Do you man those same codes that were hacked in Obama's office (white house) a few months ago? Isn't it comforting to know how well protected they were.
Then we have the UN wanting to eliminate private ownership of firearms. Yet, the figures I read show everywhere private ownership was eliminated, violent crime went up about 30%.
There is a problem with obtaining nuclear fuel, as currently we purchase a substantial amount of weapons grade material from Russia and convert it into fuel. Of course breeder reactors would eliminate that problem, but it's been deemed to dangerous to make that kind of material, even though we import many, many tons of the stuff
With the public hysteria I'd be surprised if we ever build another fission reactor. Remember most of our congress critters know no more about science than the man on the street.
And there's always the conspiracy theory of abundant, cheap power not being implemented because with the people getting cheap power the corporations won't get rich. Of course they neglect that the oil companies only make a few cents per gallon on gas and then complain about their huge profits. . Cheap electricity would be the same way. It'd open doors for more and better technology, never mind that we don't have enough power grid to cope with much of an increase of electric cars. Then someone points out the dangers from all those magnetic fields from those power lines...and so it goes.
If some one does come up with a practical, clean, economically viable alternative fuel, the big corporations will be using that technology as soon as they can get it. If you want something energy intensive, just look at the semiconductor industry. AFAIK they use more energy per gram, Ounce, pound, or what ever unit you wish to use of product than any other industry.
It's also simple to understand. The average human...OK, most humans are completely clueless about anything technical or scientific. Cell phones: Try and explain to anyone on the street that they are just a fancy, lower powered transmitter and receiver. They still don't/can't understand why any receiver that covers those frequencies can her them. They don't understand how a car works, or that "so far" bio fuels are many times the cost of fossil fuels and often take more energy to create than we can get out of them. The USAF is using a mix of bio fuel and Jet fuel on an experimental basis that runs about $15 a gallon plus a great big subsidy. They don't understand that even if we could make batteries that would drive a car 400 miles we don't have the electrical grid capacity to charge many of them, or more than a small fraction of the number of cars on the road were they to become electric cars. Skip the electrical grid explanations or how a class X10 CME could possible result in millions of deaths because we are so dependent on technology. Again it's over their heads and someone is bound to call it a conspiracy. They figure just replace the transformers that burn out. Of course they don't understand why we don't have spares for all of them or couldn't just wind more, neglecting the point the equipment to service and rewind transformers doesn't work without the grid. Then try to explain that some pretty advanced civilizations may have existed more than 10,000 years ago, which was just after the end of the last ice age. Those would be fighting words.
So, "back in the day" we had groups who associated anything nuclear with "the bomb". The movie "China Syndrome" didn't help the truth, and we had many "radicals" (and still do) who are just plain "anti-nuclear" because it's not normal. There are always those who can find the worst possible scenario (no matter how unlikely) and then blow it all out of proportion. We need to remember the conspiracists who see conspiracies behind every new project and the main stream news that blows anything newsworthy all out of proportion just adds fuel to the fire. That mainstream news is taken as the Gospel by most people without degrees in science or technology and when their proven wrong the "anti whatever" groups jump on it. Its a wonder we have as many scientifically literate people as we do.
Why would anyone in their right mind want to join a union. Over the years I've been a member but thankfully most of the time I wasn't and when I became a professional I didn't have to join.
As states become "Right to Work" workers are electing to not join, and are leaving unions in droves which tells me I am not alone in my opinion.
Back in the early days they served their purpose. Now the big unions are in the government where they should not be allowed as they are a monopoly.
Having been a sys admin, then programmer, and finally a project manager with computer systems for a large multinational corporation, they definitely did not buy all new computers every three years. Last I knew they were still using XP Pro. They did have to keep the latest versions of many programs (particularly word processors and spreadsheets) to interface with the rest of the world and those corporations that had to have the latest and greatest.
ER is supposed to take care of everyone whether they have insurance or not. How they handle service varies widely from location to location. Just wait until we have 2 or 3 times as many to serve with half the doctors. People without insurance go to the ER for even minor things because it's difficult to find a new doctor. Mine retired (wanted to get out before Obamacare) and it took over 6 months to get in to see a new doctor. Typically I walk in for an appointment, sign in, and am taken back to the examination room within 5 minutes. Usually the doc is there in less than 5 minutes.
