> So MS got more interested in the search engine business.. Google doesn't like it and wants to fight back..
Don't be mistaken. Microsoft and Google are in all out war, and Google is winning easily. Microsoft is only interested in search because google has used it to create a competive advantage, and they're using it to break it Microsoft's other markets. (deliberately and with force, not out of spite)
MS Desktop Search (next version of OS)->google desktop search MSN Search->google search hotmail/exchange->gmail MSN Maps->maps.google.com
Every product, people prefer the google version, and they're making money off these products even though consumers aren't paying for them. MS can't snub google out. MS has changed the way it does business at it's core to compete with google, and they aren't even slowing google down. Microsoft can't compete with google on any front, no matter how much money they throw at it. Google is expanding it focus to include Operating Systems (they've hired away a lot of Microsoft's top OS talent) and now office suite. If google proves to be as succesful in these new fronts as they have been in past ones, Microsoft will be forced to re-invent itself or perish.
hell, all you need to be considered a computer security expert is just say "everything's insecure."
Security is about risks management and not building fort Knox in every environment that a "Security Expert" touches. For example, vulnerabilities that allow a random person to gain admin privelages to your OS for your customer facing website which brings in $1 million dollars per hour is a high risk and a high consequence to the business. It would justify spending a couple of million dollars securing. On the other hand, if you have a home computer that you use for gaming and if it gets compromised you can't play games, then it probably deserves less resources to secure. (although you should take minimal precautions like firewalls and secure passwords, because they're almost free and reduce your chance of vulerability drastically)
It's all about weighing the chance of compromise + cost of compromise vs. cost of security. A "Security Expert" always uses easy wins that decrease the risk of compromise and are cheap to implement (ie, firewalls and secure passwords).
I've seen economists claim that the game "Capitalism" is a good economy simulator. The game simulates a capitalist economy. As a business owner, you can control every thing from the collection of raw resources, manufacturing of goods, and distribution of those goods through a retail store. You compete with other business owners. You advertise your products to raise the worth of your product. You can own TV, Radio, and Newspapers.
The game is based on the principal that a products demand is a comibination of it's quality, cost, and marketing. By marketing, you can take a cheap product like soap and have people pay $20 for a piece of soap you payed $1 to produce. These seems unrealistic until you realize this is exactly how Bath and Body Works makes money. Or take a nickel pop and selling it for 75 cents. Coca-Cola.
This is fun for a while. But then you raise enough money to buy a newspaper. You can use the newspaper to get advertising at costs. This is cool. But then, you buy the radio and the tv station too. Now, you raise the rates to the maximum. All of a sudden, you have the power to buy media at wholesale (even if your soap company pays the maximum price for the advertisement, the money still goes into your pocket for a net 0 loss). But your competitors, if they choose to advertise, will have to pay exhorbant prices. The net result is your competitors either have to drastically increase their prices or try to win the market on low-quality cheap products.
This game is an econmic simulator, and although not reality, is a good representation of what is the best strategy in a real capitalistic environment. Monopoly of the media equals a monopoly on everything. Therefore, it is paramount for capitalism that the media remain diversified. It's the FCC's job to provide this diversification.
I had a family friend whose college buddies/boyfriend where in a tragic car reck and they all died. It was a horrible horrible experience for her...
She started saying that her friends were talking to her and kept telling her that they were coming for her. She also called up her dad (divorced parents) and asked him why he never told her about her other siblings (besides the one she knew about). It was really weird. They diagnosed her with schiz. and she started to get help.
She was doing a lot better. It was about a year later. A man was driving down a country road looking out into the field for deer. He wasn't paying attention and he hit her head on. She died. She died a year later in the same way as her friends who she claimed were coming to get here from the other side. It's a true story, but you got to ask yourself, was it delussion or a super natural awareness?
I highly doubt I can sell a Linux/Samba solution, given the current state of the server environment and political climate here in my company, so that's not one of my options.
You can't sell it because you don't believe in it. It has nothing to do with the server environment and the political climate at your company. The best sells men sell things they strongly believe in. If you really want to be able to sell what you suspect is the best solution, sell yourself first.
