I'm starting a contest with myself to see how many times I can reply to ONE message. Good thing I can at least count to three! lol
"and I don't think that it's a good 1929 correlation - we're smarter"
I like the "we're smarter" part. I truly hope this is correct. However, I ask myself, "if we are smarter, how come we are in this mess". After all, a moron could tell you that if you keep borrowing as a nation, and set up a real estate market that resembles a ponzi scheme... someday, someone is going to have to pay.
The only thing we learn from history is that we don't learn from history.
"That being said, I still believe, while though awful, the Great Depression was overrated, to a point - particularly in that the world - and America in particular - DIDN'T end."
I know this was not intentional. This statement is probably just a reflection of what you have been taught, but you need to watch statements like this. They are called Straw Men. (after all, I don't think anyone says the world ended during the depression)
Heck, the world and "America"* didn't end, even when the Dinosaurs were wiped out. That does not mean that this extinction was overrated!
*Petty Note alert(lol): America is not a country. It is either one or two continents, depending on which continental theory you hold dear.
Actually, you did not have to be wealthy or savvy to invest in the stock market during that day. One problem was that the average Joe started doing it, helping inflate the bubble. Many of these investors used borrowed money.(there was a very high increase in consumer debt in the late 1920's)
Ok, first - poor and agricultural were not always used in the same sentence. My mother grew up relative affluence on a farm and during the depression. (but had a LOT more than my fathers family who lost most everything in the banking collapse).
Taking ten years before a market reaches PARITY is NOT a recovery (1929). You have 10 years of opportunity costs and inflation to recover. PLUS if it had not been for the war, it could have been another 10. And that is pretending that stock prices recovering somehow compensates all those people who lost everything in the collapse! If we loose financial institutions now like we did then, there goes pensions for a lot of people. How again does a stock "recovery" mean things are fine again???
Our current situation CANNOT be compared to the great depression! Not even a shred. Our current situation MAY be compared to pre October 1929 if one wants. The only question is if the chickens are coming home to roost now, or in ten years. We have a piper to pay, will it be now or later? And how are we going to do it?(one quick payment/crash -or- a ten year slump like Japan did(except we are in worse shape than they were))
You said. "Everything will shake out as it ALWAYS has - even right after the Great Depression, which gets more and more overrated as the years go by"
I would argue the opposite. We seem to minimize the great depression. 1. In all the charts for stock market performance, I NEVER see one that goes back to 1929. Hmmm 2. If you are talking about corrections, you cannot say "everything will shake out... even right after the great depression". First, the correction was the 1929 stock market crash. Second, everything did not shake out, there were people who lived with hunger and poverty for 10+ years. Third, many people lost everything. My grandfather lost about $250,000 when the financial institutions collapsed. He never recovered a cent. Forth, it may have taken another decade to overcome if it hadn't been for the horrible war.
You KNOW the great depression was a CATASTROPHIC event. How can you tell? Look at the effect it had on the people who lived through it. They still waste NOTHING, and have a hard time throwing things out. Anything that has that effect on people 70 years later is serious.
Yes, in this case I really don't think the telco cares if they have to pay lawyers fees for the other side. This action is to send a message to other communities and/or stall the town.
Now if they were forced to eat the cost of the fiber deployment BECAUSE of frivolous legal action, I bet they would not take this route.
The part that he seem right on is that his management was so inept, that they could not be trusted to touch anything.
I have not seen anything to indicate he "built a house of cards". It looks more like he built a palace and put a secure wall around it so the local hoodlums (his management) could not vandalize it.
I think he got a little too attached to his work and cannot let go. (obsessive compulsive?) Though his actions were extremely dumb, I am not sure I would agree with reprehensible... I might leave that word for describing his (non)management team.
While I think it is good for people to work in crappier jobs for a few years, (so they can appreciate a good job when it comes along) , I hope I won't cry if they don't get a job like that.
(Forgive me but) It is really hard for me to get concerned about individual versions of Word Processors. They barely exsisted when I first started computers, and I have been through SO many I don't even think twice about attacking a new one. In fact, the only thing I REALLY care about is if we can still render the document 15 years from now. Around work the big struggle is pulling all the old documents out of Word 11, Word Perfect etc. We loose more productivity accessing old stuff than we do training. (When a project is in the tens of millions of dollars, just the analysis alone is worth big cash. Having staff/contractors reverse engineering because you lost or can't access documentation is VERY expensive)
LOL, you are way off of my experience. I even doubt you are in Canada, as if you were you would know that conditions for Teaching and Government Contracts vary so much by region that you cannot make the blanket statements you do.