They are still using XP up here....although Win 7 can still access it. There's is probably on some old mini. Don't forget that medical records (in the US) are supposed to be inaccessible to the outside world which would mean encryption if properly done. Actually, they finished up one system about a year ago and it too was XP. Hopefully Win 8 can still access NTSF, but it looks like about time to drop the dual boot and just stick with LINUX. OTOH I'd prefer they didn't update quite so often.
This is why I've told every business and individual I've worked with as a consultant, not to use the cloud, yet every one keeps hyping the cloud. Yes, it's a great way to save money, but it's an open target for any agency that wants to look at your data (and that includes removing your access to that data) and the agencies that hold sway are known for over reacting, or just plain over kill. By the time this is done (and I sincerely believe they will hit many more sites) it is going to cost small businesses far more than they've saved. In some instances I'd expect businesses to fail. Remember the current administration is not known for its business friendly approach. OTOH the previous one was not exactly Internet friendly either. Of course it's our congress critters who are after the Internet.
In my many years I have found most people become combative at least in their language or stance when you disagree with them and particularly about their religion. . I've only met one man that I could discuss opposing views with and he happened to be a Mormon. We spent many a lunch hour taking opposing views, knowing that neither of us was going to change the others beliefs, yet they were comfortable and even enjoyable conversations.
Others? I just wanted to know about their beliefs compared to mine and they were about ready to fight after the first question.
A wireless charger. Talk about wasting energy. The low power ones are very inefficient and high power is even worse.
An electric car to save energy and then charge it with a wireless charge...what a contradiction.
Free market really isn't involved much where this price is concerned as there is very little competition. I think the tech is so simple and covered by patents that they charge what ever the traffic will stand. They don't even have noise canceling, or feedback protection in most.
There is very little technology in a hearing aid. They may claim there is and it is miniaturized but there probably isn't 50 bucks worth of tech in there. The custom molded inserts are likely worth more than the electronics. I've worn custom molded hearing protection for years. Worn under a head set, or the old "ear muffs" you can hear your shoes contact the pavement through conduction.
I have a severe high frequency hearing loss but refuse to pay that much. Insurance does not pay for hearing aids and if it did I'd still not get them at that price.
It's not the large corporations, or rich individuals or at least rarely. It's "Big Government" sponsored and promoted mostly by the Progressives and Liberals (Left), although there are quire a few on the right for Big Government as well. Big Government brings with it the entitlement mentality and once in place entitlements are very difficult to get rid of without a great deal of pain. It's those who believe in redistribution that put us in our current economic situation. The "Big Government" plays the part of helping the disadvantaged, but they are also building the ranks of the disadvantaged by making our money worth less. It's a vicious circle with us depending on the government more and more which gives them more and more power over us.
Take Social Security for instance. Nearly anyone that worked some where in the period from the 40's to the current date have come to depends on SS as part of our retirement. IOW we planned our own contributions to out retirement based on what we figured SS would be paying along with any likely pension. Many of the "less enlightened" (mathematically, or accounting challenged) figured SS would be their retirement.
I've said it many times, but if it hadn't been for the forced contributions to SS I would have a far more lucrative/comfortable retirement. Money supposedly went into a SS fund protected by the government, but instead they took the money and spent it. Keynesian Economics does not work! At least it doesn't work on a large, long term scale. Sooner or later some one has to pay the bill and on a large scale, long term the only way the government can pay it off is via printing money (or entering value into a computer system) this devalues the currency. However the cost of living doesn't appear to be reflecting, or showing any great increase. Suppose that might be because they conveniently do not count either food or fuel prices into the cost of living and they are probably the two highest contributors to the real cost of living.
At any rate, all of these keep coming back to giving the government more power and us, less!
Compound Interest and rule of 76. The stock market has historically averaged between 10 and 11% long term. At 10% your money doubles every 7.6 years (76/10)
Many years back when inflation and interest was high (prime was 21 or 22%), CDs were bringing 19 1/2%. A 30 year was bringing 16%. At 16% over 30 years with the money doubling ever4.75 (76/16) years that means the money would have doubled over 6 times. 6.3 actually. That means a 20,000 CD would have been worth 1,280,000 "One Million, two hundred and eighty thousand dollars from a 20,000 CD! That works out to a return of 64 times the investment on a lowly CD. Of course you'd need several lifetimes for it to be worth much at today's rates. A smart investor with a bit of luck should be able to do that easily.
