after which the Saudis stop over-pumping. Before that, however, the "wall of oil" (http://www.safehaven.com/article/24788/saudi-arabia-aims-to-deliver-wall-of-oil-to-us-) promised by the Saudis has brought prices down enough to give a mild boost to the economy which insures Obama's re-election.
Fundamentally, nothing's changed. The amount of oil in the continental USA and the Gulf are still relatively trivial. We are and always will be dependent of foreign oil to maintain our current standard of living. This is a blip. Diminishing supply, and more importantly, lousy energy return on the world's remaining oil guarantee higher prices over time.
For important things you can sign up for an instance of Linux on Amazon, connect, do whatever you need to do, and throw the instance away. For stuff that requires only minimal security, cough up some bucks, put on your big boy pants, slap 16 Gig of EE3 RAM into a new HP laptop and run a Linux VM web appliance on VMWare's free player or Virtual Box. Throw a keystroke encryptor on your windows host too. Sure, it's not perfect, but a dang good cheap firewall. Make sure you add Ghostery, first thing, or you'll be tracked by hundreds of different sites. The government/corporations may not come to track you down today, but your comments, even the innocent ones that mention your name, address, friends or family members may come back to haunt you in a few years.
Or maybe next year. Because maybe you're just not paranoid enough yet.
Now, (and it feels good to say this), "GET OFF MY LAWN!"
LOL. Yes, at 54, the 20-somethings are always surprised when I can figure out how to do something much faster than they can. Of course, I've been doing it since the 1980s as have many of my cohorts. Experience does count for something.
They create and throw out products and platforms willy-nilly whenever it suits them and with absolutely no regard for the customers and clients that their hardware and software vendors serve. Want to be that guy who has to find someone to support a VB6 or Silverlight app on a desktop box in 5 years? Good luck with that. You're much better off with open source on Linux.
Interesting that you think I'm poor. I have that 6 figure salary as does my wife, 5 rental properties and a small lake house. I expect to retire in reasonable comfort. So, nobody has the right to a house or a car, but someone has the right to export jobs when it suits them. How long do you expect that kind of economic power asymmetry to last before we repeat the French or Russian revolutions?
I'm not mobile either. If the pay doesn't match up with the prices I have to pay for my extravagant lifestyle (i.e. small mortgage, car, food, clothing and insurance), there's no point in taking the job. What most employers don't get is that what used to pass for a middle class lifestyle of owning a home, a car, paying the bills, having children, taking a two week vacation and eating out once a week or so on now requires a 6 figure salary for at least one family wage earner, or at least it does in most urban areas. You might squeak by on less in a more rural area, but not by much. A car costs the same in Peoria as it does in New York. Food, insurance and medical costs too. Real estate is the big difference, but that's represents only a portion of your salary.
Enter globalization. Now I have to compete with engineers making $10 an hour in the Philippines. Their end product may be crap, but bean counters are famous for ignoring productivity, quality, risk, or anything they can't see as a number on a spreadsheet. So, as the company slowly sinks by saving money, my salary is suppressed. My costs.... not so much. So yes, employers have only themselves to blame.
Usually I copy the content of one spammer, change it up just enough to sound unique and interested and gradually, as they read down the letter realize they're reading another spam letter. Occasionally I send them the CIA's phone and address. At other times, I sound normal at the beginning and slowly start raving. Great Sunday afternoon fun!
and pro-USA propaganda. The folks involved in the land grabs of the 1700 to 1800s were called "settlers" instead of "thieves." The Irish in the 1600s were called "indentured servants" not the more accurate term "slaves." And of course, we all need to be taught how to sit from 8:00 to 3:00 so we're trained for regimented factory work - the purpose of the general population.
And why, for goodness sake, would you want them to think for themselves? They'll just cause trouble...
They're not exclusive and the government doesn't trust Microsoft either. Sure, pretend to partner with Microsoft and put in some explicit backdoors. Just make sure that there are a few Microsoft doesn't know about too.
