I mostly agree with your approach to personal responsibility. However, through no fault of his own, my son was born with cerebral palsy and is moderately handicapped, both mentally and physically. In our meritocracy, he will always be at the bottom. Assuming he can even get a real job, hard work and personal responsibility are not going to reward him much beyond minimum wage. That's life. His only chance at economic viability is for my wife and I to continue to support him, which we will do as best we can.
I've come to realize that our version of meritocracy has multiple facets, of which hard work is only one component. Obviously intelligence is also a component. I've also come to realize that good looks, good health, and social skills are also key components. Fortunately, I'm reasonably blessed in those last three areas, but I know many people who aren't. These people will have a much harder time rising above the class they started in, regardless of their other merits. Again, that's life. But let's not pretend that hard work and personal responsibility are all it takes to succeed.
The impacted product is Quickbooks Enterprise Solutions, which is the top-tier QB product. This is the next step above Quickbooks and Quickbooks Pro.
The cost for 5 users is $3,000, 10 users $4,500, 20 users $7,500.
This version uses the Sybase iAnywhere SQL-compliant database as the back end. There is no additional charge for the DB.
The only components that run on Linux are the DB and a daemon that apparently manages connections.
According to QB support, the linux components won't be available until June 25th, and will be free to download.
The linux documentation says is only tested (and thus supported) on Fedora FC6 and OpenSuse 10.2.
While not confirmed, it appears that the DB can be accessed via ODBC or possibly even FreeTDS, so that other applications can see the QB data.
This does not work with the Terminal Services version of Quickbooks Enterprise Solutions. It only works when the fat client is installed on the user's desktop.
SAMBA must be enabled and mapped to the client PCs.
A thirty-day trial version of QB Enterprise Solutions can be obtained by calling the number at this site, although I haven't confirmed it will work with Linux. I called yesterday afternoon, and received a tracking number this morning. We are a paying customer, so your mileage may vary.
I don't particularly care for QB, but it is the product I have to support at my company. If I can deploy the backend on an existing Linux box, that's one less Windows server to worry about. In fact, I'm down to just one Windows server now. Currently it's a PITA to get info into and out of QB, especially in a real-time fashion. Having an standard SQL interface should improve the situation dramatically, especially for my in-house LAMP apps.
On a related note, the company/org/individual that writes a QB knock-off (think OpenOffice compared to MS Office) will make a killing. SMBs can't justify the learning curve of replacing QB. Remove that barrier, and I think many companies would consider switching. In particular, we need a web-enabled product that looks/behaves like to QB.
The guy is building a media server for his home. Does he really need hot-swap drives or hardware RAID? Software RAID is simple to implement and inexpensive, especially if you have enough SATA ports on your motherboard to support your storage config.
By the way, does anyone have recommendations on 4-port SATA controllers?
I live in Florida, so our heater (heat pump) is rarely on, while our AC is rumbling most of the year. I have started replacing my incandescents with CFLs not because of the energy saved from lighting, but my theory that CFLs will cut down on my AC requirements.
Does anyone know of an easy way to calculate the difference in heat output between incandescents and CFLs?
Thank you for pointing out the obvious yet overlooked fact that we have been using mercury-filled light bulbs for decades. The traditional 4' tubes found in offices, schools, shops, and homes contain as much or more mercury than CFLs.
The author of the original story, Steven Milloy, has been identified as a corporate hack. By the angle of the article, it really sounds like he has a "corporate sponsor" providing financial backing. It would be interesting to see what industry has a financial interest in suppressing CFLs.
The GDP includes deficit spending, which makes GDP growth look artificially high. Subtract the hundreds of billions of dollars that are pumped into the economy by deficit spending every year and then annual GDP growth doesn't look so hot. In fact, we would actually have negative GDP growth (recession) in a few years over the past decade.
If you and I make the same salary, but I spend 3-5% more than you each year by borrowing on a credit card, my lifestyle/consumption will be higher than yours. Unfortunately, I can't sustain that model forever. The same goes for our country.
Also, the deficit numbers reported by the CBO and OMB are bogus. To calculate the actual deficit for a given year, subtract the debt at the end of that year with the debt at the end of the previous year. You'll find that our deficits are actually quite a bit higher than reported by our trusty politicians.
Great advice by the parent post. In particular, learn the basics of vi/vim (or emacs) ASAP. Next (or concurrently), write some simple shell scripts. This will force you to learn some CLI tools. Use "man" extensively. Near the bottom of most man pages are lists of related commands, which is a good way to find new tools.
In addition to the previously noted CLI tools, spend some time learning how to use the "find" command. The -exec option of the "find" command is a powerful way to perform a task on a large set of files. It's also a good way to destroy your system, but if you never play with fire, you'll end up a vegan. The "screen" command is another handy little tool, especially if you are remotely connected to a system.
Finally, learn how to create aliases for commands you frequently perform. Example: alias netg="netstat -pan | grep -i " allows me to type "netg ssh" to list all open secure shell connections.
Here's a link to a good breakdown of USDA's farm subsidies.
Even though my father grew up on a dust bowl farm in Kansas during the depression and benefited from some of FDR's programs, I agree that there's no longer any need for farm subsidies. I also don't think we should use subsidies/tariffs as an excuse to compete with other exporters. If foreign governments want to subsidize their exports, then let US consumers take advantage.
