I had some issues voting yesterday and I forwarded my story to the California Registrar of voters. Here was my letter describing the very real concerns I had.
*******
I wanted to share my voting experience with you in order to assist you in providing even better service for the voters.
This morning I voted using the new Diebold voting machines. I had several unnerving experiences.
First of all, as I touched the NEXT buttons the screens didn't seem to want to move to the next screen. It took several tries to get the screen to go to the next section. However, the more disturbing issue was when I voted NO on prop 56 the vote registered as YES. I kept trying to touch the NO vote and it wouldn't change my selection back to NO. I had to call over a poll volenteer who helped me cancel my ballot, reset my voter card and try again on a different machine.
On this new machine I was able to vote although it also seemed to have difficulty with the NEXT button. I then validated that my votes were
registered correctly and tried to confirm my ballot. The confirm ballot button would not register my touches. I could hear a double chirp sound when I touched the confirm ballot button but it would not actually confirm. I had to call over the polling worker for a 2nd time. When she touched the screen it did confirm my vote.
I must say that during all of this I ended up asking if I could have a paper ballot. When the machine voted YES after I touched NO I no longer
felt confident that my vote was being registered correctly. Proposition 56 in particular is vastly important as a YES vote would allow our government
to raise our taxes with only a simple majority instead of a 2/3 vote. To have the machine accidentally change my vote from NO to YES is really disturbing. I'm glad I noticed it before I confirmed my incorrect vote.
Thank you for looking into these issues. My polling place was [deleted for my privacy]
******
The response from the California Registrar of voters was this:
Please contact San Deigo County.
That was it. Why would the California Registrar of Voters send me to my County government? Arn't they responsible for the voting machines? Overall I didn't walk away with a good feeling that my votes would be accuratly counted. I'm sure it all worked out, but had I not been paying attention I would have missed that my NO vote became a YES vote.
We had another issue with the GUI. With a paper ballot the layout of the sample ballot you get in the mail exactly matches the layout of the punch card ballot. With the voting machines the layout of the screens did not match the layout of the sample ballot. You had to be very careful that the proposition you were looking at in your sample ballot was the one you thought you were voting for with the voting machine.
The last issue we had in San Diego county was that there were several polling places that were unable to accept votes because when the voting machines were turned on they showed a Windows ME startup screen and nothing else. The polling volenteers decided (and properly I think) that rather than them trying to start the proper program they would redirect people to other polling sites that had working machines. Several people were unable to get to this last minute alternate site and were unable to vote.
So that's what happened in San Diego yesterday. I expect it was fairly typical of the experience across the country.
This was on NPR yesterday and they said that there were some pretty serious flaws in the theory. One scientist went so far as to say "I don't know how this got through peer review. It should never have been published"
It may just be scientist ruffling their feathers at a new theory, or there may very well be serious problems with the evidence. It's certainly not a final answer yet.
The reason why the unemployment rate has been falling is because people have been being crapped out the other side of the unemployment intestine, so to speak.
In addition, the very statistics our government uses to compile thase numbers are flawed. The quote below comes from The Daily Reckoning
"By now my readers should have a PHD (pretty high disdain) for Capitol Hill math," writes Crudele. "This one, though, is a cake taker. I'll translate: Included in the 112,000 new jobs in January were 76,000 jobs that supposedly exist because people who weren't hired in December couldn't be fired in January. Got that? They didn't get hired in December, or fired in January, so they showed up as new employees in January as a statistical fluke. So, really there were only an abysmally small 36,000 new jobs in January."
In other words, the 76,000 jobs are a fraud. "Weak holiday hiring," wrote the Labor Department in its release, "... meant that there were fewer workers to lay off in January, resulting in seasonally adjusted employment gains
for the month." The key words here are 'seasonally adjusted' - meaning that although holiday hiring was weak, government quants went ahead and added imaginary seasonal jobs to the total figures anyway.
[unquote]
So don't tell me that the unemployment numbers are going up. The real indicator of new job growth is the number of overtime hours being worked. When that number starts getting bigger then it indicates an increase in jobs is about to occur. But overtime hours have been flat for months. These "lower unemployment" numbers are a total fraud.
Not any more. From the site
politicalcompass.orgCoke with Yet Another New Twist: Toxic Cola
The Indian parliament has banned the sale of Coke and Pepsi products in its cafeteria. Indian parliamentarians should take the logical next step, and ban the sale of Coke and Pepsi products in the entire country.
The ban came as the result of tests, including those by the Indian government, which found high concentrations of pesticides and insecticides, including lindane, DDT, malathion and chlorpyrifos, in the colas, making them unfit for consumption. Some samples tested showed the presence of these toxins to be more than 30 times the standard allowed by the European Union. Tests of samples taken from the US of the same drinks were found to be safe.
*****
Saying Free Trade works out well because faceless corporation make billions is just plain wrong.