I do some contracts in Canada, and have a sister who teaches in Ontario(Canada).
First. Teachers in Ontario rarely have Training courses that are paid for. (most upgrading is done on their dime)
Second. The government body I do some work for up there would do a competitive bid for a project only worth $80000. Spending $80000 on a bid would be a MAJOR purchase (read $5 - $100 million). That is when the bid is more than paper work and they start doing extreme weather testing on devices etc.
Who said anything about replacing SAP? I would hope that it already went through a competitive bidding process. (Oracle, SAP and Peoplesoft would have had a mini war).
BTW, you seem to be implying that SAP only runs on MS? That is news to me! lol
It scares me that you actually buy into this hiring practice (unless you are "hiring" temps for a day, then throwing them away).
Boy, if I had a manager that did not hire someone because of the "30 minutes wasted learning the MS product menus" (or even a day), I would "allow him to pursue other business opportunities". (Which version of Word anyway? They are so different)
Lets say I want to hire an Admin Assist. I want to see HOW they use that other product, that will tell me HOW they will use OFFICE. Do they fill space with the space bar, or format properly... Are they comfortable with doing "merges" etc. In fact, it is better if they have never used Word before. I want to see how they can learn it, find things and figure things out. (if they are quick I don't have to worry when the upgrades come) This (along with personality) will tell me how they will help grow the org.
Like Google, or any smart company, we hire people for POTENTIAL not for which Word Processor they have used.
"I mean, he even slams Windows Vista!:P" Yes, it is trendy to slam Vista isn't it. Too bad that does not help his point as usability is not significantly worse in Vista than XP.
I think he was marked Flamebait because he 1. Did not make a good case that usability is a "Major Problem" in OpenOffice and MOST linux distro's when compared to MS products. 2. Sweeping statements like "the open source communities (should) improve their development methods". Actually, these development methods are revolutionary, and all but the best funded orgs cannot keep up to it. Even traditional source control methodologies/products cannot handle it!
OK, I am an OS whore (I try EVERYONE that comes across my path), so I will bite.
The linux distro's may be a little lacking on uniform look and feel throughout the ecosystem, but they are not really lacking in usability vis a vis MS Windows. The UI is usually selectable anyway. (My four year old daughter does not even notice the difference between Linux and Windows... She thinks the screen just looks different because they are different computers, just like our cars look different. She uses them equally well)
1. My opinion, Even Microsoft's best (Windows XP) is the WRONG OS to use as an alternative to slam Linux with. XP is not THAT good.
2. Even apple users suffer from non uniform appearing apps.
Paradox - How can you claim OO.org lacks a good UI design when it is almost a clone of the MS software you seem to hold in such high esteem.
I have heard more OpenOffice bashers criticize it for being a clone of Word, they think the look and feel was stolen almost verbatim, not allowing for potential improvements.
I have seen this in action. It is amazing what it can do even with one pathetic P4 and a couple gig of ram.
It really gets rolling with a quad core server and 8 gig. (I can build one of these for mere hundreds of $$)
You can even have the whole class doing 3D modeling with blender. Imagine the cost of doing this with proprietary software and without thin clients?
Also, upgrading is so cheap. The cost of upgrading everyone is just the cost of the server. (and that is under a grand) I have found that just the LABOR cost of procuring 30 new desktops, imaging, configuring and deploying them is more than the cost of a new LTSP server. YMMV
2. It is much easier to lock down and support a Network of Linux Computers.
I have friends that became so frustrated with the cost and work maintaining classes of Windows PC's that they deployed LTSP. They have never looked back! They now can buy many things for the tech labs that they couldn't before because of the new surplus of cash and time. (setting up audio workstations for multimedia training etc.)
Yes, but we do have to remember that the Republican Party is not a conservative party. It seems to be controlled by Neo-fascists (I mean neo-cons) not conservatives. (big restrictions on citizens, none on Mega-corps. BIG spending. Cannot leave the rest of the world alone. -none of these are traditional conservative qualities )
Not that there is really a big difference between the parties anyway. The US maintains the illusion of a federal democracy, but both parties seem to make basically the same decisions when in power (not usually in the interest of the citizen).
2. Even if they wanted to, a lot of households NEED two incomes to make ends meet.
Ahh, we are in "America", land of needless consumption. The VAST majority of my coworkers who think/thought they NEEDED a second income, really did not. They CHOOSE the lifestyle.
I am not criticizing the choice, it is not my business, BUT, We really need to learn the difference between the words NEED and WANT.
Full disclosure, my wife has "halted" her career to raise our kids.
