Also, I think it's important to remember that real economic growth comes more from innovation than from cheap labor.
Excellent point. All through the American industrialization of the 19th century US wages were higher than most European nations. This meant a distinct incentive for industries to automate, simply to avoid the sky-high US labor costs.
but it neglects the massive operations companies like GE and Intel are running/starting. Many companies are doing their work inhouse at low cost here.
Not surprising. Do those trans-national corporations really have any loyalty to the US or India? It just happens to be where many of their executives, stockholders, and some of their employees happen to live. In the worship of the dollar, nations don't mean anything.
For that matter, employees don't really matter either: they're just variables which can impact production, sales, and profits -- but which country those employees are located in are irrelevant as long as their are no trade/international issues impacting the corporation.
Carter has stated he had reports that Reagan/Bush officials were meeting with the Iranians to undermine release of the hostages.
Former Iranian president Bani-Sadr admitted that a deal was worked out with Reagan/Bush not to release the hostages before the elections (see this among other sources).
So we have an instance of yet another election being rigged by the Republican party.
Jimmy Carter probably took the best swipe at it (creating the Dept. of Energy and all) and look what happened to him.
Umm, let's see: Carter was president when a revolution against a corrupt puppet US dictator in Iran; the dictator previously installed by a US-funded/organized coup against a democratically-elected socialist gov't in 1953. After decades of oppression and torture by the CIA-trained Iranian Savak secret police, Iranians revolted and the rebels seized the hated symbol, the US embassy, and took 53 US people as hostages, creating a huge embarrassment for Carter.
Carter ran for reelection against a far-right actor who railed about how weak the US was, using the hostage situation to illustrate his point but, obviously, failing to talk about its historical roots or the links to past immoral US foreign policies.
We know for a fact that during the elections that there were contacts between the Reagan election team and the Iranians (Google for October surprise). What was discussed is a matter for debate.
We also know for a fact that the hostages were released as soon as Reagan became president.
A third fact is that the Reagan administration soon started shipments of weapons to the Iranians, and later used the profits from those weapon shipments to break the law by funding the "Contra" terrorists in Nicaragua.
And we know that the Dept. of Energy was diverted from its Carter-imagined task of energy conservation and research and became, under the Reagan and Bush administrations, largely concerned with nuclear power and nuclear weapons development.
I thought the U.S. Army was part of the Department of "Defense"[sic]. As such shouldn't the Army's goal be to defend the US from foreign enemies?
With the Posse Comitatus Act still supposedly intact, why does the Army need a vehicle that is obviously aimed at use against a civilian populace?
Or is the Posse Comitatus Act, like our Bill of Rights and getting honest answers from administration officials, yet another casualty of the War on Terror?
Again -- if market forces dictate that to hire candidates, most jobs pay more than the minimum wage: Great!!!
The problem is, not everyone is making more than the minimum wage. The more money people make, the more those people can spend and the stronger our economic cycles will be. If you look at it historically, the US has had one of the highest wage levels throughout the 1800 and 1900s. This benefited us many ways, including giving us a higher level of automation (to avoid those high labor costs) and a strong, robust domestic economy.
If I'm a business and can "get away with" paying people $5.15 an hour, I might think I'm doing great. But in reality, those people are going to be poor consumers of my products/services. A rising tide lifts all boats.
The entire system has checks and balances busting out all over the place. This wasn't by accident.
Correct. According to the thoughts of authors of the Constitution, as written in the Federalist Papers, much of the reason for these checks and balances were for two reasons: (1) to prevent too much power from accumulating in the executive branch (I guess we can say that wasn't totally successful), and (2) to thwart the democratic will of the people (which given our evolution into more of a plutocracy rather than a democratic republic, has been successful).
...the debate over changing the minimum wage law has ONE BLESSED THING to do with public support of public education... but I would love to see you make that connection for me. Seriously.
The point of the original message was to advance the theory that one can oppose and destroy something in a non-direct fashion. The minimum wage law was destroyed simply by gutless politicians refusing to raise the law or to tie it to the rate of inflation, thus letting the rate of inflation eat away at the law until it is no longer relevant or meaningful.
Public education can be destroyed by funding it so poorly that good teachers leave the profession and people like sbaker refuse to put up with incompetent teachers and instead put their children into private schools.
A lot depends on your school's local culture. Some schools put up with or encourage risk-taking. Others frown on it.
With computers the classroom dynamic should change to more of a peer-teaching method instead of the teacher standing in front and being the fountain of all knowledge. You just have to adopt a peer mindset with compsci if you want to be successful.
