I've seen the 'other' methods. They fail in cases where the kid is specifically willful. My ex has such a kid... His father uses a paddle, his mom (my ex) uses those alternatives. Take a wild guess who has an easier time getting him to listen...? In fact he almost always gets his way with his mom... He throws tantrums that would be the envy of two year olds, hysterics and tears and flailing all over... My ex can't take it & gives in... His father threatens to paddle him & he obeys. He knows the consequences of not obeying and fears it. Fear isn't always a bad thing.
As for 'youth crime' being low... How much isn't reported? I know teachers that were assaulted daily by kids at their school, none of it was reported because of liability issues and the fact that police can't simply arrest kids as young as 6... We have no facilities for such things...
Plenty of teachers go to work every day fearing physical pain from their students... It certainly was abused at times when I was younger and it was still usable by schools, but since it's been gone the powers that be stripped schools of pretty much all means of discipline... So schools have rampant discipline problems... And their is no end in sight... I had the opportunity to watch a 1st grader assault his teacher with a keyboard because he didn't want to be in school... Guess what was done to him? Nothing. Teachers aren't allowed to touch their students in any way, they can't even give detentions at that age, police will not deal with 6 year olds so they are useless to call after the fact, and the parents can't be bothered to be parents and discipline their own kids... Hell half of them are scared if they lay a finger on their own kids they will face the wraith of child services and the really diabolical kids use child services as weapons against their parents... Create some bruises, blame your parents, your parents get in massive trouble is the rule kids all know about... Real victims of abuse are often to frightened to ever tell anyone, instead we've given kids a tool to use to rope in parents who still feel a need to have their kids understand discipline... They know they have all the power because we gave it to them... And they will exploit that to the fullest...
As for point #2... Classrooms do this now... It's just not a separate room... kids will often be split into 2 or 3 groups by ability during math and reading lessons in elementary... Using support teachers to provide the additional group teaching....
Though the research though shows better results for one teacher over multiple years of education than for having even more teachers that they bounce between... I can show you very successful elementary schools with teachers staying with the same kids from kindergarten to 5th grade before they are handed off to 'middle school' teachers and those teacher normally get a one year break then and return for another kindergarten class... I've seen results from these kinds of schools for up to 2 iterations of this cycle and the results are much better than average (2-3 times better). Environments with lots of different teachers get worse results than existing ones...
When the kids stop being able to inflict 'corporal punishment' on the teachers, then we'd stop wanting the ability to inflict 'corporal punishment' on them... Watch a 6 year old assault a teacher with any and all items at hand, including ripping a keyboard out of the computer it was connected to on this poor woman, all while yelling that he "didn't need to listen to no stupid Fucking teachers!" and you'd understand that discipline is so very far gone that corporal punishment is one of the few ways to actually get discipline back....
& remember my example was a first grader! I can give other examples from higher grades, but it's the same thing & it starts early. When you have a class with one kid like this the others see the inability of the teacher to be able to do more than yell at the bad kid & decide "Hey lets act up to! No one will stop us!" We aren't allowed to send 6 year olds to jail for assault, we can't even kick them out of school, we can't even touch kids most of the time! What the hell do you propose we do...? Talking to them sure doesn't do jack and their parents think it's our problem to fix!
Hell I'm not even a teacher, I just work in a school... But I see these problems every day doing my job... It got worse when I wanted to help out some of these kids by starting a computer club after school for them... They listened to me less than they did to their own teachers and I had the same constraints... Fights would erupt in my club hour and all I could do was stand their and watch them go at it telling them that they needed to break it up! It was the most trying thing I've ever been a part of... Those days I went home so tired I practically just passed out on my couch when I got home. I feel for our poor teachers due to peopel like you...
