But if you're already working from remote then vacation and sick time are irrelevant. What's this about pointless meetings and special projects? We hired you because you said you can multitask. Can you or can't you?:-)
Perhaps we'll see people who have been labled "hyperactive" or "lacking focus" as the ones who will be magically productive in such environments
I don't know about magically, but I do agree with the hypothesis that there's more wrong with the medical/pharmaceutical industry than there is with their purported patients.
I've never agreed with medicating for attention deficit disorders. I think,"If I grew up today, I wouldn't be able to pay attention in class either because it's all such juvenile drivel that's pouring out of the approved curriculum!"
Why does it take six people? If the workload is so light that each person can manage 125 systems then 3 people should easily be able to manage the whole lot.
I'll be sure to pass the cost-savings analysis on to your management.
However, even if that's so, the root cause of that is a social disadvantage, not an economic one
Is this a troll? The root cause was that a RESPONSIBLE decision was made to provide for my college education and, because of it, I was ineligible for the same levels of tuition assistance which everyone, including you and people from more affluent backgrounds, would be eligible for.
It's the hallmark of a scam. Have you not heard of corporate welfare? It's an economic advantage which favors those who can hide their wealth over those who plain don't have any when it comes time to make a major purchase. Consider a purchase of $100k. If a person makes $100k, and has saved $5k, then they qualify for a 30% subsidy and a low interest rate because, while the loan amount is 65% of their income, banks recognize that a person making $100k has more expendable resources. If a person makes $30k, but has managed to save $80k, then they qualify for no subsidy and a high interest rate because the loan amount is 66% (1% is a lot in the banking industry) of their income and a person at $30k needs almost all of that just to live. Now the guy making $30k is not only paying the taxes (which provide for the 30% subsidy for the affluent neighbor, who is also paying taxes but is getting his taxes returned to him through a roundabout) but is being stripped bare by the high interest rates on a $20k loan. For the same purchase. The financial industry works this scam over and over and over throughout society every day and people buy into it because they don't spend their lives figuring numbers the way insurance companies, lenders, and large corporations do. While the system is larger and more complex today it still functions the same as the coal mining camps: the company consistently paid the workers on average just a little less than they needed to keep them indebted to the company store. Even better if the company could take in a government subsidy for their social contribution of industry and jobs.
Like I said. If I knew then what I know today I would've skipped college, put down cash on a house, and plunked the remainder in the bank.
While I've been attempting to make this point, again and again, you constantly turn this into a "my life was harder than yours" argument. Please. Can we focus on the numerical pyramid scheme?
At one job. And the other? You're still fudging for your own sob story.
Even still, we often didn't have any food in the house, which is the bit I wasn't telling
No food? Who subsidized you to eat? I'm weeping. Your numbers don't add up.
12084.8
$400/mo for rent, $50/mo for electric. 12000x.75=8000. 8000-3600=4400-600=3800. That's still only $320/mo for a family of five. Impossible, even if you didn't have food in the house. Even if she bought her own cloth and sewed all your clothes.
but it looks to me like you're projecting that out as the condition of the average American
This is a debate about the predatory nature of the financial industry. The average American, should they make a RESPONSIBLE decision to save up for a college fund, will not be eligible for the same tuition assistance and government grants which "rich kids" are easily eligible for. While the "rich kids" get subsidy from both parents and state the average American, having made a responsible decision to save, is left to live on credit for living expenses.
It truly sucks, but it's not a grand credit conspiracy
That "conspiracy" word is a magic crack pipe for you apparently. There's no conspiracy in knowing how to milk the system. There's no conspiracy in looking at the FAFSA and saying,"Wow. You were a good American worker. You saved all your money and can pay for your entire college tuition and housing all by yourself. It looks like you have no need for tuition assistance. There are these $10k in scholarship grants, but they're only available to students with a demonstrated need. We'll just give this 30% subsidy to the kid with the new BMW. Now, have you thought about how you're going to pay for daily living expenses?"
From my experience, *most* people who have too much debt live beyond their means.
From my experience, most people who have too much debt were denied subsidy opportunities given freely to more affluent people or were subject to predatory interest rates on common loans for which more affluent people would have received a fair interest rate. You enjoy browbeating people. Since I've seen the short end of the stick I prefer to give them the benefit of the doubt.
In most cases I would consider that absolutely reasonable
At some candy state school, sure. At some candy program like the military, sure. I know plenty of people who held part time jobs while in the military and I know plenty of people who held part time jobs at state schools because their average study time to score 3.0 was about 1/2 hour/night of reviewing handout lecture notes. The population of the program which I was enrolled in showed 2 out of 500 students with the mettle to hold a part-time job, accept 3 hours of sleep per night, and still pull the grades. I tried a part time job for a quarter. Coming home at 2 AM to be at 8 hours of hard science and engineering courses force fed at a rate and demand similar to MIT was not something I could handle, and neither could 498 out of 500 of my classmates. I even know people who attended MIT and held part time jobs--but they were attending classes on a lighter load or weren't trying for a hardcore science or engineering degree. With the demand that the.com boom placed on the industry schools were churning out CS and CO majors with clockwork efficiency (and it brought us the superiority of Windows, javascript, crappy websites, and the Intel architectural platform. w00 frickin' h00). I wasn't at a candy school or in a breezy program. I had a choice: live on credit and spend the time studying or drop out.
Still a bad decision? Only if you're more addicted to browbeating than you are to life.
5x40=200x50=10k. Take out 25% in tax and get $7500. If rent/mortgage is $400/mo that's $3600. That's $3900 to pay bills and food. Electricity at about $50/mo leaves $3300. Divide by 12 is less than $300/mo for food, clothes, gasoline, school supplies, and other expenses for a family of 5. $300/mo is about $10/day. You can't feed a family of five on $10/day. There's something else you're not telling.
apparently your father managed to cover saving for four years of college on his wage, for you, and gave you that money for nothing
Or perhaps that money came because I was severely disfigured in a house fire at age 2 and have dealt with the social shock complex that comes with living in a society that reviles people who are severely scarred over 80% of their body. Friends and physical appearance play a big role in the opportunities that you receive in life. That's why people who are physically disabled are legally protected. There's no protection for people in my category. I'm automatically subject to the discomfort factor because people are intimidated by my appearance. They don't know how to deal with me so, like every good American, they'd rather hire the next guy. Life's not fair.
