If you work on a Closed Source project, some faceless corporation owns everything you put into it.
That's why you get a paycheck. In case you haven't noticed, EVERY job that involves working for a company, they get to benefit & keep whatever it is you're working on, whether it's a manufacturing plant, a retail store, a service company, etc. Working on closed source projects is no more slavery than working at McDonald's.
As a former contract programmer who moved around every few months, I'm wondering... What in the hell are you bitching about? Any programmer worth his salt moves around already. What's the difference whether your plane goes to LA or to Bangalore?
I completely agree with you. Jobs are going to continue to move around the globe, and accordingly, trade barriers and labor barriers also need to drop so that an American can truly take advantage of say, Intel saving labor costs on making their chips. I want to be able to buy the same cheap Intel chips that say, the Chinese can buy.
But jobs WILL continue to move. Whether or not the various gov'ts will allow free trade is another matter entirely.
Elitist? Go fuck yourself kid. I've spent my morning sheetrocking an addition to one of my stores. Show me an "elitist" that gets up at 7:00 AM on a Saturday to swing a fucking crowbar until 1:00 AM. Jesus, what a fucking cry baby you are!
You're absolutely right. That's not free trade. THAT is where the gov't should get involved... not with silly protectionist policies that only hurts the US in the long run. They need to start knocking down those barriers, so instead of being able to travel freely from Seattle to Boston for work, US citizens can travel from Dallas to New Delhi.
Oh, puh-lease. I lost my job in the dot-com bubble, and I scraped together credit cards to start a business. Don't whine to me. I've been working 12-14 hour days for 7 days a week for the past 2 years.
Rather than hoping that everyone will, somehow, achieve a more equal economic level, why don't we start working now to preserve and strengthen the middle-class?
Because you're talkign about government intervention, and any time the government intervenes, it's a completel and abject failure. Look at the agriculture industry. We have the US gov't trying to "save farms". We have some of the most productive agricultural practices in the world, and the gov't is paying farmers to let fields go fallow, they're paying them NOT to produce, and they're artificially jacking up the proces of grain and milk. Ever wonder why that box of Corn Flakes costs $4? The gov't. Without gov't subsidies, you'd be able to buy bread for $0.50 a loaf, cereal for $1/box, and milk for $1/carton. That's just ONE example. This rich vs, poor thing has never proven to actually happen throughout history. History (and nature) both show an equilibrium happening. The US may have less of a middle class, but that doesn't mean it's going away. The middle class now lives in New Delhi.
No, a defeatist has your mentality: Whine, whine, whine, protect my job because I can't compete, whine, whine. The answer is to adapt.
And as far as the standard of living goes, I dont' know of a single other country on the planet that has as much cheap food choices as we do and gasoline as cheap as we do. Hell, minimum-wage employees still have cable TV and cars. Try doing your "poor me" schtick in central Africa, where people live in dirt huts, or much of South America, or SE Asia.
And I'm sure that people with degrees in buggy whips are having a hard time finding a job, too. Just because you have a degree doesn't mean that you're entitled to a job. Face it. You made a bad decision. Your options now are to move to India (where you can live well as a programmer), or find a new profession. Adapt or die. Nobody said life was fair, kiddo. That's something they don't teach you in college.
And I'm not saying that it is. More than likely, the entire planet's standard of living will be much higer in say, 100 years. It's improving in most of the world as we speak. The US and other western countries are just so far out of whack, that there's going to be a major adjustment in the Us in the short term before things equalize. But I agree. Cutting costs is almost always beneficial to everybody, eventually. It's just hard for unemployed Americans (again, I was one, and I understand the frustration) to see in the short term.
when the house of cards crashes down because no one here has any more money to spend.
You miss the other side of the coin. People in traditionally poor countries are becoming wealthier by the minute, and thus are also becoming customers. There's no house of cards. There's simply a shift in economies from a US based, protectionist economy, to a world economy.
It's business. Maybe not good business, but business, nonetheless. Companies in the US haven't been loyal to their employees in many years. Employees who are foolishly trying to be loyal to their employers are just being stupid. You do what you can to earn as much as possible, regardless of company. The companies will try to pay as little as possible, regardless of employees. That's how capitalism works.
