This is true -- you'd never be able to afford a house in CA on that kind of money, unless you want to live next to a meth lab in San Bernadino. In CA, $47k puts you over the hump of having your very own apartment without roommates, and maybe a late model car, if it's not too expensive. But own a home, or even a condo these days? Forget it.
But two people making $40k-plus, and sharing living expenses, that might do it. So get married!
Buying a house is still the main way the average joe builds wealth in America.
First, you have to live somewhere, so you're better off paying into your own home equity than throwing the money out the window in rent. Second, with very few exceptions, real estate in most of the US has appreciated steadily over the last 30 years, and will continue to do so. Some places more (CA), some less (Cowfuck, TX) -- but for the most part, there has been an annual rate of raturn of around 4-7%. Even places like Orange County, CA, which everyone agrees are sickly overpriced, are *still* seeing appreciation over 10%! Show me a mutual fund that's doing that these days!
Furthermore, you get to *borrow* the money to make this investment with -- your mortgage! Wouldn't you just love it if someone gave you $150k to invest as you pleased?
A house is also forced savings. You usually have to pay more for your mortgage than you would for rent (but not so much that you can't afford it if you're gainfully employed). A big mortgage is a way of forcing you to put that money away every month.
It gets even better. As your equity and income grow, you can trade up houses almost indefinately, taking advantage of more and more appreciation. They say it takes money to make money, well now you have some, so go to it! To help you do this, when you sell a house you can keep the profit, tax free, up to $250,000 for yourself, or $500,000 if you're married. That's right -- you can get a lifetime captial gains exemption of half a million dollars, on your primary residence(es).
As an aside, that's not the only benefit of being married -- think two incomes, and one set of living expenses. For that reason, most of my friends really started getting ahead when they got married.
Real estate *will* continue to appreciate, and more reliably than in the past. First, with the stock market not doing so well these days, all the money's going into real estate, which is partly what's fueling the current boom. Second, look at demographics -- the population of the US is slated to reach over 400 million by 2050. So it's a simple case of supply and demand, with prime real estate rising faster than the rest -- like CA always has (climate, etc.) So think waterfront, nice mountain areas, nice neighborhoods in up-and-coming cities. There's only so much of that to go around. Third, this wonderful internet we're using, among other things, has helped make location less relevent. So people are able, more and more, to live where they want, and make a living there. Nicer small towns are already feeling this effect -- New England is seeing a long-overdue real estate boom from all those yuppies who always wished they could live upstate, but work required being in NY or Boston. Now they can.
Big, "happening" cities like San Francisco, LA, or NY are exciting when you'e young, and offer many career opportunities. But unless you really have a shot at being the next Marc Andreeson, you're probably better off going somewhere that you can buy a house sooner rather than later. You could beat your head against the wall for 5-10 years waiting for that to happen in San Francisco. But if you moved to Charlotte, that same 5 years might have netted you $50,000 in appreciation on a home that was more affordable than the crappy apartment you were renting.
I recently visited Los Angeles and was invited to see two prescreenings (The Italian Job and Bruce Almighty). In both screenings they searched bags and wanded the patrons.
It's all just part of the hype. They want to create the atmosphere of this being a really big deal.
...unfortunately, they don't exist for Windows. In my experience, what really separates Linux/Unix from Windows is that the latter is so well documented at the deeper, more advanced levels. Windows documentation is limited to which buttons to push to do simple stuff, things which are self-explanitory anyway. There is plenty of advanced knowledge to be had, but it isn't published. It comes only from years of experience with Windows systems, plus having rubbed elbows with developers who have access to Windows' underpinnings. The worst thing with Windows documentation is that there is nothing on best practices, no "cookbook" type books, etc. Windows administrators and MCSEs would often love to be better, but there's no way to get there. Linux/Unix people, OTOH, have a huge amount and variety of information at their disposal, and can teach themselves to fairly high levels of competence. And what the books don't teach, the community is willing to offer.
This is a perfect example of what's known as "the revolving door" between industry and government. Traditionally, the big problems have been in the defense and heavy construction industries, so many computer people probably don't understand it.
