The Toshiba 3010 and 3015 are amazingly small and light, and if similar sized models were made today with modern processors and LCD screens, they would sell.
Having the other folks on a small monitor is "nice" but if you're building something today, might as well get the big'un.
And if not the room-based systems, even the small conference room systems are getting bigger and doing HD and other things like "people on content"... (think weatherman on the evening news, here... content behind you... you standing in front of it...)
These things are moving along rapidly, with a number of competitors in the marketplace. People that really need it, are just paying for it and buying it -- slow economy, slow travel, always have a reverse effect on the conferencing industry. We're one of those "backward to the market" businesses.
More importantly we're assuming anyone who knew their reactor was being monitored, wouldn't be able to come up with a way to generate neutrinos and fool the detector?
AT&T: Hey Apple, we need you to change the code on the iPhone so the phone can truly authenticate to the access point.
Apple: No. The iPhone is perfect.
AT&T: Mmm-kay. We'll need to send you a bill for the extra bandwidth we ESTIMATE is being used every month.
Apple: Mmm-kay. We'll change it. It might take a while.
AT&T: Our estimates are based on only the finest engineering a 120 year old company can give.
Apple: We'll have it done next month.
AT&T: No worries, we'll have the new code for the access point through engineering in about a month, it'll be another month for certification testing and QA, and then we'll have to write installation documentation for the field techs. We estimate one year after you notify us that the iPhone piece is done.
Apple: Great. We'll notify our market analysts about our expected change in our quarterly earnings. You guys really are evil aren't you?
There are LOTS of other options than the three you describe. If that's your view of the world, you missed something so big somewhere in your upbringing that it's going to be a struggle to show you anything different.
Let's take one you WILL understand... work your way in from the bottom up. It *can* be done. Why do I know?
I have no degree. My career started as a call center operator. From there, a lowly callcenter technician, then on to Field Engineering (Appeasement Engineer), Product Support Specialist, Lead Product Support Engineer, Data Center Engineer, and now the "official" title is Technical Account Representative. I handle as a single-point-of-contact, all of the technical requests of a medium-sized hardware vendor that come in from a multi-billion dollar telecom carrier. I've been in meetings where VP's of these companies were listening (with interest) to what I had to say... because I tell them how to alleviate risks (I've seen most of them in over 10 years of doing this job, and 15 years in the industry) and how to make money. In fact "alleviating risk" is just techie speak for "keeping the money they made".
I studied and spent lots of time fixing things no one else wanted to fix, but needed fixing. I figured things out when multi-million dollar systems wouldn't run. I was persistent at doing a good job, sometimes to a fault. And it does get noticed.
You won't get there fast, but you won't have $50K in student loans either.
Along the way I got a pilot's license, have flown search and rescue missions, worked with radios and radio systems (as a hobby, but now people ask me questions about how their radios work), helped build some computer systems that are used worldwide (and learned that a team of dedicated and interested people is all that you need to do this -- not "budgets" and marketing and hand-waving, just a need and a group of people determined to fill that need)... and in all -- have had a marvelous time doing all of it.
NONE of it with a degree. I was working on a degree back when I got the call center job to pay the gas and school bills. Back then I had that job, and also threw baggage for an airline and US Mail during holiday rushes. I had to choose where I spent my money carefully, and work hard.
It's all about work ethic. And it does all get better if you have one. I've seen a lot of "educated" people come and go, some making more money than me, some less... but if I stop to take time to compare myself to them (and everyone falls into this trap once in a while), I wouldn't be where I am today.
Learn to work. Learn to enjoy whatever it is that you're doing. Learn to play. Ignore others who say you're doing it wrong.
Re:If you people really believe this then what now
on
Disillusioned With IT?
·
· Score: 1
Look around you a bit more, young man.
Those people who are your bosses who you think are leaving you such a bad thing -- they're not retiring early or enjoying it any more than you are.
They make more money, but they also spend more money.
