Let's try again, industry publications pay good money to gather salary information all across the industry. The salary surveys regularly have Unix admins being paid more than Windows admins at all levels. This is objective evidence, not what you see, not what I see, what statistically valid surveys see all across the US. If you can't understand that, maybe you should stop working at CompUSA so many hours and take a statistics course.
If you actually look at the evidence, Unix knowledge gets you better pay than equivalent Windows knowledge.
Why not get the best of both worlds and just have Mac OS X? It's got Unix power and stability and nice GUI to boot. Coming March 24th, to a PPC computer near you!
You should read some salary surveys. Unix admins are paid more than MS admins. Unless you want your kids in the secretarial pool, I wouldn't bother with Windows.
As far as Mac is concerned, March 24th puts Apple into the Unix camp so what's the difference in terms of learning Mac or Linux?
Actually, Apple's NetBoot facility is a terminal solution and is recommended for education/lab situations. You don't even need a CD or a HD, the OS boots off the network. Windows has Windows Terminal Server which does something similar.
Of all the solutions, Linux is cheapest, Mac comes next (no CAL payments) and Windows is the most expensive solution.
It's a little difficult to run such studies because so few governments are stupid enough to raise environmental standards enough to impoverish their lower and middle classes.
It is quite telling though, that when the Clinton administration started trying to put environmental standards increases as conditions for trade deals, Mexico and all the other poor countries that were offered better access to US markets in exchange for this turned them down specifically because it would hurt their poor. In fact, a popular theory among 3rd world nations is that environmentalism is just another way that the 1st world is trying to keep them down.
DB
Re:Think H2 is dirt cheap. No. Taxes will xfer ove
on
Hydrogen Powered Cars
·
· Score: 2
Differential tax regimes are tough to maintain. The reason that they color diesel/home heating oil is specifically to make it as easy as dipping a stick in your tank to spot a tax evader. But what realistic regime are you going to do for a gas fuel? Opening a pressurized tank of gas is certainly going to be more dangerous than a non-pressurized liquid tank. Is it possible? Sure, but it's a great FUD point for tax opponents.
Another thing to think of, heating oil is much less common than natural gas heating and the people they check up on for violations are overwhelmingly commercial drivers. Natural gas cars are likely to be overwhelmingly passenger vehicles. A punitive tax regime that doesn't let any of the cost benefits get passed on to the consumer is simply not going to fly in this day and age. Differential taxation based purely on what appliance I put my gas into (heater, grill, or car) is a political non-starter.
If people go across the border to get canadian toilets, they certainly are going to do it for Canadian DVD software since it would just be an internet download away (a la PGPi). Hardware players that are multi/no zone would also be a popular export.
There's money to be made fella. Just get a really good attorney and some venture capital...
Malthus would have been proud of your post. The problem is, Malthus was wrong. Supply does not increase arithmetically as demand increases geometrically. The question on all of these power issues is are we willing to accept the tradeoffs that keep us from population crashing. Nuclear fission (CANDU type or newer) is quite safe and it's certainly capable of fulfilling the necessary power needs you state but there is a large portion of the US population that just won't accept it. Perhaps the CA experience will change their minds...
If you look beyond the headlines, you will see that most advanced societies are plateauing or crashing their populations. Japan, Europe, even the US is only maintaining its numbers via immigration. The key is to get those darn 3rd worlders something more productive to do than have that 8th kid. That means helping them develop a rich society where children are no longer viewed as primarily an economic asset.
Yes, government intervention can cause clean to be profitable, juicing up investment in clean technologies. However the fields of human endeavor that are profitable become smaller.
There is an alternative. Spend your own money and that of like minded people on funding the research and leave the poor marginal workers out of it. They are the ones who are going to get shafted as their cost of living rises to unbearable levels.
Heartless bastard
Re:Think H2 is dirt cheap. No. Taxes will xfer ove
on
Hydrogen Powered Cars
·
· Score: 1
You are assuming that hydrogen production is going to be centralized like gasoline production is today. But anybody can go out and make hydrogen, it's just too expensive right now. If hydrogen is cheaper to produce taxes will be limited to something less than the cost differential between centralized hydrogen production and made at home hydrogen production. Anything more and they are going to lose control of the revenue stream because people will just make their own and not pay the tax.
Natural gas, another alternative fuel (and a lot closer to production if the Dean Kamen rumors are to be believed) is even more resistant to taxation. Most people in the urbs/suburbs have it piped to their houses already and use it for heat. You can imagine the political resistance to making it so that granny can't heat her shack on her fixed income...
