I don't know about you, but I enjoy buying books and reading them... and then passing them on to another when they no longer serve to enlighten me.
Is it so difficult to read nowadays? I have taken online classes and I've truly missed the advantages of a good teacher and a great piece of educational literature. (Granted I have grown weary of scrolling through text files and watching flash movies.)
I miss getting handouts and highlighting relevant content, writing my own notes and then going back years later and reading them to see what new insight I had compared to my old way of thinking. Sometimes I find my thinking evolved, sometimes I wonder how I was so brilliant then and not so much now.
Perhaps you should deal with teaching students to read and write their own language. Afterwards they can learn how the big blue E takes them to "the internet (tm)".
I miss going back to handwritten notes when in the middle of doing a full install of some obscure software that throws my main workstation on the fritz.
Oh well, I guess I'm more old fashioned than I had thought.
** Try this. Goto www.openoffice.org and download a copy of open office. Have your teachers type up their handouts in OO.org opendoc format. Have them distribute to ALL their different OS using students. Students can easilly open them with whatever software they use, I hear even Microsoft has caved in and included support for OpenDoc. Perhaps if worried they can print the output in PDF format, which is readable by both Adobe Acrobat and Foxit's piece of software (look it up... free for non comm use I think). "http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_eula.htm" (free usage) Linux also has PLENTY of PDF viewers, XPDF GPDF, etc. This way you let me still PRINT my notes. (on fully recycled paper of course:)
Actually I don't know why he'd need 5TB or 7TB, but with SATA drives this would be relatively easy to achieve since most of these are relatively huge. (SCSI drives by comparison get extremely expensive for even 36GB drives ($200.00 or so a piece, plus host controller, etc). Prices may have changed since I worked IT, but I recall even the refurbs being very pricey. SATA drives at $200.00 can give you a pretty nice 400 GB or so. As you've said, this can easilly solve your "cost" issues.
SCSI Drives 1000G (rounded off 1TB) / 36G = 28 drives * $200.00 = $5600.00 USD (excluding shipping, RAID towers, etc). This is presuming a STRIPE RAID 0... if you're doing this via RAID 5 or 0+1 all I can say is "YE GODS!!!" ** YOu will also have to price out extra controllers (you will need 3 ribbon cables, plus terminators, etc to install all 28 drives, 15 devices per chain plus terminators. Don't forget the massive power requirements.
SATA Drives 1000G (rounded off 1TB) / 400G = 3 drives * $200.00 = $600.00 USD plus 3 SATA cables and ONE host adapter. If you make it a RAID 5 or 0+1 you will need at least 5 drives to make it solid, but you can see that if you were to reach 7 TB, the drive amount would shoot up significantly, requiring several RAID towers for the SCSI setup.
Pricewatch currently has the SATA 400GB setups at $205.00 for the lowest. By comparison the cheapest 36G SCSI drives are Hitachi Ultrastars at 138.00 per drive at Zip Zoom Fly. Next one is 236.00 USD and 556.00 respectively. Don't forget cables and cooling since those high RPM ultrastars really heat up (I owned several deskstars and the latest ones died of heatstroke).
The major thing about both SCSI and FC was that both of those designs imply greater redundance. Serial ATA provides one major thing which Parallel ATA could almost do. High THROUGHPUT... but no redundancy and higher CPU usage than SCSI chipsets.
Transactions make significant use of CPU resources in ATA based systems. The only cards I am aware of that move ATA transactions to hardware come from Advansys and Adaptec, both use SCSI chipsets but ATA translators. Available for about 190.00 each but hard to find.
On a PII 450 the chipset usage on a softraid was almost 40% when at full throttle with 3 P/ATA drives. Same system went down a tidbit using a PCI card (not sure why actually, presumably some operations are offboarded by the PCI card thus reducing the overhead, but don't quote me on it).
The main problem with all of this is cost vs redundancy vs speed... which brings us to the old issue we found with Cars. the FAST, GOOD, CHEAP pyramid.
FAST
/ \
GOOD-----CHEAP
CHEAP + FAST != GOOD GOOD + CHEAP != FAST FAST + GOOD != CHEAP
My suggestion since my own buying experience with FC is limited (read as NONEXISTANT) I can only tell you what I've learned on SCSI vs PATA/SATA rigs.
SATA systems that do not use an Adaptec chipset are usually mere translators that make use of CPU resources to monitor drive activities. 3Ware cards seem to transcend this limitation rather well and they provide a fine hardware RAID setup for ATA drives. PATA systems that do not use an Adaptec chipset are likewise mere translators. SCSI interfaces make use of a hardware chipset that monitors and controls each drive... thus relieving the CPU of being abused by drive intensive operations (think of a high provile FTP or CVS/Subversion server and you get the idea of what would happen to the CPU if it was forced to perform the duties of server processor AND software RAID monitor).