The only way to BEAT them (or the system) is to live far below your means, save more than you earn, and learn to be happy with it.
My family's not "aristocratic" by any stretch of the imagination. Only my youngest sibling ever completed a college degree, and yet every generation has retired early and enjoyed themselves along the way.
It's all about teaching a different set of money values. You work to save, not to spend... so you don't have to work anymore.
Mom and Dad both "retired" from middle-management jobs in their 50's, taking "early out" offers when they were offered. That's timing and luck a little bit, but they were both financially prepared to leave when the opportunity presented itself. Both now have "retirement jobs" because not working is pretty boring, and my generation and my siblings are following suit.
We work hard, young. Put as much of it away as we can, and play hard but frugally when we play, so life's still enjoyable. The habits get built up to live on very little money over time, and when it comes time to "retire" you have things paid off and ready to go.
Quit whining about "the system" and learn how it works. Spend less than everyone else expects you to. Laugh when they ask why you drive a 10 year old car, knowing that you've done the math and even with extra maintenance and an annual mechanical issue or two, you've saved tens of thousands of dollars versus your peers. Buy a smaller house than you want. (I messed up on this one but it's not ruined me.)
Choose. Every day. Choose to KEEP whatever you have made for yourself. It's yours. It gives you options other people don't have.
Of course, you'll be taxed to death in this society that offers tax rebates for each child, even after you're done "replacing" yourself, and in years like this year, the people who paid LESS in taxes will get MORE in rebates...
Been there, doing that. Doing a lot of fun things right now, and looking forward to a lot of travel in early retirement...
This is why people aren't becoming teachers. It doesn't pay. Wasn't it obvious to you both?
With that said, after a few years it gets better. I have family who both were teaching and they do fine on his teacher's salary alone now that he's been teaching in a normal suburban school district for ten years, but he also has a Master's Degree.
You'll never make any money teaching. If money makes you happier than teaching, better get out now.
Too bad their website looks like it was written by a couple of teenagers in a basement. And their "Articles by" section hasn't seen a new article (if you can even find them) since 2002.
I'm turned off. The text in the sample chapter on the site is cutesy "How do I fix spots on my dishes?" and while entertaining, very unprofessional.
Dude, that greeting line is typical for a slashdot user whose user ID is between 10,000 and 50,000 (ask any decent HR department if you don't believe me).
Aww damn, I just missed the cutoff... and I was all ready to say it, too!
I've had both, after recently switching back to Dish. I had two Tivos for years, one a very early model Series 2 and a later one.
The later one had a huge hard disk but was constantly plagued with problems that appeared to be related to the use of a cheap hard disk -- reboots, lockups, etc.
The earlier one was better built, but limited in recording space.
The multi-tuner Dish 722ViP capable of recording from two satellite tuners at once, as well as a built in ATSC tuner (who would have thought that a company that makes a living off of selling TV signals would put an off-air tuner in their box? Wow!), plus feeding two televisions (one HD, one SD) in either "show the same thing and have picture-in-picture" or "show different tuners to different TVs) and all the other features... far outshines the Tivo.
Tivo's decision to do a CableCard-based HDTV device drove me away. That was a huge mistake.
Yes absolutely Dish needs a MUCH better "Season Pass" like feature... their search feature is a little clunky, but I for one am impressed. Especially for half the price per month to drive two TV's.
Not to mention that Dish like other large companies who have lost patent cases in the past, will simply "license" whatever tech they infringed upon. The lawyers get paid (again) and Tivo gets a well-deserved cash-flow fix.
Whoever thinks Dish will simply turn off DVR service with the flick of a switch, is sorely lost when it comes to even simple business tactics, let alone creative thinking.
It's not talk, it's happening -- but not as a regulatory thing.
The stations who've stayed on the low-VHF section of the band have found that they have LOWER performance (all other things being equal) on their digital transmitters vs. their analog ones, on their old VHF frequencies, for various reasons.
Most of the large network engineering departments figured out a number of reasons why this happens, and mandated that the rest of their affiliates instead plan to move to UHF.
