I have to laugh at this. Anyone who ponied up their hard earned cash for a product from Microsoft expecting *not* to have a forced upgrade is very funny. Thank god there are alternatives in the game console market-space.
I assumed you were talking about the story of the student who triggered the red alert at some defense lab out west - by downloading MP3s and DVDs onto a server. However, that would be impossible, because you posted this before that other article came out. Your statement was perfect for that other article - hence my comment, which from my internal sequence (I read the other article first) made perfect sense to me.
Zope has this capability out of the box; using Zwiki or Squishdot you can 'undo' any previous changes. Of course, if you pack the database, then you lose your backups (having X backups going back for 6 months can eat up quite a bit of hard drive space).
Wiki, by its very nature has this feature built in - plus everyone has the ability to refactor the pages easily (no HTML needed) - so defaced pages don't hang around very long.
I run ME on my game machine (it is the OS it came with - and I am not going to pay the Microsloth tax twice - so I stick with it).
The key to getting performance out of ME is to disable everything you don't need - which means - basically just run systray at startup - and thats it. Once I did that it was stable as a rock (apparently one of the many 'support' applications was the source of my memory leak - and here I was thinking it was Windoze all along).
Additionally, I decided several years ago to standardize on Linksys 10/100 NICs (they were $9 a pop at the local BestBuy). My switch is a Linksys DSL model - and I have a NetGear 4 port hub (wife and kids on that >). I have had 0 problems with these cards either in Linux - or on any Windows machines. It is worth the time saved in headaches to spend a little money to standardize - particularly for something as cheap as a NIC.
I was just stating a fact. I was not ascribing any moral value to any of what came before in the history of the internet - it just was (and I am happy to say I actually experienced it - unlike some young people who have never know a world without spam). I do prefer my anonymity given the lack of protections against spam - and don't want to invite any more than I already get - which brings forward the question I was obliquely approaching.
The question is - if I am correct that we are heading for a bunch of walled gardens, how can we preserve the ability to contact people freely while also avoiding spam? How can we maintain our anonymity to spammers, while opening ourselves up to normal correspondance. That is the million dollar question (literally).
As a result of these failures the original intent of the internet to be a ubiquitous connection between machines is dieing. Network address translation (NAT) has made islands of our networks, and factionalized our communications.
Soon, connectivity will be by whitelist (invitation) only - and communications that now serve to further understanding will be gone, leading to further stratification.
Eventually the network will reflect society; instead of the utopia it started out as, or the wild west it seems to be - it will become a series of walled gardens that broke little communications between them.
Microsoft is banking on morphing their Xbox into a multipurpose device that does everything: game console, computer, set-top cable box/TIVO equivalent, and central point for connection of all the network enabled goo-gahs (refrigerators, phones, toasters...) that they envision the household containing in the next 10 years.
All the other companies are just rushing not to be left out of the information control bonanza. The thought is, in a thin client DRM enabled world, he who controls access controls the marketplace; by cramming as much functionality as possible into one box, Microsoft is banking on cornering the access market.
Furthermore, I think this also follows Microsoft's historical embrace and extend (and obsolete) paradigm - once enough people have 'the box', people with seperate (and lesser) 'computers' and 'game consoles' etc, will fall into forced obsolescence due to incompatible 'standards'. Microsoft will be the only game in town, and independent hardware makers will either pay royalties to Microsoft, or become marginalized.
In Microsoft's idyllic view, every machine is interconnected with full DRM implemented - and all resultant revenue flows into Microsoft's coffers. Management of 'pirates' is as easy as flipping a switch on the master server to withdraw rights to whatever software the users are misusing/appropriating.
Rewriting unnecessarily is really a symptom of a much bigger problem: failure to avoid complexity - particularly when the rewrite only serves to bloat the code base with bells and whistles.
The interesting thing about this is that developers have this ingrained sense of process that is inflexible, in many cases, disallowing the possibility of any other way. Additionally, businesses that market software have a tendency to use new features (which require constant rewrites) as a product differentiator - in order to sell more units (who cares if it works or not?)