I work in a school. Most teachers with a bachelor's+ (Usually a graduate degree when they start here) make $30k/year (Median) after five years they will be making ~$35k/year. To be middle class you need to make over $50k where I live/work... Only if they are married can they get by on what they make and be 'middle class'. Btw 'Poor' is considered 15k or lower here (by the state)... go figure what 15k-50k is called... Sort-of-poor, maybe? Under 50k you will not own your own house. Houses start around 150k here, a loan on a 150k house is ~$1000/month @ 30k/year your take home pay is ~2k/month (none take home pay doesn't count as it's sucked up by income tax and the state mandated pension plan you aren't allowed to withdraw from). If you don't need to eat you can own your own home doing that math... But I'd hope our teachers can afford to eat, otherwise we may as well not bother having them come in... It also means they can't rely on public or private transportation (no money for owning a car in there, and buses would be to expensive)... Better be in walking distance...
Even I can't afford a house and much else and I'm the network admin for the school (I make 38k/year if your curious)... That top 'exec' of the school district makes $100k/year, the second highest $70k/year, and no one else makes over $45k/year not even the business manager or assistant principal... I'm the lowest paid admin, and the two secretaries make $2k/year more than me... I"m seen as a money sink after all even though 80% of everyone's day revolves around services I support... Go figure...
No we pay crap to teachers, and you really don't want to know the hoops schools are required to jump through to get those state (& federal) funds... Politics is the reason things don't improve, combined with raw apathy from parents... 'Oh Johnny beat a teacher with a chair...? We'll that's all right.' Hello! This is what parents tell us about things like behavior issues or worse 'He doesn't listen to me either'. If Johnny doesn't listen to the school and Johnny doesn't listen to his parents who the heck is Johnny listening to...? And for gods sacks shouldn't someone do something about the whole mess...?!? Nope. The school may care, but their hands are tied as the state says it's the parents job not ours, the parents say it's our job not theirs, and the state only gives a rats ass when test scores don't increase on state testing! And even then it's not 'X% of your kids have mental/emotional issues that need to be dealt with', it's 'You aren't teaching your students correctly, we are reducing your funding until your numbers increase.' And then they won't even let us teach to what's been found to work, but by what the politicians think are good methods... It is a sick and vicious cycle that is doomed to fail...
Your going to get this old, computer illiterate woman to find random linux software online through google...? o_0
What dream world do you live in...?
By the way... add/remove option in ubuntu doesn't list more than 40 apps... Most are buried in the more convoluted GUI package manager... Which it's hard to find anything in unless you know what it's name is....
I wouldn't go so far as to say any HP printer will just work... I switched several machines where I work to linux as a means of keeping the hardware running when we were getting rid of the old OS (Win 98) they ran... I used Ubuntu and none of them had any luck with any HP printer we have (mostly laserjets) each time I had to reinstall the latest bundle of HP printing supporting files (I forget the name of the package) as the one installed by defaulted and even updated in ubuntu couldn't find the printers... repeatedly... After 20 times of trying and failing, I don't think you can call my experience a 'case study' ~_~
On the other hand cameras did just work, and flash memory, etc... But not everyone with issues is somehow lying about them to make linux look bad...
Just a point on your claim that mismanagement is something you go to the newspaper over...
I work at a place that is not only mismanaged, but in ways operating illegally... & people have proof of that... Yet the newspaper refuses to act... The TV stations refuse to talk to those people... & their is no talk radio, so no radio news to try for... What Media outlet do you suggest...? Blogs have proven ineffective except to bring to light people who have previously suffered under the same administration...
Media is dead as a news outlet. All they want to be is entertainment, because entertainment sells.
You'd think that would stop people... Until the first person dies/is hospitalized and their family sues the car owner and the city for wrongful death or similar charges... You forget this is the US, where people killing themselves while vandalizing/stealing other peoples property gets the owner of the would-be-stolen goods sued.
btw corn isn't really cheap in Iowa... Or for instance my own area where right now I drive by fields full of corn on my way to work... In fact I usually end up paying more, because if I wasn't willing to it would be quite easy for the local farmers to just sell their whole crop to more distant places or the corn chip factory run by the big snack food company 20 miles away...