Here's how it goes -- an industry bigwig is selected for a regulatory post because of "expertise" in a certain area. After all, they have all this experience, and have risen to prominence, so they must be well-qualified, no? They work for the government for awhile. They make contacts. And if they "play ball" while in their government position, they get a great job offers from private industry when their term expires. Sometimes these offers are innocent and genuine, but sometimes they're outrageous, obvious, and blatant rewards for having done someone's bidding while in office. And there's every shade of gray in between.
As I mentioned, the most common industry for this is heavy construction. It's most common at the local level -- particularly with construction managers who work as city/county inspectors, and then construction managers, or consultants, again. This is actually illegal in many places, but there are many ways to get around the letter of the law -- shell companies, etc. Sometimes it's so bad that when an inspector gets fired for obvious, intentional lack of diligence, he shows up the very next day on the same jobsite, on the contractor's payroll, making three times what the position would normally pay -- thumbing his nose at his former bosses. Nice "reward," eh, without having to take an actual bribe!
Of course, construction is an extreme example, being a somwhat bare-knuckle industry anyway. But the same conflict of interest exists everywhere else. And no matter how subtle the conflict of interest may be, the effects of it are felt by us all, and our society suffers.
Other areas of our society which could be very easily ruined by such conflict of interest are adversarial by design. Our courts, for example -- lawyers don't flip-flop between representing one side then the other. Good journalists aren't supposed to get too chummy with the people they're reporting on. Economist Milton Friedman has often commented on staying out of industry, worrying that it might corrupt his science, or give the appearance of doing so. Likwise, regulators should maintain the same distance from the industries they're regulating.
...wherever you happen to be, whether that's Bombay or San Jose. And, as far as I'm concerned, this is fair and just. If you don't think so, where did you get your sense of entitlement? Does being born in the US make you more entitled to a middle class or better living, than someone from somewhere else with greater skills, intelligence, and willingness to work?
Filemaker Pro these days is actually very similar to Access in relational capability. But as a flat filer it kicks ass, for usability, quality of the forms and reports, ease of creating these, etc. It's really what most businesses need. Now they have an internet enabled version, where a typical administrative assistant can create database driven web pages by pointing and clicking. If you can suspend your geek hangups for a few minutes, you'd see that Filemaker is exactly what most small businesses really need. Even PC Mag likes it, rating it higher than Access in the last comparison they did.
But again, the real issue is being able to create forms as if using a word processor. Sure, there are plenty of good form toolkits out there, but nothing that works quite *like that.*
It could be argued there are plenty of office suites already, especially word processors and spreadsheets. However, what this huge steaming pile of free and open source officeware lacks is a real alternative to MS Access. There simply is nothing, except for some half-assed iimitators that only run on Windows themselves.
What I'd like to see is something programmed in Java, using an embedded Java RDBMS engine such as McKoi, but also able to be used as a front end to any SQL database -- just like Access. The problem with Acces is, of course, that it only runs on Windows. Wouldn't it be groovy to have a cross-platform, true alternative?
Java has come a long way since the early days of Core's suite. Performance isn't an issue anymore, *especially* with IBM's SWT toolkit, a blazing alternative to Swing. IMO, one problem Sun has had is not offering enough slick, Java desktop apps. Perhaps the slickest one of all is InstallAnywhere -- something everyone uses and appreciates the slickness of, but doesn't realize that slickness is in no small part due to being written in Java. Maybe this will help get the ball rolling.
I know a lot of people at Universal Music, and they're a pretty unique company within their industry too -- a tightly run corporation with vision and discipline, run by multitalented, renaissance-man business professionals. They're not the loose network of vaudevillian hucksters, drug-addled sleazebags, and pseudo-mob family empires that pass for other music labels, and especially distribution companies. They're a lot more like Apple. I think the fit is better than you mght imagine. In fact they're too forward thinking for the old French foggybottoms at Vivendi, an ex public utility, which is why they're being unloaded. Now *there's* a culture clash, soon to be no more...
What the US needs first is a publicly funded broadcasting corporation that is at an arms length of government and receives no funding from the private sector. This is the only way to ensure media independence as the number of "media outlets" strink.