This is trying to match something like
adsfdfsdfs()ASDfasd#@$!@afd (adsfad@#$@!)
and replace it with
asdfa asdfa asdf adsfdfsdfs()ASDfasd#@$!@afd
or basically, get rid of things in parenthises that are after at least one white space.
so,
s/\s+\(.*?\)//g would work...
but still a lot of slashes
so try this
my $stuffInParen = qr| \(.*?\) |;
s/\s+ $stuffInParen//gx;
or even
my $stuffInParen = qr| \(.*?\) |;
my $whiteSpace = qr| \s+ |;
s/$whiteSpace $stuffInParen//gx;
now, you can look at the code and have a pretty good idea what it's doing. (even without comments). we're switching stuffInParens that follow whitespace with nothing. just because Perl gives you the flexability to write ugly code doesn't mean you should. if you are writing perl code and it looks ugly, you're doing it wrong. you should find another way to do it... with great power comes great responsability.
you could also use some kind of encryption and changing keys to make the exact ports that you had to knock different each time. Sniffing no longer gets you useful information...
It's not that simple. When an application makes a company a million dollars an hour, or looses in fines a million dollars an hour, don't you want someone that knows more than which button to click? Wouldn't you want them to know how the computer works and not just the fiddled once with the GUI that might fix the problem or make it worse? The whole IT world isn't made up of Windows file and print servers which aren't missed when they are unavailable several days per month.
I think the answer to this is de-regulating Unions. There are a lot of rules to how and when a Union can come in. There needs to be competition in Unions so employees screwed by their Unions can easily dump them for another one.
A company's focus and goals are based around making money. This is sometimes contrary to an employees goal of having a safe place to work where he makes a good living and is respected for his work. Therefore, there needs to be a balancin force. A good Union can be this balancing forces, but it's entirely too hard to get rid of a bad Union due to government regulation.
Re:I don't think it's going to work.
on
Exporting Myself?
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· Score: 1
YOu situation reminds me of that show called real world where they put writers, song singers, models, and rappers in a house and call it real world. where are the plumbers, the mechanics, the service members, the mcdonald workers?
haha!!! They could call it The Real Buttcrack, a story of plumbers, mechanics, and other people who like to show their buttcrack.
Re:I don't think it's going to work.
on
Exporting Myself?
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· Score: 1
Sure, people lost their jobs and whined about it, but eventually they found other jobs and benefited from the improved living conditions made possible by exporting a lot of jobs to cheaper countries.
Yeah, like the better living condition where both parents have to work to make ends meet where they didn't have to before. Before, one parent could stay home and concentrate on the job of raising kids. Now, the lowest bid teacher or day care gets to raise our kids. But your wife isn't working to create a better life for yourself but making 40% what you make and all the money goes to paying the years taxes.
Like the better living conditions where Mexicans are risking their lives to cross the border to come live in the United States so they can work illegally for little pay, long hours, in sweatshop like conditions so they can send money home so their family can eat. They used to have a job back home, but there aren't many any more as all of the good local businesses went belly up, unable to compete with the wages of the American car manufacturer.
Like the better living conditions where a lot of people can't go to the doctor when their sick because both parents working just isn't cutting it and a q-tip costs $50.
Like the better living conditions where as an I.T. professional, you carry a pager and are on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and work at least 50 hours per week to keep your job (not because you're paid overtime). And then when you haven't spent quality time with your kids in forever and aren't even sure you still have a wife because she works opposite shift so you don't have to pay as much for daycare, you cut back the time at work to see your family, and you're laid off and replaced with a foreign worker who makes half what you did. You'd go back to school, but can't afford the daycare, the gas, the car, the insurance, the schoolbooks to go, and even if you could, it's likely your industry will be shipped oversees any way, and you'll be in the same shape but with a school loan you can't afford to pay.
And then there's the living conditions of collecting unemployment while you search and search for another job, not making enough off of unemployment to even make your house payment. You file bankruptcy and maybe even financial stress induced divorce. You finally find a job, but it's makeing 70% what you used to make doing what you did 5 years ago, because all of the good jobs are being done oversees for 6k a year.
Policy matters, and our lifestyle hasn't gotten better over the last 50 years. We've just gotten Pentium 4's, xbox's and the internet, and it seems better. One parent should be able to stay home and raise kids. Running a household is a full time job. We shouldn't have to spend half the year working just to pay taxes. We don't need to spend $260 billion on self defense when the nearest competitors (most of which are allies) are under $30 billion. We don't need to rule the world via foreign bases and foreign government subsidies. We don't have to give our technology and our good jobs. I'm not asking for a gaurunteed job that's easy and fun that pays an exorbant amount. I'm just saying us common man should have a fighting chance at a good job and shouldn't have to eat Macaroni 6 nights a week because so some executive can eat more steak with his savings from foreign labor.