I don't believe the government should intervene in the free market in attempts to manage the economy, unless obvious monopolies have developed. On the other hand, I believe strongly that the government should intervene in the free market to protect the environment, ensure labor and product safety, and protect property/legal rights of individual citizens from corporations.
If a person's daily work flow doesn't involve much interaction with others, then I don't think organization is important. However, if I have to cover for my slovenly co-worker, then organization is critical. A good example would be code development. If I'm writing code for a script or small standalone app, my code's organization/documentation isn't really that important. If I can understand it, then that's all that counts. But if other developers are involved, then the code needs to be standardized (organized). This also extrapolates to desks and physical work environments. In my current job at a small business, I sometimes have to cover for a sales rep who is unavailable to take a customer's call. If that sales rep's desk is a mess (to me), then it's nearly impossible for me to coherently communicate with the customer. If the desk is organized, I can generally find the info I need to handle the customer.
I worked at Boeing back in the early nineties. They were bringing over a lot of Japan's business methodologies, such as quality improvement, work flow, etc. One of the things they implemented was the three CCCs, which while I don't remember what the abreviation stands for, translated to cleanliness and organization. They applied it to the entire company, from the plant floor to the tool shops to the offices. It was an extensive and expensive project. I seriously doubt Boeing would have engaged if there wasn't an ROI. I would like to know that the plane I'm flying on was built in a clean and organized environment. Do you want the engineer with the messy desk pushing changes down to the shop floor, where a similarly disorganized mechanic is installing wiring harnesses to the flight controls? Not me. I'll take the anal-retentive guy every time.
You hit the nail on the head. If morality and propensity for religion are simply evolutionary tricks to forward my genes, and I'm smart enough to understand that I will never personally benefit from forwarding my own genes, then morality and religion are simply hindering me from seeking pleasure in my short, purposeless existence. Murder, rape, theft, fraud, etc. are not wrong, as long as I don't get caught. In fact, if any of these activities provides me additional pleasure (or provides resources for future pleasure), then I should engage in them. In fact, this would imply that career criminals and sociopaths are actually smarter than the rest of us because they have mastered their evolutionary impulses.
On a personal level, my genes seem to be quite in control of my actions. I believe in a higher presence, provide for my wife/children through honest labor, and as a foster parent, have helped complete strangers at a personal cost of time/money. I'm either living my life completely ass-backwards, or more or less correct. If I'm wrong, I'll never know, so who cares. If I'm right, I'll have the rest of eternity to gloat (unless I happened to pick the wrong "higher presence"). By the way, I certainly understand the well-deserved skepticism of agnostics and atheists towards organized religion. On the flip side, I don't understand an atheist's acceptance of any kind of moral code. If there's no God, then we are all living in the jungle. There's no right/wrong, simply pain/pleasure and risk/reward.
I've got over 6 years as the solitary IT guy at a small sales company. We are the "used car sales" of electronic components (chips/caps/connectors/etc.). Prior to that I worked for Fortune 100/500 companies and had no exposure to sales. Here's my observations.
1. If you want to make real money (via commission) and don't want to own a company, then sales is your only realistic choice. Otherwise, you will constantly be bound by a salary range/cap. Even if you get performance bonuses, they will never come close to the commissions generated via sales. That's the bad news. The good news is that money doesn't really make you happy. At least that's what I've heard.
2. Your technical skills will be a distant second to your soft skills, aka human interaction. Our best sales guys can't even spell PC, but they can smell a sucker like a hyena smells carrion.
3. Our best sales guys have no scruples when it comes to their job. They may be honest and trustworthy outside of work, but once they are on the job, their values fall to the wayside. Rent Boiler Room, Wall Street, and especially Glengarry Glen Ross. All of the bad guys in these movies are the good guys in sales.
4. If you ever wondered what happened to the popular, good-looking guys in high school, they're probably in sales. The popular, good-looking girls figured out which of the popular, good-looking guys could really sell and then married them. Also, age is definitely a factor. Younger people have less to lose and more time to invest. Also, they look better, which is a definite plus in the world of sales.
5. If you have a family to support or a lot of fixed expenditures (mortgage/cars/etc.), be careful. It may take you years to build up a customer base that can support your current lifestyle. Customers, especially enterprise customers, aren't going to just pull down their pants and bend over when you walk in their company the first time. You will have to earn their business, typically by proving yourself on low-value deals.
6. If you ever want to work on your own or start a company, then you better have a partner who is good at #2/#3/#4, and you both better be ready to deal with #5.
You can make a great living in sales. We have kids who barely made it out of high school that are now making $80K+, which is pretty good jack in central Florida. On the other hand, I have watched many more people come in and flounder/sink because they were too honest, or too introverted, or too risk-adverse.
Find a small business that needs a generic sysadmin/tech to manage their systems. You will get to touch all areas of systems, computers, telephony, networking, etc. If you show any business saavy, you might also get involved in guiding your company's IT direction and even apply technology to solving business problems. Don't necessarily target technical companies, as you will be surrounded by people who either have or think they have superior technical skills, rendering you to a more subservient role.
After a few years at a small business, you should amass a broad range of IT skills and probably have a better overall idea of how companies work than more experienced IT staff at larger companies. You may not get paid as much, but you will probably have better hours and better treatment. At least you will still be making money, as opposed to spending money on further education or certs. I'm not opposed to education/training/certs, but hands-on experience is the best way to gain skills.