Stations are indeed moving to UHF, but using the data stream located (smartly) in the HDTV protocol to "re-number" themselves back to their original channel numbers in the user's TV set, so they don't lose their marketing as "Channel 2" or whatever. Their real transmitter may be up at UHF channel 35, but the TV will tell the end user "02" or similar and when "flipping" channels, people will find 2 below 3 below 4... etc.
Stations also find that moving to UHF in this new technology doesn't make them look like "inferiors" to the "big guys" on the lower channels (remember when TV sets stopped at channel 13?).
So, there's no reason for them not to take advantage of the higher RF gain of same-size antennas at the higher frequencies, and move up and out of the prevalent RF noise at and around VHF in most large cities. Done right (no significant feed line losses, bigger feedline to the new antenna) the same sized UHF antenna will have significantly more RF gain vs. the old VHF antenna... especially with technology updates in these giant circularly-polarized antennas used in broadcast.
And there's also the reality that the Cable and Satellite providers are compressing the original source signals from the networks to different degrees. I'm sure eventually this will lead to "compression limits" being written into contracts, it's already started with the NFL... I hear. But in the meantime until people figure out that their "150 channels of HDTV" from a satellite provider are actually 150 channels of inferior picture quality HD channels... the best way to see the HDTV signal the way it was intended to be seen, is by receiving it off-air from the content creators themselves, the networks.
Of course, this doesn't work for "cable" channels, like HBO, etc... but bet your boots that their contracts with the providers will start to limit the amount of compression they're allowed to do.
All fascinating stuff. Good stuff, too. It looks good when done right!
Doesn't matter -- corporations do everything possible to MAXIMIZE profit. Unless a top-dog made the decision to take the fines, someone's head will roll.
And if a top-dog did make the decision, they already had someone's head ready in mind to roll anyway, to cover for their decision. A scapegoat who couldn't prove they decided to do it.
This Doctor who's bitching about not getting paid for some patients may think he could "maximize" his income by only seeing people who can pay, and while on paper that certainly seems true -- in reality if everyone paid, the hospital and the insurance company would make sure the top dogs get their before he ever sees his. Just like any large corporation.
Most people working in upper-seniority technical jobs eventually get to see what they're billed out for -- whether it's directly if they work for that kind of firm, or indirectly by seeing the numbers on "service contracts" go by in e-mail, or however they might find them.
We all "know" we're "underpaid" by a lot of money and that it does go *somewhere*, but there's folks above us who'd never want us to know exactly *where*.
SEC filings if you work for a public company are enlightening. More people should read them, but I promise they'll be quite depressed at what they see.
It's VERY typical to see someone only three "levels" up the food chain in most corporations from a typical "middle class" worker's pay grade and rank to be making 100's of orders of magnitude more money.
One of the biggest "secrets" at any large (supposedly) public corporation is how their executives are compensated. This "secret" is right out in public view for anyone to review, mandated by law.
Personally, I only see one problem in all of this -- shareholders in such organizations put up with it. Until the real "owners" of the company step up and demand better moral behavior of those they've placed in charge of their money, the cycle continues.
This doc thinking he'll ever see "big money" working as a doc -- and looking down at those with nothing to hand him for his efforts, instead of up at the people hoarding millions above his head -- is sorely disillusioned about where the problem lies.
Since you're complaining about U.S. Foreign Policy, without any specifics, I might add -- other than some bitchy Peace Corp people...
Let's turn your argument around and ask you -- Give us an example of a country with a GOOD Foreign Policy that's as big and has as many world-wide interests as the United States.
China? Nope. What's left of the Soviet Union? Nope. UK? Nope. Australia? Hmm. Maybe.
Anyway... thinking through it you seem to be complaining about bad foreign policy in such a way as to NOT compare it to the damage that would result if the U.S. were simply and completely isolationist overnight. Do you truly think the others would simply stop also, if left to their own devices?
