They put in long hours, far beyond the typical 7.5 hours or so of the school day. The majority of them take money out their own pockets to have class supplies. And maintaining the license requires continuing education, almost always at their own cost.
You just described all the jobs between factory floor worker to senior management. Which is the majority of the jobs in the US. Do teachers work over summer? Outside of 1 hour of lunch most people work 8-9 hours a day; year around. They probably don't spend as much of their personal money on work related stuff.
I have known teachers who worked for more than 8 years making over 100k in salaries. Would summer be PTO or vacation time? Either way you slice it, it is either a higher salary or benefit; both compensation. Teachers' overall benefits as a 'career' are far better than the majority of jobs. The job-for-life feature is just icing.
1) Go read up on the industry standard IDEs & debuggers for the programming environment you will be working in. 2) If your job is really consistent and stable (ie: Java programs day in day out), then go master your IDEs & debuggers. Learn their customization capabilities. 3) Learn to organize your personal code library and build up your core tool set in a way that is functionally reusable and searchable. 4) Learn to program your work in a way that adds to and complements #3. 5) Learn to document your code and processes. 6) Read a book on communicating to management (sry someone else will need to provide a good example), this will set you apart from your companions.
I meant to give you my 2 cents, but dropped a nickle... keep it. Good luck.
I was actually a fairly big fan of Apple (except for the one button mouse & price tag) and normally used them rather than the Windows machines. UNTIL I spent about 4 months with 3 different iPhone 4/4Ss and had to do support for VIPs. For me, the iPhone is a POS.
As a "phone" is just sucks. Odd rectangle, poor speaker (thou mic is good), poor contacts interface, poor call logging, and poor battery life. Excellent screen, but lots of lost real estate. As a camera, not bad. As a smartphone, extremely limiting. Over simplified desktop, single task oriented, no widgets, and I couldn't believe that they didn't have the pull down before iOS 5. As a net surfer, horrible. Safari is extremely single task oriented in a world of multi-tabbing (thou Dolphin is a nice fill in). Email is 5 years back too with poor setting options (ex: encryption, load images), and attachments handling. Again, the entire system is designed with a "Do one thing at a time" mentality, which is great for initial users, but extremely limiting once you get used to it (1+ month). And the software quality/reliability... great for a desktop, but poor for a phone. iTunes on Windows is also poor (Mac edition works great).
Apple as a vendor is just simply arrogant and poor at partnering. My company is as big as GE and until we had multiple countries complaining about bugs in the iPhone, we didn't even get a "we are looking into it" response from Apple. They just acted like the bugs didn't exist. And I thought MS and Oracle were bad. At least the later have armies of barely useful consultants where one might know the temporary work around.
What rocks about the iPhone is it is an excellent music player, and the apps ecosystem is very well done. But the former doesn't need a full fledged iPhone and the later doesn't work well in an enterprise setting.
Don't get me wrong, I think the iPhone is better than most out there (alts: the Atrix 2, Galaxy S 2, Xperia X10), but it is far from what I would expect from Apple's normal quality. I already have requests to switch back to BBs after a month (of course) cause as our CEO told me "I just kind of need it to work all the time." Odd, you would think he was talking about his Windows laptop and wanting a Mac.
People in the US forget that most jobs in many companies require minimum wage and benefits. I am going to exclude the less than 40 hours and tip based compensations as, to include those, most of the world would beat the pants off of us.
The minimum wage in the US is $7.25/hour; benefits and all support structure (ie: IT, janitorial, break room, etc) will easily bring that up to $10/hour. So the minimum cost of an American is ~$400/week. Although the IT guy gets $300/week, this support structure will easily bring him into the $11/hour range. Most Indian IT companies maintain campuses, employee transportation, state of the art gyms, & cafeterias with subsidized meals. They really are the top of the cream in the job market.
So India's top of the line job costs about 10% more than the minimum in the US. So even if that job generates 1/4 the value of an equivalent position, it is still worth it for most companies. As someone who partially manages support for a large organization, I can tell you that the majority of helpdesk's time is spent on questions that are just 1-2 levels above "Did you plug it in?"; where a simple troubleshooting script is enough. Any wonder why so many jobs, such as support, get outsourced to India?
Of course there are many many other factors that change that value & cost proposition (ie: unpaid overtime, education, dedication, culture, language, etc) but don't show up in the business case but do in the results. Personally, I would take a one year US vet over a 4 man outsourced team for my product's development and infrastructure maintenance. But would prefer the outsourced team for front end support, and testing.
No, its like the janitor in your company coming up to you and saying that if you only learned to shoot better or stopped & actually dropped your paper balls in the trash; he could charge you less in cleaning up after your misses.
We use similar products. Here is where that breaks down and the parent is right in trying to raise the education level of the common user.
"See, the icon isn't there!" "What is the icon?" "It's this blue E thing?" --a bit of searching around-- "You had accidentally deleted it, I am restoring it from your Recycle Bin." ticket closed
Problem: Billing People are embarrassed/confused/angry that they got a $10 bill for 15 minutes of HelpDesk support for a "simple" fix. People want good service but want to pay half the price of it.
I got a $50 bill for booking my travel arrangements on the phone. Never mind the fact that their website wasn't working for the past 3 business days and this was my 3rd attempt at calling them. My wait this time around was 25+ minutes and she was only on the call for 6.5 minutes (cause I had all the times & flight/hotel codes memorized). They charge per booking. Fact is, people just don't understand that _other_ people's time is expensive in the US.
This maybe what "support" is there for, but this is certainly NOT what IT exists for. IT should exist to enable the business.
If you think of IT as just an janitor, then your business better not be dependent on IT in any critical way; aka, you are a manufacturing sweatshop w/ one computer that links to an internet site. Otherwise, your IT janitor is making your overall business obsolete day by day.
Note: I said IT enables business, that does not necessarily mean individual employees.
Until you get past 3 arrows and 4 blocks. More than 3 slides does it too. I got a chart that looks complicated, and 5 seconds will tell each viewer that they need only look at their quarter of the graph, but no one looks at it until I point them to it for their question.
No, its not normally poor communication skills. I put out FYI communications quarterly to about 10000+ employees on IT related initiatives.
- About 4% of those respond, walk-up, or call with completely stupid questions where our 3-man team replies by highlighting, copying, or reading subsections of the initial communication. - We probably get another 5% with legit questions (whom we add to a common FAQ). - We get about 10% who clearly haven't read any of the various communications or self-help resources but admit it is their fault when they mess up. - BUT we also get about 5% like the above, but come screaming at us after the fact.
If it doesn't wear you down to spend at least 1/3 of your working day every 3 months copying, and reading the same text over and over again for that 9%... you aren't human. And my team has a full time job with additional season burdens already. This is just icing on the cake. Additional resources... management doesn't want to believe their employee base needs that much hand-holding, let alone look at the evidence. Remember, its only 9%... deal with it.
