What happened to blue collar labor in the US in the '70s and '80s will now happen to those smart, hard working, well-educated white collar boys (and girls).
Private corporations are not the ideal method of provided uniform services, because not everyone can be served at uniform cost.
Yes, because this is infrastructure.
Government "watched" corporations are never going to provided the services users want when they want them, how they want them.
I partially agree. Where I part company with this idea is the regulated electric power industry. It used to work fine until steps were taken to increase "competition". Now the 2 power companies in my area have 1/3 more customer than they did 10 years ago but 2/3rds the number of linemen. So, everytime a hurricane or ice storm damages the lines, power outages that would have once lasted a couple days last a couple weeks.
I generally agree that providing infrastructure is a basic, legitimate function of government.
Agreed. The venerable iBook is also more rugged than the Powerbook and doesn't get nearly as hot. It's internal antenna has greater Airport range than the Powerbook.
Most of the work done in offices today used to be carried out in a much simpler way. There ain't no good reason why email, web stuff, word processing and other mundane stuff ought to be as onerous as it has become. It is unrealistic to expect rank and file workers to cope with such a ponderous mess.
As for the Windows vs. Mac quarrel, I say this. I watched someone with little experience get confortable with a Mac quickly. They became a happy camper. I don't know many inexperienced Winders users who are happy. I think that speaks volumes. Sure, Macs aren't a panecea. But they suck less.
That's a seductive line of reasoning with a ring of truth but in the case of shell services it just isn't so. I came from a local ISP which offered shell service. They were bought out and the service deteriorated to the point where it was no longer viable. I paid for shell service but towards the end, didn't get it.
Before that ISP went under, I tried another one that was a bit more expensive. To my surprise, they didn't have a news server and claimed no other shell provider had news either. They had old versions of various applications and had vi aliased to elvis. (!) Another one I tried had all kinds of high minded login messages about using ssh and come to find out they were running version 1. I had to sign up and pay for a couple months to find out these things.
That being said, I do contribute to SDF beyond the arpa fee. I do this because I appreciate how good it is compared with the shell services I "paid" for.
I'm going through withdrawal pangs without my shell account. I've heard NWLINK's explanation but the timing and the anecdotes of former customers cast a pall over their credibility. My take on this is they were just covering their butts. As a result, thousands of us who rely on our accounts for email and more are high and dry. If what NWLINK said is true, the script kiddies won. That's the best that I can say for them.
There ain't all that many. Most are squeezed out before they hit 40. That's what we've been trying to tell you all along but most of you haven't listened. Now you're over 30 and 35 ain't so far away. You're already looking over your shoulder.
It is in fact blaming the victim for the software's flaws.
Yep. The same can be said for clicking on virus laden emails. Back when the "I love you" email virus was making the rounds, some MSCE type sent out an email scolding people for clicking on bad emails at the comapny where my wife worked. The next day, her inbox had 50 some emails from him where he'd clicked on a bad email.
Later the same week, our IT dept deployed the last anti-virus patch. I set it off looking at comments on Slashdot where somebody had posted the Word Basic macro that was doing all the dirty work. The dern virus scanner was keying off the macro source. That caused a bru-ha-ha.
It reminds me of the Harkonen ships in the 1984 Dune.
"It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. The thoughts acquire speed. The lips acquire stain. The stain becomes a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion."
Anytime this topic is ventilated here, there always seems to be lots of smug posters who believe their skills are so great that they will be spared long periods of unemployment, or as is more common, underemployment. This recession is so bad they may have an opportunity to test their theory. Older, i.e. > 40, engineers seldom say such things. Most of them have already explored their employment prospects.
My 45th birthday is a couple weeks away. I'm a top notch analog circuit designer and a fairly good software developer. I've been fortunate to have been employed since my first go round at college. I've changed jobs a half dozen times and changed career once. By just about any reasonable measure of success, I've done well. But I ain't cocky about it. Yes, I have good skills. I'm hard working and versatile. Those are necessary conditions but they are not sufficient conditions for continuing employment.
