Linux-Advocacy Digest #326, Volume #29 Wed, 27 Sep 00 02:13:04 EDT
Contents:
Re: [OT] Bush v. Gore on taxes (was: Re: Would a M$ Voluntary Split ...)
(R.E.Ballard ( Rex Ballard ))
Re: Linux to reach NT 3.51 proportions in next 2 years (Lee Sau Dan)
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From: R.E.Ballard ( Rex Ballard ) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: [OT] Bush v. Gore on taxes (was: Re: Would a M$ Voluntary Split ...)
Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 05:29:14 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Donovan Rebbechi) wrote:
> On Tue, 26 Sep 2000 18:29:41 -0400, Aaron R. Kulkis wrote:
> >Mike Byrns wrote:
>
> >If Welfare were eliminated....then
If welfare were completely eliminated, we would simply need to build
more and bigger jails. George Bush turned the corrections industry
into big business. He even offered to sell cell space to other
states. The only problem was that several states considered the
Texas facilities so far below their standards that some states
simply couldn't use the facilities. Colorado even ruled that it
was cruel and unusual punishment.
There will always be a certian element of the population that seeks
short-term satisfaction at the cost of long-term well-being. The
result is drug addiction, disability (from improperly doing hard-labor
jobs for employers who don't provide adequate equipment and training
(many disability recipients have back and leg injuries). There are
the party people who make drugs an unregulated illegal industry.
And this all results in women who are seduced by easy money, easy
drugs, and emotional "strokes" to join gangs, where they often end
up pregnant by gang members who end up in prison. The ones who avoid
the gangs end up becoming pregnant by date-rape or gang-rape. The
ones who get past the rapes end up as hookers where they get raped
for money (the woman sells her consent to do something she wouldn't
otherwise do, in exchange for very large sums of money).
Eventually, the men end up in jail or to crippled to work effectively,
the women lose their looks, and the welfare/disability system provides
just enough to supplement what little they can still earn "off the
books" from exploitive employers who will pay as little as 1/10th for
"cash only" labor.
The only difference between the immegrant welfare recipient and the
domestic welfare recipient is that the illegal immegrant, must go
directly to "working off the books".
With very little money, no skills, and limited physical ability, and
no protected legal status, and no way to "self-train", the time not
spent working "off the books" is spent watching television, which is a
constant reminder of real-life conflicts going on right outside their
doors. When the kids (who have no educated parents to help them with
homework, or even to make schoolwork a priority) finally go to bed,
the adults have sex, unprotected sex, often a combination of
religious beliefs, cultural pressures, and neurolinguistic
programming which makes condoms and affordable contraception
and sexual pleasure mutually exclusive. Furthermore, the complete
lack of proper and adaquate training in contraception, relationship
management, and alternatives to coitus results in more pregnancies.
The additional "escape from the reality" of violent crimes that affect
your own parents, children, and closest companions, is drugs. And
drugs that are unregulated, illegal, and unmanaged are distributed by
criminals who push only the most addictive, at only the highest prices,
and only on terms that will eventually force the addict to resort to
crimes. The pusher won't tell the tweaking junkie that he can use
antihistimines to get the same effect as heroin (take 5 clor-tremetin
or benadryl and watch yourself nod like a junkie). He woun't tell the
crashing speed freak that he can get a coke-like buzz by shooting a
teaspoon of primatine. Eventually, just before the end, the junkie
may discover it out of despairation.
Meanwhile, the hospitals have
turned "treatment centers" into a joke, where effective methods (12
step programs using very effective instructions) have been rejected
in favor of inneffective but conventional "psychology" which is less
effective than a placebo (in fact, therapists actually undermine the
effectiveness because "you can't build a practice on people who recover
in 6-8 weeks". And of course, the treatment centers only want the
people with insurance, and preferably NOT HMO insurance.
The very fact that you are posting on this newsgroup puts you in a
completely different world from the world of the addicts, the poor,
and the other people who lived on welfare. Some of us have come up
from the gutters into the world of computers, quiet homes, stable
relationships, and children capable of making decisions that put
long-term benefits ahead of short-term gains.
