America for most of it's history did not have the wealth distribution of nigeria.
The lower and middle class are basically turning into slaves of 1% of the population through a combination of punishments and inducements (work for health care + health care prices 20x as much if you are not working).
Yea-- you have to be fucking kidding me as well. How BAD does it have to get before 99% of the people take back the country from the 1% who are taking everything, shipping jobs overseas and making it illegal to buy products for 10% of the price overseas and import them back here.
Interesting point. I was starting to get into the whole, "i'm an old fart" thing and it actually started to make me feel old.
My girlfriend one day said, "STOP THAT" and said I was young and virile and handsom and that should keep that attitude and that saying I was old was programming me to feel old and I should stop right now. It made a difference. I really was starting to feel old. As a young man in my 40's we had 5 hours of making out, sex, food, more sex, talking and kissing, then more sex last night. After 4 hours last saturday morning.. and probably another 3-4 hours tomorrow. I also bench 250 and have a six pack these days.
Also, when i was learning to snowboard, I was telling some 20 year olds how I wanted to learn before I got to old and this 60+ year old guy passing on HIS snowboard yelled out.. "OLD??? Your not OLD!!!" He was probably 65+. And he was outboarding most of the younger people on the slopes.
As they say.. you are as old as you feel. Don't let 20 year olds define you as old. You can be healthy, fit, and have great sex into your 70's.
As an young man in my 40's, there is no way I would marry a young woman in her 20's.
It's the recipe for financial AND emotional ruin.
I am for some reason not attracted to them (all but one of my gf's have been a year or two older than I am- the one who was 12 years older was too young and uptight) but if I were, I would use a catch and release approach. Spend a couple years, have some great sex, share travel and dinners and then leave with happy memories while they still love you before they get bored and start cheating on you.
I bet it boils down to one man who has ego issues about women sleeping with younger men. Perhaps he feels it is "gross" as I've heard some say, perhaps his wife or girlfriend left him for a younger man.
This is a dumb choice. Especially with a TV show called "cougar town".
A good guess, but I'm not a believer and most people I know are believers. A couple of them intensely.
But they are mostly college educated and reasonable. They value education and wouldn't twist it that way.
The other crowds I travel with are gamers (religion doesn't come up), computer guys ( guy across the row wears a wristband with a cross on it), dancers (pretty devout group-- but oddly 20 years ago they were all swinging single types).
Then there is the bar crowd (mixed), concert crowd (mixed but less religious).
It's damn hard to find a woman down here who is not religious. But it's usually on a personal basis, not "I must change reality and rewrite history!" basis.
No- I lost a lot of friends to austin, but I'm not from austin.
Houston has one of the largest gay communities in the country... a gay mayor. We also helped a lot of people hurt by Katrina (really proud of Bill White for that and will probably vote for him whenever I get the chance because he showed us the best part of ourselves).
We also have Lakeview church, an oasis of love. We are not a religionless town. But folks are just tolerant of each other. Religious people here can believe strongly and also not turn off their brains.
We are also gun toting and proud of our texas heritage.
There has been a slow rise in us-vs-them mentality since the wealthy and powerful noticed around the time of Reagan that if they pumped the religious and abortion issues hard, they could keep the other 99% of the population split 50/50 on everything.
This was a perfect situation for them. They managed to get 50% of the population voting against itself in the face of mass unemployment and increasing concentration of wealth and income among less than 1% of the population. For some reason, multi millionaire talk show hosts can get people making $46k to vote against themselves using these issues.
I was born and raised in texas and this is the first time I've ever seen the phrase, "War for Southern Independence".
It's always been the "Civil War" to me and I've also heard it referred to as "The war between the states".
We have a right wing religious movement here and it has power out of proportion to it's numbers. Perhaps it is coming from Dallas or San Antonio. Most people I know in Austin and Houston are not strongly religious.
true story. Friend of mine was told to change the channel since the show which had naked african non-sexual boobs was naseating and in appropriate for being on the TV while eating.
