As a christian and a scientist (not to be confused with a christian scientist), I'd like for my children to be taught both. God created the universe the way we have it, not the way some crazy televangelist says it was made.
Chapter 7 (which is much harder to file now because of recent revisions to US bankruptcy law sponsored by credit card companies)
Chapter 7s are still quite easy to get. They've just added the means test. If your income is above the median income for your area, you're forced into chapter 13. (11 is for corporations) This is no problem at all though. All you have to do is engineer a job loss. Then you have no income. Of course, you'll have a hard time paying your bills without a job, which is probably happening anyway. You just need a place to live and something to eat while working on the bankruptcy.
Of course, if you're willing to pre-plan the entire bankruptcy (which is fraud, but who's judging?) you can come out quite nicely. A friend of mine recently discharged a couple million in debts related to a failed business. He was smart and kept their house and many other things in his wife's name. He filed. She didn't. He continued to work for a company she "owned" but got "paid" less than the median income. Problem solved.
I have yet another friend who did something similar. This time, he worked for his brother who was a jerk and paid him less than the median.
Bankruptcy laws in this country are a joke. They need to be reformed, not "reformed". And credit card companies need to be heavily regulated so that usury is impossible again. While we're at it, let's abolish payday loan sharks also. And we need to force banks to stop requiring personal guarantees for business loans. What the hell are corporations for anyway? Bankruptcies need to be so easy that companies will think twice before issuing credit to people who can't pay it. We need to outlaw modern debt slavery.
My wife and I adopted a russian child who turned out to have high functioning autism. He has an extremely high IQ. And he's built like a gorilla, 95% percentile for height and weight. This kid is ripped at 6 years old.
We've also adopted other children so that we have essentially 2 year old triplets now. The one russian kid is far more work than the triplets combined. He is the most destructive child I've ever met. He focuses on lamps one week, destroying all of them, then alarm clocks the next... destroying them one by one to see what happens. He's high maintenance. And has anxiety problems such that he won't let my wife out of his sight. In spite of all of this, we love him greatly and are committed to helping him through his problems.
The point here is that I believe we would have a responsibility to place a home-grown neanderthal with surrogate human parents. But they had better be the right parents. They had better be prepared to sacrifice everything while never being tempted to give up. Because the alternative would be bad for the child, and therefore the world.
On most versions of unix, this produces a floating point exception. (which is correct) The error you're supposed to get is a clue to explaining why AIX gives you the answer it gives: 15.
I do both microsoft and unix development. This has led to some interesting situations. I wrote a mathematical parser in c#/.net that could process math expressions at runtime using Regex to get tokens from the expression. The regex wasn't too bad. But after a code review, my pointy-haired manager made me comment each symbol in the regex. 40 lines of comments to describe 1 line of code.
As a consultant, VI is my absolute favorite tool. Not on unix projects, on microsoft projects. It always happens eventually. Someone needs to modify a file in a way that screams for regex search with replace, but is a nightmare in visual studio or some other windowy editor. So I have them stand behind me while I write an long, arcane-looking regex line in VI. When I press enter, the entire file instantly morphs into exactly what they want. I can think of no better way to justify my exorbitant bill rate. lol
Example for a unix admin - 100+ per hour is paid by company A to vendor V, V keeps 35% and gives 65 to H1B holding company H, H pays about 30 to the employee who is new in USA or 40 if he is more than 2 years old in usa. H1b end up getting exploited till GC(6 to 8 years). L1s too get exploited but they are happy because they are rotated every year. So they have less expenses(no need to buy car or family home) in usa and carry all money as savings to india/china. Since h1b corp to corp is expensive, candidate has to be really skilled, but some do manage by changing clients(A) every 3 to 6 months by slipping through a phone interview(some one else giving the phone int in their name). On being found out they are fired in 3 to 6 months. Yet they manage to settle in low tech areas like managing remedy tickets etc in about 2 years of hire-fire cycle. So in downturn, h1bs are fired first, then the citizen employee and are replaced by L1. L1's don't get overtime pay. They get about 3 to 4 k per month and yet that is a very good money because in india they get max 1k per month for 1+ year experience.
