When I worked as a professional sys-admin, I sincerely didn't understand why sys-admins were paid so well.
I remember thinking that anyone could do what I'm doing, and I was surprised at how I knew programmers making less than I did.
Today, having hired devops and re-training myself to do the work, I realize why sys-admins/devops are paid well.
Firstly, it's a niche industry. While there are many programmers available, there are fewer people who understand the principles of high quality system administration.
Secondly, most people who are trained in this are already working or in high demand. Demand drives pay.
Thirdly, it's a changing field that moves- in some ways- faster than software.
It's easy to find someone who think they know devops because they run their own Linux laptop, but someone who really knows both the tools and the methodology of system administration is actually quite rare.
l@serge @anotherdaniel
I was a Linux System admin for several years. At some point, I attended a training on Chef, back when it was new. (Puppet was around before, but was not quite ___ as Code yet).
During the training, I realized how very dramatically system administration was going to change in the coming years. Instead of administering a server and keeping it up-to-date and running well, the "server" would be disposable, recreated from scratch based on a central configuration file.
No more debugging clogged mail queues or deep-optimizing of Apache. Just spin up new servers and apply the config!
It was during that training that I realized I had to get out of sysad work because the world of (what became) "dev ops" was not somewhere I wanted to be.
Remember: if you see any on social media instructing you on how to "unregister" as a voter as a protest, they are working for anti-democratic. pro-fascist regimes.
Even if they aren't, they still are.
Don't buy in to the narrative being pushed that voting in a broken system makes you complicit, or that not voting sends a message.
The only thing that does send a message is actually voting. Vote.
So, I realized something while listening to the Kan news report from Israel last night:
Western pro-Palestinian protesters don't think that Hamas exists as a unified fighting force.
Many probably don't even believe that Hamas is an elected government that represents the people and fulfills governmental duties.
I think they probably think of Hamas as "a few dozen" extremists, rather than having a membership (prior to the war) of around 40,000, with a trained and well-armed military fighting force in the thousands.
And, polling in Palestine shows Hamas with over a 70% approval rating among the civilian population! During the war!
My brain just didn't realize that protesters would ignore or reject the truth, or I guess that they would unquestioningly repeat their assumptions as truth.
But I am glad that we agree that Hamas is a terror organization.
But, it's also a government. One organization can be both things at the same time.
My belief is that the only real way forward is to bring in the PA/Fatah to take over governmental/administrative duties and arrest or exile all Hamas members whose authority is above "office clerk".
Get rid of the whole lot and let Abbas try to sort it out.
I'm sure Abbas considered it a "coup d'etat", but Abbas, while president, did not control the government.
And speaking of Israeli passivity, it's probably exactly because Israel completely withdrew from Gaza in 2005, which is something all Palestinians wanted, that allowed Hamas to take over Gaza.
There could easily be an argument made that if Israel had not fully withdrawn from Gaza then the lives of Gazans would have been much better off for the entire last 17-18 years of Hamas control.
But despite this, support for Hamas in Gaza and in the West bank is broad. AT LEAST 35% of Palestinians support Hamas and Hamas's actions. The true number is probably somewhere closer to 40%-55%. As em said, it's hard to say for sure when there snitches everywhere.
@testing@em The hypocrisy... I state facts and you state talking points, and then complain the opposite way.
You call Hamas a terrorist organization that stole power and oppresses the people against their will but then say it's part of the people's righteous struggle for freedom.
Reflect on yourself and stop lying. There is (metaphorical) blood on both our hands, stop acting like yours are so clean.
But don't bother responding. You're already blocked.
You are confusing the conflict with the occupation.
Facts:
Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.
In 2006, elections were held and Hamas got the most votes.
In 2006, Hamas formed a unity government, the PNA, with Fatah. But since Hamas had the most seats it essentially controlled the government.
Between 2006-2007, Hamas believed (and was probably correct) that Fatah was being armed/trained by the US and others to get rid of Hamas. Hamas got weapons and training from their allies.
In 2007, Fatah and Hamas started fighting, the PNA was disbanded, Fatah took control of the West Bank and Hamas seized control of Gaza.
Conjectures:
If Israel had continued to occupy Gaza, they would have probably stopped the flow of weapons and no fighting would have broken out.
