I'm sorry guys, that sounded bitter. But I'm really good at Uniary, does anyone have a job? Seriously, I haven't worked since writing
"Microsoft Off, Version 0.0".
Then they turned it into "Microsoft Off-ice", and it was it "so long Dr. Zero", wasn't it? But when you're computer goes haywire, whadda they tell you to do? That's right, it's Dr. Zero to the rescue. So please give a second chance to an old computer purist like me? Or at least, stop sticking your chewing gum under the damn table. I got hepititus 3 times last week!
That's right Mr. "Oh, I can't write a program without both 1's AND 0's". And if you think considerling logic gates and memory registers is powerful, just imagine what it must be like to be me, who wouldn't even consider posting this without knowing the precise state of every electron covalence field of the atoms which MAKE UP those logic gates.
Yeah, so just think about that the next time you ask me to bring you another cup of coffee and the check, you arrogant 10% tipping bastards.
LOL, Hey, is tupperware stronger than say, a plastic soda bottle? Because I started keeping my bottle of soda on the window ledge, after a rat chewed through it. While it was on my desk. It had been there about, oh, 3 minutes or so (I as was reading and heard a fizz, lookeup up and saw a rat drinking soda off of my desk). I suppose I could have found a metal box to keep my rice in... but somehow, trying to find new and interesting ways to lower the cost of malnutrition from $2/day to $.50/day doesn't seem like the best approach to competing with people from other countries who can eat what sounds like an Indian food banquet, for the same price as an American can eat like a slave under the Khymer Rouge.
Though I admire your energy, I still think a superior approach might be to expect our government to at least provide a level playing field for it's own knowledge workers. I didn't work and study for 18 hour days for several years so that I could, one day, hope to keep rats from stealing all my food. And I doubt the bulk of America's best and brightest would either. But, ya know, if YOU would - email me your resume. I'd be more than happy to find you a programming job in New York City that pays 11k a year.
Thanks for the tip about rice. Got any tips for keeping it a secret from the rats though? Every time I managed to keep food in the room, when I came back the rats had eaten enough of it that I didn't want to risk eating the left overs. What do those thing have anyway, suction cup feet? Like, we're taking way up on a place shelve, not friggin' way to get up there, but the food is mostly gone a what's left is all rat teeth groved.
Oh yeah, if a government in country as rich as the US allows people to starve to death, it's because they want to, not because they have to. Not that I'm saying letting people who hold down 4 jobs, or even no jobs, starve to death is good or bad; but you can't tell me it's not a matter of choice in a country like this. Well, you can, but I'll just know you're profoundly uninformed;-).
Well, the point isn't to maintain a lifestyle in terms of compensation. For me, the ideal lifestyle is doing something I'm good at (coding) that has a positive impact on the world (coding, making machines do our mindless work for us).
But yes, the "move" solution already occured to me several months ago. And not just for America's current economic policies either. I was in Toronto last fall, and I'm going to be in Quebec at the end of February. If you're country wasn't so damn cold and, well, when compared to NYC, boring; I woulda moved there already. As it is, I'm waiting to see who gets put in charge of the economy.
Moving isn't something one does lightly. I've been here for 10 years, building a reputation as a coder, as a musician, and as a friend. I'm not going to walk away from my entire life just for a few more bucks. But I will walk away from it if the country wants to keep going down the road it's on.
And though I appreciate your sense of adventure, switching careers is a little more tricky that you seem to think. Unless you want to be an intern at a company, a serious employer wants experience. You can't just walk in a say, "I taught myself how to weld!" and get hired. Largely because if that's all your resume says in the first place, you won't be invited to walk in. But the martial arts lessons idea might be feasable, I did get a black belt. Care to load me money to start a Doju? I'd hate to see what a beginning martial arts student would do to all the computer's in my apartment.
But, even though you strike me as being unrealistic and naive, perhaps that's a good sign of what Canada does to you. Imagine... suggesting someone in NYC sell their apartment. As if any mere programmer could have afforded to lay out the minimum $300,000 that even a studio goes for these days. You guys are just adorable!
On a "feed the world" level, I can't complain if there's other people who are willing to do our jobs for less, as long as they are at least treated fairly. But this isn't just competing against people who are willing to go without a few more luxeries, this is about competing with people who don't have the additional burden of American prices adding to their salary requirements. The say these programmers have homes, cars, watch cable, and drink cappucino. I recently got laid off from a job paying low six figures. But in New York City, that actually ain't as much as you think. I've never even DREAMED of owning a home around here, much less being able to afford a car. I've never lived in anything better than a studio apartment in bad to semi-bad Manhattan neighborhoods. And even if someone outright gave me a car, I certainly couldn't afford insurance or parking.
So don't give me this, "Oh, American programmers are just greedy. They had it sweet during the Dot Com Bubble, and now they're bitching because the Indians are not only more reasonable to their employers, but they're smarter too!". Horseshit. You wanna pit me against an Indian programmer on a level playing field, bring them over here and see how long they can live on $11,000 a year. Because it can't be done. My crappy, alphabet city, 9 building code violations apartment costs $15,900 a year to rent. Someone making 11K wouldn't even get an appointment with a realitor. I only eat once a day, and that's still roughly $10. Even when I was subleasing a room (6-floor walkup, no bathroom, one outlet, no phone, ect) room in a welfare hotel from a crack addict, my food budget was $2 a day. Who the hell can get a meal for 50 cents in America?
So no, this isn't about American programmers complaining that globalization means more competition. This is about using India's millions of starving masses to subsidize the lives of very bright individuals, so that they can unfairly compete with American programmers in a way which denies our country as a whole any tax revenue, or sales of American goods and services which can't be purchased on Indian salaries.
So until we have the option of paying India rents (which of course would require that our government only charged India-level property taxes), and paying India prices for food, clothes, medicine, transportation, and taxes; don't expect us to be able to work for India salaries. Or for us to keep on busting our butts to learn all this stuff when there's so little incentive.
The "IT Movement" was probably the most promising thing to happen to America's youth in a generation. And the Government may well succeed in destroying it - but don't you DARE let them tell you it's because us geeks were too greedy to work for "competitive" wages. Having your brightest and hardest working citizens wanting to live indoors, and eat more than once a week, really ain't that much to ask from their country's corporations and government. And don't let anyone tell you different.
"The problem is a lack of highly educated workers willing to work for the minimum wage or lower in the U.S."