Don't think the government/corporate insiders are omnipotent because that's their biggest edge.
Not all countries have illegalized hemp production. The trick is to create a business in hemp in a country with a free trade agreement with the US. Sue under NAFTA or whatever for the illegal trade protection.
Similarly for energy production, if hydrogen, natural gas or whatever is being suppressed in the 1st world by some conspiracy, go to the 2nd or 3rs world where they don't give a hoot, they just want cheap power. When some no-reputation country starts riding up the economic charts on the back of alternate fuels, the conspiracy isn't going to hold. And the best part is you get rich in the process!
The technologists are working on the problem of expensive editing tools. Apple's got a great contribution in the movie arena w/built in firewire and Final Cut Pro which does most of what a $40k Avid system does but w/software costs of $1k and hardware costs of $3-10k. Sure, this isn't cheap stuff for a truly broke movie fan but it does bring professional level editing to the middle/upper middle class. The entire "digital lifestyle" theme that Apple is moving into is going to give music recorders the same set of high quality opportunities.
Beyond that, keep an eye on the articles regarding printing circuitry at home. In the relative near future, you are going to be able to print up your own computers and cheaply go in any direction you wish. Poof! goodbye government/industry capability to control.
Sure the printed stuff is going to be 15 years behind the times but guess what, for a majority of garage bands a home studio for $5-10k that is at a level of professionalism equivelent to 1985 is plenty good enough for them.
I have thought about it from both ends, thank you very much. Have you?
An inheritance is a particular form of gift that only occurs at death. Now I understand why they do gift taxes so that people can't just get around income taxes by giving and receiving gifts. But an inheritance gift isn't done for income tax avoidance purposes so that's not an issue. On top of that, have you thought of what these kind of financial concerns do to people in the grieving process? The kids want to fulfill dad's wishes to keep his dream alive but they have a very short countdown before they have to pay a crippling tax payment. Unless you are one of the super rich who can afford the expensive attorneys to finesse this, the process dumps a big burden to the grieving family. Now that's really fair and moral isn't it?
Furthermore, the estate tax collects just about enough money to pay for the people who harrass grieving families into paying it. As a revenue generator, it's a wash. So guess what, the money doesn't go to the kids, it doesn't go to the tar-paper shack family on the other side of the tracks, it goes to pay treasury agents who have an upper-middle class income derived from financially pressuring families who have just suffered the loss of a parent. Oh I can see morality written all over this, can't you?
The death tax is a form of institutionalized class envy enforced through state action. The last time I checked, envy, in all its forms, was considered a sin by most moral systems and certainly any system that I'd want to follow.
I suspect that you really don't know the libertarian line here and have a fairly prejudiced idea about what libertarians believe in. Let me give it to you in a nutshell. Libertarians believe that the government is an institiution that survives by applying violence to accomplish societal goals. Libertarians believe that the number of areas where this is appropriate is small and shrinking and we would like to reduce and eliminate the level of government violence from as many areas of societal action as possible.
The credibility of MSNBC is not particularly high in my book and has not been for quite some time. And as far as court goes, you obviously don't know how blatant they would have to be to actually lose such a case in a US court.
For a long time, people on the left thought that people on the right were immoral and people on the right thought that people on the left were dumb.
In reality, the estate tax is immoral and the principle has no admirable qualities. George Washington was right when he said that government wasn't persuasion, it was force. Forcing people to fork over 55% of a business every generation is just plain evil.
It's irrelevant what the motivations are, whether self-interest, the psychological stress of trust-fund guilt, or just plain old sadism, it just doesn't matter.
The super wealthy who have made it to a certain level don't have to worry about the estate tax because they can afford estate tax planner and lobbyists to take care of things for them personally. At worst, their heirs will have lifetime jobs at fat pay in foundations devoted to the glory of their pappy and live comfortable lives for doing very little. It's those plumbers who have socked away a couple of million while driving old cars that have to worry about the estate tax. Take a look at "The Millionaire Next Door" and the rest of that series to see the real face of the rich who get socked by this tax.
Actually, if you would stop limiting your reading list to the Nation and everything to the left of that, you might just find out that there are decent, honorable Republicans out there just as there are decent honorable Democrats.
As for corporate bribes, the figures are out there and you can find them out on the web. The Democrats get quite a large amount of corporate money, are supported by more multi-millionaires than you might think, and have, in general, just as much vulnerability on the sleazy contributors issue as Republicans.
Put down your ideological blinders and look at the facts. When I did that I became a Libertarian.