Or worse, not comparing it to many other countries who's foreign policy is FAR more evil in general.
Perhaps you'd prefer the U.S. become instantly and irreversibly isolationist, have no foreign interests, and let Iran or Pakistan's foreign policy be the order of the day on the world stage?
Give us a break. The reality is -- ALL countries have both good and bad aspects to their foreign policy. Some are FAR worse than the U.S. in almost all areas, some are FAR better in most areas, but ALL are out for their own interests.
The thing that makes a lot of people mad is that SUPPOSEDLY the U.S. foreign policy is set by the citizenry, and not by some power-wielding cadre of men in a small room somewhere. In general, that's just not how it works in the real world. There are men who decide foreign policy, and hundreds of millions who just watch, ready to revolt if things get too out of hand. But, while things aren't always good -- the majority here feel that the government is still somewhat in check, even as they go about their policy.
The US Government is still made up citizens who serve others by their work. And the citizens aren't so displeased with the Government's behavior that anyone finds it worth going after them yet, beyond the usual political wrangling and tongue-wagging.
THAT really pisses some people off. YOU can't get the citizenry fired up over things like Iraq and it drives YOU crazy. But the rest of us are a bit more patient and watching to see the political outcome of such things.
Slashdot Mirror
The Toshiba 3010 and 3015 are amazingly small and light, and if similar sized models were made today with modern processors and LCD screens, they would sell.
Or because the world is constantly pushing the proprietary stuff along, and it's leading to rooms like this:
http://www.polycom.com/usa/en/products/telepresence/realpresence_experience/rpx_hd.html
Having the other folks on a small monitor is "nice" but if you're building something today, might as well get the big'un.
And if not the room-based systems, even the small conference room systems are getting bigger and doing HD and other things like "people on content"... (think weatherman on the evening news, here... content behind you... you standing in front of it...)
http://www.polycom.com/usa/en/products/video/video_conferencing_systems/large_conference_room/hdx9000.html
These things are moving along rapidly, with a number of competitors in the marketplace. People that really need it, are just paying for it and buying it -- slow economy, slow travel, always have a reverse effect on the conferencing industry. We're one of those "backward to the market" businesses.
[Disclaimer: Yeah, I work for PLCM.]
You won't enjoy it as much with reading glasses required.
More importantly we're assuming anyone who knew their reactor was being monitored, wouldn't be able to come up with a way to generate neutrinos and fool the detector?
Nah, it'll work for a while...
AT&T: Hey Apple, we need you to change the code on the iPhone so the phone can truly authenticate to the access point.
Apple: No. The iPhone is perfect.
AT&T: Mmm-kay. We'll need to send you a bill for the extra bandwidth we ESTIMATE is being used every month.
Apple: Mmm-kay. We'll change it. It might take a while.
AT&T: Our estimates are based on only the finest engineering a 120 year old company can give.
Apple: We'll have it done next month.
AT&T: No worries, we'll have the new code for the access point through engineering in about a month, it'll be another month for certification testing and QA, and then we'll have to write installation documentation for the field techs. We estimate one year after you notify us that the iPhone piece is done.
Apple: Great. We'll notify our market analysts about our expected change in our quarterly earnings. You guys really are evil aren't you?
AT&T: The best in the world!
You're missing the important term... "encapsulation".
You can put TCP packets inside UDP packets, inside X.25 packets, inside ATM cells, inside...
UDP to the VPN code at the far end, it reassembles the TCP packets and sends 'em on their way...
We'll believe you if you promise to never mention it in public again.
Every time you mention your donkey dick, God kills a kitten.
Slashdot comments considered harmful.
There are LOTS of other options than the three you describe. If that's your view of the world, you missed something so big somewhere in your upbringing that it's going to be a struggle to show you anything different.
Let's take one you WILL understand... work your way in from the bottom up. It *can* be done. Why do I know?