These communications... they go through a central communications board where at least 2 people review my draft. True, they butcher my draft and alter it in ways I feel leave out important details, but that is their job; that is what they are good at. To this day, none of us understand why HR, Legal, Procurement, etc communications don't have these problems. It seems they are established and no one wants to confront them.
I think it boils down to the below and it is understandable but doesn't make my team's job any easier: - people don't care, until it effects them (this item can no longer be ordered) - people don't have the time (I have 8hrs of work, I expect to donate only the 1st 8 minutes to you to fix this) - people only read what supports what they want (you can have this) - people don't read/digest what they see is negative (you can no longer have this) - people want tangible, over simplified results (we spent $20,000 less on 100k widgets)
But ANY non-Android based device out there can link into and utilize Google search. Android isn't pushed everytime you go to google.com. Samsung, HTC, etc don't get special promotions in Google's search results, nor do they get discounts on their sponsored ads because they use Android. These manufactures voluntarily go out of their way to get, customize, and deploy Android on their own devices. Google doesn't tell them how to do it or make any special deals with them. Google also isn't usurping some standard by creating their own either. Google did create 3 phones as examples for the manufactures, but didn't use their might to shove it down any carrier.
Comparing Android to IE doesn't even make sense.
Google Search and Android certainly have a positive feedback loop, but so do weather, yahoo stocks, whatsapp, & yupptv with Android. But that doesn't make Google a monopoly that is abusing their power.
India? No, they are at the same state as China. China did it with GE, Walmart, Apple, Cisco, etc. India did it with Microsoft, Google, IBM, Accenture, Capgemini, etc.
India is probably a bit ahead of China in progress. China is facing a major shift in its people's behavior, makeup, wealth, demands, and political orientation. India has basically passed or doesn't have the same issues. Don't misunderstand me, they both still have a long way to go, just that India is ahead.
You want the next cheap labor? Look to where China is looking to meet their people's changing demand... Africa. Even though the US provides more aid to Africa than any other country, African nations respect and look toward China more cause they feel their future is with them. It's a changing world.
This isn't just inflation as some people think. It's not as simple as flooding the market with dollars. Or globally transferring actual value from every dollar holder equally to the US government. This is eroding one of the foundation pillars of what make America better than the other options (notice I didn't say "best" or "great"). You would lower the confidence in the dollar globally.
The only reason we are not in a worse shape than the rest of the world is because we suck least. Our government's financial management is piss poor, but it is still in the top 5. Not because it is good, but because everyone else is worse over the long run. But we have one more thing going for us, we don't mess around with the dollar... much. Not as much as say other countries with their currencies. When you put the currency + country, you still have crap, but it is the least stinking pile around. So if you have some wealth or real value, cause the world economy isn't booming, your current options are either to maintain value (buy things worth more to you) or lose it as slowly as possible (gold, savings, checking, stocks, etc). And all these things are done using the dollar.
America currently has a natural subsidy funded by all the other currencies in the world, we don't pay much transaction costs for buying oil and many other commodities. Countries like UK, Germany, India, & China not only need to buy the oil just like us, but also need to pay additional for the translation of dollar to their local currency. If the dollar is replaced as the global currency, America will be facing massive transaction costs on top of the inflated prices. This will last decades.
You mess around with the dollar's value directly (printing vs loans & trade balances), people will stop believing in the dollar and start looking at alternatives. Once that happens, the alternative has inertia to stick around and becomes difficult to replace (just like the dollar today). The Euro is actually better than the dollar, but not better enough to over come the transaction cost of dethroning the dollar. You mess with the dollar, the Euro isn't the problem, but rather India & China who hold the greatest Dollar debt in the world. They will have every incentive to create their own currency and cause they hold so much Dollar debt, they have the weight to replace it too. Currently it just isn't worth it for them (not cause financial & economic reasons, but sadly... cultural) cause they have a dependable currency to do transactions.
In a US default, only the lenders to the US government take the hit. This is China, India, some EU countries, and for the largest part... the US citizen (we hold the largest US debt). In printing dollars, everyone takes the hit. By hitting everyone, we get them all moving to create a dependable alternative.
If we default, or print money, the result will be pretty much the same. Everything becomes more expensive, our savings lose value, all loan & credit rates increase, and economic growth will be suppressed. Either way, the US would become just another country that took a bit longer to realize it. But devaluation via a default, our products will be cheaper globally, the economic suppression will be offset by exports, in a few years investors will lend to the US again (maybe not the government, but to our businesses), and we will recover to a boom what historians will someday call a "short time".
However, print money, and you are risking replacing the dollar. In which case, the offsets never happen. Our export transaction costs to a foreign currency will keep our exports expensive, and investors won't invest in the US government nor businesses when there is a better global alternative. Our recover will take a long time, long enough for other economies to cement themselves as the new leaders & innovators of the world. A position we will take as long to regain as they did to take from us (and only if they screw up like us).
I was with him until he said "People seem to be saying that the bad guys are smarter, better. But the answer to that is 'no'." Until then, it was an obvious "Duh", similar to saying there is no 100% secure real system. And kind of sad that he had to actually tell the media that... how far the media has fallen.
But back to the point, the bad guys are smarter, and better than the good guys. History has proven that over and over again. Just cause you came in after the fact and cleaned up the mess doesn't mean you are better. If you prevented it in the first place, then you are better. But that is not the case. The bad guys have totally ripped apart in weeks what the good guys have created in months, sometimes years.
Good guys stick their head in the sand till something they can't ignore comes along. Then they try to solve it. If they can't do it technically (many cases), they fall back to legal means. This doesn't make the good guys better, but just competent enough. Thinking otherwise is just more sticking your head in the sand.
By default torrent trackers should be held innocent. They aren't any different from Google or Gun manufactures. On those points, why doesn't the government ban Google from indexing torrents? Or make +torrent searches invalid? As for guns, the AK-47 and other particular guns are primarily used in terrorist/genocide/bad-stuff activities as defined by the US (and sometimes even the UN). Why don't we treat the manufacturers & traders & even the users of these particular items the same way we treat the users who commit illegal activities?
I understand your reasoning that if a site blatently supports or encourages copyright infringement then they are accessories to the infringement. I think the opposite case is obvious that a site that clearly doesn't support it via filters and proactive monitoring is innocent. However, even if a torrent tracker operates in a user driven, automated fashion where no monitoring but the application of owner driven DMCA notices & local laws are complied with; I don't think should be held accountable. The courts may have ruled otherwise; but that doesn't make it right. Especially since each tracker actually tells everyone (including the traded material's owner) of all the IP addresses that are currently trading in the ware! The owner is free to file for discovery from current legal methods.
Legal is basically going after torrent trackers cause it is the easy mark. Cause getting the actual person committing the crime is too hard. Society already gave a lot to content owners; and we give them (and their next generations) too much today. Yet we have people argueing that we need to give them more!! The least owners can do is be a caretaker of their work and prosecute those who do them harm. Yet they ask that we not only bare the burden of "encouraging" them to produce more but also fully foot the bill to taking care of their work & current failing business processes, AND expand the criteria of what is considered a criminal to bystandards.