Oh yeah, that's the problem.
And the problem with enviorment is the unwillingness of people to be happily sickened by pollutants. And the problem of Spam is people's unwillingness to spend the first hour of the day politely deleting it. And the problems of your personal finances are the unwillingness of store keepers to allow you take whatever you want for free.
Oh what a wonderful world it would be if all of us "unwashed masses" would just let the greedy take advantage of us in any way they can think of. But for such a world to exist, we can't simply be passive about it of course. No, we must study for years and years so that our poverty-wage skills are as profitable to the greedy as can be. Yes, let's all do that shall we?
Or, I suppose we could also demand that companies give us fair compensation for our efforts and skills, and that our government doesn't reward the ones that which will happily destroy the American economy and work force in order to temporarily boost their profits.
You know, if HP really wanted to prop up it's bottom line with foreign labour, I'm quite sure there's some highly skilled individual in India would be willing to work as their CEO for quite a bit less than the multi-million dollar compensation package Fiona currently gets. And if Fiona really believes that best thing for HP is to reduce labour costs through outsourcing, as opposed to simply boosting her own profits at the expense of anyone and everyone else; than no doubt she will be recommending that HP look overseas for cheaper company officers during HP's next corporate meeting. You will be doing that next, right Fiona? Right? Since off-shore labour makes so much sense for the welfare of your company, right?
Needing to pay your mortagage or feed your kids does not give you free license to screw over other people. You can also get the money you need by working for a spammer, or an identity theft ring, or by mugging old ladies. Hey, you gotta do what you gotta do, right?
Seriously though, if you wanna hire people who believe that "The Ends Justify The Means", be my guest. And as soon as their low on cash, they'll steal whatever they have to from you. The rest of us prefer to staff positions of trust with people who can be trusted to do the right thing, not just cover their own butts. I'll take a wild gamble that our companies, on the whole, will put your companies out of business, because dishonesty and irresponsible behaviour are not good long term strategies. Plus, it's just more fun to concentrate on producing something good than to concentrate on not getting caught. And it's easier too. Half the reason I'm honest, and I restrict my relationships to people who are honest, is because I'm just too damn lazy to deal with the complex webs of deceit. But you go right ahead and indulge. It just makes me look that much better.
I've heard some of the same concerns about ex-Microsoft employees. Skills are skills, regardless of where one applied them. But joining, or staying at any company after they are known for a quality you don't want your company to be known for, may reveal something about a person's character if not their abilities. And character is a legitimate factor to consider in a new employee. Would you hire a brilliant coder who used to work for Sanford Wallace? Maybe, but not if there was an equally skilled worker applying who hadn't worked for the Spam King.
Personally, I think questioning the character of an ex-employee from a questionable company is one of the best ways to guard against some of the detrimental corporate activity in world. If a coder knows that participating in something which will damage the tech world, will also damage their future employment opportunities, coders will be that much less likely to go along with nefarious plans, or even remain ignorant of what their company is doing. CEO's with evil plans will be that much less likely to carry their plans to fruition if they are restricted only to coders who don't care about anyone else, or even their own job prospects when their bosses unfurl their golden parachutes.
There is nothing wrong with holding people accountable for the choices they make. And there is a great deal wrong with not doing that. In technology, as it is in life.
That said, I don't think a low-level coder for Enron should be required to answer for the same decisions the high-level "death star" programmers should. But good luck getting hired by me if you accepted any work from Halliburton or Diebold during the last 3 years.;-)
I know it's hard to survive without doing something wrong when "everybody's doing it", but there's a few reasons to work a little harder than you seemed to in your story to prevent the moving of jobs to offshore locales.
1. You live in America. Money which goes outside the country is money which doesn't help your country. 2. One of the reasons programmers got to charge such exorbinate salaries when the world was going Internet crazy, was that there wasn't a lot of Americans who could do the work. Outsourcing to other countries will result in even less technologically saavy Americans the next time a lot of high tech skills are needed. 3. Management skills are outsourcable too. When you're company realizes that so many of it's programmers work in Pune, India that it just doesn't make sense to pay American level salaries to have them managed by someone half way across the world who doesn't even speak their native tongue, you're going to have to live with the fact that you got the ball rolling in that direction.
Writing computer programs to handle tasks that computers can do as well, or better than people will always make sense economically. Well, as long as electricity costs less than human salaries. As time goes on, computers will be able to do more, and more tasks can be automated. Will programmers from other countries provide the best bang for the buck? I wouldn't count on it. But since we're in a field where 2-4 years experience and study can put you at the top of your field technically (the skills we need change pretty quickly), the American programmer will have to fight to stay on top. The same opportunity to learn everything yourself and be an expert, whether you're a 16 year old highschool student or a 35 year old nerd with a Masters in philosophy, also applies if you're a bright Indian who can feed their family on $5 a day. The only advantages we have right now are being familiar with the American culture, and being able to afford computers and net access easier than people in third world countries.
Technology is a meritocracy, but it's mostly been a national meritocracy so far. Soon it will be an International one, and America's slowest programmers will be pushed out. So let's all support politicians who really try to keep other countries from starving or overpopulating themselves. I may be smart, but I wouldn't want to compete with a guy who's bid for a job is "a bite of your sandwich".
Go on, give it a try! I wrote some wicked filters which have knocked out 100% of the hundreds of spams I used to get, while still allowing automated receipts, newsletters, and long lost friends to get emails through to me from notoriously spam heavy services; while bouncing everything else to oblivion. So see if you could so much as one email through without doing anything that would be too expensive to do for even 100 other people using the same system. Betcha can't! (I know, giving a challenge like this to slashdot readers who are VERY likely to be smarter than me is practically suicide; but it's very lonely being the only guy who never gets any spam anymore).
On a side not, Elliot Spitzer ROCKS!!! I love this dude! I think I'd ask for a refund from any candidate I contributed to if they didn't at least ASK him to be their VP. We need to clone about 2,000 more of him. We fill out our own DOJ, then sell the rest for a billion a pop to erase the deficit.
It's actually a pretty simple variation of the white-list approach, and frankly I'd be surprised if no one else had ever tried this. But it just makes more sense to concentrate on describing the emails you do want. First, because it's always easier to describe a smaller quantity than a large one. Secondly because spammers are adaptable, and can easily avoid sending an email that looks like "spam", but they can't easily send one that looks like it was sent specifically to you, because all they know about you is your email address.