How aboutPacifica Radio! Not funded by government or corporate sponsors, just listeners. So they can (and do) say what they want. They have a few shows that are real gems, like Digital Village, and The Car Show right afterward. There's a lot of crap too, but it's great to have these voices represented somewhere. One of the most amusing was an organic gardening call-in show, which always turned into a discussion about how to grow pot. Damn hippies!
Pacifica/KPFK has a sister station in the Bay Area (KPFA), and I think one in Washington DC as well.
...is what Fox News is all about. It is *not* the "mainstreaming" of news, or anything like that. It's more like slasher films, where we all go to see how bad they are, or to laugh "at" them. When Bill O'Reilly shoots his mouth off, a few people may like him, but the real reason for his ratings is everyone tuning in to see what that crazy clown is saying this time. This isn't about conservative vs. liberal politics, bad vs. good journalism, or anything of that nature. It has more in common with a children's game of "haha, made you look" -- which is the very nature of the business of television. Say something outrageous, show a car chase or a shooting, flash some T&A -- that's what gets ratings.
It doesn't take a genius to figure this out. What does take genius is offering something above the lowest comon denominator, while still making money. And schlock-monger Murdoch is too greedy and cynical to try.
Landline portability has been a reality for many years here... I know people who have taken their number with them throughout several locations without any sevice degradation.
Yeah, but they make you pay for the priveledge. With Pacbell, you have to decide when you first get your phone whether you want to be able to take that number with you when you move. And if you do, they tack on an "portability" charge of a few extra dollars a month. Over time, that can really add up.
...is that phone companies, pager companies, etc., buy numbers in blocks of 10,000 and have rights to them forever, so whether they're used or not they don't return to the pool. Because they hold your number they can hold you hostage. God forbid they should compete on service.
If we didn't have this situation, there would be no need for the constant splitting of area codes.
...is a national area code not tied to area. This makes sense because if you're calling a Verizon customer, for example, you're connecting with their network locally anyway. From there it's all within Verizon's network, so the area code shouldn't make any difference. The only real use cell phone providers have for geographic area codes, is for marketing purposes.
The problem now is that while I have a national calling plan where calls anywhere in the US and Canada are the same price, people calling me from the next street may have to pay long distance charges. This is absurd -- though I live on the east coast, people calling me locally have to dial a California number. And keeping my number is important -- it's my established business and personal number, wherever I happen to be.
So, why can't we just have national area codes for cell phone users with national plans?
From reading the computer press, one might assume that *all* computer users are gamers. I wonder what the percentage really is. Practically none of my close friends or colleagues have anything to do with games.
ArsDigita never made "Open"ACS. ArsDigita created ACS as an open source toolkit supporting the Oracle database. The OpenACS project came about when ArsDigita decided to make their Java project which is what has become Redhat CCM.
This is true. In fact, ArsDigita's new VC-installed managers decided the original ACS, written in TCL, wasn't buzzword-compliant enough, so they had the whole thing rewritten in Java. But in fact the Java version was never really finished when ArsDigita went under.
Red Hat purchased all of ArsDigita's assets and this project belongs entirely to them now.
Yeah, right. More like Redhat, out of the goodness of their hearts, gave jobs to a few ArsDigita programmers, and allowed them to continue working on ACS/Java, now called CCM. This also let ArsDigita's management save face, by allowing them to say they "sold the remaining assets" to Redhat. In fact, there was nothing left. ArsDigita had been run completely into the ground.
CCM did/does have promise. Its development has continued, albeit slowly, by both Redhat and some third party developers. I believe it's also open source, as is the Postgres variant it works with. One implementation that's been around awhile is the Aplaws project, a portal/intranet app for governments and municipalities in the UK.
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This is true -- you'd never be able to afford a house in CA on that kind of money, unless you want to live next to a meth lab in San Bernadino. In CA, $47k puts you over the hump of having your very own apartment without roommates, and maybe a late model car, if it's not too expensive. But own a home, or even a condo these days? Forget it.
But two people making $40k-plus, and sharing living expenses, that might do it. So get married!