Re:I don't think it's going to work.
on
Exporting Myself?
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· Score: 1
Not everyone has parents to live with. 5k doesn't go very far when you are paying your rent, utilities, insurance, etc. Consider yourself lucky.
Re:I don't think it's going to work.
on
Exporting Myself?
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· Score: 1
But the ceiling is so low, it means certain disaster for anyone in the I.T. industry.
Here are some rules for the state I live in. As you can see, an I.T. worker making 50k a year would make 22k on unemployment. Unemployment benefits are taxed, btw.
I sure as hell wouldn't hire you, that's for sure.
I sure as hell wouldn't work for you. Sure working through a tough time adds character, but for Christ's sake, we shouldn't just have to stand by as corporations make life harder and harder on us. An American cannot compete with an equally skilled Indian because the Indian needs a ton less money in order to make a living. That has little to do with my character or personality. I am entitled to make a living in my home country where my family and history are.
Re:I don't think it's going to work.
on
Exporting Myself?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
The world keeps turning, you can't expect it to stop because your skillset no longer matches the 'hot' jobs.
I wish that were the problem. The jobs didn't go away, they just got moved to people I can't compete with because it costs less to live in their country than it does mine. 1 Million jobs in a decade is significant.
Moving jobs to other countries only benefits the owners of the company. American workers get displaced and thrown into unemployment while companies in the targeted foreign company go belly up because they can't compete with the higher wages of American countries. Also, a small percentage of the foreign population gets their wages promoted to somewhere between a third world nation and the U.S. The large percentage of people who don't get American jobs loose buying power because of the inflation. It throws them into poverty. Neither country benefits; however, the corp owner cuts his bottom line and increases his profit margin. I'm all for competition and education for myself to compete, but the game is severely stacked against the American worker when companies start exporting labor. Look at what happened with NAFTA in Mexico and how bad it was for Mexicans and Americans.
ALso, It's very very difficult for a displaced worker to take an 80% paycut (difference between I.T. wage and unemployment) and then find money to go to school. I don't know about you, but if I took an 80% paycut, school would be the last thing on my mind. I'd be trying to find enough work to keep my house and car and avoid the failure of bankruptcy. (not to mention the familiar and marital problems that come with that kind of financial shock.)
I'm all for competition and everyone getting paid for their sacrifices and risks, but the only one winning with foreign outsourcing and h1b visa's are a small percentage of executives and large corp. owners.
Re:I don't think it's going to work.
on
Exporting Myself?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Plus, you will make 1/3 what you would working the same job in the U.S.
Write your congressman. Organize a protest. Find someone to get active with. Boycott companies that use large amounts of foreign I.T. labor (IBM, G.E. & subsideraries are two). H1b visas are just as bad. Boycott companies that use large amounts of technical H1B visas.
I remember learning in elementary school that the Earth is in roughly a 10k year ice age cycle. 400 years of data against a 10,000 year cycle is fairly insignificant. Human caused global warming is a political topic, not a scientific one.
The group can very quickly become a mob. But a group of representatives only moves the problem. It doesn't solve it. Universal Sufferage came about because activists changed the public opinion. Slavery has ended in almost all parts of the world without a military from another government forcing the issue. Via education and activism, these kinds of moral issues will eventually be addressed and resolved.
Only 1/3 of the population supported revolution the others where either indifferent or loyalists.
You can't know what would have happened without a revolution. Maybe, we'd still have the government and society that we have today, but 1000's of people wouldn't have had to die for it. There are as many bad things that have happened as a result of minority rule as good things. The fact that representatives sometimes make right decisions doesn't mean that they don't make wrong ones too. My argument is that the populace will make as many good decisions and bad decisions as representatives. However, a popular vote would protect us from corruptions and abuse of power (representatives giving themselves exorbant raises and Presidents declaring war without getting declarations of war).
But he is poorly-educated.
Really? We have almost 100% literacy. How educated is educated enough? A lot of people equate educated to thinking like they do. Is that how you measure it?
After 9/11, every person who even looked Arabic would have been put in jail.... Your post was optimistic. Optimism is good. But at some point you have to face reality.