Unfortunately for the fat & happy Americans (I'm one of them), we're entering an age of a truly global economy, where there are very few barriers as far as communication and travel. There's a huge standard of living between first world and thrid world countries. Basic economics (hell, and nature) say that what's going to happen is that there's going to have to be an equilibrium that say, the US and India will reach, eventually in terms of standard of living pay rates, etc. At least for the next generation or so, the US is going to see a dramatic drop in standard of living, while other parts of the world increase (we're seeing that already in SE Asia). There's no way around it. The Net and telephones and cheap air travel have done this, and there's really no way to stop it. The genie is out of the bottle. CEO's do what they always do: maximize the bottom line. workers do what they always do: work for as much money as is possible. It's really inevitable, and it's time the IT industry sucks it up and realizes this. It's already happened with other US industries (autos, steel, textiles), and will continue for the forseeable future.
Time to tighten up those belts boys! The days of a big house in the suburbs with a giant SUV are pretty much over. If you expect to be able to continue living as well as you have been previously, you're kidding yourself.
I don't understand this store. They censor CDs that have explicit lyrics without any on-the-package indication. Yet, they sell guns? Seems like two sets of values to me.
It's one set of fucked up values called conservative Christianity. They believe that you can't say "fuck", but shooting someone/something is just fine and dandy. Yet another readon not to go into one of those fucking stores. They're run by and patronized by the Religious Right, which is the same group that supports Bush, Ashcroft, the RIAA, the MPAA, Diebold, and the list goes on and on...
Just found this: The Arkansas-based company posted $256 billion in revenue for the 52-week period that ended Jan. 31 -- more revenue than International Business Machines, Coca-Cola, Time Warner and Microsoft combined.
You want to target a big, nasty corporation? There are none that come close to Wal-Mart, as far as consumer products go.
Besides, where was the concern when tags were placed inside of CDs and DVDs? Is this just another "attack Wal-Mart" parade? Wal-Mart is big, but they still are only 8% of the retail market... which makes them anything but a monopoly.
First off, 8% of all retail is fucking huge. Many times bigger than any competitor. Remember that retail includes selling any kinds of goods, whatsoever.
Secondly, they ARE a monopoly in many parts of the country for general merchandise, and are quickly taking over grocery stores too. Just because the Supreme Court hasn't ruled as such, doesn't mean that they're not a monopoly.
Thirdly, last I checked, Wal-Mart accounted for 2.5% of the GNP of the US. If that's not big, I don't know what is.
I don't know what you were getting at, but "only" and "8% of the retail market" shouldn't be used in the same sentence, because it's ridiculous.
Don't shop at Wal-Mart. I mean, really. For all the bitching here on/. about MS, Wal-Mart is a MUCH bigger, MUCH nastier company. I haven't been in to a Wal-Mart for many years, and I haven't missed it one bit.
Well, if you want to compare, anecdotes, I run my *own* business, so every dime I spend is my own. Every risk I take could mean that I don't eat some time in the near future. All of our machines are Windows, and we don't have problems, period. I've tried to play with Linux, and all it does is burn up very valuable time. I'm sorry your friend has problems with Windows, but just because his company has problems with it, doesn't indicate that the product itself is defective.
Nah, if I wanted to spend the time and brain cells, I could buy one of those Wal-Mart things, or get one from Dell, or better yet, build my own from the local 'puter shop. But it just ain't worth the headache to save ~$100.
They DO offer better value. That's why they're one of the largest software comapanies in the world. That's why I buy their OS's. Nobody can come close to touching their value on the desktop.
In case you've noticed, most people still don't want to use Linux because it's free. They're still beating the pants off of Linux in the desktop market. This is actually a case where you literally can't *give* Linux away. The cost is only one factor when people decide what software to use.
I'm done correcting people's English. With the advent of the Net, the literacy rate has dropped precipitously. It's so bad that I just give up. I've seen large sites with professional writers screw up "there", "they're", and "their" which should be embarassing, since that's the kind of thing that you're taught in grade school.
Slashdot Mirror
Could this "heavy metal" thing also be a synonym for slow, as in their web server?
If you work on a Closed Source project, some faceless corporation owns everything you put into it.
