We lost almost a full percentage in IT workforce count over 9 year period

Their are no promised paths and the field of computers is not about STABILITY. It is about staying up to speed.

A problems I have seen with Black Americans are expecting to get some knowledge and expecting to use it forever and not sharing information. I have met a number of White men who I have exchanged useful info with but too often Black men want some but can't provide any.

You gotta get books and magazines and read on your own. I have been talking about Blacks world wide standardizing on Linux. That is what they will put in that $100 laptop if it gets off the ground.

http://www.techbookreport.com/tbr0112.html

umbra

Great. Yeah you have to stay up to speed and I think the reamining core of the 8.3 percent of us is doing that. But I still believe the H1-B visas (India China Southeast Asia, etc even Africa to a lesser extent) status of the 90's and 200 period knocked out many of our potential doers trading in computers learning for office/trade/etc learning because employers refuse to look their way like these lower wage and benefits foreigners who get company sponsorship. (Note: not against foreigners just pointing out relationships)

Yeah I believe the problem you pointed out with Black Americans can be traced back to college or trade school. Most of the foreigners try to find some way to get answers from one another (helping in some sort but I dont really believe it and it has become flawed in my opinion) which consume most of their on and off study time while black Americans use their extra time to fit in with the outside world leaving learning a 'classroom experience'.

So I agree if we are going to take the individual approach we have to have the determination to do things on our own.

But the info IS there. The option is there, in book stores, libraries and User's Groups! ...I started in IT because, as a writer, the DOS box I used (Remember Word Star?) got upgraded to Win 3.1--I was in the field, so I ended up administering my unit. This meant a lot of reading on my own.

Also; as my way of giving back, I established a network of nerds in the Detroit area, and when ever a business upgraded their PCs I'd pile them into my brother's van. The idea was to take the hardware, cannibalize it to get as many working PCs as I could, Load a copy of LINUX on them and drive around Detroit"”you see a kid, you give him a computer. You'd be surprised how many kids took to those things"”how many stuck with it, and how many went on the become small-business owners.

But that's me, making a difference, one knucklehead at a time.

@thayfen

What version of Linux do you use? I'm using Mepis right now, a Debian derivative.

umbra

I'm still running Mandrake 10.1

quote:

...I started in IT because, as a writer, the DOS box I used (Remember Word Star?) got upgraded to Win 3.1--I was in the field, so I ended up administering my unit. This meant a lot of reading on my own.

Thayfen, what kind of writing are you engaging in? If you have any publishing, let us know all about it.

Are you into the network administration side? And do you do shell? My background is programming, and I have been out of the IT industry for at least 6 years as a choice and it has been for the better, not because of the speed and competition but to toss aside being mechanically oriented. My friends in the field are having doubt about this career and I am glad I left on good terms with myself.

Personally I want to say thanks for helping our people, even if we are driven by other things[ie stubborn], to get us familiar with what is going on to better educate us and spread the wealth of information we have. I continue this battle myself and it has it wins like you reported. To me you are a miracle worker.

Thanks for sharing.

I'm currently employed as a Network Admin"”for a large corp. in Dearborn, MI. Primarily I work with NOS admin and risk Assessment/security.

Back in the day (the 80's) the IT culture was all about sharing; it was the brilliant Bill Gates who changed the paradigm, and now all us nerds are just another commodity. I give back because I was given to.

What educational path does lead to stability? It's an outdated notion. That's why the older generation – like my mother – always had a raised eyebrow or headshake when they would hear that we had changed jobs after only a couple of years – which was common for me during the early days of IT contracting/consulting.

I and many others learned that if you wanted to get ahead you usually had to get what you needed from your current position and then move on. The notion of finding a "stable" job and staying with the company until retirement is not how it works.

I was making good money in IT before I got my degree.

There has always been a disconnect between the upper management i.e. CEO/CFO and the IT management. It was rare that you could show how IT would helped them meet the bottom line. So they saw IT people as the guys who change the toner in the printers and cleaned their keyboards when they spilled coffee on them. The IT was jus another expense and didn't contribute much to the company being profitable.

quote:

The IT was jus another expense and didn't contribute much to the company being profitable.

If they had the brains to use their computers properly maybe it would be different. Watching these people using spreadsheets when they should be learing how to use a database program was hilarious.

@Thayfen

Are you using Linux/UNIX on the job or Windows?

umbrarchist

IT contributes much, much more than most Fortune 500 companies are willing to admit. These computational systems have added much to the average organizations bottom line. Think of "Just-in-time" inventories, communications, transport and analysis. International conglomerates have realized trillions in profit just through increased efficiency"”one of those evils was actually the advent of the spread-sheet.

When C-level executives could play with the numbers on slow afternoons, they saw the cost savings of slighting hourly workers ($.50 to $10.00) and how this would increase their bonuses.

