That's always a good question and we should never stop demanding an answer to it. But I feel compelled to point out that a minimum-supply civilization -- where you're fed enough calories to make it through the day, you're housed and clothed so that you don't get wet when it rains and you're not naked in your bland coveralls, and finally you're warm enough (60degF) to not die in the winter -- will still have millions of people yearning to have a lot more than that. Instead of the bland 1200 calories of dole food, you're going to naturally want some chocolate, beer, Doritos {tm}, and of course the occasional, juicy prime steak. Keeping the rain off your head is what a shack will do; but it's hard to hold a dinner party in one. Those coveralls aren't very comfortable, so a nice pair of slacks and a Gap shirt are in order. And finally, spending the winter at 60 degrees gets old fast, and one tends to start running spot heat... which costs money, for the heater and the electricity.
We can provide a minimum-supply civilization. And people will still work to afford many things over and above the minimal needs. And the more they work, the more over-and-above they will rise in general... which is the "personal choices" part of the Republican equation that is actually possible to achieve.
Remember, a patent is a government granted monopoly for a time period to allow the patent holder to both recoup their costs and to make a profit out of inventing the idea that has been patented.
SIGH. More Hypercapitalist revisionist psychobabble. Go and polish your GOP membership badge.
Patents were actually put into the US Constitution because they allowed an inventor to take advantage of a monopoly position (and note, this is FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT than saying "allows recovery of costs and the pursuit of profit"), in exchange for DISCLOSING HIS MANUFACTURING PROCESS.
The inventor is given a protected zone, in which HE (not the GOVERNMENT) can try to wrangle a profit from the invention. In fair exchange, the public is shown his invention.
The point of the US patent system was to STOP inventors from hoarding "trade secrets" and thus denying overall social benefit (since such secrets can be lost). Saying it's to promote the inventor's wealth is a modern fantasy constructed by a greed of equally fantastic proportions.
P.S. You might well note that most software patents fail on these grounds since there's no disclosure that hasn't happened already. These patents are simply taking advantage of the general citizenship malaise in America, and are simply staking a claim upon what's already in the Public Domain -- most of the software procedures are prior art, squared!
Probably more people than the ones who will point out that a state under outrageous sanctions by the United States is running a United States OS.
Cuba is making the right decision. I'm sure Venezuela will follow if they haven't already. Those who don't want to be subject to American Hegemony should not participate in it. (Venez. has no problem selling us its oil, however. {shrug})
Those are good examples. Like I've said before, DRM and other copy-protection schemes are good choices for those who can choose them. We should be not at all concerned when, say, a pre-released piece of consumer media is subject to DRM.
Really? Who would have done the work after the firing? That's the point of becoming the irreplacable man.
The concept of the irreplacable man has long been subscribed to in the executive class. They generally express such things by large compensation packages. So, by your own sentiment, many of these execs should have been fired long ago. Right?
There are a great many firings which should have been done in America. We continue to suffer the twin evil regimes of viciousness and mediocrity for our failure to keep this under control.
Yes, that's the price to be paid for drawing the militant line... after the shots have been fired towards Reggie, you may note. Considering the price I've paid for being a nice guy all this time, I'm willing to take the risks of being a Reggie. I've been fired on, and I'm tired of that. It's time to assert my power.
I freely admit that I want clear Socialism applied to Capitalism. Or else. So I can accept the "Communist" label. The Communism I want is pretty much the Socialized Capitalism that existed to a great degree in America up to about 1980.
Your point about the airline pensions doesn't apply as you think it might. Those pensions are falling to the Federal government to pick up (to some degree). This just illustrates the modern American business philosophy that the free market is for the poor, but that the wealthy and corporate must constantly be bailed out by public funds. The wealthy generally want rock-solid Socialism... for themselves and their businesses, not for the working class. In the typical double-standard of the age, they believe that the workers must "earn their way"... but businesses must operate on welfare (bailouts, tax credits, tax abatements, grants, no-bid contracts... shit, the list is fuckin' endless!).