In case you think I'm talking through my ass, I have worked in IT for Boeing, Verizon, and Publix (regional supermarket chain, 100K+ employees) in various IT and senior IT roles, including sysadmin. I now work for a small company with around 25 people. I manage all of our systems. To clarify, if it plugs into an electrical outlet, I'm responsible. The money and hours are significantly better than my corporate gigs, but my situation is somewhat unique.
By the way, the smaller and younger the company, the better for you (if the company seems viable). This will give you the opportunity to grow with the company. If necessary, make some financial concessions up front, especially if you can work out some type of future profit-sharing or equity stake (I wish I would have done that instead of going for the big salary).
Back in the dot.com boom I did some IT hiring for a large telecom. One of the things that we looked for was job stability. I personally like to see someone stick around at least a couple of years. It takes several months to get up to speed in a new company, especially in regards to the non-technical aspects, such as the company's ecosystem. After that investment, a company needs to see at least a year or two of solid productivity to get back that initial investment
By the same token, I would typically be leary of someone who worked at the same job for too long. Note that I said the same job, not the same company. Someone who works themselves up through the company ranks or moves around within a company will have a much broader base of experience than someone who has spent the last two decades doing the same job, especially at the same company. To me, the ideal IT resume shows someone who has held several jobs, for at least a couple of years each, but not more than four or five years per job. Working at more than one company or in more than one industry is also a plus. There also should be no unexplained employment gaps.
If battery packs can be standardized, then "gas stations" could consist of an automated process to change out the depleted battery pack with a charged battery pack. Depleted packs could be charged offline over a period of hours. We consumers already do this manually with propane tanks for our backyard grills, and the same process exists for industrial equipment (forklifts, etc.) on a larger scale.
An automated quick change could probably be handled in a matter of seconds without the customer even having to exit their vehicle, making it much faster and more convenient than even today's process of pumping gasoline. Also, by automating the process, there would be less opportunity for errors/accidents.
And I don't get a damned thing out of it, and like social security, the programs won't be around long enough for me to use them.
Even if nothing is done to fix social security, it isn't going away. If nothing is done, sometime around 2040, the SSA trust fund will be exhausted. However, the SSA will still be able to pay out roughly 75% of the estimated requirements, based on incoming revenue. Shift the retirement age back a few years, and things get a lot better. I think that's fair, considering our life expectency has increased dramtically since the SSA was implemented.
The real crisis that the SSA faces is the fact that the government is spending SSA revenue meant for the trust fund and stuffing the SSA piggy bank with IOUs. It's no different than if you borrowed all the money in your 401K plan with no intention of ever paying it back. By spending money intended for the trust fund, our government is able to hide the true status of our federal deficit/debt.
To see how much debt we are really incurring, without the masking effect of borrowing from the trust fund, subtract the national debt at the end of each year from the previous year's debt. The numbers are staggering. Even during our best "surplus" year under Clinton, we incurred $18B additional debt. Since then, the annual debt growth has exploded. 2003=$555B, 2004=$596B, 2005=$554B.
I'm assuming your employer is also kicking in for your insurance. That amount is part of your compensation, so it's probable that you are already paying more than 1.5%.
I also assume you are only insuring yourself, not a spouse and children. I say this because I paid almost $10K last year for my family's medical/dental. That was before my company kicked in roughly $1,700 and before I paid significant co-pays for medical visits and prescriptions. Our company actively shops for the cheapest insurance each year, so I know that my cost is in the normal cost range. I'm not taking sides in the socialized medicine debate, but I know that most americans pay way more than 1.5% of their family income to cover health costs.
If you're one of the lucky few that pays less and still has decent insurance, count your blessings. Also, make sure your health insurance is actually going to cover you in case of serious illness. By the time I was 33, I was diagnosed with testicular cancer and had a son born with cerebral palsy. I was fortunate enough to have excellent health coverage through my employer at the time (Boeing), thanks to the strong unions there. Otherwise, I would have gone bankrupt.
LEDs are going to replace the bulbs and color wheels, greatly increasing light source longetivity and also eliminating rainbow effect. This may take awhile to trickle down from the high end devices. On the other hand, since the mfgrs won't want to lose customers over the bulb issue, they will have incentive to make the change ASAP.
I just purchased five E521 workstations with XP Home Edition on Monday. Total cost, with a $60 small business coupon was $509 per system. I ran through the E521 config using the FreeDOS option. The system, almost identically configured, was $709. The only upgrade was a 250 GB drive versus a 160 GB drive (I couldn't get a discount by dropping to a 160 GB drive). Even without the coupon, it is $40 cheaper to purchase with Windows XP than without a licensed OS. So, either Microsoft is giving away XP Home Edition, or Dell is screwing their customers.
It would be better to purchase the Windows version, then you could install Linux/Xen and would be licensed to Windows as a guest.
OK, it's not Windows-based, but it works great and it's cheap.
I'm the IT guy for a small office (30 XP desktops, 1 W2K server, 4 linux servers). Last year I replaced my homegrown scripts with BackupPC. I have been extremely happy with the results. I took an obsolete server, loaded it with four 160 GB SATA drives and a PCI SATA adapter. Total cost was under $400. Fedora FC5 and FC6 include BackupPC in their Yum repositories, so you can easily install all necessary software at no cost. Configuration was not too complicated, although it is text-based.
BackupPC has a web-based management interface that is a snap to use. BackupPC uses some fairly advanced techniques to keep the pool of backed up data to a manageable level on disk. To get data to tape (DVD in my case), BackupPC has archive tools which by default build specific backup sets as tar archives. You can easily modify BackupPC's config file to use a custom script that also handles your encryption requirements.