That's a radical change breaking years (or decades!) of training and tradition for some teachers.
There seems to be an attitude at the school that so long as she maintains classroom discipline,...
That reminds me of an epiphany moment I had when getting my teaching certificate and sitting in an education class one day. The prof mentioned -- almost in passing -- about how some teachers use boredom as a form of control. Yes, classroom control and behavior is considered very important to some teachers and administrators.
If you allow kids to teach you, you automatically have to give up some control. You also take some risk that a kid might do something wrong. Some teachers view it to be far more important to be always in control. Don't "risk" getting the kids excited about a topic. Don't allow them to think that in some ways they're equal or might know more than the teacher. It's safer ("better" in their eyes) and less threatening to be boring and to always keep control centered on yourself...
I'll agree with you: there is an interesting story to be told about market forces causing a scarcity of good technology teachers.
That's one way of looking at it. But it's not just compsci teachers that are leaving. Schools find it nearly impossible to keep good math and science teachers, even English teachers are leaving (though this has slowed a bit with the present economy). The point was that this is due to too much work, not enough pay, and that it is most easily seen in the compsci fields.
Nothing has been "repealed" de facto or otherwise.
If the reality of the market is such that even teenagers won't work for the minimum wage, IMHO the minimum wage has been, de facto, repealed. That's not true in every single state, but in my experience, it's true in most states.
What "tactic"? I don't even get what conspiracy you might even be hinting at here...
The tactic of instead of getting a legislative consensus and passing a law, that instead you can use gov't gridlock to kill laws. I cited this tactic as having the effect of doing away with the minimum wage law and pondered whether it is being used to undermine the public's support of public education.
Others have wondered whether the same tactic is being used to battle Medicare (pay the doctors so little that they won't take Medicare patients) or to "repeal" Social Security (siphon off the SS trust fund and spend the money on other things, then when the baby boomers retire either suck up huge tax increases (unlikely) or cut benefits).
There's a reason why this "computer teacher" is like this: you often get what you pay for. The pay rates that compsci teachers get in public education is an embarrassment. Add to that the fact that teaching -- if done correctly -- is hard work and you've got a disaster on your hands. You're seeing one end of that disaster.
I'm a former public/private school teacher, district technology coordinator, and college professor, who now works in the private sector. I've seen this over and over again.
Why should that computer teacher slave away in a public school when if s/he's good, s/he can get a corporate trainer job that is less work and pays $10-20,000 per year more than public education?
Why should that district technical support person work with insane budgets in an environment where often the users are deliberately trying to break the technology when instead s/he can go work for corporate IT and have less work, more money, sane users, and a boss that will actually send him to training once in a while?
What you're seeing is the sharp end of the U.S. not funding education adequately. Because of this dynamic, the "good" people leave and what you have left are computer teachers like your son has. The only thing those people in education have going for them are a few more days off, the protection of the teacher's union, and some decent (but declining) benefits.
If I were to put on my conspiracy cap, I'd say this is a plot to do away with public education. Bear with me a moment...
Years ago we had a real minimum wage. For example, in 1950, 2 people working at the minimum wage earned 94% of the median family income of the country. Pro-business politicians knew they couldn't do away with the minimum wage, it would be political suicide. So instead they fought to keep minimum wage increases down and over the years inflation ate away at the minimum wage. Today, 2 people working minimum wage jobs would earn way under 50% of the median family income -- those 2 minimum wage earners would be raising a family in dire poverty.
So today we see a situation where the minimum wage is often irrelevant -- in many states no one will work for the federal minimum wage because it's unrealistically low. It's so low that many states have minimum wage laws higher than the federal level, and so in effect we've de facto repealled the minimum wage law.
I wonder if the same tactic is being used to do away with public education...
That's funny. Let's see, we have a president sitting in the White House who lost the election. The election was rigged in a state run by his brother, oversaw by Florida Sec. of State Kathleen Harris (G. Bush's Florida campaign director). This election included denying tens of thousands the right of voting by a deliberate move of removing felons from the voting rolls (fine) and people whose names and SSNs were similar to those of a felon (not fine!). There are clearly documented examples (referenced by federal US election officials) of denying blacks and minorities the right to vote and of several Republican counties throwing ballots away. When the vote was close military ships and bases overseas were alerted to get more people to vote (on the theory those votes would be overwhemingly Republican). Despite the law clearly saying those votes had to have a valid postmark by the election day, Harris' Florida election people said to count those votes that were not validly postmarked.