I think the best way to describe exactly what I set up, is to tell what abilities my email server actually has, and how I used those few abilities to eliminate 100% of the spam I'd been getting.
The email server software is off the shelf Ipswitch stuff, which my webhost (HostMySite.com) makes available to it's customers through a web interface.
-You can set up "Filters" through which email will pass. The filters only allow to look at one of the 6 fields, Subject, To, From, Sender, Header or Body. Within that field, you can say it either contains or doesn't contain a list of words or phrases (which unfortunately must be manually typed in). When an email meets the condition you specified (ie, the "From" contains "@Slashdot.com"), you can then take 1 of 5 actions: "Move the message to this mailbox", "Send with Copy to", "Forward the message to", "Bounce", or "Delete this message". You can specify as many filters as you want, and they will be run in sequence (ie, if an email triggers filter #3, it will not be examined by filters #4 on down) However, it's important to know that an email can only go through one filter in it's lifetime - so if a filter forwards an email to another mailbox or email address, it will NOT be subject to any of that mailbox's or email address's filters.
-You can set up as many email addresses as you want, or mailboxes (ie subfolders) for a given email address as you want.
-You can set up an autoreply, with the option of having it forward any emails to another address.
1. The first thing I did was to set up two email addresses, "Me@RandyHamilton.com" and "Spam@RandyHamilton.com". I deleted the "webmaster@RandyHamilton.com" address, because that would act as a catch-all address, and I need the ability to forward emails to a non-existent email address in my domain so I can generate a bounce message in some situations. In the "me" address, I set up a mailbox subfolder called "verified", and I set my email program, Netscape Mail, to only look at that mailbox (the Inbox mailbox will be empty).
2. On the "Me@RandyHamilton.com" account, I put filters which first check for the word "FuzzyKitty" in the subject line, then to see if the From address contains any of the full or partial email addresses I specified like "Girl123232@hotmail.com" or "@thinkgeek.com" that I got by exporting my "Collected Address" folder from netscape mail, and finally to check the body of the email for my full name, or phone number, company, bandname, ect. If an email meets ANY of those criteria, it is moved to my "verified" mailbox. If it does not, it hits the last filter on the list, which will forward anything with an "@" symbol in the email address to "spam@randyhamilton.com"
3. The "Spam@RandyHamilton.com" has an autoreply which, whether an email came to it directly or was forwarded, will respond with an email asking the user to write back with the word "FuzzyKitty" in the subject line, and it then forwards the email it received to the non-existent address of "boing@randyhamilton.com" which will generate a bounce message. Note that when I first set this up, I didn't forward the emails in this way because I wanted to look at them and make sure they were all spam before bouncing them.
4. The spam@randyhamilton.com has 2 filters in addition to the autoreply. The first forwards anything with "FuzzyKitty" in the subject line to the "verified" mailbox of Me@RandyHamilton.com", and the second bounces anything with an "@" symbol in the From
I realize that was one of the major problems with white-list based spam filtering. That's why you add "white-phrase" filters to it. An email which contains the name of a company you expect a receipt from, or your full name, zip code, company name, or whatever else you can think of that would be specific to you; it's not spam. Oh sure, if it became a wide spread practice, spammers could just include every zip code, or major company name in the body of the email; but that's a snap to adjust to. Just stop accepting things with your zip code, and filter company name based on the From field. Even spammers know better than to spoof the From addresses from major companies like Amazon.com or UPS.com; because those companies have more than enough time and resources to track their slimy butts down.
Don't make the mistake of viewing spammers as hackers who are just trying to see if they get an email through because they enjoy the challenge. They're just businessmen who are trying to make money.
I don't know if anyone's interested, but over the weekend I put together a white-list, white-phrase, auto-response human-sender verification system which has been 100% effective so far. Meaning that everything it identified as spam was (which in now bounces instead of holding for my perusal) and every email from both human strangers and machine generated email from companies I wanted to hear from got right through. I wanted to write a program that would do this automatically for my web host, but even though it wasn't an option (they used off the shelf Ipswitch software that they couldn't reprogram), I was still able to set it up using existing filters. Which means you probably can too.
If you want to know how it works, either to use it or to find a flaw, say so and I'll post the specs.
As any good hacker knows, there is no way to create a 100% secure system. The only thing you can do is to raise the bar so that unwanted activity is less likely to occur, or will occur infrequently enough to not be a major problem. In the case of a totally electronic vote, all they have to do is not count it correctly. The way Diebold systems are set up, this is both quite easy to do, and impossible to track once it's been done. With a paper, ie absentee vote, they'd have to not count it, AND destroy a physical piece of paper to cheat you and not get caught. Not that it couldn't be done of course (they could also theoretically hire a $5/hr grunt to impersonate you), but it would be much harder to do on a large scale without being found out.
Just because the neo-cons are hopeless corrupt, it doesn't mean they're also geniuses. There we examples on blackboxvoting.org where "surprise" GOP victories involved precisely the same number of votes in several counties, or where the number of votes for the GOP candidate was far greater than the number of registered voters for a precint. Heck, even that first folder which contained all of the Diebold's software in their insecure FTP site was actually called, "RobGeogia.zip". We're dealing with crooks here, not rocket scientists.
Paper ballots at least would provide a way to get to the bottom of electoral "anomolies" when they occur that electronic ballots currently don't. And the neo-cons are no more likely to figure out a fool proof way around that in next 11 months, then we are to get secure and accurate electronic voting machines in that time.
By all means, push for electronic voting machines that can be trusted. But until that happens, the best way I can think of to insure you vote will be counted correctly on the systems which will definetely be in use during the 2004 elections, is to use a very carefully filled-out absentee ballot.
This is a solution from Bartcop.com, and it's both clever and simple. Absentee ballots ARE a paper trail. So if you're worried that voting machines aren't going to count your vote, and won't leave a paper trail which would let election officials catch them at it, vote via absentee ballot and leave your OWN paper trail.
You "know" they're most likely to re-offend? Unless they're insane (in which case they should be confined to a mental hospital), why would they be. Either way, please let us know why you believe this.