That's pretty close to what happened any way, isn't it? All the people that are being held in the U.S. without trial because they have ties to the middle east. All the people being held in Cuba in violation of the Geneva convention... Representatives don't stop mob mentality. They paint mob mentality with a false coat of legitimacy... We don't need protected from ourselves; however, rising taxes and shrinking services is evidence that we need protected from the ruling class. Executives that pillage companies and make common men poor are proof that we need protection from the ruling class.
"Our government was based on a series of checks and balances. Regular elections are a check against the power of the people."
Under the phenomina of mob mentality, representatives don't provide that much protection. When the mob gets enough motion, nothing can stop it. (Nazi Germany). The only real check against mobs is the will of the common men of other contries.
There would be no true United States, as the Confederacy would still be around.
The United States is not more valuable than the rights and freedom of the men that live within its boarders. When the Soviet states succeeded from the U.S.S.R., the American policy was that is immoral to force federation on a people that doesn't want it. Although slavery was wrong, the succession of the Southern states was not. Forcing the Federal government on the Southern commoner who explicitly voiced there intent to rule themselves can't be justified, even with the slavery issue. If the civil war was only about slavery, then independence would have been given to the states after the slaves were freed. The civil war was about a cultural rift the formed between the North and the South caused by a difference in lifestyle. It's the same rift that is forming between the East Coast, West Coast, and the MidWest; between the Big cities and the small towns; between the Democrats and the Republicans. The Civil War was about one people using the military to omit it's will on another people.
I wonder if you even read my post. My point was that in a true Democracy, the president would not be all that important. All the important decisions would be made by the public.
In this country, we have a Representative Democracy. You probably already know that. No one in the world has a true democracy. There are philosophical reasons and technological reasons for that. Our forefathers thought that be creating a representative democracy, we would avoid mobs controlling the country and the resources of war and economy. The theory that there exists a class of people more capable of ruling than the common man is wrong. They make mistakes because they are men, and there mistakes are not worse or less than those that would be made by a direct election. Extreme examples include the Civil War, The Vietnam War, McCarthy Trials, or the way laws seem to get passed by corporations. I'm guessing that you are a liberal Democrat, so you may mention the Clinton impeachment or the most recent Golf War.
So, we have a government 'of the people' and 'for the people', but 'the people' stil are not allowed to rule themselves. They have to pick people to rule them. Obviously an improvement over a Monarchy or Dictatorship, but not a true Democracy. With the philosophical reasoning proven wrong by counter-examples, there still remains the technological gap. It was impractical to have an election every month in 1890 for every major issue. It is not now if we embrace electronic voting.
Now, in the age of computers, that means of a truer Democracy may finally be at our finger tips. But there are forces that stand to loose a lot of power from a True Democracy and they will turn us comman men against each other in an attempt to maintain status quo. Look at the polirization of the American people today. The Democrats blame it on the Republicans, and the Republicans blame it on the Democrats. It is just a ploy to keep you distracted from the fact that both parties are the same. I think we've seen proof that the wealthy ruling class is less capable of ruling the country. They are highly susceptable to bribes, corruption, and cold heartedness.
Let's go back to the founding fathers again... Who were they? Were they common men? Not really. They were British military officers and British appointed governors for the most part. They were wealthy men, landowners. So when the Revolution occured, it was the ruling class of the America succeeding from the ruling class of Britan. It was the ruling class of America that influenced commen men to fight. When the new government was created, the creators ensured that the rich ruling class of the Americas maintained wealth and political power. Even when the constitution was ratified, it was not done so by a popular vote, but a vote of representatives. In our American history, there is a class prejedice that says the common man cannot rule himself. The Democratic and Republican party is an establishment to ensure control is maintained by a ruling class. Look how difficult it is for a free thinking independent to get elected to office.
Free, uncorrupted electronic voting may lead to true democracy where a popular vote can decide do we deploy troops, do we go to war, do we raise or lower taxes, where do we spend our taxes, should abortion be legal, should there be racial quotas, etc. etc. etc. If electronic voting is allowed to happen, it may lead to a revolution of politics in the United States... It may lead to a paradigm shift where the United States becomes free, and is no longer a choice between two people that you would not trust babysit your dog. The government truly becomes "of the people."
We should not allow un-auditable electronic voting machines. But we should not resist them on the chance that they might be corrupt. Let the powers in place lie about the election results. The common man is not stupid. He will find out, and change will come.
Slashdot Mirror
> So MS got more interested in the search engine business.. Google doesn't like it and wants to fight back..