Onto bandwidth. Serial ATA setups suffer from a similar issue I've found with almost all setups. Without separate controllers, SATA setups and PATA setups split up the total bandwidth to the maximum number of active drives. More recent controllers available via SATA may have fixed this issue, but in general, I've found that my systems slowed down in data transfer rate when using drives or arrays found on the same card. SCSI seems to bypass this completely by providing each drive with a dedicated pipeline, but I am not sure what the set ammount is, there is an issue however, as some of the older chipsets DO have some issues when handling a full set of 15 drives. The primer on the article link at Seagate is on the money in their LVD vs FC link/FAQ. You will most likely require a backplane and full setup, and it probably won't be cheap. The big difference will be that FC setups are usually bulletproof, and can support MASSIVE amounts of drives (128 or 125 I think...), with the only thing being faster being a VERY high end Solid State drive or array. Those also have a very small amount of latency, but as far as speed, setup a good ram drive on a dedicated memory bank with backup battery and EMP shielding... okay, that's way expensive:)
~D
PS - I understand that I've not answered your question but I should've simplified this for everyone else out there.
I'm not underestimating them chief, I'm saddened that my parents chose to bring me here. To be quite honest, I'm saddened that "here" is ruled instead of represented, and that everything they based their decision to bring us here upon, was a lie, a lie meant to get very well educated immigrants to come here and swell the ranks of American Middle classers (the way we were treated our first few years was deplorable, but I digress.)
I am saddened that most Americans that I've met, and heard from, and watched on the news, and... well you probably get it, have been lazy complacent types who try to find any one halfway good thing to make them feel better about the downward spiral. I also watched the other half scream about their "christian values" and it disgusts me that religion has been allowed to fuck the free minded folks who've evolved beyond the need to have someone tell them exactly what to believe.
I watched it back home, I believe they called it "Consolidation of Power of the Communist Government". We ran from it. Where do we run when the power is consolidated everywhere and fighting is impossible because they have plenty of flag waving brainwashed idiots upholding their cause and ready to kill you??
I speak English, Spanish (and a few others) WITHOUT ANY ACCENT!! (I can also emulate scottish, german, russian, indian/arab and southern redneck style accents on English when necessary.)
I can write 3 fluent languages, as well as relatively staccato and wildly punctuated C++, PHP and a little Python...
That's no longer a middle class thing if you're having to budget yourself, no longer "eat well" (read as eat a lot), now is it? That shows restraint, and I don't recall that being in the American Citizen Middle Class brochure I read when I was a kid (nor was it on the citizenship exam, though they were VERY keen on finding out if I was a terrorist or supported the VIOLENT OVERTHROW of governments).
(Technically, if anyone at the INS actually READ the Constitution, or the Declaration of Independence, they would change the exam, but I digress.)
(Reading current events, I'd say they ought to change it, since they NEED people who support violent overthrowing of governments, obviously this is exactly what is being done currently to destabilize areas that can provide cheap labor for a few dozen more years after China shuts out the spout.)
Yep, If Lenovo shows itself successful, and conquers the PC market (as it may well do, considering the Chinese learn engrish about as well as our Indian friends...)
And since most americans ONLY shop on price and nothing else... well, you get the idea.
Before I quit, 2 (3 shortly after) were turned down (we had the odd privilege of listening to conferences/interviews as we passed by the conf room:)
Anyways, as it turns out, they had stood up to "ye olde psychopath" (namely the boss, and he was a half geek half satanic minion, very hard to mess with.) They had said they wouldn't work weekends without pay, and premium 1.5X pay at that. Seems the big boss wasn't much on negociation.
Legally it is, yes. However, a lot of places step all over their employees, and when they grow a backbone (like I did, thankfully I had already resigned) they fire you. Yes, I was fired with a week to go to my end of employment, so no big loss there. I got upset with all sorts of shit being said in my name, and demanded that it stop.
Plus, how the hell has the work week for IT ppl been declining when we're required to sleep with our cellphones two out of two to three weekends?? (or more often when someone gets a backbone/aka fired.)
Ever get called on a nightly server outage (lovely windows) in the middle of the fucking night?!? (I mean that quite literally, lady's halfway to orgasm and cellphone starts vibrating on the nightstand... oh yeah... talk about "sorry honey, I'll just finish up and leave you with your bunny to finish yourself, work called and the goddamn windows farm is offline again".) Oh yeah... sadly, that's not just a joke:(
Virginia Tech, first 4 years on grants, last year on loans... most expenses from last year:( rest were loan repays, grants paid for mostly everything though.
Perhaps I overgeneralized, but if you're not having trouble paying it off and keeping the kids in college (especially since all the public colleges lost their funding so bush could pay the war with it, I should know my bro was still in school and suddenly it all went away and he was stuck paying a higher tuition with only loans to help, tuition shot up several thousand the year bush killed that college support).