I have no degree. My career started as a call center operator. From there, a lowly callcenter technician, then on to Field Engineering (Appeasement Engineer), Product Support Specialist, Lead Product Support Engineer, Data Center Engineer, and now the "official" title is Technical Account Representative. I handle as a single-point-of-contact, all of the technical requests of a medium-sized hardware vendor that come in from a multi-billion dollar telecom carrier. I've been in meetings where VP's of these companies were listening (with interest) to what I had to say... because I tell them how to alleviate risks (I've seen most of them in over 10 years of doing this job, and 15 years in the industry) and how to make money. In fact "alleviating risk" is just techie speak for "keeping the money they made".
I studied and spent lots of time fixing things no one else wanted to fix, but needed fixing. I figured things out when multi-million dollar systems wouldn't run. I was persistent at doing a good job, sometimes to a fault. And it does get noticed.
You won't get there fast, but you won't have $50K in student loans either.
Along the way I got a pilot's license, have flown search and rescue missions, worked with radios and radio systems (as a hobby, but now people ask me questions about how their radios work), helped build some computer systems that are used worldwide (and learned that a team of dedicated and interested people is all that you need to do this -- not "budgets" and marketing and hand-waving, just a need and a group of people determined to fill that need)... and in all -- have had a marvelous time doing all of it.
NONE of it with a degree. I was working on a degree back when I got the call center job to pay the gas and school bills. Back then I had that job, and also threw baggage for an airline and US Mail during holiday rushes. I had to choose where I spent my money carefully, and work hard.
It's all about work ethic. And it does all get better if you have one. I've seen a lot of "educated" people come and go, some making more money than me, some less... but if I stop to take time to compare myself to them (and everyone falls into this trap once in a while), I wouldn't be where I am today.
Learn to work. Learn to enjoy whatever it is that you're doing. Learn to play. Ignore others who say you're doing it wrong.
Look around you a bit more, young man.
Those people who are your bosses who you think are leaving you such a bad thing -- they're not retiring early or enjoying it any more than you are.
They make more money, but they also spend more money.
The only way to BEAT them (or the system) is to live far below your means, save more than you earn, and learn to be happy with it.
My family's not "aristocratic" by any stretch of the imagination. Only my youngest sibling ever completed a college degree, and yet every generation has retired early and enjoyed themselves along the way.
It's all about teaching a different set of money values. You work to save, not to spend... so you don't have to work anymore.
Mom and Dad both "retired" from middle-management jobs in their 50's, taking "early out" offers when they were offered. That's timing and luck a little bit, but they were both financially prepared to leave when the opportunity presented itself. Both now have "retirement jobs" because not working is pretty boring, and my generation and my siblings are following suit.
We work hard, young. Put as much of it away as we can, and play hard but frugally when we play, so life's still enjoyable. The habits get built up to live on very little money over time, and when it comes time to "retire" you have things paid off and ready to go.
Quit whining about "the system" and learn how it works. Spend less than everyone else expects you to. Laugh when they ask why you drive a 10 year old car, knowing that you've done the math and even with extra maintenance and an annual mechanical issue or two, you've saved tens of thousands of dollars versus your peers. Buy a smaller house than you want. (I messed up on this one but it's not ruined me.)
Choose. Every day. Choose to KEEP whatever you have made for yourself. It's yours. It gives you options other people don't have.
There is another option. Don't have kids.
Of course, you'll be taxed to death in this society that offers tax rebates for each child, even after you're done "replacing" yourself, and in years like this year, the people who paid LESS in taxes will get MORE in rebates...
Been there, doing that. Doing a lot of fun things right now, and looking forward to a lot of travel in early retirement...
This is why people aren't becoming teachers. It doesn't pay. Wasn't it obvious to you both?
With that said, after a few years it gets better. I have family who both were teaching and they do fine on his teacher's salary alone now that he's been teaching in a normal suburban school district for ten years, but he also has a Master's Degree.
You'll never make any money teaching. If money makes you happier than teaching, better get out now.
What so they can think the same thing, sacrifice their happiness and send their kids to Yale? WTF?
