Well if Joe gets a shiny netbook from Bestbuy and it can't office it will make him quite unhappy.
Retailers are hte ones who make money selling proprietary games and office suites. Consumers just want to turn on the book and work. Its no surprise Linux didn't last.
What about people making only $10/hr and paying 60% of their money for healthcare!
Seriously why work in a place like Massachussetts when you are forced by the government to put down as much as 50% of your paycheck to medicaid or any plan that your boss has.
To me thats worse than being uninsured. With healthcare costs going up people in Massachussetts will be making less and less money as they are required to enroll in expensive premiums by law.
Insurance companies are profit making entities. Yes they can save you sometimes. But their goal is to screw you anyway possible for a buck. After all, we are not their customers. Are employers our.
Before you think my views sound extreme let me give you some background.
Example I just paid $750 for care 7 months ago and I was insured. Why? My wife's former employer switched PPO's during the time of treatment. Each one cited it was the other ones problem and refused. I am trying to sue for damages in a small claims court. The paperwork says company X is responsible. Company X claims company Y handles all calls due to the contract and hangs up. Company Y says I was not part of their coverage yet so it was company X. My wife quit work 2 months later so company x is trying to comp out saying oh well she doesn't work for them anymore so we just wont pay.
Anyway this has been going on for months where one will hang up on me and hte other will say you were not covered by us yet. Turns out the billing for the services also involve 3 outsourced companies that much approve everything and one just bills the other depending on the care. Its a mess.
How many homes destroyed in New Orleans had insurance pick up the bill? 0. The insurance company claimed it was a flood while the flood insurance company claimed it was a hurricane.
Insurance companies hire tens of thousands of people each year to figure out clever ways to screw people by not paying what they claimed they are bond to cover. They even let people die by withholding life saving procedures until its too late. If the patient dies then they do not have to pay it.
America has the lowest quality healthcare of any firstworld country.
The high quality care cites is for those who paid cash for their procedures. Infact I read about the best plastic surgeons in the US do not even take any health insurance. Just $80,000 in cash.
If Ron Paul were president every major bank would be out of business and we would be in great depression #2. Doing nothing is what caused the great depression in the first place as 12k banks failed and everyone pulled money and stopped spending out of fear. Just let the market correct it right?
BoA and many other banks were tens of billions in red and own over a half of corporate and consumer bank accounts. Yes you can scream its my money do not give it to the banks! But the fact of the matter is we were very close to having a full freeze last fall.
Ron Paul favors a 20% national sales tax! Tell me how this would help create jobs and benefit everyone but the millionaires? He favors the rich who make 100x as much as yourself to pay the same amount in taxes and have you spend less to make up for it.
Supply side economics do not work. My economic textbook calls oldschool economists classical economists. They do not understand the marginal prospensity to consume. Basically this means the desire to purchase. Just because things get cheaper does not mean people will buy more when they are afraid their job might not be secure. Ron Paul would argue lower prices will have people buy more. Keysnian economics dictates deflation is the problem not the solution.
I dissagree and think they are cluess and motivated only by greed.
I know they are very very convenient but in a recession I would not be surprised if a few annoying accountants make policies of using the image that came with the computer in order to save cash that is visible on the spreadsheets.
More work is not easily seen by the bean counters.
I found office 2007 annoying for the first month but if you do the shortcuts you never even have to use the mouse.
They are a little different but when you hit the "alt" key the ribbon will show the numbers and letters for keyboard combos. You can do more than the shortcuts with 2003 without ever having to use a mouse.
This and the vista feature of just hitting the windows key and then typing rather than scrolling and clicking for programs is sweet too.
The only problem is you need to work differently and this is an issue when the boss wants everything done a week ago.
I am sure all these businesses who are fighting tooth and nail not to lay off any more workers would love to waste more money for an OS that does the same things as XP for more money.
Accountants and not doctors make the decisions on the tests as most PPOs and MMOs refuse to cover any unnecessary tests. Meaning they will test for years and years before performing the more expensive ones. Also if the disease is serious like cancer the patient can die quicker which could save them more money. Insurance companies are evil SOBs who delay cancer treatment and other diseases as long as possible to get patients to die so they can cut costs.