Don't be mistaken. Microsoft and Google are in all out war, and Google is winning easily. Microsoft is only interested in search because google has used it to create a competive advantage, and they're using it to break it Microsoft's other markets. (deliberately and with force, not out of spite)
MS Desktop Search (next version of OS)->google desktop search
MSN Search->google search
hotmail/exchange->gmail
MSN Maps->maps.google.com
Every product, people prefer the google version, and they're making money off these products even though consumers aren't paying for them. MS can't snub google out. MS has changed the way it does business at it's core to compete with google, and they aren't even slowing google down. Microsoft can't compete with google on any front, no matter how much money they throw at it. Google is expanding it focus to include Operating Systems (they've hired away a lot of Microsoft's top OS talent) and now office suite. If google proves to be as succesful in these new fronts as they have been in past ones, Microsoft will be forced to re-invent itself or perish.
hell, all you need to be considered a computer security expert is just say "everything's insecure."
Security is about risks management and not building fort Knox in every environment that a "Security Expert" touches. For example, vulnerabilities that allow a random person to gain admin privelages to your OS for your customer facing website which brings in $1 million dollars per hour is a high risk and a high consequence to the business. It would justify spending a couple of million dollars securing. On the other hand, if you have a home computer that you use for gaming and if it gets compromised you can't play games, then it probably deserves less resources to secure. (although you should take minimal precautions like firewalls and secure passwords, because they're almost free and reduce your chance of vulerability drastically)
It's all about weighing the chance of compromise + cost of compromise vs. cost of security. A "Security Expert" always uses easy wins that decrease the risk of compromise and are cheap to implement (ie, firewalls and secure passwords).
I've seen economists claim that the game "Capitalism" is a good economy simulator. The game simulates a capitalist economy. As a business owner, you can control every thing from the collection of raw resources, manufacturing of goods, and distribution of those goods through a retail store. You compete with other business owners. You advertise your products to raise the worth of your product. You can own TV, Radio, and Newspapers.
The game is based on the principal that a products demand is a comibination of it's quality, cost, and marketing. By marketing, you can take a cheap product like soap and have people pay $20 for a piece of soap you payed $1 to produce. These seems unrealistic until you realize this is exactly how Bath and Body Works makes money. Or take a nickel pop and selling it for 75 cents. Coca-Cola.
This is fun for a while. But then you raise enough money to buy a newspaper. You can use the newspaper to get advertising at costs. This is cool. But then, you buy the radio and the tv station too. Now, you raise the rates to the maximum. All of a sudden, you have the power to buy media at wholesale (even if your soap company pays the maximum price for the advertisement, the money still goes into your pocket for a net 0 loss). But your competitors, if they choose to advertise, will have to pay exhorbant prices. The net result is your competitors either have to drastically increase their prices or try to win the market on low-quality cheap products.
This game is an econmic simulator, and although not reality, is a good representation of what is the best strategy in a real capitalistic environment. Monopoly of the media equals a monopoly on everything. Therefore, it is paramount for capitalism that the media remain diversified. It's the FCC's job to provide this diversification.
yadda yadda yadda is cool
...
... is the yadda yadda yadda operator
it makes this valid executable code
sub bla {
}
# the
There is also an infinity operator. I forget how to to denote it, but it allows you to do
foreach my $number ( 1..infinity) {
}
of course it's filled in as you need it, unless you have a pentium infinity processor.
I had a family friend whose college buddies/boyfriend where in a tragic car reck and they all died. It was a horrible horrible experience for her...
She started saying that her friends were talking to her and kept telling her that they were coming for her. She also called up her dad (divorced parents) and asked him why he never told her about her other siblings (besides the one she knew about). It was really weird. They diagnosed her with schiz. and she started to get help.
She was doing a lot better. It was about a year later. A man was driving down a country road looking out into the field for deer. He wasn't paying attention and he hit her head on. She died. She died a year later in the same way as her friends who she claimed were coming to get here from the other side. It's a true story, but you got to ask yourself, was it delussion or a super natural awareness?
I highly doubt I can sell a Linux/Samba solution, given the current state of the server environment and political climate here in my company, so that's not one of my options.