Voting was confused enough that a recount was ordered, a recount approved by the Flordia state Supreme Court. When it was clear that Gore was going to win the recount, the media clearly had to fix Bush in the public's mind as the winner. So the head of Fox News (G. Bush's first cousin) called the election in Bush's favor.
The vote then moved to the US Supreme Court. The Supreme Court had to work fast because Gore was catching up and would soon pass Bush in the recount. One Supreme Court "justice" [sic] had a son working for the legal firm which presented the Republican's case. Another "justice" [sic] had a wife working for Bush's campaign transition team. Yet those 2 justices did not recuse themselves, and instead were the key votes in the 5-4 decision to stop the recount. A very nice, clean, bloodless coup!
Many times I've heard the US president tell tales of how the IAEA said in 1998 Iraq was working on nuclear weapons, but he IAEA said no such thing. Many times I've heard the president say how the UN weapons inspectors were "kicked out" of Iraq -- yet they left voluntarily after being frustrated by Iraqi resistance to inspections. It's clear these repeated incidents are not "slips of the tongue." It's clear why the president is lying like this -- he simply wants to build support for an attack on Iraq.
Why this ramble? My point is this: What person is fool enough to trust the government now? What makes you think we're that naive?
Given the above examples, given the lies surrounding the Iran-Contra affair and the US importing of drugs to support the Contras during the 1980s, given the history of the Vietnam era -- deliberate large-scale lies to the American people and attempts by the Nixon administration to rig an election -- is there any person who really thinks we live in a democratic republic and that our government is trustworthy?!
This message -- and your e-mail and movements across the WWW/Internet -- is being monitored by the US gov't and it's "new" version of the First Amendment. Don't worry, you have nothing to fear, just trust us -- we'll only use these new draconian laws on the bad guys and you're "free" talk talk about J.Lo or the Super Bowl all you want...
Doesn't this report work as FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) in the most classic meaning of the term?
Imagine some mid-sized fairly-clueless company who is considering GNU/Linux and they read this article. Wouldn't the natural thing to do be to say, "Hey, let's wait until that Microsoft version gets here..." Classic FUD response.
It's clear Microsoft isn't going to do anything to further GNU/Linux. Yes, they could make some money here, but at the expense of Windows? I don't think so.
I know that for some quoting RMS is some kind of blasphemy. But in this recent BBC article Stallman said, "Proprietary software is not designed to serve you but it is designed to control you" and later added, "A whole generation has grown up with the idea that it is normal for them to have no freedom."
This proves his point in a major way. The question remains, how long are people going to put up with such abuse?
Martin, aka "Joey", is one of the many unsung free software heroes of SPI/Debian. Joey deals with everything from helping newbies to organizational tasks to technical issues in a way that few can do -- either because of a lack of time, patience, and/or skills.
This is a case of someone dedicating huge amounts of time in the best traditions of free software -- something that few can do, either because of finances, other life pressures, or simply human limitations. This makes Joey an overachiever in the best sense of the word.
The poster was right: this resignation spells trouble for free software. It's a sign of distress and it should cause some thought to be given to the issues of time/work and free software: Is there a better way we can encourage people to commit their time to free software projects? Is there a way we can give these hard working people who do all of the non-glamorous -- but necessary -- work behind the scenes the recogition they deserve?
I've run Debian for years, and I've always felt that other distros were better. After all, those other distros get much more press, they've got glitzy widgets and eye candy, and it's hard to resist that.
So about every 6 months I'll hear about a new version or distro and will give them a shot. I'll install them and make an honest effort to use it, rationalizing my choice just like the distro's marketing people want me to. But I always wind up throwing my hands up in disgust and thinking, "How can people use this crap from day to day?!"
Now, with many distros polluting the ideas of free software and open source -- feeding you a GPL license and then their own proprietary license which prevents you from copying CDs and giving them to all your friends or from installing on multiple computers -- there's more reason than ever to use Debian.
Debian's geek appeal is legendary. But now, with Debian's Desktop and Education sub-groups, the old idea of being proud of a geeky install is disappearing. Debian's beta installer is on par with every other distro's -- a fact that thousands of Debian users are eagerly awaiting.
Everyone's heard of apt-get and Debian's package management system. Yes, it's as slick as you've heard. But fewer people realize the huge scope of software available in Debian. I run all my desktop machines with Debian's "unstable" (think "unstable" as in changing; Debian's "unstable" release might have bugs, but there are certainly no more bugs in unstable than in the commercial release distros!). With that I have a huge selection of software -- over 10,000 packages. All of those packages are done by registered developers whose first job is to do it right.