Yale sucks anyway. Send 'em to Harvard.
Better yet, teach them to do what they want to do, and be happy.
Ah, I see you've been in the Air Force...
Correction: Geeks with girlfriends who have no idea how to hold a conversation with them. In other words, people who shouldn't be dating anyway.
Yawn. People willing to pay for Veritas File System have been able to do this for 10 years on the Solaris platform.
While I like ZFS, it's really not all that "NEW". It's just a re-implementation of things available commercially.
That makes it inexpensive, which is good for many -- but critical systems have been doing this kind of disk management for a very long time now.
Too bad their website looks like it was written by a couple of teenagers in a basement. And their "Articles by" section hasn't seen a new article (if you can even find them) since 2002.
I'm turned off. The text in the sample chapter on the site is cutesy "How do I fix spots on my dishes?" and while entertaining, very unprofessional.
Not sure if the Simpsons started it or if it was www.userfriendly.org where a lot of geeks saw it first. Canadian, not American.
slashdot user whose user ID is between 10,000 and 50,000
(ask any decent HR department if you don't believe me).
Aww damn, I just missed the cutoff... and I was all ready to say it, too!
I've had both, after recently switching back to Dish. I had two Tivos for years, one a very early model Series 2 and a later one.
The later one had a huge hard disk but was constantly plagued with problems that appeared to be related to the use of a cheap hard disk -- reboots, lockups, etc.
The earlier one was better built, but limited in recording space.
The multi-tuner Dish 722ViP capable of recording from two satellite tuners at once, as well as a built in ATSC tuner (who would have thought that a company that makes a living off of selling TV signals would put an off-air tuner in their box? Wow!), plus feeding two televisions (one HD, one SD) in either "show the same thing and have picture-in-picture" or "show different tuners to different TVs) and all the other features... far outshines the Tivo.
Tivo's decision to do a CableCard-based HDTV device drove me away. That was a huge mistake.
Yes absolutely Dish needs a MUCH better "Season Pass" like feature... their search feature is a little clunky, but I for one am impressed. Especially for half the price per month to drive two TV's.
Not to mention that Dish like other large companies who have lost patent cases in the past, will simply "license" whatever tech they infringed upon. The lawyers get paid (again) and Tivo gets a well-deserved cash-flow fix.
Whoever thinks Dish will simply turn off DVR service with the flick of a switch, is sorely lost when it comes to even simple business tactics, let alone creative thinking.
It's not talk, it's happening -- but not as a regulatory thing.
The stations who've stayed on the low-VHF section of the band have found that they have LOWER performance (all other things being equal) on their digital transmitters vs. their analog ones, on their old VHF frequencies, for various reasons.
Most of the large network engineering departments figured out a number of reasons why this happens, and mandated that the rest of their affiliates instead plan to move to UHF.
Stations are indeed moving to UHF, but using the data stream located (smartly) in the HDTV protocol to "re-number" themselves back to their original channel numbers in the user's TV set, so they don't lose their marketing as "Channel 2" or whatever. Their real transmitter may be up at UHF channel 35, but the TV will tell the end user "02" or similar and when "flipping" channels, people will find 2 below 3 below 4... etc.
Stations also find that moving to UHF in this new technology doesn't make them look like "inferiors" to the "big guys" on the lower channels (remember when TV sets stopped at channel 13?).
So, there's no reason for them not to take advantage of the higher RF gain of same-size antennas at the higher frequencies, and move up and out of the prevalent RF noise at and around VHF in most large cities. Done right (no significant feed line losses, bigger feedline to the new antenna) the same sized UHF antenna will have significantly more RF gain vs. the old VHF antenna... especially with technology updates in these giant circularly-polarized antennas used in broadcast.
And there's also the reality that the Cable and Satellite providers are compressing the original source signals from the networks to different degrees. I'm sure eventually this will lead to "compression limits" being written into contracts, it's already started with the NFL... I hear. But in the meantime until people figure out that their "150 channels of HDTV" from a satellite provider are actually 150 channels of inferior picture quality HD channels... the best way to see the HDTV signal the way it was intended to be seen, is by receiving it off-air from the content creators themselves, the networks.