Yet you complain about having to pay $200 rent during college
Rent during college came out of my own pocket, full price. The fact that I had that money saved disqualified me for the $200/mo. in tuition assistance that even the "rich kids" were eligible for.
Would he be oh so proud to see you disrespecting everything he worked so hard to give you?
He actually chuckles about the fact that he didn't have to work a day for the money that put me through college and felt no guilt about not sending me the same money that other students received from their parents for basic living expenses. Just like you, he takes great pleasure in browbeating me over the debt that I took on in college just to live. As you must think his default was always to say,"Get a part-time job!" No consideration for the calibre of the school. I've already mentioned that, out of a class of 500, there were 2 gunners who could subsist on 3 hours of sleep a night to hold down a part-time job and still pull grades at that institution. I feel no shame in admitting that I couldn't subsist on 3 hours of sleep and honestly expect to pull the grades.
No, at that point in my life I was actually far better off than I'd ever been previously
Live twenty years of your life far under the poverty line
If you lived under the poverty line then you qualified for subsidies. Suck it up soldier. My father pulled $10/hr to support a family of five and we didn't take charity because others, like you, apparently needed it more.
Then come back to me with your sob story
Is that the same sob story as you have living on $20k with a wife and child?
You're already describing economic conditions far in excess of the conditions I had experienced up to that age
Had I known how it would be used against me in the financial industry I would've skipped college, banked the money, and put a down payment on a house. Then I wouldn't have any debt because I would've started out with real equity and a steady wage job rather than living on work-study, credit, and ramen for four years.
Your entire post sounds to me like something I would hear from what I would have considered a "rich kid"
The rich kids still got tuition assistance and grant subsidies. I paid full price for everything out of my own pocket. Their daily living expenses were subsidized. I had no income for daily living expenses. Credit was the only way to cover daily living expense.
As I've said. It's a economic scam that plays on statistics. People from affluent families that made no responsible planning decisions still receive subsidies. A family, such as mine, scraping by on the single income of a father making less than $10/hr (he still makes less than $12/hr after 30 years with the company) that made a responsible planning decision to set up a college account was no longer eligible because that college fund negated all possibility for financial aid from the biggest provider--the government.
It appears to me that you're considering the difference between the funding and income you recieved and that of what your peers received as somehow an automatic debt accrual
Not at all, but even you must realize that there's a basic amount of cash on hand which is required to live. Personally, I estimate that it costs about $5/hr just to breathe in this nation. Those who can qualify for subsidies can breathe with someone else's money. Those of us who tried to make responsible decisions for our future end up funding our own breathing out of pocket AND paying taxes to subsidize the breathing of others. Those subsidies are not always direct handouts that you know about, but even something as simple as owning a house qualifies as a "subsidy" due to the interest rates and equity involved. The money that's milked from people paying high interest rates on debt or taking lower returns on investments is used to keep the housing market in a favorable light.
you've basically admitted that you were far more economically advantaged than I was
If only you knew. I was economically advantaged by a college fund and the financial industry ensured that they would take every penny of that back and then charge me extra just to live. Why? Not because I made any bad decision, but because a RESPONSIBLE decision which my parents made rendered me ineligible for the benefits which everyone entering college, including you, would be eligible for. Heck, you'd be eligible for even more because you have a wife and child.
I've lived a life that was overall far harder than yours
I sincerely doubt it. I'm not going to get into a sob story. This was a debate about the inequities of the financial industry and how subsidy funds (and this truly is a welfare/subsidy society, whether you recognize it or not) are disbursed.
be glad you're lucky enough to not know what it's like to be really poor
When's the last time you spent 6 months homeless living out of a tent and a sleeping bag with no real options for getting back into society? Not only did I face it once but now I'm facing it again when the debt collectors come calling. Screw them. I don't deserve this crap. I've never lived beyond my means. I lived. Nothing more than any other human would expect, especially a human making a responsible effort to attain an education, especially a human that's held a job since age 11.
So I lived without things that I didn't need. It's that simple - if you just want it, but can live without it, don't buy it
Read my other post. I didn't buy anything I didn't need. It was living expense that others had subsidized through tuition assistance and state sponsored grants that I didn't qualify for because my parents made a RESPONSIBLE decision to set up a college fund for me at 2 years old. Is that a bad decision on my part? No. Is it a financial scam? Absolutely. People with higher incomes could apply for and receive state-subsidized handouts when people with lower incomes, like my parents, making intelligent decisions, like setting up a college fund, are now ineligible. It's the equivalent of corporate welfare for those who don't really need it. Did you live on $200/mo? Of course you did. $200/mo. is not a bad decision.
Where did I say SP2 sucks? The topic is "WinXP happiness" and the only allusion that I make is to thank SP2 for the security update. Does SP2 enable the firewall or not? I installed SP2. My firewall was not enabled. Enabling the firewall successfully blocks RDC.
DUH.
No need to be rude.
That's the whole purpose of a domain
I know that. Why does a remote login have the capability to kick a console login? You can say "What if I forgot to log out and I need to log in from home?". Do you leave your front door unlocked because you might have forgotten to put your keys in your pocket?
If you want stuff stored on your machine, safely, then setup your own damn permissions.
If the world wanted to be a bunch of do-it-yourselfers, they'd skip the $200 MS license and go with Linux. I use Linux at home. This is a corporate problem. I don't monkey with my employer's machine. I don't need that liability.
You, and your domain admins, don't know what you are doing.
That's an admirable superiority complex you have going there. Where can I get one?:-)
First, RDC is disabled by default in Windows XP
I didn't make this corporate distro. It's enabled. We checked other machines around the office.