It already exists, industrial hemp. Low to no THC, makes great paper, rope, decent cloth, just one problem, it's been illegalized along with drug grade marijuana for the convenience of the drug warriors in the US.
And capital controls get you what exactly? It certainly isn't a cleaner environment or a more friendly workplace. Mostly what it gets you is a lot of bookkeeping lies and people crossing borders with cash. Oh, and a lot of economic inefficiency, otherwise known as pouring resources down a rathole.
And your point is that the military can violate the GPL anytime they like because they are not capable of being held to a contract? Real bright, fella.
You are missing my point. Just by silently boycotting, you aren't getting your point across, whatever your particular point is. The RIAA and MPAA folks are misinterpreting your actions and that leads them to doing things that aren't going to address your concerns.
It's sort of like the Florida vote. I've cast blank ballots in protest before but I'll think twice about doing it now since it's been labelled OK for some tea leaf reader down at county election to 'interpret' my blank ballot as really voting for X.
The formality of agreement may make it more or less difficult to enforce the law but that does not affect the existance of a contract under US law.
Not reading or understanding a contract may be an excuse up to a very limited point but none of those points seem to have occurred here. There is no mention of anybody being mentally incapacitated (drunk or high) or unable to exercise proper judgement (minor, mentally incompetent), nor was there any mention of pressure put on these people to sign now or forget the deal. Cluelessness is generally not a legal defense in any jurisdiction I am familiar with (IANAL). The people who were charged with overseeing the contract approved the license and at least one version of the code was published under the GPL. These people either did or did not have the right to do this. That is the crux of the question. Do all license contracts have to be personally signed by the President or is it generally safe to assume that when a military officer hires your company to provide code and the direct supervising officer says its ok to use the GPL, that a valid agreement has been fashioned. This is important stuff because you could get the exact same runaround about getting paid at all. Hey, *we* didn't approve that contract, therefore you don't get paid.
My guess is that if the programmer sticks to his guns, in the end the military will take it out of the approving officer's hide but the code will remain open. If I were that programmer though, I would start looking for a new job. Uncomfortable situations like this tend to shorten careers no matter what the outcome.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's try again, industry publications pay good money to gather salary information all across the industry. The salary surveys regularly have Unix admins being paid more than Windows admins at all levels. This is objective evidence, not what you see, not what I see, what statistically valid surveys see all across the US. If you can't understand that, maybe you should stop working at CompUSA so many hours and take a statistics course.
If you actually look at the evidence, Unix knowledge gets you better pay than equivalent Windows knowledge.
DB
There is much anger in this one B-)
Why not get the best of both worlds and just have Mac OS X? It's got Unix power and stability and nice GUI to boot. Coming March 24th, to a PPC computer near you!
DB
You should read some salary surveys. Unix admins are paid more than MS admins. Unless you want your kids in the secretarial pool, I wouldn't bother with Windows.
As far as Mac is concerned, March 24th puts Apple into the Unix camp so what's the difference in terms of learning Mac or Linux?
DB
Actually, Apple's NetBoot facility is a terminal solution and is recommended for education/lab situations. You don't even need a CD or a HD, the OS boots off the network. Windows has Windows Terminal Server which does something similar.
Of all the solutions, Linux is cheapest, Mac comes next (no CAL payments) and Windows is the most expensive solution.
It's a little difficult to run such studies because so few governments are stupid enough to raise environmental standards enough to impoverish their lower and middle classes.
It is quite telling though, that when the Clinton administration started trying to put environmental standards increases as conditions for trade deals, Mexico and all the other poor countries that were offered better access to US markets in exchange for this turned them down specifically because it would hurt their poor. In fact, a popular theory among 3rd world nations is that environmentalism is just another way that the 1st world is trying to keep them down.
DB
Differential tax regimes are tough to maintain. The reason that they color diesel/home heating oil is specifically to make it as easy as dipping a stick in your tank to spot a tax evader. But what realistic regime are you going to do for a gas fuel? Opening a pressurized tank of gas is certainly going to be more dangerous than a non-pressurized liquid tank. Is it possible? Sure, but it's a great FUD point for tax opponents.
Another thing to think of, heating oil is much less common than natural gas heating and the people they check up on for violations are overwhelmingly commercial drivers. Natural gas cars are likely to be overwhelmingly passenger vehicles. A punitive tax regime that doesn't let any of the cost benefits get passed on to the consumer is simply not going to fly in this day and age. Differential taxation based purely on what appliance I put my gas into (heater, grill, or car) is a political non-starter.