I think Dustin would agree with you, it is just a matter of semantics.
Where you cross over into a full fledged police state is an arbitrary line, and it still SEEMS benevolent enough that most people don't want to look like chicken little and call it such.
Bush may know what he is doing, but I am still leaning toward my original view that he is not very bright and easily manipulated.
Now this is sarcasm right? Stalin was just trying to further the cause of Communism!
Very few times in politics are the stated reasons the real reasons.
Lets look at what has been done. A step closer to a police state? check New powers for the elite? check New restrictions on travel? check Transmission of information on citizenry between countries, continents? check
"Compare that to the Patriot Act which was supported by Bush for a means to an end" lol, oh ya, it is a means to an end, just not the stated end! I don't know, but it looks more like he is laying the groundwork for a world governing body to me. H.G. Wells called this "A new world order"
Actually, I don't believe he is intelligent enough to do this. For this to be true, there would have to be others pulling the strings, he would have to be just be a puppet.
"We're now beginning to see the same kind of sharp cost reductions as the demand grows for solar cells."
Well, on a theoretical level there may be cost reductions. But as a person who closely tracks the price of modules, THE COST PER WATT IS STILL HIGHER THAN IN 2002! Before 2002 we had constant slow reductions in price... the price has been crazy ever since then.
I believe you, I don't have any trouble with Compiz with my ATI chipsets, but I do with my Centrino. The worst thing is that I cannot have video playback while running the 3D desktop.
Ironically, the thing that has worked best on this Centrino laptop is the Broadcom Gigabit ethernet adaptor(BCM5787M). Not a big broadcom fan, and maybe it is because ethernet adaptors are simple to do(?), but it has worked reliably in every distro I've tried.
Hey, Linux would have Broadcom support if only they had not been such geeks. All that they needed was a Linux grotto, full of Coke, E, and chicks... They would have had the full support of the president of the company! But no, the Linux dudes are all concerned about freedom (and not the freedom to slip drugs into the food and drinks of business associates)
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I'm starting a contest with myself to see how many times I can reply to ONE message. Good thing I can at least count to three! lol
"and I don't think that it's a good 1929 correlation - we're smarter"
I like the "we're smarter" part. I truly hope this is correct.
However, I ask myself, "if we are smarter, how come we are in this mess".
After all, a moron could tell you that if you keep borrowing as a nation, and set up a real estate market that resembles a ponzi scheme... someday, someone is going to have to pay.
The only thing we learn from history is that we don't learn from history.
"That being said, I still believe, while though awful, the Great Depression was overrated, to a point - particularly in that the world - and America in particular - DIDN'T end."
I know this was not intentional. This statement is probably just a reflection of what you have been taught, but you need to watch statements like this. They are called Straw Men. (after all, I don't think anyone says the world ended during the depression)
Heck, the world and "America"* didn't end, even when the Dinosaurs were wiped out. That does not mean that this extinction was overrated!
*Petty Note alert(lol): America is not a country. It is either one or two continents, depending on which continental theory you hold dear.
Actually, you did not have to be wealthy or savvy to invest in the stock market during that day. One problem was that the average Joe started doing it, helping inflate the bubble.
Many of these investors used borrowed money.(there was a very high increase in consumer debt in the late 1920's)
Ok, first - poor and agricultural were not always used in the same sentence. My mother grew up relative affluence on a farm and during the depression. (but had a LOT more than my fathers family who lost most everything in the banking collapse).
Taking ten years before a market reaches PARITY is NOT a recovery (1929). You have 10 years of opportunity costs and inflation to recover.
PLUS if it had not been for the war, it could have been another 10.
And that is pretending that stock prices recovering somehow compensates all those people who lost everything in the collapse! If we loose financial institutions now like we did then, there goes pensions for a lot of people. How again does a stock "recovery" mean things are fine again???
Our current situation CANNOT be compared to the great depression! Not even a shred.
Our current situation MAY be compared to pre October 1929 if one wants.
The only question is if the chickens are coming home to roost now, or in ten years. We have a piper to pay, will it be now or later? And how are we going to do it?(one quick payment/crash -or- a ten year slump like Japan did(except we are in worse shape than they were))
You said.
"Everything will shake out as it ALWAYS has - even right after the Great Depression, which gets more and more overrated as the years go by"
I would argue the opposite. We seem to minimize the great depression.
1. In all the charts for stock market performance, I NEVER see one that goes back to 1929. Hmmm
2. If you are talking about corrections, you cannot say "everything will shake out... even right after the great depression".