However, there is at least one good reason to rewrite: when the rewrite will lower the level of complexity significantly enough to gain overwhelming benefits in terms of efficiency, maintainability, stability, and reduction of the number of tests required to validate the application.
I have 3 windoze boxes on my network atm. My daughter has one, my wife the other - both their primary work/play stations, and I have a juiced up P4 as my game box (that is all it does - the only thing running on it is 'systray', and whatever game I happen to be playing, most likely WWIIonline)
I have 3 other machines that are all Linux machines (Redhat - soon to be Debian file server, Debian workstation, and a Slackware network analysis machine).
I've played with Cygwin, Hummingbird etc. over the years - and found the emulation of the unix environment Kludgey, and not transparent enough for my tastes.
Basically I wanted a bash compliant shell that was transparent enough to run the standard set of unix CLI tools (ls, ps, grep, df etc...) - but also allow me to kick off native windows and dos applications without switching modes of operation (i.e. type in the path and have it run the application). I did not need to be able to compile binaries - my main purpose for this tool would be to write utility scripts for system administration on the boxes. I wouldn't need remote access (although I might implement that as a seperate capability with freely available tools if needed - outside the scope of my project).
Then a thought hit me - why not implement this in python? I already have python loaded on most of my windows machines - why not make it universal? Python would serve as the abstraction layer I needed - and provide a built-in scripting capability to boot. All of the unix tools will be implemented in python either as built-ins or as seperate '.py' scripts.
Additional functionality - such as 'crontabs' would need to be implemented, as well (haven't worked out the details of that yet).
Ideally, you would drop python and this package on the windows box -- and presto! Instant CLI... And the nice thing about it is that it would be using native windows APIs - so would be faster than some of the emulators that attempt to be a complete source compliant emulation environment.
I haven't seen any drawbacks, yet. The cron functionality might be a bit of an issue - but it doesn't look insurmountable.
Very excellent point - that I think everyone should take to heart.
We are all not clones. What you like is not necessarily 'better' (whatever that means - I'm still running a pentium 120 in my home cluster, and it continues to do what it does admirably. Is it 'better' than the latest P4 3ghz? You bet - at least for the criteria that I am judging it on atm; given another job for it to do, and my story might change).
Ignore the 'my toy is better than your toy' crowd - they either work for the company or are overcompensating for something they lack.
Your 'econopolitical spectrum' is a delusion. The people who ascribe to one standpoint consistently are few and far between; most people who vote do not vote the party line, choosing instead to vote for who will be best for the country or municipality at the given moment. Most people don't even vote.
People are evolutional beings who grow and change constantly - until their final moment. We miss the quality of individuals when we lump them together based on limited criteria. This allows us to dehumanize them and raise ourselves above them, and justify such attrocities as genocide and wars of conquest.
As long as we continue to wear the rosy tinted glasses, and fail to see our commonality, we will continue to reap the bitter harvest of pain and suffering that your view of the world only serves to propogate.
Don't take the easy way out. Become an impartial observer; get all that crap out of your brain they fed you in school that colors every thought you have, and really see people for who they are moment to moment. When you can see people without thinking of a classification - then you will be enlightened.
axxackall writes: Nobody takes your livehood from, but you. Get less lazy and more smart/effcient - and get better job.
I guess that means instead of working the 50 hours per week I do now (doing two people's jobs, I might add [my partner's position was elimenated]), I should not only work more hours, but also do even more for less pay?
The issue of jobs going overseas has nothing to do with lazy or inefficient American workers, and everything to do with money. Money to pay our salaries and money to pay the stockholders their dividends. Guess who gets paid first...
Bravo - you put me in a box. You just illustrated the point I was making.
As much as you say people are various degrees of artificial qualities, you still are willing to pigeonhole people in narrowly defined boundaries. You don't get the picture.
You may enjoy being tagged and sorted away; I prefer being judged on the merits of all my qualities as they exist in me at any given moment - not some artifice that only superficially represents reality.