There is a way to create a window that lets the child of the slum
peek into the possibilities of education, hard work, and service
to others. That window is the internet. Already, children are
seeing engineers, doctors, lawyers, and accountants as being
professions within their reach. Direct access to the internet
opens the view a bit wider, letting them see a direct path from
poverty to prosperity. They see that they can learn skills that
are in short supply and high demand, and get paid what, in their
world of "the street", would be an unthinkable amount of money.
> >the only immigrants we would be getting
> >would be those who want to work.
Nearly every immigrant who comes to the United States wants to work.
They come, thinking and hoping that they will be able to find jobs
with companies who will pay them minimum wage, or slightly better,
for skills like house cleaning, accounting, manufacturing. Many
have even operated small businesses which could thrive in the U.S.
But the reality is that many of them are hit with a very hard and
ugly reality just miles before or after they get across the border.
The "tour guide", who gave them passports to get across the border
is joined by men with machine-guns, who collect the counterfeit
passports, handcuff the passengers, and take them to farms in isolated
parts of the southwest, to be paid "farm labor rates", which they
will be required to surrender in exchange for rent, food, bottled
water, and perhaps what little they can buy in the "company store".
Anyone caught speaking english while working at the farms will often
be beaten in front of the rest, just to make sure that no one attempts
to escape.
At the end of the harvest season, everyone is packed into a
tractor-trailor, driven to a populated city, and dropped off
in the worst part of down, at about the same time that the bars
close (usually they have been given bottles of booze while on the
truck - the only drinkable fluid available, for a 18-16 hour drive
that they think will bring them back home from the nightmare, but
only if they aren't caught. In the dead of night, when everyone
is too busy partying, the truck stops in a secluded alley, drops
off the intoxicated passengers, and disappears before they realize
that they've been dropped off in Houston Texas, Denver Colorado,
or Los Angeles, in the very worst part of town, with no money, no
clothing, no friends, and no legal documents.
Maybe, at one time, they were accountants, waitresses, house-cleaners,
and shopkeepers. But here, they are "illegals", who have neither the
skills to survive with no money, no food, no clothing suitable to their
profession, no merchandise to sell, and no way to buy inventory. The
lucky ones get adopted by opportunists who will turn accountants into
numbers runners, waitresses prostitutes, house-cleaners into theives,
and shop-keepers into drug pushers. The not so lucky ones will be
beaten, robbed of what little they have left, and picked up for
stealing food or breaking into a building to find a warm place to
sleep. The really unfortunate will lack the skills to even stay warm
and will freeze during the cold December nights (with no humidity, it
gets lethally cold at night).
> I'd say "yes" to reform, but "no" to elimination.
The real purpose of welfare should be to turn those numbers runners
into accountants, those prostitutes into waitresses and retail
sales-people, those theives into security guards, and those drug
pushers into shopkeepers. Find their misutilized talents, encourage
them to work "on the books" (by not cutting everything if they make
anything), and providing a roadmap for making the transition.
It's only slightly more expensive. And with computers, it's possible.
It's possible to create the roadmap, to create the milestones, and
to track the progress, while creating new horizons that are real
possibilities.
Unfortunately, this also means that you have to deal with the
exploiters differently as well. Instead of punishing the illegal
worker, you need to identify the illegal employer. Identify the drug
pusher and give him the option of managing shop-keepers (urban malls),
identify the strong-arms and enforcers, and give them the option of
becoming the security guards. Identify the "cash-only" contractors
and create ways to get cheap labor by providing training that upgrades
them to more valuable skills, which they can market at higher rates.
Finally, remove the need for relocation. We now have the ability
to let the "have-nots" provide customized goods and services to
the "haves". I recently observed a young lady who was selling jewelry
made in Kenya, for $30 each. She was extremely wealthy and was simply
doing this as a favor to a woman she met while touring Africa. The
jewelry is so popular that her entire inventory was sold out in 3 days.
