Whatever happened for using the best tool for the job? I am happy to deploy Apache webservers when I'm running some Java stuff, just as happily as I deploy IIS servers for.NET stuff.
The problem is with this guy, and legions of others, is that they look at using one versus another as important. Enterprises don't. They look at what they want to accomplish, look at the TCO, look at how long it takes to get there, and make a decision. Yea, for enterprise deployment of things that means they run Windows, Active Directory, and related print/file/etc services. Linux might be out there as a fileshare or FTP or something, but it's used strategically.
In terms of the consumer device area well, Linux is free and having a bajillion shitty devices doesn't mean that it has "won". Look at the problems on Android right now. Granted, Windows Phone isn't doing well either but there are distinct benefits with going with one over the other. I'll let the consumer decide. And what's really winning? Apple, as closed source and proprietary a company as you can get.
So seriously if you are comparing Linux and Windows and hoping that one "wins", you can probably bet that you'll never be in the position to influence the decision. As I said, enterprises choose what makes sense, and they don't give a shit if it's closed, open, proprietary, etc... they have dollars on the line, and time counts heartily.
Respectfully disagree... yes, I agree many jobs require an entry level degree and tech jobs are no exception to that. This is the reason that most people go to school, so that they can get a job. However, it's the people that go to college and graduate with a degree that won't get them a great job like I have. And on a related note, a degree is meaningless if you suck at the job, so you can't get to where I am now without putting in a lot of hard work.
That aside... these folks are hand to mouth. They may not be bankrupt, but they are what they call the "working poor". This generation will have a vast amount of the "working poor" as opposed to prior generations. When that generation went to school, tuition was $5000 a year for a GOOD school. The costs have risen dramatically, at a far faster rate than inflation or income, and the disparity isn't going to really hit us until some years later. We are putting the next generation into debt for the benefit of a few (Wall Street and others) in the name of profit, and when we fast forward the clock a little and find that the US has one of the weakest middle classes, the worst rates of innovation and manufacturing, and a steadily increasing criminal element, we'll wonder where we all went wrong.
It starts with education and a strong middle class.
I worked for 10 years to bring it down substantially, and working in the financial sector lent me the ability to get 20-30% bonuses that I used to immediately pay off the other loans I couldn't or didn't consolidate. At the onset, I had about 6 different loans to which I paid about $800 a month, now I'm down to two loans but still pay $450. The key is to pay off all the smallest loans as quickly as possible, and add money towards your payment towards the principle.
The $450 isn't terrible for me, but I have other costs like kids, wife, car payments, etc that could definitely use a $450/mo addition. How much more formula, diapers, groceries, entertainment, etc, would $450 get me? Quite a bit, I bet. But I can manage just fine. It's when you graduate with the 65k in debt and only make 40k that the $800 a month will kill you.
I graduated from a good private university, went off to get a tech job in the finance sector and make very good money. Having been down that road now, I realize what all colleges do -- "for profit" or not. They are businesses out to make money.
First, they steer you towards bad loans. For example in New Jersey, the financial aid office steers you towards "NJClass" loans that have a 7% interest rate. You can do better if you go down to your local bank, or even shop around online. But the college gets a cut from this, so they offer you the NJClass loan. The prices you pay, especially for private schools, don't come NEAR what you will be worth in any amount of time. If you assume no scholarships (and I had a half scholarship -- more on that later), a good school can run you anywhere from $15k to $40k a year -- the former for a public state school, and the latter for a private school. Things are variable of course, whether you commute or dorm, but the minimum you can look at nowadays is about $15k, even commuting.
I commuted to a private university with a half scholarship, and 5 years and a major change later, I graduated 65k in debt from school. I however, am one of the luckier ones as I have a real skill and work in an industry that while full of bad ethics, pays really well. I still pay about $450 a month on my loans, and that's after consolidating and everything else. If you figure that a college graduate that comes out of school will make less than a six figure salary, that $450 is going to be debilitating to pay back. And odds are, it will be even higher just because financial firms have gotten more twisted and turned over the years. Remember how the sub prime mortgages got bundled up and sold off as good loans to other people? It happens with school loans TOO. The bank has no reason to keep the loans, and in the 10 years I've been paying back my loans, I have had six different lenders.