Civilization has continued through monumental upheavals (Dark Ages, two world wars etc...). If not for the continuation of society, we would not be where we are today. History does show the triumph of civilization over anarchy - contrary to your thesis.
Even at traditionally 'high' rates of unemployment - we are only talking about 6% of the population - the remainder are employed or on welfare (with a very few slipping through the cracks panhandling on the street). Most crime is committed by people who are employed. Being a criminal is a conscious moral choice; it is not a 'survival' issue, as you imply, at all. If that was the case, we would have almost no crime because those truely needful enough to contemplate murder for survival are miniscule in number.
You commented about the so-called 'Coordinator Class' being the 'cops' of the 'Capitalist' class.
Again, to illustrate the point about reality being more complex than these simple classifications:
I work for a company - I develop software applications (Worker); however I am not 'craft' or 'union', I am a manager (Coordinator) and have some responsibility for other workers. Additionally, I have stock options and own stock in my company as well as other companies (Capitalist). Additionally, I buy and sell items on Ebay for a profit (Merchant). Finally, I write music and stories and have made a few bucks on individual works - but am not tied by contract to any such endeavor, and am able to pursue it as I see fit (Artist - my classification). What box would you stick me in?
An artist is anyone who controls their own destiny - but does not employ others (if they did they would simply be manager/owners). This group would include craftsmen, as well as what we traditionally think of as artists. Generally they sell products they build by hand as individual units for a premium price - due to the specialized/unique nature of the product.
Now, if an artist makes a long term contract to produce a sequence of items for someone else, then they are no longer an artist, in the sense that I am refering, and would fall into the 'Work for Wages' category. The key is control; if an artist is willing to 'sell his soul to the devil' - then he is no longer an artist.
In your second to last statement you noted that capitalists deny the existence of classes. I would tend to agree with that. My feeble attempt at classification is only window dressing, an excersize in hand waving who's purpose is to illustrate the broader reality behind it. Reality is much more complex than simple Aristotlian classification hierarchies can describe - it is easy to put people in little boxes, than to actually recognize the unique characteristics of each individual regardless of economic or social status. Ironically, the people you classify as 'captialists' themselves classify people based on breeding, education, race, and gender for admission to clubs and advancement in business.
The point is, everyone is doing it for their own agendas - the left and the right and everyone in between. It is wrong, but much easier than the alternative: recognizing the commonality found in people you previously thought of as 'substandard' or 'subhuman'. This is the core of xenophobia, which leads to racism, sexism, bigotry and hate.
I agree with your last statement, "Humans will never be free until they are their own artists". I would like to build a world where that is not the exception as much as the norm. At no time in history have we had the tools to do just that - in the form of the power we wield with our technology. My ultimate personal goal in life is to achieve that freedom (after sending my kids through college, of course).
Life is not black or white, true or false, yes or no - it is seeming contradictions and shades of gray. Recognizing that reality and understanding it is the first step to enlightenment IMHO.
That is what I meant. From a financial standpoint, young people are less likely to sustain economic discipline than older people - and thus would be the primary source of an economic boycott failure. I know this from years of empirical observation and experience, having been both young and old in my lifetime.
He who owns a thing, makes the rules for the thing.
In the case of corporations, the principle shareholders own the company - and thus want to ensure a specific return on their investment (millions of dollars per annum). To do that they have two ways they can increase the return on the investment: lower capital expenditures, or lower variable costs. Generally capital spending remains constant as a percentage of total sales - so the only real way of increasing profits in a market where sales are flat is to lower the variable costs. Of course salaries fall within the variable cost box.
Unfortunately, most corporations have no vision beyond that simple formula. This is why unions and government have to be involved to protect workers and the economy from poor decisions on the part of the executives.
If you are not independently employed, or independently wealthy, then you have to work within those rules. As long as you work for someone else you are never in control of the situation - and must live or die on the decisions of those in positions of power. You are entitled to nothing beyond what the Constitution and Bill of Rights provide - there is no 'guarantee of employment'. A Union provides some benefit of 'strength in numbers' - but you will end up paying dues to the Union for the privilege of keeping your job and your seniority. Again, you are at the mercy of the decisions made by an outside entity, the union.