Buying a house is still the main way the average joe builds wealth in America.
First, you have to live somewhere, so you're better off paying into your own home equity than throwing the money out the window in rent. Second, with very few exceptions, real estate in most of the US has appreciated steadily over the last 30 years, and will continue to do so. Some places more (CA), some less (Cowfuck, TX) -- but for the most part, there has been an annual rate of raturn of around 4-7%. Even places like Orange County, CA, which everyone agrees are sickly overpriced, are *still* seeing appreciation over 10%! Show me a mutual fund that's doing that these days!
Furthermore, you get to *borrow* the money to make this investment with -- your mortgage! Wouldn't you just love it if someone gave you $150k to invest as you pleased?
A house is also forced savings. You usually have to pay more for your mortgage than you would for rent (but not so much that you can't afford it if you're gainfully employed). A big mortgage is a way of forcing you to put that money away every month.
It gets even better. As your equity and income grow, you can trade up houses almost indefinately, taking advantage of more and more appreciation. They say it takes money to make money, well now you have some, so go to it! To help you do this, when you sell a house you can keep the profit, tax free, up to $250,000 for yourself, or $500,000 if you're married. That's right -- you can get a lifetime captial gains exemption of half a million dollars, on your primary residence(es).
As an aside, that's not the only benefit of being married -- think two incomes, and one set of living expenses. For that reason, most of my friends really started getting ahead when they got married.
Real estate *will* continue to appreciate, and more reliably than in the past. First, with the stock market not doing so well these days, all the money's going into real estate, which is partly what's fueling the current boom. Second, look at demographics -- the population of the US is slated to reach over 400 million by 2050. So it's a simple case of supply and demand, with prime real estate rising faster than the rest -- like CA always has (climate, etc.) So think waterfront, nice mountain areas, nice neighborhoods in up-and-coming cities. There's only so much of that to go around. Third, this wonderful internet we're using, among other things, has helped make location less relevent. So people are able, more and more, to live where they want, and make a living there. Nicer small towns are already feeling this effect -- New England is seeing a long-overdue real estate boom from all those yuppies who always wished they could live upstate, but work required being in NY or Boston. Now they can.
Big, "happening" cities like San Francisco, LA, or NY are exciting when you'e young, and offer many career opportunities. But unless you really have a shot at being the next Marc Andreeson, you're probably better off going somewhere that you can buy a house sooner rather than later. You could beat your head against the wall for 5-10 years waiting for that to happen in San Francisco. But if you moved to Charlotte, that same 5 years might have netted you $50,000 in appreciation on a home that was more affordable than the crappy apartment you were renting.
Think about it.
I recently visited Los Angeles and was invited to see two prescreenings (The Italian Job and Bruce Almighty). In both screenings they searched bags and wanded the patrons.
It's all just part of the hype. They want to create the atmosphere of this being a really big deal.
...unfortunately, they don't exist for Windows. In my experience, what really separates Linux/Unix from Windows is that the latter is so well documented at the deeper, more advanced levels. Windows documentation is limited to which buttons to push to do simple stuff, things which are self-explanitory anyway. There is plenty of advanced knowledge to be had, but it isn't published. It comes only from years of experience with Windows systems, plus having rubbed elbows with developers who have access to Windows' underpinnings. The worst thing with Windows documentation is that there is nothing on best practices, no "cookbook" type books, etc. Windows administrators and MCSEs would often love to be better, but there's no way to get there. Linux/Unix people, OTOH, have a huge amount and variety of information at their disposal, and can teach themselves to fairly high levels of competence. And what the books don't teach, the community is willing to offer.
This is a perfect example of what's known as "the revolving door" between industry and government. Traditionally, the big problems have been in the defense and heavy construction industries, so many computer people probably don't understand it.
Here's how it goes -- an industry bigwig is selected for a regulatory post because of "expertise" in a certain area. After all, they have all this experience, and have risen to prominence, so they must be well-qualified, no? They work for the government for awhile. They make contacts. And if they "play ball" while in their government position, they get a great job offers from private industry when their term expires. Sometimes these offers are innocent and genuine, but sometimes they're outrageous, obvious, and blatant rewards for having done someone's bidding while in office. And there's every shade of gray in between.