Second, RDC can be locked down using group policy. Read this information
Is that like saying that you could have set the safety on the gun before shooting your best friend? Sure... it's possible... was it smart to have the safety off to begin with?
If your admins did what mine did- they set a group policy in Active Directory to shut off the firewall
That may be the case. Did I mention that ITs response, when everyone in the office scratched their heads over this insecurity, was to "turn on the firewall"? Is there any good reason to allow RDC on a default installation for an office machine? Is there any good reason why a remote login should have the authority to kick out a console login?
Sure, we can make up excuses like,"Maybe I left my session logged on at the office and now I need to login from home." Is that like not locking your doors because you might have left the keys in the house? It's just not bright.
You don't make it very clear whether he would still have been able to log into your box if it wasn't through Remote Desktop - if he could, I don't really see why you're so suprised.
I'm not surprised that he could authenticate with out domain server. I'm surprised that RDC is enabled by default. I'm surprised that a remote login has the ability to kick a console login. That's just not security smart by any stretch of the imagination.
Get a grip -- anyone reading this that has worked with a complex software product can tell you that these sorts of upgrades inevitably involve gitches -- even more so where the vendor (Microsoft) isn't able to test all possible operating scenarios (i.e. combinations of vendor hardware and software).
Debian Sid has no problem updating everything on my system on a daily basis, breaks nothing, and doesn't cost $200/license.
I heard that SP2 enabled the Windows firewall. I don't know if it does or not.
I have a default install of WinXP on my work laptop. SP2 came out from automatic updates and was installed on my machine. Two days later IT sent out a memo not to install it until they had finished testing it. Oops. Oh well. I'll just not say anything.
A coworker and I were messing around at work and he was RDC'ing to a server upstairs. I asked him how often he used RDC and pattered on about my sshd on my home boxen but that I hadn't set up the remote X server. Eventually we both blinked and I asked him if he'd ever tried RDC'ing into another employees system. He shrugged and we decided that he should try to RDC to my computer across the office.
So he did. Now I had SP2 installed (sshhh!) but, amazingly, he was given a login box. When he entered his u/p combo, authenticating through our domain server so as not to deal with local accounts on my machine, he was presented with a box which warned (pph): "The user blahnameblah is currently logged in on system BLAHNAMEBLAH-CPU. If you continue that user will be logged out."
WTH? He's RDC'ing into *MY* system and HE gets the option to kick me out so that he can login? Well... we tested it, it worked. I was logged out and he happily logged in to browse my files. What's more, his account was magically created on my system and the default policy was to allow him the access to modify all the files on MY HD.
might actually be the result of a bad decision you made
Let's take this apart piece by piece, then.
When I was 2 years old my parents set up a college fund for me. By the time I was 18 that fund held enough money to fully fund my college tuition for four years and my projected housing cost for three years. My parents also had ownership of my grandparents house in order to spare my grandparents the weight of the property taxes. Upon entering college I qualified for the same academic scholarships as most of my peers but, because of my fund and because my parents owned two houses (on paper) I did not qualify for many of the assistance scholarships and grants that my peers qualified for even when the parents of those peers had higher salaries than my parents. While my peers were receiving monthly stipends from their parents (which mine couldn't afford) and additional stipends from assistance grants and scholarships I was receiving none of those extra perks. That typically amounted to about $200/mo. Is that my bad decision for that fund? No. Is that my bad decision for the way FAFSA determines need and eligibility for assistance? No. To be perfectly honest I didn't know about the dual house ownership until several years after I had graduated. I had always wondered why I didn't qualify for the same assistance that my peers, from more affluent families, qualified for. Is that my bad decision? No. If you take the subsidies that my peers received, at around $200/mo., and call them "cost of living" then I had an additional $1800 per school year in "living debt" through no bad decision of my own. Is $200/mo. unreasonable? Absolutely not. Even stingy employers will allow $15/day for "per diem" when they put their employees on the road. That's $7200 in "living debt" after four years of college. Is it unreasonable for a person to require $7200 to live for four years? Hardly. At 19% interest, however, it's predatory and nearly impossible to pay back. Did I work a summer job to try and pay it back? Yes. Did my parents charge me rent while I was home working over the summer? You bet--$200/mo. I busted my hump working on wood floors at $9/hour in the summer heat (gymnasiums are rarely air conditioned in summer and full riding floor sanders generate enormous amounts of heat) while many of my peers worked candy internships in IT at $15/hour with parents who weren't charging rent. Was I in IT? No. Is that my bad decision? Absolutely not. We can't all be in IT at a time when the stock market was favoring every junk.com founded by VCs.
Your four years in the military puts you in the category of my peers. My peers were subsidized by grants and assistance (not academic) scholarships which I didn't qualify for because my tuition and housing was paid. You were subsidized by the military. That's four years of $200/mo. That's all. Nothing more.
Extend this to the first year out of college. I am now working on a job to pay back "living debt", at 19% interest, that the majority of my peers don't have. While many of my peers were offered signing bonuses in the IT field, my field was in chemistry which was not offering signing bonuses. Is that a bad decision on my part? Absolutely not. Right away my peers, who don't have the living debt due to their subsidy grants and eligibility for other scholarships, are averaging another $5k in signing bonus over me. While they can take the puny first year salary to live and save, I'm using my first year salary to try and pay back "living debt". Is this a bad decision on my part? No. It only shows that the FAFSA eligibility was poisoned by what seemed to be a smart decision by my parents to set up a college fund for me and their ownership of two houses to spare my grandparents the burden of property tax. Are these bad decisions? In hindsight perhaps we shouldn't have been so responsible and taken the route that everyone else did--not create a college fund and allow the state (and taxpayers) to take the burden of
might actually be the result of a bad decision you made
Or it might not. In an group of 100 people 5 people become enormously wealthy, 50 people subsist, and 45 people live in debt. You can postulate that the 45 people all made bad decisions or you can use your brain and think that the 5 people at the top are working the statistics of the economy. Just because you're one of the 55 people that subsist doesn't prove that the other 45 are making bad decisions.
