Re: Available consultant Vijay for Unix System Admin with sun Solories Expireance.

On Fri, 09 May 2008 22:06:22 -0500,
Moe Trin <ibuprofin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 9 May 2008, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.unix.admin, in article
<slrng28chk.31bj.read_the_sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, jpd wrote:
Moe Trin <ibuprofin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Another initiative working it's way forward for inclusion on the November
2008 ballot is an increase in the 'sales tax' (a tax levied on _most_
sales of goods) of one percent effective for the next 30 years to pay
for additional transportation infrastructure. Various counties and
cities tack more taxes on top of the state levy, and I'm currently
paying 8.9%.

I don't really like fixed ear-marking practice. Just take all the money
you (well, the state) receives and pass it on to those things that need
it, as needed. Fixed budgets and the games of musical chairs that arise
probably account for multi-percent inefficiencies accross the system.

VAT in Europe varies from... 15% to 25%, I believe. Many places have it
at 19%. So it's a pass-on tax, but 19% is still a sizeable chunk of the
final price.

I wouldn't know where to start with the math, but I do wonder whether
removing all the overhead, including silent overhead spent on
administration details by tax payers, wouldn't pay for the reduced tax
intakes if we'd switch to a flat income tax and perhaps one `unmoving
value' tax, like a property or total wealth tax or something. Just ditch
all the penny pinching on all the little details everywhere. If that
wouldn't work, I'm still interested in finding out what absolute minimum
`touch' would be needed to fund the services the state provides.


It feels so good to be standing at the gas pump and watching some
idiot filling the 40 gallon tank on his penis extension.

:-)

Amazingly, you increasingly see them here too. Here, of course, the
taxes on fuel account for, half or more, I forgot, of the final price.

By the same token I don't see any finance-technical reason to add extra
levies on using a car to pay for the roads and such. Efficient use of
fuel presumably correlates reasonably well with efficient use of roads,
with the possible exception of the damage done by overloaded large
road transports). (Dark thoughts again: But apparently an excuse to
follow each individual car wherever it goes --using cameras or RFID or
whatnot-- is what our beloved and wise representatives really wanted.)


[interesting explanation snipped]

Most of the tow birds I've seen are a fine pitch prop if fixed. On
the other hand, it seems that every airport I've been based at had
at least one _large_ single, with a minimum 750 horse engine. There's
something magic about the sound of a Merlin pulling 50 inches of
manifold at 3000 RPM (50 inches rather than 61 because 150 Octane
gas is no longer available).

Agree. :-)


The idea seems to be quite novel here, though. Or maybe my dark
thoughts about the political agenda are entirely true. Who knows?

Many of the "in close" airports were built in the piston era, and
were limited in size.

That doesn't have to be a problem. LCY has a short runway (1,508m,
4,984ft) but also requires a steeper-than-usual approach. If that has
the side-effect of forcing the use of smaller, new-ish planes with
relatively silent motors, all the merrier.

The big flights should go to the big airport, but smaller short haul
flights and the occasional charter can use a pleasant and relatively
quiet airport. To my mind there should be no need to be ``super rich''
to organize travel such that it's actually enjoyable.


I haven't done first or even second line support (other than Usenet
where you can ignore things) in years, but I've always found the
information provided to describe a problem - whether to a ticketing
system or verbally face to face has been lacking, and often describes
the wrong things anyway. Starting with the "is smoke coming out of
the hardware" and working down might take longer for a knowledgeable
user, but most users aren't.

Same experience here, whether the asker is some board level waste of
breath or a developer proving himself to be less than clueful. In
fact, talking with newbies and not-so-newbies about C++ and their
problems with it, the experience is the same. It takes an experienced
interrogator to get to the bottom reasonably quickly. In that particular
setting most are non-native speakers of English, and plenty aren't very
good at it either.

Then again, when I have occasion to file a bug or ask for explanation,
it invariably takes more time than expected (altough by now I expect
that) to come up with a good, usable, case description. And that while I
know from experience this is important. Most people don't realise this
at all.

Of course, then there's a good chance the other side turns out to plain
not understand what's wrong and blithely blames something else.


Import into /that one brand of spread***/, then tinker for a while.
The barrier to ``macro-ize'' buttonclicks is probably higher too.

Luckily, we're primarily a UNIX shop, and the support people are
expected to know their way around common commands. We're even
luckier, because there is virtually no Redmondware - it's mainly
at corporate in sales/marketing and a few systems in accounting (to
file on-line crap with the government).

Recently flunked a phone interview because, well, a couple of things,
among them the sudden onset of lots of redmondware questions. If any
of that would've been mentioned in the ad, I'd skipped right over it
and saved me a bunch of work. *sigh*.


Personally, I think that setting up systems so that interfacing with
them requires any specific platform (especially commercial, but that
is just icing on the cake, really) means you've deliberately hobbled
and obsoleted your platform, and is inexcusable for public services.


My wife tells me they make use of command lists at her place (some
Sloaris and Linux - less than 20% Redmondware). That's pitiful, as
their average worker is old enough to have been trained to do the jobs
by hand (mainly accounting and sales tracking) and you were expected
to think to the extent that you had some clue what the data should
look like, and thus at least identify situations where things weren't
running correctly.

Yes, but that doesn't mean they've been trained to use the platform
that now underpins the calculations. Before that, it was ``pencil and
paper'', which is quite different. But I agree that people who know that
part inside out shouldn't have much trouble with training for the pencil
and paper replacement. Providing the training would be useful, though.

The problem with redmondware is that it's sold as ``requires no
training'', with the effect of unleashing many computer illiterates on
computers with the expection they'll pick up literacy as they go. We
don't expect that to work with language, or maths, and so on. ``We''
accept it from computer salesmen, and in fact the loudmouthed wannabe
replacement providers pitch the same thing (with less success). Curious.


Then again, open any mainstream computer magazine and see how they
rate computing equipment. With ``(web) content creation'' and
``productivity'', and whatever they thought up this week indices.

s/they thought up/the advertiser suggested they use/

There is that.


Apparently the numbers are a big deal, though to me they're ironically
meaningless. Is it the machine that does the creation now?

Remember the target audience - many have no idea what is actually
useful in the computer.

Well, the computer magazine I actually got this from used to be,
before its merger with the largest competitor (which was pure lies^W^W
commercial) the organ of the /computer hobbyists club/, and for some
token value of that still is. Of course, that only adds to the irony.


What would be the ``productivity index'' of, oh, this here hammer?

Probably pretty low - no place to plug in the mouse, and it won't
run vista. (Heck, it won't run a lot of things - not enough RAM.)

Ram it hard enough into the skulls of the editors and watch the indices
soar. If the metric were anywhere near realistic, the guarantee of not
being able to run windows, notably vista, would increase the numbers
even more. Useful, or at least meaningfully measurable, metrics for that
platform should be called ``eyecandy index'', ``invitiveness to tinker
index'', ``corporate timewasting index'', and so on.

Administratively? ``Expected blood pressure increase index.''


--
j p d (at) d s b (dot) t u d e l f t (dot) n l .
This message was originally posted on Usenet in plain text.
Any other representation, additions, or changes do not have my
consent and may be a violation of international copyright law.
.