You are absolutly correct. Just look at how much Coke cares about the people in India who drink their product. Do you think they care about us Americans any more?
"What happened to freedom of expression online?"
Remember, the story refers to the UK, not the USA. Things are different there, government and law struture wise.
Here in the US we have a different view of what "Freedom" means. For example, even if the supreme court says that you can't make certain acts (oral sex) illegal for one group of people (gay) and legal for other sets of people (Bill Clinton) then our "leader" (Dubya) will still attempt to "protect" (utterly destroy) our freedoms ( by suggesting to modify the constitution to legalize bigotry against gay people).
The problem is that only a tiny fraction of the money they'd be paying to their workers will come back to THEIR company in this way. By your logic, the more they pay their workers, the better off the company will be. Why not just double everyone's salary and make a fortune?
You're missing the point. The American companies sell goods and services. When they are contributing to American unemployment in a way that ALSO reduces the tax base then they are killing off their own customer base.
Think of it this way: They're creating a country where the only jobs left are at McDonalds and yet nobody can afford to eat there.
I'm just asking: What's immoral about giving jobs to Indians
The imorality comes from laying off Americans and killing off American jobs and destroying the American tax base and damaging the American economy when there are other cost cutting measures available that they are not considering.
In Southern California housing prices have increased 50% to 100% (some times even more) in the past 6 to 10 years. A house on my very street that sold for $173,000 9 years ago just sold for $448,000. Just north of us in Mission Viejo in Orange County I know of a place where homes sold for $450,000 just 4 years ago and are now selling for $1.2 million. Go to realtor.com and you won't be able to find a house in San Diego for less than $300,000. You will find a 600 sq. foot hell hole for $336k. Now look in Atlanta GA, Indianapolis IN, Lexington Ky, and so on and you'll see the difference.
If you look at house prices in Silicon valley, or Boston you'll tend to find the same pattern. So yes, the price of housing in the areas where the software jobs tend to be has risen dramatically.
I met programmers who lived in apartments and houses that cost anywhere between $200 and $500 per month.
So what we really have is this scenario:
US software companies tend to exist in Silicon valley, Orange County, San Diego County, and Boston. These are also the most expensive places in the country to live.
US software companies don't seem to want to allow telecommuting when their employees live within driving distance of work. They certainly don't want to allow it when the employee lives in, for example, Kentucky.
That means that the employees need to make wages high enough to afford housing in these markets. How do you pay a mortgage of $2500 to $4000 a month if you're not making $90k to $120k a year?
The US employees average car loan cost him $350 a month, plus auto insurance, plus gas (which hovers around $2 a gallon here in California).
So the US employee has NO CHOICE but to live in the expensive part of the country because the companies are too short sighted to see the benefit of letting their employees telecommute from places where the cost of living is cheaper. And yet isn't this EXACTLY what outsourcing is? It's just hiring employees who telecommute from a place where the cost of living is cheaper.
Therefore: US employees must have higher wages to maintain a middle class standard of living that would cost 30% to 50% less in other areas of OUR OWN country.
Employers then make the dumb-ass decision that "US programmers are too expensive" and they move the jobs offshore to India instead of using any of the easily available and less morally bankrupt cost cutting tools available to them.
The software companies caused their own problem. Our own government make the problem worse by keeping instrest rates so low that housing prices (not value, but prices) have skyrocketed. It's not the programmer's fault that the jobs in this country exist where they do, but we're the ones who are getting screwed.
If US companies had enough foresight to see beyond the tips of their own noses they would realize that they could save money simply by outsourcing jobs to the midwest. Keep American jobs, keep the tax base here in America, and take the higher moral road.
Have any of these companies thought about where their customers will come from when the middle class and upper middle class in America are no longer working AND no longer contributing to the tax base? There's more to outsourcing than me losing my job. This is the straw that will break America's already overloaded economic back.
For this to work, the company providing the tech support has to give a damn about customer service. If they cared about customer service they wouldn't be outsourcing the phone support to India and the Phillipines. If they cared about customer support they would actually "support the customer
Here's a true example from my life last week:
Register.com has put a lock on my domain and will not change my WHOIS informatin and will not unlock it so I can move to a different registrar. My domain register fees are paid up until March of 2005.
I call Register.com. They say they have no account data on me because I registered via a 3rd party. I have to call my hosting company.
I call my hosting company. They attempt to make the changes through their partners channel with Register.com. Register.com refuses to change the information or to unlock the domain.
I call Register.com again. They say they can't/won't help me and to email their partner channel email.
I email the partner channel and they say I have to go through my hosting company to make those changes.
I go back to my hosting company and provide them with the email from Register.com in a hope that they could use that as evidence to make Register.com do their damn job!
Register.com refuses to make the change.
Is this the way to impress you customers? What good will cussing them out do if they don't give a damn whether they help you or not? No, this scheme will only work if the company in question actually cares about customer service. Most companies see customer service as a cost center.