As others have said, it's not at all suspicious. An IRA is money you or your employer invest at some maximum. It used to be much less than it is now. However if the money were wisely invested (it can be invested ) it *could* be worth many times what you invested. Unlike Social Security where they take money from you and guarantee a pittance back doled out a little at a time your IRAs are a far better investment. The thief is the SS program which cost me a great deal of money and the government. Had I been able to invest that SS deduction (based on investments I did make) I'd be rich now instead of getting a relatively small SS payment. They should privatize SS and keep the government's hands out of it.
The first thing that comes to mind other than they shouldn't lose strength that quick, is cheap, or faulty components and primarily capacitors. A batch of Samsung monitors are famous or infamous for capacitors going out in the power supply. Router builders could have come up with part of that batch as well. Another is low voltage, as they all use "wall warts" AFAIK. Try a different PS before pitching the router. QC and quality of the generic wall wart is not exactly for lab standard work.
Normally and I have to emphasize the "normally" capacitors last on the order of 20 years...or more.
In the last 15 years (give or take) the only router failures I've had were due to lightning and one that appeared to lose its brains.
Most of the "stuff" here is in two buildings, one of which has the entire interior constructed of bonded barn metal so the placement of NICs or relays is important. IE the router is in the basement and the NICs are in the shop (pretty much shielded except for windows) some 130 foot distant.
I have to admit that most of the time I use CAT6 instead of wireless as large backups take far too long on wireless.
Unfortunately the US chose to have no ground based back up to GPS and I assume the EU will go the same way. One major Coronal Mass Ejection (CME), severe meteor storm, or even EMP and we'll all be without navigation signals. We (in the US) had an ideal back up in the new Enhanced, or E-Loran, but that was scrapped and the equipment (including antennas) immediately destroyed. Non Directional Beacons (NDBs) which are very simple, but require a little skill and practice to use are already being phased out and the VORs are also scheduled to be decomissioned. Many airports, at least through class C require GPS for instrument approaches. If we are going to get hit by a major CME I hope it's before they get all the ground based backups decommissioned.
One other point: Beyond a certain point additional satellites gain you little in accuracy. My question is why do people with consumer devices want more accuracy? With the current number of US satellites it can tell you where you are on a taxiway within 15 to 20 feet and that is without the additional, high accuracy ground based augmentation transmitters.
GPS is not infallible. It has failed for a few hours a couple of times. It is also not immune to interference, or even strong signals a few channels off to the side, or even farther. Fly or drive in the SW US and you'll see what I mean. It is not a good system for putting all your eggs in one basket.
We had a local biker get his foot caught and fall over at the curb. At zero forward speed he suffered brain damage with no helmet. Another had a jogger step in front of her on the rail trail and was killed. My daughter attended MI State. They had far more serious injuries from bikes on campus than cars.
I've run both Windows and LINUX of various flavors for many years in both dual and multi boot (with multi I just select the boot disk at boot time). All I care about is that the computers can talk to each other over a network. I could care less about what they call "syncronized". I also avoid "The cloud" as much as I possibly can.
I also plan on skipping Windows 8. I can see no advantage in going to it. There are multinational corporations still running XP because it does what they want. Particularly large corporations with their own IT departments only care about whether the OS and software does what they want. They are not going to spend millions of dollars for new hardware, the OS, applications, training programs, and lost productive time just because some one says a new system can do things they don't need. They have the backups and don't really care about updates or whether MS still supports it. Many of them also avoid the cloud for their operations. If the govt wants to sneak a peak they'll at least have to work at it a bit instead of just telling a supplier they want to take a look.
IF and I emphasize the IF, an OS does every thing you want and you have the ability to fix it should it get wiped out it makes no sense to upgrade.
These same companies allow *some* workers to work from home. When I was a sys admin and then project manager, I did at least half of my work at home and/or logged in from home.
And you have that backwards. Baine Capital has an over 80% success rate of turning failing companies around. That is outstanding! If a company fails they lose money so it's in their best interests to make them succeed.
The Cayman islands is definitely not a tax shelter.