Here's why the rich pay more than their share in the USA. Each person's true portion of the 2006 federal budget is $8,000. For my family of five, the federal tax burden would be $40,000 this year. That's before sales tax, state income tax, property tax, etc. My total tax burden would easily exceed $50,000. That doesn't leave much wiggle room to consume other things like say... food, clothing, and housing. Discretionary spending on entertainment, travel, etc. would be right out for the vast majority of us. It's hard to be rich if nobody can afford to buy your products/services. While it may not seem fair, a progressive tax system is the best way to ensure that the rich get richer and the rest of us get to eat.
That $8,000 number I cooked up is based on the 2006 federal budget of 2.5 trillion and a US population of 300 million. The actual number is $8,333 but the government gets a small portion of revenue from other sources than taxes, so I rounded down. I ignored corporate taxes since these taxes simply get passed back to end users in the form of higher costs on products/services. Feel free to trash my numbers/logic, as I'm not a bean counter. I just don't see how it is possible to equitably distribute the cost of our government without bankrupting most of us in the process.
Unfortunately, I have way too much experience with health insurance, so here's my suggestions.
1. Extend your wife's plan with COBRA even after she quits at least until your baby is born. Do this, even if that means traveling further because your closest hospital is no longer in network. My first child required an emergency C-section and a few days in the neonatal ICU. He was almost 11 pounds at birth and there was no way he was coming out through the in door, so to speak. The bill was pretty amazing, but I didn't have to pay much out-of-pocket. So, if there are additional expenses related to your child's birth, at least you won't be completely screwed. On a side note, my son ended up with cerebral palsy, possibly due to decisions made by our doctor and his team. Learn up front about what can go wrong, and don't assume the experts are paying close attention to your wife/child.
2. Never go without health insurance and life insurance. I was 33 years old and my wife was pregnant with our third child when I found out I had testicular cancer. I caught it before the cancer had spread, but I still required one minor and one major operation, all kinds of diagnostics, and years of follow-up. My bills, way back in 1994, were well over $100K. My insurance at the time covered almost all expenses. Because I had life insurance, I had one less thing to worry about. Without life insurance, I probably would have died simply from stress.
3. If you have pre-existing conditions, you really need some type of group plan. Individual insurance plans are out of the question if you have any kind of serious pre-existing condition (cerebral palsy, testicular cancer, etc.). I know, because I tried this route. I pay around $10K per year for medical/dental at my current company. I thought that was a ripoff until I tried to get insurance on my own. Your only reasonable way to get health insurance is to be in some kind of group plan where your risks can be spread across a large pool of individuals. Even then you may have problems if you have any coverage gaps or you aren't going into a large enough group plan. If you have no pre-existing conditions and are healthy, the medical savings plan along with a high deductable plan is a cost-effective approach.
4. Without health insurance, you pay much higher rates for the same procedures/care. I recently had a 4-day stay in the hospital (as a result of the cancer surgery 10 years earlier). The unadjusted bill was 3 times the amount of the adjusted bill. Without insurance, you get the unadjusted bill and no expert on your side to help negotiate the bill down.
Hopefully your luck will be better than mine when it comes to health. However, I can say that insurance has saved me from financial ruin on more than one occasion. More important, insurance allowed me to make career and life decisions (like having more than one child) that I may not have made if I was paying out the ass for the rest of my life due to one bad medical experience.
I wish I had an answer for our country's current medical insurance problem. I don't think a government-based single-provider solution is best, but I think government may need to help fund large group plans that are affordable for the tens of millions of americans that want insurance but can't afford it. The uninsured are driving up costs for the rest of us by waiting too long to get care, and then entering the system directly through hospital emergency rooms. I'm encouraged by the pay-as-you-go clinics that are popping up at Wal-Marts and elsewhere for non-emergency care. It costs a lot less to pay $25 at a clinic to have your kid checked out than to wait until your kid is seriously ill and then take him/her to the emergency room.
By far the biggest hurdle to a carbon tax is convincing our tax-adverse populace to comply with a new tax. Just mentioning taxes is a show-stopper for most politicians. However, there is one phrase that is more evil to Joe 6-pak than "taxes", and that phrase is "income taxes". So, how about a revenue-neutral approach. Lower/eliminate the bottom of the income tax brackets while adding/raising taxes on carbon-based energy. Consumers pay less income taxes, but more at the pump. Joe 6-pak is happy because he gets a bigger paycheck. He pays more to gas up his 4-wheel drive extended supercab, but he blames the Arabs for that problem. He also knows that he can buy a Prius if he gets really tired of paying so much for fuel (although for cultural reasons, he will no longer be able to take his friends to NASCAR events).
Obviously, just about every product and service will increase in price because underlying energy costs will increase production costs. This will put market pressures on all industries to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels so they can gain competitive advantage. Meanwhile, smart consumers will be able to lower their overall tax bill while those of us who don't want to adapt will pay more taxes than we currently pay.
The increased costs of goods/services will be a drag on our economy, but that drag is coming sooner or later. It's just a sad fact of being so dependent upon a finite resource. I would rather pay a little more now and avoid the increasingly volatile energy fluctuations that will most certainly occur as fossil fuel supplies dwindle. Hopefully, the drag on the economy will be somewhat countered by increased spending for more efficient products as well as the growth of the alternate energy industry. To minimize the impact on the economy, the transition from income taxes to carbon taxes would have to be reasonably slow, maybe a 3% shift per year. Ten years from now, the average citizen would pay 30% less income taxes and 30% more carbon taxes.