When I read in Linux Journal or somewhere online about a nifty program XYZ123, I just try to install it -- 9 times out of 10 one of Debian's hundreds of developers has already packaged up XYZ123 for Debian. There's a huge advantage of having a distro that is controlled by geeks who like computers and who do this for the fun of it. Debian's developers are into GNU/Linux, and it shows.
On DebianHELP we call Debian "militantly free software". Yes, that's what it is. That militant attitude permeates Debian and this is Debian's strong point. I like the fact that Debian people worry about little details in the license agreements. I like the fact that Debian segregates non-free software into its own little slum. I like that Debian has a "social contract" and clear guidelines about what it's interested in and what it's not.
Many times I've often said to myself, "Gee, why are those guys worried about that stupid thing..." (e.g. the old KDE-QT license battles). But time and time again I'm proven wrong as the correct view turns out to be the morally miltant view. Besides turning out a first-rate distro with loads of software, Debian's role as GNU/Linux's moral compass is something we can't afford to lose.
Forcing the government to release code under GPL is *removing* competition from the market. Public domain is much better. The code can be taken up by private companies and they can improve and sell it.
Gee, Red Hat seems to make a fair amount of money taking GPL code, improving it, and then selling it...
Needless to say, I disagree. The best license for taxpayer-funded code is the GPL -- that allows any and everyone to take the code and use/improve it, and it guarantees the code's freedom, both in the present and in the future.
Obviously, I didn't like the article. First, a Q&A was the wrong tactic to use when you know you're just going to get the same answer from all 3 companies. I mean, I don't want to read the same thing 3 times.
Worse, THG's "conclusion" just parroted the company line and thus I read the same thing 4 times.:-(
The "mystery" of this is simple: there's a cartel in the hard drive industry.
The three companies got together and want to drive up their profits and to cut back on warranties. Large corporations don't really care about customers. Customers only come into play if their anger negatively impacts gross sales, marketshare, and/or profits.
What treaty do we have with Israel? We surely don't have a mutual defense treaty.
As to the US keeping our treaties, that's just a nationalistic myth. The US gov't breaks treaties when it's in their interest. Sure, we try not to do that often, but as the anti-ballistic missle treaty illustrates, when we want to break a treaty, we will break it.
I'll tell you what it's all about: It's about borders, language, and culture.
I agree with that in general. (But definitely not with some of your points.) However, you seem to completely ignore the imperialist aspects of US foreign policy -- the US support of undemocratic governments in the Middle East, our domination of the oil trade and international monetary system, interference in Arab countries, etc.
Instead of Bush using almost exclusively military tactics, I think this war against terror is more or less a war against Islamic fundamentalism. If that's what it is, then our primary weapons should be social and cultural in nature and not military.
Do you remember the story just before (or was it during) the Gulf War, the one about cruel Iraqi soldiers going into Kuwaiti hospitals and stealing the babies' incubators? The story was full of details about how the Iraqi troops put the babies on the cold concrete floors and was "verified"[sic] by Kuwaiti doctors and officials.
Of course, we later learned that the entire story was bullshit -- it was simple propaganda.
While I'm not saying that the referenced story is false, I would take any stories like this with a huge grain of salt.
The article headline says students are outpacing their teachers. Shouldn't that read: Students continue to outpace their teachers?!
As a former public school teacher, technology coordinator, and comp sci professor, it's my experience that with the terrible pay and bureaucracy in public education, very little innovative education with technology is being done. Sure, every state and lots of districts can point to a shining example, but those are by far the isolated exception rather than the rule.
When you see sharp kids in public schools who know technology, credit the kid and not the school. In many cases, the sharp kids are bored out of their minds and are discouraged (either directly or indirectly) from pushing the envelope and rocking the boat.
The Times-Picayune's article is the word kind of cheerleading masquerading as "new reporting." Let the article's author know how you feel.
My attempt:
I found your article "City may get free Microsoft makeover" amusing, in a sad sort of way. Your omissions seemed to speak more than your words.
There was not one word of the irony of the city working out a deal with a convicted, unrepentant monopolist corporation in upgrading the city's police department. Surely that should have been mentioned.
Nor was there any real data on what the "minuscule" software upgrade costs would be in the future. Instead, you just used the "minuscule" quote and presented it as a fact. Anyone who has dealt with Microsoft's licensing on any significant scale knows these upgrade costs are wildly excessive and over a short time are far more expensive than the software's initial license fees.