OTOH look at what Obama did to the GM pensions. Salaried (techs, engineers, IT) all lost theirs while the hourly kept theirs. Stock holders, who by law come ahead of government were also thrown out. (Picking winners and losers)
Don't believe the news from either side and the Dems are being particularly vicious and loose with the truth because they have no successes to list. They tried "Bin Laden is dead and GM is alive", but then tried to hide that terrorism appears to be as strong as ever...maybe even getting stronger because of this administration's policies.
How about drones circling over much of the US, not just the borders? How about the increased monitoring of all US citizens?
I disagree with a lot of Romney's policies, but he's pretty much in line with the constitution, is known for giving lots to charities, knows how to manage a business, has experience in government, and appears to be a decent human being. I think Ryan would make a better president.
I don't consider any of those to be positives. The health care act (Obama care) is something we can not afford. They've already admitted that because of it health care will be rationed. Doctors are leaving the profession in droves. If you are considered a senior *they* (a government panel) will decide if you are worth the effort and money even you can afford it. The CBO has doubled the cost estimate at least twice. They stole nearly 3/4 of a billion from medicare to prop up Obama care and they figure it'll cost the average family at least $2 to 3 thousand more than now.
People think of the elderly when it comes to the panels, but what about the low paid mechanic who has had several heart attacks with a high percent chance of a major one wiping him out? What about us lowly professionals near the end of our working lives with only a BS degree and there are all those politicians with their friends along with the rich. When they spread the wealth around, historically it's the rich and rulers that get richer. Just look at Europe.
Ask those in the service if the ending of "Don't ask, don't tell" did them a favor.
Hunted and killed Bin Laden? According to reports coming from people in the WH he had to be forced into it, but then took credit for the work of "Seal Team 6" and marked them by not only giving out their names, but by giving out classified information.
He and his staff lied about our ambassador getting killed by terrorists. Intelligence knew the next day it was a well planned attack and there was no demonstration going on about some video and reported such, but Obama and his staff stuck with the video story for two weeks with Clinton going over and apologizing.
The only thing Obama has been good at is taking credit for others work and blaming others for his failures.
Debt is going higher faster. He's build more debt in well less than one term than Bush did in two. The government has had to keep changing the way they measure things to make them look better. He now has an out of control EPA and believes he only needs to "print more cash" to pay our bills. Debt as a part of GDP is now something like 60%. His performance has all been down hill with an ever increasing slope.
Strange, using the same logic I came up with "vote for Romney". Obama was not dealt a good hand, but he turned it into one that is far worse. Am I better off today than when he took office. Far from it. Real inflation is way up when you count food and fuel. The only thing that has improved has been the stock marked, but the money I have there although larger in numbers is worth almost a third less thanks to QE1,2,3....???. Every cash account, retirement account, every dollar is worth about a third less. He has a miserable foreign policy that gives aid to terrorists and abandons our allies. His "be nice to them and they'll like us" approach has invited attacks. The only way employment improves is for people to leave the work force.
I should add that my first computer was an Ohio Scientific C2-8P with dual *8" floppies" that held a whopping couple hundred K, 48K of dynamic RAM, and a 1 MHz 6502. It cost me 4 grand without a monitor of keyboard. You typed the load command in machine language, and then it loaded from disk while what few others that were on the market used tape. Today I can build 2 top end machines with a couple of top end video cards, 16 Gig of RAM, 25" - 37" wide screen monitors and have money left over.
BTW that was a couple decades after I graduated from high school. Advanced math I had, but I don't think the public was even aware of the term, "computing" when I was in high school. Needless to say, I've been retired for quite some time.
When I went to college later in life we held computer contests at the university each year. We always had a couple of teams show up with computing gurus that knew how to write programs in the latest languages. "C" was still not heavily typed. IE, it would let you do most anything. Not one of them ever placed as some one forgot to point out that you use computers to solve problems and problem solving was not one of their strong points. A couple times they were still trying to figure out how to solve the problems while the kids using Basic were already done. As a grad student I saw much the same and wondered how many of the Liberal Arts students even managed to get in. Few of the business students could even type. I think for about a quarter of them, college was a waste of money. Me? I never had typing, but "borrowed" a typing book from school and taught myself. I can't imagine being in the business world and not knowing how to type, solve problems, or make decisions. Even if you made it free, I doubt college is for more than about half the population.