That's a good point, and I was too succint in my ranting to mention that Reggie has a PFY helping him out. But not nowadays. Now we DOWNSIZE. Heck, that's the silver lining in Reggie's dark cloud, in that after a few instances of vacation and sickness, the management sees the light and either (1) allows him the time to document his job (which is not being done in the current age), or (2) stop working him to death by getting him the assistant he probably requires by the very nature of his job function.
What's so disgusting today is that this truth can be enunciated in about 30 seconds, but management doesn't want to hear about it. They are in the lah-tee-dah world of stock options, and think that cost-cutting is the ultimate expression of their positions. Too bad for all of us that their fatal philosophies lead to catastrophe.
Ah, for those halcyon days where geeks didn't horde information to protect their job security, where they documented everything they did, and money grew on trees and all you had to do was train the flying pigs to retrieve it.
Your sarcasm simply illustrates what a terrible experience that you had yourself. As for myself, working in Massachusetts in the 1990s, documentation was the rule, not the fucking exception. Today, working IT in Toledo OH, there's no time for documentation. I'm currently watching managers run around in a panic simply because THEY FAILED to document ANYTHING about the systems they install (and apparently change monthly, which only adds to the problem -- you know, the "growth company" disease). I'm watching people working weekends as a standard thing just to put out all the fires that they start in the prior week... and no one can help them fix anything, since (apparently) documentation is NEVER a line item on the timesheet activities.
You see, fuckwit, documentation doesn't make money. Every MBA knows that one. The only thing which makes money is SELLING, SELLING, SELLING... which explains why customer support in general has completely collapsed across America. I say "completely collapsed" to point out that people EXPECT poor support nowadays. It's become acculturated.
So you really have to go off somewhere and stick your sarcasm right in your stupid ass. Folks like you pretend that IT didn't have a better age, when CEOs were only paid 50 to 100 times the average worker (instead of the 400+ times they are now). The better age existed when people weren't slackjawed with hypergreed. Documentation got done; training was the rule; managers performed due diligence; and in general there was a whole set of career-based behaviors... instead of the current age's fatal philosophy of "if it doesn't make the most money in the least time then STOP DOING IT".
Now go off and masturbate over your 401K. I really can't stand the sight of fools like you. {dismissive gesture}
It's very likely that most if not all of your 300 attempts to find employment since 1998 have ended in failure because of your attitude, something which appears to be pretty obvious if one reads your posting.
Wow. THERE is the stereotypical Neo-Con response... which is easily decimated by quietly pointing out that a faxed, mailed or emailed resume conveys NO ATTITUDE WHATSOEVER. Attitude is conveyed by tone of voice and overall somatic semantics of personal appearance, which is NOT DETECTABLE AT ALL when you fax, email or mail text. (And it's not like I put "looking for work so dammit give me a fucking job" on my resume, so don't even try THAT line of bullshit with me. My resume is as tone neutral as it should be, and as tone neutral as any example you've seen or have produced... shitpiece!)
If ANYTHING, a terrible attitude is instead conveyed BY THE EMPLOYER when they post ads like this fictitious but entirely representative example:
"IT Technician needed for field work in area on customer sites. Send resume to PO Box 123 Toledo OH 43604"
WOW, huh? What a DESCRIPTIVE AD, right? I can really give them a good cover letter, by knowing the COMPANY and the INDUSTRY that is advertising for the work, right? It looks like the employer is REALLY trying to qualify their prospective employees, right?
NO. You are a fuckhead, just like 99% of the employers around Toledo (where I'm currently cursed to live). You are not living in denial, since you are just another hypercapitalist bitch-boi who will crow about stockholder rights all the way to the bridge you will be living under after your "poor-man's bankruptcy" (i.e. you stop paying your bills because you just don't have the fucking money).
My revenge upon shitheels like you is coming. Your degrees and certifications are being devalued as rapidly as my experience was. Don't look behind you in the bread-line you'll be shambling in, within 20 years... it may be ME behind you, with a shiv, lookin' for some righteous payback from a crowing but vicious buffoon. {spit}
Well, it certainly isn't helping that I live in Toledo OH. But no, I don't spend my time reflecting on 20 years of computer work as being that "I suck". If I truly "sucked", then I wouldn't have been employed by HP, PictureTel, DEC, and others for years while I lived in Massachusetts in the 1990s.