(about 50 necklaces). She sent her check for $1500 (she didn't charge a
mark-up, but easily could have) which will be enough to provide
training, food, clothing, and shelter for about 30 families. In fact,
this sudden infusion of cash may even cause a healthy form of inflation
in that community as the jewelry makers begin to spend their cash.
> As for immigrants, current policy favours skilled
> workers -- for example,
> a H1B requires a University degree ( in fact a lot
> of H1B people have a masters or PhD since they use
> the education system to get into the country in the first place ).
The problem hasn't been the people who come here legally, learn and
practice skills, and then either return or become citizens. Many of
these workers are extremely industrious, hard working, and - in the
structure of being a legal alien, even become quite prosperous.
Many even send money back home to their families who are starting
businesses of their own, or preparing for the return of the visitor.
The problem is when the legal alien or potentially legal alien
becomes the target of people seeking to bring others in illegally.
The pick-pocket or hooker who is more interested in the passport
and work visa than the Rolex watch or the $100 in cash that she
will also be taking. These documents will be used to bring in
black-market slave-labor. Meanwhile, the alien will have to deal
with the INS who may take a dim view of unreported stolen documents
that seem to keep showing up in the hands of newly arriving immigrants
who claim to be "Dr Gonzales".
> The difficulty with US immigration policy
> is that it's difficult to stop
> illegals getting in because you've got an exposed border.
We have exposed borders to Canada (which the Canadians wanted
do close during the Vietnam War), and Mexico (which the U.S.
wants to close. The Mexican border is bordered by one of the
most toxic rivers in North America (deliberately kept toxic with
sewage and chemical waste from L.A.) and some very rough, dry
terrain exposed for many miles in some cases.
In some cases, crossing to/from Texas is no big deal because there
aren't too many ways for people to get out of town without the law
enforcement knowing about it.
> >Eliminate welfare, and you won't have any slum & bodega problem.
Eliminate welfare without creating alternative opportunies that
significantly exceed the benifits of dependency/illegal income, and
you merely increase the crime rate. Furthermore, with no "welfare moms"
and "disabled boys" to exploit, the slum would come to "yuppy-ville".
They already bring drugs to the schools (a key source of finances for
the low-income community), they bring prostitutes to the work areas
(to create yet another easy access to the "yuppie wallet". And finally,
you have the lawsuit - if you have deep pockets, there will be poor
people sponsored by greedy lawyers who will even tell the poor guy
how to create accidents that will result in the biggest possible
settlements.
> I don't think eliminating welfare is a cure all. It's not that simple.
Eliminating welfare is only about 1/4 of the solution. You have to
balance reduction of welfare with creation of opportunity to enter
markets where skilled and semi-skilled labor is scarce. This means
transportation to affluent areas (automobiles), and access via the
internet. It also means creating venues that are attractive to the
affluent that can be staffed by people living in "low-rent"
neighborhoods.
A good example of this is the work that Christie Whitman and George
Pataki are doing in the area around New York's Manhattan area.
Manhattan used to be a "nice place to work, but you don't want to live
there". The upper east side was nice enough, but the lower east side,
harlem, and hell's kitchen were - at best - "a good place to pick up a
hooker" after about 8 P.M. In many cases, it wasn't even safe to ride
the bus. Today, thanks to the internet community that revamped "the
squats" (Artists who created internet art rewired and refurbished
condemned buildings in Alphabet City, the Lower East side, Hell's
kitchen, and both Harlems. The renewal of these slums happened in a
way that created income opportunities and training opportunities for
what had previously been welfare families. By 1996, there wasn't a
"starving artist" in Manhattan. In fact, housing and real-estate
got so scarce that they moved into Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx.