My wife bought a book that used this method to improve the odds of having a boy or girl. We wanted a girl since we already had a boy. Using the formula in the book, she kept me at bay for a week, waited for the magic date, and said "Go". Nine months later, we had a girl. Maybe it worked, or maybe we were just on the right side of the coin flip.
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Despite his non-compete contract, it was determined that he still had his soul.
I mostly agree with your approach to personal responsibility. However, through no fault of his own, my son was born with cerebral palsy and is moderately handicapped, both mentally and physically. In our meritocracy, he will always be at the bottom. Assuming he can even get a real job, hard work and personal responsibility are not going to reward him much beyond minimum wage. That's life. His only chance at economic viability is for my wife and I to continue to support him, which we will do as best we can.
I've come to realize that our version of meritocracy has multiple facets, of which hard work is only one component. Obviously intelligence is also a component. I've also come to realize that good looks, good health, and social skills are also key components. Fortunately, I'm reasonably blessed in those last three areas, but I know many people who aren't. These people will have a much harder time rising above the class they started in, regardless of their other merits. Again, that's life. But let's not pretend that hard work and personal responsibility are all it takes to succeed.
I don't particularly care for QB, but it is the product I have to support at my company. If I can deploy the backend on an existing Linux box, that's one less Windows server to worry about. In fact, I'm down to just one Windows server now. Currently it's a PITA to get info into and out of QB, especially in a real-time fashion. Having an standard SQL interface should improve the situation dramatically, especially for my in-house LAMP apps.
On a related note, the company/org/individual that writes a QB knock-off (think OpenOffice compared to MS Office) will make a killing. SMBs can't justify the learning curve of replacing QB. Remove that barrier, and I think many companies would consider switching. In particular, we need a web-enabled product that looks/behaves like to QB.
The guy is building a media server for his home. Does he really need hot-swap drives or hardware RAID? Software RAID is simple to implement and inexpensive, especially if you have enough SATA ports on your motherboard to support your storage config.
By the way, does anyone have recommendations on 4-port SATA controllers?
I live in Florida, so our heater (heat pump) is rarely on, while our AC is rumbling most of the year. I have started replacing my incandescents with CFLs not because of the energy saved from lighting, but my theory that CFLs will cut down on my AC requirements.
Does anyone know of an easy way to calculate the difference in heat output between incandescents and CFLs?
Thank you for pointing out the obvious yet overlooked fact that we have been using mercury-filled light bulbs for decades. The traditional 4' tubes found in offices, schools, shops, and homes contain as much or more mercury than CFLs.
The author of the original story, Steven Milloy, has been identified as a corporate hack. By the angle of the article, it really sounds like he has a "corporate sponsor" providing financial backing. It would be interesting to see what industry has a financial interest in suppressing CFLs.
The GDP includes deficit spending, which makes GDP growth look artificially high. Subtract the hundreds of billions of dollars that are pumped into the economy by deficit spending every year and then annual GDP growth doesn't look so hot. In fact, we would actually have negative GDP growth (recession) in a few years over the past decade.
If you and I make the same salary, but I spend 3-5% more than you each year by borrowing on a credit card, my lifestyle/consumption will be higher than yours. Unfortunately, I can't sustain that model forever. The same goes for our country.
Also, the deficit numbers reported by the CBO and OMB are bogus. To calculate the actual deficit for a given year, subtract the debt at the end of that year with the debt at the end of the previous year. You'll find that our deficits are actually quite a bit higher than reported by our trusty politicians.
Great advice by the parent post. In particular, learn the basics of vi/vim (or emacs) ASAP. Next (or concurrently), write some simple shell scripts. This will force you to learn some CLI tools. Use "man" extensively. Near the bottom of most man pages are lists of related commands, which is a good way to find new tools.
In addition to the previously noted CLI tools, spend some time learning how to use the "find" command. The -exec option of the "find" command is a powerful way to perform a task on a large set of files. It's also a good way to destroy your system, but if you never play with fire, you'll end up a vegan. The "screen" command is another handy little tool, especially if you are remotely connected to a system.
Finally, learn how to create aliases for commands you frequently perform. Example: alias netg="netstat -pan | grep -i " allows me to type "netg ssh" to list all open secure shell connections.
Here's a link to a good breakdown of USDA's farm subsidies.
Even though my father grew up on a dust bowl farm in Kansas during the depression and benefited from some of FDR's programs, I agree that there's no longer any need for farm subsidies. I also don't think we should use subsidies/tariffs as an excuse to compete with other exporters. If foreign governments want to subsidize their exports, then let US consumers take advantage.
I don't believe the government should intervene in the free market in attempts to manage the economy, unless obvious monopolies have developed. On the other hand, I believe strongly that the government should intervene in the free market to protect the environment, ensure labor and product safety, and protect property/legal rights of individual citizens from corporations.
If a person's daily work flow doesn't involve much interaction with others, then I don't think organization is important. However, if I have to cover for my slovenly co-worker, then organization is critical. A good example would be code development. If I'm writing code for a script or small standalone app, my code's organization/documentation isn't really that important. If I can understand it, then that's all that counts. But if other developers are involved, then the code needs to be standardized (organized). This also extrapolates to desks and physical work environments. In my current job at a small business, I sometimes have to cover for a sales rep who is unavailable to take a customer's call. If that sales rep's desk is a mess (to me), then it's nearly impossible for me to coherently communicate with the customer. If the desk is organized, I can generally find the info I need to handle the customer.