This whole outsourcing fad is so disturbing. Apparently the CEO's of this country want to build a nation where the only jobs left are at McDonalds, but nobody can afford to eat there.
There are very real problems with outsourcing to India, and it's about time that we discuss these openly. I should add that my company has recently annouced that they will be outsourcing jobs and it disgust me that of all the possible cost cutting options available to them they chose the one that is the most morally bankrupt.
But let's list the real issues:
In every case I've seen, EVERY CASE, the reason for outsourcing is to save cost. NOT ONCE has the reason for outsourcing been "because we can get better quality code from India." I've worked extensivly with H1-B Indians and I spent most of my time teaching them how to write decent code and fixing their bugs. The quality of their code was atrociously bad.
Let's look at India politically. Can we assume that they will always be friendly to the US? How friendly were they with Russia 30 years ago compared to today? How has their relationship to England changed in the past 50 years?
India has roughly 80 million muslims. The US is doing things in the world which right or wrong (and you can discuss this at a different time) are making muslims around the world mad at us. Regardless of how you feel about Bush's "War On Terrorism" you must admit that we are not making many friends in the muslim world.
India's relationship with Pakistan is strained at best. Do you really want to outsource your banking records, medical records, etc to a country that has such tension between themselves and their nuclear weapon holding neighbor?
What about the moral stance of shipping American jobs overseas? Americans built the very companies who are now outsourcing. Is our reward to have our jobs taken from us and to have the hi-tech job market in this country destroyed?
When farming jobs were vaninishing and the country was moving towards a manufacturing economy farmers had a generation or so to change their lives. When manufacturing jobs left the country we had a decade or so to "re-tool" to the hi-tech job market. In this wave of outsourcing tech jobs there is no "next new job market" to take over the lost jobs and there is no time to retrain. (Retrain? Retrain for what?) This will do untold damage to the US economy.
This is not only losing American jobs, but it's losing some of the higher paid American jobs. The top 50% (as far as wages) of Americans pay just over 80% of the total amount of collected federal income tax. With our government printing roughly $5 billion of fiat money a week and issueing roughly $15 billion of new debt each week and Bush issuing a 2005 budget with $500 billion of deficit spending how are we suppose to pay off ANY of this debt if the very people who pay most of the taxes no longer have jobs?
Security of data. We've already seen cases where medical transcribers in India wern't being paid. In retaliation they threatened to release those medical records to the world via the internet if they wern't paid. I have had Secret military clearance and one of the things that is pounded into our heads it that "Security is only as tight as YOU decide to make it". How wise is it to allow our medical records, our banking records, our hi-tech programming skills and secrets to be completly available to programmers who have no connection to our country or our lifestyle at all?
Have these companies really looked at alternatives? Most hi-tech jobs are in the most expensive areas in the country: San Francisco/Silicon Valley, Southern California, and Boston. If these companies would consider moving their operations to the midwest and the south then their employees could afford the housing and therefore afford lower wages without changing their standard of living. Or how about allowing more telecommuting? Have you tried outsourcing to telecommuting programers from Kentucky (for example).
Once again, U.S companies are shooting for short term gains while ignoring the very serious long term damage to our economy that outsourcing will cause.
But Register.com refused to change it. Moreover they have a lock on my WHOIS data for no apparent reason. I'm paid up until March of 2005 and yet they seem to be intent on hijacking my domain and holding it ransom.
Just last week they added their own DNS servers to my WHOIS data which pointed my web site and all my email to their search page. Because I registered through my hosting company (who in turn registered through Register.com) Register.com's tech support refuse to help me. They say I have to do everything through my hosting company. But when XO communications asked them to make a change they just said "No".
I mean, I'd love to have an accurate phone number and email in my WHOIS. I'd REALLY love to change the registrar of record to anybody except Register.com. But they're holding my domain hostage and won't give me a way (short of sueing) to maintain my own domain.
So don't make it a crime for ME to have false information in my WHOIS. I'd love to change the information. The jerks at Register.com won't let me.
I thought that the ability to email millions of people offers to extend their naughty bits (and to send them that offer 20 or 30 times a day EVERY FREAKING DAY) would be the most hated new technology.
The real problem comes from the possibility of horizontal transmission of the antibiotic resistance gene.
As has been stated many time in this thread: Eating genetically modified food does not modify YOUR genes. Take my earlier example. If I eat meat from a pig that has a genetic predisposition to being diabetic it DOES NOT mean that I will become diabetic.
A more likely harmful situation would be for a genetically altered creature to produce compounds that are simply toxic or carcinogenic. Those might also be passed on up the food chain
But if they were toxic it would kill the animal that eats it. If it were carcinogenic it would(in the long run) also kill the animal. If the animal had cancerous tumors then WE would avoid eating it.