Slashdot had a study on this and the fact is Larry Ellison and Carnegie just were lucky at the right place and time.
Bill Clinton earned it through dishonest special interests.
Hard work does not pay off as the people I see the hardest are the ones illegal here working 10 hour shifts building houses for minimal wage in the hot sun. Work just pays the bills.
Taking initiative to get ahead can get you middle class and that work does pay off in that regard to its max. The rich are just lucky as the industrial revolution or computer revolution just started and they were at the right place at hte right time.
Its about working smart and not hard and not everyone gets the opportunity to work smart as bills and responsibilities keep them from getting the right education and meeting the right people.
It sounds counter intuitive but the poorest people I know work the hardest and upper management who makes 10x times their salary play golf twice a week and yack on the phone in their climate controlled offices. The good news is that this inequality in this deep recession si changing this as it rightfully should.
Its not their job to care. Its their job to HAVE THAT PROPOSAL BY NOON. Yes I would be assholish too if you would not take my request seriously too (If I didn't work tech).
Tell them I can't give you an estimate or give a very big one so here is a working laptop to work on while I fix it for you. I will let you know and email you when I can give an ETA. Need any more help let me know. Anything else I can help you with just let me know?
The problems with servers are a different matter. The problem is you can't say your boss is an idiot and is too cheap to buy a linux not NT box and use a switch. I got fired for this because it pissed me off so much that I was the scapegoat for such incompetent planning.
Learned my lesson now
Work with them and acted concern always with a sense of urgency. Run to solve each problem and be the man to save the day. Then you will earn respect.
It could be possible that you replaced someone who was incompetant. I am not sure of the situation so naturally you are getting some of the crap for now until respect is earned.
Just let them do their job and always ask if their is anything more you can do. Maybe handle requests. If they are turned down its managements fault and not yoru own. You are on their side and part of their team.
If these requests can't be completed then you need to talk to management and use some bs like lost productivity dollars and mention just having 5 backups and have users save their work on a share and you're good.
She works in the Palm Springs school district and so far the results are mixed and expensive.
Basically the school dumps down $35,000 of tax payer money into laptops that the students try to steal which break when you drop them. The software is all internet based so that means no filtering. For some reason the I.T. department can't figure out how to firewall all addresses besides the 2 or 3 needed for the programs. She was told it had to do with some activeX controls. This means the kids log into myspace, facebook, and other inappropriate web sites when no one is looking. This includes a few sites where a chick in her class thought it was funny to show a pic of herself topless. My wife didn't report it because she could be fired on spot. She tried banning htem after I told her how to filter them with a hosts file. The kids just google for proxies to get around that. This is a problem because the lawyers feel the teacher is 100% responsible 100% of all the viewing on all 30 laptops.
Anyway as a math teacher the students really need to practice on paper and its hard to graph functions and slopes on a computer as the students do not understand the concept. What is good about them is that students can finish their work early and then be done and browse the net. With books they have to wait because they can distract other students if they do any other activities.
My wife kind of likes it because its less work for her. Computer grades everything wtih a submit button. In practice she has had the lkaptop key stolen once or twice and had to put her classroom on lockdown to get them back and the issue of inappropriate websites keep becoming an issue. Schools do not have a budget for a real competent staff who could configure their routers tighter than a virgin's ass with blocking search engines and non educational websites.
The problem is that Cisco clean access agent slows sytems down and running through a VM in Ubuntu will slow your computer to a crawl which still does not solve the problem.
Most schools like the one I go to let you not use the agent but you only have an hour of access. Mac users and Linux users have to restart their connections by the hour or use Windows. Nothing wrong with that unless your run wow or a webserver.
I got addicted to games back in the Quake1/2/3 and unreal tournament days. I credit it to the fact I became unemployed couldn't commit to getting a degree and other bad issues.I decided to take my love of computers outside of games. I too had everquest and wow wrapped up for years. A few years later I had to support users and many users had graphical issues with games so I installed wow and gave a wow account to my wife.