You can't sell it because you don't believe in it. It has nothing to do with the server environment and the political climate at your company. The best sells men sell things they strongly believe in. If you really want to be able to sell what you suspect is the best solution, sell yourself first.
s/(.*?\s+)\(.*?\)/$1/g
//gx;
This is trying to match something like adsfdfsdfs()ASDfasd#@$!@afd (adsfad@#$@!)
and replace it with
asdfa asdfa asdf adsfdfsdfs()ASDfasd#@$!@afd
or basically, get rid of things in parenthises that are after at least one white space.
so,
s/\s+\(.*?\)//g would work...
but still a lot of slashes
so try this
my $stuffInParen = qr| \(.*?\) |;
s/\s+ $stuffInParen
or even
my $stuffInParen = qr| \(.*?\) |;
my $whiteSpace = qr| \s+ |;
s/$whiteSpace $stuffInParen//gx;
now, you can look at the code and have a pretty good idea what it's doing. (even without comments). we're switching stuffInParens that follow whitespace with nothing. just because Perl gives you the flexability to write ugly code doesn't mean you should. if you are writing perl code and it looks ugly, you're doing it wrong. you should find another way to do it... with great power comes great responsability.
see http://www.perl.com/lpt/a/2003/06/06/regexps.html for more info.
you could also use some kind of encryption and changing keys to make the exact ports that you had to knock different each time. Sniffing no longer gets you useful information...
but it seems everyone wants 3 - 5 years experience -- not much "entry level" stuff out there.
Maybe if you had some experience, you'd understand the difference between a college graduate and a person with 3-5 years experience.
It's not that simple. When an application makes a company a million dollars an hour, or looses in fines a million dollars an hour, don't you want someone that knows more than which button to click? Wouldn't you want them to know how the computer works and not just the fiddled once with the GUI that might fix the problem or make it worse? The whole IT world isn't made up of Windows file and print servers which aren't missed when they are unavailable several days per month.
How can you use the New York Times as a factual resource? They constantly make stuff up. They might as well be a tabloid.
I think the answer to this is de-regulating Unions. There are a lot of rules to how and when a Union can come in. There needs to be competition in Unions so employees screwed by their Unions can easily dump them for another one.
A company's focus and goals are based around making money. This is sometimes contrary to an employees goal of having a safe place to work where he makes a good living and is respected for his work. Therefore, there needs to be a balancin force. A good Union can be this balancing forces, but it's entirely too hard to get rid of a bad Union due to government regulation.
YOu situation reminds me of that show called real world where they put writers, song singers, models, and rappers in a house and call it real world. where are the plumbers, the mechanics, the service members, the mcdonald workers?
haha!!! They could call it The Real Buttcrack, a story of plumbers, mechanics, and other people who like to show their buttcrack.
Sure, people lost their jobs and whined about it, but eventually they found other jobs and benefited from the improved living conditions made possible by exporting a lot of jobs to cheaper countries.
Yeah, like the better living condition where both parents have to work to make ends meet where they didn't have to before. Before, one parent could stay home and concentrate on the job of raising kids. Now, the lowest bid teacher or day care gets to raise our kids. But your wife isn't working to create a better life for yourself but making 40% what you make and all the money goes to paying the years taxes.
Like the better living conditions where Mexicans are risking their lives to cross the border to come live in the United States so they can work illegally for little pay, long hours, in sweatshop like conditions so they can send money home so their family can eat. They used to have a job back home, but there aren't many any more as all of the good local businesses went belly up, unable to compete with the wages of the American car manufacturer.
Like the better living conditions where a lot of people can't go to the doctor when their sick because both parents working just isn't cutting it and a q-tip costs $50.
Like the better living conditions where as an I.T. professional, you carry a pager and are on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and work at least 50 hours per week to keep your job (not because you're paid overtime). And then when you haven't spent quality time with your kids in forever and aren't even sure you still have a wife because she works opposite shift so you don't have to pay as much for daycare, you cut back the time at work to see your family, and you're laid off and replaced with a foreign worker who makes half what you did. You'd go back to school, but can't afford the daycare, the gas, the car, the insurance, the schoolbooks to go, and even if you could, it's likely your industry will be shipped oversees any way, and you'll be in the same shape but with a school loan you can't afford to pay.
And then there's the living conditions of collecting unemployment while you search and search for another job, not making enough off of unemployment to even make your house payment. You file bankruptcy and maybe even financial stress induced divorce. You finally find a job, but it's makeing 70% what you used to make doing what you did 5 years ago, because all of the good jobs are being done oversees for 6k a year.