As I mentioned, the most common industry for this is heavy construction. It's most common at the local level -- particularly with construction managers who work as city/county inspectors, and then construction managers, or consultants, again. This is actually illegal in many places, but there are many ways to get around the letter of the law -- shell companies, etc. Sometimes it's so bad that when an inspector gets fired for obvious, intentional lack of diligence, he shows up the very next day on the same jobsite, on the contractor's payroll, making three times what the position would normally pay -- thumbing his nose at his former bosses. Nice "reward," eh, without having to take an actual bribe!
Of course, construction is an extreme example, being a somwhat bare-knuckle industry anyway. But the same conflict of interest exists everywhere else. And no matter how subtle the conflict of interest may be, the effects of it are felt by us all, and our society suffers.
Other areas of our society which could be very easily ruined by such conflict of interest are adversarial by design. Our courts, for example -- lawyers don't flip-flop between representing one side then the other. Good journalists aren't supposed to get too chummy with the people they're reporting on. Economist Milton Friedman has often commented on staying out of industry, worrying that it might corrupt his science, or give the appearance of doing so. Likwise, regulators should maintain the same distance from the industries they're regulating.
...wherever you happen to be, whether that's Bombay or San Jose. And, as far as I'm concerned, this is fair and just. If you don't think so, where did you get your sense of entitlement? Does being born in the US make you more entitled to a middle class or better living, than someone from somewhere else with greater skills, intelligence, and willingness to work?
Filemaker Pro these days is actually very similar to Access in relational capability. But as a flat filer it kicks ass, for usability, quality of the forms and reports, ease of creating these, etc. It's really what most businesses need. Now they have an internet enabled version, where a typical administrative assistant can create database driven web pages by pointing and clicking. If you can suspend your geek hangups for a few minutes, you'd see that Filemaker is exactly what most small businesses really need. Even PC Mag likes it, rating it higher than Access in the last comparison they did.
But again, the real issue is being able to create forms as if using a word processor. Sure, there are plenty of good form toolkits out there, but nothing that works quite *like that.*
Not that I have a problem with that...
...and that's a scary thought.
It could be argued there are plenty of office suites already, especially word processors and spreadsheets. However, what this huge steaming pile of free and open source officeware lacks is a real alternative to MS Access. There simply is nothing, except for some half-assed iimitators that only run on Windows themselves.
What I'd like to see is something programmed in Java, using an embedded Java RDBMS engine such as McKoi, but also able to be used as a front end to any SQL database -- just like Access. The problem with Acces is, of course, that it only runs on Windows. Wouldn't it be groovy to have a cross-platform, true alternative?
I wonder if this suite is built with IBM's SWT toolkit, a quick, ultra-slick alternative to Sun's Swing.
Java has come a long way since the early days of Core's suite. Performance isn't an issue anymore, *especially* with IBM's SWT toolkit, a blazing alternative to Swing. IMO, one problem Sun has had is not offering enough slick, Java desktop apps. Perhaps the slickest one of all is InstallAnywhere -- something everyone uses and appreciates the slickness of, but doesn't realize that slickness is in no small part due to being written in Java. Maybe this will help get the ball rolling.
Saves the environment, saves money, saves YOU!
Bicycle commuting is probably easier for techies than anyone else -- looser dress codes, no briefcases, and eccentricities tolerated, if not expected.
Live to ride, ride to live!
I know a lot of people at Universal Music, and they're a pretty unique company within their industry too -- a tightly run corporation with vision and discipline, run by multitalented, renaissance-man business professionals. They're not the loose network of vaudevillian hucksters, drug-addled sleazebags, and pseudo-mob family empires that pass for other music labels, and especially distribution companies. They're a lot more like Apple. I think the fit is better than you mght imagine. In fact they're too forward thinking for the old French foggybottoms at Vivendi, an ex public utility, which is why they're being unloaded. Now *there's* a culture clash, soon to be no more...
Download Sun's JVM instead. You shouldn't be using Microsoft's broken, outdated JVM anyway.