On the other hand, if you want to strike out on your own - you will not only be competing with the established technology companies (assuming you pursue contracting in your current line of work) - but also come under closer scrutiny by the IRS regarding your disbursements of taxes. If you have a slow month - you still have to pay your tax bill. Eventually things get resolved - but you might be eating beans out of a can, and selling your automobile to make your house payment. If you are lucky and pick a business that is in high demand, and low competition, you may grow to have employees and actually have enough financial solvency (flexibility) to not have to worry about where the next paycheck is going to come from. Of course, by then you have become one of the owners - you have the power to steer your own ship - you have become an executive.
Finally, there is one last opportunity - if you don't particularly like the idea of being an economic slave or master, or are not independently wealthy - you can always become an artist. An artist who is making good money is the only truly free person - steering their own ship. Of course the odds of making it as an artist is astronomical (the economy will only support so many Britney Spears, or Stephen Kings, after all).
Executive summary: You have a few choices - work for wages and go where the wind blows you, manage workers and be an owner, become a successful artist, or live off your inheritance if independently wealthy. What you choose to value will determine your place in life. If you are unhappy with the way the world works, then find a way to change it. Failing that, find the place in life that you are most comfortable with and make it your goal to be in that place.
P.S. I know some of you will probably say, "what about the religeons and nonprofit organizations - what about the military and government sectors"? For all intents and purposes the people in these fields are working for wages - the government or the nonprofit organization gives you your marching orders. If you are called to public service - more power to you. You will never be rich (in cash), but you may gain something few of the diehard capitalists ever gain: peace of mind.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh look at me! I'm Stephen Evans! Look Microsoft and Sco - I am beating up on Linux! Look at me! (maybe I'll get a free laptop out of this)...
I have to laugh at this. Anyone who ponied up their hard earned cash for a product from Microsoft expecting *not* to have a forced upgrade is very funny. Thank god there are alternatives in the game console market-space.
I had a cronological misstep.
I assumed you were talking about the story of the student who triggered the red alert at some defense lab out west - by downloading MP3s and DVDs onto a server. However, that would be impossible, because you posted this before that other article came out. Your statement was perfect for that other article - hence my comment, which from my internal sequence (I read the other article first) made perfect sense to me.
I appologize for the sequential faux pas.
Zope has this capability out of the box; using Zwiki or Squishdot you can 'undo' any previous changes. Of course, if you pack the database, then you lose your backups (having X backups going back for 6 months can eat up quite a bit of hard drive space).
Wiki, by its very nature has this feature built in - plus everyone has the ability to refactor the pages easily (no HTML needed) - so defaced pages don't hang around very long.
I think you posted your reply to the wrong thread...
The oil cartels will probably have something to say (or do) about any practical application of this technology.
What was the state of network infrastructure before the war, and what is the current state of the network?
I.E. is broadband available? Is it mostly dialup etc...
I run ME on my game machine (it is the OS it came with - and I am not going to pay the Microsloth tax twice - so I stick with it).
The key to getting performance out of ME is to disable everything you don't need - which means - basically just run systray at startup - and thats it. Once I did that it was stable as a rock (apparently one of the many 'support' applications was the source of my memory leak - and here I was thinking it was Windoze all along).
Additionally, I decided several years ago to standardize on Linksys 10/100 NICs (they were $9 a pop at the local BestBuy). My switch is a Linksys DSL model - and I have a NetGear 4 port hub (wife and kids on that >). I have had 0 problems with these cards either in Linux - or on any Windows machines. It is worth the time saved in headaches to spend a little money to standardize - particularly for something as cheap as a NIC.
I was just stating a fact. I was not ascribing any moral value to any of what came before in the history of the internet - it just was (and I am happy to say I actually experienced it - unlike some young people who have never know a world without spam). I do prefer my anonymity given the lack of protections against spam - and don't want to invite any more than I already get - which brings forward the question I was obliquely approaching.