I never fully got into wow as nothing was good from the original. My wife is hooked and plays hours every day after work. I would rather have her play wow than do drugs or become an alcoholic.
However I feel obligated to play in order to spend time with her. I just can't get into new addictions besides maybe browsing news.
I suppose I could become an addict to wow if I fully commit. I lose friends, raids, and huge amounts of gold from doing other things and I do not want to go heavy into wow as my grades, work, and relationship would suffer. My wife does not allow me to spend excess time on my computer when she is home.
I guess what both of us have is the realization you can't just have one drink when your alcoholic and its the same with gamers. You need to fully commit to 40 hours minimum or you do not get the dopamine high.
There is a server recession/depression and Business need to put off investments and asset upgrades until the business environment becomes more favorable.
What kind of ROI (return on investment)will upgrading bring? Seems MS had already succeeded in building a better mouse trap. No real reason to upgrade unlike its predecessors.
Corporations use more public services like an educated workforce, electricity, roads to delivery their products, protection by a military, treaties and other things.
The corporations want us to pay for them while they get a break. The problem is these cost too much money for the average tax payer to pay and why should I compensate for them?
I am the one loaded with student loans at insane interest rates. My parents paid a tiny fraction of what a college grad does today even when calculating inflation. This is because of grant and funding cuts to universities. Add roads, electricity, and other government uses and I would expect my side of the bill is quite high if the company pays absolutely nothing.
Now we are having a situation where the gap in income between the wealthy and the poor is at its highest and economic instability is around due to debt because the wealthy keep raising the prices of housing forcing the poor to make loans at high interest rates.
Taxes suck indeed but unless the government cuts down massively we can not sustain this spending without taxing the average man to death to pay off our deficit.
Its very expensive to just simply fire everyone and move and then rehire elsewhere.
I have noticed a problem in states like California where its hard for Americans to find work.
If company A hires a Mexican they do not have to a.) Pay taxes for that person b.) Not pay for health care
30% of employee compsensation goes straight to the insurace companies. Companies also pay $11,000 in taxes for each person they hire.
Also add liability and tax code benefits for companies hiring less than 50 *documented* workers and they can claim to be smaller companies that save them even more money.
Its no wonder the unemployment rate is high and I am surprised its not higher.
So 40% of all the jobs are employeed by undocumented workers in Los Angeles. This is causing a big problem.
Now tell me how is that fair?
Many companies outsource to India for tax and health care costs and not just for salary reduction. If companies had to fork over more money for these things you can imagine a huge amount of jobs would re-open here due to the high cost and low productivity of outsourcing.
Most people I know do not want to install any apps on their computers. They are just tools like cars. You buy it and then use it and do not screw them up by installing software you do not need.
Maybe a game or two and office is what most users want. Thats it.
This is also why Ubuntu will never replace Windows. My wife has seen me run Ubuntu on more than one occasion. The question is always why do you waste your time on that when you have Windows Vista that does everything?
She has a point. When you buy a new car do you void the warranty and replace the engine for fun? No. Its the same with changing your operating system. Vista can be a dog but it works and I can get stuff done and not waste time. I may consider switching if more hardware support became available and more stable software packages as well. I am not a unix noob by any sense of the means since I have been using Linux and FreeBSD from 1999 to 2006. I just do not find it useful when my time is limited by marriage, family, college, and a job. I do not want to recompile kernels in order to get hardware working and install software and fix bugs.
I think more applications do bring more bugs. I noticed this trend about 5 or 6 years ago and it nulls the point of switching away from a Microsoft environment due to buggy software and security holes. I try to keep software on a minimum for this reason.
I have given up on Linux for the desktop completely.
It never just works. I have been waiting since 1999 and even switched to FreeBSD for a couple of years. I spent hours twinking the FreeBSD ports or Gentoo portage and it almost works or some bugs happen like an issue of bleeding high volume without hte volume control and a kill -9 will kill only the gui part of the application and my speakers get blown out because the sound system is still blasting, etc.