And we had Rush Limbaugh, probably one of the most out spoken "conservative" critics of national healthcare go to Hawaii which has the most socialistic healthcare system in the US for his medical needs. He didn't pick Massachusetts which has a similar system; no, he bloodly got as from the US as possible without actually leaving it.
Not to mention the conservative, cut-spending-now republican convention whose top topics were against nationwide healthcare was in Hawaii. And they totally ignored Hawaii's situation.
So either these guys publically disagree with nationwide healthcare and privately love it, or they have no clue how to manage anything. Either way, you wouldn't want them leading the country.
So I got a N900 a year ago. My first Nokia phone (I was a Sony man before). It was and is almost exactly what I am looking for. I was even impressed by the way Nokia did the whole repository thing. I am basically a PM. And as I looked into the processes that Nokia employeed, I slowly became disappointed.
They had initiatives for : - code refactoring for better UI/responsiveness - Meemo to Meego migration - Ovi Suite - Better front camera software stack - Qt in the works - voice recognization - Android compatibility - etc.
What I see are a lot of "initiatives" but no project plans or defined deliverables. It just seemed to me that there was no direction or focus. The second something became almost, it's direction changed. I don't mean to be rude, but this is what in-experienced programmers do. I am not talking about good/bad programmers, but about immature/mature programmers. Mature programmers are the guys who also write the good help docs & APIs along with the code. In-experienced programmers reinvent wheels, lose focus on the big picture, and get too much into their super optimized code. And I am not placing the blame on them, but rather the PMs. It is their duty to notice this, put them back on the correct path, and keep the big picture in mind. It is the PM's duty to define and focus on the deliverables. They need to make sure they aren't wasting time on useless optimizations that give you 50% gain a module, but a meer 1% in the overall process.
Going with Microsoft may give Nokia the ability to quickly draw a common big picture, but it does really nothing to address the issues underneath. Even within that big picture, the issues will just resurface and you will end up like you did with the N900. I really like the N900, but it can be so much better. Before this whole Microsoft thing, I was going to buy another N900 and was recommending it to 2 others in my office as PDAs. But after almost convincing my wife to buy my phone, I dropped it at the last minute. Along with my recommendations in the office environment. A good product is more than just hardware or even software, and I don't think Nokia gets it.
Actually, these types of things are usually in house. If there ever was a case for non-off-the-shelf software, a SE booking & matching engine is it. Most of the developers will be inhouse. The reason to use Linux is most likely that you can strip out all non-essentials. A path that an order takes from external interface to execution can be seriously streamlined with little intereferance from the OS. Imagine having fat kernels like Windows in the interfaces/perimeters and slim kernels almost akin to embedded systems within the centralized engine(s) itself. Inside and outside the system you don't care about security, but on the perimeter, you setup some big bouncers. There are only two platforms that provide this capability & flexibility at a competitive scale while retaining a common programming interface. BSD and Linux. Linux has a better user side support and there are more programmers for it in the overall ecosystem. BSD may have better security, but once inside the system... who cares.
There is also the aspect of scalability; bringing on and tearing down virtual/physical machines as needed. A thin Linux/BSD/embedded solution flows more linearly and smoothly with demand than say full blown Windows/Redhat ES. With a standardized OS/programming interface, you can break down processes to individual tasks quite efficiently. This allows you to identify bottlenecks in the process and reenforce them with additional parallel processes/machines when needed to maximize throughput. Monolithic systems just don't do this well without huge upfront resource investments and increasing power on non-bottlenecks causing waste.
What's sad is the assumption that the "bad guys" don't know about this already. This is one of those stupid "What I don't know, can't hurt me" craps. God forbid someone points out that the emperor has no clothes.
It's something I have observed in many businesses. Unknown risk can't be quantified, and thus doesn't get a dollar cost or reported in figures. It's unknown. Known risk gets reported, tracked, quantified, and requires expenditure of resources to mitigate. Unfortunately, failure to do so of the later has personal consequences, and failure of the former doesn't have any. We have evolved a whole "Cover Your Ass" culture around it, where the responsibility can't be avoided (that equals higher salary) but the consequences are just passed around. We end up with fall guys, or expensive litigation/arbitration, or C&D letters + lawsuit like this. Which ever is cheaper. Along with sub-sub-contractors, over paid CEOs, and useless managerial middle men/policies. The "business smart" guys know how to do CYA real well, and don't look into things that could cause trouble. The conclusion is that the less people know, the better. Curiosity is an exercise done in a dark closet, alone.
Small businesses (peasants) can't afford not to look, cause one instance can take them out. And once they are gone, the system just moves on w/o a glitch. Big business (emperors) on the other hand has the financial muscle to ignore what they want to. Any windfall costs associated with any ignorance is taken up by anyone but them cause they are "Too big to fail". The smaller day to day costs are spread to customers and stockholders. It's a sad state of affairs; makes one wonder how anything gets done. Or how much those that do get stuff done, carry the dead weight of those that don't.
Dude, just cause I disagree with you doesn't mean I am taking the polar opposite! Why don't we do more checks on Cargo planes & ships? We need one to blow up 1st? Why don't we spend more on immigration overhaul? Why don't we make Healthcare cheaper? We are having trouble extending tax cuts, lets put the money there. Why not rebuild our under-maintained, failing infrastructure... etc. But I guess these would be a deficit building waste while the TSA isn't.
Even if we did have all those bombers go off, flight is STILL many times safer than other modes of transit. Yet we spend a fraction of the amount on those other things. If we are in so much danger that the TSA is being effective, then why don't we have annual bombings in other sectors of our society. You are telling me we can't make those other things safer? Why bother with this one then? Example, Pakistan and India don't get along, they have terrorists on both sides, and they don't just aim at planes! They hit all easy targets. So since there are no bombs in our other sectors, I would say that we aren't in so much danger that needs a TSA protecting the safest thing we already have (that doesn't mean I am taking the polar opposite). And if you think we are amazing at catching things at the border, just look at the war on drugs. Oh, btw, guess what India does (with a fraction of our budget), they EDUCATE their populace. They tell people to be vigilant, report suspicious activity, and true safety always resides with the individuals. And this isn't just at their airports. And people aren't cowering in their homes either that their local McDee may get hit this year. They have logically addressed it and moved on.
Lets leave the bed analogy cause its obviously isn't getting the point across. Basically, the under the bed is the imaginary place situation. By definition, there is no reason to waste resources looking under there.
How about we educate people in our country about who our threat is (its not "terror"). How about we educate people that show where threats come from and what the real risk is? How about we educate people that flight is still the safest mode of transit. That whole multi-colored "Threat Level" BS where half the colors are useless doesn't count.