The question is - if I am correct that we are heading for a bunch of walled gardens, how can we preserve the ability to contact people freely while also avoiding spam? How can we maintain our anonymity to spammers, while opening ourselves up to normal correspondance. That is the million dollar question (literally).
As a result of these failures the original intent of the internet to be a ubiquitous connection between machines is dieing. Network address translation (NAT) has made islands of our networks, and factionalized our communications.
Soon, connectivity will be by whitelist (invitation) only - and communications that now serve to further understanding will be gone, leading to further stratification.
Eventually the network will reflect society; instead of the utopia it started out as, or the wild west it seems to be - it will become a series of walled gardens that broke little communications between them.
Medusa - a web server that runs under linux/unix...
Microsoft is banking on morphing their Xbox into a multipurpose device that does everything: game console, computer, set-top cable box/TIVO equivalent, and central point for connection of all the network enabled goo-gahs (refrigerators, phones, toasters...) that they envision the household containing in the next 10 years.
All the other companies are just rushing not to be left out of the information control bonanza. The thought is, in a thin client DRM enabled world, he who controls access controls the marketplace; by cramming as much functionality as possible into one box, Microsoft is banking on cornering the access market.
Furthermore, I think this also follows Microsoft's historical embrace and extend (and obsolete) paradigm - once enough people have 'the box', people with seperate (and lesser) 'computers' and 'game consoles' etc, will fall into forced obsolescence due to incompatible 'standards'. Microsoft will be the only game in town, and independent hardware makers will either pay royalties to Microsoft, or become marginalized.
In Microsoft's idyllic view, every machine is interconnected with full DRM implemented - and all resultant revenue flows into Microsoft's coffers. Management of 'pirates' is as easy as flipping a switch on the master server to withdraw rights to whatever software the users are misusing/appropriating.
Big Brother is watching you.
Rewriting unnecessarily is really a symptom of a much bigger problem: failure to avoid complexity - particularly when the rewrite only serves to bloat the code base with bells and whistles.
The interesting thing about this is that developers have this ingrained sense of process that is inflexible, in many cases, disallowing the possibility of any other way. Additionally, businesses that market software have a tendency to use new features (which require constant rewrites) as a product differentiator - in order to sell more units (who cares if it works or not?)
However, there is at least one good reason to rewrite: when the rewrite will lower the level of complexity significantly enough to gain overwhelming benefits in terms of efficiency, maintainability, stability, and reduction of the number of tests required to validate the application.
I have 3 windoze boxes on my network atm. My daughter has one, my wife the other - both their primary work/play stations, and I have a juiced up P4 as my game box (that is all it does - the only thing running on it is 'systray', and whatever game I happen to be playing, most likely WWIIonline)
I have 3 other machines that are all Linux machines (Redhat - soon to be Debian file server, Debian workstation, and a Slackware network analysis machine).
I've played with Cygwin, Hummingbird etc. over the years - and found the emulation of the unix environment Kludgey, and not transparent enough for my tastes.
Basically I wanted a bash compliant shell that was transparent enough to run the standard set of unix CLI tools (ls, ps, grep, df etc...) - but also allow me to kick off native windows and dos applications without switching modes of operation (i.e. type in the path and have it run the application). I did not need to be able to compile binaries - my main purpose for this tool would be to write utility scripts for system administration on the boxes. I wouldn't need remote access (although I might implement that as a seperate capability with freely available tools if needed - outside the scope of my project).
Then a thought hit me - why not implement this in python? I already have python loaded on most of my windows machines - why not make it universal? Python would serve as the abstraction layer I needed - and provide a built-in scripting capability to boot. All of the unix tools will be implemented in python either as built-ins or as seperate '.py' scripts.
Additional functionality - such as 'crontabs' would need to be implemented, as well (haven't worked out the details of that yet).
Ideally, you would drop python and this package on the windows box -- and presto! Instant CLI... And the nice thing about it is that it would be using native windows APIs - so would be faster than some of the emulators that attempt to be a complete source compliant emulation environment.
I haven't seen any drawbacks, yet. The cron functionality might be a bit of an issue - but it doesn't look insurmountable.