Anyway Ubuntu sort of worked on my laptop. Then all of the sudden during an apt-get upgrade my hardware became unsupported.
To this day Ubuntu will not run on any non intel AMD chipset. They refuse to provide drivers and the instructions to enable them require a cvs to madwifi which I could do if I had internet access in the first place which I lost. I do not know if Ubuntu is trying to take a stance on principles of supporting proprietary drivers but as a user I do not care. All I know is it used to work and now I have Ethernet, 3d video, or wifi.
And please do not give me the lecture that I should have checked my hardware. I am on a strict budget in this economy and do not have time to check every component in every chipset to find a laptop under $750 to see how stable the Linux drivers are. The intel ones had crappy video or were too expensive.
I had nothing but problems and I use MS Office which is a superior to openoffice. My computers just work with Windows with zero hassles.
Linux is great in the computer room where it does not have to pretend to be the operating system for everyone like Windows tries to be. Windows is now stable for desktop usage and comes with the computer anyway. Unless your a php or Unix developer why switch? Only servers need six sigma %99.97 uptime or better and Windows server 2008 is getting close to this.
Do not get me wrong I think its a great operating system. But I have noticed hardware compatibility has gone down rather than up in recent years due to wifi and users switching from standard desktops to proprietary laptops.
This is what Linux truly needs. Alot of anti Microsoft users are switching to Macs which ends up hurting Linux on anything but servers.
Where the government needs to get involved is where we have a free rider dilemma on a public good. An example is the military. If you pay for your share for our armed services why should I pay my part? I get protection free of charge. Everything from schools to dams to roads all have this problem. Also having a natural monopoly is bad in capitalism but good in efficiency and a necessity to have things get done for cheap. The government needs to regulate these monopolies such as power, sewer, and phone. We can't have 3 seperate power lines, 3 internet fiber connections, 2 sewer lines, and 3 water for every home. That is crazy. If no regulations exists we would end up in a situation such as... It is illegal to have an outhouse in your backyard. Well I guess you have to pay me $1100 a month for sewer rates hu?.. etc. Its price regulated on purpose because the government created the monopolies on sewers.
As outrageous and silly as sewage fees and plans sound to us this is exactly what the telecom industry is doing by forcing to be deregulated. They were handed a monopoly on the last mile that tax payers paid for. Competition does not work if a monopoly exists so there are no benefits.
How many of us can afford the $20k or so to send each kid to private school? Or how about lay fiber and buy the property rights to lay the infrastructure and pray the company that lays the cable doesn't turn into a monopoly that charges $200 a month for internet access.
Fact of the matter is we would not have education nor internet access like the rest of the world if the government didn't provide it.
I think web developers and/.ers would take up their pitchforks and the future of the internet could be at stake itself.
Java does have potential and I think someone at Sun should explain to Oracle that raising hte costs and putting up barriers to make higher RIOs would actual hamper Java as many hobbiests and college studnets will learn c#.net instead of java.
Java was not ready while flash and shockwave were. I am hoping javafx takes off. The problem is that many new computers sold do not have a jre installed but come with flash.
Javafx should have come out back in the late 1990s when flash was starting to gain attention.
I am hoping Java will come back as Microsoft is slowly taking over java in the server room and adobe flash/air is all the rage. Silver light may take off in a few years after it becomes standard with new computers.
I am still bugged MS bought their way to depreciate the (applet) tag which led to Java's demise.
Applets could have been something if sun would ever allow the applets to run native and not be re-compiled into byte code on spot while the user waited on their 486 with a 14.4 modem. That was truly ugly and nearly killed it on the desktop.
My guess is silverlightFX or something will come out next and will be AJAX like and support HD video and other things and so will AIR in the next 5 years. Lets hope JavaFX does make a little comeback. It does not suck that much today with core2duos and broadband with 3d cards.
Slashdot Mirror
Well if Joe gets a shiny netbook from Bestbuy and it can't office it will make him quite unhappy.
Retailers are hte ones who make money selling proprietary games and office suites. Consumers just want to turn on the book and work. Its no surprise Linux didn't last.
What about people making only $10/hr and paying 60% of their money for healthcare!