Q.E.D.... you fucking hypercapitalist advocate. But permit me to clue you in. Let me tell you a story. It's a real story, unfortunately. Toledo hosts Sun Oil as an employer, and recently they advertised for 3 positions (machinist, boilermaker, and I think an electrician). They advertised this online and specifically stated that only personal recommendations from existing employees will be considered.
About 24 hours later, THREE THOUSAND online applications were made for these THREE JOBS.
So, sending out 300 applications by one means or another since 1998 is not hard to imagine around here.
Toledo is the low point of America. Disguised as an American city, it is really a Third World country, populated with the American Taliban known as Christians {spit}. There's a reason this is called the "flyover".
BUT... the rest of America is seeing a more diffuse problem of this kind of thing. Sending out hundreds of resumes without a qualitative response is NOT uncommon. And that was much of my point.
There's no social reason whatsoever to starve out the professional classes. The only reason is GREED. And we USED to jail people who were this actively greedy. How America has changed.
There no disability cheques. There is no safety net of any kind left to pay for anything.
Bzzt! Wrong. In America, about 4 million men found their way of the unemployment stats permanently by obtaining disability status during the 1990s (and about half of the 1980s?). That hid quite a bit of unemployment, and they're still hidden as far as I know. Most of these disabilities are for 2 things: back injuries and mental illness. I personally know a man who is now disabled under option #2. I only recently started to make more money than his $1700/mo disability check.
Now, it may well be true that it is harder to get this disability status, and I can only imagine that 4 more years of Hyper-Republican policies will squash what programs remain for it. But it's more than possible; heck, it happens every day in America.
"NO! Most of them work at fast food now and would take the job I'm interviewing for with you! For less money, too! Oh god, I'll never tell you who they are!"
If I had to spend time documenting all the exceptions that exist in my company today, I'd never get anything done. This documentation thing is a case of overblown expectations, particularly since corporations are counting on replacing ANY worker when they start acquiring too much seniority (hence obtaining unearned stuff like longer vacations, sick time, profit sharing -- fuck, all the things that should be reserved for EXECUTIVES!). Documentation is just their way of getting rid of you as they are planning to do in each and every corporate boardroom across America today.
The "geek" is getting smarter about the utterly vicious American management class all the time, hence he's catching on that documentation undermines his job security. If you want the job done, don't dare fire that guy Reggie in the back room... since he's the guy keeping the servers running. It's all in his head. Remove him, and you remove the pillars underneath your datacomm.
And I've gotta say: FINE BY ME. Americans have trained their foreign replacements and have packed up their equipment for shipment overseas TO MANY FUCKING TIMES. It's long since time to assert the Power of the Worker.
In the final analysis, the only real thing an I.T. professional possesses is their reputation. Trash that, and you'll find it difficult to secure further employment.
No, in the final analysis, your sloganeering is just propaganda. The only thing your American employer wants you -- the IT "monkey" (yes, even a "computer janitor" as I've been treated to recently) -- for is nothing. YOU are too expensive with your endless needs for money to make your car payment, house payment, insurance premiums, and entertainment expenses like going to a 9 dollar movie, etc. YOU are too expensive compared to a pseudo-slavery outsourcer, neo-slavery H-1B, and of course the actual slavery to be found in overseas labor.
Hence, a POSITIVE reputation is worth NOTHING. I have over 300 failed attempts to find employment since 1998 that PROVE that.
Now, a NEGATIVE reputation is worth a SLIGHTLY NEGATIVE amount. Compared to the damage you can do to a shitfuck employer who truly deserves it -- and their numbers are becoming legion -- the price you pay may well be worth it.
But you're hardly "unemployable" after that. Employers just don't care about the workforce anymore. They don't even care enough to identify the real troublemakers. Troublemakers and productive First World workers are ALL THE SAME to the class of hyper-capitalistic uber-greedbags who ONLY decide things on the basis of what makes the bottom line larger in the least amount of time.
A customer just today told me offhand her son is in college and is looking to get into IT. I laughed at that and advised her son to STRONGLY consider something else. So she said that her son was also interested in "engineering"... and I nearly fell off my chair. All working professionals in America (except the non-working or parasitical executive and management classes) are under a class warfare threat of wholesale disenfranchisement. I told her that whatever engineering her son does will undoubtedly be outsourced, nearshored, offshored, and in general removed from the control of her son, making him impoverished... with big college debts to pay off, too!