What the US needs first is a publicly funded broadcasting corporation that is at an arms length of government and receives no funding from the private sector. This is the only way to ensure media independence as the number of "media outlets" strink.
How aboutPacifica Radio! Not funded by government or corporate sponsors, just listeners. So they can (and do) say what they want. They have a few shows that are real gems, like Digital Village, and The Car Show right afterward. There's a lot of crap too, but it's great to have these voices represented somewhere. One of the most amusing was an organic gardening call-in show, which always turned into a discussion about how to grow pot. Damn hippies!
Pacifica/KPFK has a sister station in the Bay Area (KPFA), and I think one in Washington DC as well.
...is what Fox News is all about. It is *not* the "mainstreaming" of news, or anything like that. It's more like slasher films, where we all go to see how bad they are, or to laugh "at" them. When Bill O'Reilly shoots his mouth off, a few people may like him, but the real reason for his ratings is everyone tuning in to see what that crazy clown is saying this time. This isn't about conservative vs. liberal politics, bad vs. good journalism, or anything of that nature. It has more in common with a children's game of "haha, made you look" -- which is the very nature of the business of television. Say something outrageous, show a car chase or a shooting, flash some T&A -- that's what gets ratings.
It doesn't take a genius to figure this out. What does take genius is offering something above the lowest comon denominator, while still making money. And schlock-monger Murdoch is too greedy and cynical to try.
Landline portability has been a reality for many years here... I know people who have taken their number with them throughout several locations without any sevice degradation.
Yeah, but they make you pay for the priveledge. With Pacbell, you have to decide when you first get your phone whether you want to be able to take that number with you when you move. And if you do, they tack on an "portability" charge of a few extra dollars a month. Over time, that can really add up.
...is that phone companies, pager companies, etc., buy numbers in blocks of 10,000 and have rights to them forever, so whether they're used or not they don't return to the pool. Because they hold your number they can hold you hostage. God forbid they should compete on service.
If we didn't have this situation, there would be no need for the constant splitting of area codes.
...is a national area code not tied to area. This makes sense because if you're calling a Verizon customer, for example, you're connecting with their network locally anyway. From there it's all within Verizon's network, so the area code shouldn't make any difference. The only real use cell phone providers have for geographic area codes, is for marketing purposes.
The problem now is that while I have a national calling plan where calls anywhere in the US and Canada are the same price, people calling me from the next street may have to pay long distance charges. This is absurd -- though I live on the east coast, people calling me locally have to dial a California number. And keeping my number is important -- it's my established business and personal number, wherever I happen to be.
So, why can't we just have national area codes for cell phone users with national plans?
From reading the computer press, one might assume that *all* computer users are gamers. I wonder what the percentage really is. Practically none of my close friends or colleagues have anything to do with games.
...so we don't miss out on getting our own copy!
ArsDigita never made "Open"ACS. ArsDigita created ACS as an open source toolkit supporting the Oracle database. The OpenACS project came about when ArsDigita decided to make their Java project which is what has become Redhat CCM.
This is true. In fact, ArsDigita's new VC-installed managers decided the original ACS, written in TCL, wasn't buzzword-compliant enough, so they had the whole thing rewritten in Java. But in fact the Java version was never really finished when ArsDigita went under.
Red Hat purchased all of ArsDigita's assets and this project belongs entirely to them now.
Yeah, right. More like Redhat, out of the goodness of their hearts, gave jobs to a few ArsDigita programmers, and allowed them to continue working on ACS/Java, now called CCM. This also let ArsDigita's management save face, by allowing them to say they "sold the remaining assets" to Redhat. In fact, there was nothing left. ArsDigita had been run completely into the ground.
CCM did/does have promise. Its development has continued, albeit slowly, by both Redhat and some third party developers. I believe it's also open source, as is the Postgres variant it works with. One implementation that's been around awhile is the Aplaws project, a portal/intranet app for governments and municipalities in the UK.
...Kazaa!
However, in practice I find that Objectivists are about as pragmatic as 2nd year philosophy majors.
Isn't that because most of them *are* 2nd year philosophy majors?