Because some of us were born, raised, & still live in areas where tech has never bloomed. Because of that every job in the field is rare and pay is crap. How can you up and leave if you can barely afford to live where you are now? It's not just a city, a county, or even a state, but their are whole regions like this in the US. Most of the usual US slashdot crowd is all from 3 or 4 major tech areas, then their are those of us who aren't and could never afford to move to those areas. I can't afford a apartment in Cali, the tech centers of Texas, New York, etc. I make $38k/year USD as a network admin with 5 years of experience and 3 years of consulting experience. & at that I make as much as my parents combined make. But people find it hard to live on $100k/year in those areas. Is it really any surprise considering that, that I find it hard to move?
I think you don't realize where I live in the US... The top IT people where I live make 50k/year... Most make closer to 30k/year. I'm in the middle of those numbers.
I have an apartment I can barely afford, a car likewise. I can't afford to fly much of anywhere. I can't rent a second apartment... I'm single so I don't have the theoretical wife & kids, but that doesn't save me money. The next closest major city to mine (mine is already a major city) is Pittsburgh and it actually has 'lower average cost of living' than where I live. I've thought of leaving for there, but I quite literally couldn't afford it.
I'm also not a programmer, there isn't allot of call for 6-12 month contracts for network admins. I used to be a consultant, but working for yourself your ignored by the larger businesses who want firms of consultants to support them. Work for a firm and they pay you less than I make at my current job (Though they charge $150/hour for what you do, you make under $15/hour).
Anyways... I just don't think you understand the situation other people live in...
& I'm replying to myself because I forgot to add this: Relocating isn't possible for everyone. I can't afford relocation & most companies aren't paying for you to relocate these days for instance. I'd be hard pressed right now to put a down payment on a new place in my current town, let alone one with a higher cost of living than mine. Add to that plenty of places requiring seeing you in person for interviews, and I certainly can't afford to travel to far, and you left working your way up where you live just to be able to move away...
This varies by region to... Monster, Dice, careerbuilder, etc have zilch for IT in my area because my area is still stuck in the paper days for all that they are forced kicking and screaming to modernize.
I live in a small town and I'm frankly tired of seeing these absurd claims...
It's not 'to expensive' it's 'more expensive than they want to pay'. These are communities with sometimes up to 10,000 people who are not seen as 'profitable enough' by the major telcos that currently have contracts (usually monopoly phone & monopoly cable). Even with competition these companies still don't really care... the only thing they care about is when they don't own the physical line (such as muni broadband), even if the muni opens their lines to anyone to use the business model of these companies is to hike up prices for service over the lines that exist and reap all the benefits from them perpetually.
This is the municipality and by extension all the people in the community (or at least the majority) saying 'We can do it! We don't need them just to offer this to us!' and then the telcos saying 'But you gave us ownership of phone/cable lines decades ago for eternity! You need us!' and getting exactly what they deserve for dragging their feet...
Not that I'm one for putting people in jail... But his crimes are 'light' and in no way will place him in prison with rapists or murders in most of the US... Frankly I think we are to light on criminals and prison is usually lighter than some other punishments (your given middle class housing level facilities including sat or cable tv, nice meals, fitness centers, etc with effectively maid service... Your cost only is being in a cell for part of your day and not being able to leave the building in most cases... Poor people from the city I work in want to commit crimes to live life easy like that!
On the admin/networking side I have been a 'assistant network admin', it's a do it all spot that is less admin and more network engineer in most cases. I've also seen postings for 'junior network admin', I'd assume it's much the same. They funny thing of course is that those positions are rare. Also these jobs are fill ins for an actual admin for more than a few days usually. Most admins I've seen come from consulting (troubleshooting) or network engineering disciplines. I came from consulting myself before being a 'assistant network admin', the real issue is that these jobs are hard to get as experience is scarce. Also companies will use a particular technology in alot of cases that without having worked for another business (as the software costs more than the yearly admin salary) that uses it. This further limits things... You'd think this would inspire companies to pay more... But usually not. For my state (PA) it's ~50k/year average. If I had to do things over again... I'd have gotten a degree in photography... It's very techy these days with the change to digital and would make easily as much money...