Still I know plenty of people with 200k+interest mortgages who are paying out the ass... one's refinanced over and over and even with a friend taking up the loan from his mom back when we were in high school (he only charged her 4% I think, instead of 8% like the bank) all of her kids were still helping out with bills because of the tremendous expense her home was on her. (You're forgetting that most "middle classers" also overspend and have the following list
House Payment. House MAINTENANCE expenses. (power, water, trash, lawn, roof, bugs, etc) Car Payment. CAR MAINTENANCE (oil, repairs, brakes, inspections, etc). Insurance (health, home, auto) Cable TV. Internet. Telephone. Cellphone (show me one "middle class" employee with a white collar job who doesn't have a cell... and you'll greatly surprise me, I don't count.) Food. Entertainment (movies, eating out, etc). Gas (most have BIG cars or SUV's or pickups, which suck up lots of gas) Pet expenses (okay this one's not a must, but plenty of people have pets, rich, middle or poor).
There's plenty more, but lets not forget another...
PROPERTY TAXES CAR TAXES!!! INCOME TAXES.
I make almost 50k / year.
I lose over 25% of that. (I was losing 24% when I make just shy of 40 k last year). I haven't bought a house because I find paying interest rates to be antithetical to my way of thinking.
Do the math on the above expenses using any online calculator, and show me how a 30k to 50k person can make all those ends meet, especially when adjusting all those expenses to having KIDS... plus the kid maintenance costs, since most "middle class" "fat and happy" people are usually married and with kids.
Show me one person who can make it with less than 50k and a bigger house than a 200k one, while still MAINTAINING the middle class way of life in the United States.
(now I'll throw in a curve ball, show me one who can properly maintain unemployment without selling the house, say, losing a limb, or having some permanent injury or change of health making them unemployable.... hmmm... either loss of job or permanent unemployability can quickly put that house into foreclosure... and there goes your american dream.)
I've gained 10 lbs since I started driving, but I'm still around 187 to 190 lbs, instead of 215 or 220... the upside is that I'm more BUFF than fat... which is good.
I hear what you say tho. I think I noticed one thing when I got fat. I had to fight to be complacent about everything in order to retain my "good nature" (believe no such thing, I am quite neurotic and very draconian about my own self).
I expect high things of others, but I expect perfection of myself, and strive for it. I know I'll reach it very far off or never, but if I do not try, I have nobody to blame but myself.
I found that when I had let myself get out of shape when I worked IT, and I was "fat and happy" as that poster I replied to earlier said he/she was, almost all my mental faculties had slowed down, as had my physical abilities.
I got back in shape and I noticed that not only my mood, but everything from attention to intuition and memory are all working much better.
I use my lunch breaks to study The Art Of War, Bushido, Oakeshott's Catalog O' Swords, and get some paralells drawn between what Sun Tzu said, and what the idiots in chief and entourage are screwing up doing opposite what one of the world's greatest generals outlined as "the way to conduct a successful and profitable war".
I will post in my journal about it, I'm working on writing up a treatise on The Art of War and its connections to our "modern" and "civilized" world.
Leave your rich neighborhood sometime. If you live in the high class neighborhood, you are not middle class. If your home is worth more than 200k you're upper class:)
I should know, I've done a lot of different work, I"ve travelled the world, and I've not been just a truck driver (now) or IT guy (before) I've also done sales, managed a construction business and done a LOT of mechanical and plumbing work as a kid.
I've had the "priviledge" to work in some of those "middle class" homes. When the Audi is out front, the Jaguar out back and they are "fat and happy" they're not middle class anymore. Especially when they judge the world by how their neighbors and friends behave and look.
You really need to provide me with more examples. I live in a town where there are "middle class" "upper class" and LOTS of lower class neighborhoods. Strangely, most of those Middle Class as you call them, are FILTHY RICH retirees that buy jaguars and bmw's cash down. Strangely, everyone calls them middle class, most of these guys are either real estate or former IT guys or executives from the.com days who weren't stupid enough to stick around when things went south. On the other hand there are VERY FEW owner operators of small businesses in those neighborhoods. Most of those are outside the gated neighborhoods, and despite what YOU seem to think, all the ones I talked to smile to your face, but once you get talking you find out just how scared they are that their savings won't be enough, or that they'll get sick and insurance or not, the mortgage won't get paid since they bought more house than they can afford just out of their savings. Of course there are those who don't worry, and then those who don't get checkups or don't know enough about medicine to do their own (I usually do, but I've got field aid and diagnosis training).
Its okay though, your blackberry likely died today, so I won't worry much, you can post on slashdot, but you can't email me till you get home after your relaxing job. (What do you do by the way.)
I never said I was unhappy, I simply said I'm shocked that there are so many blind, ignorant and often stupid people living all around me.
Hell tho, it worked in the days of MacCartyism... all of you "we americans are perfect happy fat people" were exactly the ones who destroyed all those innocent lives.