Next day... "the Tudors" is showing catherine's lovers being drawn and quartered (pulled apart by four horses fastened to the limbs) lovingly showed in full detail by the special effects department with the bodies being torn open and the intestines being dragged apart and gore spewing about the ground. The folks so offended by african titties were not bothered a bit by this.
I mean, hell, what is wrong with the U.S. with regard to sex vs violence????
And who feels the need to display drawing and quartering in full glory on a TV show?
Or the prior night when catherine for some reason decides to strip nude to try out her head on the chopping block? Can we say gratuitous smarmy director shooting for shock with no story point? This is "violence porn" and a hell of a lot sicker than any normal porn.
If 1% of society has college degrees, the degrees have high value. If 99% of society has college degrees, the degrees have little value.
The tipping point for college degrees looks a lot lower than 99%-- under 20%.
Add on top of that the fact that colleges have gotten more expensive much faster than inflation and the relative value of a degree is pretty poor vs the investment.
They tried that approach already. The results were pretty bad for the guards and even the prisoners. And no better for society.
If they really wanted to bring down prison rates, they would legalize pot and allow use of other harder drugs in a controlled locations (with stiff penalties for selling/using them outside of those locations).
I have a dishwasher with a "dial" and mechanical steel workings. It's going on 10 years. I've known folks whose lasted 20 years (same for fridge, dryer, washer).
My friend has a dishwasher with electronics-- it broke after 3 years. The repairman said, "yes these last about 3 years". $250 a pop every time (Cost $399 new).
You used to be able to buy a washer, stove, refrigerator, etc. and it just bloody ran forever except for belts. These days 10 years-- maybe even less.
I was looking into hot water heaters and apparently they are way down as well (15 years to about 7).
I agree with your basic point. Would it not extend to the hardware as well?
The most secure systems should be based on formally tested, provably save, closed hardware made by u.s. factories.
Good point on the compiler-- another argument for open source-- then you compile your own executables.
My after thought was that if you had a group dedicated to finding and fixing security holes in government used software, that they would get pretty good at finding and fixing security holes after a while.
A better idea would be to have an office that analyzes the code of existing software for security issues, develops solutions, and hands them over to the software owner.
Owner doesn't want to share the code? Don't use their software for government work.
But redeveloping from scratch at this point does not make fiscal sense any more. We stand on the shoulders of 30 year tall giants. There is no need to rewrite the TCP IP stack from scratch, to write a word processor from scratch, to write a web server from scratch, etc.
While I brush daily and floss after every meal, I'm unusual. Many people brush and floss or water pick once a day. More than I would like do not brush daily.
I have to shower daily (or my skin gets inflamed- apparently allergic to my own sweat) (and i wake up after sleeping 3 hours feeling like I'm smothering and then take a shower so I can sleep -- which I should have done anyway) but more people than I would like do not shower daily.
age 18 to 30 nerd/geek types seem to not value brushing or bathing as much as the rest of the population.
I've heard that People in Europe bathe less but do clean the smelly parts more often.
Microsoft will offer a product which does some of what Office 2010 does but which does not offer key features and does not offer 24/7 uptime.
There is no promise to support the product for any particular time, so based on past history, the product will change every 3-4 years and at least once per decade, prior data will become unsupported to lesser or greater degrees.
I really disliked office 2010. I can buy it for $10 if I want to. It was slower and it was unable to print a lot of my complicated office 2003 documents. On loading them into Openoffice 3.0, I noticed that office 2003 had allowed a lot of overlapping tables and graphic files which a test showed was the problem. Since neither office 2003 nor office 2010 DISPLAYED the frikkin graphic or table boundaries there was no way I could fix this issue in Office.
So I converted all the documents to OpenOffice. Took me about 8 hours for the first 100 pages.. then once i understood OO sections, I got it down to about 2 hours per 100 pages for the rest.
Still have to use Office at work. I can even buy a full copy for $20 for home use if I want. But really don't want to go back now.
I dislike the office 2010 ribbons and approach to formatting documents and working with tables.
It was the legal department that waylaid a bunch of sites last thanksgiving (2 days left to comply with most folks on vacation when the letter arrived- somehow taking 12 days to cross the sea from UK.