But let's just say you got your wish. You can look up information on anyone who's ever commited any kind of crime, including their picture, home address, work address, ect. What exactly do you picture doing with that information that would make you safer? Would you "run them out of town"? If so, you'd better first make sure that you're better at it then the guys who live next to criminals in the next town who'll be trying to do the same thing. Would you contact them somehow and say, "Hey, I know what you've done. And if anyone does that around here I'm coming after you first!"? Well, even if that didn't result in you getting into a fight (in which case YOUR picture, address, and employer would be on the Internet because you'd be guilty of assault), it's not like the police don't already look at known criminals first when pursuing a new crime. Would you, if you found out you had a convicted criminal next door, go out and buy extra locks, maybe install some sort of alarm system? Well, only the dumbest and laziest criminal in the world is going to commit a crime they got convicted of, at the house next door. The vast majority of them are at least smart enough to go to a different neighbourhood. And not just to avoid being the first and most obvious suspect, but also because ex-cons don't tend to be able to afford to live in the types of neighbourhoods they'd want to steal things from.
So where's the benefit of such registries? There's nothing sensible you can do in response to discovering a criminal living in your neighbourhood, that wouldn't be sensible if there wasn't one there. And there's nothing you can do to the ex-con themself that would deter them from victimizing you anymore than the records they know the police have. Unless you'd be willing to go so far to deter them they you yourself would wind up on the list of "known criminals".
If you want to be safe, take reasonable precautions against crime. If you have any energy left over, drive more carefully and take good care of your health (you're far more likely to die from sickness or an accident than from an avoidable crime).
But if you want to scare the snot out of yourself, and put ex-cons in hostile and desparate positions, then by all means, start a registry.
I telecommuted for 2 years as the Vice President of a Computer Aided Software Engineering tool company. Of course, that's not the type of job an extrovert would take whether it required telecommuting or not, so it took about 8 months before I even noticed the comparitive lack of social interaction. How I handled it was, I waited for Microsoft to buy our biggest competitor, Rational Corp, and drive us to the verge of ruin. Then, being not just flat broke but seriously in debt, it was very easy to get motivated to go out and take the first crappy sweat-shop programmer job I could find. And one of the places they sent me to work at bought my contract out for more than I made in a year at the telecommuting company, and wound up paying me the highest salary I'd ever seen.
Um, none of which had any real effect on my opportunities to socialize. For that, I got really drunk one night and joined some chick's band who I was flirting with. The band became very popular playing places like Burning Man, and now I'm seeing 5 different girls, only one of whom is old enough drink.
Let me know if this formula works for you as well.
This has got to be somewhat illegal to do; but the only thing which would actually make any of SCO's actions seem to make any kind of sense at all; is if SCO officers are somehow SHORTING THEIR OWN STOCK.
Think about it: the only way to make money in the stockmarket is to know or guess what a stock is going to do before most other people do. Keeping some technological breakthrough a secret from the public is tough to do, the SEC watches out for that a lot, and it's a strategy that only works if your company doesn't suck.
Keeping the fact that your company sucks a secret from the public is equally tricky, unless you're willing to fudge the books (also something the SEC looks out for these days).
So the only way to know which way your stock is going to move, if it's not going to go up and everyone already knows you suck - is to do something SO INCREDIBLY STUPID that no one could have possibly seen it coming (like their IP claim). And then, just when the public has started to adjust to the fact that your company not only sucks, but appears to be run by people without any understanding of their own industry - the only remaining tricks left to you is to something SO MUCH MORE INCREDIBLY STUPID; that even people who thought you were idiots are taken by surprise.
Someone, somewhere, is shorting SCO stock, and that money is getting back to the people behind these idiotic decisions.
Is this crackpot theory possible? There's only one way to tell for sure: If they get away with this, they're next strategic move will be to either a) Re-brand their distro as "Osama Bin Linux" b) Develop a line of Windows CE-based pacemakers or c) Hire Kevin Costner to direct another film.
Look guys, I use Windows 2000/XP, Jaguar, and very rarely, Linux. They all have their own little advantages and disadvantages over each other, but how can anything possibly be more important than an OS being open? Without that trait, even the coolest, slickest, most stable and secure OS still throws it's future at the mercy of the company controling it. Apple seems like a cool company for the most part (at least compared to Microsoft, not that that's saying much); but it's still a company. Right now, it churns out great work because that's a profitable strategy against market leader Microsoft. Tomorrow, it might not be. And for those who can't switch to Microsoft, you don't see Apple behaving quite as honourably.
I implore you, do not surrender control of your operating system in exchange for anything. Nothing can make that a winning proposition in the long run. A benign dicatorship can offer citizens plenty of perks over a chaotic democracy, but I've never seen a group of people ultimately happy with that choice; other than the dictators themselves.
A large chunk of our lives takes place in computers. If the Linux community looks at the fruits of a dictatorship OS (one controled by a company) as a viable alternative to a free OS, rather than simply a challenge, we will all ultimately regret it. At any moment, even a seemingly benign company like Apple could decide that they needed to put DRM software, or lousy security, or ill-conceived product activation schemes into their OS; and if there isn't a good alternative available, and there won't be a damn thing you can do about it. Or, simply because it's a company, it could be required by the government to install spyware of one sort or another, and you won't be able to get it out. With a free OS, you'll never have to worry about that.
Apple has been an inspiration to technophiles since it's inception, and I think OSX is really great piece of work. But computer operating systems are already too important to our lives to relinquish control over, and will become more and more vital every year. My sincerest hope is that Apple will one day be confined to making contributions to a ubiquitous open source OS, rather than producing one which only it controls. And that will only happen if people never lose sight of how important it is to do whatever it takes to retain control over their computers.
No one will probably read this, since this is an old thread, but I just wanted to go on record as pointing out that no feature is as important as freedom. Cheers.
Hey, I've got a huuuuge music library (120+ GB) and I've tried every app out there for keeping it organized. The iTunes for Windows software is AMAZINGLY FAST. No comparison. There is absolutely no noticable delay in any function, whereas all my other pc programs took so long to edit a single aspect of a song that I'd spend my morning listening to the news on tv while organizing music or I'd have fallen asleep again out of boredom. If that takes 128 MB to do - so be it. The other programs available take so much time to do anything that the computer is essentially useless for any other task while dealing with large libraries of music. Heck, this thing is so convenient... I may even find myself PAYING for music again! Never thought I'd see the day.
And yes, I have both PC's and Macs so this is all about the compatibility for me.
Slashdot Mirror
Damn! That's what the fry cook said. And I thought he was just being petty.