If people go across the border to get canadian toilets, they certainly are going to do it for Canadian DVD software since it would just be an internet download away (a la PGPi). Hardware players that are multi/no zone would also be a popular export.
There's money to be made fella. Just get a really good attorney and some venture capital...
DB
Malthus would have been proud of your post. The problem is, Malthus was wrong. Supply does not increase arithmetically as demand increases geometrically. The question on all of these power issues is are we willing to accept the tradeoffs that keep us from population crashing. Nuclear fission (CANDU type or newer) is quite safe and it's certainly capable of fulfilling the necessary power needs you state but there is a large portion of the US population that just won't accept it. Perhaps the CA experience will change their minds...
If you look beyond the headlines, you will see that most advanced societies are plateauing or crashing their populations. Japan, Europe, even the US is only maintaining its numbers via immigration. The key is to get those darn 3rd worlders something more productive to do than have that 8th kid. That means helping them develop a rich society where children are no longer viewed as primarily an economic asset.
DB
Yes, government intervention can cause clean to be profitable, juicing up investment in clean technologies. However the fields of human endeavor that are profitable become smaller.
There is an alternative. Spend your own money and that of like minded people on funding the research and leave the poor marginal workers out of it. They are the ones who are going to get shafted as their cost of living rises to unbearable levels.
Heartless bastard
You are assuming that hydrogen production is going to be centralized like gasoline production is today. But anybody can go out and make hydrogen, it's just too expensive right now. If hydrogen is cheaper to produce taxes will be limited to something less than the cost differential between centralized hydrogen production and made at home hydrogen production. Anything more and they are going to lose control of the revenue stream because people will just make their own and not pay the tax.
Natural gas, another alternative fuel (and a lot closer to production if the Dean Kamen rumors are to be believed) is even more resistant to taxation. Most people in the urbs/suburbs have it piped to their houses already and use it for heat. You can imagine the political resistance to making it so that granny can't heat her shack on her fixed income...
Don't think the government/corporate insiders are omnipotent because that's their biggest edge.
Not all countries have illegalized hemp production. The trick is to create a business in hemp in a country with a free trade agreement with the US. Sue under NAFTA or whatever for the illegal trade protection.
Similarly for energy production, if hydrogen, natural gas or whatever is being suppressed in the 1st world by some conspiracy, go to the 2nd or 3rs world where they don't give a hoot, they just want cheap power. When some no-reputation country starts riding up the economic charts on the back of alternate fuels, the conspiracy isn't going to hold. And the best part is you get rich in the process!
DB
If DECSS is legal in Canada/Mexico, why not bring the lawsuit up as an illegal trade practice under NAFTA?
The technologists are working on the problem of expensive editing tools. Apple's got a great contribution in the movie arena w/built in firewire and Final Cut Pro which does most of what a $40k Avid system does but w/software costs of $1k and hardware costs of $3-10k. Sure, this isn't cheap stuff for a truly broke movie fan but it does bring professional level editing to the middle/upper middle class. The entire "digital lifestyle" theme that Apple is moving into is going to give music recorders the same set of high quality opportunities.
Beyond that, keep an eye on the articles regarding printing circuitry at home. In the relative near future, you are going to be able to print up your own computers and cheaply go in any direction you wish. Poof! goodbye government/industry capability to control.
Sure the printed stuff is going to be 15 years behind the times but guess what, for a majority of garage bands a home studio for $5-10k that is at a level of professionalism equivelent to 1985 is plenty good enough for them.
DB
I have thought about it from both ends, thank you very much. Have you?
An inheritance is a particular form of gift that only occurs at death. Now I understand why they do gift taxes so that people can't just get around income taxes by giving and receiving gifts. But an inheritance gift isn't done for income tax avoidance purposes so that's not an issue. On top of that, have you thought of what these kind of financial concerns do to people in the grieving process? The kids want to fulfill dad's wishes to keep his dream alive but they have a very short countdown before they have to pay a crippling tax payment. Unless you are one of the super rich who can afford the expensive attorneys to finesse this, the process dumps a big burden to the grieving family. Now that's really fair and moral isn't it?
Furthermore, the estate tax collects just about enough money to pay for the people who harrass grieving families into paying it. As a revenue generator, it's a wash. So guess what, the money doesn't go to the kids, it doesn't go to the tar-paper shack family on the other side of the tracks, it goes to pay treasury agents who have an upper-middle class income derived from financially pressuring families who have just suffered the loss of a parent. Oh I can see morality written all over this, can't you?