The only thing we can do as parents (if you are one, as I am), is to steer your kids to making good choices and spend less money on their education. The return simply doesn't work out well in their favor, especially with the debt load they will likely have to carry. Community college for two years, then a decent school for another two, and graduate with as little debt as possible. I am one of the lucky ones as I said; I have a six figure salary, I have a really good resume, I am good at what I do and I enjoy it to boot. Not everybody is that lucky, and the really unfortunate part is that it will affect their lives in a profound way, while Wall Street (and the industry I work for) will profit handsomely as they help shrink the middle class even more than they already are.
If you want to take a real stand, write your senator and get the allowance for federal student loans raised to a higher level. It's easier to repay a 1.5 or 2% loan than a 7% with variable interest and lots of legalese you can't follow.
Let's face the facts -- Nokia is in a race to the bottom of the smartphone market. You can say what you will, but Nokia's reign came from building sturdy handsets that took a beating in any part of the world. Go to the Asian markets and you'll find a genuine love for Nokia, the brand.
In recent years however, it became more cost effective to buy chinese dumbphones that you can buy 20 of for the price of one Nokia. Nokia's reign starts to erode in name only. Symbian was the first real smartphone OS, but with a lack of apps almost throughout its life, and a lack of big developer ecosystem, it's been stagnant. Meego seems to be a suitable replacement, but how are you going to convince people to produce MORE apps for yet ANOTHER ecosystem?
We're geeks folks -- we care about the Androids of the world, and we care about open source. Consumers however, don't give a flying fuck. They want a phone that works, is reliable (Nokia's speciality), and if it's a smartphone, has a good selection of apps. Despite what people want to say, Microsoft's WP7 ecosystem is growing *fast*. Faster than Android did in its infancy, and they aren't tied to the same problems that Android has with fragmentation. It's a one-size-fits-all UI, and that surprisingly, fits with Nokia's brand as it is. Symbian is largely the same from phone to phone.
This is not "fighting back". This is geeks getting mad about Symbian and Meego getting the boot. Nine shareholders -- I'm sure that the Nokia CEO is shaking in his boots. It's ridiculous that things like this even get traction on Slashdot. Nokia's CEO is making a business decision, and given that a LOT of his compensation comes from the company actually doing WELL, it's a move that he feels is going to give Nokia an edge. Will it work? I don't know, but the variables are in place and are good -- growing developer ecosystem, LEGAL PROTECTION (that Android does *not* afford you -- think about how that weighs in on the cost/benefit analysis), and a lot of weight from MS to push the phone. People forget that since Nokia can now write off advertising, UI/OS development, legal costs... they can cut a lot of fat out of their budget and just return to what the people in the Asian markets loved about them -- making badass, durable, ergonomical phones.
And if they fail that, they will still wind up in the same place they were headed BEFORE the MS agreement -- bankruptcy.
The blogosphere is pretty happy about the move. Engadget and Gizmodo viewers are eager to see the new device(s), and some are ready to buy them.
I know there's a lot of MS hatred here, but sticking with Symbian, which is losing developers at an alarming rate, or going to WP7 which is gaining them at a reasonable rate seems to have some logic behind it. That said, having been through an iPhone, Android (Galaxy S), and now a WP7 phone, I do think that WP7 is quite good. There's stuff missing, but it's not a deal breaker.
Time will tell how this partnership works out, but if they continued on the current course, they'd just be dead in the water. At least this is an attempt to change course from the iceberg.
We lease machines. Apple leases are significantly higher than HP Desktops, and for less performance. For the needs of our marketing department some things required video editing in Premiere and as a result, the better hardware was actually invaluable.
That said, TCO isn't the only way to measure things. When you blow 50% of your departmental budget on Apple stuff, when only 15% is allotted for the "IT" world, you're a moron. But to get apples to apples, we had to spend 35% more than the PC world because of the extra cost of XServe, the desktops, and also specialized support vendors to support it. Nobody in our IT department wanted to bother with >1% of the company, so we outsourced it. To be fair, the vendor that supported our Macs was really good and knowledgeable but they also charged premium prices because well... Apple has premium prices.