I grew up with my mother working her behind off at a minimum wage job
Most Americans cannot subsist on a minimum wage job. Apparently your beginnings started out at a more favorable income/expense ratio.
At the point in time I made my decision to stop using credit, I was out of the Air Force, supporting my wife and newborn son on a gross salary of $20k a year, in the San Francisco Bay Area, where cost of living is one of the highest in the country
It sounds like you had some other factors which were helping you along. The majority of Americans would quickly slip into debt in that situation.
1 in 5 Americans who do not have any cards at all
Would that be the 1 in 5 who are being subsidized with other forms of assistance? Or would that be the 1 in 5 who are independently wealthy because they're siphoning someone else's wage? Perhaps it's the 1 in 5 who are in an age group that places them beyond the boom of the credit/debt industry.
In fact, only one in twenty Americans have a balance of $8k or more
Of the 19/20 who are left, how many of them are moving closer to paying the balance off and how many are slipping farther into debt? It's easy to spin the numbers game any way you want.
Another 31.2% of the households the Fed surveyed paid off their most recent credit card bills in full
Which does not say they paid all of their credit card bills in full and also does not give an indication for how many paid the credit cards by consolidating their debt into another form. It still doesn't prove that the 68.8% who didn't pay in full were making bad decisions.
That's 55% of Americans who carried no credit card debt at all at the time of the survey
Only if you assume those who paid the most recent bill in full had only one credit card. What of the subject population distribution? Those who are working their butts off to try to catch up to bills aren't going to be home to answer the phone when the Fed calls. Many people who are living in debt may not even have a published telephone number to avoid the harassment.
Everything is everyone's fault but your own in your world.
All other things being equal I've put just as much effort into staying ahead of bills as any of my peers. My peers who are in debt feel much the same way that I do. My peers who aren't in debt often concede that they were given opportunities which the rest of us didn't have. Apparently you don't share their objective honesty preferring instead to cling to your browbeating stick.
You're being self-righteous and ignoring the wholesale industry of legal predatory lending. You're also ignoring the 10% drop in average American wages from '00-'02 which makes it statistically less likely to pay back debt.
I agree with what you've said about responsibility but it lacks perspective within the insurance industry. The insurance industry penalizes people for every minor infraction. In today's society people always call the police for every ding and scratch because they can't get the insurance company to honor their contract without a police report. Every police report generates unwanted attention. I can't count the number of times that people would bump us, my father and the other driver would look over the damage, shrug, and everyone would continue on their way because it wasn't worth the hassle with the insurance company and the deductible. In today's world, if someone so much as leaves a fingerprint on your car, the police are called and even the person who wasn't at fault sees an increase in their premiums.
And we're still treating the insurance companies like auto insurance is in its own little vacuum. We know it's not. Why is it so difficult to see that a good majority of why the auto and health insurance industry is robbing us blind is because they're recouping the losses on the business insurance and lawsuits that came out of the.com boom-bust? As usual the middle-class consumer is paying out on both ends to support profit margins which they never see while CEOs, VPs, and VCs set their own salaries, reap the profits, and dump the defunct businesses on bankruptcy insurance. Add insult to injury when one heeds the IRS report that average middle class wages have DECREASED 10% from '00-'02 while inflation continues to plod ahead.
Gatos and DRI both provide functionality. It's not really necessary, though, the stock kmod radeon and stock Xf86 radeon drivers work.
Except for that pesky s-video port. The kernel has no trouble putting the console screen on the TV but only the VESA driver is successful for Xf86. The VESA driver isn't fast enough to watch DVDs.
Pick and choose, I've tried all the combos: kmod: 2.4.18-2.6.7, Gatos, DRI drivers: Xf86 4.1.0-Xf4.3.0, Gatos, DRI
Put the kmod on the x-axis and the drivers on the y-axis and make a matrix. I've tried them all. Only the VESA driver will correctly get the sync values for the s-video port with a Radeon 7500. I've tried the math to convert VESA screenmodes to modelines with no luck.
I doubt it. If the insurance industry wouldn't be scamming us blind we'd probably all have some assets. Additionally, if the insurance/financial industry wasn't scamming us all blind, then their family/friends would be able to pull together to aid each other in the time of trouble.
When I was a child people would change lanes or rear-end us once every three or four months. It was common back in the early 80s. It happened to everyone. No one thought much of it. Just another $200 to fix a dent or paint or whatever. My father did most of the work himself. The neat thing was that everyone usually had $200 because we weren't being bent over a barrel by insurance companies and investment brokers.
I'd be driving illegally, maybe I'd go to jail, and you'd feel better
YUCK. I'd never feel better about being responsible for sending a non-violent (maybe absent-minded, but certainly not violent) offender to jail. Do you realize what that would do to your employment prospects for the rest of your life? And why? Because you dented my passenger door?
If you sold your car the day before and market dictated that the price would be $880, the insurance company is not going to pay you $1500. That's not indemnity
When you come back to reality you'll realize that the whole Blue Book Value system is a scam to justify a scam. Every company, every attorney, and every salesman in the world will base everything they say and do on the BBV but the moment that we, as consumers, want to purchase something the BBV is nowhere to be found. Fair market price? It's set by the delineation of the haves vs. the have-nots. Compensation value? Oh... now _THAT'S_ BBV.
Hey... wait... I just had a deja-vu... like I was typing the exact same thing. All of my work is released under GNU GPL. You have to at least give me credit.
Slashdot Mirror
But if you're already working from remote then vacation and sick time are irrelevant. What's this about pointless meetings and special projects? We hired you because you said you can multitask. Can you or can't you? :-)
Perhaps we'll see people who have been labled "hyperactive" or "lacking focus" as the ones who will be magically productive in such environments
I don't know about magically, but I do agree with the hypothesis that there's more wrong with the medical/pharmaceutical industry than there is with their purported patients.
I've never agreed with medicating for attention deficit disorders. I think,"If I grew up today, I wouldn't be able to pay attention in class either because it's all such juvenile drivel that's pouring out of the approved curriculum!"