But the most notable was the changes in Jersey City. Near each of the
Path Stations, internet workers, wanting to stay close to the action in
the city (able to return within 30 minutes of any problems) began
looking for housing and office space. Suddenly there was a housing
shortage in an area which had been a slum. The Jersey City government
used the windfall taxes to fund better police protection, but also
created safe places where the "welfare crowd" could actually mingle
with the "web wonders". Before long, synergies started to form,
welfare kids were rubbing shoulders with engineers. And since the
Web Geeks were young, single, and open no new experiences, they
found ways to explore the communities. They went to all of the
different restaurants (and packed them), created new night clubs
where "urban girls" could hang tight with "rich geeks". Many of
these combinations blossomed into relationships and marriages.
Suddenly, the "boys of the hood" were scrambling to learn how to
run computers, to be responsible and productive. The entire value
system began to shift from a culture where the most violent and most
illegal acts provided access to the most irresponsible forms of sex,
to one where the most responsible behavior, the most respectful
attitude (respect for everyone, including the criminal element),
and the most ethical practices led to the most satisfying long-term
relationships.
What was most interesting is that the benefits flowed both ways. When
the internet started expanding into Asia, South America, and Eastern
Europe, here was this town, filled with first generation arrivals from
all of these countries, and just happened to be the parents of second
generation kids who didn't have the language and legal barriers. But
mom, dad, and grandpa suddenly became valuable business partners when
it became clear that some special skills were needed, from those
arrivals, to reach new markets who wanted to do business in both
directions. The americans were looking for interesting things to
buy, and the Asians, Africans, South Americans, Indians, and Eastern
Europeans had hand-crafted artwork that had a very special appeal
to the web-artists who no longer had the time to create that kind of
art, but could still take great joy in owning Russian Laquer boxes,
Chinese room dividers and silks, and Indian textiles and artwork.
Today, they can't build apartments fast enough for these people.
The previously poor families are thriving, and the previously
fearful affluent families are experiencing a community who enjoys
the diversity of immigrant populations, African-American enthusiasm,
and a plethora of delightful experiences with everyone from other
executives to the pan-handlers (who have now created an entire genre
of entertainment specifically tailored to provide 90 seconds of
entertainment worth around $5/minute to passengers who happily
drop quarters and dollars for an acapella rendition of "you are my
sunshine" with a Gospel swing. In the stations and boats, there
are performers, many of whom would be quite popular at hotels or
fine restaurants, playing scheduled engagements. Even the old
ex-winos (many of whom have sobered up for many years) have turned
into philosophers and sages. Many will even give you a 3 minute
psychic reading if you drop $3 in their hat (what's really scary is
that they're incredibly accurate).
Governer Whitman is working with other communities as well. There
is even a move under way to create a similar type of infrastructure
in Newark NJ, near the NJCPA and the train station. The goal is to
turn the area from the NJCPA to Penn Station down to the river into
yet another "transformational community". For people who want the
freedom of personal transit, the Newark area provides the benifits
of quick and easy access to the City with quick and easy access to
much less expensive parking (some of the suburban train stations
even offer free parking).
The irony of welfare, and our current coversation around the
entitlements programs, even social security, is that there are
people in this world who can't contribute anything to the community
and must therefore be supported exclusively by the government.
At 101 years old, Lloyd Mints would provide monthly counciling and
advice to the members of the federal reserve, the secretary of the
treasury, and numerous people in the treasury department, many of whom
were former students, or students of former students such as Milton
Freedman. His greatest joy in life was getting those phone calls.
He was contributing his wisdom, 80 years of experience as an
economist, and 85 years as a teacher (he began teaching in a
one-room schoolhouse in Cripple Creek Colorado when he as 15
years old, because his mother didn't want him to work in the
mines). He even helped engineer the bail-out of the Savings and
Loans branch of the banking system. Ironically, even though he
was deaf (he had a special amplifier that amplified the telephone
signal to 70 db so that he could "hear" the telephone and economic
news. He was blind (learned how to read braille at 85 so that he
could track the economy). And he was crippled (he could walk very
slowly from his room to the nursing home dining room). He said he
felt like he was a prisoner because of the limitations of his body,
that kept his always-busy mind from being able to function and serve
others as he knew it could. The entire time he worked for the
government, from 1938 to 1988, he would only accept a "salary"
of $1/year. Even at the end of his life, he lived on the income
from his investments. He bought "crazy" investments, like IBM when
they were just starting to create this thing called a "Computer",
at 50 cents a share, just a few days after the announcement.