THIS IS THE REALITY. Reputation is now the new HR toilet paper. Resumes are the old HR toilet paper, and are now worthless, since HR departments are in almost total control of hiring and almost always choose on the basis of stupid fucking degrees and certifications... hence, experience is worth almost exactly FUCK ZERO. Now, if you can devalue experience to ZERO, what the fuck do you really think "reputation" is actually worth, hmm?
Yes, more innovation from Microsoft. {snicker} What's depressing is the thought of all those IE users who have never seen Mozilla, even Opera... and WILL think that good ol' Microsoft has come out with Yet Another Great Idea{tm}. And how many Microsoft developers will think the same thing by 2010?
The gems are all things that never gets air-time, so it's harder to discover.
Despite my scorn for the monied music industry, this is exactly the service that they DO offer -- presentation.
The new stuff arrives intentionaly broken and very expensive. The indi stuff takes forever to find and is also expensive.
Perhaps this suggests that music is innately valuable. We're going to be hit by a money expense (for pipelined stuff) or time expense (for indie stuff).
Too bad they extended the copyrights.
Too bad for them we outnumber them. The US Congress can ignore the US Constitution only so long. All this music piracy is the public's reaction to the undercurrent of extreme corporate ownership.
The problem with copyright is works that are not sold are simply locked in a vault, maybe never to be seen.
Why is that a problem? Isn't a original work up to the creator to decide what to do with it?
Are you implying copyright should be like patents, in that a formally copyrighted work must be revealed? Or are you implying that a publically-chartered corporation like Disney owes the public exposure of its works?
Sell me music in a format all my hardware and software can play. Is that too much to ask?
Yes, it is too much to ask, since that format is too loose and leads to some loss of copyright.
I love the idea of a DRM system... as long as we consumers can choose non-DRM systems entirely. Those what want their material covered by DRM can release it under DRM format for DRM systems, and anyone else wishing to try their luck (and there are a lot of those guys) can release their material under something else... possibly under your "all-hardware" format.
The market will then choose, variously.
(But this is where the staunch capitalists in the music industry turn tail and show us their true colors of dyed-in-the-wool socialists. The music industry wants to make all product pipelines DRM enabled.)
Yes, your sarcasm is warranted. I've been trying to fight this trend. When I go to garage sales, I pay more than the sticker price, since their prices are too cheap. I've been ebaying recently, and I've frowned on the concept of getting a $30 D&D book for 5 bucks... so I start my bidding higher. I've also retained the services of a mechanic who needs work, and I hire him for 99% of my car work, even though I could have done at least 50%.
And so it goes. It's a somewhat tough course since I'm constantly teetering on the precipice of long-term unemployment, but all of my life simply had to change if I was going to follow truly progressive principles to the logical ends. I hope the original poster understands that, as your sarcasm hinted at.
Unfortunately, in election after election, these politicians watch the body politic support the most inane ideas and candidates... hence, you'd have to be a rocket scientist to explain that despite the ENORMOUS short term advantages of such a fucked-up system, that there will be some sort of downside, somewhat, maybe, someday, I'll have to get back to ya on the exact prediction.
We've let being sheep-like become society's highest aspiration. This is a looooong way from being over. This could go on for many more decades. Depressing, ain't it?
I got hit head-on on a one-way street by an illegal alien driving a stolen van with no license and no insurance in Houston, Texas. Fortunately, a cop was driving right behind me. Unfortunately, the cop let her go because she is illegal.
That was Houston's engraved invitation for you to leave Houston. I can see that you honored their invitation. That was wise.
(There is a similar situation going on here in Toledo OH. There are simply no fucking jobs. Hence, the sparse wants ads each Sunday is Toledo's "engraved invitation" for me to get the fuck out. I'm planning on honoring that invitation too.)