I worked at Boeing back in the early nineties. They were bringing over a lot of Japan's business methodologies, such as quality improvement, work flow, etc. One of the things they implemented was the three CCCs, which while I don't remember what the abreviation stands for, translated to cleanliness and organization. They applied it to the entire company, from the plant floor to the tool shops to the offices. It was an extensive and expensive project. I seriously doubt Boeing would have engaged if there wasn't an ROI. I would like to know that the plane I'm flying on was built in a clean and organized environment. Do you want the engineer with the messy desk pushing changes down to the shop floor, where a similarly disorganized mechanic is installing wiring harnesses to the flight controls? Not me. I'll take the anal-retentive guy every time.
You hit the nail on the head. If morality and propensity for religion are simply evolutionary tricks to forward my genes, and I'm smart enough to understand that I will never personally benefit from forwarding my own genes, then morality and religion are simply hindering me from seeking pleasure in my short, purposeless existence. Murder, rape, theft, fraud, etc. are not wrong, as long as I don't get caught. In fact, if any of these activities provides me additional pleasure (or provides resources for future pleasure), then I should engage in them. In fact, this would imply that career criminals and sociopaths are actually smarter than the rest of us because they have mastered their evolutionary impulses.
On a personal level, my genes seem to be quite in control of my actions. I believe in a higher presence, provide for my wife/children through honest labor, and as a foster parent, have helped complete strangers at a personal cost of time/money. I'm either living my life completely ass-backwards, or more or less correct. If I'm wrong, I'll never know, so who cares. If I'm right, I'll have the rest of eternity to gloat (unless I happened to pick the wrong "higher presence"). By the way, I certainly understand the well-deserved skepticism of agnostics and atheists towards organized religion. On the flip side, I don't understand an atheist's acceptance of any kind of moral code. If there's no God, then we are all living in the jungle. There's no right/wrong, simply pain/pleasure and risk/reward.
I've got over 6 years as the solitary IT guy at a small sales company. We are the "used car sales" of electronic components (chips/caps/connectors/etc.). Prior to that I worked for Fortune 100/500 companies and had no exposure to sales. Here's my observations.
1. If you want to make real money (via commission) and don't want to own a company, then sales is your only realistic choice. Otherwise, you will constantly be bound by a salary range/cap. Even if you get performance bonuses, they will never come close to the commissions generated via sales. That's the bad news. The good news is that money doesn't really make you happy. At least that's what I've heard.
2. Your technical skills will be a distant second to your soft skills, aka human interaction. Our best sales guys can't even spell PC, but they can smell a sucker like a hyena smells carrion.
3. Our best sales guys have no scruples when it comes to their job. They may be honest and trustworthy outside of work, but once they are on the job, their values fall to the wayside. Rent Boiler Room, Wall Street, and especially Glengarry Glen Ross. All of the bad guys in these movies are the good guys in sales.
4. If you ever wondered what happened to the popular, good-looking guys in high school, they're probably in sales. The popular, good-looking girls figured out which of the popular, good-looking guys could really sell and then married them. Also, age is definitely a factor. Younger people have less to lose and more time to invest. Also, they look better, which is a definite plus in the world of sales.
5. If you have a family to support or a lot of fixed expenditures (mortgage/cars/etc.), be careful. It may take you years to build up a customer base that can support your current lifestyle. Customers, especially enterprise customers, aren't going to just pull down their pants and bend over when you walk in their company the first time. You will have to earn their business, typically by proving yourself on low-value deals.
6. If you ever want to work on your own or start a company, then you better have a partner who is good at #2/#3/#4, and you both better be ready to deal with #5.
You can make a great living in sales. We have kids who barely made it out of high school that are now making $80K+, which is pretty good jack in central Florida. On the other hand, I have watched many more people come in and flounder/sink because they were too honest, or too introverted, or too risk-adverse.
Find a small business that needs a generic sysadmin/tech to manage their systems. You will get to touch all areas of systems, computers, telephony, networking, etc. If you show any business saavy, you might also get involved in guiding your company's IT direction and even apply technology to solving business problems. Don't necessarily target technical companies, as you will be surrounded by people who either have or think they have superior technical skills, rendering you to a more subservient role.
After a few years at a small business, you should amass a broad range of IT skills and probably have a better overall idea of how companies work than more experienced IT staff at larger companies. You may not get paid as much, but you will probably have better hours and better treatment. At least you will still be making money, as opposed to spending money on further education or certs. I'm not opposed to education/training/certs, but hands-on experience is the best way to gain skills.
In case you think I'm talking through my ass, I have worked in IT for Boeing, Verizon, and Publix (regional supermarket chain, 100K+ employees) in various IT and senior IT roles, including sysadmin. I now work for a small company with around 25 people. I manage all of our systems. To clarify, if it plugs into an electrical outlet, I'm responsible. The money and hours are significantly better than my corporate gigs, but my situation is somewhat unique.
By the way, the smaller and younger the company, the better for you (if the company seems viable). This will give you the opportunity to grow with the company. If necessary, make some financial concessions up front, especially if you can work out some type of future profit-sharing or equity stake (I wish I would have done that instead of going for the big salary).