That's why you get a paycheck. In case you haven't noticed, EVERY job that involves working for a company, they get to benefit & keep whatever it is you're working on, whether it's a manufacturing plant, a retail store, a service company, etc. Working on closed source projects is no more slavery than working at McDonald's.
As a former contract programmer who moved around every few months, I'm wondering... What in the hell are you bitching about? Any programmer worth his salt moves around already. What's the difference whether your plane goes to LA or to Bangalore?
I completely agree with you. Jobs are going to continue to move around the globe, and accordingly, trade barriers and labor barriers also need to drop so that an American can truly take advantage of say, Intel saving labor costs on making their chips. I want to be able to buy the same cheap Intel chips that say, the Chinese can buy.
But jobs WILL continue to move. Whether or not the various gov'ts will allow free trade is another matter entirely.
Elitist? Go fuck yourself kid. I've spent my morning sheetrocking an addition to one of my stores. Show me an "elitist" that gets up at 7:00 AM on a Saturday to swing a fucking crowbar until 1:00 AM. Jesus, what a fucking cry baby you are!
You're absolutely right. That's not free trade. THAT is where the gov't should get involved... not with silly protectionist policies that only hurts the US in the long run. They need to start knocking down those barriers, so instead of being able to travel freely from Seattle to Boston for work, US citizens can travel from Dallas to New Delhi.
Oh, puh-lease. I lost my job in the dot-com bubble, and I scraped together credit cards to start a business. Don't whine to me. I've been working 12-14 hour days for 7 days a week for the past 2 years.
Rather than hoping that everyone will, somehow, achieve a more equal economic level, why don't we start working now to preserve and strengthen the middle-class?
Because you're talkign about government intervention, and any time the government intervenes, it's a completel and abject failure. Look at the agriculture industry. We have the US gov't trying to "save farms". We have some of the most productive agricultural practices in the world, and the gov't is paying farmers to let fields go fallow, they're paying them NOT to produce, and they're artificially jacking up the proces of grain and milk. Ever wonder why that box of Corn Flakes costs $4? The gov't. Without gov't subsidies, you'd be able to buy bread for $0.50 a loaf, cereal for $1/box, and milk for $1/carton. That's just ONE example. This rich vs, poor thing has never proven to actually happen throughout history. History (and nature) both show an equilibrium happening. The US may have less of a middle class, but that doesn't mean it's going away. The middle class now lives in New Delhi.
Defeatist crap.
No, a defeatist has your mentality: Whine, whine, whine, protect my job because I can't compete, whine, whine. The answer is to adapt.
And as far as the standard of living goes, I dont' know of a single other country on the planet that has as much cheap food choices as we do and gasoline as cheap as we do. Hell, minimum-wage employees still have cable TV and cars. Try doing your "poor me" schtick in central Africa, where people live in dirt huts, or much of South America, or SE Asia.
And I'm sure that people with degrees in buggy whips are having a hard time finding a job, too. Just because you have a degree doesn't mean that you're entitled to a job. Face it. You made a bad decision. Your options now are to move to India (where you can live well as a programmer), or find a new profession. Adapt or die. Nobody said life was fair, kiddo. That's something they don't teach you in college.
Free trade doesn't have to be a zero-sum game.
And I'm not saying that it is. More than likely, the entire planet's standard of living will be much higer in say, 100 years. It's improving in most of the world as we speak. The US and other western countries are just so far out of whack, that there's going to be a major adjustment in the Us in the short term before things equalize. But I agree. Cutting costs is almost always beneficial to everybody, eventually. It's just hard for unemployed Americans (again, I was one, and I understand the frustration) to see in the short term.
when the house of cards crashes down because no one here has any more money to spend.
You miss the other side of the coin. People in traditionally poor countries are becoming wealthier by the minute, and thus are also becoming customers. There's no house of cards. There's simply a shift in economies from a US based, protectionist economy, to a world economy.
It's business. Maybe not good business, but business, nonetheless. Companies in the US haven't been loyal to their employees in many years. Employees who are foolishly trying to be loyal to their employers are just being stupid. You do what you can to earn as much as possible, regardless of company. The companies will try to pay as little as possible, regardless of employees. That's how capitalism works.