As for the work done in Adobe you're right, it depends entirely on the employee, but when the hardware costs are a lot higher to do the same work, you just have a bonehead in charge of the department.
Can't agree more with you. We used XServes because our marketing department felt it would best suit them on the backend -- a totally unfounded note, given they are using it as a file share (and we have lots of *nix servers if they really want it). So their director thought that the XServes were better than any HP device we could get, and we spend $20k on them.
Fast forward, that director got fired for going full Apple, the new director brought in heavy-duty Windows 7 machines so they could get more work done in Adobe's Creative Studio, which oddly enough -- works just as well on a PC as on a Mac. The amount of money that director spent to get Apple products in just for the sake of having them was ultimately what got him canned. Businesses don't care about the logo, they care about the results.
Is the fact that Google doesn't provide legal protection for Android licensees, whereas Microsoft does to its licensees. Samsung is going whole hog with WP7 despite having great success on Android, so it makes me wonder whether or not some of this has a hint of truth.
Of course, it could have none at all too. But the lack of protection is an interesting thing to note.
Granted maybe not in Apple's case since you can't install anything on your own, and I think that's the way they are going to go on the desktop as well -- totally closed off and everything 100% through the App store for desktop and mobile.
Windows won't go that route on the desktop, though they will on the mobile device.
Android is going to take a bit of a hit with the iPhone coming to Verizon, so we'll see how they change their tune to stay competitive.
The reality of Wall Street ripping off the consumer is not far from reality. I work "in the industry" as well (and have, for 10 years), and I've seen and been witness to all kinds of shams and problems that Wall Street is culpable for.
Let's just leave it simply, the average investor doesn't know *anything* about investing. They don't know stocks, bonds, they don't know diversification, they don't know how to change allocations before retirement age for 401ks, etc. But the sad thing is, Wall Street doesn't either. They may know the P/E ratios of firms, the current stock price, and lots of fancy math, but the reality is that a lot of money made on Wall Street isn't in active trading, it's in knowing their customers and playing on that information, and topping it all off with fees. For example, Goldman advises its customers, and the clients lose out, and Goldman wins -- See here. This isn't uncommon.
The simplest secret about Wall Street is that the average investor can forgo using a trading firm, and just invest in an index fund instead (like the S&P). Those funds have very low fees, and require zero understanding about Wall Street. They go up as the economy gets better, they go down as it doesn't. And less than 20% of firms out there can *BEAT* the S&P, meaning that 80% actually do worse. In addition, they charge higher fees. So if you throw your money into the index fund, you don't have to know anything, and you do just as well as 80%+ of the firms out there, and keep the fees they'd charge you to just meet the same ROR in your pocket.
Sadly, you'll never hear about this on the Street, because it would ruin their whole scam. The only thing you need to know is that 5-10 years before retirement age, pull out of indexes and put into guaranteed products so you don't get thrashed on your retirement day, and you'll be a happy camper.
With the amount of influence Wall Street has in our government, in our economy, it's about due time we start getting them the hell out of the way so that we can do better as a country. I know it sounds cheesy, but it's true.
This is the talking point that right wing blogs and tea party activists love to run for, which usually places the blame squarely on the shoulders of "poor people who don't have enough money to live in that house".
Yea, it's true that the government wanted poor people to get houses. The subprime problem was part of that. But if you think that the Fannie Mae and Freddie Macs of the world are what caused the house of cards to topple, then you're just simply uninformed and really should come back to this discussion with some more facts than what Glenn Beck tells you.
Because if what you say was true, then there would be *no reason* for foreign countries to suffer the SAME type of fallouts and severe declines in economy, since of course... Fannie and Freddie are only in the US. But of course, this would take actually understanding the issue, and since you've already gone the route of thinking regulation = bad and mentioned Fannie and Freddie, I'll resign you to the notion that you have no idea what the hell you're talking about.
No, because there was no regulation on how much the banks could overleverage themselves. They just kept going until *boom*. There was *no* regulation to prevent that from happening.
The fallout from this of course, was to save the financial markets and not the people who suffered as a result of the fallout. So we created bailed them out, which is a pittance compared to the 0 interest loans given to them as WELL.