Nonsense, we'll just print the money after it's been magically created by a central bank. I'm sure any rational alien would believe that has value. Don't you?
Yes, suddenly we're flooded with alien offers for tentacle size enhancement, special offers on [untranslatable] lubricating solution, and offers from the centurans offering to transfer some money from their inheritance to our bank accounts if we will just give them our name, address, galactic identification number and wealth storage account routing ID.
There was in interesting line in "Gladiator" where the Maximus the gladiator character despairs to Lucilla that the gods have spared him only to amuse a mob.
"That is power. The mob is Rome." she replies.
I've never forgotten that quote - thought about it for days. I never had much hope for real sustained democracy after that.
Electronic or otherwise. California has direct ballot initiatives which is fairly pure, as democracy in America goes. It hasn't been an unmitigated success.
The "wisdom of crowds" is too easily subverted by a mass media owned by a moneyed elite, and researching your own information has fallen to finding out what some other idiots on facebook or slashdot think. I wish I had a solution, but frankly, I don't think there is one until and unless money somehow magically leaves our political system. Fat chance of that happening.
We've developed this new language that... SQUIRREL! Oh, what was that language again. Screw it. Let's dump it and develop a purely functional... SQUIRREL!
May I gently suggest that another language is NOT needed, and that rationally built, compatible extensions and frameworks added to existing languages might, instead, be far, far more useful. C to C++ worked.
Slashdot Mirror
after which the Saudis stop over-pumping. Before that, however, the "wall of oil" (http://www.safehaven.com/article/24788/saudi-arabia-aims-to-deliver-wall-of-oil-to-us-) promised by the Saudis has brought prices down enough to give a mild boost to the economy which insures Obama's re-election.
Fundamentally, nothing's changed. The amount of oil in the continental USA and the Gulf are still relatively trivial. We are and always will be dependent of foreign oil to maintain our current standard of living. This is a blip. Diminishing supply, and more importantly, lousy energy return on the world's remaining oil guarantee higher prices over time.
OK, here's my 54-year old doddering answer.
For important things you can sign up for an instance of Linux on Amazon, connect, do whatever you need to do, and throw the instance away. For stuff that requires only minimal security, cough up some bucks, put on your big boy pants, slap 16 Gig of EE3 RAM into a new HP laptop and run a Linux VM web appliance on VMWare's free player or Virtual Box. Throw a keystroke encryptor on your windows host too. Sure, it's not perfect, but a dang good cheap firewall. Make sure you add Ghostery, first thing, or you'll be tracked by hundreds of different sites. The government/corporations may not come to track you down today, but your comments, even the innocent ones that mention your name, address, friends or family members may come back to haunt you in a few years.
Or maybe next year. Because maybe you're just not paranoid enough yet.
Now, (and it feels good to say this), "GET OFF MY LAWN!"
LOL. Yes, at 54, the 20-somethings are always surprised when I can figure out how to do something much faster than they can. Of course, I've been doing it since the 1980s as have many of my cohorts. Experience does count for something.
Why thanks, voluntary-serf man! Have some *more* kool-aid!
They create and throw out products and platforms willy-nilly whenever it suits them and with absolutely no regard for the customers and clients that their hardware and software vendors serve. Want to be that guy who has to find someone to support a VB6 or Silverlight app on a desktop box in 5 years? Good luck with that. You're much better off with open source on Linux.
Signed, a frequently screwed MS developer
Drink a lot of Kool-aid, do you? Perhaps you might like to review a history book or two on labor movements and economic revolutions over time.
Interesting that you think I'm poor. I have that 6 figure salary as does my wife, 5 rental properties and a small lake house. I expect to retire in reasonable comfort. So, nobody has the right to a house or a car, but someone has the right to export jobs when it suits them. How long do you expect that kind of economic power asymmetry to last before we repeat the French or Russian revolutions?