Oddly... all I've ever dreamed of when I was little was having some sort of stable job and a family with a comfortable life... I'm 30 and I'm not really any closer to having my dreams come true than anyone who wanted to be an astronaut, but has motion sickness.
I'll take your kids, car, wife, job, mortgage, and life if you'll trade it for my stupidly insecure life with no safety nets...
See then there are people like me... I eat fairly healthy moderate portions (even with some fast food I manage a 2000 calorie diet) and I never loose weight... In fact without being very active (well over half an hour of aggressive exercise) everyday I gain more weight! Not that most people ever believe me unless they see what I eat all day for themselves... Even my doctor thought I was lying about intake...
The funny part is I'm actually very healthy and hardly ever get sick...
Privately owned prisons that are contracted out by the state. It's the invention of those who say that business can always provide cheaper solutions than the state does... They have standards they are supposed to be held to, but...
Great efforts have been made in state & federal prisons in the US to where they live better than they ever did outside... Now private prisons in the US... those can be bad o.o
you forgot a category: Those paid crap for the work they do are more likely to snoop. Dirt on an exec can get you a hefty 'bonus' used correctly... Or unscrupulous enough and you sell off everything not 'bolted down' in the network and sell it off to the highest bidder...
I'd love to live where public transport options exist in the US... sadly my salary won't let me... So instead what little I save where I do live is slowly squeezing me out of saving for retirement or anything else I may otherwise use of the slight excess I have over my current cost of living... If I made more I'd move closer to work adding options for public transportation and/or diminishing my driving distance (though city driving in general is what kills my gas mileage as is).
I'm not lying at all about how much I make... The joke was very much on me... They used to have a management company doing their IT work... They paid roughly 28k for someone to be there during the day, so when they separated from the management company they said they would pay ~45k/year... The board though nixed that at the very last minute after I'd already taken the job & so all of last year I made 28k... They swear I'll make 38k this coming year (July 1st on), which is all they could afford as an increase... >_>
And I'm just saying that some people actually can complain and it isn't because they feel entitled to 80k+ a year with a nice benefits package... But really... If there are more people like myself who owe 60k for college... I can see why we feel entitled to making a bit more than the average person... 28k/year after taxes is almost exactly what my college loan holders want form me every month... >_>
Being a coder is not all their is to CS... Otherwise where will you find your network engineers & Network admins...? As a network admin I know businesses want a CS degree for their admin spots...
I however ended up in a network admin job that looked good initially (talk of at least a 10k pay increase for the job within 6 months, increased benefits, etc), but in the real world pays out 28k as the promises were smoke & mirrors... Well below Median income you quote... I can very well cry you a river & then some.
I can top that... I have a associates in business (It's a CIS degree) & a Bachelors in Business (And actual business degree, though I walked a 'computer science' path until very late in then switched because I got tired of the focus on programming). My job is a Network Admin/Director of Technology (I do the job, but don't get the title or pay of the second). And I got this job as a means out of doing small business consulting where I'd have to fight to ever see my money (every time, regardless of how good a project would go small business owners would treat me like shit and tell me they couldn't pay once the work was done). So I have this job, which is in my field of my degrees... Yet I make crap money, have a worse boss, overworked, underpaid (yes I'm repeating myself it's really that bad, though better than consulting where I wasn't being paid til two or three months after I did the work), and to top it off I can't leave... I'd either have to go back to consulting (and not be able to pay my college loans) or I'd have to take a non-admin job for less money... Why? In the time I've held this job everyone locally has decided they won't take anyone without five or more years of experience and won't take anything except a Bachelors CS degrees for admin work... Which I still don't get to this day... I meet the skills required for the job, I can talk to the pointy haired bosses in their language, & I do have some experience all be it not five years... You'd think I'd be near perfect... and I'm trapped liek never before...