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It appears the bakers got what they wanted...Nothing and no jobs.
Do you man those same codes that were hacked in Obama's office (white house) a few months ago? Isn't it comforting to know how well protected they were. Then we have the UN wanting to eliminate private ownership of firearms. Yet, the figures I read show everywhere private ownership was eliminated, violent crime went up about 30%. There is a problem with obtaining nuclear fuel, as currently we purchase a substantial amount of weapons grade material from Russia and convert it into fuel. Of course breeder reactors would eliminate that problem, but it's been deemed to dangerous to make that kind of material, even though we import many, many tons of the stuff With the public hysteria I'd be surprised if we ever build another fission reactor. Remember most of our congress critters know no more about science than the man on the street. And there's always the conspiracy theory of abundant, cheap power not being implemented because with the people getting cheap power the corporations won't get rich. Of course they neglect that the oil companies only make a few cents per gallon on gas and then complain about their huge profits. . Cheap electricity would be the same way. It'd open doors for more and better technology, never mind that we don't have enough power grid to cope with much of an increase of electric cars. Then someone points out the dangers from all those magnetic fields from those power lines...and so it goes. If some one does come up with a practical, clean, economically viable alternative fuel, the big corporations will be using that technology as soon as they can get it. If you want something energy intensive, just look at the semiconductor industry. AFAIK they use more energy per gram, Ounce, pound, or what ever unit you wish to use of product than any other industry.
It's also simple to understand. The average human...OK, most humans are completely clueless about anything technical or scientific. Cell phones: Try and explain to anyone on the street that they are just a fancy, lower powered transmitter and receiver. They still don't/can't understand why any receiver that covers those frequencies can her them. They don't understand how a car works, or that "so far" bio fuels are many times the cost of fossil fuels and often take more energy to create than we can get out of them. The USAF is using a mix of bio fuel and Jet fuel on an experimental basis that runs about $15 a gallon plus a great big subsidy. They don't understand that even if we could make batteries that would drive a car 400 miles we don't have the electrical grid capacity to charge many of them, or more than a small fraction of the number of cars on the road were they to become electric cars. Skip the electrical grid explanations or how a class X10 CME could possible result in millions of deaths because we are so dependent on technology. Again it's over their heads and someone is bound to call it a conspiracy. They figure just replace the transformers that burn out. Of course they don't understand why we don't have spares for all of them or couldn't just wind more, neglecting the point the equipment to service and rewind transformers doesn't work without the grid. Then try to explain that some pretty advanced civilizations may have existed more than 10,000 years ago, which was just after the end of the last ice age. Those would be fighting words. So, "back in the day" we had groups who associated anything nuclear with "the bomb". The movie "China Syndrome" didn't help the truth, and we had many "radicals" (and still do) who are just plain "anti-nuclear" because it's not normal. There are always those who can find the worst possible scenario (no matter how unlikely) and then blow it all out of proportion. We need to remember the conspiracists who see conspiracies behind every new project and the main stream news that blows anything newsworthy all out of proportion just adds fuel to the fire. That mainstream news is taken as the Gospel by most people without degrees in science or technology and when their proven wrong the "anti whatever" groups jump on it. Its a wonder we have as many scientifically literate people as we do.
Why would anyone in their right mind want to join a union. Over the years I've been a member but thankfully most of the time I wasn't and when I became a professional I didn't have to join. As states become "Right to Work" workers are electing to not join, and are leaving unions in droves which tells me I am not alone in my opinion. Back in the early days they served their purpose. Now the big unions are in the government where they should not be allowed as they are a monopoly.
Having been a sys admin, then programmer, and finally a project manager with computer systems for a large multinational corporation, they definitely did not buy all new computers every three years. Last I knew they were still using XP Pro. They did have to keep the latest versions of many programs (particularly word processors and spreadsheets) to interface with the rest of the world and those corporations that had to have the latest and greatest.
ER is supposed to take care of everyone whether they have insurance or not. How they handle service varies widely from location to location. Just wait until we have 2 or 3 times as many to serve with half the doctors. People without insurance go to the ER for even minor things because it's difficult to find a new doctor. Mine retired (wanted to get out before Obamacare) and it took over 6 months to get in to see a new doctor. Typically I walk in for an appointment, sign in, and am taken back to the examination room within 5 minutes. Usually the doc is there in less than 5 minutes.