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That's always a good question and we should never stop demanding an answer to it. But I feel compelled to point out that a minimum-supply civilization -- where you're fed enough calories to make it through the day, you're housed and clothed so that you don't get wet when it rains and you're not naked in your bland coveralls, and finally you're warm enough (60degF) to not die in the winter -- will still have millions of people yearning to have a lot more than that. Instead of the bland 1200 calories of dole food, you're going to naturally want some chocolate, beer, Doritos {tm}, and of course the occasional, juicy prime steak. Keeping the rain off your head is what a shack will do; but it's hard to hold a dinner party in one. Those coveralls aren't very comfortable, so a nice pair of slacks and a Gap shirt are in order. And finally, spending the winter at 60 degrees gets old fast, and one tends to start running spot heat ... which costs money, for the heater and the electricity.
... which is the "personal choices" part of the Republican equation that is actually possible to achieve.
We can provide a minimum-supply civilization. And people will still work to afford many things over and above the minimal needs. And the more they work, the more over-and-above they will rise in general
Remember, a patent is a government granted monopoly for a time period to allow the patent holder to both recoup their costs and to make a profit out of inventing the idea that has been patented.
SIGH. More Hypercapitalist revisionist psychobabble. Go and polish your GOP membership badge.
Patents were actually put into the US Constitution because they allowed an inventor to take advantage of a monopoly position (and note, this is FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT than saying "allows recovery of costs and the pursuit of profit"), in exchange for DISCLOSING HIS MANUFACTURING PROCESS.
The inventor is given a protected zone, in which HE (not the GOVERNMENT) can try to wrangle a profit from the invention. In fair exchange, the public is shown his invention.
The point of the US patent system was to STOP inventors from hoarding "trade secrets" and thus denying overall social benefit (since such secrets can be lost). Saying it's to promote the inventor's wealth is a modern fantasy constructed by a greed of equally fantastic proportions.
P.S. You might well note that most software patents fail on these grounds since there's no disclosure that hasn't happened already. These patents are simply taking advantage of the general citizenship malaise in America, and are simply staking a claim upon what's already in the Public Domain -- most of the software procedures are prior art, squared!
Probably more people than the ones who will point out that a state under outrageous sanctions by the United States is running a United States OS.
Cuba is making the right decision. I'm sure Venezuela will follow if they haven't already. Those who don't want to be subject to American Hegemony should not participate in it. (Venez. has no problem selling us its oil, however. {shrug})
Those are good examples. Like I've said before, DRM and other copy-protection schemes are good choices for those who can choose them. We should be not at all concerned when, say, a pre-released piece of consumer media is subject to DRM.
Really? Who would have done the work after the firing? That's the point of becoming the irreplacable man.
The concept of the irreplacable man has long been subscribed to in the executive class. They generally express such things by large compensation packages. So, by your own sentiment, many of these execs should have been fired long ago. Right?
There are a great many firings which should have been done in America. We continue to suffer the twin evil regimes of viciousness and mediocrity for our failure to keep this under control.
Yes, that's the price to be paid for drawing the militant line ... after the shots have been fired towards Reggie, you may note. Considering the price I've paid for being a nice guy all this time, I'm willing to take the risks of being a Reggie. I've been fired on, and I'm tired of that. It's time to assert my power.
I freely admit that I want clear Socialism applied to Capitalism. Or else. So I can accept the "Communist" label. The Communism I want is pretty much the Socialized Capitalism that existed to a great degree in America up to about 1980.
... for themselves and their businesses, not for the working class. In the typical double-standard of the age, they believe that the workers must "earn their way" ... but businesses must operate on welfare (bailouts, tax credits, tax abatements, grants, no-bid contracts ... shit, the list is fuckin' endless!).
Your point about the airline pensions doesn't apply as you think it might. Those pensions are falling to the Federal government to pick up (to some degree). This just illustrates the modern American business philosophy that the free market is for the poor, but that the wealthy and corporate must constantly be bailed out by public funds. The wealthy generally want rock-solid Socialism
That's a good point, and I was too succint in my ranting to mention that Reggie has a PFY helping him out. But not nowadays. Now we DOWNSIZE. Heck, that's the silver lining in Reggie's dark cloud, in that after a few instances of vacation and sickness, the management sees the light and either (1) allows him the time to document his job (which is not being done in the current age), or (2) stop working him to death by getting him the assistant he probably requires by the very nature of his job function.