None of this sounds right to me. I'm a 17 year IT consultant in chicago. What I've seen is that the majority of H1s can't find their ass. Typically two or three are needed to replace the american being fired. Obviously there are exceptions. But the vast majority are really quite useless. They're hired because upper management thinks IT workers are lego bricks. You can just unplug one and plug in another with no intangible cost to the company. Gardner told them so.
Also, the bill rate numbers you quote are way off. I've never seen an H1 anywhere hired for $100 an hour. I'd say $60 is pretty much max. Otherwise, why wouldn't the end client just hire an american? There's a financial incentive for the client to hire an H1.
Usually, there's no extra middleman for H1s. The consulting firm billing them out is host for the visa.
I agree that L1s are a huge loophole. But usually, they come in when an indian corporation like TCS (tata) comes in an takes over an entire IT department. Then they can place an army of indians at the client because the project manager probably works for TCS also. I seriously doubt consultants on L1 visas get sent alone to a client.
This reminds me of a joke many of you have probably heard.
Mickey Mouse decides to file for divorce. When they get in front of the judge, he seems skeptical. The judge says to Mickey, "So what you're saying is that your wife, Minnie is a little strange?" Mickey said, "No! What I said was that she was fucking Goofy."
I have a 350Z. The traction control is great for keeping you connected during full blast acceleration or fast corners. It makes the car do otherworldly things. But it's utterly useless in the snow and has to be turned off to make the care even remotely drivable.
It wasn't so much that the formats were different as it was the controllers. The catweasel can write to both formats using a standard 1.2mb 5.25" PC floppy drive.
Yes, Bush has sucked, but I hate to break it to you: It was Clinton/GORE that enacted the policy that destroyed the economy.
I blame Richard Nixon. Leaving the gold standard bought him some points back then, but sealed our fate. It was only a matter of time before this happened. Fiat currencies always self-destruct in pretty much the pattern we've seen here.
Of course there were other events along the way that hastened the dollar's demise. Deregulation, the repeal of glass-stegal, deficit spending... Both parties are to blame, as well as the american people for being too uneducated to recognize what was happening.
How this all ends is painfully obvious. The only steps left are depression then hyperinflation. As long as my bill rate keeps pace with inflation (it wont) I'll be fine. I'll be able to pay off my mortgage with pocket change.
Actually, substitute the ?s for loud beeps and strange letters flooding the screen, and you've got vi.
I've been practicing the vi faith for 15 years. But somehow I still manage to accidentally get trapped in emacs from time to time. I still don't know how to get out. I just switch to a different shell and kill -9. I find this to be very effective.
Sitting listening to some idiot talk about something you already know is a valuable life skill...
More valuable than learning some other skill? I agree that far too many lack people skills. But not challenging students, and instead expecting them to conform to a prescribed average is a crime.
The public school system in this country (usa), when it was created, was based on the public school system in Prussia. That system was designed to make good laborers and soldiers. That's it. Over the decades, what we expect from school has slowly evolved. Originally, high school was optional. Then it became required, and university was optional. Now, unfortunately, it seems university is really required. But you have to pay for it. (and pay and pay)
I had a business idea that I discussed with my wife the other day. Why not create a school that offered the classes that are missing from public educations. Things like how to balance a checkbook and make a budget, how to start a business, how to not end up with an idiotic mortgage, people skills, sales skills, why credit cards suck, how not to be a tool.... She said it would fail miserably. The people who need this the most would never pay for this education. And the parents who would/could pay for it would simply teach these things to their children themselves.
I've been an incorporated consultant for a very long time.
Incorporation is great under certain circumstances, it can also be a hell of a lot of stress.
When you switch from salaried work to independent consulting, you're trading one sort of stress for another. Each person has to ask them self which type of stress they're more willing to accept.
There's good times and there's bad times, and contractors don't generally get much work in the bad times.
Neither do salaried workers. Many, many companies have no trouble at all laying off their best people during recessions. The difference is that with consulting, you'll usually see it coming and can plan for it. With salaried employment, the employees are the last to know.
Your skill set has to be sufficiently in demand to either guarantee you pretty close to full time work, or for you to get paid sufficiently above permanent rates to make up for the time you're not working. This demand is often substantially higher than the demand necessary to get a regular job.
Over the last 10 years, if you add up all the time I've been out of work, it adds up to about six weeks. This includes the dotcom crash. Typically for me, one contract ends on friday, the next one starts on monday. There's nothing spectacular about my experience, except that I have a lot of it. I do both c#/.net/sqlserver and c++/unix/oracle development.