Policy matters, and our lifestyle hasn't gotten better over the last 50 years. We've just gotten Pentium 4's, xbox's and the internet, and it seems better. One parent should be able to stay home and raise kids. Running a household is a full time job. We shouldn't have to spend half the year working just to pay taxes. We don't need to spend $260 billion on self defense when the nearest competitors (most of which are allies) are under $30 billion. We don't need to rule the world via foreign bases and foreign government subsidies. We don't have to give our technology and our good jobs. I'm not asking for a gaurunteed job that's easy and fun that pays an exorbant amount. I'm just saying us common man should have a fighting chance at a good job and shouldn't have to eat Macaroni 6 nights a week because so some executive can eat more steak with his savings from foreign labor.
Not everyone has parents to live with. 5k doesn't go very far when you are paying your rent, utilities, insurance, etc. Consider yourself lucky.
But the ceiling is so low, it means certain disaster for anyone in the I.T. industry.
Here are some rules for the state I live in. As you can see, an I.T. worker making 50k a year would make 22k on unemployment. Unemployment benefits are taxed, btw.
Ahmen!!!
I sure as hell wouldn't hire you, that's for sure.
I sure as hell wouldn't work for you. Sure working through a tough time adds character, but for Christ's sake, we shouldn't just have to stand by as corporations make life harder and harder on us. An American cannot compete with an equally skilled Indian because the Indian needs a ton less money in order to make a living. That has little to do with my character or personality. I am entitled to make a living in my home country where my family and history are.
The world keeps turning, you can't expect it to stop because your skillset no longer matches the 'hot' jobs.
I wish that were the problem. The jobs didn't go away, they just got moved to people I can't compete with because it costs less to live in their country than it does mine. 1 Million jobs in a decade is significant.
Moving jobs to other countries only benefits the owners of the company. American workers get displaced and thrown into unemployment while companies in the targeted foreign company go belly up because they can't compete with the higher wages of American countries. Also, a small percentage of the foreign population gets their wages promoted to somewhere between a third world nation and the U.S. The large percentage of people who don't get American jobs loose buying power because of the inflation. It throws them into poverty. Neither country benefits; however, the corp owner cuts his bottom line and increases his profit margin. I'm all for competition and education for myself to compete, but the game is severely stacked against the American worker when companies start exporting labor. Look at what happened with NAFTA in Mexico and how bad it was for Mexicans and Americans.
ALso, It's very very difficult for a displaced worker to take an 80% paycut (difference between I.T. wage and unemployment) and then find money to go to school. I don't know about you, but if I took an 80% paycut, school would be the last thing on my mind. I'd be trying to find enough work to keep my house and car and avoid the failure of bankruptcy. (not to mention the familiar and marital problems that come with that kind of financial shock.)
I'm all for competition and everyone getting paid for their sacrifices and risks, but the only one winning with foreign outsourcing and h1b visa's are a small percentage of executives and large corp. owners.
Plus, you will make 1/3 what you would working the same job in the U.S.
Write your congressman. Organize a protest. Find someone to get active with. Boycott companies that use large amounts of foreign I.T. labor (IBM, G.E. & subsideraries are two). H1b visas are just as bad. Boycott companies that use large amounts of technical H1B visas.
Check out http://www.h1b.info/
I remember learning in elementary school that the Earth is in roughly a 10k year ice age cycle. 400 years of data against a 10,000 year cycle is fairly insignificant. Human caused global warming is a political topic, not a scientific one.
The group can very quickly become a mob. But a group of representatives only moves the problem. It doesn't solve it. Universal Sufferage came about because activists changed the public opinion. Slavery has ended in almost all parts of the world without a military from another government forcing the issue. Via education and activism, these kinds of moral issues will eventually be addressed and resolved.
Only 1/3 of the population supported revolution the others where either indifferent or loyalists. You can't know what would have happened without a revolution. Maybe, we'd still have the government and society that we have today, but 1000's of people wouldn't have had to die for it. There are as many bad things that have happened as a result of minority rule as good things. The fact that representatives sometimes make right decisions doesn't mean that they don't make wrong ones too. My argument is that the populace will make as many good decisions and bad decisions as representatives. However, a popular vote would protect us from corruptions and abuse of power (representatives giving themselves exorbant raises and Presidents declaring war without getting declarations of war).
But he is poorly-educated.
Really? We have almost 100% literacy. How educated is educated enough? A lot of people equate educated to thinking like they do. Is that how you measure it?
After 9/11, every person who even looked Arabic would have been put in jail.... Your post was optimistic. Optimism is good. But at some point you have to face reality.