Back in the dot.com boom I did some IT hiring for a large telecom. One of the things that we looked for was job stability. I personally like to see someone stick around at least a couple of years. It takes several months to get up to speed in a new company, especially in regards to the non-technical aspects, such as the company's ecosystem. After that investment, a company needs to see at least a year or two of solid productivity to get back that initial investment
By the same token, I would typically be leary of someone who worked at the same job for too long. Note that I said the same job, not the same company. Someone who works themselves up through the company ranks or moves around within a company will have a much broader base of experience than someone who has spent the last two decades doing the same job, especially at the same company. To me, the ideal IT resume shows someone who has held several jobs, for at least a couple of years each, but not more than four or five years per job. Working at more than one company or in more than one industry is also a plus. There also should be no unexplained employment gaps.
If battery packs can be standardized, then "gas stations" could consist of an automated process to change out the depleted battery pack with a charged battery pack. Depleted packs could be charged offline over a period of hours. We consumers already do this manually with propane tanks for our backyard grills, and the same process exists for industrial equipment (forklifts, etc.) on a larger scale.
An automated quick change could probably be handled in a matter of seconds without the customer even having to exit their vehicle, making it much faster and more convenient than even today's process of pumping gasoline. Also, by automating the process, there would be less opportunity for errors/accidents.
And I don't get a damned thing out of it, and like social security, the programs won't be around long enough for me to use them.
Even if nothing is done to fix social security, it isn't going away. If nothing is done, sometime around 2040, the SSA trust fund will be exhausted. However, the SSA will still be able to pay out roughly 75% of the estimated requirements, based on incoming revenue. Shift the retirement age back a few years, and things get a lot better. I think that's fair, considering our life expectency has increased dramtically since the SSA was implemented.
The real crisis that the SSA faces is the fact that the government is spending SSA revenue meant for the trust fund and stuffing the SSA piggy bank with IOUs. It's no different than if you borrowed all the money in your 401K plan with no intention of ever paying it back. By spending money intended for the trust fund, our government is able to hide the true status of our federal deficit/debt.
To see how much debt we are really incurring, without the masking effect of borrowing from the trust fund, subtract the national debt at the end of each year from the previous year's debt. The numbers are staggering. Even during our best "surplus" year under Clinton, we incurred $18B additional debt. Since then, the annual debt growth has exploded. 2003=$555B, 2004=$596B, 2005=$554B.
I'm assuming your employer is also kicking in for your insurance. That amount is part of your compensation, so it's probable that you are already paying more than 1.5%.
I also assume you are only insuring yourself, not a spouse and children. I say this because I paid almost $10K last year for my family's medical/dental. That was before my company kicked in roughly $1,700 and before I paid significant co-pays for medical visits and prescriptions. Our company actively shops for the cheapest insurance each year, so I know that my cost is in the normal cost range. I'm not taking sides in the socialized medicine debate, but I know that most americans pay way more than 1.5% of their family income to cover health costs.
If you're one of the lucky few that pays less and still has decent insurance, count your blessings. Also, make sure your health insurance is actually going to cover you in case of serious illness. By the time I was 33, I was diagnosed with testicular cancer and had a son born with cerebral palsy. I was fortunate enough to have excellent health coverage through my employer at the time (Boeing), thanks to the strong unions there. Otherwise, I would have gone bankrupt.
LEDs are going to replace the bulbs and color wheels, greatly increasing light source longetivity and also eliminating rainbow effect. This may take awhile to trickle down from the high end devices. On the other hand, since the mfgrs won't want to lose customers over the bulb issue, they will have incentive to make the change ASAP.
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http://www.dlp.com/home_entertainment/led_hdtvs.a
I just purchased five E521 workstations with XP Home Edition on Monday. Total cost, with a $60 small business coupon was $509 per system. I ran through the E521 config using the FreeDOS option. The system, almost identically configured, was $709. The only upgrade was a 250 GB drive versus a 160 GB drive (I couldn't get a discount by dropping to a 160 GB drive). Even without the coupon, it is $40 cheaper to purchase with Windows XP than without a licensed OS. So, either Microsoft is giving away XP Home Edition, or Dell is screwing their customers.
It would be better to purchase the Windows version, then you could install Linux/Xen and would be licensed to Windows as a guest.
OK, it's not Windows-based, but it works great and it's cheap.
I'm the IT guy for a small office (30 XP desktops, 1 W2K server, 4 linux servers). Last year I replaced my homegrown scripts with BackupPC. I have been extremely happy with the results. I took an obsolete server, loaded it with four 160 GB SATA drives and a PCI SATA adapter. Total cost was under $400. Fedora FC5 and FC6 include BackupPC in their Yum repositories, so you can easily install all necessary software at no cost. Configuration was not too complicated, although it is text-based.
BackupPC has a web-based management interface that is a snap to use. BackupPC uses some fairly advanced techniques to keep the pool of backed up data to a manageable level on disk. To get data to tape (DVD in my case), BackupPC has archive tools which by default build specific backup sets as tar archives. You can easily modify BackupPC's config file to use a custom script that also handles your encryption requirements.
Here's why the rich pay more than their share in the USA. Each person's true portion of the 2006 federal budget is $8,000. For my family of five, the federal tax burden would be $40,000 this year. That's before sales tax, state income tax, property tax, etc. My total tax burden would easily exceed $50,000. That doesn't leave much wiggle room to consume other things like say... food, clothing, and housing. Discretionary spending on entertainment, travel, etc. would be right out for the vast majority of us. It's hard to be rich if nobody can afford to buy your products/services. While it may not seem fair, a progressive tax system is the best way to ensure that the rich get richer and the rest of us get to eat.