~D
PS - I don't seem to recall being happy when I was "fat" though. (215 - 220 lbs, 5'10") After I shed about 35 to 40 lbs however, I feel happy, especially since most of the health problems I had developed from weight and lack of exercise went away once I got in shape (no more back pains, lasted longer during sex, wasn't as tired, slept really good, moved faster, etc)... but hey... I'm not a native born american, I guess being "fat and happy" don't go hand in hand for me:)
Actually it was up here on slashdot, and on CNN sometime ago... Halliburton was either one or two, AIPAC was up there, and then MS... and then the next year, we hear NOTHING anymore about the DOJ and the MS case.
Strange indeed.
~D
PS - I work long hours, research it yourself:) I wouldn't've said it if I hadn't heard it somewhere else.
As I recall from my childhood, being unemployed, was a crime.
Also, my father was a very... ummm... troublemaking type of individual, he jumped a LOT of jobs, nobody MADE a job for him, he did everything from weapons design, aircraft design and was even part of the cosmonaut program (sadly when they wanted to send him to russia so he would give all the credit to the russians, he withdrew). The "party" didn't like him, so he eventually decided to come to america, because he heard it was great here. And for a good deal of years it was. But now I watch as it becomes the same type of place as it was back home. Only with more unemployment and lots of homeless people.
We once had a saying "shhhh... the walls have eyes and ears".
Odd, I don't seem to recall Ken Lay or Martha Stewart going to the same prison you or I would go to if WE stole money or destroyed a company or someone's life.
Yet you say people would demand their heads.
Exactly why our fascist capitalism is just like communism... some are more equal than others.
Do the math, but you MAY notice that even if the old USSR is not around anymore, all of the countries there are still heavilly influenced by Russia. Russia is what I meant to say, and if you check, they bled their satellites dry while keeping their resources virtually untouched.
Trust me on this one, I used to live in one, and we used to watch them load everything from iron, coal, copper, manufactured goods, food, gold, silver, (who only knows what else) and ship it off on cargo trains, and it always headed to the russians... nowhere else.
Microsoft SHOULD have been split up. However, when they were the #3 highest donor on the campaign contribution list to G Dubbya, you cannot really expect that ANYONE would dare touch them. (both elections mind you).
Also, with Alito getting setup on the supreme court, you've now got majority conservatives in EVERY branch of the government... I guess there go the "checks and balances" eh? As Yoda would say here, "fucked, we are being".
Nothing more to say, have I. At least not in response to that comment. I will eagerly await all of MH42's replies to my comments when I return from my run today. Again... VERY WELL PUT!
I'm curious, when you're doing 10 people's job, and fearing for your livelihood, you still have time to sleep AND play?? And your health isn't completely dependant on supplements, pills and constant doctor visits?
Plus, only an IDIOT would see the USSR shedding dead weight as "winning the cold war", if you haven't read up on it lately, the USSR is sitting on arguably more of EVERY natural resource than we are... they have oil, lumber, mineral deposits and a working industry. They didn't lose the war, and what they can't produce, they have allies willing to sell to them, and both India and China view them with a lot less hostility than they do us.
While on the subject, the cold war was a money drain meant to keep sucking up the GDP of an otherwise prosperous nation (US). Can you comprehend what those resources might've been used for if not for nationalistic flag waving fools like yourself believing in the regime? At least in the eastern block , people weren't as gullible to think that politicians were kind gentle folks who were only out to help the people... (but at least, to some extent, nobody I knew was left homeless, and their family was there for them when needed).
But who am I kidding, I have an expert world traveller such as yourself to educate me on how "we won the cold war" and how "we are the greatest country in the world" (and we are, well, as long as China and Japan keep buying up our treasury notes to keep our fiat money economy floating, before they get tired of it and let us become the biggest third world country out there.)
You really should read the Art of War (and I don't mean the movie), I mean that fine little literary piece by Sun Tzu.
"All warfare is based on deception." ~Sun Tzu
You might want to keep this one in mind, because right now, the only ones deceived in this whole set of farces (Cold War, War on Drugs, War on Terror, etc) is the american PEOPLE.
I predicted a lot of what happened in Iraq to the letter. I even predicted that Bush would use 9/11 as a pretext to attack several unrelated nations and that there would be enough gullibles here to support him. My family called me a cook, now they look at me and ask "how did you know"...
This will be revisited when YOU are on the other end of the blade:)
Remember your words when you've spent 40k and 5 years of college learning a subject which recently became the target of massive outsourcing and layoffs.
I look forward to seeing if you make it past that, I have:) but that doesn't mean I don't look out for my fellow man, which, I believe, is what makes me a better citizen than you. I don't help others only when it gives me a tax break.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know about you, but I enjoy buying books and reading them... and then passing them on to another when they no longer serve to enlighten me.
:)
Is it so difficult to read nowadays? I have taken online classes and I've truly missed the advantages of a good teacher and a great piece of educational literature. (Granted I have grown weary of scrolling through text files and watching flash movies.)
I miss getting handouts and highlighting relevant content, writing my own notes and then going back years later and reading them to see what new insight I had compared to my old way of thinking. Sometimes I find my thinking evolved, sometimes I wonder how I was so brilliant then and not so much now.