They are jerks-- even sued the fan site that helped them redevelop the bloodbowl rules.
I will not be buying their products again.
There are too many other forms of entertainment-- more than you can consume in a lifetime-- to bother supporting jerks.
Wash at least every couple days. Hit your underarms and brush your teeth at least daily.
An unbrushed mouth can smell like roadkill from as far as three feet away after a couple months of not brushing. Bacteria set up a coral reef like structure around the base of each tooth and in between them.
Other than that...
If someone else is willing to do the work, then let them do it their way 90% of the time.
Set a goal of 90% yes. Only say no if it is critical. Hint, it isn't critical except 10% of the time.
If you say yes, then they will say yes to your goofy ideas.
Tho always be on the look for some competitive asshole undercutting you regardless of how nice you are to them. For those- you have to get out of their way or find a way to stick it in and break it off.
Show up on time, don't miss meetings.
Fail gracefully-- if they are over-assigning you work, then rather than flaming out, start to miss deadlines in minor ways early. If you always play the hero, then you'll be there at 10pm some night playing the hero while everyone else is partying-- including your soon to be ex girlfriend or boyfriend.
Keep up on the technology. On your own time. Get official training when you can.
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We have a building full of people who like to work 10+ hours a day. Heck, some of them are sending emails at 3am.
While I'm more on your side of the line than theirs, who do you think the business is going to promote and retain at a higher rate?
They genuinely enjoy working longer hours. It's challenging. It's fun. It's not about the money for the majority of them.
A lot of humans enjoy being productive and busy over being idle.
America for most of it's history did not have the wealth distribution of nigeria.
The lower and middle class are basically turning into slaves of 1% of the population through a combination of punishments and inducements (work for health care + health care prices 20x as much if you are not working).
Yea-- you have to be fucking kidding me as well. How BAD does it have to get before 99% of the people take back the country from the 1% who are taking everything, shipping jobs overseas and making it illegal to buy products for 10% of the price overseas and import them back here.
Interesting point.
I was starting to get into the whole, "i'm an old fart" thing and it actually started to make me feel old.
My girlfriend one day said, "STOP THAT" and said I was young and virile and handsom and that should keep that attitude and that saying I was old was programming me to feel old and I should stop right now.
It made a difference. I really was starting to feel old. As a young man in my 40's we had 5 hours of making out, sex, food, more sex, talking and kissing, then more sex last night. After 4 hours last saturday morning.. and probably another 3-4 hours tomorrow. I also bench 250 and have a six pack these days.
Also, when i was learning to snowboard, I was telling some 20 year olds how I wanted to learn before I got to old and this 60+ year old guy passing on HIS snowboard yelled out.. "OLD??? Your not OLD!!!" He was probably 65+. And he was outboarding most of the younger people on the slopes.
As they say.. you are as old as you feel. Don't let 20 year olds define you as old. You can be healthy, fit, and have great sex into your 70's.
As an young man in my 40's, there is no way I would marry a young woman in her 20's.
It's the recipe for financial AND emotional ruin.
I am for some reason not attracted to them (all but one of my gf's have been a year or two older than I am- the one who was 12 years older was too young and uptight) but if I were, I would use a catch and release approach. Spend a couple years, have some great sex, share travel and dinners and then leave with happy memories while they still love you before they get bored and start cheating on you.
Depression sucks. You have my sympathy.
Did your depression just drift away or did you find something that helped?
oh wait. have to be on topic.
Did depression just drift away or did you find something that helped like being wrapped in the arms of an older woman?
I bet it boils down to one man who has ego issues about women sleeping with younger men. Perhaps he feels it is "gross" as I've heard some say, perhaps his wife or girlfriend left him for a younger man.
This is a dumb choice. Especially with a TV show called "cougar town".
If there is an algorithm for it, the Sheldon could use it to recognize (and produce?) sarcasm.
Bazynga!
Exception proves the rule.
rush, hannity, beck, o'reilley.
A good guess, but I'm not a believer and most people I know are believers. A couple of them intensely.
But they are mostly college educated and reasonable. They value education and wouldn't twist it that way.