Unfortunately for the fat & happy Americans (I'm one of them), we're entering an age of a truly global economy, where there are very few barriers as far as communication and travel. There's a huge standard of living between first world and thrid world countries. Basic economics (hell, and nature) say that what's going to happen is that there's going to have to be an equilibrium that say, the US and India will reach, eventually in terms of standard of living pay rates, etc. At least for the next generation or so, the US is going to see a dramatic drop in standard of living, while other parts of the world increase (we're seeing that already in SE Asia). There's no way around it. The Net and telephones and cheap air travel have done this, and there's really no way to stop it. The genie is out of the bottle. CEO's do what they always do: maximize the bottom line. workers do what they always do: work for as much money as is possible. It's really inevitable, and it's time the IT industry sucks it up and realizes this. It's already happened with other US industries (autos, steel, textiles), and will continue for the forseeable future.
Time to tighten up those belts boys! The days of a big house in the suburbs with a giant SUV are pretty much over. If you expect to be able to continue living as well as you have been previously, you're kidding yourself.
I don't understand this store. They censor CDs that have explicit lyrics without any on-the-package indication. Yet, they sell guns? Seems like two sets of values to me.
It's one set of fucked up values called conservative Christianity. They believe that you can't say "fuck", but shooting someone/something is just fine and dandy. Yet another readon not to go into one of those fucking stores. They're run by and patronized by the Religious Right, which is the same group that supports Bush, Ashcroft, the RIAA, the MPAA, Diebold, and the list goes on and on...
Just found this:
The Arkansas-based company posted $256 billion in revenue for the 52-week period that ended Jan. 31 -- more revenue than International Business Machines, Coca-Cola, Time Warner and Microsoft combined.
You want to target a big, nasty corporation? There are none that come close to Wal-Mart, as far as consumer products go.
Besides, where was the concern when tags were placed inside of CDs and DVDs? Is this just another "attack Wal-Mart" parade? Wal-Mart is big, but they still are only 8% of the retail market... which makes them anything but a monopoly.
First off, 8% of all retail is fucking huge. Many times bigger than any competitor. Remember that retail includes selling any kinds of goods, whatsoever.
Secondly, they ARE a monopoly in many parts of the country for general merchandise, and are quickly taking over grocery stores too. Just because the Supreme Court hasn't ruled as such, doesn't mean that they're not a monopoly.
Thirdly, last I checked, Wal-Mart accounted for 2.5% of the GNP of the US. If that's not big, I don't know what is.
I don't know what you were getting at, but "only" and "8% of the retail market" shouldn't be used in the same sentence, because it's ridiculous.
Don't shop at Wal-Mart. I mean, really. For all the bitching here on /. about MS, Wal-Mart is a MUCH bigger, MUCH nastier company. I haven't been in to a Wal-Mart for many years, and I haven't missed it one bit.
Well, if you want to compare, anecdotes, I run my *own* business, so every dime I spend is my own. Every risk I take could mean that I don't eat some time in the near future. All of our machines are Windows, and we don't have problems, period. I've tried to play with Linux, and all it does is burn up very valuable time. I'm sorry your friend has problems with Windows, but just because his company has problems with it, doesn't indicate that the product itself is defective.
No, I'm just sick and tired of all the "MS doesn't work" and "Linux is better because it's free" bullshit. Both of which are, by the way, bullshit.
Nah, if I wanted to spend the time and brain cells, I could buy one of those Wal-Mart things, or get one from Dell, or better yet, build my own from the local 'puter shop. But it just ain't worth the headache to save ~$100.
Well, it was still an incredibly nice fucking gesture. You don't need to go bursting my bubble, now.
They DO offer better value. That's why they're one of the largest software comapanies in the world. That's why I buy their OS's. Nobody can come close to touching their value on the desktop.
How do you beat free?
In case you've noticed, most people still don't want to use Linux because it's free. They're still beating the pants off of Linux in the desktop market. This is actually a case where you literally can't *give* Linux away. The cost is only one factor when people decide what software to use.
I'm done correcting people's English. With the advent of the Net, the literacy rate has dropped precipitously. It's so bad that I just give up. I've seen large sites with professional writers screw up "there", "they're", and "their" which should be embarassing, since that's the kind of thing that you're taught in grade school.