They are still using XP up here....although Win 7 can still access it. There's is probably on some old mini. Don't forget that medical records (in the US) are supposed to be inaccessible to the outside world which would mean encryption if properly done. Actually, they finished up one system about a year ago and it too was XP. Hopefully Win 8 can still access NTSF, but it looks like about time to drop the dual boot and just stick with LINUX. OTOH I'd prefer they didn't update quite so often.
This is why I've told every business and individual I've worked with as a consultant, not to use the cloud, yet every one keeps hyping the cloud. Yes, it's a great way to save money, but it's an open target for any agency that wants to look at your data (and that includes removing your access to that data) and the agencies that hold sway are known for over reacting, or just plain over kill. By the time this is done (and I sincerely believe they will hit many more sites) it is going to cost small businesses far more than they've saved. In some instances I'd expect businesses to fail. Remember the current administration is not known for its business friendly approach. OTOH the previous one was not exactly Internet friendly either. Of course it's our congress critters who are after the Internet.
In my many years I have found most people become combative at least in their language or stance when you disagree with them and particularly about their religion. . I've only met one man that I could discuss opposing views with and he happened to be a Mormon. We spent many a lunch hour taking opposing views, knowing that neither of us was going to change the others beliefs, yet they were comfortable and even enjoyable conversations. Others? I just wanted to know about their beliefs compared to mine and they were about ready to fight after the first question.
A wireless charger. Talk about wasting energy. The low power ones are very inefficient and high power is even worse. An electric car to save energy and then charge it with a wireless charge...what a contradiction.
Free market really isn't involved much where this price is concerned as there is very little competition. I think the tech is so simple and covered by patents that they charge what ever the traffic will stand. They don't even have noise canceling, or feedback protection in most.
There is very little technology in a hearing aid. They may claim there is and it is miniaturized but there probably isn't 50 bucks worth of tech in there. The custom molded inserts are likely worth more than the electronics. I've worn custom molded hearing protection for years. Worn under a head set, or the old "ear muffs" you can hear your shoes contact the pavement through conduction. I have a severe high frequency hearing loss but refuse to pay that much. Insurance does not pay for hearing aids and if it did I'd still not get them at that price.
It's not the large corporations, or rich individuals or at least rarely. It's "Big Government" sponsored and promoted mostly by the Progressives and Liberals (Left), although there are quire a few on the right for Big Government as well. Big Government brings with it the entitlement mentality and once in place entitlements are very difficult to get rid of without a great deal of pain. It's those who believe in redistribution that put us in our current economic situation. The "Big Government" plays the part of helping the disadvantaged, but they are also building the ranks of the disadvantaged by making our money worth less. It's a vicious circle with us depending on the government more and more which gives them more and more power over us. Take Social Security for instance. Nearly anyone that worked some where in the period from the 40's to the current date have come to depends on SS as part of our retirement. IOW we planned our own contributions to out retirement based on what we figured SS would be paying along with any likely pension. Many of the "less enlightened" (mathematically, or accounting challenged) figured SS would be their retirement. I've said it many times, but if it hadn't been for the forced contributions to SS I would have a far more lucrative/comfortable retirement. Money supposedly went into a SS fund protected by the government, but instead they took the money and spent it. Keynesian Economics does not work! At least it doesn't work on a large, long term scale. Sooner or later some one has to pay the bill and on a large scale, long term the only way the government can pay it off is via printing money (or entering value into a computer system) this devalues the currency. However the cost of living doesn't appear to be reflecting, or showing any great increase. Suppose that might be because they conveniently do not count either food or fuel prices into the cost of living and they are probably the two highest contributors to the real cost of living. At any rate, all of these keep coming back to giving the government more power and us, less!
Compound Interest and rule of 76. The stock market has historically averaged between 10 and 11% long term. At 10% your money doubles every 7.6 years (76/10) Many years back when inflation and interest was high (prime was 21 or 22%), CDs were bringing 19 1/2%. A 30 year was bringing 16%. At 16% over 30 years with the money doubling ever4.75 (76/16) years that means the money would have doubled over 6 times. 6.3 actually. That means a 20,000 CD would have been worth 1,280,000 "One Million, two hundred and eighty thousand dollars from a 20,000 CD! That works out to a return of 64 times the investment on a lowly CD. Of course you'd need several lifetimes for it to be worth much at today's rates. A smart investor with a bit of luck should be able to do that easily.