The suit alleges the hidden genes can threaten human and animal health if the biotech fish are released and consumed by other fish that eventually are eaten by humans.
Is this even possible? I mean, if I eat meat from an animal that has a genetic pre-disposition to being diabetic it doesn't mean that I will become diabetic. Is there any evidence at all that eating a genetically altered animal will in any way effect the genetics of the animal that consumes it?
Does anyone here have the background to clear this up? It seems that this is the crux issue. If it's not possible to transport any genetic information (and I would think that it's not) then this is a total knee-jerk reaction with no science to back it up.
You all ran your salaries up way to far, lived outside your means, and suddenly, but bubble burst.
Let's look at an $80k per year salery in southern california. Now before you say "Well, it's your choice to live in So Cal" think about it for a moment. Southern California has 15% of the US population and 10% of the jobs. So you live where the jobs are. Yeah right, I could buy a house in the middle of Montana and wait around for the tech companies to come to me.
So here's the breakdown.
Salary: $80,000
Minus 35% Federal taxes $52000
Minus another 10% in state tax, SSN, Insureance etc (probably a low estimate)
$46,800
Morgage, Assuming only $2000 a month in payments (go ahead, try to buy a new house in San Diego for a $2000 a month payment. I dare you)
That's $2000 x 12 for $24,000 which brings us to $22,800
Now assume that you're married and you and your wife both need cars to get around. We're not talking about a pair of Lexus or monster SUV. How about a Honda and a small ford pickup truck? Let's assume a car payment of only $300 each. That's $600 x 12 for another $7200 which brings us to $15,600
Insureance on those two cars is another $2000 a year
$13,600
Gas and Electricity: $80 per month = $960
Gas for the car so you can get to work and back is another $40 a week for the 2 cars = $2080. That brings us to $10560
Right now we're standing at $880 per month in left over cash. We havn't bought food yet, or clothing, or any of the cost of maintaining a house (yard work, interior work) or the trash colleciton bill, or property taxes or anything else that life requires. Let's take a LOW estimate that that stuff only cost $500 a month. Now were at $4560 a year of extra cash or just $380 a month.
Did you notice that we haven't accounted for having any kids? And what if I want to put $2000 a year into my IRA account in the hope of not starving to death when I retire? That leaves just $2560 a year or just over $213 a month only if I live very frugally and have no other expenses like student loans or insurence deductables or having my electric bill skyrocket from $70 a month to $250 a month because of degregulation
All of those are conservative estimates of the actual cost of living. That car payment amount is low, the morgage amount is low. And you think I'm OVERPAID!? Do the same calculation on $60,000 a year and you'd see that we'd be in debt at the end of the year.
So don't go telling me that I'm a rich whiney bastard that lives beyond his means you liberal prick.
The problem is a lack of highly educated workers willing to work for the minimum wage or lower in the U.S. Costs are driving outsourcing, not the quality of American schools.
That's exactly right. The call center jobs that are being outsourced do not require ANY math or science skills. Those people generally read from a script and as you answer their questions Yes or No they move to the next appropriate question. This means that the call center jobs are are going overseas are taking jobs away from the poorest Americans, the ones that can benefit from a near minimum wage job as a way to start building their life.
What WE (the real techies) need to worry about is the abundence of H1B programmers from India. Because of America's inflation (Don't believe Greenspan when he says there's no inflation. Look at the increase in the price of housing in the last 3 years and tell me that they're no inflation) it cost a LOT to live here. And besides, we are highly trained college educated engineers. We should get paid a reasonable living wage.
The other problem is that companies think that the cost of programmers is due to their wages. However, I havn't written code of any consequence in almost a year. I've been busy dealing with endless planning sessions, then design sessions, then project plan sessions, then project estimation sessions, then writing design documents, then writing test documents, then dealing with the vendors to make sure that THEY understand our design and how we will integrate our code. This goes on and on ad infinitum. When we eventually get around to writing the damn code we'll be done in about 3 months. But it's taken up a year of freaking paperwork and buracracy to get this project off the ground. I get paid the same if I write code or not. So how about getting the managament types to understand that if they didn't waste my time for a year then I'd be a lot more cost effective? But know, they think that the problem is that I get paid too much.
The answer to that statement is "That's just silly. To a manager cost cutting means cutting YOUR job, not his. Havn't you been paying attention?"
It's amazing that during an election year that I've yet to hear one thing from Dean or Bush about this. Is everyone bought and paid for?
The answer to that question is "Of course they are, havn't you been paying attention?"
Sadly, this appears to fall into the "globalization" groupthink. It's a "free market economy" therefore it must be good...right?