If you're a salaried employee, you need to be just as concerned about the marketability of your skillset. If you don't because your job is "safe" you're a fool.
You have to have either a really flexible financial situation, or a partner with an income you can live on.
My wife is a stay-at-home mom. And you make your own flexible financial situation. Regardless of your working arrangement, you need to be getting ahead of your cashflow. Live on 80% of your takehome pay and save the rest. This will mean a standard of living reduction. It's necessary.
Most companies are perfectly willing to throw extra work at a contractor because, well they're paying for it, so you often end up more stressed.
More work equals more stress? As a consultant, there's nothing forcing you to accept more work. If you hate your contract, find a new one.
If you want stress, try being forced to work 50 hours a week at a salaried job where they don't pay you for overtime. As a consultant, they're forced to respect your time, because, well, they're paying for it.
Add to that the fact that in a lot of countries if you work as a contractor for one company for too long you're considered legally a full time employee and have to pay all the relevant payroll taxes anyway.
In the US, if you have an article-C corporation, you have to pay payroll taxes on any money that flows out of the corp to you personally. I'm not sure how it works in other countries.
Also, that works both ways. It's far more troublesome for the employer when you're classified as an employee. They have to pay your taxes.
I'm always amused by people who use taxes to justify not being a consultant. This is like saying you don't want to win the lottery because you don't want to pay taxes on the money.
For my two cents, if you're young, and single, or financially stable on your wife/husband's income. If your skill set is really hot at the moment, or if your specialty is in a field where generally you're only needed for a small portion of the project life cycle, then go ahead and contract.
I'm just the opposite of everything you listed. I'm older. I have nine kids. My wife doesn't work. My skills aren't rare or unusual. And I work throughout the entire project lifecycle.
I guess I'm financially stable. But I wasn't during the dotcom crash.
If these things aren't true, it can be a hell of a lot worse than doing a regular old job, even if the pay during the good times is better. Be
Guess what, those working only 40 hours a week won't get anywhere.... in their current job.
If you tolerate being treated like crap, you'll be treated like crap. Public corporations by definition have a fiduciary responsibility to squeeze as much productivity from their employees as possible at the expense of everything else including morals and ethics.
I wouldn't blame the recruiters. Although I agree that they're stupid/ignorant/incompetent/lazy. I think this is a case of the consumers trying to ignore supply and demand and dictate prices to the market.
One company in particular here in the chicago area is notorious for this. (I don't want to name any names, but I'm pretty sure their initials are motorola.) I keep getting emails and phone calls from recruiters (indian and othewise) wanting me to take a (w2 only) contract for $33/hr. Of course, they want years of experience in all sorts of things. I keep telling them they should be paying more than double that rate. A week later, I get the same request for the same rate.
If you take these jobs, stop it. Please don't encourage them.
Picking up the spoils of a catastrophe they were instrumental in causing. What a bunch of dicks.
They weren't instrumental in causing it. They just chose not to rescue them out of fear of the damage that lehman's debt could cause barclays. And they had good reason. There was no way to evaluate the risk level or value of lehman's toxic debt. Their actions were just good business.
You would be wise to re-balance your asset pool to reflect coming inflation.
You don't know that. What's really happening is that we're experiencing a huge amount of deflation. The credit markets are contracting in a major way. The fed will almost certainly fire up the printing press to bail out more institutions and to counteract this deflation. The real question will be which one will happen at a greater rate. There's a large group of economists claiming that there's no way the printing press can keep up with the deflation.
My IRA is betting against the dollar all the same though. I think we're going to hurt a lot harder than the rest of the world.
Slashdot Mirror
As a christian and a scientist (not to be confused with a christian scientist), I'd like for my children to be taught both. God created the universe the way we have it, not the way some crazy televangelist says it was made.
100mL penis
When did we start using units of volume to measure penis size?
Chapter 7 (which is much harder to file now because of recent revisions to US bankruptcy law sponsored by credit card companies)
Chapter 7s are still quite easy to get. They've just added the means test. If your income is above the median income for your area, you're forced into chapter 13. (11 is for corporations) This is no problem at all though. All you have to do is engineer a job loss. Then you have no income. Of course, you'll have a hard time paying your bills without a job, which is probably happening anyway. You just need a place to live and something to eat while working on the bankruptcy.