To umbrachist: Yes, I work with both Microsoft and Linux...and sorrowfully, less UNIX in my day-job.

Have you done anything with SUSE Linux?

I just installed it on my ASUS P5GDC-V mobo. I have tried Mepis and Red Hat on it. Red Hat didn't work at all, I think because of the video. One version of Mepis worked with the video but not the SATA drive. It only worked with PATA.

So far SUSE 10.0 works with video, SATA and 100 Mb LAN. I still have to try it with RAID tho. SATA seems to be the inevitable wave of the future so I decided I better get ready to ride it.

umbra

quote:

When C-level executives could play with the numbers on slow afternoons, they saw the cost savings of slighting hourly workers ($.50 to $10.00) and how this would increase their bonuses.

Very observant. Usually an increase in bonus for these executives means less work on their part (play as you say thoses numbers) and more work with lower pay for the hourly worker. The corporate answer to the a constant flux to meet the "state of equilibrium".

quote:

The corporate answer to the a constant flux to meet the "state of equilibrium".

since 500 MHz computers have the power of early 80s mainframes why can't everyone do accounting and affect the global economic balance of power just like the C-level executives?

Don't buy $3000 computers. The used $300 computer can compute that you loose too much in depreciation on the $3000.

umbra

quote:

Originally posted by umbrarchist:

since 500 MHz computers have the power of early 80s mainframes why can't everyone do accounting and affect the global economic balance of power just like the C-level executives?

Don't buy $3000 computers. The used $300 computer can compute that you loose too much in depreciation on the $3000.

umbra

I agree but corporations and businesses forerunners are their sales department. It may have been 'cheap' to put it all together from raw material to 'finished' product but it lacks the aestetic quality that a sales man or woman gives which drives up the cost in the showroom.

I've seen salespeople sell old mint Pentium II and III with 128Mb RAM to many less computer saavy amoung us for a $1000 dollars when that could have been used to buy a Pentium 4 or AMD with 1 Gb RAM for less and still have some change in their pocket.

Only a smooth talking saleperson could get away with that. Business world finest.

Accounting fits well when they are up for their next promotion to climb the corporate ladder to success. Accounting is a part of the 'higher learning' club mostly out of reach for the living paychecks to paycheck American.

I remember housewives helped their husband 'balance' their checkbooks. Now with newlywedded Americans it about getting out of debt. And our friends, businesses and corporations are making a fast buck form lack of knowledge. How things have changed.

I have this accounting book:

http://books.mcgraw-hill.com/getbook.php?isbn=0078456703&template=

The word careers has 18 listings in the index. The term chart of accounts only has 5. You can't do accounting without a chart of accounts but you don't have to be a professional accountant to do accounting. It also doesn't start talking about depreciation until page 624 in an 800 page book but it has an example of a business woman spending $3000 on computer equipment on page 52. She would loose $2000 in depreciation in two years on that equipment. Used machines would cost a lot less and greatly reduce that depreciation. The book has lots of color glossy pictures though, Bill Gates is on page 573.

Accounting is a lot easier than most accounting books make it seem. The books force the student to memorize a lot of trivia but never supply a good diagram.

http://www.bsu.edu/news/article/0,1370,-1019-11714,00.html

Computers should make accounting a piece of cake with a basic understanding by the user.



umbrarchist

quote:

Originally posted by umbrarchist:
I have this accounting book:

http://books.mcgraw-hill.com/getbook.php?isbn=0078456703&template=

The word careers has 18 listings in the index. The term chart of accounts only has 5. You can't do accounting without a chart of accounts but you don't have to be a professional accountant to do accounting. It also doesn't start talking about depreciation until page 624 in an 800 page book but it has an example of a business woman spending $3000 on computer equipment on page 52. She would loose $2000 in depreciation in two years on that equipment. Used machines would cost a lot less and greatly reduce that depreciation. The book has lots of color glossy pictures though, Bill Gates is on page 573.

Accounting is a lot easier than most accounting books make it seem. The books force the student to memorize a lot of trivia but never supply a good diagram.

http://www.bsu.edu/news/article/0,1370,-1019-11714,00.html

Computers should make accounting a piece of cake with a basic understanding by the user.



umbrarchist

Question: Is depreciation based on "market value at the time" because if so it could be like an old mint baseball card that increases even thought "naturally" it is decressing. If they stop making computers for a year and you got the latest line before the stoppage and you wish to resell it on the market wouldn't you get an appreciation on it even though its "naturally" depreciating.

Some related news of how things worked with IT in Australia with migrants.

Migrants blamed for IT jobs cut


By Jewel Topsfield, Canberra
January 10, 2006

AUSTRALIA'S intake of skilled migrants with information technology expertise should be reduced to improve the prospects of local IT graduates who are struggling to find jobs, says an immigration analyst.