Now, all you guys who think you're in command of your destiny, listen up. There's lots of stuff that is beyond your control. Through no fault of your own, you may find yourself out of work. I personally know dozens of good programmers who have been unemployed and underemployed for more than a year. Several of them are better developers than I am. Why? Luck of the draw. I'm fortunate enough to be working for a stable company. They aren't and that is the difference.
So go own thinking what you will. One poster claimed he'd had 4 jobs in one year. He also clings to the belief that keeping his skills up to date will always save him. His strategy is essentially to burn his candle at both ends. That is a temporary solution at best. He will soon burn out. Even if he begins to budget his energy, he will find that his opportunities will diminish as he gets older. The sad fact is engineering is no longer the lifetime career choice it once was.
"The article goes on to say a California computer science professor has statistics to show that a programmer's career is not much longer than a pro-football player."
Why not say who and where this guy/gal is?
The author is probably referring to Professor Norm Matloff at UC Davis. Do a Google search on him and his paper, "Debunking the myth of a high tech labor shortage".
Free trade, or rather the form of extremely restrictive trade that is passed off to us as being "free," only makes the situation worse.
That's just it. This ain't no free market economy.
But in the end, I don't care about any of that. I want to be able to feed my family and live a good life. Any political system that rewards the few at the expense of the many and cloaks itself in the language of morality is doomed to failure. If you think that the US is immune to this, I suggest you crack open a history book.
I've been a generalist in the computer field for 20 years.
Then you're exceptional.
I make a good salary for my geographic area and am not in danger of losing my job (knock, knock).
You're very fortunate too.
Now the wave is receeding and those not prepared for it are left high and dry.
Well sir, there are an awful lot of "those". As it stands, "those" are the rule, not the exception.
My advice: Use your knowledge of the industry to forecast where it's going, decide if you want to go there, then position yourself (with skills and interpersonal networking) to ride the next wave.
This kind of advice is easy to give but hard to take. I've done this. It was very difficult for me and infeasible for most engineer/programmer types.
How many times have you had to send an email twice because someone deleted it thinking it was junk or because it was in with a bunch of other junk emails?
The email client which ships with Mac OS X 10.2.2 routinely flags all sorts of legitimate emails as junk. Fortunately, there's a "Not Junk" button.
Poor signal to noise ratio has limited the usefulness of the internet's first "killer app".
I've worked through 3 recessions. Each has been worse than the last. The last one was '90-'92. Every 2 weeks came an announcement of a couple thousand people laid off here or there. This go-round, the frequency of these announcements is about the same but the size is an order of magnitude bigger.
The personal computer pulled us out of the stagflated 70's and early 80's. The internet pulled us out of the early 90's recession. What's going to pull us out of this? Companies have hollowed out and sent manufacturing overseas during the late 80's, so it won't be that. They were unsuccessful in exporting tech work to the cheap labor so they imported cheap labor and brought it to the tech work. So, it won't be that kind of work that turns us around. I might add these last 2 changes are nearly irreversible. What is going to turn this economy around? Whatever it is, it ain't in sight yet. At the rate we're going, we'll be a 2nd world country before long.
Slashdot Mirror
What happened to blue collar labor in the US in the '70s and '80s will now happen to those smart, hard working, well-educated white collar boys (and girls).
It already has happened and is still happening.
Private corporations are not the ideal method of provided uniform services, because not
everyone can be served at uniform cost.
Yes, because this is infrastructure.
Government "watched" corporations are never going to provided the services users want
when they want them, how they want them.
I partially agree. Where I part company with this idea is the regulated electric power industry. It used to work fine until steps were taken to increase "competition". Now the 2 power companies in my area have 1/3 more customer than they did 10 years ago but 2/3rds the number of linemen. So, everytime a hurricane or ice storm damages the lines, power outages that would have once lasted a couple days last a couple weeks.