Of course, if you're willing to pre-plan the entire bankruptcy (which is fraud, but who's judging?) you can come out quite nicely. A friend of mine recently discharged a couple million in debts related to a failed business. He was smart and kept their house and many other things in his wife's name. He filed. She didn't. He continued to work for a company she "owned" but got "paid" less than the median income. Problem solved.
I have yet another friend who did something similar. This time, he worked for his brother who was a jerk and paid him less than the median.
Bankruptcy laws in this country are a joke. They need to be reformed, not "reformed". And credit card companies need to be heavily regulated so that usury is impossible again. While we're at it, let's abolish payday loan sharks also. And we need to force banks to stop requiring personal guarantees for business loans. What the hell are corporations for anyway? Bankruptcies need to be so easy that companies will think twice before issuing credit to people who can't pay it. We need to outlaw modern debt slavery.
My wife and I adopted a russian child who turned out to have high functioning autism. He has an extremely high IQ. And he's built like a gorilla, 95% percentile for height and weight. This kid is ripped at 6 years old.
We've also adopted other children so that we have essentially 2 year old triplets now. The one russian kid is far more work than the triplets combined. He is the most destructive child I've ever met. He focuses on lamps one week, destroying all of them, then alarm clocks the next... destroying them one by one to see what happens. He's high maintenance. And has anxiety problems such that he won't let my wife out of his sight. In spite of all of this, we love him greatly and are committed to helping him through his problems.
The point here is that I believe we would have a responsibility to place a home-grown neanderthal with surrogate human parents. But they had better be the right parents. They had better be prepared to sacrifice everything while never being tempted to give up. Because the alternative would be bad for the child, and therefore the world.
I have an AIX story. Try out this program:
#include
void main(bla bla)
{
int x, y, z;
x = 1;
y = 0;
z = x / y;
printf("%d\n",z);
}
On most versions of unix, this produces a floating point exception. (which is correct) The error you're supposed to get is a clue to explaining why AIX gives you the answer it gives: 15.
brian
I do both microsoft and unix development. This has led to some interesting situations. I wrote a mathematical parser in c#/.net that could process math expressions at runtime using Regex to get tokens from the expression. The regex wasn't too bad. But after a code review, my pointy-haired manager made me comment each symbol in the regex. 40 lines of comments to describe 1 line of code.
As a consultant, VI is my absolute favorite tool. Not on unix projects, on microsoft projects. It always happens eventually. Someone needs to modify a file in a way that screams for regex search with replace, but is a nightmare in visual studio or some other windowy editor. So I have them stand behind me while I write an long, arcane-looking regex line in VI. When I press enter, the entire file instantly morphs into exactly what they want. I can think of no better way to justify my exorbitant bill rate. lol
I thought we were choosing between a douche and a turd sandwich.
Then how are you going to help those poor people? Give them free money and food so they'll continue to do nothing and further your poverty problem?
Please make sure you feed them while teaching them to feed themselves.
Example for a unix admin - 100+ per hour is paid by company A to vendor V, V keeps 35% and gives 65 to H1B holding company H, H pays about 30 to the employee who is new in USA or 40 if he is more than 2 years old in usa. H1b end up getting exploited till GC(6 to 8 years). L1s too get exploited but they are happy because they are rotated every year. So they have less expenses(no need to buy car or family home) in usa and carry all money as savings to india/china.
Since h1b corp to corp is expensive, candidate has to be really skilled, but some do manage by changing clients(A) every 3 to 6 months by slipping through a phone interview(some one else giving the phone int in their name). On being found out they are fired in 3 to 6 months. Yet they manage to settle in low tech areas like managing remedy tickets etc in about 2 years of hire-fire cycle. So in downturn, h1bs are fired first, then the citizen employee and are replaced by L1. L1's don't get overtime pay. They get about 3 to 4 k per month and yet that is a very good money because in india they get max 1k per month for 1+ year experience.
None of this sounds right to me. I'm a 17 year IT consultant in chicago. What I've seen is that the majority of H1s can't find their ass. Typically two or three are needed to replace the american being fired. Obviously there are exceptions. But the vast majority are really quite useless. They're hired because upper management thinks IT workers are lego bricks. You can just unplug one and plug in another with no intangible cost to the company. Gardner told them so.