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I've seen the 'other' methods. They fail in cases where the kid is specifically willful. My ex has such a kid... His father uses a paddle, his mom (my ex) uses those alternatives. Take a wild guess who has an easier time getting him to listen...? In fact he almost always gets his way with his mom... He throws tantrums that would be the envy of two year olds, hysterics and tears and flailing all over... My ex can't take it & gives in... His father threatens to paddle him & he obeys. He knows the consequences of not obeying and fears it. Fear isn't always a bad thing.
As for 'youth crime' being low... How much isn't reported? I know teachers that were assaulted daily by kids at their school, none of it was reported because of liability issues and the fact that police can't simply arrest kids as young as 6... We have no facilities for such things...
Plenty of teachers go to work every day fearing physical pain from their students... It certainly was abused at times when I was younger and it was still usable by schools, but since it's been gone the powers that be stripped schools of pretty much all means of discipline... So schools have rampant discipline problems... And their is no end in sight... I had the opportunity to watch a 1st grader assault his teacher with a keyboard because he didn't want to be in school... Guess what was done to him? Nothing. Teachers aren't allowed to touch their students in any way, they can't even give detentions at that age, police will not deal with 6 year olds so they are useless to call after the fact, and the parents can't be bothered to be parents and discipline their own kids... Hell half of them are scared if they lay a finger on their own kids they will face the wraith of child services and the really diabolical kids use child services as weapons against their parents... Create some bruises, blame your parents, your parents get in massive trouble is the rule kids all know about... Real victims of abuse are often to frightened to ever tell anyone, instead we've given kids a tool to use to rope in parents who still feel a need to have their kids understand discipline... They know they have all the power because we gave it to them... And they will exploit that to the fullest...
As for point #2... Classrooms do this now... It's just not a separate room... kids will often be split into 2 or 3 groups by ability during math and reading lessons in elementary... Using support teachers to provide the additional group teaching....
Though the research though shows better results for one teacher over multiple years of education than for having even more teachers that they bounce between... I can show you very successful elementary schools with teachers staying with the same kids from kindergarten to 5th grade before they are handed off to 'middle school' teachers and those teacher normally get a one year break then and return for another kindergarten class... I've seen results from these kinds of schools for up to 2 iterations of this cycle and the results are much better than average (2-3 times better). Environments with lots of different teachers get worse results than existing ones...
When the kids stop being able to inflict 'corporal punishment' on the teachers, then we'd stop wanting the ability to inflict 'corporal punishment' on them... Watch a 6 year old assault a teacher with any and all items at hand, including ripping a keyboard out of the computer it was connected to on this poor woman, all while yelling that he "didn't need to listen to no stupid Fucking teachers!" and you'd understand that discipline is so very far gone that corporal punishment is one of the few ways to actually get discipline back....
& remember my example was a first grader! I can give other examples from higher grades, but it's the same thing & it starts early. When you have a class with one kid like this the others see the inability of the teacher to be able to do more than yell at the bad kid & decide "Hey lets act up to! No one will stop us!" We aren't allowed to send 6 year olds to jail for assault, we can't even kick them out of school, we can't even touch kids most of the time! What the hell do you propose we do...? Talking to them sure doesn't do jack and their parents think it's our problem to fix!
Hell I'm not even a teacher, I just work in a school... But I see these problems every day doing my job... It got worse when I wanted to help out some of these kids by starting a computer club after school for them... They listened to me less than they did to their own teachers and I had the same constraints... Fights would erupt in my club hour and all I could do was stand their and watch them go at it telling them that they needed to break it up! It was the most trying thing I've ever been a part of... Those days I went home so tired I practically just passed out on my couch when I got home. I feel for our poor teachers due to peopel like you...
