ‘on’ and greatly lower my computer security?  Right there, you are weeding out the people that care about, and are knowledgeable about security.

Why do I have to cut and paste 100 little boxes with the same information I have already pasted into Taleo for other companies?  In this case you are weeding out the people that make efficient use of their time.  My information is already entered on Dice, and Linked-in, and a couple other places.

Why do I need to create YET ANOTHER login on Taleo?  My 3 hours of typing, re-typing, and cut and paste has already been done five times on Taleo.  There simply won’t be a sixth time.

Why does the stupid little window use only the top half of my monitor?  (bad programming)

Why can’t I click on a job title to open the detail in another window?  It just opens the list again.  (bad programming)

To use Taleo for your career host is just plain sadism.  There are much better ways to refine your candidate list than to put us through the 3 hour obstacle course.  I’m sure you are thinking that you don’t want to manually review 300 resumes for a position, but there are much better solutions than Taleo.

Taleo must have a very powerful sales team.  And I would guess they cost a fortune. It seems like a good way to spend money to make applicants hate you.

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Posted in Career Section Hosting | 8 Comments »

Comments on the Word ‘Literally’

January 22nd, 2013

“Literally” is a useful word that is being destroyed by the boobs in society that have never read a book.

Some argue that the transition 1000 years ago of the meanings of “very” (from ‘true’ to ‘extremely’) and “really” (from ‘real’ to ‘extremely’) justifies throwing up your hands at “literally”.  I think this is a defeatist attitude.  We have a rich and precise language that is under assault from texting, ghetto, immigrants, slang, Alanis Morrisette, and hillbillies, but we haven’t lost the battle by any means.

Go to any serious text book or presentation and the rules of grammar apply.  This is where Proper English is preserved.  Go out in the streets and it’s a free-for-all.  To say one version is as good as the other is ridiculous.  Proper English is a rich way to express complex ideas asymmetrically (without getting feedback and making in-course corrections).  Street English is a way to burp out simple ideas, and interact and correct as you go.  Slang is sometimes a verbal fashion statement (look at the cool words I know!) or just plain simplification and shortening.

If the incorrect use of “literally” bothers you, good for you!, you can help protect our language, and chances are, you’ve probably read a book in your life.  Just tell the people that “literally” is the opposite of “figuratively” and means the words are to be taken at face value.  Or if they say “I was literally bored to death”, ask if they mean “completely bored to death”, because they still appear to be alive.  Or if they say it was “literally raining cats and dogs outside” ask them what kinds of dogs they were.  Or if they say they were so mad they “literally had a stroke”, ask them if they meant “figuratively had a stroke”, or how long were they in the hospital?

And be prepared for the dictionary issue.  Some people will argue that “the dictionary says ‘literally’ can be used in place of “really really”.  But some dictionaries are descriptive, meaning they include a definition for however society uses a word — from comic books, songs, blogs, or movies.  The prescriptive dictionaries focus on proper English, the English you need when writing something for smart people and critical thinkers.

Now this kind of comment usually draws replies about how I missed a comma or misspelled something.  Don’t bother.  I didn’t say I was perfect.  I do try to preserve proper English.  That’s the point.  That doesn’t mean I claim to have perfect English, though I do try.

Finally, it might be asked, “do we really need Proper English anymore?”  Can’t everything be Googled? … Well, it sure would be nice if user manuals were readable and not in some choppy awkward Chinese-English.  I’d hate for nuclear plant instructions to be written in the gibberish of texting.  Try to write laws in Street English — impossible.  And what about medicine?  I’d prefer that anyone treating me knows what they are doing, and frankly, if someone can’t speak Proper English, I have a hard time taking them seriously.  It doesn’t mean they have to use it all the time, but they need to know how to speak properly, or I’ve got to wonder if they have ever read a book.

Posted in Language | 2 Comments »

VOIP for Android Phones

November 25th, 2009

Android phones like the HTC Google T-Mobile G-1 and the Verizon Motorola Droid, are on multiple cellular networks.  As far as I know, none of them allow “easy” VOIP calling.  They are in the business of selling minutes and need to protect their business.  For us techies, though, is it possible to set up VOIP calling from an Android phone?

Searching the Android Market for VOIP, we find:

  • 2.5 stars – Voice Chat Peer to Peer (VOIP)
  • 4.0 stars – SipAgent Beta
  • 4.0 stars – Sipdroid
  • 2.5 stars – Truphone

Sipdroid is far and away the most popular.  Notes from the Sipdroid comments:

  • Google Voice
  • Gizmo5
  • pbxes.org
  • Guava – another Android client
  • sipsorcery.com
  • TCP or UDP
  • Guido
  • Freeswitch
  • calleasy
  • diamondcard.us
  • sipgate
  • two install options http://robbdeeze.blogspot.com
  • Skype calls limited to 3 minutes.  (really?)
  • tornamac04(*********)
  • Trixbox
  • pfingo
  • sipgate
  • voicepulse
  • pennytel
  • sipphone.com
  • 12voip
  • spectravoice
  • sipgate.de
  • orbtalk
  • justvoip
  • pfingo
  • avoid PBXES unless you are a techie, but sipgate is fine
  • be warned, it’s tailored to PBXES
  • pbxes/vbpro
  • trixbox

Conclusion: Use Google Voice and Gizmo5 (Google just acquired Gizmo5 — http://googlevoiceblog.blogspot.com/)

—

This guy (at the link below) has a write-up about

  • Google Voice
  • Gizmo5
  • Sipdroid
  • The GV app by Evan Charlton from the Market

Sipdroid + GV = GUAVA = Free Calls and Messaging to USA and Canada

—

Crap!  For now, Google has suspended new Gizmo5 account sign ups.   Do I wait for an invitation for Gizmo5 or march onward?