Also, the bill rate numbers you quote are way off. I've never seen an H1 anywhere hired for $100 an hour. I'd say $60 is pretty much max. Otherwise, why wouldn't the end client just hire an american? There's a financial incentive for the client to hire an H1.
Usually, there's no extra middleman for H1s. The consulting firm billing them out is host for the visa.
I agree that L1s are a huge loophole. But usually, they come in when an indian corporation like TCS (tata) comes in an takes over an entire IT department. Then they can place an army of indians at the client because the project manager probably works for TCS also. I seriously doubt consultants on L1 visas get sent alone to a client.
This reminds me of a joke many of you have probably heard.
Mickey Mouse decides to file for divorce. When they get in front of the judge, he seems skeptical. The judge says to Mickey, "So what you're saying is that your wife, Minnie is a little strange?" Mickey said, "No! What I said was that she was fucking Goofy."
I have a 350Z. The traction control is great for keeping you connected during full blast acceleration or fast corners. It makes the car do otherworldly things. But it's utterly useless in the snow and has to be turned off to make the care even remotely drivable.
It wasn't so much that the formats were different as it was the controllers. The catweasel can write to both formats using a standard 1.2mb 5.25" PC floppy drive.
Yes, Bush has sucked, but I hate to break it to you: It was Clinton/GORE that enacted the policy that destroyed the economy.
I blame Richard Nixon. Leaving the gold standard bought him some points back then, but sealed our fate. It was only a matter of time before this happened. Fiat currencies always self-destruct in pretty much the pattern we've seen here.
Of course there were other events along the way that hastened the dollar's demise. Deregulation, the repeal of glass-stegal, deficit spending... Both parties are to blame, as well as the american people for being too uneducated to recognize what was happening.
How this all ends is painfully obvious. The only steps left are depression then hyperinflation. As long as my bill rate keeps pace with inflation (it wont) I'll be fine. I'll be able to pay off my mortgage with pocket change.
Actually, substitute the ?s for loud beeps and strange letters flooding the screen, and you've got vi.
I've been practicing the vi faith for 15 years. But somehow I still manage to accidentally get trapped in emacs from time to time. I still don't know how to get out. I just switch to a different shell and kill -9. I find this to be very effective.
He's related to General Protection. It's always his Fault.
Sitting listening to some idiot talk about something you already know is a valuable life skill...
More valuable than learning some other skill? I agree that far too many lack people skills. But not challenging students, and instead expecting them to conform to a prescribed average is a crime.
Lady Ada and Messr's Babbage, Turing and Godel would like to talk to you before they beat you up and leave you for dead in a bad neighborhood.
Yeah, don't mess with mathematicians. They'll kick your asymptote.
The public school system in this country (usa), when it was created, was based on the public school system in Prussia. That system was designed to make good laborers and soldiers. That's it. Over the decades, what we expect from school has slowly evolved. Originally, high school was optional. Then it became required, and university was optional. Now, unfortunately, it seems university is really required. But you have to pay for it. (and pay and pay)
I had a business idea that I discussed with my wife the other day. Why not create a school that offered the classes that are missing from public educations. Things like how to balance a checkbook and make a budget, how to start a business, how to not end up with an idiotic mortgage, people skills, sales skills, why credit cards suck, how not to be a tool.... She said it would fail miserably. The people who need this the most would never pay for this education. And the parents who would/could pay for it would simply teach these things to their children themselves.
Our public school system creates sheep.
Yeah, I mostly need to get the hell out of Miami. But that's not feasible right now.
"You see this? You know what it is? It's sand! Do you know what it will be in 100 years? Fucking Sand!!!" - Sam Kinison.
Dude, either get a career that fits your market, or move to a different market. Stop complaining.
I've been an incorporated consultant for a very long time.
Incorporation is great under certain circumstances, it can also be a hell of a lot of stress.
When you switch from salaried work to independent consulting, you're trading one sort of stress for another. Each person has to ask them self which type of stress they're more willing to accept.
There's good times and there's bad times, and contractors don't generally get much work in the bad times.
Neither do salaried workers. Many, many companies have no trouble at all laying off their best people during recessions. The difference is that with consulting, you'll usually see it coming and can plan for it. With salaried employment, the employees are the last to know.