That's pretty close to what happened any way, isn't it? All the people that are being held in the U.S. without trial because they have ties to the middle east. All the people being held in Cuba in violation of the Geneva convention... Representatives don't stop mob mentality. They paint mob mentality with a false coat of legitimacy... We don't need protected from ourselves; however, rising taxes and shrinking services is evidence that we need protected from the ruling class. Executives that pillage companies and make common men poor are proof that we need protection from the ruling class.
"Our government was based on a series of checks and balances. Regular elections are a check against the power of the people."
Under the phenomina of mob mentality, representatives don't provide that much protection. When the mob gets enough motion, nothing can stop it. (Nazi Germany). The only real check against mobs is the will of the common men of other contries.
There would be no true United States, as the Confederacy would still be around.
The United States is not more valuable than the rights and freedom of the men that live within its boarders. When the Soviet states succeeded from the U.S.S.R., the American policy was that is immoral to force federation on a people that doesn't want it. Although slavery was wrong, the succession of the Southern states was not. Forcing the Federal government on the Southern commoner who explicitly voiced there intent to rule themselves can't be justified, even with the slavery issue. If the civil war was only about slavery, then independence would have been given to the states after the slaves were freed. The civil war was about a cultural rift the formed between the North and the South caused by a difference in lifestyle. It's the same rift that is forming between the East Coast, West Coast, and the MidWest; between the Big cities and the small towns; between the Democrats and the Republicans. The Civil War was about one people using the military to omit it's will on another people.
I wonder if you even read my post. My point was that in a true Democracy, the president would not be all that important. All the important decisions would be made by the public.
In this country, we have a Representative Democracy. You probably already know that. No one in the world has a true democracy. There are philosophical reasons and technological reasons for that. Our forefathers thought that be creating a representative democracy, we would avoid mobs controlling the country and the resources of war and economy. The theory that there exists a class of people more capable of ruling than the common man is wrong. They make mistakes because they are men, and there mistakes are not worse or less than those that would be made by a direct election. Extreme examples include the Civil War, The Vietnam War, McCarthy Trials, or the way laws seem to get passed by corporations. I'm guessing that you are a liberal Democrat, so you may mention the Clinton impeachment or the most recent Golf War.
So, we have a government 'of the people' and 'for the people', but 'the people' stil are not allowed to rule themselves. They have to pick people to rule them. Obviously an improvement over a Monarchy or Dictatorship, but not a true Democracy. With the philosophical reasoning proven wrong by counter-examples, there still remains the technological gap. It was impractical to have an election every month in 1890 for every major issue. It is not now if we embrace electronic voting.
Now, in the age of computers, that means of a truer Democracy may finally be at our finger tips. But there are forces that stand to loose a lot of power from a True Democracy and they will turn us comman men against each other in an attempt to maintain status quo. Look at the polirization of the American people today. The Democrats blame it on the Republicans, and the Republicans blame it on the Democrats. It is just a ploy to keep you distracted from the fact that both parties are the same. I think we've seen proof that the wealthy ruling class is less capable of ruling the country. They are highly susceptable to bribes, corruption, and cold heartedness.
Let's go back to the founding fathers again... Who were they? Were they common men? Not really. They were British military officers and British appointed governors for the most part. They were wealthy men, landowners. So when the Revolution occured, it was the ruling class of the America succeeding from the ruling class of Britan. It was the ruling class of America that influenced commen men to fight. When the new government was created, the creators ensured that the rich ruling class of the Americas maintained wealth and political power. Even when the constitution was ratified, it was not done so by a popular vote, but a vote of representatives. In our American history, there is a class prejedice that says the common man cannot rule himself. The Democratic and Republican party is an establishment to ensure control is maintained by a ruling class. Look how difficult it is for a free thinking independent to get elected to office.
Free, uncorrupted electronic voting may lead to true democracy where a popular vote can decide do we deploy troops, do we go to war, do we raise or lower taxes, where do we spend our taxes, should abortion be legal, should there be racial quotas, etc. etc. etc. If electronic voting is allowed to happen, it may lead to a revolution of politics in the United States... It may lead to a paradigm shift where the United States becomes free, and is no longer a choice between two people that you would not trust babysit your dog. The government truly becomes "of the people."
We should not allow un-auditable electronic voting machines. But we should not resist them on the chance that they might be corrupt. Let the powers in place lie about the election results. The common man is not stupid. He will find out, and change will come.