Al Qeada... I am not sure where to begin. Most people see this group as the boogieman or something. They over simply the situation as "This is the one true evil" and all other enemies are like them. Al Qeada is just one symptom of a greater problem and they were basically the early warning. There are MANY other entities that are pissed at us, and we are just adding to them. It no longer takes a great super power to mess with super powers, and we should not be giving birth to them left and right. Maybe we shouldn't stick our finger in everything? Maybe we should follow other countries like the UAE, Switzerland, Sweden, Brazil, Canada, Japan, etc who have their own problems, but not as bad as ours.
The world gave is a great amount of sympathy after 9/11; today, they look at us as the prick of the world. For some, they view us as the guys trying to eradicate Muslims from the middle east. You may not care about these relationships, but they have real world consequences. If we had more friends out there, you would think Bin Laden would have less places to hide. Saddam is an example where he couldn't run cause his neighbors, maybe didn't like us, but would turn him over to us. Today? You think many of those same countries wouldn't arm and fund guys like him with a revenge vendetta?
And assuming that only "backwoods hill fuck off"s (second time your have pointlessly demeaned them) are the only ones getting pissed at us only shows your uneducated ignorance. Some of these people are smart, really smart. They aren't all radical idiots bent on blowing themselves up or wanting y virgins in heaven. Some just want power and money. We just happen to be a bigger wrench for their means.
Our basic disagreement as I understand it is this: You bel
Here, I will keep it simple for you. The terrorist in 9/11 tried to instill terror into the people. These actions negate that to a point
Fine, work is ancillary. But the way we are going about "removing" terror is BS. We should be educating people, not playing games with security theater.
Fail. You have no reason to believe that the so called diverted capitol would be used in any way that would promote any economic growth. In fact, hiring TSA agents and manufacturing machines that you don't think is needed is probably providing more economic growth then the alternative of not spending the money at all.
So we should hire morons to do nearly useless tasks so that people "feel" less terror? We shouldn't be spending the money if that's all its value is. Why don't we just hire 2 shifts a day where one digs holes and the other fills them? That's about as productive as what we are currently doing with that money. When there is money, it gets spent, period. Read up on budgets and how they work. And when it comes to the government, money not spent is either left in the economy, or not provided as a burden to the next generation. Both lead to better growth than what we currently have.
First, you are arguing against yourself with your own arguments. Second, you are confusing the function of government with the reaction of people. In short, you are saying that the government shouldn't take action to quash the fear of the people but at the same time, should take action because the people are afraid of the hassles at the airports. I really do not care how many people are taking more dangerous modes of transportation since 9/11.
What I am arguing is exactly your issue, I am saying the government _should_ think about how their policies will change the behavior of the public. Remember prohibition? How about no alcohol sales on Sunday (everyone just buys and stores more on Saturdays). The point shouldn't be to spend money to make people "feel" safer, it should be to actually make them safer. Fear should be addressed via education, not secrecy, and theater. We should be targeting things that have a greater risk, and tell the public why.
You see, I don't care if the country of bumfuckistan doesn't like us and never will again.
Well, one set of "bumfuckistan"s took out 2 towers and part of the Pentagon. They were probably pissed at us before, but weren't going to do anything till we pissed them off more. That simple act has caused us to invade 2 countries, and cost us massive amounts of resources, lives, and goodwill. I certainly think it matters. I am not saying we should go out there and make nice, nice but we certainly shouldn't be pissing people off left and right. Most of the world today has a very negative view of the US. Travel around a bit, find out for yourself. Its not friends that attack you, but enemies and you can never have too few of them. We are no different, we didn't attack Japan till they hit PH and "pissed" us off.
My analogy with the "bed" was that its a waste of time (and resources) looking under the bed. There is nothing under the bed. Instead of wasting time looking under the bed every night we should educate the child about imaginary and real monsters. We should be concentrating upon risker real world threats instead of imaginary ones. Cause as we waste time with the bed, we are actually creating more and more treats in the wild. Real threats that this over pampered child will be incapable of handling when they come forward.
But what exactly are you making safer and why? Commercial flight is already the safest mode of transportation. What's the point of making it a fraction safer? And to the chicken and egg argument, if the TSA is protecting us from such danger, why don't we have annual terrorist attacks on other more vulnerable sectors of our society? We have 2 major long ass borders and 2 long coast lines with little to no security in comparison to flight policies. A city skyline, subway, or football game have as much, if not a far more, of a profound and lasting impression on our society. Why aren't we protecting those similarly, and can we or should we? Just ask other nations that already have to deal with this. Even with all their protection in the everyday sector (ex: pat downs & bag check in at McDonalds) their flight is still safer than all else. Are terrorists biased only toward flight? Maybe concerning the US, they are.
I understand what you are saying, but when it comes to the "terrorist" subject I think we have clearly gone too far and made no progress.
You are basically saying we should spend all this extra capital on these extra measures so that the airline industry doesn't fall, and people will feel good about going to work. This is not the way to treat a society, its how you treat 2 year olds who are afraid of what's under their bed. The way you address this is through proper public education. You determine where your failure points are, if any, and try to prevent knee jerk reactions. Your objective is NOT to make people "feel" safe, but to actually make them safer without additional negative effects. If you think our society is already 2 year olds and needs this pampering, then we have already lost the battle for survival. Perpetual 2 year olds eventually die a lonely horrible death, as all the adults that could spare to take care of them have passed on. Our attempts at fictional protection is a battle already lost as some other unstoppable economic or law of the jungle force will bury us.
Even after all the accidents, disasters, and attacks in all of commercial aviation history, that round trip international flight half way around the world is many many times safer than the 15 minute car ride for the flight. Flight is already comparatively safe, but we redirect huge amounts of our capital which would otherwise go to economic growth endeavors into trying to make something that is already ridiculously safe just a fraction safer. Our "fear" has caused us more damage than 9/11 terrorists could have ever imagined. Bin-Laden should shoot himself with a smile on his face the next time on camera, cause it ain't gona get better than this.
There are a ton of much bigger and easier targets where this capital can be used to a FAR greater efficiency, benefit, and return to our society (ie: medical research, education, other transportation, infrastructure, etc). At the very least, our policies and reactions should not increase the danger we put our society as a whole in. Due to our adaptation to the events of 9/11, how many people do you think have switched to a more dangerous mode of transportation? How many new enemies around the world have we recently made? How many friends and allies around the world have we lost or never will be? How many lives have been lost in battle for that "feeling" of being safe? How many innocents have we turned into monsters for our future generations? How many rights and how much control over our lives have we lost? What kind of a precedent have we set for other situations in our lives (ex: texting ban while driving, new taboo words, etc.)?
Our government and society may have the luxury right now to tell us that the Power Rangers will beam in and stop the monsters under our beds. But one day we won't be able to afford not looking under the bed and when that day comes, lets hope we haven't made the monster real.
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They put in long hours, far beyond the typical 7.5 hours or so of the school day. The majority of them take money out their own pockets to have class supplies. And maintaining the license requires continuing education, almost always at their own cost.