Of course, this doesn't work for "cable" channels, like HBO, etc... but bet your boots that their contracts with the providers will start to limit the amount of compression they're allowed to do.
All fascinating stuff. Good stuff, too. It looks good when done right!
Doesn't matter -- corporations do everything possible to MAXIMIZE profit. Unless a top-dog made the decision to take the fines, someone's head will roll.
And if a top-dog did make the decision, they already had someone's head ready in mind to roll anyway, to cover for their decision. A scapegoat who couldn't prove they decided to do it.
Well said.
This Doctor who's bitching about not getting paid for some patients may think he could "maximize" his income by only seeing people who can pay, and while on paper that certainly seems true -- in reality if everyone paid, the hospital and the insurance company would make sure the top dogs get their before he ever sees his. Just like any large corporation.
Most people working in upper-seniority technical jobs eventually get to see what they're billed out for -- whether it's directly if they work for that kind of firm, or indirectly by seeing the numbers on "service contracts" go by in e-mail, or however they might find them.
We all "know" we're "underpaid" by a lot of money and that it does go *somewhere*, but there's folks above us who'd never want us to know exactly *where*.
SEC filings if you work for a public company are enlightening. More people should read them, but I promise they'll be quite depressed at what they see.
It's VERY typical to see someone only three "levels" up the food chain in most corporations from a typical "middle class" worker's pay grade and rank to be making 100's of orders of magnitude more money.
One of the biggest "secrets" at any large (supposedly) public corporation is how their executives are compensated. This "secret" is right out in public view for anyone to review, mandated by law.
Personally, I only see one problem in all of this -- shareholders in such organizations put up with it. Until the real "owners" of the company step up and demand better moral behavior of those they've placed in charge of their money, the cycle continues.
This doc thinking he'll ever see "big money" working as a doc -- and looking down at those with nothing to hand him for his efforts, instead of up at the people hoarding millions above his head -- is sorely disillusioned about where the problem lies.
Since you're complaining about U.S. Foreign Policy, without any specifics, I might add -- other than some bitchy Peace Corp people...
Let's turn your argument around and ask you -- Give us an example of a country with a GOOD Foreign Policy that's as big and has as many world-wide interests as the United States.
China? Nope.
What's left of the Soviet Union? Nope.
UK? Nope.
Australia? Hmm. Maybe.
Anyway... thinking through it you seem to be complaining about bad foreign policy in such a way as to NOT compare it to the damage that would result if the U.S. were simply and completely isolationist overnight. Do you truly think the others would simply stop also, if left to their own devices?
Or worse, not comparing it to many other countries who's foreign policy is FAR more evil in general.
Perhaps you'd prefer the U.S. become instantly and irreversibly isolationist, have no foreign interests, and let Iran or Pakistan's foreign policy be the order of the day on the world stage?
Give us a break. The reality is -- ALL countries have both good and bad aspects to their foreign policy. Some are FAR worse than the U.S. in almost all areas, some are FAR better in most areas, but ALL are out for their own interests.
The thing that makes a lot of people mad is that SUPPOSEDLY the U.S. foreign policy is set by the citizenry, and not by some power-wielding cadre of men in a small room somewhere. In general, that's just not how it works in the real world. There are men who decide foreign policy, and hundreds of millions who just watch, ready to revolt if things get too out of hand. But, while things aren't always good -- the majority here feel that the government is still somewhat in check, even as they go about their policy.
The US Government is still made up citizens who serve others by their work. And the citizens aren't so displeased with the Government's behavior that anyone finds it worth going after them yet, beyond the usual political wrangling and tongue-wagging.
THAT really pisses some people off. YOU can't get the citizenry fired up over things like Iraq and it drives YOU crazy. But the rest of us are a bit more patient and watching to see the political outcome of such things.