Very excellent point - that I think everyone should take to heart.
We are all not clones. What you like is not necessarily 'better' (whatever that means - I'm still running a pentium 120 in my home cluster, and it continues to do what it does admirably. Is it 'better' than the latest P4 3ghz? You bet - at least for the criteria that I am judging it on atm; given another job for it to do, and my story might change).
Ignore the 'my toy is better than your toy' crowd - they either work for the company or are overcompensating for something they lack.
Your 'econopolitical spectrum' is a delusion. The people who ascribe to one standpoint consistently are few and far between; most people who vote do not vote the party line, choosing instead to vote for who will be best for the country or municipality at the given moment. Most people don't even vote.
People are evolutional beings who grow and change constantly - until their final moment. We miss the quality of individuals when we lump them together based on limited criteria. This allows us to dehumanize them and raise ourselves above them, and justify such attrocities as genocide and wars of conquest.
As long as we continue to wear the rosy tinted glasses, and fail to see our commonality, we will continue to reap the bitter harvest of pain and suffering that your view of the world only serves to propogate.
Don't take the easy way out. Become an impartial observer; get all that crap out of your brain they fed you in school that colors every thought you have, and really see people for who they are moment to moment. When you can see people without thinking of a classification - then you will be enlightened.
axxackall writes:
Nobody takes your livehood from, but you. Get less lazy and more smart/effcient - and get better job.
I guess that means instead of working the 50 hours per week I do now (doing two people's jobs, I might add [my partner's position was elimenated]), I should not only work more hours, but also do even more for less pay?
The issue of jobs going overseas has nothing to do with lazy or inefficient American workers, and everything to do with money. Money to pay our salaries and money to pay the stockholders their dividends. Guess who gets paid first...
Bravo - you put me in a box. You just illustrated the point I was making.
As much as you say people are various degrees of artificial qualities, you still are willing to pigeonhole people in narrowly defined boundaries. You don't get the picture.
You may enjoy being tagged and sorted away; I prefer being judged on the merits of all my qualities as they exist in me at any given moment - not some artifice that only superficially represents reality.
Civilization has continued through monumental upheavals (Dark Ages, two world wars etc...). If not for the continuation of society, we would not be where we are today. History does show the triumph of civilization over anarchy - contrary to your thesis.
Even at traditionally 'high' rates of unemployment - we are only talking about 6% of the population - the remainder are employed or on welfare (with a very few slipping through the cracks panhandling on the street). Most crime is committed by people who are employed. Being a criminal is a conscious moral choice; it is not a 'survival' issue, as you imply, at all. If that was the case, we would have almost no crime because those truely needful enough to contemplate murder for survival are miniscule in number.
One more thing to add:
You commented about the so-called 'Coordinator Class' being the 'cops' of the 'Capitalist' class.
Again, to illustrate the point about reality being more complex than these simple classifications:
I work for a company - I develop software applications (Worker); however I am not 'craft' or 'union', I am a manager (Coordinator) and have some responsibility for other workers. Additionally, I have stock options and own stock in my company as well as other companies (Capitalist). Additionally, I buy and sell items on Ebay for a profit (Merchant). Finally, I write music and stories and have made a few bucks on individual works - but am not tied by contract to any such endeavor, and am able to pursue it as I see fit (Artist - my classification). What box would you stick me in?
Judge a book not by its cover.
An artist is anyone who controls their own destiny - but does not employ others (if they did they would simply be manager/owners). This group would include craftsmen, as well as what we traditionally think of as artists. Generally they sell products they build by hand as individual units for a premium price - due to the specialized/unique nature of the product.
Now, if an artist makes a long term contract to produce a sequence of items for someone else, then they are no longer an artist, in the sense that I am refering, and would fall into the 'Work for Wages' category. The key is control; if an artist is willing to 'sell his soul to the devil' - then he is no longer an artist.