He had a funny way of picking the winners. He would talk to the poor,
the young, and the seemingly insane. Those who talked of really nutty
ideas, but struck a chord with the young, and served the needs of those
who needed the most (the lower middle class) tended to be incredibly
good investments. He was by no means a tight-wad, but he made it a
point not to attract attention. He had a high squeaky voice that
seemed like it was still going through puberty at 80 (or even 100),
What does this have to do with Linux advocacy?
Actually, quite a bit. Linux presents the possibility of a fully
functional computer system, with all of the same features as the best
computers available to government and business, for a price as low as
$200 (using recycled equipment and trivial upgrades). This makes the
computer, which provides the possibility of real economic opportunity,
less expensive than a television, which serves the same function as
the Roman "Circus", without even having to get up off of the couch.
Consider this as a possibility. If access to the internet, which,
even as late as 1995 was difficult to access, expensive to purchase,
and relatively expensive to establish, could have an impact like the
one it had on New York and Jersey City New Jersey by providing
lucrative income to "starving artists", what would happen if you
had just 5,000 UNIX (or Linux) engineers living in or near every
low-income community. Imagine if they were joined by experts in
finance, business management, and even personal development (able
to get large communities motivated and in action around worthwhile
goals).
By the way, much of this insight come because I actually lived in
Jersey City when this transformation was just beginning to be seeded.
Today, the PATH is supplemented with Light Rail, and
> --
> Donovan
>
--
Rex Ballard - I/T Architect, MIS Director
Linux Advocate, Internet Pioneer
http://www.open4success.com
Linux - 42 million satisfied users worldwide
and growing at over 5%/month! (recalibrated 8/2/00)
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
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From: Lee Sau Dan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Linux to reach NT 3.51 proportions in next 2 years
Date: 27 Sep 2000 13:50:01 +0800
>>>>> "Bob" == Bob Hauck <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Bob> I'd rather have a full-text search engine automatically index
Bob> all of my documents, including text fields in non-text
Bob> documents. Or perhaps they could be classifed by subject
Bob> matter and context so that I could retrieve them later by
Bob> asking for, say, "all the documents that were touched while I
Bob> was working on bug report foo", or "documents relating to
Bob> meetings about two months ago".
Bob> I want the computer to do the work for me rather than making
Bob> it easier for me to do things manually.
I could do something close to that under UNIX with a collection of
LaTeX documents (which are text-files with markups):
find ~/documents/ -mtime -10 -name '*.tex'
would print a list of all the documents (all *.tex files stored under
the ~/documents/ directory) that were modified within 10 days. Do
this under Emacs (M-x find-dired) and you can open the listed file by
pointing-and-clicking (or keyboard only: move cursor to the listed
file and press enter).
find ~/documents/ -name '*.tex' -mtime +45 -mtime -75 |
xargs grep -i "meeting"
would list the files named *.tex which are modified n days ago where
45 < n < 75 (i.e. about 2 months ago) containing the word "meeting".
They don't do exactly what you want. However, I can tell you that a
system that can do exactly what you want is difficult, if possible, to
implement and would be very very resource hungry. Moreover, queries
like "relating to meetings" is very difficult to implement, because it
requires semantical analysis, which computers are still very weak at
despite decades of research in artificial intelligence, of your
document. E.g. does a document (such as a memo) that just mentioned
about the meeting be included into the result set of your query? On
the other hand, queries like "a file containing the word 'meeting'"
are trivial.
Computer are only good at dealing with precise data, not inexact,
ambiguous information.
--
Lee Sau Dan §õ¦u´°(Big5) ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ)
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| e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.csis.hku.hk/~sdlee |
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