First, the correction was the 1929 stock market crash. Second, everything did not shake out, there were people who lived with hunger and poverty for 10+ years.
Third, many people lost everything. My grandfather lost about $250,000 when the financial institutions collapsed. He never recovered a cent.
Forth, it may have taken another decade to overcome if it hadn't been for the horrible war.
You KNOW the great depression was a CATASTROPHIC event. How can you tell? Look at the effect it had on the people who lived through it. They still waste NOTHING, and have a hard time throwing things out. Anything that has that effect on people 70 years later is serious.
Yes, in this case I really don't think the telco cares if they have to pay lawyers fees for the other side. This action is to send a message to other communities and/or stall the town.
Now if they were forced to eat the cost of the fiber deployment BECAUSE of frivolous legal action, I bet they would not take this route.
How do we prevent more of these pesky lawsuits?
My only idea is we increase penalties so parties like this telco can be ordered to build out the network for free or some major penalty.
Now that would be justice!
The part that he seem right on is that his management was so inept, that they could not be trusted to touch anything.
I have not seen anything to indicate he "built a house of cards".
It looks more like he built a palace and put a secure wall around it so the local hoodlums (his management) could not vandalize it.
I think he got a little too attached to his work and cannot let go. (obsessive compulsive?)
Though his actions were extremely dumb, I am not sure I would agree with reprehensible... I might leave that word for describing his (non)management team.
Man, the more I read about this story, the more inclined I am to believe the network admin.
He may be incredibly bull-headed and lacking social self preservation techniques, but he may have been technically right.
While I think it is good for people to work in crappier jobs for a few years, (so they can appreciate a good job when it comes along) , I hope I won't cry if they don't get a job like that.
(Forgive me but) It is really hard for me to get concerned about individual versions of Word Processors. They barely exsisted when I first started computers, and I have been through SO many I don't even think twice about attacking a new one.
In fact, the only thing I REALLY care about is if we can still render the document 15 years from now. Around work the big struggle is pulling all the old documents out of Word 11, Word Perfect etc. We loose more productivity accessing old stuff than we do training. (When a project is in the tens of millions of dollars, just the analysis alone is worth big cash. Having staff/contractors reverse engineering because you lost or can't access documentation is VERY expensive)
LOL, you are way off of my experience. I even doubt you are in Canada, as if you were you would know that conditions for Teaching and Government Contracts vary so much by region that you cannot make the blanket statements you do.
I do some contracts in Canada, and have a sister who teaches in Ontario(Canada).
First. Teachers in Ontario rarely have Training courses that are paid for. (most upgrading is done on their dime)
Second. The government body I do some work for up there would do a competitive bid for a project only worth $80000. Spending $80000 on a bid would be a MAJOR purchase (read $5 - $100 million). That is when the bid is more than paper work and they start doing extreme weather testing on devices etc.
Who said anything about replacing SAP? I would hope that it already went through a competitive bidding process. (Oracle, SAP and Peoplesoft would have had a mini war).
BTW, you seem to be implying that SAP only runs on MS? That is news to me! lol
It scares me that you actually buy into this hiring practice (unless you are "hiring" temps for a day, then throwing them away).
Boy, if I had a manager that did not hire someone because of the "30 minutes wasted learning the MS product menus" (or even a day), I would "allow him to pursue other business opportunities".
(Which version of Word anyway? They are so different)
Lets say I want to hire an Admin Assist. I want to see HOW they use that other product, that will tell me HOW they will use OFFICE. Do they fill space with the space bar, or format properly... Are they comfortable with doing "merges" etc. In fact, it is better if they have never used Word before. I want to see how they can learn it, find things and figure things out. (if they are quick I don't have to worry when the upgrades come)
This (along with personality) will tell me how they will help grow the org.
Like Google, or any smart company, we hire people for POTENTIAL not for which Word Processor they have used.
"I mean, he even slams Windows Vista! :P"
Yes, it is trendy to slam Vista isn't it. Too bad that does not help his point as usability is not significantly worse in Vista than XP.
I think he was marked Flamebait because he
1. Did not make a good case that usability is a "Major Problem" in OpenOffice and MOST linux distro's when compared to MS products.
2. Sweeping statements like "the open source communities (should) improve their development methods". Actually, these development methods are revolutionary, and all but the best funded orgs cannot keep up to it. Even traditional source control methodologies/products cannot handle it!
OK, I am an OS whore (I try EVERYONE that comes across my path), so I will bite.
The linux distro's may be a little lacking on uniform look and feel throughout the ecosystem, but they are not really lacking in usability vis a vis MS Windows. The UI is usually selectable anyway.