Seriously why work in a place like Massachussetts when you are forced by the government to put down as much as 50% of your paycheck to medicaid or any plan that your boss has.
To me thats worse than being uninsured. With healthcare costs going up people in Massachussetts will be making less and less money as they are required to enroll in expensive premiums by law.
Insurance companies are profit making entities. Yes they can save you sometimes. But their goal is to screw you anyway possible for a buck. After all, we are not their customers. Are employers our.
Before you think my views sound extreme let me give you some background.
Example I just paid $750 for care 7 months ago and I was insured. Why? My wife's former employer switched PPO's during the time of treatment. Each one cited it was the other ones problem and refused. I am trying to sue for damages in a small claims court. The paperwork says company X is responsible. Company X claims company Y handles all calls due to the contract and hangs up. Company Y says I was not part of their coverage yet so it was company X. My wife quit work 2 months later so company x is trying to comp out saying oh well she doesn't work for them anymore so we just wont pay.
Anyway this has been going on for months where one will hang up on me and hte other will say you were not covered by us yet. Turns out the billing for the services also involve 3 outsourced companies that much approve everything and one just bills the other depending on the care. Its a mess.
How many homes destroyed in New Orleans had insurance pick up the bill? 0. The insurance company claimed it was a flood while the flood insurance company claimed it was a hurricane.
Insurance companies hire tens of thousands of people each year to figure out clever ways to screw people by not paying what they claimed they are bond to cover. They even let people die by withholding life saving procedures until its too late. If the patient dies then they do not have to pay it.
They are a totally evil entity.
America has the lowest quality healthcare of any firstworld country.
The high quality care cites is for those who paid cash for their procedures. Infact I read about the best plastic surgeons in the US do not even take any health insurance. Just $80,000 in cash.
I can't believe this got modded.
If Ron Paul were president every major bank would be out of business and we would be in great depression #2. Doing nothing is what caused the great depression in the first place as 12k banks failed and everyone pulled money and stopped spending out of fear. Just let the market correct it right?
BoA and many other banks were tens of billions in red and own over a half of corporate and consumer bank accounts. Yes you can scream its my money do not give it to the banks! But the fact of the matter is we were very close to having a full freeze last fall.
Ron Paul favors a 20% national sales tax! Tell me how this would help create jobs and benefit everyone but the millionaires? He favors the rich who make 100x as much as yourself to pay the same amount in taxes and have you spend less to make up for it.
Supply side economics do not work. My economic textbook calls oldschool economists classical economists. They do not understand the marginal prospensity to consume. Basically this means the desire to purchase. Just because things get cheaper does not mean people will buy more when they are afraid their job might not be secure. Ron Paul would argue lower prices will have people buy more. Keysnian economics dictates deflation is the problem not the solution.
I dissagree and think they are cluess and motivated only by greed.
Doesn't this cost more money?
I know they are very very convenient but in a recession I would not be surprised if a few annoying accountants make policies of using the image that came with the computer in order to save cash that is visible on the spreadsheets.
More work is not easily seen by the bean counters.
I found office 2007 annoying for the first month but if you do the shortcuts you never even have to use the mouse.
They are a little different but when you hit the "alt" key the ribbon will show the numbers and letters for keyboard combos. You can do more than the shortcuts with 2003 without ever having to use a mouse.
This and the vista feature of just hitting the windows key and then typing rather than scrolling and clicking for programs is sweet too.
The only problem is you need to work differently and this is an issue when the boss wants everything done a week ago.
Why raise the price.
I am sure all these businesses who are fighting tooth and nail not to lay off any more workers would love to waste more money for an OS that does the same things as XP for more money.
The tests are probably more expensive.
Accountants and not doctors make the decisions on the tests as most PPOs and MMOs refuse to cover any unnecessary tests. Meaning they will test for years and years before performing the more expensive ones. Also if the disease is serious like cancer the patient can die quicker which could save them more money. Insurance companies are evil SOBs who delay cancer treatment and other diseases as long as possible to get patients to die so they can cut costs.