I'm sorry guys, that sounded bitter. But I'm really good at Uniary, does anyone have a job? Seriously, I haven't worked since writing
"Microsoft Off, Version 0.0".
Then they turned it into "Microsoft Off-ice", and it was it "so long Dr. Zero", wasn't it? But when you're computer goes haywire, whadda they tell you to do? That's right, it's Dr. Zero to the rescue. So please give a second chance to an old computer purist like me? Or at least, stop sticking your chewing gum under the damn table. I got hepititus 3 times last week!
That's right Mr. "Oh, I can't write a program without both 1's AND 0's". And if you think considerling logic gates and memory registers is powerful, just imagine what it must be like to be me, who wouldn't even consider posting this without knowing the precise state of every electron covalence field of the atoms which MAKE UP those logic gates.
Yeah, so just think about that the next time you ask me to bring you another cup of coffee and the check, you arrogant 10% tipping bastards.
LOL,
Hey, is tupperware stronger than say, a plastic soda bottle? Because I started keeping my bottle of soda on the window ledge, after a rat chewed through it. While it was on my desk. It had been there about, oh, 3 minutes or so (I as was reading and heard a fizz, lookeup up and saw a rat drinking soda off of my desk). I suppose I could have found a metal box to keep my rice in... but somehow, trying to find new and interesting ways to lower the cost of malnutrition from $2/day to $.50/day doesn't seem like the best approach to competing with people from other countries who can eat what sounds like an Indian food banquet, for the same price as an American can eat like a slave under the Khymer Rouge.
Though I admire your energy, I still think a superior approach might be to expect our government to at least provide a level playing field for it's own knowledge workers. I didn't work and study for 18 hour days for several years so that I could, one day, hope to keep rats from stealing all my food. And I doubt the bulk of America's best and brightest would either. But, ya know, if YOU would - email me your resume. I'd be more than happy to find you a programming job in New York City that pays 11k a year.
Thanks for the tip about rice. Got any tips for keeping it a secret from the rats though? Every time I managed to keep food in the room, when I came back the rats had eaten enough of it that I didn't want to risk eating the left overs. What do those thing have anyway, suction cup feet? Like, we're taking way up on a place shelve, not friggin' way to get up there, but the food is mostly gone a what's left is all rat teeth groved.
;-).
Oh yeah, if a government in country as rich as the US allows people to starve to death, it's because they want to, not because they have to. Not that I'm saying letting people who hold down 4 jobs, or even no jobs, starve to death is good or bad; but you can't tell me it's not a matter of choice in a country like this. Well, you can, but I'll just know you're profoundly uninformed
We're at war with Eurasia. We have ALWAYS been at war with Eurasia.
Well, the point isn't to maintain a lifestyle in terms of compensation. For me, the ideal lifestyle is doing something I'm good at (coding) that has a positive impact on the world (coding, making machines do our mindless work for us).
But yes, the "move" solution already occured to me several months ago. And not just for America's current economic policies either. I was in Toronto last fall, and I'm going to be in Quebec at the end of February. If you're country wasn't so damn cold and, well, when compared to NYC, boring; I woulda moved there already. As it is, I'm waiting to see who gets put in charge of the economy.
Moving isn't something one does lightly. I've been here for 10 years, building a reputation as a coder, as a musician, and as a friend. I'm not going to walk away from my entire life just for a few more bucks. But I will walk away from it if the country wants to keep going down the road it's on.
And though I appreciate your sense of adventure, switching careers is a little more tricky that you seem to think. Unless you want to be an intern at a company, a serious employer wants experience. You can't just walk in a say, "I taught myself how to weld!" and get hired. Largely because if that's all your resume says in the first place, you won't be invited to walk in. But the martial arts lessons idea might be feasable, I did get a black belt. Care to load me money to start a Doju? I'd hate to see what a beginning martial arts student would do to all the computer's in my apartment.
But, even though you strike me as being unrealistic and naive, perhaps that's a good sign of what Canada does to you. Imagine... suggesting someone in NYC sell their apartment. As if any mere programmer could have afforded to lay out the minimum $300,000 that even a studio goes for these days. You guys are just adorable!
On a "feed the world" level, I can't complain if there's other people who are willing to do our jobs for less, as long as they are at least treated fairly. But this isn't just competing against people who are willing to go without a few more luxeries, this is about competing with people who don't have the additional burden of American prices adding to their salary requirements. The say these programmers have homes, cars, watch cable, and drink cappucino. I recently got laid off from a job paying low six figures. But in New York City, that actually ain't as much as you think. I've never even DREAMED of owning a home around here, much less being able to afford a car. I've never lived in anything better than a studio apartment in bad to semi-bad Manhattan neighborhoods. And even if someone outright gave me a car, I certainly couldn't afford insurance or parking.
So don't give me this, "Oh, American programmers are just greedy. They had it sweet during the Dot Com Bubble, and now they're bitching because the Indians are not only more reasonable to their employers, but they're smarter too!". Horseshit. You wanna pit me against an Indian programmer on a level playing field, bring them over here and see how long they can live on $11,000 a year. Because it can't be done. My crappy, alphabet city, 9 building code violations apartment costs $15,900 a year to rent. Someone making 11K wouldn't even get an appointment with a realitor. I only eat once a day, and that's still roughly $10. Even when I was subleasing a room (6-floor walkup, no bathroom, one outlet, no phone, ect) room in a welfare hotel from a crack addict, my food budget was $2 a day. Who the hell can get a meal for 50 cents in America?
So no, this isn't about American programmers complaining that globalization means more competition. This is about using India's millions of starving masses to subsidize the lives of very bright individuals, so that they can unfairly compete with American programmers in a way which denies our country as a whole any tax revenue, or sales of American goods and services which can't be purchased on Indian salaries.
So until we have the option of paying India rents (which of course would require that our government only charged India-level property taxes), and paying India prices for food, clothes, medicine, transportation, and taxes; don't expect us to be able to work for India salaries. Or for us to keep on busting our butts to learn all this stuff when there's so little incentive.
The "IT Movement" was probably the most promising thing to happen to America's youth in a generation. And the Government may well succeed in destroying it - but don't you DARE let them tell you it's because us geeks were too greedy to work for "competitive" wages. Having your brightest and hardest working citizens wanting to live indoors, and eat more than once a week, really ain't that much to ask from their country's corporations and government. And don't let anyone tell you different.
"The problem is a lack of highly educated workers willing to work for the minimum wage or lower in the U.S."