You just described all the jobs between factory floor worker to senior management. Which is the majority of the jobs in the US. Do teachers work over summer? Outside of 1 hour of lunch most people work 8-9 hours a day; year around. They probably don't spend as much of their personal money on work related stuff.
I have known teachers who worked for more than 8 years making over 100k in salaries. Would summer be PTO or vacation time? Either way you slice it, it is either a higher salary or benefit; both compensation. Teachers' overall benefits as a 'career' are far better than the majority of jobs. The job-for-life feature is just icing.
But really, that's for project management.
1) Go read up on the industry standard IDEs & debuggers for the programming environment you will be working in.
2) If your job is really consistent and stable (ie: Java programs day in day out), then go master your IDEs & debuggers. Learn their customization capabilities.
3) Learn to organize your personal code library and build up your core tool set in a way that is functionally reusable and searchable.
4) Learn to program your work in a way that adds to and complements #3.
5) Learn to document your code and processes.
6) Read a book on communicating to management (sry someone else will need to provide a good example), this will set you apart from your companions.
I meant to give you my 2 cents, but dropped a nickle... keep it. Good luck.
I was actually a fairly big fan of Apple (except for the one button mouse & price tag) and normally used them rather than the Windows machines. UNTIL I spent about 4 months with 3 different iPhone 4/4Ss and had to do support for VIPs. For me, the iPhone is a POS.
As a "phone" is just sucks. Odd rectangle, poor speaker (thou mic is good), poor contacts interface, poor call logging, and poor battery life. Excellent screen, but lots of lost real estate. As a camera, not bad. As a smartphone, extremely limiting. Over simplified desktop, single task oriented, no widgets, and I couldn't believe that they didn't have the pull down before iOS 5. As a net surfer, horrible. Safari is extremely single task oriented in a world of multi-tabbing (thou Dolphin is a nice fill in). Email is 5 years back too with poor setting options (ex: encryption, load images), and attachments handling. Again, the entire system is designed with a "Do one thing at a time" mentality, which is great for initial users, but extremely limiting once you get used to it (1+ month). And the software quality/reliability... great for a desktop, but poor for a phone. iTunes on Windows is also poor (Mac edition works great).
Apple as a vendor is just simply arrogant and poor at partnering. My company is as big as GE and until we had multiple countries complaining about bugs in the iPhone, we didn't even get a "we are looking into it" response from Apple. They just acted like the bugs didn't exist. And I thought MS and Oracle were bad. At least the later have armies of barely useful consultants where one might know the temporary work around.
What rocks about the iPhone is it is an excellent music player, and the apps ecosystem is very well done. But the former doesn't need a full fledged iPhone and the later doesn't work well in an enterprise setting.
Don't get me wrong, I think the iPhone is better than most out there (alts: the Atrix 2, Galaxy S 2, Xperia X10), but it is far from what I would expect from Apple's normal quality. I already have requests to switch back to BBs after a month (of course) cause as our CEO told me "I just kind of need it to work all the time." Odd, you would think he was talking about his Windows laptop and wanting a Mac.
People in the US forget that most jobs in many companies require minimum wage and benefits. I am going to exclude the less than 40 hours and tip based compensations as, to include those, most of the world would beat the pants off of us.
The minimum wage in the US is $7.25/hour; benefits and all support structure (ie: IT, janitorial, break room, etc) will easily bring that up to $10/hour. So the minimum cost of an American is ~$400/week. Although the IT guy gets $300/week, this support structure will easily bring him into the $11/hour range. Most Indian IT companies maintain campuses, employee transportation, state of the art gyms, & cafeterias with subsidized meals. They really are the top of the cream in the job market.
So India's top of the line job costs about 10% more than the minimum in the US. So even if that job generates 1/4 the value of an equivalent position, it is still worth it for most companies. As someone who partially manages support for a large organization, I can tell you that the majority of helpdesk's time is spent on questions that are just 1-2 levels above "Did you plug it in?"; where a simple troubleshooting script is enough. Any wonder why so many jobs, such as support, get outsourced to India?
Of course there are many many other factors that change that value & cost proposition (ie: unpaid overtime, education, dedication, culture, language, etc) but don't show up in the business case but do in the results. Personally, I would take a one year US vet over a 4 man outsourced team for my product's development and infrastructure maintenance. But would prefer the outsourced team for front end support, and testing.
In the US... apparently so. But he would get a far lesser sentence than this UK guy, even if he actually robbed the bank.
The US owns the UK. What are you guys... the 55th state or something. Who's up next?
No, its like the janitor in your company coming up to you and saying that if you only learned to shoot better or stopped & actually dropped your paper balls in the trash; he could charge you less in cleaning up after your misses.
We use similar products. Here is where that breaks down and the parent is right in trying to raise the education level of the common user.
"See, the icon isn't there!"
"What is the icon?"
"It's this blue E thing?"
--a bit of searching around--
"You had accidentally deleted it, I am restoring it from your Recycle Bin."
ticket closed
Problem: Billing
People are embarrassed/confused/angry that they got a $10 bill for 15 minutes of HelpDesk support for a "simple" fix. People want good service but want to pay half the price of it.
I got a $50 bill for booking my travel arrangements on the phone. Never mind the fact that their website wasn't working for the past 3 business days and this was my 3rd attempt at calling them. My wait this time around was 25+ minutes and she was only on the call for 6.5 minutes (cause I had all the times & flight/hotel codes memorized). They charge per booking. Fact is, people just don't understand that _other_ people's time is expensive in the US.
This maybe what "support" is there for, but this is certainly NOT what IT exists for. IT should exist to enable the business.
If you think of IT as just an janitor, then your business better not be dependent on IT in any critical way; aka, you are a manufacturing sweatshop w/ one computer that links to an internet site. Otherwise, your IT janitor is making your overall business obsolete day by day.
Note: I said IT enables business, that does not necessarily mean individual employees.
Until you get past 3 arrows and 4 blocks. More than 3 slides does it too. I got a chart that looks complicated, and 5 seconds will tell each viewer that they need only look at their quarter of the graph, but no one looks at it until I point them to it for their question.
No, its not normally poor communication skills. I put out FYI communications quarterly to about 10000+ employees on IT related initiatives.
- About 4% of those respond, walk-up, or call with completely stupid questions where our 3-man team replies by highlighting, copying, or reading subsections of the initial communication.
- We probably get another 5% with legit questions (whom we add to a common FAQ).
- We get about 10% who clearly haven't read any of the various communications or self-help resources but admit it is their fault when they mess up.
- BUT we also get about 5% like the above, but come screaming at us after the fact.
If it doesn't wear you down to spend at least 1/3 of your working day every 3 months copying, and reading the same text over and over again for that 9%... you aren't human. And my team has a full time job with additional season burdens already. This is just icing on the cake. Additional resources... management doesn't want to believe their employee base needs that much hand-holding, let alone look at the evidence. Remember, its only 9%... deal with it.