(My four year old daughter does not even notice the difference between Linux and Windows... She thinks the screen just looks different because they are different computers, just like our cars look different. She uses them equally well)
1. My opinion, Even Microsoft's best (Windows XP) is the WRONG OS to use as an alternative to slam Linux with. XP is not THAT good.
2. Even apple users suffer from non uniform appearing apps.
Paradox - How can you claim OO.org lacks a good UI design when it is almost a clone of the MS software you seem to hold in such high esteem.
I have heard more OpenOffice bashers criticize it for being a clone of Word, they think the look and feel was stolen almost verbatim, not allowing for potential improvements.
I have seen this in action. It is amazing what it can do even with one pathetic P4 and a couple gig of ram.
It really gets rolling with a quad core server and 8 gig. (I can build one of these for mere hundreds of $$)
You can even have the whole class doing 3D modeling with blender. Imagine the cost of doing this with proprietary software and without thin clients?
Also, upgrading is so cheap. The cost of upgrading everyone is just the cost of the server. (and that is under a grand)
I have found that just the LABOR cost of procuring 30 new desktops, imaging, configuring and deploying them is more than the cost of a new LTSP server. YMMV
Two points.
1. Many schools pay high costs for MS software.
2. It is much easier to lock down and support a Network of Linux Computers.
I have friends that became so frustrated with the cost and work maintaining classes of Windows PC's that they deployed LTSP. They have never looked back!
They now can buy many things for the tech labs that they couldn't before because of the new surplus of cash and time. (setting up audio workstations for multimedia training etc.)
Yes, but we do have to remember that the Republican Party is not a conservative party. It seems to be controlled by Neo-fascists (I mean neo-cons) not conservatives.
(big restrictions on citizens, none on Mega-corps. BIG spending. Cannot leave the rest of the world alone. -none of these are traditional conservative qualities )
Not that there is really a big difference between the parties anyway. The US maintains the illusion of a federal democracy, but both parties seem to make basically the same decisions when in power (not usually in the interest of the citizen).
2. Even if they wanted to, a lot of households NEED two incomes to make ends meet.
Ahh, we are in "America", land of needless consumption.
The VAST majority of my coworkers who think/thought they NEEDED a second income, really did not. They CHOOSE the lifestyle.
I am not criticizing the choice, it is not my business, BUT, We really need to learn the difference between the words NEED and WANT.
Full disclosure, my wife has "halted" her career to raise our kids.
I think Dustin would agree with you, it is just a matter of semantics.
Where you cross over into a full fledged police state is an arbitrary line, and it still SEEMS benevolent enough that most people don't want to look like chicken little and call it such.
Bush may know what he is doing, but I am still leaning toward my original view that he is not very bright and easily manipulated.
Now this is sarcasm right? Stalin was just trying to further the cause of Communism!
Very few times in politics are the stated reasons the real reasons.
Lets look at what has been done.
A step closer to a police state? check
New powers for the elite? check
New restrictions on travel? check
Transmission of information on citizenry between countries, continents? check
"Compare that to the Patriot Act which was supported by Bush for a means to an end" lol, oh ya, it is a means to an end, just not the stated end!
I don't know, but it looks more like he is laying the groundwork for a world governing body to me. H.G. Wells called this "A new world order"
Actually, I don't believe he is intelligent enough to do this. For this to be true, there would have to be others pulling the strings, he would have to be just be a puppet.
I thought it was funny, and ontopic.
Not totally to blame, partial public nudity (toplessness) is legal in Ontario. (Ontario, the largest province in Canada, home of Toronto)
"We're now beginning to see the same kind of sharp cost reductions as the demand grows for solar cells."
Well, on a theoretical level there may be cost reductions. But as a person who closely tracks the price of modules, THE COST PER WATT IS STILL HIGHER THAN IN 2002!
Before 2002 we had constant slow reductions in price... the price has been crazy ever since then.
I believe you, I don't have any trouble with Compiz with my ATI chipsets, but I do with my Centrino. The worst thing is that I cannot have video playback while running the 3D desktop.
Ironically, the thing that has worked best on this Centrino laptop is the Broadcom Gigabit ethernet adaptor(BCM5787M). Not a big broadcom fan, and maybe it is because ethernet adaptors are simple to do(?), but it has worked reliably in every distro I've tried.
Hey, Linux would have Broadcom support if only they had not been such geeks.
All that they needed was a Linux grotto, full of Coke, E, and chicks... They would have had the full support of the president of the company!
But no, the Linux dudes are all concerned about freedom (and not the freedom to slip drugs into the food and drinks of business associates)