Your skill set has to be sufficiently in demand to either guarantee you pretty close to full time work, or for you to get paid sufficiently above permanent rates to make up for the time you're not working. This demand is often substantially higher than the demand necessary to get a regular job.
Over the last 10 years, if you add up all the time I've been out of work, it adds up to about six weeks. This includes the dotcom crash. Typically for me, one contract ends on friday, the next one starts on monday. There's nothing spectacular about my experience, except that I have a lot of it. I do both c#/.net/sqlserver and c++/unix/oracle development.
If you're a salaried employee, you need to be just as concerned about the marketability of your skillset. If you don't because your job is "safe" you're a fool.
You have to have either a really flexible financial situation, or a partner with an income you can live on.
My wife is a stay-at-home mom. And you make your own flexible financial situation. Regardless of your working arrangement, you need to be getting ahead of your cashflow. Live on 80% of your takehome pay and save the rest. This will mean a standard of living reduction. It's necessary.
Most companies are perfectly willing to throw extra work at a contractor because, well they're paying for it, so you often end up more stressed.
More work equals more stress? As a consultant, there's nothing forcing you to accept more work. If you hate your contract, find a new one.
If you want stress, try being forced to work 50 hours a week at a salaried job where they don't pay you for overtime. As a consultant, they're forced to respect your time, because, well, they're paying for it.
Add to that the fact that in a lot of countries if you work as a contractor for one company for too long you're considered legally a full time employee and have to pay all the relevant payroll taxes anyway.
In the US, if you have an article-C corporation, you have to pay payroll taxes on any money that flows out of the corp to you personally. I'm not sure how it works in other countries.
Also, that works both ways. It's far more troublesome for the employer when you're classified as an employee. They have to pay your taxes.
I'm always amused by people who use taxes to justify not being a consultant. This is like saying you don't want to win the lottery because you don't want to pay taxes on the money.
For my two cents, if you're young, and single, or financially stable on your wife/husband's income. If your skill set is really hot at the moment, or if your specialty is in a field where generally you're only needed for a small portion of the project life cycle, then go ahead and contract.
I'm just the opposite of everything you listed. I'm older. I have nine kids. My wife doesn't work. My skills aren't rare or unusual. And I work throughout the entire project lifecycle.
I guess I'm financially stable. But I wasn't during the dotcom crash.
If these things aren't true, it can be a hell of a lot worse than doing a regular old job, even if the pay during the good times is better. Be
Guess what, those working only 40 hours a week won't get anywhere.... in their current job.
If you tolerate being treated like crap, you'll be treated like crap. Public corporations by definition have a fiduciary responsibility to squeeze as much productivity from their employees as possible at the expense of everything else including morals and ethics.
I wouldn't blame the recruiters. Although I agree that they're stupid/ignorant/incompetent/lazy. I think this is a case of the consumers trying to ignore supply and demand and dictate prices to the market.
One company in particular here in the chicago area is notorious for this. (I don't want to name any names, but I'm pretty sure their initials are motorola.) I keep getting emails and phone calls from recruiters (indian and othewise) wanting me to take a (w2 only) contract for $33/hr. Of course, they want years of experience in all sorts of things. I keep telling them they should be paying more than double that rate. A week later, I get the same request for the same rate.
If you take these jobs, stop it. Please don't encourage them.
Picking up the spoils of a catastrophe they were instrumental in causing. What a bunch of dicks.
They weren't instrumental in causing it. They just chose not to rescue them out of fear of the damage that lehman's debt could cause barclays. And they had good reason. There was no way to evaluate the risk level or value of lehman's toxic debt. Their actions were just good business.
You would be wise to re-balance your asset pool to reflect coming inflation.
You don't know that. What's really happening is that we're experiencing a huge amount of deflation. The credit markets are contracting in a major way. The fed will almost certainly fire up the printing press to bail out more institutions and to counteract this deflation. The real question will be which one will happen at a greater rate. There's a large group of economists claiming that there's no way the printing press can keep up with the deflation.
My IRA is betting against the dollar all the same though. I think we're going to hurt a lot harder than the rest of the world.
I suspect the encryption is there to make sure that only iTunes can talk to an iPod.
I use ubuntu and bashee to talk to my ipod just fine.