As others have said, it's not at all suspicious. An IRA is money you or your employer invest at some maximum. It used to be much less than it is now. However if the money were wisely invested (it can be invested ) it *could* be worth many times what you invested. Unlike Social Security where they take money from you and guarantee a pittance back doled out a little at a time your IRAs are a far better investment. The thief is the SS program which cost me a great deal of money and the government. Had I been able to invest that SS deduction (based on investments I did make) I'd be rich now instead of getting a relatively small SS payment. They should privatize SS and keep the government's hands out of it.
The first thing that comes to mind other than they shouldn't lose strength that quick, is cheap, or faulty components and primarily capacitors. A batch of Samsung monitors are famous or infamous for capacitors going out in the power supply. Router builders could have come up with part of that batch as well. Another is low voltage, as they all use "wall warts" AFAIK. Try a different PS before pitching the router. QC and quality of the generic wall wart is not exactly for lab standard work. Normally and I have to emphasize the "normally" capacitors last on the order of 20 years...or more. In the last 15 years (give or take) the only router failures I've had were due to lightning and one that appeared to lose its brains. Most of the "stuff" here is in two buildings, one of which has the entire interior constructed of bonded barn metal so the placement of NICs or relays is important. IE the router is in the basement and the NICs are in the shop (pretty much shielded except for windows) some 130 foot distant. I have to admit that most of the time I use CAT6 instead of wireless as large backups take far too long on wireless.
Unfortunately the US chose to have no ground based back up to GPS and I assume the EU will go the same way. One major Coronal Mass Ejection (CME), severe meteor storm, or even EMP and we'll all be without navigation signals. We (in the US) had an ideal back up in the new Enhanced, or E-Loran, but that was scrapped and the equipment (including antennas) immediately destroyed. Non Directional Beacons (NDBs) which are very simple, but require a little skill and practice to use are already being phased out and the VORs are also scheduled to be decomissioned. Many airports, at least through class C require GPS for instrument approaches. If we are going to get hit by a major CME I hope it's before they get all the ground based backups decommissioned. One other point: Beyond a certain point additional satellites gain you little in accuracy. My question is why do people with consumer devices want more accuracy? With the current number of US satellites it can tell you where you are on a taxiway within 15 to 20 feet and that is without the additional, high accuracy ground based augmentation transmitters. GPS is not infallible. It has failed for a few hours a couple of times. It is also not immune to interference, or even strong signals a few channels off to the side, or even farther. Fly or drive in the SW US and you'll see what I mean. It is not a good system for putting all your eggs in one basket.
We had a local biker get his foot caught and fall over at the curb. At zero forward speed he suffered brain damage with no helmet. Another had a jogger step in front of her on the rail trail and was killed. My daughter attended MI State. They had far more serious injuries from bikes on campus than cars.
I've run both Windows and LINUX of various flavors for many years in both dual and multi boot (with multi I just select the boot disk at boot time). All I care about is that the computers can talk to each other over a network. I could care less about what they call "syncronized". I also avoid "The cloud" as much as I possibly can. I also plan on skipping Windows 8. I can see no advantage in going to it. There are multinational corporations still running XP because it does what they want. Particularly large corporations with their own IT departments only care about whether the OS and software does what they want. They are not going to spend millions of dollars for new hardware, the OS, applications, training programs, and lost productive time just because some one says a new system can do things they don't need. They have the backups and don't really care about updates or whether MS still supports it. Many of them also avoid the cloud for their operations. If the govt wants to sneak a peak they'll at least have to work at it a bit instead of just telling a supplier they want to take a look. IF and I emphasize the IF, an OS does every thing you want and you have the ability to fix it should it get wiped out it makes no sense to upgrade. These same companies allow *some* workers to work from home. When I was a sys admin and then project manager, I did at least half of my work at home and/or logged in from home.