Perhaps you should deal with teaching students to read and write their own language. Afterwards they can learn how the big blue E takes them to "the internet (tm)".
I miss going back to handwritten notes when in the middle of doing a full install of some obscure software that throws my main workstation on the fritz.
Oh well, I guess I'm more old fashioned than I had thought.
** Try this. Goto www.openoffice.org and download a copy of open office. Have your teachers type up their handouts in OO.org opendoc format. Have them distribute to ALL their different OS using students. Students can easilly open them with whatever software they use, I hear even Microsoft has caved in and included support for OpenDoc. Perhaps if worried they can print the output in PDF format, which is readable by both Adobe Acrobat and Foxit's piece of software (look it up... free for non comm use I think). "http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_eula.htm" (free usage) Linux also has PLENTY of PDF viewers, XPDF GPDF, etc. This way you let me still PRINT my notes. (on fully recycled paper of course
~D
Actually I don't know why he'd need 5TB or 7TB, but with SATA drives this would be relatively easy to achieve since most of these are relatively huge. (SCSI drives by comparison get extremely expensive for even 36GB drives ($200.00 or so a piece, plus host controller, etc). Prices may have changed since I worked IT, but I recall even the refurbs being very pricey. SATA drives at $200.00 can give you a pretty nice 400 GB or so. As you've said, this can easilly solve your "cost" issues.
SCSI Drives
1000G (rounded off 1TB) / 36G = 28 drives * $200.00 = $5600.00 USD (excluding shipping, RAID towers, etc). This is presuming a STRIPE RAID 0... if you're doing this via RAID 5 or 0+1 all I can say is "YE GODS!!!"
** YOu will also have to price out extra controllers (you will need 3 ribbon cables, plus terminators, etc to install all 28 drives, 15 devices per chain plus terminators. Don't forget the massive power requirements.
SATA Drives
1000G (rounded off 1TB) / 400G = 3 drives * $200.00 = $600.00 USD plus 3 SATA cables and ONE host adapter. If you make it a RAID 5 or 0+1 you will need at least 5 drives to make it solid, but you can see that if you were to reach 7 TB, the drive amount would shoot up significantly, requiring several RAID towers for the SCSI setup.
Pricewatch currently has the SATA 400GB setups at $205.00 for the lowest.
By comparison the cheapest 36G SCSI drives are Hitachi Ultrastars at 138.00 per drive at Zip Zoom Fly. Next one is 236.00 USD and 556.00 respectively. Don't forget cables and cooling since those high RPM ultrastars really heat up (I owned several deskstars and the latest ones died of heatstroke).
~D
The major thing about both SCSI and FC was that both of those designs imply greater redundance. Serial ATA provides one major thing which Parallel ATA could almost do. High THROUGHPUT... but no redundancy and higher CPU usage than SCSI chipsets.
:)
Transactions make significant use of CPU resources in ATA based systems. The only cards I am aware of that move ATA transactions to hardware come from Advansys and Adaptec, both use SCSI chipsets but ATA translators. Available for about 190.00 each but hard to find.
On a PII 450 the chipset usage on a softraid was almost 40% when at full throttle with 3 P/ATA drives. Same system went down a tidbit using a PCI card (not sure why actually, presumably some operations are offboarded by the PCI card thus reducing the overhead, but don't quote me on it).
The main problem with all of this is cost vs redundancy vs speed... which brings us to the old issue we found with Cars. the FAST, GOOD, CHEAP pyramid.
FAST
/ \
GOOD-----CHEAP
CHEAP + FAST != GOOD
GOOD + CHEAP != FAST
FAST + GOOD != CHEAP
My suggestion since my own buying experience with FC is limited (read as NONEXISTANT) I can only tell you what I've learned on SCSI vs PATA/SATA rigs.
SATA systems that do not use an Adaptec chipset are usually mere translators that make use of CPU resources to monitor drive activities. 3Ware cards seem to transcend this limitation rather well and they provide a fine hardware RAID setup for ATA drives.
PATA systems that do not use an Adaptec chipset are likewise mere translators.
SCSI interfaces make use of a hardware chipset that monitors and controls each drive... thus relieving the CPU of being abused by drive intensive operations (think of a high provile FTP or CVS/Subversion server and you get the idea of what would happen to the CPU if it was forced to perform the duties of server processor AND software RAID monitor).