In your second to last statement you noted that capitalists deny the existence of classes. I would tend to agree with that. My feeble attempt at classification is only window dressing, an excersize in hand waving who's purpose is to illustrate the broader reality behind it. Reality is much more complex than simple Aristotlian classification hierarchies can describe - it is easy to put people in little boxes, than to actually recognize the unique characteristics of each individual regardless of economic or social status. Ironically, the people you classify as 'captialists' themselves classify people based on breeding, education, race, and gender for admission to clubs and advancement in business.
The point is, everyone is doing it for their own agendas - the left and the right and everyone in between. It is wrong, but much easier than the alternative: recognizing the commonality found in people you previously thought of as 'substandard' or 'subhuman'. This is the core of xenophobia, which leads to racism, sexism, bigotry and hate.
I agree with your last statement, "Humans will never be free until they are their own artists". I would like to build a world where that is not the exception as much as the norm. At no time in history have we had the tools to do just that - in the form of the power we wield with our technology. My ultimate personal goal in life is to achieve that freedom (after sending my kids through college, of course).
Life is not black or white, true or false, yes or no - it is seeming contradictions and shades of gray. Recognizing that reality and understanding it is the first step to enlightenment IMHO.
That is what I meant. From a financial standpoint, young people are less likely to sustain economic discipline than older people - and thus would be the primary source of an economic boycott failure. I know this from years of empirical observation and experience, having been both young and old in my lifetime.
Boy, that was stupid of me.
I've read the book several times, and saw the movie - my synapses just would not snap.
He who owns a thing, makes the rules for the thing.
In the case of corporations, the principle shareholders own the company - and thus want to ensure a specific return on their investment (millions of dollars per annum). To do that they have two ways they can increase the return on the investment: lower capital expenditures, or lower variable costs. Generally capital spending remains constant as a percentage of total sales - so the only real way of increasing profits in a market where sales are flat is to lower the variable costs. Of course salaries fall within the variable cost box.
Unfortunately, most corporations have no vision beyond that simple formula. This is why unions and government have to be involved to protect workers and the economy from poor decisions on the part of the executives.
If you are not independently employed, or independently wealthy, then you have to work within those rules. As long as you work for someone else you are never in control of the situation - and must live or die on the decisions of those in positions of power. You are entitled to nothing beyond what the Constitution and Bill of Rights provide - there is no 'guarantee of employment'. A Union provides some benefit of 'strength in numbers' - but you will end up paying dues to the Union for the privilege of keeping your job and your seniority. Again, you are at the mercy of the decisions made by an outside entity, the union.
On the other hand, if you want to strike out on your own - you will not only be competing with the established technology companies (assuming you pursue contracting in your current line of work) - but also come under closer scrutiny by the IRS regarding your disbursements of taxes. If you have a slow month - you still have to pay your tax bill. Eventually things get resolved - but you might be eating beans out of a can, and selling your automobile to make your house payment. If you are lucky and pick a business that is in high demand, and low competition, you may grow to have employees and actually have enough financial solvency (flexibility) to not have to worry about where the next paycheck is going to come from. Of course, by then you have become one of the owners - you have the power to steer your own ship - you have become an executive.
Finally, there is one last opportunity - if you don't particularly like the idea of being an economic slave or master, or are not independently wealthy - you can always become an artist. An artist who is making good money is the only truly free person - steering their own ship. Of course the odds of making it as an artist is astronomical (the economy will only support so many Britney Spears, or Stephen Kings, after all).
Executive summary: You have a few choices - work for wages and go where the wind blows you, manage workers and be an owner, become a successful artist, or live off your inheritance if independently wealthy. What you choose to value will determine your place in life. If you are unhappy with the way the world works, then find a way to change it. Failing that, find the place in life that you are most comfortable with and make it your goal to be in that place.
P.S. I know some of you will probably say, "what about the religeons and nonprofit organizations - what about the military and government sectors"? For all intents and purposes the people in these fields are working for wages - the government or the nonprofit organization gives you your marching orders. If you are called to public service - more power to you. You will never be rich (in cash), but you may gain something few of the diehard capitalists ever gain: peace of mind.
I assume you are refering to a lack of discipline on the part of young people to hold on to their money?
Please explain your 'Two Towers' reference; is that a movie or a music video?