It's social manipulation, pure and simple.
Do you know how many times I've been trolled out of town for expressing the exact same ideas?
Bravo!
At my employer, 6 of us manage over 700 servers
Why does it take six people? If the workload is so light that each person can manage 125 systems then 3 people should easily be able to manage the whole lot.
I'll be sure to pass the cost-savings analysis on to your management.
Yes, it is, and that's the point. Being "contactable all the time" is just friggin' stupid
I'm still avoiding cell phones. Never owned one and, hopefully, never will.
And, being idiots, they won't self-limit their impact upon your life.
I've always wondered who's been getting all my tax money because I sure don't see any benefits from it.
However, even if that's so, the root cause of that is a social disadvantage, not an economic one
Is this a troll? The root cause was that a RESPONSIBLE decision was made to provide for my college education and, because of it, I was ineligible for the same levels of tuition assistance which everyone, including you and people from more affluent backgrounds, would be eligible for.
It's the hallmark of a scam. Have you not heard of corporate welfare? It's an economic advantage which favors those who can hide their wealth over those who plain don't have any when it comes time to make a major purchase. Consider a purchase of $100k. If a person makes $100k, and has saved $5k, then they qualify for a 30% subsidy and a low interest rate because, while the loan amount is 65% of their income, banks recognize that a person making $100k has more expendable resources. If a person makes $30k, but has managed to save $80k, then they qualify for no subsidy and a high interest rate because the loan amount is 66% (1% is a lot in the banking industry) of their income and a person at $30k needs almost all of that just to live. Now the guy making $30k is not only paying the taxes (which provide for the 30% subsidy for the affluent neighbor, who is also paying taxes but is getting his taxes returned to him through a roundabout) but is being stripped bare by the high interest rates on a $20k loan. For the same purchase. The financial industry works this scam over and over and over throughout society every day and people buy into it because they don't spend their lives figuring numbers the way insurance companies, lenders, and large corporations do. While the system is larger and more complex today it still functions the same as the coal mining camps: the company consistently paid the workers on average just a little less than they needed to keep them indebted to the company store. Even better if the company could take in a government subsidy for their social contribution of industry and jobs.
Like I said. If I knew then what I know today I would've skipped college, put down cash on a house, and plunked the remainder in the bank.
While I've been attempting to make this point, again and again, you constantly turn this into a "my life was harder than yours" argument. Please. Can we focus on the numerical pyramid scheme?
she made $3.32 an hour
.com boom placed on the industry schools were churning out CS and CO majors with clockwork efficiency (and it brought us the superiority of Windows, javascript, crappy websites, and the Intel architectural platform. w00 frickin' h00). I wasn't at a candy school or in a breezy program. I had a choice: live on credit and spend the time studying or drop out.
At one job. And the other? You're still fudging for your own sob story.
Even still, we often didn't have any food in the house, which is the bit I wasn't telling
No food? Who subsidized you to eat? I'm weeping. Your numbers don't add up.
12084.8
$400/mo for rent, $50/mo for electric. 12000x.75=8000. 8000-3600=4400-600=3800. That's still only $320/mo for a family of five. Impossible, even if you didn't have food in the house. Even if she bought her own cloth and sewed all your clothes.
but it looks to me like you're projecting that out as the condition of the average American
This is a debate about the predatory nature of the financial industry. The average American, should they make a RESPONSIBLE decision to save up for a college fund, will not be eligible for the same tuition assistance and government grants which "rich kids" are easily eligible for. While the "rich kids" get subsidy from both parents and state the average American, having made a responsible decision to save, is left to live on credit for living expenses.
It truly sucks, but it's not a grand credit conspiracy
That "conspiracy" word is a magic crack pipe for you apparently. There's no conspiracy in knowing how to milk the system. There's no conspiracy in looking at the FAFSA and saying,"Wow. You were a good American worker. You saved all your money and can pay for your entire college tuition and housing all by yourself. It looks like you have no need for tuition assistance. There are these $10k in scholarship grants, but they're only available to students with a demonstrated need. We'll just give this 30% subsidy to the kid with the new BMW. Now, have you thought about how you're going to pay for daily living expenses?"
From my experience, *most* people who have too much debt live beyond their means.
From my experience, most people who have too much debt were denied subsidy opportunities given freely to more affluent people or were subject to predatory interest rates on common loans for which more affluent people would have received a fair interest rate. You enjoy browbeating people. Since I've seen the short end of the stick I prefer to give them the benefit of the doubt.
In most cases I would consider that absolutely reasonable
At some candy state school, sure. At some candy program like the military, sure. I know plenty of people who held part time jobs while in the military and I know plenty of people who held part time jobs at state schools because their average study time to score 3.0 was about 1/2 hour/night of reviewing handout lecture notes. The population of the program which I was enrolled in showed 2 out of 500 students with the mettle to hold a part-time job, accept 3 hours of sleep per night, and still pull the grades. I tried a part time job for a quarter. Coming home at 2 AM to be at 8 hours of hard science and engineering courses force fed at a rate and demand similar to MIT was not something I could handle, and neither could 498 out of 500 of my classmates. I even know people who attended MIT and held part time jobs--but they were attending classes on a lighter load or weren't trying for a hardcore science or engineering degree. With the demand that the
Still a bad decision? Only if you're more addicted to browbeating than you are to life.
$10 an hour is over twice what she was making
5x40=200x50=10k. Take out 25% in tax and get $7500. If rent/mortgage is $400/mo that's $3600. That's $3900 to pay bills and food. Electricity at about $50/mo leaves $3300. Divide by 12 is less than $300/mo for food, clothes, gasoline, school supplies, and other expenses for a family of 5. $300/mo is about $10/day. You can't feed a family of five on $10/day. There's something else you're not telling.
apparently your father managed to cover saving for four years of college on his wage, for you, and gave you that money for nothing
Or perhaps that money came because I was severely disfigured in a house fire at age 2 and have dealt with the social shock complex that comes with living in a society that reviles people who are severely scarred over 80% of their body. Friends and physical appearance play a big role in the opportunities that you receive in life. That's why people who are physically disabled are legally protected. There's no protection for people in my category. I'm automatically subject to the discomfort factor because people are intimidated by my appearance. They don't know how to deal with me so, like every good American, they'd rather hire the next guy. Life's not fair.