I'm not going to get embroiled in this debate because if you think that the financial meltdown was because of government regulation, then I have a bridge to nowhere in Alaska to sell you.
This is ridiculous if you understood what caused the whole financial meltdown and the ability for financial firms to increase their assets while the average joe lost theirs.
The problem with the TPM is simple -- they think the Constitution is the only way we can live. This is absolutely ridiculous and almost laughable.
The problem is that the Constitution does not cover the high tech, deeply mathematic equations for how the financial industry operations. If they basically gamble, there's no way to prosecute them for this, there's no way to even fine them because most people can't even understand what the HELL they are doing.
Conservatism as you put it, and "Constitution first" is another way of putting it as "less government", but that's really not the problem. Less government or more, either way they are not there to benefit you. They benefit themselves, and themselves only. I used to think the TPM was a bunch of rednecks but I've since changed that stance and realized that they are all about lowering government interference, but then go as far as to say things like healthcare shouldn't be universal, that the rich make jobs, and espouse ideals that not only don't exist, but ones that aren't even relevant to the troubles we have today.
You'd be best suited to put down the Constitution for a while, and pick up a finance book and start learning about how you are getting screwed. Yea, the FCC plays into this as well, but it's all driven by the idea that corporations own everything.
Corporate cronyism is the banner that the Republicans carry, and the Tea Party carries the banner for the Republicans. Look at Rand Paul -- he talked big about all the things that the Tea Party wanted to hear, and as soon as he got elected started to reverse everything to fit the mold of the party. In fact, all the *extreme* Tea Party candidates didn't even get elected. Wonder why that is?
Slashdot Mirror
If I can have my World of Warcraft account secured with a two factor authentication, I should be able to do this for Facebook. Seriously.
I can recommend a good therapist...
Whatever happened for using the best tool for the job? I am happy to deploy Apache webservers when I'm running some Java stuff, just as happily as I deploy IIS servers for .NET stuff.
The problem is with this guy, and legions of others, is that they look at using one versus another as important. Enterprises don't. They look at what they want to accomplish, look at the TCO, look at how long it takes to get there, and make a decision. Yea, for enterprise deployment of things that means they run Windows, Active Directory, and related print/file/etc services. Linux might be out there as a fileshare or FTP or something, but it's used strategically.
In terms of the consumer device area well, Linux is free and having a bajillion shitty devices doesn't mean that it has "won". Look at the problems on Android right now. Granted, Windows Phone isn't doing well either but there are distinct benefits with going with one over the other. I'll let the consumer decide. And what's really winning? Apple, as closed source and proprietary a company as you can get.
So seriously if you are comparing Linux and Windows and hoping that one "wins", you can probably bet that you'll never be in the position to influence the decision. As I said, enterprises choose what makes sense, and they don't give a shit if it's closed, open, proprietary, etc... they have dollars on the line, and time counts heartily.
Sorry, I just saw some irony in it is all.
Heh, funny that.
Using the Tracking Protection Lists, you can get very simple adblock mechanism for IE9 here:
http://easylist.adblockplus.org/en/#easyprivacytpl
It doesn't let you whitelist anything, but if you need something quick and simple, this is the Easylist TPL and it works very well.
Respectfully disagree... yes, I agree many jobs require an entry level degree and tech jobs are no exception to that. This is the reason that most people go to school, so that they can get a job. However, it's the people that go to college and graduate with a degree that won't get them a great job like I have. And on a related note, a degree is meaningless if you suck at the job, so you can't get to where I am now without putting in a lot of hard work.
That aside... these folks are hand to mouth. They may not be bankrupt, but they are what they call the "working poor". This generation will have a vast amount of the "working poor" as opposed to prior generations. When that generation went to school, tuition was $5000 a year for a GOOD school. The costs have risen dramatically, at a far faster rate than inflation or income, and the disparity isn't going to really hit us until some years later. We are putting the next generation into debt for the benefit of a few (Wall Street and others) in the name of profit, and when we fast forward the clock a little and find that the US has one of the weakest middle classes, the worst rates of innovation and manufacturing, and a steadily increasing criminal element, we'll wonder where we all went wrong.