I work in a school. Most teachers with a bachelor's+ (Usually a graduate degree when they start here) make $30k/year (Median) after five years they will be making ~$35k/year. To be middle class you need to make over $50k where I live/work... Only if they are married can they get by on what they make and be 'middle class'. Btw 'Poor' is considered 15k or lower here (by the state)... go figure what 15k-50k is called... Sort-of-poor, maybe? Under 50k you will not own your own house. Houses start around 150k here, a loan on a 150k house is ~$1000/month @ 30k/year your take home pay is ~2k/month (none take home pay doesn't count as it's sucked up by income tax and the state mandated pension plan you aren't allowed to withdraw from). If you don't need to eat you can own your own home doing that math... But I'd hope our teachers can afford to eat, otherwise we may as well not bother having them come in... It also means they can't rely on public or private transportation (no money for owning a car in there, and buses would be to expensive)... Better be in walking distance...
Even I can't afford a house and much else and I'm the network admin for the school (I make 38k/year if your curious)... That top 'exec' of the school district makes $100k/year, the second highest $70k/year, and no one else makes over $45k/year not even the business manager or assistant principal... I'm the lowest paid admin, and the two secretaries make $2k/year more than me... I"m seen as a money sink after all even though 80% of everyone's day revolves around services I support... Go figure...
No we pay crap to teachers, and you really don't want to know the hoops schools are required to jump through to get those state (& federal) funds... Politics is the reason things don't improve, combined with raw apathy from parents... 'Oh Johnny beat a teacher with a chair...? We'll that's all right.' Hello! This is what parents tell us about things like behavior issues or worse 'He doesn't listen to me either'. If Johnny doesn't listen to the school and Johnny doesn't listen to his parents who the heck is Johnny listening to...? And for gods sacks shouldn't someone do something about the whole mess...?!? Nope. The school may care, but their hands are tied as the state says it's the parents job not ours, the parents say it's our job not theirs, and the state only gives a rats ass when test scores don't increase on state testing! And even then it's not 'X% of your kids have mental/emotional issues that need to be dealt with', it's 'You aren't teaching your students correctly, we are reducing your funding until your numbers increase.' And then they won't even let us teach to what's been found to work, but by what the politicians think are good methods... It is a sick and vicious cycle that is doomed to fail...
Your going to get this old, computer illiterate woman to find random linux software online through google...? o_0
What dream world do you live in...?
By the way... add/remove option in ubuntu doesn't list more than 40 apps... Most are buried in the more convoluted GUI package manager... Which it's hard to find anything in unless you know what it's name is....
I wouldn't go so far as to say any HP printer will just work... I switched several machines where I work to linux as a means of keeping the hardware running when we were getting rid of the old OS (Win 98) they ran... I used Ubuntu and none of them had any luck with any HP printer we have (mostly laserjets) each time I had to reinstall the latest bundle of HP printing supporting files (I forget the name of the package) as the one installed by defaulted and even updated in ubuntu couldn't find the printers... repeatedly... After 20 times of trying and failing, I don't think you can call my experience a 'case study' ~_~
On the other hand cameras did just work, and flash memory, etc... But not everyone with issues is somehow lying about them to make linux look bad...
Just a point on your claim that mismanagement is something you go to the newspaper over...
I work at a place that is not only mismanaged, but in ways operating illegally... & people have proof of that... Yet the newspaper refuses to act... The TV stations refuse to talk to those people... & their is no talk radio, so no radio news to try for... What Media outlet do you suggest...? Blogs have proven ineffective except to bring to light people who have previously suffered under the same administration...
Media is dead as a news outlet. All they want to be is entertainment, because entertainment sells.
You'd think that would stop people... Until the first person dies/is hospitalized and their family sues the car owner and the city for wrongful death or similar charges... You forget this is the US, where people killing themselves while vandalizing/stealing other peoples property gets the owner of the would-be-stolen goods sued.
btw corn isn't really cheap in Iowa... Or for instance my own area where right now I drive by fields full of corn on my way to work... In fact I usually end up paying more, because if I wasn't willing to it would be quite easy for the local farmers to just sell their whole crop to more distant places or the corn chip factory run by the big snack food company 20 miles away...