Slashdot had a study on this and the fact is Larry Ellison and Carnegie just were lucky at the right place and time.
Bill Clinton earned it through dishonest special interests.
Hard work does not pay off as the people I see the hardest are the ones illegal here working 10 hour shifts building houses for minimal wage in the hot sun. Work just pays the bills.
Taking initiative to get ahead can get you middle class and that work does pay off in that regard to its max. The rich are just lucky as the industrial revolution or computer revolution just started and they were at the right place at hte right time.
Its about working smart and not hard and not everyone gets the opportunity to work smart as bills and responsibilities keep them from getting the right education and meeting the right people.
It sounds counter intuitive but the poorest people I know work the hardest and upper management who makes 10x times their salary play golf twice a week and yack on the phone in their climate controlled offices. The good news is that this inequality in this deep recession si changing this as it rightfully should.
8 out of 10 times its something that just can't leave your mind after blinding you when posted on slashdot.
After goatse.cx and tubgirl I would think to learn my lesson clicking links here ... just can't help it.
Think of the problem through a user's eyes.
Its not their job to care. Its their job to HAVE THAT PROPOSAL BY NOON. Yes I would be assholish too if you would not take my request seriously too (If I didn't work tech).
Tell them I can't give you an estimate or give a very big one so here is a working laptop to work on while I fix it for you. I will let you know and email you when I can give an ETA. Need any more help let me know. Anything else I can help you with just let me know?
The problems with servers are a different matter. The problem is you can't say your boss is an idiot and is too cheap to buy a linux not NT box and use a switch. I got fired for this because it pissed me off so much that I was the scapegoat for such incompetent planning.
Learned my lesson now
Work with them and acted concern always with a sense of urgency. Run to solve each problem and be the man to save the day. Then you will earn respect.
It could be possible that you replaced someone who was incompetant. I am not sure of the situation so naturally you are getting some of the crap for now until respect is earned.
Just let them do their job and always ask if their is anything more you can do. Maybe handle requests. If they are turned down its managements fault and not yoru own. You are on their side and part of their team.
If these requests can't be completed then you need to talk to management and use some bs like lost productivity dollars and mention just having 5 backups and have users save their work on a share and you're good.
She works in the Palm Springs school district and so far the results are mixed and expensive.
Basically the school dumps down $35,000 of tax payer money into laptops that the students try to steal which break when you drop them. The software is all internet based so that means no filtering. For some reason the I.T. department can't figure out how to firewall all addresses besides the 2 or 3 needed for the programs. She was told it had to do with some activeX controls. This means the kids log into myspace, facebook, and other inappropriate web sites when no one is looking. This includes a few sites where a chick in her class thought it was funny to show a pic of herself topless. My wife didn't report it because she could be fired on spot. She tried banning htem after I told her how to filter them with a hosts file. The kids just google for proxies to get around that. This is a problem because the lawyers feel the teacher is 100% responsible 100% of all the viewing on all 30 laptops.
Anyway as a math teacher the students really need to practice on paper and its hard to graph functions and slopes on a computer as the students do not understand the concept. What is good about them is that students can finish their work early and then be done and browse the net. With books they have to wait because they can distract other students if they do any other activities.
My wife kind of likes it because its less work for her. Computer grades everything wtih a submit button. In practice she has had the lkaptop key stolen once or twice and had to put her classroom on lockdown to get them back and the issue of inappropriate websites keep becoming an issue. Schools do not have a budget for a real competent staff who could configure their routers tighter than a virgin's ass with blocking search engines and non educational websites.
The problem is that Cisco clean access agent slows sytems down and running through a VM in Ubuntu will slow your computer to a crawl which still does not solve the problem.
Most schools like the one I go to let you not use the agent but you only have an hour of access. Mac users and Linux users have to restart their connections by the hour or use Windows. Nothing wrong with that unless your run wow or a webserver.
I got addicted to games back in the Quake1/2/3 and unreal tournament days. I credit it to the fact I became unemployed couldn't commit to getting a degree and other bad issues.I decided to take my love of computers outside of games. I too had everquest and wow wrapped up for years.