It starts with education and a strong middle class.
So I'll watch less sports than I do now, which is basically none anyway.
It's not 65k any more :)
I worked for 10 years to bring it down substantially, and working in the financial sector lent me the ability to get 20-30% bonuses that I used to immediately pay off the other loans I couldn't or didn't consolidate. At the onset, I had about 6 different loans to which I paid about $800 a month, now I'm down to two loans but still pay $450. The key is to pay off all the smallest loans as quickly as possible, and add money towards your payment towards the principle.
The $450 isn't terrible for me, but I have other costs like kids, wife, car payments, etc that could definitely use a $450/mo addition. How much more formula, diapers, groceries, entertainment, etc, would $450 get me? Quite a bit, I bet. But I can manage just fine. It's when you graduate with the 65k in debt and only make 40k that the $800 a month will kill you.
I graduated from a good private university, went off to get a tech job in the finance sector and make very good money. Having been down that road now, I realize what all colleges do -- "for profit" or not. They are businesses out to make money.
First, they steer you towards bad loans. For example in New Jersey, the financial aid office steers you towards "NJClass" loans that have a 7% interest rate. You can do better if you go down to your local bank, or even shop around online. But the college gets a cut from this, so they offer you the NJClass loan. The prices you pay, especially for private schools, don't come NEAR what you will be worth in any amount of time. If you assume no scholarships (and I had a half scholarship -- more on that later), a good school can run you anywhere from $15k to $40k a year -- the former for a public state school, and the latter for a private school. Things are variable of course, whether you commute or dorm, but the minimum you can look at nowadays is about $15k, even commuting.
I commuted to a private university with a half scholarship, and 5 years and a major change later, I graduated 65k in debt from school. I however, am one of the luckier ones as I have a real skill and work in an industry that while full of bad ethics, pays really well. I still pay about $450 a month on my loans, and that's after consolidating and everything else. If you figure that a college graduate that comes out of school will make less than a six figure salary, that $450 is going to be debilitating to pay back. And odds are, it will be even higher just because financial firms have gotten more twisted and turned over the years. Remember how the sub prime mortgages got bundled up and sold off as good loans to other people? It happens with school loans TOO. The bank has no reason to keep the loans, and in the 10 years I've been paying back my loans, I have had six different lenders.
The only thing we can do as parents (if you are one, as I am), is to steer your kids to making good choices and spend less money on their education. The return simply doesn't work out well in their favor, especially with the debt load they will likely have to carry. Community college for two years, then a decent school for another two, and graduate with as little debt as possible. I am one of the lucky ones as I said; I have a six figure salary, I have a really good resume, I am good at what I do and I enjoy it to boot. Not everybody is that lucky, and the really unfortunate part is that it will affect their lives in a profound way, while Wall Street (and the industry I work for) will profit handsomely as they help shrink the middle class even more than they already are.
If you want to take a real stand, write your senator and get the allowance for federal student loans raised to a higher level. It's easier to repay a 1.5 or 2% loan than a 7% with variable interest and lots of legalese you can't follow.
Let's face the facts -- Nokia is in a race to the bottom of the smartphone market. You can say what you will, but Nokia's reign came from building sturdy handsets that took a beating in any part of the world. Go to the Asian markets and you'll find a genuine love for Nokia, the brand.
In recent years however, it became more cost effective to buy chinese dumbphones that you can buy 20 of for the price of one Nokia. Nokia's reign starts to erode in name only. Symbian was the first real smartphone OS, but with a lack of apps almost throughout its life, and a lack of big developer ecosystem, it's been stagnant. Meego seems to be a suitable replacement, but how are you going to convince people to produce MORE apps for yet ANOTHER ecosystem?
We're geeks folks -- we care about the Androids of the world, and we care about open source. Consumers however, don't give a flying fuck. They want a phone that works, is reliable (Nokia's speciality), and if it's a smartphone, has a good selection of apps. Despite what people want to say, Microsoft's WP7 ecosystem is growing *fast*. Faster than Android did in its infancy, and they aren't tied to the same problems that Android has with fragmentation. It's a one-size-fits-all UI, and that surprisingly, fits with Nokia's brand as it is. Symbian is largely the same from phone to phone.