Yet you complain about having to pay $200 rent during college
Rent during college came out of my own pocket, full price. The fact that I had that money saved disqualified me for the $200/mo. in tuition assistance that even the "rich kids" were eligible for.
Would he be oh so proud to see you disrespecting everything he worked so hard to give you?
He actually chuckles about the fact that he didn't have to work a day for the money that put me through college and felt no guilt about not sending me the same money that other students received from their parents for basic living expenses. Just like you, he takes great pleasure in browbeating me over the debt that I took on in college just to live. As you must think his default was always to say,"Get a part-time job!" No consideration for the calibre of the school. I've already mentioned that, out of a class of 500, there were 2 gunners who could subsist on 3 hours of sleep a night to hold down a part-time job and still pull grades at that institution. I feel no shame in admitting that I couldn't subsist on 3 hours of sleep and honestly expect to pull the grades.
No, at that point in my life I was actually far better off than I'd ever been previously
No doubt. Candy street for you.
Live twenty years of your life far under the poverty line
If you lived under the poverty line then you qualified for subsidies. Suck it up soldier. My father pulled $10/hr to support a family of five and we didn't take charity because others, like you, apparently needed it more.
Then come back to me with your sob story
Is that the same sob story as you have living on $20k with a wife and child?
You're already describing economic conditions far in excess of the conditions I had experienced up to that age
Had I known how it would be used against me in the financial industry I would've skipped college, banked the money, and put a down payment on a house. Then I wouldn't have any debt because I would've started out with real equity and a steady wage job rather than living on work-study, credit, and ramen for four years.
Your entire post sounds to me like something I would hear from what I would have considered a "rich kid"
The rich kids still got tuition assistance and grant subsidies. I paid full price for everything out of my own pocket. Their daily living expenses were subsidized. I had no income for daily living expenses. Credit was the only way to cover daily living expense.
As I've said. It's a economic scam that plays on statistics. People from affluent families that made no responsible planning decisions still receive subsidies. A family, such as mine, scraping by on the single income of a father making less than $10/hr (he still makes less than $12/hr after 30 years with the company) that made a responsible planning decision to set up a college account was no longer eligible because that college fund negated all possibility for financial aid from the biggest provider--the government.
It appears to me that you're considering the difference between the funding and income you recieved and that of what your peers received as somehow an automatic debt accrual
Not at all, but even you must realize that there's a basic amount of cash on hand which is required to live. Personally, I estimate that it costs about $5/hr just to breathe in this nation. Those who can qualify for subsidies can breathe with someone else's money. Those of us who tried to make responsible decisions for our future end up funding our own breathing out of pocket AND paying taxes to subsidize the breathing of others. Those subsidies are not always direct handouts that you know about, but even something as simple as owning a house qualifies as a "subsidy" due to the interest rates and equity involved. The money that's milked from people paying high interest rates on debt or taking lower returns on investments is used to keep the housing market in a favorable light.
you've basically admitted that you were far more economically advantaged than I was
If only you knew. I was economically advantaged by a college fund and the financial industry ensured that they would take every penny of that back and then charge me extra just to live. Why? Not because I made any bad decision, but because a RESPONSIBLE decision which my parents made rendered me ineligible for the benefits which everyone entering college, including you, would be eligible for. Heck, you'd be eligible for even more because you have a wife and child.
I've lived a life that was overall far harder than yours
I sincerely doubt it. I'm not going to get into a sob story. This was a debate about the inequities of the financial industry and how subsidy funds (and this truly is a welfare/subsidy society, whether you recognize it or not) are disbursed.
be glad you're lucky enough to not know what it's like to be really poor
When's the last time you spent 6 months homeless living out of a tent and a sleeping bag with no real options for getting back into society? Not only did I face it once but now I'm facing it again when the debt collectors come calling. Screw them. I don't deserve this crap. I've never lived beyond my means. I lived. Nothing more than any other human would expect, especially a human making a responsible effort to attain an education, especially a human that's held a job since age 11.
When you come back and unlock the machine, it kicks off the remote user
Yes. When I came back to log on I could kick him off.
You're not logged off, your tasks continue to run
That wasn't true, though. I was actually logged off and, upon logging in again, nothing was running. I had left Outlook and a Word doc open.
So I lived without things that I didn't need. It's that simple - if you just want it, but can live without it, don't buy it
Read my other post. I didn't buy anything I didn't need. It was living expense that others had subsidized through tuition assistance and state sponsored grants that I didn't qualify for because my parents made a RESPONSIBLE decision to set up a college fund for me at 2 years old. Is that a bad decision on my part? No. Is it a financial scam? Absolutely. People with higher incomes could apply for and receive state-subsidized handouts when people with lower incomes, like my parents, making intelligent decisions, like setting up a college fund, are now ineligible. It's the equivalent of corporate welfare for those who don't really need it. Did you live on $200/mo? Of course you did. $200/mo. is not a bad decision.
doesn't mean SP2 inherently sucks
Where did I say SP2 sucks? The topic is "WinXP happiness" and the only allusion that I make is to thank SP2 for the security update. Does SP2 enable the firewall or not? I installed SP2. My firewall was not enabled. Enabling the firewall successfully blocks RDC.
DUH.
No need to be rude.
That's the whole purpose of a domain
I know that. Why does a remote login have the capability to kick a console login? You can say "What if I forgot to log out and I need to log in from home?". Do you leave your front door unlocked because you might have forgotten to put your keys in your pocket?
If you want stuff stored on your machine, safely, then setup your own damn permissions.