Onto bandwidth. Serial ATA setups suffer from a similar issue I've found with almost all setups. Without separate controllers, SATA setups and PATA setups split up the total bandwidth to the maximum number of active drives. More recent controllers available via SATA may have fixed this issue, but in general, I've found that my systems slowed down in data transfer rate when using drives or arrays found on the same card. SCSI seems to bypass this completely by providing each drive with a dedicated pipeline, but I am not sure what the set ammount is, there is an issue however, as some of the older chipsets DO have some issues when handling a full set of 15 drives. The primer on the article link at Seagate is on the money in their LVD vs FC link/FAQ. You will most likely require a backplane and full setup, and it probably won't be cheap. The big difference will be that FC setups are usually bulletproof, and can support MASSIVE amounts of drives (128 or 125 I think...), with the only thing being faster being a VERY high end Solid State drive or array. Those also have a very small amount of latency, but as far as speed, setup a good ram drive on a dedicated memory bank with backup battery and EMP shielding... okay, that's way expensive
~D
PS - I understand that I've not answered your question but I should've simplified this for everyone else out there.
Damn, my last piece was an H&K...
Oh well.
I never said we americans don't have taste, I simply said that the average layman goes to walmart to get the cheapest shit he can.
I don't shop that way, but most do.
~D
I'm not underestimating them chief, I'm saddened that my parents chose to bring me here. To be quite honest, I'm saddened that "here" is ruled instead of represented, and that everything they based their decision to bring us here upon, was a lie, a lie meant to get very well educated immigrants to come here and swell the ranks of American Middle classers (the way we were treated our first few years was deplorable, but I digress.)
I am saddened that most Americans that I've met, and heard from, and watched on the news, and... well you probably get it, have been lazy complacent types who try to find any one halfway good thing to make them feel better about the downward spiral. I also watched the other half scream about their "christian values" and it disgusts me that religion has been allowed to fuck the free minded folks who've evolved beyond the need to have someone tell them exactly what to believe.
I watched it back home, I believe they called it "Consolidation of Power of the Communist Government". We ran from it. Where do we run when the power is consolidated everywhere and fighting is impossible because they have plenty of flag waving brainwashed idiots upholding their cause and ready to kill you??
~D
I speak English, Spanish (and a few others) WITHOUT ANY ACCENT!! (I can also emulate scottish, german, russian, indian/arab and southern redneck style accents on English when necessary.)
I can write 3 fluent languages, as well as relatively staccato and wildly punctuated C++, PHP and a little Python...
My question is... what is THEIR excuse?
~D
That's no longer a middle class thing if you're having to budget yourself, no longer "eat well" (read as eat a lot), now is it? That shows restraint, and I don't recall that being in the American Citizen Middle Class brochure I read when I was a kid (nor was it on the citizenship exam, though they were VERY keen on finding out if I was a terrorist or supported the VIOLENT OVERTHROW of governments).
(Technically, if anyone at the INS actually READ the Constitution, or the Declaration of Independence, they would change the exam, but I digress.)
(Reading current events, I'd say they ought to change it, since they NEED people who support violent overthrowing of governments, obviously this is exactly what is being done currently to destabilize areas that can provide cheap labor for a few dozen more years after China shuts out the spout.)
~D
Yep, If Lenovo shows itself successful, and conquers the PC market (as it may well do, considering the Chinese learn engrish about as well as our Indian friends...)
And since most americans ONLY shop on price and nothing else... well, you get the idea.
~D
Before I quit, 2 (3 shortly after) were turned down (we had the odd privilege of listening to conferences/interviews as we passed by the conf room :)
Anyways, as it turns out, they had stood up to "ye olde psychopath" (namely the boss, and he was a half geek half satanic minion, very hard to mess with.) They had said they wouldn't work weekends without pay, and premium 1.5X pay at that. Seems the big boss wasn't much on negociation.
~D
Well...
:(
Legally it is, yes. However, a lot of places step all over their employees, and when they grow a backbone (like I did, thankfully I had already resigned) they fire you. Yes, I was fired with a week to go to my end of employment, so no big loss there. I got upset with all sorts of shit being said in my name, and demanded that it stop.
Plus, how the hell has the work week for IT ppl been declining when we're required to sleep with our cellphones two out of two to three weekends?? (or more often when someone gets a backbone/aka fired.)
Ever get called on a nightly server outage (lovely windows) in the middle of the fucking night?!? (I mean that quite literally, lady's halfway to orgasm and cellphone starts vibrating on the nightstand... oh yeah... talk about "sorry honey, I'll just finish up and leave you with your bunny to finish yourself, work called and the goddamn windows farm is offline again".) Oh yeah... sadly, that's not just a joke
~D
Virginia Tech, first 4 years on grants, last year on loans... most expenses from last year :( rest were loan repays, grants paid for mostly everything though.
Computer Science Grad.
~D
Perhaps I overgeneralized, but if you're not having trouble paying it off and keeping the kids in college (especially since all the public colleges lost their funding so bush could pay the war with it, I should know my bro was still in school and suddenly it all went away and he was stuck paying a higher tuition with only loans to help, tuition shot up several thousand the year bush killed that college support).
Still I know plenty of people with 200k+interest mortgages who are paying out the ass... one's refinanced over and over and even with a friend taking up the loan from his mom back when we were in high school (he only charged her 4% I think, instead of 8% like the bank) all of her kids were still helping out with bills because of the tremendous expense her home was on her. (You're forgetting that most "middle classers" also overspend and have the following list
House Payment.