The entire aspect of this being a "gift" was not questioned. Nor was the fact that public data will be locked up in secret, proprietary file formats that only Microsoft knows. The fact that this "gift" will lock the city into Microsoft software and make any future migration away from Microsoft software very expensive was never mentioned.
And moreover, there was not one word about Microsoft's legendary security problems and whether the officials involved had even considered these problems when linking together many different government agencies which contain huge amounts of personal/private data.
To me, the article was simply "feel good" cheerleading; this is hardly the role the public expects the media to play. Your article wasn't objective nor did it try to do even a minimal amount of investigation. Shame on you.
So this means that I cannot legally back up Microsoft Flight Simulator to tape?
After all, if your point holds true, I can only back up a commercial games onto a CD in the exact same format it was purchased in. I don't think that's the case.
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Also, I think it's important to remember that real economic growth comes more from innovation than from cheap labor.
Excellent point. All through the American industrialization of the 19th century US wages were higher than most European nations. This meant a distinct incentive for industries to automate, simply to avoid the sky-high US labor costs.
Let's hope that trend continues...
Not surprising. Do those trans-national corporations really have any loyalty to the US or India? It just happens to be where many of their executives, stockholders, and some of their employees happen to live. In the worship of the dollar, nations don't mean anything.
For that matter, employees don't really matter either: they're just variables which can impact production, sales, and profits -- but which country those employees are located in are irrelevant as long as their are no trade/international issues impacting the corporation.
Former Iranian president Bani-Sadr admitted that a deal was worked out with Reagan/Bush not to release the hostages before the elections (see this among other sources).
So we have an instance of yet another election being rigged by the Republican party.
Umm, let's see: Carter was president when a revolution against a corrupt puppet US dictator in Iran; the dictator previously installed by a US-funded/organized coup against a democratically-elected socialist gov't in 1953. After decades of oppression and torture by the CIA-trained Iranian Savak secret police, Iranians revolted and the rebels seized the hated symbol, the US embassy, and took 53 US people as hostages, creating a huge embarrassment for Carter.
Carter ran for reelection against a far-right actor who railed about how weak the US was, using the hostage situation to illustrate his point but, obviously, failing to talk about its historical roots or the links to past immoral US foreign policies.
We know for a fact that during the elections that there were contacts between the Reagan election team and the Iranians (Google for October surprise). What was discussed is a matter for debate.
We also know for a fact that the hostages were released as soon as Reagan became president.
A third fact is that the Reagan administration soon started shipments of weapons to the Iranians, and later used the profits from those weapon shipments to break the law by funding the "Contra" terrorists in Nicaragua.
And we know that the Dept. of Energy was diverted from its Carter-imagined task of energy conservation and research and became, under the Reagan and Bush administrations, largely concerned with nuclear power and nuclear weapons development.
What was your point?
I thought the U.S. Army was part of the Department of "Defense"[sic]. As such shouldn't the Army's goal be to defend the US from foreign enemies?
With the Posse Comitatus Act still supposedly intact, why does the Army need a vehicle that is obviously aimed at use against a civilian populace?
Or is the Posse Comitatus Act, like our Bill of Rights and getting honest answers from administration officials, yet another casualty of the War on Terror?
The problem is, not everyone is making more than the minimum wage. The more money people make, the more those people can spend and the stronger our economic cycles will be. If you look at it historically, the US has had one of the highest wage levels throughout the 1800 and 1900s. This benefited us many ways, including giving us a higher level of automation (to avoid those high labor costs) and a strong, robust domestic economy.
If I'm a business and can "get away with" paying people $5.15 an hour, I might think I'm doing great. But in reality, those people are going to be poor consumers of my products/services. A rising tide lifts all boats.
The entire system has checks and balances busting out all over the place. This wasn't by accident.
Correct. According to the thoughts of authors of the Constitution, as written in the Federalist Papers, much of the reason for these checks and balances were for two reasons: (1) to prevent too much power from accumulating in the executive branch (I guess we can say that wasn't totally successful), and (2) to thwart the democratic will of the people (which given our evolution into more of a plutocracy rather than a democratic republic, has been successful).
The point of the original message was to advance the theory that one can oppose and destroy something in a non-direct fashion. The minimum wage law was destroyed simply by gutless politicians refusing to raise the law or to tie it to the rate of inflation, thus letting the rate of inflation eat away at the law until it is no longer relevant or meaningful.
Public education can be destroyed by funding it so poorly that good teachers leave the profession and people like sbaker refuse to put up with incompetent teachers and instead put their children into private schools.