Oh yeah, that's the problem.
And the problem with enviorment is the unwillingness of people to be happily sickened by pollutants. And the problem of Spam is people's unwillingness to spend the first hour of the day politely deleting it. And the problems of your personal finances are the unwillingness of store keepers to allow you take whatever you want for free.
Oh what a wonderful world it would be if all of us "unwashed masses" would just let the greedy take advantage of us in any way they can think of. But for such a world to exist, we can't simply be passive about it of course. No, we must study for years and years so that our poverty-wage skills are as profitable to the greedy as can be. Yes, let's all do that shall we?
Or, I suppose we could also demand that companies give us fair compensation for our efforts and skills, and that our government doesn't reward the ones that which will happily destroy the American economy and work force in order to temporarily boost their profits.
You know, if HP really wanted to prop up it's bottom line with foreign labour, I'm quite sure there's some highly skilled individual in India would be willing to work as their CEO for quite a bit less than the multi-million dollar compensation package Fiona currently gets. And if Fiona really believes that best thing for HP is to reduce labour costs through outsourcing, as opposed to simply boosting her own profits at the expense of anyone and everyone else; than no doubt she will be recommending that HP look overseas for cheaper company officers during HP's next corporate meeting. You will be doing that next, right Fiona? Right? Since off-shore labour makes so much sense for the welfare of your company, right?
India will be off shoring their programming jobs to us. So brush up those "Apu" imitations guys.
Needing to pay your mortagage or feed your kids does not give you free license to screw over other people. You can also get the money you need by working for a spammer, or an identity theft ring, or by mugging old ladies. Hey, you gotta do what you gotta do, right?
Seriously though, if you wanna hire people who believe that "The Ends Justify The Means", be my guest. And as soon as their low on cash, they'll steal whatever they have to from you. The rest of us prefer to staff positions of trust with people who can be trusted to do the right thing, not just cover their own butts. I'll take a wild gamble that our companies, on the whole, will put your companies out of business, because dishonesty and irresponsible behaviour are not good long term strategies. Plus, it's just more fun to concentrate on producing something good than to concentrate on not getting caught. And it's easier too. Half the reason I'm honest, and I restrict my relationships to people who are honest, is because I'm just too damn lazy to deal with the complex webs of deceit. But you go right ahead and indulge. It just makes me look that much better.
I've heard some of the same concerns about ex-Microsoft employees. Skills are skills, regardless of where one applied them. But joining, or staying at any company after they are known for a quality you don't want your company to be known for, may reveal something about a person's character if not their abilities. And character is a legitimate factor to consider in a new employee. Would you hire a brilliant coder who used to work for Sanford Wallace? Maybe, but not if there was an equally skilled worker applying who hadn't worked for the Spam King.
;-)
Personally, I think questioning the character of an ex-employee from a questionable company is one of the best ways to guard against some of the detrimental corporate activity in world. If a coder knows that participating in something which will damage the tech world, will also damage their future employment opportunities, coders will be that much less likely to go along with nefarious plans, or even remain ignorant of what their company is doing. CEO's with evil plans will be that much less likely to carry their plans to fruition if they are restricted only to coders who don't care about anyone else, or even their own job prospects when their bosses unfurl their golden parachutes.
There is nothing wrong with holding people accountable for the choices they make. And there is a great deal wrong with not doing that. In technology, as it is in life.
That said, I don't think a low-level coder for Enron should be required to answer for the same decisions the high-level "death star" programmers should. But good luck getting hired by me if you accepted any work from Halliburton or Diebold during the last 3 years.
I know it's hard to survive without doing something wrong when "everybody's doing it", but there's a few reasons to work a little harder than you seemed to in your story to prevent the moving of jobs to offshore locales.
1. You live in America. Money which goes outside the country is money which doesn't help your country.
2. One of the reasons programmers got to charge such exorbinate salaries when the world was going Internet crazy, was that there wasn't a lot of Americans who could do the work. Outsourcing to other countries will result in even less technologically saavy Americans the next time a lot of high tech skills are needed.
3. Management skills are outsourcable too. When you're company realizes that so many of it's programmers work in Pune, India that it just doesn't make sense to pay American level salaries to have them managed by someone half way across the world who doesn't even speak their native tongue, you're going to have to live with the fact that you got the ball rolling in that direction.
Writing computer programs to handle tasks that computers can do as well, or better than people will always make sense economically. Well, as long as electricity costs less than human salaries. As time goes on, computers will be able to do more, and more tasks can be automated. Will programmers from other countries provide the best bang for the buck? I wouldn't count on it. But since we're in a field where 2-4 years experience and study can put you at the top of your field technically (the skills we need change pretty quickly), the American programmer will have to fight to stay on top. The same opportunity to learn everything yourself and be an expert, whether you're a 16 year old highschool student or a 35 year old nerd with a Masters in philosophy, also applies if you're a bright Indian who can feed their family on $5 a day. The only advantages we have right now are being familiar with the American culture, and being able to afford computers and net access easier than people in third world countries.
Technology is a meritocracy, but it's mostly been a national meritocracy so far. Soon it will be an International one, and America's slowest programmers will be pushed out. So let's all support politicians who really try to keep other countries from starving or overpopulating themselves. I may be smart, but I wouldn't want to compete with a guy who's bid for a job is "a bite of your sandwich".
Tell ya what, try to spam me at:
Me@RandyHamilton.com
Go on, give it a try! I wrote some wicked filters which have knocked out 100% of the hundreds of spams I used to get, while still allowing automated receipts, newsletters, and long lost friends to get emails through to me from notoriously spam heavy services; while bouncing everything else to oblivion. So see if you could so much as one email through without doing anything that would be too expensive to do for even 100 other people using the same system. Betcha can't! (I know, giving a challenge like this to slashdot readers who are VERY likely to be smarter than me is practically suicide; but it's very lonely being the only guy who never gets any spam anymore).
On a side not, Elliot Spitzer ROCKS!!! I love this dude! I think I'd ask for a refund from any candidate I contributed to if they didn't at least ASK him to be their VP. We need to clone about 2,000 more of him. We fill out our own DOJ, then sell the rest for a billion a pop to erase the deficit.
It's actually a pretty simple variation of the white-list approach, and frankly I'd be surprised if no one else had ever tried this. But it just makes more sense to concentrate on describing the emails you do want. First, because it's always easier to describe a smaller quantity than a large one. Secondly because spammers are adaptable, and can easily avoid sending an email that looks like "spam", but they can't easily send one that looks like it was sent specifically to you, because all they know about you is your email address.