The answer to the last statement is more complex. The plain truth is that our government has done this to us on purpose. Rather than cutting back on spending they simply spend more and more and more. How do we pay for that? Well, last week Greenspan printed another $5 Billion in fiat money that has no gold or assets to back it up. In the same week the Fed issued an addition $17 Billion in debt. And that's just one week! How about a month of $17 billion weeks? Think about a year of $17 billion weeks. How about a decade of $17 billion weeks. What will that do to our economy? Throw in ridiculusly low interest rates and it's a recipie for disaster. Allow me to elaborate:
Here in Southern California we have 15% of the jobs and 10% of the nation's population. If you count Southern California and the San Fransisco/San Jose are we have nearly 15% of the population of the entire country AND a bit more than 20% of the jobs. (This data comes from Claritas, a demographics company that I use to work for)
People need to live where the jobs are. Yes, you can say "Go live in Indiana where you can buy a house on 2 acres of land for $200k" but then reality sets in and you realize that in general, you must live where the jobs are. People need to buy houses where they live. The artificially low interest rates have made it far too easy to get cheap money in the form of home loans. This access to easy money has artificially increased the price (not the value, but the price) of homes. In Mission Viejo in Orange County a house next door to my niece sold for $440k 4 years ago. It sold last month for $1.2 million. In my area of San Diego our home prices have doubled in 5 years.
So how do people pay for that house? They need higher wages. Now follow along because this is an important concept: To purchase the same house they could have had 4 years ago they need almost twice as much money. In other words It takes more money to purchase the same amount of stuff That ladies and gentlemen is the very definition of inflation. That is the inflation that Allan Greenspan says does not exist
So our government has made it far too easy to get money which has caused housing prices in the areas where the jobs exist to skyrocket. In the mean time they are printing money like maniacs which also deflats the value of all the existing dollars AND they're going deeper and deeper into debt at a such a rate that they seem determined to utterly destroy the country and it's entire economy at the fastest rate possible.
Our government does not represent us, the middle class. Republicans, Democrats, it doesn't matter. We don't need an election, we need a revolution.
In FOTR watch the scene where the hobbits enter Bree. There are sundry mean and ugly characters in the streets. One of them is holding a carrot. That's Peter Jackson.
Sorry folks, a programmer with no degree but lots of Open Source experience will still have a tougher time getting a job than a C.S. student with no experience.
if aliens existed and were advanced enough to send us signals, they would in all probability have mastered the use of nano-technology
How does that follow? We've been sending signals into space ever since we started broadcasting radio and television and we don't have any usable nanotechnology.
Sending signals into space is fairly simple. building microscopic machines is not. I don't see how the presents of one means we should assume the existence of the other.
But think of how convenient it will be every September when the new CS students start posting their questions to various news groups with subject lines like:
Need Help ASAP! How Do I Do This??!!
Now we can just point them to this page and ignore them istead of trying to explain how we're not here to do their homework for them. Ah, yes. The changing color of the leaves, the crisp coolness of the air, the desperate plea of the programmer newbies. Those are the first signs of autumn that I love so much.
Slashdot Mirror
*******
I wanted to share my voting experience with you in order to assist you in providing even better service for the voters.
This morning I voted using the new Diebold voting machines. I had several unnerving experiences.
First of all, as I touched the NEXT buttons the screens didn't seem to want to move to the next screen. It took several tries to get the screen to go to the next section. However, the more disturbing issue was when I voted NO on prop 56 the vote registered as YES. I kept trying to touch the NO vote and it wouldn't change my selection back to NO. I had to call over a poll volenteer who helped me cancel my ballot, reset my voter card and try again on a different machine.
On this new machine I was able to vote although it also seemed to have difficulty with the NEXT button. I then validated that my votes were registered correctly and tried to confirm my ballot. The confirm ballot button would not register my touches. I could hear a double chirp sound when I touched the confirm ballot button but it would not actually confirm. I had to call over the polling worker for a 2nd time. When she touched the screen it did confirm my vote.
I must say that during all of this I ended up asking if I could have a paper ballot. When the machine voted YES after I touched NO I no longer felt confident that my vote was being registered correctly. Proposition 56 in particular is vastly important as a YES vote would allow our government to raise our taxes with only a simple majority instead of a 2/3 vote. To have the machine accidentally change my vote from NO to YES is really disturbing. I'm glad I noticed it before I confirmed my incorrect vote.
Thank you for looking into these issues. My polling place was [deleted for my privacy]
******
The response from the California Registrar of voters was this:
Please contact San Deigo County.
That was it. Why would the California Registrar of Voters send me to my County government? Arn't they responsible for the voting machines? Overall I didn't walk away with a good feeling that my votes would be accuratly counted. I'm sure it all worked out, but had I not been paying attention I would have missed that my NO vote became a YES vote.
We had another issue with the GUI. With a paper ballot the layout of the sample ballot you get in the mail exactly matches the layout of the punch card ballot. With the voting machines the layout of the screens did not match the layout of the sample ballot. You had to be very careful that the proposition you were looking at in your sample ballot was the one you thought you were voting for with the voting machine.