The other crowds I travel with are gamers (religion doesn't come up), computer guys ( guy across the row wears a wristband with a cross on it), dancers (pretty devout group-- but oddly 20 years ago they were all swinging single types).
Then there is the bar crowd (mixed), concert crowd (mixed but less religious).
It's damn hard to find a woman down here who is not religious. But it's usually on a personal basis, not "I must change reality and rewrite history!" basis.
No- I lost a lot of friends to austin, but I'm not from austin.
Houston has one of the largest gay communities in the country... a gay mayor.
We also helped a lot of people hurt by Katrina (really proud of Bill White for that and will probably vote for him whenever I get the chance because he showed us the best part of ourselves).
We also have Lakeview church, an oasis of love. We are not a religionless town. But folks are just tolerant of each other. Religious people here can believe strongly and also not turn off their brains.
We are also gun toting and proud of our texas heritage.
There has been a slow rise in us-vs-them mentality since the wealthy and powerful noticed around the time of Reagan that if they pumped the religious and abortion issues hard, they could keep the other 99% of the population split 50/50 on everything.
This was a perfect situation for them. They managed to get 50% of the population voting against itself in the face of mass unemployment and increasing concentration of wealth and income among less than 1% of the population. For some reason, multi millionaire talk show hosts can get people making $46k to vote against themselves using these issues.
I was born and raised in texas and this is the first time I've ever seen the phrase, "War for Southern Independence".
It's always been the "Civil War" to me and I've also heard it referred to as "The war between the states".
We have a right wing religious movement here and it has power out of proportion to it's numbers. Perhaps it is coming from Dallas or San Antonio. Most people I know in Austin and Houston are not strongly religious.
true story.
Friend of mine was told to change the channel since the show which had naked african non-sexual boobs was naseating and in appropriate for being on the TV while eating.
Next day... "the Tudors" is showing catherine's lovers being drawn and quartered (pulled apart by four horses fastened to the limbs) lovingly showed in full detail by the special effects department with the bodies being torn open and the intestines being dragged apart and gore spewing about the ground. The folks so offended by african titties were not bothered a bit by this.
I mean, hell, what is wrong with the U.S. with regard to sex vs violence????
And who feels the need to display drawing and quartering in full glory on a TV show?
Or the prior night when catherine for some reason decides to strip nude to try out her head on the chopping block? Can we say gratuitous smarmy director shooting for shock with no story point? This is "violence porn" and a hell of a lot sicker than any normal porn.
If 1% of society has college degrees, the degrees have high value.
If 99% of society has college degrees, the degrees have little value.
The tipping point for college degrees looks a lot lower than 99%-- under 20%.
Add on top of that the fact that colleges have gotten more expensive much faster than inflation and the relative value of a degree is pretty poor vs the investment.
They tried that approach already. The results were pretty bad for the guards and even the prisoners.
And no better for society.
If they really wanted to bring down prison rates, they would legalize pot and allow use of other harder drugs in a controlled locations (with stiff penalties for selling/using them outside of those locations).
It's also "hard goods" manufacturers.
I have a dishwasher with a "dial" and mechanical steel workings. It's going on 10 years. I've known folks whose lasted 20 years (same for fridge, dryer, washer).
My friend has a dishwasher with electronics-- it broke after 3 years. The repairman said, "yes these last about 3 years". $250 a pop every time (Cost $399 new).
You used to be able to buy a washer, stove, refrigerator, etc. and it just bloody ran forever except for belts. These days 10 years-- maybe even less.
I was looking into hot water heaters and apparently they are way down as well (15 years to about 7).
I agree with your basic point. Would it not extend to the hardware as well?
The most secure systems should be based on formally tested, provably save, closed hardware made by u.s. factories.
Good point on the compiler-- another argument for open source-- then you compile your own executables.
My after thought was that if you had a group dedicated to finding and fixing security holes in government used software, that they would get pretty good at finding and fixing security holes after a while.
If someone showed up with $3k worth of figures from the prior edition, they wouldn't be able to play.
The $80 Bloodscrim Snotling figure now has it's arms slightly different and has a belt and is a $80 Bloodscrim Snotling Elite.