Bob Kinnaird, of labour market consultants Kinnaird and Associates, said the Federal Government had brought in large numbers of IT workers over the past four years, even though there was a serious oversupply in the Australian labour market, particularly of graduates. He said the skilled migration program had effectively increased the IT graduate labour supply by nearly 80 per cent in recent years. During this time, 30 per cent of Australian IT graduates could not find full-time work.

The policy had been a "miserable failure", Mr Kinnaird said, leading to an oversupply of entry-level programmers, high graduate unemployment and lower wages.

In his paper, commissioned by the Centre for Population and Urban Research at Monash University, Mr Kinnaird said that in the past four years the number of visas granted to overseas students graduating in IT from Australian universities had increased by 62 per cent.

The report said this had been accompanied by plummeting enrolments by Australian students in IT courses, which dropped by 36 per cent between 2001 and 2004.

Mr Kinnaird said migrants were also losing out.

"People lured to Australia on the promise of lucrative jobs in IT get here and find they don't have a hope of getting a job," he said.

"It's a human disaster for these people who, in many cases, uprooted themselves and their families, leaving behind reasonably paid jobs, and find they are worse off when they come here.There's a heck of a lot of people driving cabs and working as security guards who are IT graduates."

Mr Kinnaird called on the Government to "substantially reduce" the intake of IT graduates through the skilled migration program until the market could absorb Australian IT graduates.

He said entry-level programmers should be taken off the skilled occupation list.

He also said the Australian Computer Society, which accredits the IT qualifications of applicants for permanent residency, should introduce tougher English tests and insist that overseas students spend three years studying IT in Australia, rather than two.

But Australian Computer Society chief executive officer Dennis Furini said that while there was possibly an oversupply of entry-level programmers, there was a shortage of specialists in areas such as e-commerce and network security.

An Immigration Department spokesman said it relied on information from the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations to draw up the skilled occupation list.

"The Immigration Department has no information suggesting IT jobs should be taken off the skilled occupation list," he said.

With MEAGHAN SHAW

quote:

Question: Is depreciation based on "market value at the time" because if so it could be like an old mint baseball card that increases even thought "naturally" it is decressing. If they stop making computers for a year and you got the latest line before the stoppage and you wish to resell it on the market wouldn't you get an appreciation on it even though its "naturally" depreciating.

I am saying there are three types of depreciation:

Physical Depreciation

Psychological Depreciation

Legal Depreciation

Physical depreciation is like your car wearing out, or your house needing a new roof every 20 years. These are the result of use and environmental factors. They must be fixed or replaced by consumers and businesses, but businesses make money on the consumers.

Psychological depreciation is the result of a reduction in people's willingness to pay a certain amount of money for something. Suppose you bought $100,000 in diamonds wholesale and put them in a safe deposit box. 3 months later a huge diamond mine is found in South America. The market value of diamonds drops. You can only get $60,000 for the diamonds you payed $100,000 for. That is depreciation but there has been no physical change in the diamonds.

Legal depreciation is what can be filed with the IRS. The economists get this data and use it to compute NDP. A Machine might be legally depreciated to $0 over five years but a company could still be using it to make money. A man told me his family had a business making wire and they were using machines that were built in the 1920s. Do you think they are listed as worth $0 on their insuranc policy?

The amount of physical depreciation might be 10 times the legal depreciation and it must be compensated for in reality or people's quality of life goes down. That is added to GDP every year and the cycle repeats. I say the economics profession is bullsh!tting us by not trying to get a handle on this physical depreciation.

The appreciation of many things is purely psychological, like that baseball card. Actually much of what happens in the economy is psychological. If most human beings made logical decisions most of the time the economy would be very different. We must figure out how to institute Vulcan economics. Where is Sarek when you really need him?

umbrarchist

The economic unit model on that picture. Is that a house, our economy or any goods in general? How does the economist come into the picture with this. It looks like depreciation is sneaking out the backdoor.


Since there is net worth I googled a search for "gross worth" and a page says they are both the same.

Not many pages talk about "gross worth" with google results coming at...

Results 1 - 100 of about 726 for "gross worth". (1.38 seconds)

with "net worth" googled at

Results 1 - 100 of about 4,940,000 for "net worth"



Highly suspectable...

The ECONOMIC UNIT is just an abstract representation for many possible economic entities that all have certain things in common. It could be a single person living alone. It could be a family of 4. It could be a hippy commune. It could be a multi-billion dollar corporation.

In some ways you could compare it to a water tank. Water flowing in is income. Water flowing out is expenses. But the tank is not prefect, there is leakage from the bottom which is depreciation. A single man living alone has a job which provides income. He pays rent which is an expense. But he has a car which he drives to work every day. Little by little the car is wearing out, that is depreciation, there is no way to prevent it. Good maintenance may reduce it but cannot eliminate it.

