Hear, hear. I saw this when I was stationed at Tinker AFB.
Military hanger(s): spotless, orderly, tools and equipment in good working order, work mostly done by E-3s with (light) non-commissioned supervision.
Contractor hanger: dirty, bird-shit infested, disorderly, with most work done by guys making $60k who sat on their asses as much as possible. Both sides used and maintained the exact same class of aerospace ground equipment.
Needless to say, when the boys in suits (whom we grunts referred to as "office fairies" back then) start talking about "public-private partnerships" and "contracts," it's time to duck for cover.
I'll concede that point. After doing some research (avoiding MSM sites, thanks), it's pretty clear that the people in charge of the city and state failed in their duties. Perhaps they were skeptical of "whitey" from the federal government, or perhaps they just didn't care as long as their own families and friends were OK.
As for the death of the girl in the SuperDome, and the conditions there generally, I can only trust the eyewitness account of a good friend.
That doesn't negate the responsibility of people to take care of themselves, however.
I had friends in the Superdome during Katrina. There was no water or food. A young girl was raped and killed in a bathroom; her neck was snapped. My friends, who were from England and New Zealand, had to get together with other white people to form a small circle where they could huddle without being harassed. There was a lot of anger against whites in that place, which is understandable considering that the wealthier (presumably white) parts of the city had left these people behind without the consideration you would show a dog.
Thousands of people were huddled together in the Superdome like animals for days with no food, water or law enforcement. You clearly have no idea what you're talking about.
Where teachers make upwards of $100k before they retire -- and $75k afterward. Until death.
Where state troopers make upwards of $60k or more with full benefits.
I'm sure there are other examples, these are just the two I know about.
Here's an experiment: try moving to a smallish city or largish town in New York State (outside NYC/Westchester). Try finding a job at a private company that pays the rates listed above, with similar benefits and retirement package.
Good luck.
Most people in (upstate) NY are making in the $30k range, and paying 30% in taxes to support the public employee unions. No wonder we're losing (by some estimates) 500,000 residents a year.
It's interesting that surveillance and data retention by the government is framed as a moral issue in these discussions. I happen to think that laziness is at least as big a factor, and it's what really drives behavior in many cases. It's all about the path of least resistance. In the old days of paper-based records, you had to go through several extra steps to keep a record, using a copier, for example (or carbon paper before that). Even the old computer systems had bulky, expensive tape drives which held fairly little data. Assuming you wanted to keep any given bit of information around once you'd grabbed it, you then had to file it, keep it dry, and so on. This meant that data retention cost money in terms of creation, storage and indexing (which they used to call "filing," and it took even more people), so you had to justify the expense of keeping a record of an event.
Fast forward a few decades: nowadays, if you run a network of any kind (even a small one at home), you have various servers, firewalls, daemons, and so forth running all the time, each writing the details of their activities to various logfiles which sit on disk and cost very little to index, search and store. In addition, since the records are created automatically, you have to actually *do something* to get rid of them. That means adding an extra "deletion step", whether it's writing a script or otherwise, which means at least some expertise is required, which means you have to pay someone, and, if you are in government or business, you have to justify to someone why you are spending money to have less information about your systems, users, what-have-you. This is especially problematic if someone can find you blameworthy for doing so. Which they will, especially if it is politically or financially advantageous to do so. And it always is.
All of this is obvious; I'm not saying anything new or interesting here.
Re:Simple shit you didn't know existed
on
Ubuntu Kung Fu
·
· Score: 1
It will take you from the basics of filesystem navigation all the way to writing your own shell scripts. As a plus, it's written by a guy who actually knows how to write for human beings (rare, ain't it?:-)). I don't know if it's got everything you mentioned, but I thought it rather nice.
Absolutely painful. While Mr. Gaiman and his publishers are free to do as they please, I'm unimpressed. No pdf? Nothing I can take with me when I'm sans net? I can appreciate that this probably seemed like a really "edgy" idea in the boardroom, out here in the street they just come off looking, well... old.
Also, the horribly clunky "Web 2.0 interface" is a hoot.:-)
What amazes me, frankly, is that this has happened at all. From what I've seen in my short life, most people who rise to positions of authority in the U.S. Government are totally unwilling to trade their position and prestige for Constitutional principle. Although I am unfamiliar with her situation, I suspect that this particular judge will rise no higher in the ranks of the Federal Government (which may not be her wish, anyway).
As an aside, I am really tired of hearing about all of the cool stuff around health care and civil rights coming out of Oregon. I'm from New York, and damn it, they're making us "East Coast Liberals" look like a bunch of featherweights who never get anything done.
Could we please stop using the term "intellectual property" already? Repeat after me, kids: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY. As far as I am aware, there are "copyrights" and there are "trademarks." That is all. Intellectual Property is a term invented by corporate lawyers, and it has the effect of defining the discussion in terms of "theft", etc., which is just what was intended in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
Hear, hear. I saw this when I was stationed at Tinker AFB.