These communications... they go through a central communications board where at least 2 people review my draft. True, they butcher my draft and alter it in ways I feel leave out important details, but that is their job; that is what they are good at. To this day, none of us understand why HR, Legal, Procurement, etc communications don't have these problems. It seems they are established and no one wants to confront them.
I think it boils down to the below and it is understandable but doesn't make my team's job any easier:
- people don't care, until it effects them (this item can no longer be ordered)
- people don't have the time (I have 8hrs of work, I expect to donate only the 1st 8 minutes to you to fix this)
- people only read what supports what they want (you can have this)
- people don't read/digest what they see is negative (you can no longer have this)
- people want tangible, over simplified results (we spent $20,000 less on 100k widgets)
But ANY non-Android based device out there can link into and utilize Google search. Android isn't pushed everytime you go to google.com. Samsung, HTC, etc don't get special promotions in Google's search results, nor do they get discounts on their sponsored ads because they use Android. These manufactures voluntarily go out of their way to get, customize, and deploy Android on their own devices. Google doesn't tell them how to do it or make any special deals with them. Google also isn't usurping some standard by creating their own either. Google did create 3 phones as examples for the manufactures, but didn't use their might to shove it down any carrier.
Comparing Android to IE doesn't even make sense.
Google Search and Android certainly have a positive feedback loop, but so do weather, yahoo stocks, whatsapp, & yupptv with Android. But that doesn't make Google a monopoly that is abusing their power.
India? No, they are at the same state as China. China did it with GE, Walmart, Apple, Cisco, etc. India did it with Microsoft, Google, IBM, Accenture, Capgemini, etc.
India is probably a bit ahead of China in progress. China is facing a major shift in its people's behavior, makeup, wealth, demands, and political orientation. India has basically passed or doesn't have the same issues. Don't misunderstand me, they both still have a long way to go, just that India is ahead.
You want the next cheap labor? Look to where China is looking to meet their people's changing demand ... Africa. Even though the US provides more aid to Africa than any other country, African nations respect and look toward China more cause they feel their future is with them. It's a changing world.
This isn't just inflation as some people think. It's not as simple as flooding the market with dollars. Or globally transferring actual value from every dollar holder equally to the US government. This is eroding one of the foundation pillars of what make America better than the other options (notice I didn't say "best" or "great"). You would lower the confidence in the dollar globally.
The only reason we are not in a worse shape than the rest of the world is because we suck least. Our government's financial management is piss poor, but it is still in the top 5. Not because it is good, but because everyone else is worse over the long run. But we have one more thing going for us, we don't mess around with the dollar... much. Not as much as say other countries with their currencies. When you put the currency + country, you still have crap, but it is the least stinking pile around. So if you have some wealth or real value, cause the world economy isn't booming, your current options are either to maintain value (buy things worth more to you) or lose it as slowly as possible (gold, savings, checking, stocks, etc). And all these things are done using the dollar.
America currently has a natural subsidy funded by all the other currencies in the world, we don't pay much transaction costs for buying oil and many other commodities. Countries like UK, Germany, India, & China not only need to buy the oil just like us, but also need to pay additional for the translation of dollar to their local currency. If the dollar is replaced as the global currency, America will be facing massive transaction costs on top of the inflated prices. This will last decades.
You mess around with the dollar's value directly (printing vs loans & trade balances), people will stop believing in the dollar and start looking at alternatives. Once that happens, the alternative has inertia to stick around and becomes difficult to replace (just like the dollar today). The Euro is actually better than the dollar, but not better enough to over come the transaction cost of dethroning the dollar. You mess with the dollar, the Euro isn't the problem, but rather India & China who hold the greatest Dollar debt in the world. They will have every incentive to create their own currency and cause they hold so much Dollar debt, they have the weight to replace it too. Currently it just isn't worth it for them (not cause financial & economic reasons, but sadly... cultural) cause they have a dependable currency to do transactions.
In a US default, only the lenders to the US government take the hit. This is China, India, some EU countries, and for the largest part... the US citizen (we hold the largest US debt). In printing dollars, everyone takes the hit. By hitting everyone, we get them all moving to create a dependable alternative.
If we default, or print money, the result will be pretty much the same. Everything becomes more expensive, our savings lose value, all loan & credit rates increase, and economic growth will be suppressed. Either way, the US would become just another country that took a bit longer to realize it. But devaluation via a default, our products will be cheaper globally, the economic suppression will be offset by exports, in a few years investors will lend to the US again (maybe not the government, but to our businesses), and we will recover to a boom what historians will someday call a "short time".
However, print money, and you are risking replacing the dollar. In which case, the offsets never happen. Our export transaction costs to a foreign currency will keep our exports expensive, and investors won't invest in the US government nor businesses when there is a better global alternative. Our recover will take a long time, long enough for other economies to cement themselves as the new leaders & innovators of the world. A position we will take as long to regain as they did to take from us (and only if they screw up like us).
I was with him until he said "People seem to be saying that the bad guys are smarter, better. But the answer to that is 'no'." Until then, it was an obvious "Duh", similar to saying there is no 100% secure real system. And kind of sad that he had to actually tell the media that... how far the media has fallen.
But back to the point, the bad guys are smarter, and better than the good guys. History has proven that over and over again. Just cause you came in after the fact and cleaned up the mess doesn't mean you are better. If you prevented it in the first place, then you are better. But that is not the case. The bad guys have totally ripped apart in weeks what the good guys have created in months, sometimes years.
Good guys stick their head in the sand till something they can't ignore comes along. Then they try to solve it. If they can't do it technically (many cases), they fall back to legal means. This doesn't make the good guys better, but just competent enough. Thinking otherwise is just more sticking your head in the sand.
By default torrent trackers should be held innocent. They aren't any different from Google or Gun manufactures. On those points, why doesn't the government ban Google from indexing torrents? Or make +torrent searches invalid? As for guns, the AK-47 and other particular guns are primarily used in terrorist/genocide/bad-stuff activities as defined by the US (and sometimes even the UN). Why don't we treat the manufacturers & traders & even the users of these particular items the same way we treat the users who commit illegal activities?
I understand your reasoning that if a site blatently supports or encourages copyright infringement then they are accessories to the infringement. I think the opposite case is obvious that a site that clearly doesn't support it via filters and proactive monitoring is innocent. However, even if a torrent tracker operates in a user driven, automated fashion where no monitoring but the application of owner driven DMCA notices & local laws are complied with; I don't think should be held accountable. The courts may have ruled otherwise; but that doesn't make it right. Especially since each tracker actually tells everyone (including the traded material's owner) of all the IP addresses that are currently trading in the ware! The owner is free to file for discovery from current legal methods.
Legal is basically going after torrent trackers cause it is the easy mark. Cause getting the actual person committing the crime is too hard. Society already gave a lot to content owners; and we give them (and their next generations) too much today. Yet we have people argueing that we need to give them more!! The least owners can do is be a caretaker of their work and prosecute those who do them harm. Yet they ask that we not only bare the burden of "encouraging" them to produce more but also fully foot the bill to taking care of their work & current failing business processes, AND expand the criteria of what is considered a criminal to bystandards.