What's so disgusting today is that this truth can be enunciated in about 30 seconds, but management doesn't want to hear about it. They are in the lah-tee-dah world of stock options, and think that cost-cutting is the ultimate expression of their positions. Too bad for all of us that their fatal philosophies lead to catastrophe.
Ah, for those halcyon days where geeks didn't horde information to protect their job security, where they documented everything they did, and money grew on trees and all you had to do was train the flying pigs to retrieve it.
... and no one can help them fix anything, since (apparently) documentation is NEVER a line item on the timesheet activities.
... which explains why customer support in general has completely collapsed across America. I say "completely collapsed" to point out that people EXPECT poor support nowadays. It's become acculturated.
... instead of the current age's fatal philosophy of "if it doesn't make the most money in the least time then STOP DOING IT".
Your sarcasm simply illustrates what a terrible experience that you had yourself. As for myself, working in Massachusetts in the 1990s, documentation was the rule, not the fucking exception. Today, working IT in Toledo OH, there's no time for documentation. I'm currently watching managers run around in a panic simply because THEY FAILED to document ANYTHING about the systems they install (and apparently change monthly, which only adds to the problem -- you know, the "growth company" disease). I'm watching people working weekends as a standard thing just to put out all the fires that they start in the prior week
You see, fuckwit, documentation doesn't make money. Every MBA knows that one. The only thing which makes money is SELLING, SELLING, SELLING
So you really have to go off somewhere and stick your sarcasm right in your stupid ass. Folks like you pretend that IT didn't have a better age, when CEOs were only paid 50 to 100 times the average worker (instead of the 400+ times they are now). The better age existed when people weren't slackjawed with hypergreed. Documentation got done; training was the rule; managers performed due diligence; and in general there was a whole set of career-based behaviors
Now go off and masturbate over your 401K. I really can't stand the sight of fools like you. {dismissive gesture}
Bob? No. My name is Robert Paulsen. ..............
My Name is Robert Paulsen.
My name Is Robert Paulsen.
My name is
It's very likely that most if not all of your 300 attempts to find employment since 1998 have ended in failure because of your attitude, something which appears to be pretty obvious if one reads your posting.
... which is easily decimated by quietly pointing out that a faxed, mailed or emailed resume conveys NO ATTITUDE WHATSOEVER. Attitude is conveyed by tone of voice and overall somatic semantics of personal appearance, which is NOT DETECTABLE AT ALL when you fax, email or mail text. (And it's not like I put "looking for work so dammit give me a fucking job" on my resume, so don't even try THAT line of bullshit with me. My resume is as tone neutral as it should be, and as tone neutral as any example you've seen or have produced ... shitpiece!)
... it may be ME behind you, with a shiv, lookin' for some righteous payback from a crowing but vicious buffoon. {spit}
Wow. THERE is the stereotypical Neo-Con response
If ANYTHING, a terrible attitude is instead conveyed BY THE EMPLOYER when they post ads like this fictitious but entirely representative example:
"IT Technician needed for field work in area on customer sites. Send resume to PO Box 123 Toledo OH 43604"
WOW, huh? What a DESCRIPTIVE AD, right? I can really give them a good cover letter, by knowing the COMPANY and the INDUSTRY that is advertising for the work, right? It looks like the employer is REALLY trying to qualify their prospective employees, right?
NO. You are a fuckhead, just like 99% of the employers around Toledo (where I'm currently cursed to live). You are not living in denial, since you are just another hypercapitalist bitch-boi who will crow about stockholder rights all the way to the bridge you will be living under after your "poor-man's bankruptcy" (i.e. you stop paying your bills because you just don't have the fucking money).
My revenge upon shitheels like you is coming. Your degrees and certifications are being devalued as rapidly as my experience was. Don't look behind you in the bread-line you'll be shambling in, within 20 years
Well, it certainly isn't helping that I live in Toledo OH. But no, I don't spend my time reflecting on 20 years of computer work as being that "I suck". If I truly "sucked", then I wouldn't have been employed by HP, PictureTel, DEC, and others for years while I lived in Massachusetts in the 1990s.