Well, next would be PBXES (which is what one OP said Sipdroid is tailored towards anyway).

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Posted in Android | No Comments »

Sieve Filter – 1. What is a sieve filter?

November 16th, 2009

A sieve filter is used to process email. It can move, mark, and/or delete the emails based on rules. A sieve filter can look in the various header fields in order to select mail and make decisions for action.

The options for setting up a sieve filter are listed below, taken from the Horde 3.2-imp ‘create filter’ screen:

——–

FROM HORDE

For an incoming message that matches:

To
+Address
Subject
Sender
From
Cc
Bcc
List-ID
Received
Resent-from
Resent To
Return-Path
Size
X-Envelope-To
X-List
X-Mailer
X-MailingList
X-ML-Name’ (I’m not sure if the single quote is a typo or not, but it’s in the list)
X-MSMail-Priority
X-Original-To
X-Spam-BayesResult
X-Spam-Discard
X-Spam-Flag
X-Spam-Integer1-Score
X-Spam-Integer2-Score
X-Spam-Junkmail
X-Spam-Level
X-Spam-Report
X-Spam-Status
X-Priority
Body
Self-Defined Header:

Do this:

Deliver into my INBOX:
Deliver to folder
Delete message completely
Redirect to
Deliver into my INBOX and redirect to
Deliver into my INBOX and copy to

Mark message as:

Seen/unseen (read/unread)
Important
Answered
Deleted

——–

I personally find sieve filters weak as far as options and flexibility are concerned, but don’t know of any other server-side options.  The only other automatic way to  handle email are client ‘rules’ which run when the client runs (Thunderbird, Opera, Outlook, etc.).

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Posted in Sieve Filter | No Comments »

EULA – Are You Hiding Something?

November 15th, 2009

I generallty try to read the EULAs (End User License Agreements) when I installed software, but after reading hundreds of them, it starting to seem to be a waste of time.

My first reason is that the language is not meant to be clear. If they are *even* going to tell you about spyware, they are going to make it as vague as possible anyway.

Here’s an example. I was installing an email client from the Android Market on my T-mobile G-1 Google Smartphone. Here’s part of the EULA, and it’s vague. Are they talking about spyware? What the hell are they talking about? I’m not saying they are doing anything bad, but I *am* saying it’s pretty vague.

EULA vague

(since the image is unclear, here’s the text:
EXTERNAL SERVICE: “[company] may rely on external services and service providers to provide you with capabilities to interoperate with such service. [company] will not be liable or responsible for … [blah blah blah”)

They could be talking about using Google contacts, or they could be talking about sending all your keystrokes to the mother ship … who knows?

Anyway……

Why I hate to read the EULAs:

I’ve found suspicious software behaviour even after reading the EULA and not finding anything negative.

Installing software takes 2 minutes if I don’t read the EULA, and 30 minutes or an hour if I do.

No one else seems to read EULAs. And I get pressure from anyone I’m working with, like “OH, I JUST CLICK THOSE”, or “are you gonna actually READ THAT??!!”

I think legal ‘strict liabllity’ is going to eventually have to apply to software. In other words, there needs to be a minimum resposibility for software. You can’t just wipe someone’s hard drive because you had it in the EULA. It’s a dismal situation and free-for-all right now though, insofar as software goes.

Even legitimate companies do it. Like back in 2000 (?) when I was maxed out at 384 megs of RAM, my HP printer drivers came with an update checker that took 60 megs just to sit in the systray and check for updates once a week. I called HP support … “I can’t afford the RAM for this. I only print once a month, anyway. How do I turn it off?” The rep said there was no way to turn it off. I told the rep that they ought to be in jail for that crap.

Admittedly, some of the problem lies with the end users. Consumers have some sick belief that everything should be free — that all the hundreds of hours a musician, or author, or programmer spend don’t mean anything, and they have some “right” (??) to steal music, ebooks, and programs. So I’m sure part of what’s going on is that the programmers are thinking “well okay, food doesn’t magically appear on my table and I have to pay the bills, and consumers bitch about paying for anything, so I’ll just add this browser tracker module and get a penny per record from the big tracking company, then I’ll either not mention it in the EULA, or create vague smoke screen language”.

Look at the example of website templates. “Free” means you don’t have to pay for them, but in many cases you end up with either cleartext or obfuscated links to what? … the template site? … porn or gambling sites? Many beginner webmasters aren’t even aware of this. Does it hurt? … yes, it can hurt your ranking if you are linking to a bad neighborhood.

I’m sure a lot of the FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) apps are written by good people, such as students who are just learning, or organizations looking for free feedback from users. And some are just trying to build a big following and hoping to get purchased by some big company. But I think you have to think about why someone would spend hundreds of hours to create a free app. And then, of course, read the EULA.

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Posted in Security | No Comments »

WordPress MU, are you still there?

November 4th, 2009

It’s been discussed since June, 2009 when Matt Mulliweg mentioned WPMU would be discontinued, or did he say merged?  Well this has been the subject of much debate.  Is WPMU going to be subsumed by WordPress?  Will they become the same thing?  Will both WordPress single-user and and WordPress multi-users (MU) both end up upgrading to the same thing?

http://wpmu.phreeblog.com/2009/10/14/the-future-of-wordpress-mu-%E2%80%93-have-your-say/

http://bavatuesdays.com/wpmu-state-of-the-union-here-and-abroad/

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Posted in Wordpress | No Comments »