Net Worth = Assets - Liabilities

Actually I don't recall ever hearing the term Gross Worth before. I think that would be Assets. But valuing assets is a somewhat tricky thing. If you have a house to sell it would probably be a good idea to get an appraiser to estimate the value, this will probably cost a couple of hundred bucks, that would be an expense to selling the house. The value of a house can change every few months. Then there is the question of how fast you want to liquidate. It could take months to find someone to pay your asking price, if you need to liquidate in a hurry you need to drop you price. That could cost you $20,000 depending.

People try to pretend economics is very rational, especially economists, but it is actually very psychological. The good players know this and use it. Suckers get taken all the time.

quote:

determine at what point in time outliving your assets might become an issue.

Outliving your assets means your children or relatives inheirit. Don't you think people like the Rockefellers make sure their assets outlive them? The worker consumers are supposed to be stupid and not leave anything. We should all know accounting and not throw money away on things that depreciate. I think every automobile manufacturer in the world knows how to make cars that last 30 years. The laws of physics don't change style every year and human beings don't change shape. Redesigning cars is stupid bullsh!t. People act like buying cars is like buying clothes.

I think 80% of Americans should have had their home payed for 20 years ago. The United States should be on a 3-day work week by now. But we have to play these silly status, my car is better than your car, games when all of the cars are underengineered junk designed to fall apart.

umbrarchist

quote:

Originally posted by umbrarchist:
every automobile manufacturer in the world knows how to make cars that last 30 years. The laws of physics don't change style every year ....... Redesigning cars is stupid bullshit ....I think 80% of Americans should have had their home payed for 20 years ago. The United States should be on a 3-day work week by now. But we have to play these silly status, my car is better than your car, games when all of the cars are underengineered junk designed to fall apart.

Sorta makes you think...

quote:

Outliving your assets means your children or relatives inheirit.

Sorry got that backwards. Outliving your assets would be running out of money.

quote:

I think 80% of Americans should have had their home payed for 20 years ago. The United States should be on a 3-day work week by now. But we have to play these silly status, my car is better than your car, games when all of the cars are underengineered junk designed to fall apart.

quote:

The ECONOMIC UNIT is just an abstract representation for many possible economic entities that all have certain things in common. It could be a single person living alone. It could be a family of 4. It could be a hippy commune. It could be a multi-billion dollar corporation.

In some ways you could compare it to a water tank. Water flowing in is income. Water flowing out is expenses. But the tank is not prefect, there is leakage from the bottom which is depreciation. A single man living alone has a job which provides income. He pays rent which is an expense. But he has a car which he drives to work every day. Little by little the car is wearing out, that is depreciation, there is no way to prevent it. Good maintenance may reduce it but cannot eliminate it.

Does the term and title 'net worth' only applies to the owner? It cannot seem to say the net worth of my car since its had depreciation associated with it. Or a house. Or a job. The person and or person that own can claim 'net worth' it seems? That's is very trick term 'net worth'.

quote:

Does the term and title 'net worth' only applies to the owner? It cannot seem to say the net worth of my car since its had depreciation associated with it. Or a house. Or a job. The person and or person that own can claim 'net worth' it seems? That's is very trick term 'net worth'.

The car is an asset. The house is an asset. The car would be an asset that just about certainly depreciates. The house could be an asset that appreciates but not necessarily. There can be market appreciation and physical depreciation. Have you ever had a roof leak and had to pay for a new roof? In order to realize that appreciation you must mortgage or sell the house. If you mortgage you take on a liability and must pay every month. If you sell, where do you live?

Net worth applies to the owner. Assets are owned and contribute to net worth of the owner. Liabilities are subtracted from assets and the result is net worth. Grammar school arithmatic.

http://www.bsu.edu/news/article/0,1370,-1019-11714,00.html

umbra

quote:

The economic unit model on that picture. Is that a house, our economy or any goods in general? How does the economist come into the picture with this. It looks like depreciation is sneaking out the backdoor.


Since there is net worth I googled a search for "gross worth" and a page says they are both the same.

Looks like I missed this eons ago.

The way I am thinking of economic unit, which is a perspective I formulated, could be an individual, a family a business, a corporation or a nation. Of course big economic units will have smaller economic units within them. I am trying to get individuals and families to think of themselves as economic units. The corporations mostly know how to take care of themselves and use their employees.

When you buy a new car you probably know that the car will be worth less than the purchase price two years later. The economists added the purchase price to GDP when you bought the car. But he isn't going to deduct that depreciation you lose from anywhaer.

I am estimating Americans have loste 10 TRILLION dollars in depreciation on cars since 1945. The economics profession isn't tellin us about this like the don't talk about planned obsolescence of automobiles.

I don't remember running across the term gross worth before. What they seem to be talking about is the cost of liquidating assetes. If you sell a house for $300,000 you may only end up with $270,000 to $285,000.

umbra