The last issue we had in San Diego county was that there were several polling places that were unable to accept votes because when the voting machines were turned on they showed a Windows ME startup screen and nothing else. The polling volenteers decided (and properly I think) that rather than them trying to start the proper program they would redirect people to other polling sites that had working machines. Several people were unable to get to this last minute alternate site and were unable to vote.
So that's what happened in San Diego yesterday. I expect it was fairly typical of the experience across the country.
It may just be scientist ruffling their feathers at a new theory, or there may very well be serious problems with the evidence. It's certainly not a final answer yet.
In addition, the very statistics our government uses to compile thase numbers are flawed. The quote below comes from The Daily Reckoning
"By now my readers should have a PHD (pretty high disdain) for Capitol Hill math," writes Crudele. "This one, though, is a cake taker. I'll translate: Included in the 112,000 new jobs in January were 76,000 jobs that supposedly exist because people who weren't hired in December couldn't be fired in January. Got that? They didn't get hired in December, or fired in January, so they showed up as new employees in January as a statistical fluke. So, really there were only an abysmally small 36,000 new jobs in January."
In other words, the 76,000 jobs are a fraud. "Weak holiday hiring," wrote the Labor Department in its release, "... meant that there were fewer workers to lay off in January, resulting in seasonally adjusted employment gains for the month." The key words here are 'seasonally adjusted' - meaning that although holiday hiring was weak, government quants went ahead and added imaginary seasonal jobs to the total figures anyway. [unquote]
So don't tell me that the unemployment numbers are going up. The real indicator of new job growth is the number of overtime hours being worked. When that number starts getting bigger then it indicates an increase in jobs is about to occur. But overtime hours have been flat for months. These "lower unemployment" numbers are a total fraud.
Not any more. From the site politicalcompass.org Coke with Yet Another New Twist: Toxic Cola
The Indian parliament has banned the sale of Coke and Pepsi products in its cafeteria. Indian parliamentarians should take the logical next step, and ban the sale of Coke and Pepsi products in the entire country.
The ban came as the result of tests, including those by the Indian government, which found high concentrations of pesticides and insecticides, including lindane, DDT, malathion and chlorpyrifos, in the colas, making them unfit for consumption. Some samples tested showed the presence of these toxins to be more than 30 times the standard allowed by the European Union. Tests of samples taken from the US of the same drinks were found to be safe.
*****
Saying Free Trade works out well because faceless corporation make billions is just plain wrong.
You are absolutly correct. Just look at how much Coke cares about the people in India who drink their product. Do you think they care about us Americans any more?
Remember, the story refers to the UK, not the USA. Things are different there, government and law struture wise.
Here in the US we have a different view of what "Freedom" means. For example, even if the supreme court says that you can't make certain acts (oral sex) illegal for one group of people (gay) and legal for other sets of people (Bill Clinton) then our "leader" (Dubya) will still attempt to "protect" (utterly destroy) our freedoms ( by suggesting to modify the constitution to legalize bigotry against gay people).
You're missing the point. The American companies sell goods and services. When they are contributing to American unemployment in a way that ALSO reduces the tax base then they are killing off their own customer base.
Think of it this way: They're creating a country where the only jobs left are at McDonalds and yet nobody can afford to eat there.
The imorality comes from laying off Americans and killing off American jobs and destroying the American tax base and damaging the American economy when there are other cost cutting measures available that they are not considering.
In Southern California housing prices have increased 50% to 100% (some times even more) in the past 6 to 10 years. A house on my very street that sold for $173,000 9 years ago just sold for $448,000. Just north of us in Mission Viejo in Orange County I know of a place where homes sold for $450,000 just 4 years ago and are now selling for $1.2 million. Go to realtor.com and you won't be able to find a house in San Diego for less than $300,000. You will find a 600 sq. foot hell hole for $336k. Now look in Atlanta GA, Indianapolis IN, Lexington Ky, and so on and you'll see the difference.
If you look at house prices in Silicon valley, or Boston you'll tend to find the same pattern. So yes, the price of housing in the areas where the software jobs tend to be has risen dramatically.
So what we really have is this scenario:
The software companies caused their own problem. Our own government make the problem worse by keeping instrest rates so low that housing prices (not value, but prices) have skyrocketed. It's not the programmer's fault that the jobs in this country exist where they do, but we're the ones who are getting screwed.
If US companies had enough foresight to see beyond the tips of their own noses they would realize that they could save money simply by outsourcing jobs to the midwest. Keep American jobs, keep the tax base here in America, and take the higher moral road.
Have any of these companies thought about where their customers will come from when the middle class and upper middle class in America are no longer working AND no longer contributing to the tax base? There's more to outsourcing than me losing my job. This is the straw that will break America's already overloaded economic back.