A few years later I had to support users and many users had graphical issues with games so I installed wow and gave a wow account to my wife.
I never fully got into wow as nothing was good from the original. My wife is hooked and plays hours every day after work. I would rather have her play wow than do drugs or become an alcoholic.
However I feel obligated to play in order to spend time with her. I just can't get into new addictions besides maybe browsing news.
I suppose I could become an addict to wow if I fully commit. I lose friends, raids, and huge amounts of gold from doing other things and I do not want to go heavy into wow as my grades, work, and relationship would suffer. My wife does not allow me to spend excess time on my computer when she is home.
I guess what both of us have is the realization you can't just have one drink when your alcoholic and its the same with gamers. You need to fully commit to 40 hours minimum or you do not get the dopamine high.
Well if he is good at his fingers but doesn't give attention to her she could use her own fingers then. He wouldn't be needed
There is a server recession/depression and Business need to put off investments and asset upgrades until the business environment becomes more favorable.
What kind of ROI (return on investment)will upgrading bring? Seems MS had already succeeded in building a better mouse trap. No real reason to upgrade unlike its predecessors.
Corporations use more public services like an educated workforce, electricity, roads to delivery their products, protection by a military, treaties and other things.
The corporations want us to pay for them while they get a break. The problem is these cost too much money for the average tax payer to pay and why should I compensate for them?
I am the one loaded with student loans at insane interest rates. My parents paid a tiny fraction of what a college grad does today even when calculating inflation. This is because of grant and funding cuts to universities. Add roads, electricity, and other government uses and I would expect my side of the bill is quite high if the company pays absolutely nothing.
Now we are having a situation where the gap in income between the wealthy and the poor is at its highest and economic instability is around due to debt because the wealthy keep raising the prices of housing forcing the poor to make loans at high interest rates.
Taxes suck indeed but unless the government cuts down massively we can not sustain this spending without taxing the average man to death to pay off our deficit.
Its very expensive to just simply fire everyone and move and then rehire elsewhere.
I have noticed a problem in states like California where its hard for Americans to find work.
If company A hires a Mexican they do not have to
a.) Pay taxes for that person
b.) Not pay for health care
30% of employee compsensation goes straight to the insurace companies. Companies also pay $11,000 in taxes for each person they hire.
Also add liability and tax code benefits for companies hiring less than 50 *documented* workers and they can claim to be smaller companies that save them even more money.
Its no wonder the unemployment rate is high and I am surprised its not higher.
So 40% of all the jobs are employeed by undocumented workers in Los Angeles. This is causing a big problem.
Now tell me how is that fair?
Many companies outsource to India for tax and health care costs and not just for salary reduction. If companies had to fork over more money for these things you can imagine a huge amount of jobs would re-open here due to the high cost and low productivity of outsourcing.
A company can not just move.
Most people I know do not want to install any apps on their computers. They are just tools like cars. You buy it and then use it and do not screw them up by installing software you do not need.
Maybe a game or two and office is what most users want. Thats it.
This is also why Ubuntu will never replace Windows. My wife has seen me run Ubuntu on more than one occasion. The question is always why do you waste your time on that when you have Windows Vista that does everything?
She has a point. When you buy a new car do you void the warranty and replace the engine for fun? No. Its the same with changing your operating system. Vista can be a dog but it works and I can get stuff done and not waste time. I may consider switching if more hardware support became available and more stable software packages as well. I am not a unix noob by any sense of the means since I have been using Linux and FreeBSD from 1999 to 2006. I just do not find it useful when my time is limited by marriage, family, college, and a job. I do not want to recompile kernels in order to get hardware working and install software and fix bugs.
I think more applications do bring more bugs. I noticed this trend about 5 or 6 years ago and it nulls the point of switching away from a Microsoft environment due to buggy software and security holes. I try to keep software on a minimum for this reason.
I had quite the opposite experience.
I have given up on Linux for the desktop completely.