With computers the classroom dynamic should change to more of a peer-teaching method instead of the teacher standing in front and being the fountain of all knowledge. You just have to adopt a peer mindset with compsci if you want to be successful.
That's a radical change breaking years (or decades!) of training and tradition for some teachers.
There seems to be an attitude at the school that so long as she maintains classroom discipline, ...
That reminds me of an epiphany moment I had when getting my teaching certificate and sitting in an education class one day. The prof mentioned -- almost in passing -- about how some teachers use boredom as a form of control. Yes, classroom control and behavior is considered very important to some teachers and administrators.
If you allow kids to teach you, you automatically have to give up some control. You also take some risk that a kid might do something wrong. Some teachers view it to be far more important to be always in control. Don't "risk" getting the kids excited about a topic. Don't allow them to think that in some ways they're equal or might know more than the teacher. It's safer ("better" in their eyes) and less threatening to be boring and to always keep control centered on yourself...
That's been known to happen... :-)
I'll agree with you: there is an interesting story to be told about market forces causing a scarcity of good technology teachers.
That's one way of looking at it. But it's not just compsci teachers that are leaving. Schools find it nearly impossible to keep good math and science teachers, even English teachers are leaving (though this has slowed a bit with the present economy). The point was that this is due to too much work, not enough pay, and that it is most easily seen in the compsci fields.
Nothing has been "repealed" de facto or otherwise.
If the reality of the market is such that even teenagers won't work for the minimum wage, IMHO the minimum wage has been, de facto, repealed. That's not true in every single state, but in my experience, it's true in most states.
What "tactic"? I don't even get what conspiracy you might even be hinting at here...
The tactic of instead of getting a legislative consensus and passing a law, that instead you can use gov't gridlock to kill laws. I cited this tactic as having the effect of doing away with the minimum wage law and pondered whether it is being used to undermine the public's support of public education.
Others have wondered whether the same tactic is being used to battle Medicare (pay the doctors so little that they won't take Medicare patients) or to "repeal" Social Security (siphon off the SS trust fund and spend the money on other things, then when the baby boomers retire either suck up huge tax increases (unlikely) or cut benefits).
I'm a former public/private school teacher, district technology coordinator, and college professor, who now works in the private sector. I've seen this over and over again.
Why should that computer teacher slave away in a public school when if s/he's good, s/he can get a corporate trainer job that is less work and pays $10-20,000 per year more than public education?
Why should that district technical support person work with insane budgets in an environment where often the users are deliberately trying to break the technology when instead s/he can go work for corporate IT and have less work, more money, sane users, and a boss that will actually send him to training once in a while?
What you're seeing is the sharp end of the U.S. not funding education adequately. Because of this dynamic, the "good" people leave and what you have left are computer teachers like your son has. The only thing those people in education have going for them are a few more days off, the protection of the teacher's union, and some decent (but declining) benefits.
If I were to put on my conspiracy cap, I'd say this is a plot to do away with public education. Bear with me a moment...
Years ago we had a real minimum wage. For example, in 1950, 2 people working at the minimum wage earned 94% of the median family income of the country. Pro-business politicians knew they couldn't do away with the minimum wage, it would be political suicide. So instead they fought to keep minimum wage increases down and over the years inflation ate away at the minimum wage. Today, 2 people working minimum wage jobs would earn way under 50% of the median family income -- those 2 minimum wage earners would be raising a family in dire poverty.
So today we see a situation where the minimum wage is often irrelevant -- in many states no one will work for the federal minimum wage because it's unrealistically low. It's so low that many states have minimum wage laws higher than the federal level, and so in effect we've de facto repealled the minimum wage law.
I wonder if the same tactic is being used to do away with public education...
That's funny. Let's see, we have a president sitting in the White House who lost the election. The election was rigged in a state run by his brother, oversaw by Florida Sec. of State Kathleen Harris (G. Bush's Florida campaign director). This election included denying tens of thousands the right of voting by a deliberate move of removing felons from the voting rolls (fine) and people whose names and SSNs were similar to those of a felon (not fine!). There are clearly documented examples (referenced by federal US election officials) of denying blacks and minorities the right to vote and of several Republican counties throwing ballots away. When the vote was close military ships and bases overseas were alerted to get more people to vote (on the theory those votes would be overwhemingly Republican). Despite the law clearly saying those votes had to have a valid postmark by the election day, Harris' Florida election people said to count those votes that were not validly postmarked.
Voting was confused enough that a recount was ordered, a recount approved by the Flordia state Supreme Court. When it was clear that Gore was going to win the recount, the media clearly had to fix Bush in the public's mind as the winner. So the head of Fox News (G. Bush's first cousin) called the election in Bush's favor.