I find it hard to believe folks go for this crap but they apparently do.
Same with Magic-- last I heard it was two editions back- everything else was illegal except for less common special open tournaments.
A better idea would be to have an office that analyzes the code of existing software for security issues, develops solutions, and hands them over to the software owner.
Owner doesn't want to share the code? Don't use their software for government work.
But redeveloping from scratch at this point does not make fiscal sense any more. We stand on the shoulders of 30 year tall giants. There is no need to rewrite the TCP IP stack from scratch, to write a word processor from scratch, to write a web server from scratch, etc.
Monopoly, Risk, Axis & Allies, Diplomacy (50 years old).
Yea-- hard to believe ANYONE would want to play a game 7 years after it was published.
Games Workshop is getting bad about this (as is Magic the Gathering).
Sure- you can play on your own, but convention play requires the current figures and rules. Which are arbitrarily changed about every 24-36 months.
Business wants you to RENT everything- no ownership.
So I get the impression they were relying on the 100 tons to hold it down.
What about screwing some big augers into the ocean floor and strapping the cap down to them?
Or is that what they tried?
While I brush daily and floss after every meal, I'm unusual. Many people brush and floss or water pick once a day. More than I would like do not brush daily.
I have to shower daily (or my skin gets inflamed- apparently allergic to my own sweat) (and i wake up after sleeping 3 hours feeling like I'm smothering and then take a shower so I can sleep -- which I should have done anyway) but more people than I would like do not shower daily.
age 18 to 30 nerd/geek types seem to not value brushing or bathing as much as the rest of the population.
I've heard that People in Europe bathe less but do clean the smelly parts more often.
Microsoft will offer a product which does some of what Office 2010 does but which does not offer key features and does not offer 24/7 uptime.
There is no promise to support the product for any particular time, so based on past history, the product will change every 3-4 years and at least once per decade, prior data will become unsupported to lesser or greater degrees.
I really disliked office 2010. I can buy it for $10 if I want to. It was slower and it was unable to print a lot of my complicated office 2003 documents. On loading them into Openoffice 3.0, I noticed that office 2003 had allowed a lot of overlapping tables and graphic files which a test showed was the problem. Since neither office 2003 nor office 2010 DISPLAYED the frikkin graphic or table boundaries there was no way I could fix this issue in Office.
So I converted all the documents to OpenOffice. Took me about 8 hours for the first 100 pages.. then once i understood OO sections, I got it down to about 2 hours per 100 pages for the rest.
Still have to use Office at work. I can even buy a full copy for $20 for home use if I want. But really don't want to go back now.
I dislike the office 2010 ribbons and approach to formatting documents and working with tables.
It was the legal department that waylaid a bunch of sites last thanksgiving (2 days left to comply with most folks on vacation when the letter arrived- somehow taking 12 days to cross the sea from UK.
They are jerks-- even sued the fan site that helped them redevelop the bloodbowl rules.
I will not be buying their products again.
There are too many other forms of entertainment-- more than you can consume in a lifetime-- to bother supporting jerks.
It bears repeating.
Wash at least every couple days. Hit your underarms and brush your teeth at least daily.
An unbrushed mouth can smell like roadkill from as far as three feet away after a couple months of not brushing. Bacteria set up a coral reef like structure around the base of each tooth and in between them.
Other than that...
If someone else is willing to do the work, then let them do it their way 90% of the time.
Set a goal of 90% yes. Only say no if it is critical. Hint, it isn't critical except 10% of the time.
If you say yes, then they will say yes to your goofy ideas.
Tho always be on the look for some competitive asshole undercutting you regardless of how nice you are to them. For those- you have to get out of their way or find a way to stick it in and break it off.
Show up on time, don't miss meetings.
Fail gracefully-- if they are over-assigning you work, then rather than flaming out, start to miss deadlines in minor ways early. If you always play the hero, then you'll be there at 10pm some night playing the hero while everyone else is partying-- including your soon to be ex girlfriend or boyfriend.
Keep up on the technology. On your own time. Get official training when you can.
And don't for get to wear sunscreen.