Because some of us were born, raised, & still live in areas where tech has never bloomed. Because of that every job in the field is rare and pay is crap. How can you up and leave if you can barely afford to live where you are now? It's not just a city, a county, or even a state, but their are whole regions like this in the US. Most of the usual US slashdot crowd is all from 3 or 4 major tech areas, then their are those of us who aren't and could never afford to move to those areas. I can't afford a apartment in Cali, the tech centers of Texas, New York, etc. I make $38k/year USD as a network admin with 5 years of experience and 3 years of consulting experience. & at that I make as much as my parents combined make. But people find it hard to live on $100k/year in those areas. Is it really any surprise considering that, that I find it hard to move?
I think you don't realize where I live in the US... The top IT people where I live make 50k/year... Most make closer to 30k/year. I'm in the middle of those numbers.
I have an apartment I can barely afford, a car likewise. I can't afford to fly much of anywhere. I can't rent a second apartment... I'm single so I don't have the theoretical wife & kids, but that doesn't save me money. The next closest major city to mine (mine is already a major city) is Pittsburgh and it actually has 'lower average cost of living' than where I live. I've thought of leaving for there, but I quite literally couldn't afford it.
I'm also not a programmer, there isn't allot of call for 6-12 month contracts for network admins. I used to be a consultant, but working for yourself your ignored by the larger businesses who want firms of consultants to support them. Work for a firm and they pay you less than I make at my current job (Though they charge $150/hour for what you do, you make under $15/hour).
Anyways... I just don't think you understand the situation other people live in...
& I'm replying to myself because I forgot to add this:
Relocating isn't possible for everyone. I can't afford relocation & most companies aren't paying for you to relocate these days for instance. I'd be hard pressed right now to put a down payment on a new place in my current town, let alone one with a higher cost of living than mine. Add to that plenty of places requiring seeing you in person for interviews, and I certainly can't afford to travel to far, and you left working your way up where you live just to be able to move away...
This varies by region to... Monster, Dice, careerbuilder, etc have zilch for IT in my area because my area is still stuck in the paper days for all that they are forced kicking and screaming to modernize.
I live in a small town and I'm frankly tired of seeing these absurd claims...
It's not 'to expensive' it's 'more expensive than they want to pay'. These are communities with sometimes up to 10,000 people who are not seen as 'profitable enough' by the major telcos that currently have contracts (usually monopoly phone & monopoly cable). Even with competition these companies still don't really care... the only thing they care about is when they don't own the physical line (such as muni broadband), even if the muni opens their lines to anyone to use the business model of these companies is to hike up prices for service over the lines that exist and reap all the benefits from them perpetually.
This is the municipality and by extension all the people in the community (or at least the majority) saying 'We can do it! We don't need them just to offer this to us!' and then the telcos saying 'But you gave us ownership of phone/cable lines decades ago for eternity! You need us!' and getting exactly what they deserve for dragging their feet...
Not that I'm one for putting people in jail... But his crimes are 'light' and in no way will place him in prison with rapists or murders in most of the US... Frankly I think we are to light on criminals and prison is usually lighter than some other punishments (your given middle class housing level facilities including sat or cable tv, nice meals, fitness centers, etc with effectively maid service... Your cost only is being in a cell for part of your day and not being able to leave the building in most cases... Poor people from the city I work in want to commit crimes to live life easy like that!
On the admin/networking side I have been a 'assistant network admin', it's a do it all spot that is less admin and more network engineer in most cases. I've also seen postings for 'junior network admin', I'd assume it's much the same. They funny thing of course is that those positions are rare. Also these jobs are fill ins for an actual admin for more than a few days usually. Most admins I've seen come from consulting (troubleshooting) or network engineering disciplines. I came from consulting myself before being a 'assistant network admin', the real issue is that these jobs are hard to get as experience is scarce. Also companies will use a particular technology in alot of cases that without having worked for another business (as the software costs more than the yearly admin salary) that uses it. This further limits things... You'd think this would inspire companies to pay more... But usually not. For my state (PA) it's ~50k/year average.