But since Israel wasn't in Gaza, "medding" would involve invading. It would be Israel killing Palestinians instead of Hamas/Fatah killing them themselves.
My opinion is that Israel invading would have been bad.
No one was saying that. The election was 18 years ago (first screenshot), But Hamas still has broad support (second screenshot).
em was pointing out that although support may be "broad" it may not be quite as high as in the recent polling.
My point was that even if support is only at, say, 40%, that still counts as broad support and to say that support for Hamas among Palestinians to be "fringe" is not supportable.
Em didn't say that, I said that. The original post is mine.
You are REALLY twisting the history here.
Hamas definitively won the majority of votes in 2006, across the West Bank and Gaza. Hamas shortly thereafter created a unity government with Fatah. This unity government was over both territories.
In 2007, the unity government couldn't hold and literal bloody battle was waged between Hamas, who had the majority, and Fatah. From the fighting, Hamas consolidated full control over Gaza while being kicked out of the West Bank.
It wasn't a coup. It was a civil war that literally split the territories into having separate governmental entities.
It is true that Gazans did not vote in favor of conducting the civil war and there has not been an election since. But the undeniable fact remains that in 2006 Hamas ran in an election and got the most votes and so "won".
Also, thank goodness Israel stayed out of the conflict. Can you imagine if Israel meddled more than it already did?
No one is saying that the company shouldn't have a Christmas party. But if the only holiday you're celebrating is Christmas, it's not a "Holiday Party" and attendance should be strictly voluntary.
Insisting that your employees celebrate the same holiday in the same way as you do is just plain wrong. Punishing your employees for not conforming to your traditions is even worse.
It doesn't matter if it's a religious holiday or a secular one. It is wrong.
So, please, throw your company Christmas party and you can tell me all about what happened on Monday. I'm happy to hear all about it and sincerely hope you enjoy yourself.
“I've learned that when people give you notes on something, when they tell you what's wrong they're usually right, when they tell you how to fix it they're usually wrong” — Bill Hader
If I were to buy a new laptop with some version of newbie friendly linux preloaded, intending to use it for music and graphics arts (not gaming), social media, and regular LibreOffice type stuff (and affinity, audacity, etc), what laptop would I buy with what version of linux?
A few years ago when all the independence referendums were going on or being discussed, Catalonia, Scotland, Basque, etc, people seemed to be surprised by how much I support those movements. To me, this is an obvious extension of my Zionism.
My belief that a people have the right to self-determination and self-government. That is the core of my Zionist belief.
This, of course, extends to Palestinians as well. I believe that Palestinians should have the same right.
A "two-state solution" is the obvious conclusion of my Zionism. Full autonomy and self-governance for the Palestinian state. This is born from, not opposed to, my Zionism.
I'm an avowed descriptivist over prescriptivism, but when people us "literal" to describe something that is impossible, it still raises my hackles.
Like, "it literally cost a million dollars" is fine because it is possible for something to literally cost a million dollars.
or "it literally cost a ton of cash", yeah, it's possibly to weigh cash, so cash could weigh a ton.
But, "that website action creates a literal ton alert messages"... ☠️
Alert messages don't have weight, so it's not possible to "literally" have "a ton" of them.
If it was just "it generates a ton of messages", no problem. But a "literal ton" of something that is intangible: 🤯
@shekinahcancook
I'm a descriptivist, so I think that there isn't any "right" way to language. Language changes and it should be the way that people use it.
That said, I am human, and have certain learned and ingrained biases that react to stimuli in various ways whether I want them to or not.
If someone claims to be Jewish, especially if they are "anti-zionist", it seems a good way to determining right away if they're a fraud is to ask them what was their bar/bat mitzvah parasha. If the can't remember the name, they should at least be able to tell you something about the content.
Even if they don't know it, how they react will probably tell you a lot.
If you're Jewish and didn't have a b'nai mitzvah, that's cool. We can still hang. I'm not trying to gatekeep Judaism.
I am however strongly gatekeeping using "but I'm Jewish so my opinion on XXX matters". If you can't converse about their Jewish upbringing, you probably didn't have one. And if you didn't have one, who are you to speak for other Jews?