House MAINTENANCE expenses. (power, water, trash, lawn, roof, bugs, etc)
Car Payment.
CAR MAINTENANCE (oil, repairs, brakes, inspections, etc).
Insurance (health, home, auto)
Cable TV.
Internet.
Telephone.
Cellphone (show me one "middle class" employee with a white collar job who doesn't have a cell... and you'll greatly surprise me, I don't count.)
Food.
Entertainment (movies, eating out, etc).
Gas (most have BIG cars or SUV's or pickups, which suck up lots of gas)
Pet expenses (okay this one's not a must, but plenty of people have pets, rich, middle or poor).
There's plenty more, but lets not forget another...
PROPERTY TAXES
CAR TAXES!!!
INCOME TAXES.
I make almost 50k / year.
I lose over 25% of that. (I was losing 24% when I make just shy of 40 k last year).
I haven't bought a house because I find paying interest rates to be antithetical to my way of thinking.
Do the math on the above expenses using any online calculator, and show me how a 30k to 50k person can make all those ends meet, especially when adjusting all those expenses to having KIDS... plus the kid maintenance costs, since most "middle class" "fat and happy" people are usually married and with kids.
Show me one person who can make it with less than 50k and a bigger house than a 200k one, while still MAINTAINING the middle class way of life in the United States.
(now I'll throw in a curve ball, show me one who can properly maintain unemployment without selling the house, say, losing a limb, or having some permanent injury or change of health making them unemployable.... hmmm... either loss of job or permanent unemployability can quickly put that house into foreclosure... and there goes your american dream.)
~D
I've gained 10 lbs since I started driving, but I'm still around 187 to 190 lbs, instead of 215 or 220... the upside is that I'm more BUFF than fat... which is good.
I hear what you say tho. I think I noticed one thing when I got fat. I had to fight to be complacent about everything in order to retain my "good nature" (believe no such thing, I am quite neurotic and very draconian about my own self).
I expect high things of others, but I expect perfection of myself, and strive for it. I know I'll reach it very far off or never, but if I do not try, I have nobody to blame but myself.
~D
I found that when I had let myself get out of shape when I worked IT, and I was "fat and happy" as that poster I replied to earlier said he/she was, almost all my mental faculties had slowed down, as had my physical abilities.
I got back in shape and I noticed that not only my mood, but everything from attention to intuition and memory are all working much better.
I use my lunch breaks to study The Art Of War, Bushido, Oakeshott's Catalog O' Swords, and get some paralells drawn between what Sun Tzu said, and what the idiots in chief and entourage are screwing up doing opposite what one of the world's greatest generals outlined as "the way to conduct a successful and profitable war".
I will post in my journal about it, I'm working on writing up a treatise on The Art of War and its connections to our "modern" and "civilized" world.
~D
Leave your rich neighborhood sometime. If you live in the high class neighborhood, you are not middle class. If your home is worth more than 200k you're upper class :)
.com days who weren't stupid enough to stick around when things went south. On the other hand there are VERY FEW owner operators of small businesses in those neighborhoods. Most of those are outside the gated neighborhoods, and despite what YOU seem to think, all the ones I talked to smile to your face, but once you get talking you find out just how scared they are that their savings won't be enough, or that they'll get sick and insurance or not, the mortgage won't get paid since they bought more house than they can afford just out of their savings. Of course there are those who don't worry, and then those who don't get checkups or don't know enough about medicine to do their own (I usually do, but I've got field aid and diagnosis training).
:)
I should know, I've done a lot of different work, I"ve travelled the world, and I've not been just a truck driver (now) or IT guy (before) I've also done sales, managed a construction business and done a LOT of mechanical and plumbing work as a kid.
I've had the "priviledge" to work in some of those "middle class" homes. When the Audi is out front, the Jaguar out back and they are "fat and happy" they're not middle class anymore. Especially when they judge the world by how their neighbors and friends behave and look.
You really need to provide me with more examples. I live in a town where there are "middle class" "upper class" and LOTS of lower class neighborhoods. Strangely, most of those Middle Class as you call them, are FILTHY RICH retirees that buy jaguars and bmw's cash down. Strangely, everyone calls them middle class, most of these guys are either real estate or former IT guys or executives from the
Its okay though, your blackberry likely died today, so I won't worry much, you can post on slashdot, but you can't email me till you get home after your relaxing job. (What do you do by the way.)
I never said I was unhappy, I simply said I'm shocked that there are so many blind, ignorant and often stupid people living all around me.
Hell tho, it worked in the days of MacCartyism... all of you "we americans are perfect happy fat people" were exactly the ones who destroyed all those innocent lives.