The vote then moved to the US Supreme Court. The Supreme Court had to work fast because Gore was catching up and would soon pass Bush in the recount. One Supreme Court "justice" [sic] had a son working for the legal firm which presented the Republican's case. Another "justice" [sic] had a wife working for Bush's campaign transition team. Yet those 2 justices did not recuse themselves, and instead were the key votes in the 5-4 decision to stop the recount. A very nice, clean, bloodless coup!
Many times I've heard the US president tell tales of how the IAEA said in 1998 Iraq was working on nuclear weapons, but he IAEA said no such thing. Many times I've heard the president say how the UN weapons inspectors were "kicked out" of Iraq -- yet they left voluntarily after being frustrated by Iraqi resistance to inspections. It's clear these repeated incidents are not "slips of the tongue." It's clear why the president is lying like this -- he simply wants to build support for an attack on Iraq.
Why this ramble? My point is this: What person is fool enough to trust the government now? What makes you think we're that naive?
Given the above examples, given the lies surrounding the Iran-Contra affair and the US importing of drugs to support the Contras during the 1980s, given the history of the Vietnam era -- deliberate large-scale lies to the American people and attempts by the Nixon administration to rig an election -- is there any person who really thinks we live in a democratic republic and that our government is trustworthy?!
This message -- and your e-mail and movements across the WWW/Internet -- is being monitored by the US gov't and it's "new" version of the First Amendment. Don't worry, you have nothing to fear, just trust us -- we'll only use these new draconian laws on the bad guys and you're "free" talk talk about J.Lo or the Super Bowl all you want...
Doesn't this report work as FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) in the most classic meaning of the term?
Imagine some mid-sized fairly-clueless company who is considering GNU/Linux and they read this article. Wouldn't the natural thing to do be to say, "Hey, let's wait until that Microsoft version gets here..." Classic FUD response.
It's clear Microsoft isn't going to do anything to further GNU/Linux. Yes, they could make some money here, but at the expense of Windows? I don't think so.
This proves his point in a major way. The question remains, how long are people going to put up with such abuse?
Martin, aka "Joey", is one of the many unsung free software heroes of SPI/Debian. Joey deals with everything from helping newbies to organizational tasks to technical issues in a way that few can do -- either because of a lack of time, patience, and/or skills.
This is a case of someone dedicating huge amounts of time in the best traditions of free software -- something that few can do, either because of finances, other life pressures, or simply human limitations. This makes Joey an overachiever in the best sense of the word.
The poster was right: this resignation spells trouble for free software. It's a sign of distress and it should cause some thought to be given to the issues of time/work and free software: Is there a better way we can encourage people to commit their time to free software projects? Is there a way we can give these hard working people who do all of the non-glamorous -- but necessary -- work behind the scenes the recogition they deserve?
I've run Debian for years, and I've always felt that other distros were better. After all, those other distros get much more press, they've got glitzy widgets and eye candy, and it's hard to resist that.
So about every 6 months I'll hear about a new version or distro and will give them a shot. I'll install them and make an honest effort to use it, rationalizing my choice just like the distro's marketing people want me to. But I always wind up throwing my hands up in disgust and thinking, "How can people use this crap from day to day?!"
Now, with many distros polluting the ideas of free software and open source -- feeding you a GPL license and then their own proprietary license which prevents you from copying CDs and giving them to all your friends or from installing on multiple computers -- there's more reason than ever to use Debian.
Debian's geek appeal is legendary. But now, with Debian's Desktop and Education sub-groups, the old idea of being proud of a geeky install is disappearing. Debian's beta installer is on par with every other distro's -- a fact that thousands of Debian users are eagerly awaiting.
Everyone's heard of apt-get and Debian's package management system. Yes, it's as slick as you've heard. But fewer people realize the huge scope of software available in Debian. I run all my desktop machines with Debian's "unstable" (think "unstable" as in changing; Debian's "unstable" release might have bugs, but there are certainly no more bugs in unstable than in the commercial release distros!). With that I have a huge selection of software -- over 10,000 packages. All of those packages are done by registered developers whose first job is to do it right.
When I read in Linux Journal or somewhere online about a nifty program XYZ123, I just try to install it -- 9 times out of 10 one of Debian's hundreds of developers has already packaged up XYZ123 for Debian. There's a huge advantage of having a distro that is controlled by geeks who like computers and who do this for the fun of it. Debian's developers are into GNU/Linux, and it shows.