To the content owners... SCREW YOU!
And we had Rush Limbaugh, probably one of the most out spoken "conservative" critics of national healthcare go to Hawaii which has the most socialistic healthcare system in the US for his medical needs. He didn't pick Massachusetts which has a similar system; no, he bloodly got as from the US as possible without actually leaving it.
Not to mention the conservative, cut-spending-now republican convention whose top topics were against nationwide healthcare was in Hawaii. And they totally ignored Hawaii's situation.
So either these guys publically disagree with nationwide healthcare and privately love it, or they have no clue how to manage anything. Either way, you wouldn't want them leading the country.
So I got a N900 a year ago. My first Nokia phone (I was a Sony man before). It was and is almost exactly what I am looking for. I was even impressed by the way Nokia did the whole repository thing. I am basically a PM. And as I looked into the processes that Nokia employeed, I slowly became disappointed.
They had initiatives for :
- code refactoring for better UI/responsiveness
- Meemo to Meego migration
- Ovi Suite
- Better front camera software stack
- Qt in the works
- voice recognization
- Android compatibility
- etc.
What I see are a lot of "initiatives" but no project plans or defined deliverables. It just seemed to me that there was no direction or focus. The second something became almost, it's direction changed. I don't mean to be rude, but this is what in-experienced programmers do. I am not talking about good/bad programmers, but about immature/mature programmers. Mature programmers are the guys who also write the good help docs & APIs along with the code. In-experienced programmers reinvent wheels, lose focus on the big picture, and get too much into their super optimized code. And I am not placing the blame on them, but rather the PMs. It is their duty to notice this, put them back on the correct path, and keep the big picture in mind. It is the PM's duty to define and focus on the deliverables. They need to make sure they aren't wasting time on useless optimizations that give you 50% gain a module, but a meer 1% in the overall process.
Going with Microsoft may give Nokia the ability to quickly draw a common big picture, but it does really nothing to address the issues underneath. Even within that big picture, the issues will just resurface and you will end up like you did with the N900. I really like the N900, but it can be so much better. Before this whole Microsoft thing, I was going to buy another N900 and was recommending it to 2 others in my office as PDAs. But after almost convincing my wife to buy my phone, I dropped it at the last minute. Along with my recommendations in the office environment. A good product is more than just hardware or even software, and I don't think Nokia gets it.
Actually, these types of things are usually in house. If there ever was a case for non-off-the-shelf software, a SE booking & matching engine is it. Most of the developers will be inhouse. The reason to use Linux is most likely that you can strip out all non-essentials. A path that an order takes from external interface to execution can be seriously streamlined with little intereferance from the OS. Imagine having fat kernels like Windows in the interfaces/perimeters and slim kernels almost akin to embedded systems within the centralized engine(s) itself. Inside and outside the system you don't care about security, but on the perimeter, you setup some big bouncers. There are only two platforms that provide this capability & flexibility at a competitive scale while retaining a common programming interface. BSD and Linux. Linux has a better user side support and there are more programmers for it in the overall ecosystem. BSD may have better security, but once inside the system... who cares.
There is also the aspect of scalability; bringing on and tearing down virtual/physical machines as needed. A thin Linux/BSD/embedded solution flows more linearly and smoothly with demand than say full blown Windows/Redhat ES. With a standardized OS/programming interface, you can break down processes to individual tasks quite efficiently. This allows you to identify bottlenecks in the process and reenforce them with additional parallel processes/machines when needed to maximize throughput. Monolithic systems just don't do this well without huge upfront resource investments and increasing power on non-bottlenecks causing waste.
Curiosity is an exercise done in a dark closet, alone.
That sounded dirtier than I meant it to be.
What's sad is the assumption that the "bad guys" don't know about this already. This is one of those stupid "What I don't know, can't hurt me" craps. God forbid someone points out that the emperor has no clothes.
It's something I have observed in many businesses. Unknown risk can't be quantified, and thus doesn't get a dollar cost or reported in figures. It's unknown. Known risk gets reported, tracked, quantified, and requires expenditure of resources to mitigate. Unfortunately, failure to do so of the later has personal consequences, and failure of the former doesn't have any. We have evolved a whole "Cover Your Ass" culture around it, where the responsibility can't be avoided (that equals higher salary) but the consequences are just passed around. We end up with fall guys, or expensive litigation/arbitration, or C&D letters + lawsuit like this. Which ever is cheaper. Along with sub-sub-contractors, over paid CEOs, and useless managerial middle men/policies. The "business smart" guys know how to do CYA real well, and don't look into things that could cause trouble. The conclusion is that the less people know, the better. Curiosity is an exercise done in a dark closet, alone.
Small businesses (peasants) can't afford not to look, cause one instance can take them out. And once they are gone, the system just moves on w/o a glitch. Big business (emperors) on the other hand has the financial muscle to ignore what they want to. Any windfall costs associated with any ignorance is taken up by anyone but them cause they are "Too big to fail". The smaller day to day costs are spread to customers and stockholders. It's a sad state of affairs; makes one wonder how anything gets done. Or how much those that do get stuff done, carry the dead weight of those that don't.
Dude, just cause I disagree with you doesn't mean I am taking the polar opposite! Why don't we do more checks on Cargo planes & ships? We need one to blow up 1st? Why don't we spend more on immigration overhaul? Why don't we make Healthcare cheaper? We are having trouble extending tax cuts, lets put the money there. Why not rebuild our under-maintained, failing infrastructure... etc. But I guess these would be a deficit building waste while the TSA isn't.
Even if we did have all those bombers go off, flight is STILL many times safer than other modes of transit. Yet we spend a fraction of the amount on those other things. If we are in so much danger that the TSA is being effective, then why don't we have annual bombings in other sectors of our society. You are telling me we can't make those other things safer? Why bother with this one then? Example, Pakistan and India don't get along, they have terrorists on both sides, and they don't just aim at planes! They hit all easy targets. So since there are no bombs in our other sectors, I would say that we aren't in so much danger that needs a TSA protecting the safest thing we already have (that doesn't mean I am taking the polar opposite). And if you think we are amazing at catching things at the border, just look at the war on drugs. Oh, btw, guess what India does (with a fraction of our budget), they EDUCATE their populace. They tell people to be vigilant, report suspicious activity, and true safety always resides with the individuals. And this isn't just at their airports. And people aren't cowering in their homes either that their local McDee may get hit this year. They have logically addressed it and moved on.
Lets leave the bed analogy cause its obviously isn't getting the point across. Basically, the under the bed is the imaginary place situation. By definition, there is no reason to waste resources looking under there.
How about we educate people in our country about who our threat is (its not "terror"). How about we educate people that show where threats come from and what the real risk is? How about we educate people that flight is still the safest mode of transit. That whole multi-colored "Threat Level" BS where half the colors are useless doesn't count.