... you fucking hypercapitalist advocate. But permit me to clue you in. Let me tell you a story. It's a real story, unfortunately. Toledo hosts Sun Oil as an employer, and recently they advertised for 3 positions (machinist, boilermaker, and I think an electrician). They advertised this online and specifically stated that only personal recommendations from existing employees will be considered.
... the rest of America is seeing a more diffuse problem of this kind of thing. Sending out hundreds of resumes without a qualitative response is NOT uncommon. And that was much of my point.
Q.E.D.
About 24 hours later, THREE THOUSAND online applications were made for these THREE JOBS.
So, sending out 300 applications by one means or another since 1998 is not hard to imagine around here.
Toledo is the low point of America. Disguised as an American city, it is really a Third World country, populated with the American Taliban known as Christians {spit}. There's a reason this is called the "flyover".
BUT
There's no social reason whatsoever to starve out the professional classes. The only reason is GREED. And we USED to jail people who were this actively greedy. How America has changed.
There no disability cheques. There is no safety net of any kind left to pay for anything.
Bzzt! Wrong. In America, about 4 million men found their way of the unemployment stats permanently by obtaining disability status during the 1990s (and about half of the 1980s?). That hid quite a bit of unemployment, and they're still hidden as far as I know. Most of these disabilities are for 2 things: back injuries and mental illness. I personally know a man who is now disabled under option #2. I only recently started to make more money than his $1700/mo disability check.
Now, it may well be true that it is harder to get this disability status, and I can only imagine that 4 more years of Hyper-Republican policies will squash what programs remain for it. But it's more than possible; heck, it happens every day in America.
What you SHOULD say is:
"NO! Most of them work at fast food now and would take the job I'm interviewing for with you! For less money, too! Oh god, I'll never tell you who they are!"
If I had to spend time documenting all the exceptions that exist in my company today, I'd never get anything done. This documentation thing is a case of overblown expectations, particularly since corporations are counting on replacing ANY worker when they start acquiring too much seniority (hence obtaining unearned stuff like longer vacations, sick time, profit sharing -- fuck, all the things that should be reserved for EXECUTIVES!). Documentation is just their way of getting rid of you as they are planning to do in each and every corporate boardroom across America today.
The "geek" is getting smarter about the utterly vicious American management class all the time, hence he's catching on that documentation undermines his job security. If you want the job done, don't dare fire that guy Reggie in the back room ... since he's the guy keeping the servers running. It's all in his head. Remove him, and you remove the pillars underneath your datacomm.
And I've gotta say: FINE BY ME. Americans have trained their foreign replacements and have packed up their equipment for shipment overseas TO MANY FUCKING TIMES. It's long since time to assert the Power of the Worker.
In the final analysis, the only real thing an I.T. professional possesses is their reputation. Trash that, and you'll find it difficult to secure further employment.
... and I nearly fell off my chair. All working professionals in America (except the non-working or parasitical executive and management classes) are under a class warfare threat of wholesale disenfranchisement. I told her that whatever engineering her son does will undoubtedly be outsourced, nearshored, offshored, and in general removed from the control of her son, making him impoverished ... with big college debts to pay off, too!
... hence, experience is worth almost exactly FUCK ZERO. Now, if you can devalue experience to ZERO, what the fuck do you really think "reputation" is actually worth, hmm?
No, in the final analysis, your sloganeering is just propaganda. The only thing your American employer wants you -- the IT "monkey" (yes, even a "computer janitor" as I've been treated to recently) -- for is nothing. YOU are too expensive with your endless needs for money to make your car payment, house payment, insurance premiums, and entertainment expenses like going to a 9 dollar movie, etc. YOU are too expensive compared to a pseudo-slavery outsourcer, neo-slavery H-1B, and of course the actual slavery to be found in overseas labor.
Hence, a POSITIVE reputation is worth NOTHING. I have over 300 failed attempts to find employment since 1998 that PROVE that.
Now, a NEGATIVE reputation is worth a SLIGHTLY NEGATIVE amount. Compared to the damage you can do to a shitfuck employer who truly deserves it -- and their numbers are becoming legion -- the price you pay may well be worth it.
But you're hardly "unemployable" after that. Employers just don't care about the workforce anymore. They don't even care enough to identify the real troublemakers. Troublemakers and productive First World workers are ALL THE SAME to the class of hyper-capitalistic uber-greedbags who ONLY decide things on the basis of what makes the bottom line larger in the least amount of time.