If the world wanted to be a bunch of do-it-yourselfers, they'd skip the $200 MS license and go with Linux. I use Linux at home. This is a corporate problem. I don't monkey with my employer's machine. I don't need that liability.
You, and your domain admins, don't know what you are doing.
:-)
That's an admirable superiority complex you have going there. Where can I get one?
First, RDC is disabled by default in Windows XP
I didn't make this corporate distro. It's enabled. We checked other machines around the office.
Second, RDC can be locked down using group policy. Read this information
Is that like saying that you could have set the safety on the gun before shooting your best friend? Sure... it's possible... was it smart to have the safety off to begin with?
some nimrod
What's with the name-calling?
If your admins did what mine did- they set a group policy in Active Directory to shut off the firewall
That may be the case. Did I mention that ITs response, when everyone in the office scratched their heads over this insecurity, was to "turn on the firewall"? Is there any good reason to allow RDC on a default installation for an office machine? Is there any good reason why a remote login should have the authority to kick out a console login?
Sure, we can make up excuses like,"Maybe I left my session logged on at the office and now I need to login from home." Is that like not locking your doors because you might have left the keys in the house? It's just not bright.
You don't make it very clear whether he would still have been able to log into your box if it wasn't through Remote Desktop - if he could, I don't really see why you're so suprised.
I'm not surprised that he could authenticate with out domain server. I'm surprised that RDC is enabled by default. I'm surprised that a remote login has the ability to kick a console login. That's just not security smart by any stretch of the imagination.
Get a grip -- anyone reading this that has worked with a complex software product can tell you that these sorts of upgrades inevitably involve gitches -- even more so where the vendor (Microsoft) isn't able to test all possible operating scenarios (i.e. combinations of vendor hardware and software).
Debian Sid has no problem updating everything on my system on a daily basis, breaks nothing, and doesn't cost $200/license.
I heard that SP2 enabled the Windows firewall. I don't know if it does or not.
I have a default install of WinXP on my work laptop. SP2 came out from automatic updates and was installed on my machine. Two days later IT sent out a memo not to install it until they had finished testing it. Oops. Oh well. I'll just not say anything.
A coworker and I were messing around at work and he was RDC'ing to a server upstairs. I asked him how often he used RDC and pattered on about my sshd on my home boxen but that I hadn't set up the remote X server. Eventually we both blinked and I asked him if he'd ever tried RDC'ing into another employees system. He shrugged and we decided that he should try to RDC to my computer across the office.
So he did. Now I had SP2 installed (sshhh!) but, amazingly, he was given a login box. When he entered his u/p combo, authenticating through our domain server so as not to deal with local accounts on my machine, he was presented with a box which warned (pph): "The user blahnameblah is currently logged in on system BLAHNAMEBLAH-CPU. If you continue that user will be logged out."
WTH? He's RDC'ing into *MY* system and HE gets the option to kick me out so that he can login? Well... we tested it, it worked. I was logged out and he happily logged in to browse my files. What's more, his account was magically created on my system and the default policy was to allow him the access to modify all the files on MY HD.
Some security... thanks SP2... or whatever.
might actually be the result of a bad decision you made
.com founded by VCs.
Let's take this apart piece by piece, then.
When I was 2 years old my parents set up a college fund for me. By the time I was 18 that fund held enough money to fully fund my college tuition for four years and my projected housing cost for three years. My parents also had ownership of my grandparents house in order to spare my grandparents the weight of the property taxes. Upon entering college I qualified for the same academic scholarships as most of my peers but, because of my fund and because my parents owned two houses (on paper) I did not qualify for many of the assistance scholarships and grants that my peers qualified for even when the parents of those peers had higher salaries than my parents. While my peers were receiving monthly stipends from their parents (which mine couldn't afford) and additional stipends from assistance grants and scholarships I was receiving none of those extra perks. That typically amounted to about $200/mo. Is that my bad decision for that fund? No. Is that my bad decision for the way FAFSA determines need and eligibility for assistance? No. To be perfectly honest I didn't know about the dual house ownership until several years after I had graduated. I had always wondered why I didn't qualify for the same assistance that my peers, from more affluent families, qualified for. Is that my bad decision? No. If you take the subsidies that my peers received, at around $200/mo., and call them "cost of living" then I had an additional $1800 per school year in "living debt" through no bad decision of my own. Is $200/mo. unreasonable? Absolutely not. Even stingy employers will allow $15/day for "per diem" when they put their employees on the road. That's $7200 in "living debt" after four years of college. Is it unreasonable for a person to require $7200 to live for four years? Hardly. At 19% interest, however, it's predatory and nearly impossible to pay back. Did I work a summer job to try and pay it back? Yes. Did my parents charge me rent while I was home working over the summer? You bet--$200/mo. I busted my hump working on wood floors at $9/hour in the summer heat (gymnasiums are rarely air conditioned in summer and full riding floor sanders generate enormous amounts of heat) while many of my peers worked candy internships in IT at $15/hour with parents who weren't charging rent. Was I in IT? No. Is that my bad decision? Absolutely not. We can't all be in IT at a time when the stock market was favoring every junk
Your four years in the military puts you in the category of my peers. My peers were subsidized by grants and assistance (not academic) scholarships which I didn't qualify for because my tuition and housing was paid. You were subsidized by the military. That's four years of $200/mo. That's all. Nothing more.
Extend this to the first year out of college. I am now working on a job to pay back "living debt", at 19% interest, that the majority of my peers don't have. While many of my peers were offered signing bonuses in the IT field, my field was in chemistry which was not offering signing bonuses. Is that a bad decision on my part? Absolutely not. Right away my peers, who don't have the living debt due to their subsidy grants and eligibility for other scholarships, are averaging another $5k in signing bonus over me. While they can take the puny first year salary to live and save, I'm using my first year salary to try and pay back "living debt". Is this a bad decision on my part? No. It only shows that the FAFSA eligibility was poisoned by what seemed to be a smart decision by my parents to set up a college fund for me and their ownership of two houses to spare my grandparents the burden of property tax. Are these bad decisions? In hindsight perhaps we shouldn't have been so responsible and taken the route that everyone else did--not create a college fund and allow the state (and taxpayers) to take the burden of
might actually be the result of a bad decision you made
Or it might not. In an group of 100 people 5 people become enormously wealthy, 50 people subsist, and 45 people live in debt. You can postulate that the 45 people all made bad decisions or you can use your brain and think that the 5 people at the top are working the statistics of the economy. Just because you're one of the 55 people that subsist doesn't prove that the other 45 are making bad decisions.