If I had to do things over again... I'd have gotten a degree in photography... It's very techy these days with the change to digital and would make easily as much money...
Oddly... all I've ever dreamed of when I was little was having some sort of stable job and a family with a comfortable life... I'm 30 and I'm not really any closer to having my dreams come true than anyone who wanted to be an astronaut, but has motion sickness.
I'll take your kids, car, wife, job, mortgage, and life if you'll trade it for my stupidly insecure life with no safety nets...
See then there are people like me... I eat fairly healthy moderate portions (even with some fast food I manage a 2000 calorie diet) and I never loose weight... In fact without being very active (well over half an hour of aggressive exercise) everyday I gain more weight!
Not that most people ever believe me unless they see what I eat all day for themselves... Even my doctor thought I was lying about intake...
The funny part is I'm actually very healthy and hardly ever get sick...
Privately owned prisons that are contracted out by the state. It's the invention of those who say that business can always provide cheaper solutions than the state does... They have standards they are supposed to be held to, but...
Great efforts have been made in state & federal prisons in the US to where they live better than they ever did outside...
Now private prisons in the US... those can be bad o.o
you forgot a category: Those paid crap for the work they do are more likely to snoop.
Dirt on an exec can get you a hefty 'bonus' used correctly... Or unscrupulous enough and you sell off everything not 'bolted down' in the network and sell it off to the highest bidder...
I'd love to live where public transport options exist in the US... sadly my salary won't let me... So instead what little I save where I do live is slowly squeezing me out of saving for retirement or anything else I may otherwise use of the slight excess I have over my current cost of living... If I made more I'd move closer to work adding options for public transportation and/or diminishing my driving distance (though city driving in general is what kills my gas mileage as is).
I'm not lying at all about how much I make... The joke was very much on me... They used to have a management company doing their IT work... They paid roughly 28k for someone to be there during the day, so when they separated from the management company they said they would pay ~45k/year... The board though nixed that at the very last minute after I'd already taken the job & so all of last year I made 28k... They swear I'll make 38k this coming year (July 1st on), which is all they could afford as an increase... >_>
And I'm just saying that some people actually can complain and it isn't because they feel entitled to 80k+ a year with a nice benefits package... But really... If there are more people like myself who owe 60k for college... I can see why we feel entitled to making a bit more than the average person... 28k/year after taxes is almost exactly what my college loan holders want form me every month... >_>
Being a coder is not all their is to CS... Otherwise where will you find your network engineers & Network admins...? As a network admin I know businesses want a CS degree for their admin spots...
I however ended up in a network admin job that looked good initially (talk of at least a 10k pay increase for the job within 6 months, increased benefits, etc), but in the real world pays out 28k as the promises were smoke & mirrors... Well below Median income you quote... I can very well cry you a river & then some.
I can top that... I have a associates in business (It's a CIS degree) & a Bachelors in Business (And actual business degree, though I walked a 'computer science' path until very late in then switched because I got tired of the focus on programming). My job is a Network Admin/Director of Technology (I do the job, but don't get the title or pay of the second). And I got this job as a means out of doing small business consulting where I'd have to fight to ever see my money (every time, regardless of how good a project would go small business owners would treat me like shit and tell me they couldn't pay once the work was done). So I have this job, which is in my field of my degrees... Yet I make crap money, have a worse boss, overworked, underpaid (yes I'm repeating myself it's really that bad, though better than consulting where I wasn't being paid til two or three months after I did the work), and to top it off I can't leave... I'd either have to go back to consulting (and not be able to pay my college loans) or I'd have to take a non-admin job for less money... Why? In the time I've held this job everyone locally has decided they won't take anyone without five or more years of experience and won't take anything except a Bachelors CS degrees for admin work... Which I still don't get to this day... I meet the skills required for the job, I can talk to the pointy haired bosses in their language, & I do have some experience all be it not five years... You'd think I'd be near perfect... and I'm trapped liek never before...