That $8,000 number I cooked up is based on the 2006 federal budget of 2.5 trillion and a US population of 300 million. The actual number is $8,333 but the government gets a small portion of revenue from other sources than taxes, so I rounded down. I ignored corporate taxes since these taxes simply get passed back to end users in the form of higher costs on products/services. Feel free to trash my numbers/logic, as I'm not a bean counter. I just don't see how it is possible to equitably distribute the cost of our government without bankrupting most of us in the process.
Unfortunately, I have way too much experience with health insurance, so here's my suggestions.
1. Extend your wife's plan with COBRA even after she quits at least until your baby is born. Do this, even if that means traveling further because your closest hospital is no longer in network. My first child required an emergency C-section and a few days in the neonatal ICU. He was almost 11 pounds at birth and there was no way he was coming out through the in door, so to speak. The bill was pretty amazing, but I didn't have to pay much out-of-pocket. So, if there are additional expenses related to your child's birth, at least you won't be completely screwed. On a side note, my son ended up with cerebral palsy, possibly due to decisions made by our doctor and his team. Learn up front about what can go wrong, and don't assume the experts are paying close attention to your wife/child.
2. Never go without health insurance and life insurance. I was 33 years old and my wife was pregnant with our third child when I found out I had testicular cancer. I caught it before the cancer had spread, but I still required one minor and one major operation, all kinds of diagnostics, and years of follow-up. My bills, way back in 1994, were well over $100K. My insurance at the time covered almost all expenses. Because I had life insurance, I had one less thing to worry about. Without life insurance, I probably would have died simply from stress.
3. If you have pre-existing conditions, you really need some type of group plan. Individual insurance plans are out of the question if you have any kind of serious pre-existing condition (cerebral palsy, testicular cancer, etc.). I know, because I tried this route. I pay around $10K per year for medical/dental at my current company. I thought that was a ripoff until I tried to get insurance on my own. Your only reasonable way to get health insurance is to be in some kind of group plan where your risks can be spread across a large pool of individuals. Even then you may have problems if you have any coverage gaps or you aren't going into a large enough group plan. If you have no pre-existing conditions and are healthy, the medical savings plan along with a high deductable plan is a cost-effective approach.
4. Without health insurance, you pay much higher rates for the same procedures/care. I recently had a 4-day stay in the hospital (as a result of the cancer surgery 10 years earlier). The unadjusted bill was 3 times the amount of the adjusted bill. Without insurance, you get the unadjusted bill and no expert on your side to help negotiate the bill down.
Hopefully your luck will be better than mine when it comes to health. However, I can say that insurance has saved me from financial ruin on more than one occasion. More important, insurance allowed me to make career and life decisions (like having more than one child) that I may not have made if I was paying out the ass for the rest of my life due to one bad medical experience.
I wish I had an answer for our country's current medical insurance problem. I don't think a government-based single-provider solution is best, but I think government may need to help fund large group plans that are affordable for the tens of millions of americans that want insurance but can't afford it. The uninsured are driving up costs for the rest of us by waiting too long to get care, and then entering the system directly through hospital emergency rooms. I'm encouraged by the pay-as-you-go clinics that are popping up at Wal-Marts and elsewhere for non-emergency care. It costs a lot less to pay $25 at a clinic to have your kid checked out than to wait until your kid is seriously ill and then take him/her to the emergency room.
Best of luck with your new family.
By far the biggest hurdle to a carbon tax is convincing our tax-adverse populace to comply with a new tax. Just mentioning taxes is a show-stopper for most politicians. However, there is one phrase that is more evil to Joe 6-pak than "taxes", and that phrase is "income taxes". So, how about a revenue-neutral approach. Lower/eliminate the bottom of the income tax brackets while adding/raising taxes on carbon-based energy. Consumers pay less income taxes, but more at the pump. Joe 6-pak is happy because he gets a bigger paycheck. He pays more to gas up his 4-wheel drive extended supercab, but he blames the Arabs for that problem. He also knows that he can buy a Prius if he gets really tired of paying so much for fuel (although for cultural reasons, he will no longer be able to take his friends to NASCAR events).
Obviously, just about every product and service will increase in price because underlying energy costs will increase production costs. This will put market pressures on all industries to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels so they can gain competitive advantage. Meanwhile, smart consumers will be able to lower their overall tax bill while those of us who don't want to adapt will pay more taxes than we currently pay.
The increased costs of goods/services will be a drag on our economy, but that drag is coming sooner or later. It's just a sad fact of being so dependent upon a finite resource. I would rather pay a little more now and avoid the increasingly volatile energy fluctuations that will most certainly occur as fossil fuel supplies dwindle. Hopefully, the drag on the economy will be somewhat countered by increased spending for more efficient products as well as the growth of the alternate energy industry. To minimize the impact on the economy, the transition from income taxes to carbon taxes would have to be reasonably slow, maybe a 3% shift per year. Ten years from now, the average citizen would pay 30% less income taxes and 30% more carbon taxes.
My wife bought a book that used this method to improve the odds of having a boy or girl. We wanted a girl since we already had a boy. Using the formula in the book, she kept me at bay for a week, waited for the magic date, and said "Go". Nine months later, we had a girl. Maybe it worked, or maybe we were just on the right side of the coin flip.