I generally agree that providing infrastructure is a basic, legitimate function of government.
The issue is, there are not very many DSL capable central offices in the first place
Good point. It's not like they were serving the customer well.
Err, you show me an iBook with 512MB of RAM in it.
hunh? I got 640 Megs o' RAM in mine.
Agreed. The venerable iBook is also more rugged than the Powerbook and doesn't get nearly as hot. It's internal antenna has greater Airport range than the Powerbook.
Most of the work done in offices today used to be carried out in a much simpler way. There ain't no good reason why email, web stuff, word processing and other mundane stuff ought to be as onerous as it has become. It is unrealistic to expect rank and file workers to cope with such a ponderous mess.
As for the Windows vs. Mac quarrel, I say this. I watched someone with little experience get confortable with a Mac quickly. They became a happy camper. I don't know many inexperienced Winders users who are happy. I think that speaks volumes. Sure, Macs aren't a panecea. But they suck less.
Power Supplies also use low ESR electrolytic capacitors. I'll bet some of the bad capacitors turn up in power supplies too.
It's a long way to Redmond.
You get what you pay for.
That's a seductive line of reasoning with a ring of truth but in the case of shell services it just isn't so. I came from a local ISP which offered shell service. They were bought out and the service deteriorated to the point where it was no longer viable. I paid for shell service but towards the end, didn't get it.
Before that ISP went under, I tried another one that was a bit more expensive. To my surprise, they didn't have a news server and claimed no other shell provider had news either. They had old versions of various applications and had vi aliased to elvis. (!) Another one I tried had all kinds of high minded login messages about using ssh and come to find out they were running version 1. I had to sign up and pay for a couple months to find out these things.
That being said, I do contribute to SDF beyond the arpa fee. I do this because I appreciate how good it is compared with the shell services I "paid" for.
I'm going through withdrawal pangs without my shell account. I've heard NWLINK's explanation but the timing and the anecdotes of former customers cast a pall over their credibility. My take on this is they were just covering their butts. As a result, thousands of us who rely on our accounts for email and more are high and dry. If what NWLINK said is true, the script kiddies won. That's the best that I can say for them.
Long live the Super Dimensional Fortress!
There ain't all that many. Most are squeezed out before they hit 40. That's what we've been trying to tell you all along but most of you haven't listened. Now you're over 30 and 35 ain't so far away. You're already looking over your shoulder.
It is in fact blaming the victim for the software's flaws.
Yep. The same can be said for clicking on virus laden emails. Back when the "I love you" email virus was making the rounds, some MSCE type sent out an email scolding people for clicking on bad emails at the comapny where my wife worked. The next day, her inbox had 50 some emails from him where he'd clicked on a bad email.
Later the same week, our IT dept deployed the last anti-virus patch. I set it off looking at comments on Slashdot where somebody had posted the Word Basic macro that was doing all the dirty work. The dern virus scanner was keying off the macro source. That caused a bru-ha-ha.
One problem a UPS has that a power supply doesn't have is the battery will continnue to dump energy into whatever is getting hot.
I bet whoever at APC designed this has a severe pucker factor right now. Their butt has puckered up and gripped the seat cushion. Yessir.
Floppies, zips and tapes should be burned. Hard drive platters should be ground down with grinder wheel or belt sander.
Looks like it's easy to get to everything.
It reminds me of the Harkonen ships in the 1984 Dune.
"It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.
The thoughts acquire speed.
The lips acquire stain.
The stain becomes a warning.
It is by will alone I set my mind in motion."
It wasn't very long ago that this letter appeared
/ 02 56214&mode=flat&tid=95
http://www.netparadox.com/
on slashdot
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/10/22
I don't recall seeing any follow up on this. It sorta looks like he's staying the course.
I enjoyed their acount of the habits of the slender loris pictured on the cover of Sed and Awk. Yessir.