Military hanger(s): spotless, orderly, tools and equipment in good working order, work mostly done by E-3s with (light) non-commissioned supervision.
Contractor hanger: dirty, bird-shit infested, disorderly, with most work done by guys making $60k who sat on their asses as much as possible. Both sides used and maintained the exact same class of aerospace ground equipment.
Needless to say, when the boys in suits (whom we grunts referred to as "office fairies" back then) start talking about "public-private partnerships" and "contracts," it's time to duck for cover.
I'll concede that point. After doing some research (avoiding MSM sites, thanks), it's pretty clear that the people in charge of the city and state failed in their duties. Perhaps they were skeptical of "whitey" from the federal government, or perhaps they just didn't care as long as their own families and friends were OK.
As for the death of the girl in the SuperDome, and the conditions there generally, I can only trust the eyewitness account of a good friend.
That doesn't negate the responsibility of people to take care of themselves, however.
I had friends in the Superdome during Katrina. There was no water or food. A young girl was raped and killed in a bathroom; her neck was snapped. My friends, who were from England and New Zealand, had to get together with other white people to form a small circle where they could huddle without being harassed. There was a lot of anger against whites in that place, which is understandable considering that the wealthier (presumably white) parts of the city had left these people behind without the consideration you would show a dog.
Thousands of people were huddled together in the Superdome like animals for days with no food, water or law enforcement. You clearly have no idea what you're talking about.
Actually, until 1953, it *was* a democracy. You can read about the president the British and Americans helped to overthrow here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Mossadegh
Where teachers make upwards of $100k before they retire -- and $75k afterward. Until death.
Where state troopers make upwards of $60k or more with full benefits.
I'm sure there are other examples, these are just the two I know about.
Here's an experiment: try moving to a smallish city or largish town in New York State (outside NYC/Westchester). Try finding a job at a private company that pays the rates listed above, with similar benefits and retirement package.
Good luck.
Most people in (upstate) NY are making in the $30k range, and paying 30% in taxes to support the public employee unions. No wonder we're losing (by some estimates) 500,000 residents a year.
It's interesting that surveillance and data retention by the government is framed as a moral issue in these discussions. I happen to think that laziness is at least as big a factor, and it's what really drives behavior in many cases. It's all about the path of least resistance. In the old days of paper-based records, you had to go through several extra steps to keep a record, using a copier, for example (or carbon paper before that). Even the old computer systems had bulky, expensive tape drives which held fairly little data. Assuming you wanted to keep any given bit of information around once you'd grabbed it, you then had to file it, keep it dry, and so on. This meant that data retention cost money in terms of creation, storage and indexing (which they used to call "filing," and it took even more people), so you had to justify the expense of keeping a record of an event.
Fast forward a few decades: nowadays, if you run a network of any kind (even a small one at home), you have various servers, firewalls, daemons, and so forth running all the time, each writing the details of their activities to various logfiles which sit on disk and cost very little to index, search and store. In addition, since the records are created automatically, you have to actually *do something* to get rid of them. That means adding an extra "deletion step", whether it's writing a script or otherwise, which means at least some expertise is required, which means you have to pay someone, and, if you are in government or business, you have to justify to someone why you are spending money to have less information about your systems, users, what-have-you. This is especially problematic if someone can find you blameworthy for doing so. Which they will, especially if it is politically or financially advantageous to do so. And it always is.
All of this is obvious; I'm not saying anything new or interesting here.
After much searching long ago, I found this site:
http://linuxcommand.org/
It will take you from the basics of filesystem navigation all the way to writing your own shell scripts. As a plus, it's written by a guy who actually knows how to write for human beings (rare, ain't it? :-)). I don't know if it's got everything you mentioned, but I thought it rather nice.
Absolutely painful. While Mr. Gaiman and his publishers are free to do as they please, I'm unimpressed. No pdf? Nothing I can take with me when I'm sans net? I can appreciate that this probably seemed like a really "edgy" idea in the boardroom, out here in the street they just come off looking, well... old.
:-)
Also, the horribly clunky "Web 2.0 interface" is a hoot.
What amazes me, frankly, is that this has happened at all. From what I've seen in my short life, most people who rise to positions of authority in the U.S. Government are totally unwilling to trade their position and prestige for Constitutional principle. Although I am unfamiliar with her situation, I suspect that this particular judge will rise no higher in the ranks of the Federal Government (which may not be her wish, anyway).
As an aside, I am really tired of hearing about all of the cool stuff around health care and civil rights coming out of Oregon. I'm from New York, and damn it, they're making us "East Coast Liberals" look like a bunch of featherweights who never get anything done.
Could we please stop using the term "intellectual property" already? Repeat after me, kids: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY. As far as I am aware, there are "copyrights" and there are "trademarks." That is all. Intellectual Property is a term invented by corporate lawyers, and it has the effect of defining the discussion in terms of "theft", etc., which is just what was intended in the first place.