I think the best way to describe exactly what I set up, is to tell what abilities my email server actually has, and how I used those few abilities to eliminate 100% of the spam I'd been getting.
The email server software is off the shelf Ipswitch stuff, which my webhost (HostMySite.com) makes available to it's customers through a web interface.
-You can set up "Filters" through which email will pass. The filters only allow to look at one of the 6 fields, Subject, To, From, Sender, Header or Body. Within that field, you can say it either contains or doesn't contain a list of words or phrases (which unfortunately must be manually typed in). When an email meets the condition you specified (ie, the "From" contains "@Slashdot.com"), you can then take 1 of 5 actions: "Move the message to this mailbox", "Send with Copy to", "Forward the message to", "Bounce", or "Delete this message". You can specify as many filters as you want, and they will be run in sequence (ie, if an email triggers filter #3, it will not be examined by filters #4 on down) However, it's important to know that an email can only go through one filter in it's lifetime - so if a filter forwards an email to another mailbox or email address, it will NOT be subject to any of that mailbox's or email address's filters.
-You can set up as many email addresses as you want, or mailboxes (ie subfolders) for a given email address as you want.
-You can set up an autoreply, with the option of having it forward any emails to another address.
1. The first thing I did was to set up two email addresses, "Me@RandyHamilton.com" and "Spam@RandyHamilton.com". I deleted the "webmaster@RandyHamilton.com" address, because that would act as a catch-all address, and I need the ability to forward emails to a non-existent email address in my domain so I can generate a bounce message in some situations. In the "me" address, I set up a mailbox subfolder called "verified", and I set my email program, Netscape Mail, to only look at that mailbox (the Inbox mailbox will be empty).
2. On the "Me@RandyHamilton.com" account, I put filters which first check for the word "FuzzyKitty" in the subject line, then to see if the From address contains any of the full or partial email addresses I specified like "Girl123232@hotmail.com" or "@thinkgeek.com" that I got by exporting my "Collected Address" folder from netscape mail, and finally to check the body of the email for my full name, or phone number, company, bandname, ect. If an email meets ANY of those criteria, it is moved to my "verified" mailbox. If it does not, it hits the last filter on the list, which will forward anything with an "@" symbol in the email address to "spam@randyhamilton.com"
3. The "Spam@RandyHamilton.com" has an autoreply which, whether an email came to it directly or was forwarded, will respond with an email asking the user to write back with the word "FuzzyKitty" in the subject line, and it then forwards the email it received to the non-existent address of "boing@randyhamilton.com" which will generate a bounce message. Note that when I first set this up, I didn't forward the emails in this way because I wanted to look at them and make sure they were all spam before bouncing them.
4. The spam@randyhamilton.com has 2 filters in addition to the autoreply. The first forwards anything with "FuzzyKitty" in the subject line to the "verified" mailbox of Me@RandyHamilton.com", and the second bounces anything with an "@" symbol in the From
I realize that was one of the major problems with white-list based spam filtering. That's why you add "white-phrase" filters to it. An email which contains the name of a company you expect a receipt from, or your full name, zip code, company name, or whatever else you can think of that would be specific to you; it's not spam. Oh sure, if it became a wide spread practice, spammers could just include every zip code, or major company name in the body of the email; but that's a snap to adjust to. Just stop accepting things with your zip code, and filter company name based on the From field. Even spammers know better than to spoof the From addresses from major companies like Amazon.com or UPS.com; because those companies have more than enough time and resources to track their slimy butts down.
Don't make the mistake of viewing spammers as hackers who are just trying to see if they get an email through because they enjoy the challenge. They're just businessmen who are trying to make money.
I don't know if anyone's interested, but over the weekend I put together a white-list, white-phrase, auto-response human-sender verification system which has been 100% effective so far. Meaning that everything it identified as spam was (which in now bounces instead of holding for my perusal) and every email from both human strangers and machine generated email from companies I wanted to hear from got right through. I wanted to write a program that would do this automatically for my web host, but even though it wasn't an option (they used off the shelf Ipswitch software that they couldn't reprogram), I was still able to set it up using existing filters. Which means you probably can too.
If you want to know how it works, either to use it or to find a flaw, say so and I'll post the specs.
As any good hacker knows, there is no way to create a 100% secure system. The only thing you can do is to raise the bar so that unwanted activity is less likely to occur, or will occur infrequently enough to not be a major problem. In the case of a totally electronic vote, all they have to do is not count it correctly. The way Diebold systems are set up, this is both quite easy to do, and impossible to track once it's been done. With a paper, ie absentee vote, they'd have to not count it, AND destroy a physical piece of paper to cheat you and not get caught. Not that it couldn't be done of course (they could also theoretically hire a $5/hr grunt to impersonate you), but it would be much harder to do on a large scale without being found out.
Just because the neo-cons are hopeless corrupt, it doesn't mean they're also geniuses. There we examples on blackboxvoting.org where "surprise" GOP victories involved precisely the same number of votes in several counties, or where the number of votes for the GOP candidate was far greater than the number of registered voters for a precint. Heck, even that first folder which contained all of the Diebold's software in their insecure FTP site was actually called, "RobGeogia.zip". We're dealing with crooks here, not rocket scientists.
Paper ballots at least would provide a way to get to the bottom of electoral "anomolies" when they occur that electronic ballots currently don't. And the neo-cons are no more likely to figure out a fool proof way around that in next 11 months, then we are to get secure and accurate electronic voting machines in that time.
By all means, push for electronic voting machines that can be trusted. But until that happens, the best way I can think of to insure you vote will be counted correctly on the systems which will definetely be in use during the 2004 elections, is to use a very carefully filled-out absentee ballot.
This is a solution from Bartcop.com, and it's both clever and simple. Absentee ballots ARE a paper trail. So if you're worried that voting machines aren't going to count your vote, and won't leave a paper trail which would let election officials catch them at it, vote via absentee ballot and leave your OWN paper trail.
You "know" they're most likely to re-offend? Unless they're insane (in which case they should be confined to a mental hospital), why would they be. Either way, please let us know why you believe this.