Anytime this topic is ventilated here, there always seems to be lots of smug posters who believe their skills are so great that they will be spared long periods of unemployment, or as is more common, underemployment. This recession is so bad they may have an opportunity to test their theory. Older, i.e. > 40, engineers seldom say such things. Most of them have already explored their employment prospects.
My 45th birthday is a couple weeks away. I'm a top notch analog circuit designer and a fairly good software developer. I've been fortunate to have been employed since my first go round at college. I've changed jobs a half dozen times and changed career once. By just about any reasonable measure of success, I've done well. But I ain't cocky about it. Yes, I have good skills. I'm hard working and versatile. Those are necessary conditions but they are not sufficient conditions for continuing employment.
Now, all you guys who think you're in command of your destiny, listen up. There's lots of stuff that is beyond your control. Through no fault of your own, you may find yourself out of work. I personally know dozens of good programmers who have been unemployed and underemployed for more than a year. Several of them are better developers than I am. Why? Luck of the draw. I'm fortunate enough to be working for a stable company. They aren't and that is the difference.
So go own thinking what you will. One poster claimed he'd had 4 jobs in one year. He also clings to the belief that keeping his skills up to date will always save him. His strategy is essentially to burn his candle at both ends. That is a temporary solution at best. He will soon burn out. Even if he begins to budget his energy, he will find that his opportunities will diminish as he gets older. The sad fact is engineering is no longer the lifetime career choice it once was.
"The article goes on to say a California computer science professor has statistics to show that a programmer's career is not much longer than a pro-football player."
Why not say who and where this guy/gal is?
The author is probably referring to Professor Norm Matloff at UC Davis. Do a Google search on him and his paper, "Debunking the myth of a high tech labor shortage".
Free trade, or rather the form of extremely restrictive trade that is passed off to us as being "free," only makes the situation worse.
That's just it. This ain't no free market economy.
But in the end, I don't care about any of that. I want to be able to feed my family and live a good life. Any political system that rewards the few at the expense of the many and cloaks itself in the language of morality is doomed to failure. If you think that the US is immune to this, I suggest you crack open a history book.
Amen
I've been a generalist in the computer field for 20 years.
Then you're exceptional.
I make a good salary for my geographic area and am not in danger of losing my job (knock, knock).
You're very fortunate too.
Now the wave is receeding and those not prepared for it are left high and dry.
Well sir, there are an awful lot of "those". As it stands, "those" are the rule, not the exception.
My advice: Use your knowledge of the industry to forecast where it's going, decide if you want to go there, then position yourself (with skills and interpersonal networking) to ride the next wave.
This kind of advice is easy to give but hard to take. I've done this. It was very difficult for me and infeasible for most engineer/programmer types.
How many times have you had to send an email twice because someone deleted it thinking it was junk or because it was in with a bunch of other junk emails?
The email client which ships with Mac OS X 10.2.2 routinely flags all sorts of legitimate emails as junk. Fortunately, there's a "Not Junk" button.
Poor signal to noise ratio has limited the usefulness of the internet's first "killer app".
I've worked through 3 recessions. Each has been worse than the last. The last one was '90-'92. Every 2 weeks came an announcement of a couple thousand people laid off here or there. This go-round, the frequency of these announcements is about the same but the size is an order of magnitude bigger.
The personal computer pulled us out of the stagflated 70's and early 80's. The internet pulled us out of the early 90's recession. What's going to pull us out of this? Companies have hollowed out and sent manufacturing overseas during the late 80's, so it won't be that. They were unsuccessful in exporting tech work to the cheap labor so they imported cheap labor and brought it to the tech work. So, it won't be that kind of work that turns us around. I might add these last 2 changes are nearly irreversible. What is going to turn this economy around? Whatever it is, it ain't in sight yet. At the rate we're going, we'll be a 2nd world country before long.
I'll bet these bad capacitors have found their way into many power supplies too.