This is not "fighting back". This is geeks getting mad about Symbian and Meego getting the boot. Nine shareholders -- I'm sure that the Nokia CEO is shaking in his boots. It's ridiculous that things like this even get traction on Slashdot. Nokia's CEO is making a business decision, and given that a LOT of his compensation comes from the company actually doing WELL, it's a move that he feels is going to give Nokia an edge. Will it work? I don't know, but the variables are in place and are good -- growing developer ecosystem, LEGAL PROTECTION (that Android does *not* afford you -- think about how that weighs in on the cost/benefit analysis), and a lot of weight from MS to push the phone. People forget that since Nokia can now write off advertising, UI/OS development, legal costs... they can cut a lot of fat out of their budget and just return to what the people in the Asian markets loved about them -- making badass, durable, ergonomical phones.
And if they fail that, they will still wind up in the same place they were headed BEFORE the MS agreement -- bankruptcy.
That video is pretty damn cool.
The blogosphere is pretty happy about the move. Engadget and Gizmodo viewers are eager to see the new device(s), and some are ready to buy them.
I know there's a lot of MS hatred here, but sticking with Symbian, which is losing developers at an alarming rate, or going to WP7 which is gaining them at a reasonable rate seems to have some logic behind it. That said, having been through an iPhone, Android (Galaxy S), and now a WP7 phone, I do think that WP7 is quite good. There's stuff missing, but it's not a deal breaker.
Time will tell how this partnership works out, but if they continued on the current course, they'd just be dead in the water. At least this is an attempt to change course from the iceberg.
We lease machines. Apple leases are significantly higher than HP Desktops, and for less performance. For the needs of our marketing department some things required video editing in Premiere and as a result, the better hardware was actually invaluable.
That said, TCO isn't the only way to measure things. When you blow 50% of your departmental budget on Apple stuff, when only 15% is allotted for the "IT" world, you're a moron. But to get apples to apples, we had to spend 35% more than the PC world because of the extra cost of XServe, the desktops, and also specialized support vendors to support it. Nobody in our IT department wanted to bother with >1% of the company, so we outsourced it. To be fair, the vendor that supported our Macs was really good and knowledgeable but they also charged premium prices because well... Apple has premium prices.
As for the work done in Adobe you're right, it depends entirely on the employee, but when the hardware costs are a lot higher to do the same work, you just have a bonehead in charge of the department.
Can't agree more with you. We used XServes because our marketing department felt it would best suit them on the backend -- a totally unfounded note, given they are using it as a file share (and we have lots of *nix servers if they really want it). So their director thought that the XServes were better than any HP device we could get, and we spend $20k on them.
Fast forward, that director got fired for going full Apple, the new director brought in heavy-duty Windows 7 machines so they could get more work done in Adobe's Creative Studio, which oddly enough -- works just as well on a PC as on a Mac. The amount of money that director spent to get Apple products in just for the sake of having them was ultimately what got him canned. Businesses don't care about the logo, they care about the results.
Is the fact that Google doesn't provide legal protection for Android licensees, whereas Microsoft does to its licensees. Samsung is going whole hog with WP7 despite having great success on Android, so it makes me wonder whether or not some of this has a hint of truth.
Of course, it could have none at all too. But the lack of protection is an interesting thing to note.
Granted maybe not in Apple's case since you can't install anything on your own, and I think that's the way they are going to go on the desktop as well -- totally closed off and everything 100% through the App store for desktop and mobile.
Windows won't go that route on the desktop, though they will on the mobile device.
Android is going to take a bit of a hit with the iPhone coming to Verizon, so we'll see how they change their tune to stay competitive.
Send in the Irish. The dead cost nothing.
With JUST AT&T as a carrier.
When Verizon gets the iPhone, I say that the market share proposition shifts big towards iPhone.
The reality of Wall Street ripping off the consumer is not far from reality. I work "in the industry" as well (and have, for 10 years), and I've seen and been witness to all kinds of shams and problems that Wall Street is culpable for.