Al Qeada... I am not sure where to begin. Most people see this group as the boogieman or something. They over simply the situation as "This is the one true evil" and all other enemies are like them. Al Qeada is just one symptom of a greater problem and they were basically the early warning. There are MANY other entities that are pissed at us, and we are just adding to them. It no longer takes a great super power to mess with super powers, and we should not be giving birth to them left and right. Maybe we shouldn't stick our finger in everything? Maybe we should follow other countries like the UAE, Switzerland, Sweden, Brazil, Canada, Japan, etc who have their own problems, but not as bad as ours.
The world gave is a great amount of sympathy after 9/11; today, they look at us as the prick of the world. For some, they view us as the guys trying to eradicate Muslims from the middle east. You may not care about these relationships, but they have real world consequences. If we had more friends out there, you would think Bin Laden would have less places to hide. Saddam is an example where he couldn't run cause his neighbors, maybe didn't like us, but would turn him over to us. Today? You think many of those same countries wouldn't arm and fund guys like him with a revenge vendetta?
And assuming that only "backwoods hill fuck off"s (second time your have pointlessly demeaned them) are the only ones getting pissed at us only shows your uneducated ignorance. Some of these people are smart, really smart. They aren't all radical idiots bent on blowing themselves up or wanting y virgins in heaven. Some just want power and money. We just happen to be a bigger wrench for their means.
Our basic disagreement as I understand it is this: You bel
Here, I will keep it simple for you. The terrorist in 9/11 tried to instill terror into the people. These actions negate that to a point
Fine, work is ancillary. But the way we are going about "removing" terror is BS. We should be educating people, not playing games with security theater.
Fail. You have no reason to believe that the so called diverted capitol would be used in any way that would promote any economic growth. In fact, hiring TSA agents and manufacturing machines that you don't think is needed is probably providing more economic growth then the alternative of not spending the money at all.
So we should hire morons to do nearly useless tasks so that people "feel" less terror? We shouldn't be spending the money if that's all its value is. Why don't we just hire 2 shifts a day where one digs holes and the other fills them? That's about as productive as what we are currently doing with that money. When there is money, it gets spent, period. Read up on budgets and how they work. And when it comes to the government, money not spent is either left in the economy, or not provided as a burden to the next generation. Both lead to better growth than what we currently have.
First, you are arguing against yourself with your own arguments. Second, you are confusing the function of government with the reaction of people. In short, you are saying that the government shouldn't take action to quash the fear of the people but at the same time, should take action because the people are afraid of the hassles at the airports. I really do not care how many people are taking more dangerous modes of transportation since 9/11.
What I am arguing is exactly your issue, I am saying the government _should_ think about how their policies will change the behavior of the public. Remember prohibition? How about no alcohol sales on Sunday (everyone just buys and stores more on Saturdays). The point shouldn't be to spend money to make people "feel" safer, it should be to actually make them safer. Fear should be addressed via education, not secrecy, and theater. We should be targeting things that have a greater risk, and tell the public why.
You see, I don't care if the country of bumfuckistan doesn't like us and never will again.
Well, one set of "bumfuckistan"s took out 2 towers and part of the Pentagon. They were probably pissed at us before, but weren't going to do anything till we pissed them off more. That simple act has caused us to invade 2 countries, and cost us massive amounts of resources, lives, and goodwill. I certainly think it matters. I am not saying we should go out there and make nice, nice but we certainly shouldn't be pissing people off left and right. Most of the world today has a very negative view of the US. Travel around a bit, find out for yourself. Its not friends that attack you, but enemies and you can never have too few of them. We are no different, we didn't attack Japan till they hit PH and "pissed" us off.
My analogy with the "bed" was that its a waste of time (and resources) looking under the bed. There is nothing under the bed. Instead of wasting time looking under the bed every night we should educate the child about imaginary and real monsters. We should be concentrating upon risker real world threats instead of imaginary ones. Cause as we waste time with the bed, we are actually creating more and more treats in the wild. Real threats that this over pampered child will be incapable of handling when they come forward.
But what exactly are you making safer and why? Commercial flight is already the safest mode of transportation. What's the point of making it a fraction safer? And to the chicken and egg argument, if the TSA is protecting us from such danger, why don't we have annual terrorist attacks on other more vulnerable sectors of our society? We have 2 major long ass borders and 2 long coast lines with little to no security in comparison to flight policies. A city skyline, subway, or football game have as much, if not a far more, of a profound and lasting impression on our society. Why aren't we protecting those similarly, and can we or should we? Just ask other nations that already have to deal with this. Even with all their protection in the everyday sector (ex: pat downs & bag check in at McDonalds) their flight is still safer than all else. Are terrorists biased only toward flight? Maybe concerning the US, they are.
I understand what you are saying, but when it comes to the "terrorist" subject I think we have clearly gone too far and made no progress.
You are basically saying we should spend all this extra capital on these extra measures so that the airline industry doesn't fall, and people will feel good about going to work. This is not the way to treat a society, its how you treat 2 year olds who are afraid of what's under their bed. The way you address this is through proper public education. You determine where your failure points are, if any, and try to prevent knee jerk reactions. Your objective is NOT to make people "feel" safe, but to actually make them safer without additional negative effects. If you think our society is already 2 year olds and needs this pampering, then we have already lost the battle for survival. Perpetual 2 year olds eventually die a lonely horrible death, as all the adults that could spare to take care of them have passed on. Our attempts at fictional protection is a battle already lost as some other unstoppable economic or law of the jungle force will bury us.
Even after all the accidents, disasters, and attacks in all of commercial aviation history, that round trip international flight half way around the world is many many times safer than the 15 minute car ride for the flight. Flight is already comparatively safe, but we redirect huge amounts of our capital which would otherwise go to economic growth endeavors into trying to make something that is already ridiculously safe just a fraction safer. Our "fear" has caused us more damage than 9/11 terrorists could have ever imagined. Bin-Laden should shoot himself with a smile on his face the next time on camera, cause it ain't gona get better than this.
There are a ton of much bigger and easier targets where this capital can be used to a FAR greater efficiency, benefit, and return to our society (ie: medical research, education, other transportation, infrastructure, etc). At the very least, our policies and reactions should not increase the danger we put our society as a whole in. Due to our adaptation to the events of 9/11, how many people do you think have switched to a more dangerous mode of transportation? How many new enemies around the world have we recently made? How many friends and allies around the world have we lost or never will be? How many lives have been lost in battle for that "feeling" of being safe? How many innocents have we turned into monsters for our future generations? How many rights and how much control over our lives have we lost? What kind of a precedent have we set for other situations in our lives (ex: texting ban while driving, new taboo words, etc.)?
Our government and society may have the luxury right now to tell us that the Power Rangers will beam in and stop the monsters under our beds. But one day we won't be able to afford not looking under the bed and when that day comes, lets hope we haven't made the monster real.