I grew up with my mother working her behind off at a minimum wage job
Most Americans cannot subsist on a minimum wage job. Apparently your beginnings started out at a more favorable income/expense ratio.
At the point in time I made my decision to stop using credit, I was out of the Air Force, supporting my wife and newborn son on a gross salary of $20k a year, in the San Francisco Bay Area, where cost of living is one of the highest in the country
It sounds like you had some other factors which were helping you along. The majority of Americans would quickly slip into debt in that situation.
1 in 5 Americans who do not have any cards at all
Would that be the 1 in 5 who are being subsidized with other forms of assistance? Or would that be the 1 in 5 who are independently wealthy because they're siphoning someone else's wage? Perhaps it's the 1 in 5 who are in an age group that places them beyond the boom of the credit/debt industry.
In fact, only one in twenty Americans have a balance of $8k or more
Of the 19/20 who are left, how many of them are moving closer to paying the balance off and how many are slipping farther into debt? It's easy to spin the numbers game any way you want.
Another 31.2% of the households the Fed surveyed paid off their most recent credit card bills in full
Which does not say they paid all of their credit card bills in full and also does not give an indication for how many paid the credit cards by consolidating their debt into another form. It still doesn't prove that the 68.8% who didn't pay in full were making bad decisions.
That's 55% of Americans who carried no credit card debt at all at the time of the survey
Only if you assume those who paid the most recent bill in full had only one credit card. What of the subject population distribution? Those who are working their butts off to try to catch up to bills aren't going to be home to answer the phone when the Fed calls. Many people who are living in debt may not even have a published telephone number to avoid the harassment.
Everything is everyone's fault but your own in your world.
All other things being equal I've put just as much effort into staying ahead of bills as any of my peers. My peers who are in debt feel much the same way that I do. My peers who aren't in debt often concede that they were given opportunities which the rest of us didn't have. Apparently you don't share their objective honesty preferring instead to cling to your browbeating stick.
You're being self-righteous and ignoring the wholesale industry of legal predatory lending. You're also ignoring the 10% drop in average American wages from '00-'02 which makes it statistically less likely to pay back debt.
I agree with what you've said about responsibility but it lacks perspective within the insurance industry. The insurance industry penalizes people for every minor infraction. In today's society people always call the police for every ding and scratch because they can't get the insurance company to honor their contract without a police report. Every police report generates unwanted attention. I can't count the number of times that people would bump us, my father and the other driver would look over the damage, shrug, and everyone would continue on their way because it wasn't worth the hassle with the insurance company and the deductible. In today's world, if someone so much as leaves a fingerprint on your car, the police are called and even the person who wasn't at fault sees an increase in their premiums.
.com boom-bust? As usual the middle-class consumer is paying out on both ends to support profit margins which they never see while CEOs, VPs, and VCs set their own salaries, reap the profits, and dump the defunct businesses on bankruptcy insurance. Add insult to injury when one heeds the IRS report that average middle class wages have DECREASED 10% from '00-'02 while inflation continues to plod ahead.
And we're still treating the insurance companies like auto insurance is in its own little vacuum. We know it's not. Why is it so difficult to see that a good majority of why the auto and health insurance industry is robbing us blind is because they're recouping the losses on the business insurance and lawsuits that came out of the
It's a scam.
Still no support for the Radeon 7500.
Gatos and DRI both provide functionality. It's not really necessary, though, the stock kmod radeon and stock Xf86 radeon drivers work.
Except for that pesky s-video port. The kernel has no trouble putting the console screen on the TV but only the VESA driver is successful for Xf86. The VESA driver isn't fast enough to watch DVDs.
Pick and choose, I've tried all the combos:
kmod: 2.4.18-2.6.7, Gatos, DRI
drivers: Xf86 4.1.0-Xf4.3.0, Gatos, DRI
Put the kmod on the x-axis and the drivers on the y-axis and make a matrix. I've tried them all. Only the VESA driver will correctly get the sync values for the s-video port with a Radeon 7500. I've tried the math to convert VESA screenmodes to modelines with no luck.
You will get nothing because I have no assets
I doubt it. If the insurance industry wouldn't be scamming us blind we'd probably all have some assets. Additionally, if the insurance/financial industry wasn't scamming us all blind, then their family/friends would be able to pull together to aid each other in the time of trouble.
When I was a child people would change lanes or rear-end us once every three or four months. It was common back in the early 80s. It happened to everyone. No one thought much of it. Just another $200 to fix a dent or paint or whatever. My father did most of the work himself. The neat thing was that everyone usually had $200 because we weren't being bent over a barrel by insurance companies and investment brokers.
I'd be driving illegally, maybe I'd go to jail, and you'd feel better
YUCK. I'd never feel better about being responsible for sending a non-violent (maybe absent-minded, but certainly not violent) offender to jail. Do you realize what that would do to your employment prospects for the rest of your life? And why? Because you dented my passenger door?
If you sold your car the day before and market dictated that the price would be $880, the insurance company is not going to pay you $1500. That's not indemnity
When you come back to reality you'll realize that the whole Blue Book Value system is a scam to justify a scam. Every company, every attorney, and every salesman in the world will base everything they say and do on the BBV but the moment that we, as consumers, want to purchase something the BBV is nowhere to be found. Fair market price? It's set by the delineation of the haves vs. the have-nots. Compensation value? Oh... now _THAT'S_ BBV.
KMA.
Hey... wait... I just had a deja-vu... like I was typing the exact same thing. All of my work is released under GNU GPL. You have to at least give me credit.