I'm not mobile either. If the pay doesn't match up with the prices I have to pay for my extravagant lifestyle (i.e. small mortgage, car, food, clothing and insurance), there's no point in taking the job. What most employers don't get is that what used to pass for a middle class lifestyle of owning a home, a car, paying the bills, having children, taking a two week vacation and eating out once a week or so on now requires a 6 figure salary for at least one family wage earner, or at least it does in most urban areas. You might squeak by on less in a more rural area, but not by much. A car costs the same in Peoria as it does in New York. Food, insurance and medical costs too. Real estate is the big difference, but that's represents only a portion of your salary.
Enter globalization. Now I have to compete with engineers making $10 an hour in the Philippines. Their end product may be crap, but bean counters are famous for ignoring productivity, quality, risk, or anything they can't see as a number on a spreadsheet. So, as the company slowly sinks by saving money, my salary is suppressed. My costs.... not so much. So yes, employers have only themselves to blame.
Usually I copy the content of one spammer, change it up just enough to sound unique and interested and gradually, as they read down the letter realize they're reading another spam letter. Occasionally I send them the CIA's phone and address. At other times, I sound normal at the beginning and slowly start raving. Great Sunday afternoon fun!
Dang do gooders. Always causing trouble.
Remember, just because you have an evil twin doesn't mean *you're* not evil too.
So if I grow a goatee, do I get to be in the evil universe? Wait. I have a goatee....
But what could go wrong?
and pro-USA propaganda. The folks involved in the land grabs of the 1700 to 1800s were called "settlers" instead of "thieves." The Irish in the 1600s were called "indentured servants" not the more accurate term "slaves." And of course, we all need to be taught how to sit from 8:00 to 3:00 so we're trained for regimented factory work - the purpose of the general population.
And why, for goodness sake, would you want them to think for themselves? They'll just cause trouble...
They're not exclusive and the government doesn't trust Microsoft either. Sure, pretend to partner with Microsoft and put in some explicit backdoors. Just make sure that there are a few Microsoft doesn't know about too.
Nonsense, we'll just print the money after it's been magically created by a central bank. I'm sure any rational alien would believe that has value. Don't you?
Yes, suddenly we're flooded with alien offers for tentacle size enhancement, special offers on [untranslatable] lubricating solution, and offers from the centurans offering to transfer some money from their inheritance to our bank accounts if we will just give them our name, address, galactic identification number and wealth storage account routing ID.
There was in interesting line in "Gladiator" where the Maximus the gladiator character despairs to Lucilla that the gods have spared him only to amuse a mob.
"That is power. The mob is Rome." she replies.
I've never forgotten that quote - thought about it for days. I never had much hope for real sustained democracy after that.
Electronic or otherwise. California has direct ballot initiatives which is fairly pure, as democracy in America goes. It hasn't been an unmitigated success.
The "wisdom of crowds" is too easily subverted by a mass media owned by a moneyed elite, and researching your own information has fallen to finding out what some other idiots on facebook or slashdot think. I wish I had a solution, but frankly, I don't think there is one until and unless money somehow magically leaves our political system. Fat chance of that happening.
We've developed this new language that... SQUIRREL! Oh, what was that language again. Screw it. Let's dump it and develop a purely functional... SQUIRREL!
May I gently suggest that another language is NOT needed, and that rationally built, compatible extensions and frameworks added to existing languages might, instead, be far, far more useful. C to C++ worked.
'The man challenged everyone's thinking,' says Vint Cerf, Google's chief Internet evangelist, in an interview with Network World.
No wonder he was driven to suicide. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Death
Or perhaps object relational genitalia (ORG), requiring almost no CPU power and only selective memory.
extends all the way down to their presentations. What 20-something newly minted "manager" was responsible for that, I wonder?
It's not dead. It just smells funny.
If you've done nothing wrong officer, you have nothing to worry about, do you?