But let's just say you got your wish. You can look up information on anyone who's ever commited any kind of crime, including their picture, home address, work address, ect. What exactly do you picture doing with that information that would make you safer? Would you "run them out of town"? If so, you'd better first make sure that you're better at it then the guys who live next to criminals in the next town who'll be trying to do the same thing. Would you contact them somehow and say, "Hey, I know what you've done. And if anyone does that around here I'm coming after you first!"? Well, even if that didn't result in you getting into a fight (in which case YOUR picture, address, and employer would be on the Internet because you'd be guilty of assault), it's not like the police don't already look at known criminals first when pursuing a new crime. Would you, if you found out you had a convicted criminal next door, go out and buy extra locks, maybe install some sort of alarm system? Well, only the dumbest and laziest criminal in the world is going to commit a crime they got convicted of, at the house next door. The vast majority of them are at least smart enough to go to a different neighbourhood. And not just to avoid being the first and most obvious suspect, but also because ex-cons don't tend to be able to afford to live in the types of neighbourhoods they'd want to steal things from.
So where's the benefit of such registries? There's nothing sensible you can do in response to discovering a criminal living in your neighbourhood, that wouldn't be sensible if there wasn't one there. And there's nothing you can do to the ex-con themself that would deter them from victimizing you anymore than the records they know the police have. Unless you'd be willing to go so far to deter them they you yourself would wind up on the list of "known criminals".
If you want to be safe, take reasonable precautions against crime. If you have any energy left over, drive more carefully and take good care of your health (you're far more likely to die from sickness or an accident than from an avoidable crime).
But if you want to scare the snot out of yourself, and put ex-cons in hostile and desparate positions, then by all means, start a registry.
I telecommuted for 2 years as the Vice President of a Computer Aided Software Engineering tool company. Of course, that's not the type of job an extrovert would take whether it required telecommuting or not, so it took about 8 months before I even noticed the comparitive lack of social interaction. How I handled it was, I waited for Microsoft to buy our biggest competitor, Rational Corp, and drive us to the verge of ruin. Then, being not just flat broke but seriously in debt, it was very easy to get motivated to go out and take the first crappy sweat-shop programmer job I could find. And one of the places they sent me to work at bought my contract out for more than I made in a year at the telecommuting company, and wound up paying me the highest salary I'd ever seen.
Um, none of which had any real effect on my opportunities to socialize. For that, I got really drunk one night and joined some chick's band who I was flirting with. The band became very popular playing places like Burning Man, and now I'm seeing 5 different girls, only one of whom is old enough drink.
Let me know if this formula works for you as well.
This has got to be somewhat illegal to do; but the only thing which would actually make any of SCO's actions seem to make any kind of sense at all; is if SCO officers are somehow SHORTING THEIR OWN STOCK.
Think about it: the only way to make money in the stockmarket is to know or guess what a stock is going to do before most other people do. Keeping some technological breakthrough a secret from the public is tough to do, the SEC watches out for that a lot, and it's a strategy that only works if your company doesn't suck.
Keeping the fact that your company sucks a secret from the public is equally tricky, unless you're willing to fudge the books (also something the SEC looks out for these days).
So the only way to know which way your stock is going to move, if it's not going to go up and everyone already knows you suck - is to do something SO INCREDIBLY STUPID that no one could have possibly seen it coming (like their IP claim). And then, just when the public has started to adjust to the fact that your company not only sucks, but appears to be run by people without any understanding of their own industry - the only remaining tricks left to you is to something SO MUCH MORE INCREDIBLY STUPID; that even people who thought you were idiots are taken by surprise.
Someone, somewhere, is shorting SCO stock, and that money is getting back to the people behind these idiotic decisions.
Is this crackpot theory possible? There's only one way to tell for sure: If they get away with this, they're next strategic move will be to either
a) Re-brand their distro as "Osama Bin Linux"
b) Develop a line of Windows CE-based pacemakers
or
c) Hire Kevin Costner to direct another film.
Look guys,
I use Windows 2000/XP, Jaguar, and very rarely, Linux. They all have their own little advantages and disadvantages over each other, but how can anything possibly be more important than an OS being open? Without that trait, even the coolest, slickest, most stable and secure OS still throws it's future at the mercy of the company controling it. Apple seems like a cool company for the most part (at least compared to Microsoft, not that that's saying much); but it's still a company. Right now, it churns out great work because that's a profitable strategy against market leader Microsoft. Tomorrow, it might not be. And for those who can't switch to Microsoft, you don't see Apple behaving quite as honourably.
I implore you, do not surrender control of your operating system in exchange for anything. Nothing can make that a winning proposition in the long run. A benign dicatorship can offer citizens plenty of perks over a chaotic democracy, but I've never seen a group of people ultimately happy with that choice; other than the dictators themselves.
A large chunk of our lives takes place in computers. If the Linux community looks at the fruits of a dictatorship OS (one controled by a company) as a viable alternative to a free OS, rather than simply a challenge, we will all ultimately regret it. At any moment, even a seemingly benign company like Apple could decide that they needed to put DRM software, or lousy security, or ill-conceived product activation schemes into their OS; and if there isn't a good alternative available, and there won't be a damn thing you can do about it. Or, simply because it's a company, it could be required by the government to install spyware of one sort or another, and you won't be able to get it out. With a free OS, you'll never have to worry about that.
Apple has been an inspiration to technophiles since it's inception, and I think OSX is really great piece of work. But computer operating systems are already too important to our lives to relinquish control over, and will become more and more vital every year. My sincerest hope is that Apple will one day be confined to making contributions to a ubiquitous open source OS, rather than producing one which only it controls. And that will only happen if people never lose sight of how important it is to do whatever it takes to retain control over their computers.
No one will probably read this, since this is an old thread, but I just wanted to go on record as pointing out that no feature is as important as freedom. Cheers.
Hey, I've got a huuuuge music library (120+ GB) and I've tried every app out there for keeping it organized. The iTunes for Windows software is AMAZINGLY FAST. No comparison. There is absolutely no noticable delay in any function, whereas all my other pc programs took so long to edit a single aspect of a song that I'd spend my morning listening to the news on tv while organizing music or I'd have fallen asleep again out of boredom. If that takes 128 MB to do - so be it. The other programs available take so much time to do anything that the computer is essentially useless for any other task while dealing with large libraries of music. Heck, this thing is so convenient... I may even find myself PAYING for music again! Never thought I'd see the day.
And yes, I have both PC's and Macs so this is all about the compatibility for me.