On DebianHELP we call Debian "militantly free software". Yes, that's what it is. That militant attitude permeates Debian and this is Debian's strong point. I like the fact that Debian people worry about little details in the license agreements. I like the fact that Debian segregates non-free software into its own little slum. I like that Debian has a "social contract" and clear guidelines about what it's interested in and what it's not.
Many times I've often said to myself, "Gee, why are those guys worried about that stupid thing..." (e.g. the old KDE-QT license battles). But time and time again I'm proven wrong as the correct view turns out to be the morally miltant view. Besides turning out a first-rate distro with loads of software, Debian's role as GNU/Linux's moral compass is something we can't afford to lose.
Forcing the government to release code under GPL is *removing* competition from the market. Public domain is much better. The code can be taken up by private companies and they can improve and sell it.
Gee, Red Hat seems to make a fair amount of money taking GPL code, improving it, and then selling it...
Needless to say, I disagree. The best license for taxpayer-funded code is the GPL -- that allows any and everyone to take the code and use/improve it, and it guarantees the code's freedom, both in the present and in the future.
Worse, THG's "conclusion" just parroted the company line and thus I read the same thing 4 times. :-(
The "mystery" of this is simple: there's a cartel in the hard drive industry.
The three companies got together and want to drive up their profits and to cut back on warranties. Large corporations don't really care about customers. Customers only come into play if their anger negatively impacts gross sales, marketshare, and/or profits.
Maybe RMS and the FSF has a point about all that "freedom" stuff after all. :-)
With my government, I pay for corporate welfare and software patent clowns.
How can I redirect some of my tax money to go to Germany?!
What treaty do we have with Israel? We surely don't have a mutual defense treaty.
As to the US keeping our treaties, that's just a nationalistic myth. The US gov't breaks treaties when it's in their interest. Sure, we try not to do that often, but as the anti-ballistic missle treaty illustrates, when we want to break a treaty, we will break it.
I'll tell you what it's all about: It's about borders, language, and culture.
I agree with that in general. (But definitely not with some of your points.) However, you seem to completely ignore the imperialist aspects of US foreign policy -- the US support of undemocratic governments in the Middle East, our domination of the oil trade and international monetary system, interference in Arab countries, etc.
Instead of Bush using almost exclusively military tactics, I think this war against terror is more or less a war against Islamic fundamentalism. If that's what it is, then our primary weapons should be social and cultural in nature and not military.
Of course, we later learned that the entire story was bullshit -- it was simple propaganda.
While I'm not saying that the referenced story is false, I would take any stories like this with a huge grain of salt.
As a former public school teacher, technology coordinator, and comp sci professor, it's my experience that with the terrible pay and bureaucracy in public education, very little innovative education with technology is being done. Sure, every state and lots of districts can point to a shining example, but those are by far the isolated exception rather than the rule.
When you see sharp kids in public schools who know technology, credit the kid and not the school. In many cases, the sharp kids are bored out of their minds and are discouraged (either directly or indirectly) from pushing the envelope and rocking the boat.
My attempt:
I found your article "City may get free Microsoft makeover" amusing, in a sad sort of way. Your omissions seemed to speak more than your words.
There was not one word of the irony of the city working out a deal with a convicted, unrepentant monopolist corporation in upgrading the city's police department. Surely that should have been mentioned.
Nor was there any real data on what the "minuscule" software upgrade costs would be in the future. Instead, you just used the "minuscule" quote and presented it as a fact. Anyone who has dealt with Microsoft's licensing on any significant scale knows these upgrade costs are wildly excessive and over a short time are far more expensive than the software's initial license fees.
The entire aspect of this being a "gift" was not questioned. Nor was the fact that public data will be locked up in secret, proprietary file formats that only Microsoft knows. The fact that this "gift" will lock the city into Microsoft software and make any future migration away from Microsoft software very expensive was never mentioned.
And moreover, there was not one word about Microsoft's legendary security problems and whether the officials involved had even considered these problems when linking together many different government agencies which contain huge amounts of personal/private data.
To me, the article was simply "feel good" cheerleading; this is hardly the role the public expects the media to play. Your article wasn't objective nor did it try to do even a minimal amount of investigation. Shame on you.
http://sharpelectronics.com/global/ContactUsImprov eSite/1,1889,,00.html
Let them have it...
So this means that I cannot legally back up Microsoft Flight Simulator to tape?
After all, if your point holds true, I can only back up a commercial games onto a CD in the exact same format it was purchased in. I don't think that's the case.
OCS is GPL'ed, and I'm impressed with the calendar portion of it.