~D
PS - I don't seem to recall being happy when I was "fat" though. (215 - 220 lbs, 5'10") After I shed about 35 to 40 lbs however, I feel happy, especially since most of the health problems I had developed from weight and lack of exercise went away once I got in shape (no more back pains, lasted longer during sex, wasn't as tired, slept really good, moved faster, etc)... but hey... I'm not a native born american, I guess being "fat and happy" don't go hand in hand for me
Actually it was up here on slashdot, and on CNN sometime ago... Halliburton was either one or two, AIPAC was up there, and then MS... and then the next year, we hear NOTHING anymore about the DOJ and the MS case.
:) I wouldn't've said it if I hadn't heard it somewhere else.
Strange indeed.
~D
PS - I work long hours, research it yourself
As I recall from my childhood, being unemployed, was a crime.
Also, my father was a very... ummm... troublemaking type of individual, he jumped a LOT of jobs, nobody MADE a job for him, he did everything from weapons design, aircraft design and was even part of the cosmonaut program (sadly when they wanted to send him to russia so he would give all the credit to the russians, he withdrew). The "party" didn't like him, so he eventually decided to come to america, because he heard it was great here. And for a good deal of years it was. But now I watch as it becomes the same type of place as it was back home. Only with more unemployment and lots of homeless people.
We once had a saying "shhhh... the walls have eyes and ears".
~D
Odd, I don't seem to recall Ken Lay or Martha Stewart going to the same prison you or I would go to if WE stole money or destroyed a company or someone's life.
Yet you say people would demand their heads.
Exactly why our fascist capitalism is just like communism... some are more equal than others.
~D
My father was an aeronautical and mechanical engineer (plus physicist when he taught) and my mother was a research biologist/microbiologist.
I strongly DOUBT their jobs were less complex or intensive than those of a spyware cleaning monkey (which is probably 90% of IT jobs left in the US).
~D
Do the math, but you MAY notice that even if the old USSR is not around anymore, all of the countries there are still heavilly influenced by Russia. Russia is what I meant to say, and if you check, they bled their satellites dry while keeping their resources virtually untouched.
Trust me on this one, I used to live in one, and we used to watch them load everything from iron, coal, copper, manufactured goods, food, gold, silver, (who only knows what else) and ship it off on cargo trains, and it always headed to the russians... nowhere else.
~D
yep, mispelling. cook = kook.
:) still drowsy.
its 0200... quite late, I am going to work too
Lates.
~D
Microsoft SHOULD have been split up. However, when they were the #3 highest donor on the campaign contribution list to G Dubbya, you cannot really expect that ANYONE would dare touch them. (both elections mind you).
Also, with Alito getting setup on the supreme court, you've now got majority conservatives in EVERY branch of the government... I guess there go the "checks and balances" eh? As Yoda would say here, "fucked, we are being".
~D
Nothing more to say, have I. At least not in response to that comment. I will eagerly await all of MH42's replies to my comments when I return from my run today. Again... VERY WELL PUT!
~D
I'm curious, when you're doing 10 people's job, and fearing for your livelihood, you still have time to sleep AND play?? And your health isn't completely dependant on supplements, pills and constant doctor visits?
Plus, only an IDIOT would see the USSR shedding dead weight as "winning the cold war", if you haven't read up on it lately, the USSR is sitting on arguably more of EVERY natural resource than we are... they have oil, lumber, mineral deposits and a working industry. They didn't lose the war, and what they can't produce, they have allies willing to sell to them, and both India and China view them with a lot less hostility than they do us.
While on the subject, the cold war was a money drain meant to keep sucking up the GDP of an otherwise prosperous nation (US). Can you comprehend what those resources might've been used for if not for nationalistic flag waving fools like yourself believing in the regime? At least in the eastern block , people weren't as gullible to think that politicians were kind gentle folks who were only out to help the people... (but at least, to some extent, nobody I knew was left homeless, and their family was there for them when needed).
But who am I kidding, I have an expert world traveller such as yourself to educate me on how "we won the cold war" and how "we are the greatest country in the world" (and we are, well, as long as China and Japan keep buying up our treasury notes to keep our fiat money economy floating, before they get tired of it and let us become the biggest third world country out there.)
You really should read the Art of War (and I don't mean the movie), I mean that fine little literary piece by Sun Tzu.
"All warfare is based on deception." ~Sun Tzu
You might want to keep this one in mind, because right now, the only ones deceived in this whole set of farces (Cold War, War on Drugs, War on Terror, etc) is the american PEOPLE.
I predicted a lot of what happened in Iraq to the letter. I even predicted that Bush would use 9/11 as a pretext to attack several unrelated nations and that there would be enough gullibles here to support him. My family called me a cook, now they look at me and ask "how did you know"...
How? I read, I listen, I learn and I THINK!!
~D
This will be revisited when YOU are on the other end of the blade :)
:) but that doesn't mean I don't look out for my fellow man, which, I believe, is what makes me a better citizen than you. I don't help others only when it gives me a tax break.
Remember your words when you've spent 40k and 5 years of college learning a subject which recently became the target of massive outsourcing and layoffs.
I look forward to seeing if you make it past that, I have
~D