It never just works. I have been waiting since 1999 and even switched to FreeBSD for a couple of years. I spent hours twinking the FreeBSD ports or Gentoo portage and it almost works or some bugs happen like an issue of bleeding high volume without hte volume control and a kill -9 will kill only the gui part of the application and my speakers get blown out because the sound system is still blasting, etc.
Anyway Ubuntu sort of worked on my laptop. Then all of the sudden during an apt-get upgrade my hardware became unsupported.
To this day Ubuntu will not run on any non intel AMD chipset. They refuse to provide drivers and the instructions to enable them require a cvs to madwifi which I could do if I had internet access in the first place which I lost. I do not know if Ubuntu is trying to take a stance on principles of supporting proprietary drivers but as a user I do not care. All I know is it used to work and now I have Ethernet, 3d video, or wifi.
And please do not give me the lecture that I should have checked my hardware. I am on a strict budget in this economy and do not have time to check every component in every chipset to find a laptop under $750 to see how stable the Linux drivers are. The intel ones had crappy video or were too expensive.
I had nothing but problems and I use MS Office which is a superior to openoffice. My computers just work with Windows with zero hassles.
Linux is great in the computer room where it does not have to pretend to be the operating system for everyone like Windows tries to be. Windows is now stable for desktop usage and comes with the computer anyway. Unless your a php or Unix developer why switch? Only servers need six sigma %99.97 uptime or better and Windows server 2008 is getting close to this.
Do not get me wrong I think its a great operating system. But I have noticed hardware compatibility has gone down rather than up in recent years due to wifi and users switching from standard desktops to proprietary laptops.
This is what Linux truly needs. Alot of anti Microsoft users are switching to Macs which ends up hurting Linux on anything but servers.
Government is both bad and good.
Where the government needs to get involved is where we have a free rider dilemma on a public good. An example is the military. If you pay for your share for our armed services why should I pay my part? I get protection free of charge. Everything from schools to dams to roads all have this problem. Also having a natural monopoly is bad in capitalism but good in efficiency and a necessity to have things get done for cheap. The government needs to regulate these monopolies such as power, sewer, and phone. We can't have 3 seperate power lines, 3 internet fiber connections, 2 sewer lines, and 3 water for every home. That is crazy. If no regulations exists we would end up in a situation such as ... It is illegal to have an outhouse in your backyard. Well I guess you have to pay me $1100 a month for sewer rates hu? .. etc. Its price regulated on purpose because the government created the monopolies on sewers.
As outrageous and silly as sewage fees and plans sound to us this is exactly what the telecom industry is doing by forcing to be deregulated. They were handed a monopoly on the last mile that tax payers paid for. Competition does not work if a monopoly exists so there are no benefits.
How many of us can afford the $20k or so to send each kid to private school? Or how about lay fiber and buy the property rights to lay the infrastructure and pray the company that lays the cable doesn't turn into a monopoly that charges $200 a month for internet access.
Fact of the matter is we would not have education nor internet access like the rest of the world if the government didn't provide it.
I think web developers and /.ers would take up their pitchforks and the future of the internet could be at stake itself.
Java does have potential and I think someone at Sun should explain to Oracle that raising hte costs and putting up barriers to make higher RIOs would actual hamper Java as many hobbiests and college studnets will learn c#.net instead of java.
They are now AJAX and flash driven.
Java was not ready while flash and shockwave were. I am hoping javafx takes off. The problem is that many new computers sold do not have a jre installed but come with flash.
Javafx should have come out back in the late 1990s when flash was starting to gain attention.
I am hoping Java will come back as Microsoft is slowly taking over java in the server room and adobe flash/air is all the rage. Silver light may take off in a few years after it becomes standard with new computers.
I am still bugged MS bought their way to depreciate the (applet) tag which led to Java's demise.
Applets could have been something if sun would ever allow the applets to run native and not be re-compiled into byte code on spot while the user waited on their 486 with a 14.4 modem. That was truly ugly and nearly killed it on the desktop.
My guess is silverlightFX or something will come out next and will be AJAX like and support HD video and other things and so will AIR in the next 5 years. Lets hope JavaFX does make a little comeback. It does not suck that much today with core2duos and broadband with 3d cards.