And you have that backwards. Baine Capital has an over 80% success rate of turning failing companies around. That is outstanding! If a company fails they lose money so it's in their best interests to make them succeed. The Cayman islands is definitely not a tax shelter. OTOH look at what Obama did to the GM pensions. Salaried (techs, engineers, IT) all lost theirs while the hourly kept theirs. Stock holders, who by law come ahead of government were also thrown out. (Picking winners and losers) Don't believe the news from either side and the Dems are being particularly vicious and loose with the truth because they have no successes to list. They tried "Bin Laden is dead and GM is alive", but then tried to hide that terrorism appears to be as strong as ever...maybe even getting stronger because of this administration's policies.
How about drones circling over much of the US, not just the borders? How about the increased monitoring of all US citizens? I disagree with a lot of Romney's policies, but he's pretty much in line with the constitution, is known for giving lots to charities, knows how to manage a business, has experience in government, and appears to be a decent human being. I think Ryan would make a better president.
I don't consider any of those to be positives. The health care act (Obama care) is something we can not afford. They've already admitted that because of it health care will be rationed. Doctors are leaving the profession in droves. If you are considered a senior *they* (a government panel) will decide if you are worth the effort and money even you can afford it. The CBO has doubled the cost estimate at least twice. They stole nearly 3/4 of a billion from medicare to prop up Obama care and they figure it'll cost the average family at least $2 to 3 thousand more than now. People think of the elderly when it comes to the panels, but what about the low paid mechanic who has had several heart attacks with a high percent chance of a major one wiping him out? What about us lowly professionals near the end of our working lives with only a BS degree and there are all those politicians with their friends along with the rich. When they spread the wealth around, historically it's the rich and rulers that get richer. Just look at Europe. Ask those in the service if the ending of "Don't ask, don't tell" did them a favor. Hunted and killed Bin Laden? According to reports coming from people in the WH he had to be forced into it, but then took credit for the work of "Seal Team 6" and marked them by not only giving out their names, but by giving out classified information. He and his staff lied about our ambassador getting killed by terrorists. Intelligence knew the next day it was a well planned attack and there was no demonstration going on about some video and reported such, but Obama and his staff stuck with the video story for two weeks with Clinton going over and apologizing. The only thing Obama has been good at is taking credit for others work and blaming others for his failures.
Debt is going higher faster. He's build more debt in well less than one term than Bush did in two. The government has had to keep changing the way they measure things to make them look better. He now has an out of control EPA and believes he only needs to "print more cash" to pay our bills. Debt as a part of GDP is now something like 60%. His performance has all been down hill with an ever increasing slope.
Strange, using the same logic I came up with "vote for Romney". Obama was not dealt a good hand, but he turned it into one that is far worse. Am I better off today than when he took office. Far from it. Real inflation is way up when you count food and fuel. The only thing that has improved has been the stock marked, but the money I have there although larger in numbers is worth almost a third less thanks to QE1,2,3....???. Every cash account, retirement account, every dollar is worth about a third less. He has a miserable foreign policy that gives aid to terrorists and abandons our allies. His "be nice to them and they'll like us" approach has invited attacks. The only way employment improves is for people to leave the work force.
I should add that my first computer was an Ohio Scientific C2-8P with dual *8" floppies" that held a whopping couple hundred K, 48K of dynamic RAM, and a 1 MHz 6502. It cost me 4 grand without a monitor of keyboard. You typed the load command in machine language, and then it loaded from disk while what few others that were on the market used tape. Today I can build 2 top end machines with a couple of top end video cards, 16 Gig of RAM, 25" - 37" wide screen monitors and have money left over. BTW that was a couple decades after I graduated from high school. Advanced math I had, but I don't think the public was even aware of the term, "computing" when I was in high school. Needless to say, I've been retired for quite some time. When I went to college later in life we held computer contests at the university each year. We always had a couple of teams show up with computing gurus that knew how to write programs in the latest languages. "C" was still not heavily typed. IE, it would let you do most anything. Not one of them ever placed as some one forgot to point out that you use computers to solve problems and problem solving was not one of their strong points. A couple times they were still trying to figure out how to solve the problems while the kids using Basic were already done. As a grad student I saw much the same and wondered how many of the Liberal Arts students even managed to get in. Few of the business students could even type. I think for about a quarter of them, college was a waste of money. Me? I never had typing, but "borrowed" a typing book from school and taught myself. I can't imagine being in the business world and not knowing how to type, solve problems, or make decisions. Even if you made it free, I doubt college is for more than about half the population.