Here's a true example from my life last week:
- Register.com has put a lock on my domain and will not change my WHOIS informatin and will not unlock it so I can move to a different registrar. My domain register fees are paid up until March of 2005.
- I call Register.com. They say they have no account data on me because I registered via a 3rd party. I have to call my hosting company.
- I call my hosting company. They attempt to make the changes through their partners channel with Register.com. Register.com refuses to change the information or to unlock the domain.
- I call Register.com again. They say they can't/won't help me and to email their partner channel email.
- I email the partner channel and they say I have to go through my hosting company to make those changes.
- I go back to my hosting company and provide them with the email from Register.com in a hope that they could use that as evidence to make Register.com do their damn job!
- Register.com refuses to make the change.
Is this the way to impress you customers? What good will cussing them out do if they don't give a damn whether they help you or not? No, this scheme will only work if the company in question actually cares about customer service. Most companies see customer service as a cost center.There are very real problems with outsourcing to India, and it's about time that we discuss these openly. I should add that my company has recently annouced that they will be outsourcing jobs and it disgust me that of all the possible cost cutting options available to them they chose the one that is the most morally bankrupt.
But let's list the real issues:
Once again, U.S companies are shooting for short term gains while ignoring the very serious long term damage to our economy that outsourcing will cause.
Just last week they added their own DNS servers to my WHOIS data which pointed my web site and all my email to their search page. Because I registered through my hosting company (who in turn registered through Register.com) Register.com's tech support refuse to help me. They say I have to do everything through my hosting company. But when XO communications asked them to make a change they just said "No".
I mean, I'd love to have an accurate phone number and email in my WHOIS. I'd REALLY love to change the registrar of record to anybody except Register.com. But they're holding my domain hostage and won't give me a way (short of sueing) to maintain my own domain.
So don't make it a crime for ME to have false information in my WHOIS. I'd love to change the information. The jerks at Register.com won't let me.
Electronic Buggery in the Senate.
What? Can they do that remotely now?
I thought that the ability to email millions of people offers to extend their naughty bits (and to send them that offer 20 or 30 times a day EVERY FREAKING DAY) would be the most hated new technology.
As has been stated many time in this thread: Eating genetically modified food does not modify YOUR genes. Take my earlier example. If I eat meat from a pig that has a genetic predisposition to being diabetic it DOES NOT mean that I will become diabetic.
But if they were toxic it would kill the animal that eats it. If it were carcinogenic it would(in the long run) also kill the animal. If the animal had cancerous tumors then WE would avoid eating it.
Is this even possible? I mean, if I eat meat from an animal that has a genetic pre-disposition to being diabetic it doesn't mean that I will become diabetic. Is there any evidence at all that eating a genetically altered animal will in any way effect the genetics of the animal that consumes it?
Does anyone here have the background to clear this up? It seems that this is the crux issue. If it's not possible to transport any genetic information (and I would think that it's not) then this is a total knee-jerk reaction with no science to back it up.
And for sure it needs to come in XXXLg sizes.
Let's look at an $80k per year salery in southern california. Now before you say "Well, it's your choice to live in So Cal" think about it for a moment. Southern California has 15% of the US population and 10% of the jobs. So you live where the jobs are. Yeah right, I could buy a house in the middle of Montana and wait around for the tech companies to come to me.
So here's the breakdown.
Salary: $80,000
Minus 35% Federal taxes $52000
Minus another 10% in state tax, SSN, Insureance etc (probably a low estimate) $46,800
Morgage, Assuming only $2000 a month in payments (go ahead, try to buy a new house in San Diego for a $2000 a month payment. I dare you)
That's $2000 x 12 for $24,000 which brings us to
$22,800
Now assume that you're married and you and your wife both need cars to get around. We're not talking about a pair of Lexus or monster SUV. How about a Honda and a small ford pickup truck? Let's assume a car payment of only $300 each. That's $600 x 12 for another $7200 which brings us to $15,600
Insureance on those two cars is another $2000 a year
$13,600
Gas and Electricity: $80 per month = $960
Gas for the car so you can get to work and back is another $40 a week for the 2 cars = $2080. That brings us to $10560
Right now we're standing at $880 per month in left over cash. We havn't bought food yet, or clothing, or any of the cost of maintaining a house (yard work, interior work) or the trash colleciton bill, or property taxes or anything else that life requires. Let's take a LOW estimate that that stuff only cost $500 a month. Now were at $4560 a year of extra cash or just $380 a month.
Did you notice that we haven't accounted for having any kids? And what if I want to put $2000 a year into my IRA account in the hope of not starving to death when I retire? That leaves just $2560 a year or just over $213 a month only if I live very frugally and have no other expenses like student loans or insurence deductables or having my electric bill skyrocket from $70 a month to $250 a month because of degregulation
All of those are conservative estimates of the actual cost of living. That car payment amount is low, the morgage amount is low. And you think I'm OVERPAID!? Do the same calculation on $60,000 a year and you'd see that we'd be in debt at the end of the year.