Let's just leave it simply, the average investor doesn't know *anything* about investing. They don't know stocks, bonds, they don't know diversification, they don't know how to change allocations before retirement age for 401ks, etc. But the sad thing is, Wall Street doesn't either. They may know the P/E ratios of firms, the current stock price, and lots of fancy math, but the reality is that a lot of money made on Wall Street isn't in active trading, it's in knowing their customers and playing on that information, and topping it all off with fees. For example, Goldman advises its customers, and the clients lose out, and Goldman wins -- See here. This isn't uncommon.
The simplest secret about Wall Street is that the average investor can forgo using a trading firm, and just invest in an index fund instead (like the S&P). Those funds have very low fees, and require zero understanding about Wall Street. They go up as the economy gets better, they go down as it doesn't. And less than 20% of firms out there can *BEAT* the S&P, meaning that 80% actually do worse. In addition, they charge higher fees. So if you throw your money into the index fund, you don't have to know anything, and you do just as well as 80%+ of the firms out there, and keep the fees they'd charge you to just meet the same ROR in your pocket.
Sadly, you'll never hear about this on the Street, because it would ruin their whole scam. The only thing you need to know is that 5-10 years before retirement age, pull out of indexes and put into guaranteed products so you don't get thrashed on your retirement day, and you'll be a happy camper.
With the amount of influence Wall Street has in our government, in our economy, it's about due time we start getting them the hell out of the way so that we can do better as a country. I know it sounds cheesy, but it's true.
However being part of the alpha I am almost laughing at what they are accomplishing thus far.
*facepalm*
This is the talking point that right wing blogs and tea party activists love to run for, which usually places the blame squarely on the shoulders of "poor people who don't have enough money to live in that house".
Yea, it's true that the government wanted poor people to get houses. The subprime problem was part of that. But if you think that the Fannie Mae and Freddie Macs of the world are what caused the house of cards to topple, then you're just simply uninformed and really should come back to this discussion with some more facts than what Glenn Beck tells you.
Because if what you say was true, then there would be *no reason* for foreign countries to suffer the SAME type of fallouts and severe declines in economy, since of course... Fannie and Freddie are only in the US. But of course, this would take actually understanding the issue, and since you've already gone the route of thinking regulation = bad and mentioned Fannie and Freddie, I'll resign you to the notion that you have no idea what the hell you're talking about.
No, because there was no regulation on how much the banks could overleverage themselves. They just kept going until *boom*. There was *no* regulation to prevent that from happening.
The fallout from this of course, was to save the financial markets and not the people who suffered as a result of the fallout. So we created bailed them out, which is a pittance compared to the 0 interest loans given to them as WELL.
I'm not going to get embroiled in this debate because if you think that the financial meltdown was because of government regulation, then I have a bridge to nowhere in Alaska to sell you.
This is ridiculous if you understood what caused the whole financial meltdown and the ability for financial firms to increase their assets while the average joe lost theirs.
Regulation is needed.
The problem with the TPM is simple -- they think the Constitution is the only way we can live. This is absolutely ridiculous and almost laughable.
The problem is that the Constitution does not cover the high tech, deeply mathematic equations for how the financial industry operations. If they basically gamble, there's no way to prosecute them for this, there's no way to even fine them because most people can't even understand what the HELL they are doing.
Conservatism as you put it, and "Constitution first" is another way of putting it as "less government", but that's really not the problem. Less government or more, either way they are not there to benefit you. They benefit themselves, and themselves only. I used to think the TPM was a bunch of rednecks but I've since changed that stance and realized that they are all about lowering government interference, but then go as far as to say things like healthcare shouldn't be universal, that the rich make jobs, and espouse ideals that not only don't exist, but ones that aren't even relevant to the troubles we have today.
You'd be best suited to put down the Constitution for a while, and pick up a finance book and start learning about how you are getting screwed. Yea, the FCC plays into this as well, but it's all driven by the idea that corporations own everything.
Corporate cronyism is the banner that the Republicans carry, and the Tea Party carries the banner for the Republicans. Look at Rand Paul -- he talked big about all the things that the Tea Party wanted to hear, and as soon as he got elected started to reverse everything to fit the mold of the party. In fact, all the *extreme* Tea Party candidates didn't even get elected. Wonder why that is?