The death tax is a form of institutionalized class envy enforced through state action. The last time I checked, envy, in all its forms, was considered a sin by most moral systems and certainly any system that I'd want to follow.
I suspect that you really don't know the libertarian line here and have a fairly prejudiced idea about what libertarians believe in. Let me give it to you in a nutshell. Libertarians believe that the government is an institiution that survives by applying violence to accomplish societal goals. Libertarians believe that the number of areas where this is appropriate is small and shrinking and we would like to reduce and eliminate the level of government violence from as many areas of societal action as possible.
DB
The credibility of MSNBC is not particularly high in my book and has not been for quite some time. And as far as court goes, you obviously don't know how blatant they would have to be to actually lose such a case in a US court.
For a long time, people on the left thought that people on the right were immoral and people on the right thought that people on the left were dumb.
In reality, the estate tax is immoral and the principle has no admirable qualities. George Washington was right when he said that government wasn't persuasion, it was force. Forcing people to fork over 55% of a business every generation is just plain evil.
DB
It's irrelevant what the motivations are, whether self-interest, the psychological stress of trust-fund guilt, or just plain old sadism, it just doesn't matter.
The super wealthy who have made it to a certain level don't have to worry about the estate tax because they can afford estate tax planner and lobbyists to take care of things for them personally. At worst, their heirs will have lifetime jobs at fat pay in foundations devoted to the glory of their pappy and live comfortable lives for doing very little. It's those plumbers who have socked away a couple of million while driving old cars that have to worry about the estate tax. Take a look at "The Millionaire Next Door" and the rest of that series to see the real face of the rich who get socked by this tax.
DB
Actually, if you would stop limiting your reading list to the Nation and everything to the left of that, you might just find out that there are decent, honorable Republicans out there just as there are decent honorable Democrats.
As for corporate bribes, the figures are out there and you can find them out on the web. The Democrats get quite a large amount of corporate money, are supported by more multi-millionaires than you might think, and have, in general, just as much vulnerability on the sleazy contributors issue as Republicans.
Put down your ideological blinders and look at the facts. When I did that I became a Libertarian.
DB
It already exists, industrial hemp. Low to no THC, makes great paper, rope, decent cloth, just one problem, it's been illegalized along with drug grade marijuana for the convenience of the drug warriors in the US.
DB
And capital controls get you what exactly? It certainly isn't a cleaner environment or a more friendly workplace. Mostly what it gets you is a lot of bookkeeping lies and people crossing borders with cash. Oh, and a lot of economic inefficiency, otherwise known as pouring resources down a rathole.
DB
And your point is that the military can violate the GPL anytime they like because they are not capable of being held to a contract? Real bright, fella.
DB
You are missing my point. Just by silently boycotting, you aren't getting your point across, whatever your particular point is. The RIAA and MPAA folks are misinterpreting your actions and that leads them to doing things that aren't going to address your concerns.
It's sort of like the Florida vote. I've cast blank ballots in protest before but I'll think twice about doing it now since it's been labelled OK for some tea leaf reader down at county election to 'interpret' my blank ballot as really voting for X.
DB
Even the govt of singapore realizes the difference and they, laughably, are trying to get people to loosen up, officially.
Look into it. The results are hilariously pathetic.
DB
The formality of agreement may make it more or less difficult to enforce the law but that does not affect the existance of a contract under US law.
Not reading or understanding a contract may be an excuse up to a very limited point but none of those points seem to have occurred here. There is no mention of anybody being mentally incapacitated (drunk or high) or unable to exercise proper judgement (minor, mentally incompetent), nor was there any mention of pressure put on these people to sign now or forget the deal. Cluelessness is generally not a legal defense in any jurisdiction I am familiar with (IANAL). The people who were charged with overseeing the contract approved the license and at least one version of the code was published under the GPL. These people either did or did not have the right to do this. That is the crux of the question. Do all license contracts have to be personally signed by the President or is it generally safe to assume that when a military officer hires your company to provide code and the direct supervising officer says its ok to use the GPL, that a valid agreement has been fashioned. This is important stuff because you could get the exact same runaround about getting paid at all. Hey, *we* didn't approve that contract, therefore you don't get paid.
My guess is that if the programmer sticks to his guns, in the end the military will take it out of the approving officer's hide but the code will remain open. If I were that programmer though, I would start looking for a new job. Uncomfortable situations like this tend to shorten careers no matter what the outcome.
DB
More and more people are starting their own companies just to take advantage of the business only breaks that are everywhere.
An america as you describe would be left with few or no employees, only independent contractors. It would be an interesting world.
DB