A customer just today told me offhand her son is in college and is looking to get into IT. I laughed at that and advised her son to STRONGLY consider something else. So she said that her son was also interested in "engineering"
THIS IS THE REALITY. Reputation is now the new HR toilet paper. Resumes are the old HR toilet paper, and are now worthless, since HR departments are in almost total control of hiring and almost always choose on the basis of stupid fucking degrees and certifications
Yes, more innovation from Microsoft. {snicker} What's depressing is the thought of all those IE users who have never seen Mozilla, even Opera ... and WILL think that good ol' Microsoft has come out with Yet Another Great Idea {tm}. And how many Microsoft developers will think the same thing by 2010?
On your second point, I think that Microsoft ought to have an option for screens to go black on errors.
Oh, great. A peril-sensitive operating system.
The gems are all things that never gets air-time, so it's harder to discover.
Despite my scorn for the monied music industry, this is exactly the service that they DO offer -- presentation.
The new stuff arrives intentionaly broken and very expensive. The indi stuff takes forever to find and is also expensive.
Perhaps this suggests that music is innately valuable. We're going to be hit by a money expense (for pipelined stuff) or time expense (for indie stuff).
Too bad they extended the copyrights.
Too bad for them we outnumber them. The US Congress can ignore the US Constitution only so long. All this music piracy is the public's reaction to the undercurrent of extreme corporate ownership.
The problem with copyright is works that are not sold are simply locked in a vault, maybe never to be seen.
Why is that a problem? Isn't a original work up to the creator to decide what to do with it?
Are you implying copyright should be like patents, in that a formally copyrighted work must be revealed? Or are you implying that a publically-chartered corporation like Disney owes the public exposure of its works?
Sell me music in a format all my hardware and software can play. Is that too much to ask?
... as long as we consumers can choose non-DRM systems entirely. Those what want their material covered by DRM can release it under DRM format for DRM systems, and anyone else wishing to try their luck (and there are a lot of those guys) can release their material under something else ... possibly under your "all-hardware" format.
Yes, it is too much to ask, since that format is too loose and leads to some loss of copyright.
I love the idea of a DRM system
The market will then choose, variously.
(But this is where the staunch capitalists in the music industry turn tail and show us their true colors of dyed-in-the-wool socialists. The music industry wants to make all product pipelines DRM enabled.)
The morons in office just tax us to death and give the money to private entities to build stadiums and bribe their constituents [...]
This deserves a classic one-liner:
WELCOME TO THE MIDWEST.
Yes, your sarcasm is warranted. I've been trying to fight this trend. When I go to garage sales, I pay more than the sticker price, since their prices are too cheap. I've been ebaying recently, and I've frowned on the concept of getting a $30 D&D book for 5 bucks ... so I start my bidding higher. I've also retained the services of a mechanic who needs work, and I hire him for 99% of my car work, even though I could have done at least 50%.
And so it goes. It's a somewhat tough course since I'm constantly teetering on the precipice of long-term unemployment, but all of my life simply had to change if I was going to follow truly progressive principles to the logical ends. I hope the original poster understands that, as your sarcasm hinted at.
Unfortunately, in election after election, these politicians watch the body politic support the most inane ideas and candidates ... hence, you'd have to be a rocket scientist to explain that despite the ENORMOUS short term advantages of such a fucked-up system, that there will be some sort of downside, somewhat, maybe, someday, I'll have to get back to ya on the exact prediction.
We've let being sheep-like become society's highest aspiration. This is a looooong way from being over. This could go on for many more decades. Depressing, ain't it?
I got hit head-on on a one-way street by an illegal alien driving a stolen van with no license and no insurance in Houston, Texas. Fortunately, a cop was driving right behind me. Unfortunately, the cop let her go because she is illegal.
That was Houston's engraved invitation for you to leave Houston. I can see that you honored their invitation. That was wise.
(There is a similar situation going on here in Toledo OH. There are simply no fucking jobs. Hence, the sparse wants ads each Sunday is Toledo's "engraved invitation" for me to get the fuck out. I'm planning on honoring that invitation too.)