So don't go telling me that I'm a rich whiney bastard that lives beyond his means you liberal prick.
That's exactly right. The call center jobs that are being outsourced do not require ANY math or science skills. Those people generally read from a script and as you answer their questions Yes or No they move to the next appropriate question. This means that the call center jobs are are going overseas are taking jobs away from the poorest Americans, the ones that can benefit from a near minimum wage job as a way to start building their life.
What WE (the real techies) need to worry about is the abundence of H1B programmers from India. Because of America's inflation (Don't believe Greenspan when he says there's no inflation. Look at the increase in the price of housing in the last 3 years and tell me that they're no inflation) it cost a LOT to live here. And besides, we are highly trained college educated engineers. We should get paid a reasonable living wage.
The other problem is that companies think that the cost of programmers is due to their wages. However, I havn't written code of any consequence in almost a year. I've been busy dealing with endless planning sessions, then design sessions, then project plan sessions, then project estimation sessions, then writing design documents, then writing test documents, then dealing with the vendors to make sure that THEY understand our design and how we will integrate our code. This goes on and on ad infinitum. When we eventually get around to writing the damn code we'll be done in about 3 months. But it's taken up a year of freaking paperwork and buracracy to get this project off the ground. I get paid the same if I write code or not. So how about getting the managament types to understand that if they didn't waste my time for a year then I'd be a lot more cost effective? But know, they think that the problem is that I get paid too much.
The answer to that statement is "That's just silly. To a manager cost cutting means cutting YOUR job, not his. Havn't you been paying attention?"
It's amazing that during an election year that I've yet to hear one thing from Dean or Bush about this. Is everyone bought and paid for?
The answer to that question is "Of course they are, havn't you been paying attention?"
Sadly, this appears to fall into the "globalization" groupthink. It's a "free market economy" therefore it must be good...right?
The answer to the last statement is more complex. The plain truth is that our government has done this to us on purpose. Rather than cutting back on spending they simply spend more and more and more. How do we pay for that? Well, last week Greenspan printed another $5 Billion in fiat money that has no gold or assets to back it up. In the same week the Fed issued an addition $17 Billion in debt. And that's just one week! How about a month of $17 billion weeks? Think about a year of $17 billion weeks. How about a decade of $17 billion weeks. What will that do to our economy? Throw in ridiculusly low interest rates and it's a recipie for disaster. Allow me to elaborate:
Here in Southern California we have 15% of the jobs and 10% of the nation's population. If you count Southern California and the San Fransisco/San Jose are we have nearly 15% of the population of the entire country AND a bit more than 20% of the jobs. (This data comes from Claritas, a demographics company that I use to work for)
People need to live where the jobs are. Yes, you can say "Go live in Indiana where you can buy a house on 2 acres of land for $200k" but then reality sets in and you realize that in general, you must live where the jobs are. People need to buy houses where they live. The artificially low interest rates have made it far too easy to get cheap money in the form of home loans. This access to easy money has artificially increased the price (not the value, but the price) of homes. In Mission Viejo in Orange County a house next door to my niece sold for $440k 4 years ago. It sold last month for $1.2 million. In my area of San Diego our home prices have doubled in 5 years.
So how do people pay for that house? They need higher wages. Now follow along because this is an important concept: To purchase the same house they could have had 4 years ago they need almost twice as much money. In other words It takes more money to purchase the same amount of stuff That ladies and gentlemen is the very definition of inflation. That is the inflation that Allan Greenspan says does not exist
So our government has made it far too easy to get money which has caused housing prices in the areas where the jobs exist to skyrocket. In the mean time they are printing money like maniacs which also deflats the value of all the existing dollars AND they're going deeper and deeper into debt at a such a rate that they seem determined to utterly destroy the country and it's entire economy at the fastest rate possible.
Our government does not represent us, the middle class. Republicans, Democrats, it doesn't matter. We don't need an election, we need a revolution.
Now are you paying attention?
In FOTR watch the scene where the hobbits enter Bree. There are sundry mean and ugly characters in the streets. One of them is holding a carrot. That's Peter Jackson.
Sorry folks, a programmer with no degree but lots of Open Source experience will still have a tougher time getting a job than a C.S. student with no experience.
It's wrong, but it's still true.
How does that follow? We've been sending signals into space ever since we started broadcasting radio and television and we don't have any usable nanotechnology.
Sending signals into space is fairly simple. building microscopic machines is not. I don't see how the presents of one means we should assume the existence of the other.
Need Help ASAP! How Do I Do This??!!
Now we can just point them to this page and ignore them istead of trying to explain how we're not here to do their homework for them. Ah, yes. The changing color of the leaves, the crisp coolness of the air, the desperate plea of the programmer newbies. Those are the first signs of autumn that I love so much.