Parrot Linux and Btrfs

My special interest is computers. Let's talk geek here.
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yogi
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Re: Parrot Linux and Btrfs

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It's still hard to believe you had enough time in your life to do all the things that you write about here. And I know you did much more than what you tell us in these forums. Perhaps it's not unusual for a horticulturist to develop their own growing medium, but it seems to require more knowledge than meets the eye. It's all very complex and involves at least a familiarity with several different sciences. Your success proves it can all be done in one lifetime, but I can't figure out how. LOL

Having said all the above, it is equally astonishing that mastering the insurance industry seems so difficult. Perhaps I'm reading it all wrong. You probably do understand more than the average bear which is why you are able to cite apparent inequities in the system. Then, too, understanding the system is quite different than having to deal with it in a practical sense when you are under financial restraints. The prices for prescription drugs are indeed changing. My most expensive drug came down about $50 from the last time I ordered it. Now I only pay $375 for 90 pills. There really is no mystery to the pricing. Insurance companies and pharmaceutical manufacturers all follow the same economic principles as any other business. Nothing is free, and when the costs come down in one area they go up in another. Profits are always preserved. At the end of the year the balance sheet must be equal on both sides. There is no doubt in my mind that we are paying for those discounts one way or another.
Last edited by yogi on 25 Nov 2020, 16:46, edited 1 time in total.
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Kellemora
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Re: Parrot Linux and Btrfs

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That's where the era I was raised in was most beneficial. Companies let you see how they did things back then.
Also, I was always inquisitive about how things were made. So I went and found out when I could.
Many times, similar products are manufactured in different ways, and it produces slightly different results.
Over time you build up a knowledge of how things are made, and can put that knowledge to good use, and perhaps come up with new products using certain types of manufacturing processes.
Sometimes some things are available, if you knew what they were called.
My brothers office had about thirty computers and desks in it, all with keyboard drawers.
I knew if I installed pegs in the back of the keyboard tray, it would keep them from sliding further back.
But I also needed something in front of them that was soft to rest the heel of your palms on while you type.
I tried all kinds of refrigeration door seals and although they worked, they were not quite what I wanted.
So I started my search and finally found out the stuff I wanted was called EPDM Closed Cell Solid Foam Tubing. But I didn't want round tubing, I wanted a triangular shape and solid filled, not hollow like a tube.
I finally found a company that had close to what I wanted and after talking to them they said they could do what I wanted without making a custom die to do so. They could do it by leaving the center piece out of an existing die. But I would have to buy at least 500 feet for them to go to the trouble. I almost gave up because almost all of their custom work is 10 bucks a foot and up, so I was shocked when the guy said 75 cents per foot for 500 feet.
Turned out the product was perfect for what I needed. I even have it here on my two desks at home, used most of it at my brothers, and sold the rest to Sauder Furniture who made my desks for like 2 bucks a foot, and they thought that was an awesome deal. They took all I had left. I had actually thought about buying more just to sell as palm rests for keyboard drawers, but other things came up and never had the chance to do so.
I think I talked about my light/water meter rods I had made in the past. Now that took quite a bit of learning about plastics before I attempted the high cost of experimentation.
I don't remember much of anything I learned about plastics, because I was only on a quest to find out what might work for me. I solved my problem, my product worked just great, and I managed to patent it as well, not that a patent ever did me any good on anything. Just wasted money most of the time.

Insurance can drive one nuts. Right now everyone and their brother is trying to sell that awful Advantage Plan.
It sounds good on the surface, but when you get right down to it, they don't cover hardly anything. They just make it sound like they are giving you the world for the cost of a shoestring, or free.
We have a neighbor on the Advantage Plan, and their yearly payout for the things they use is much higher than we pay for the similar items. Medicare and my Supplemental Plan, including the high cost of the supplemental plan, still came out much cheaper than their 33 buck a month Advantage Plan. They say things like it covers glasses. Yeah, single vision only from a discount 2 pair for 99 bucks type of place, and you only get one pair of plastic glasses. If you need bifocals, or trifocals, and better frames, you pay for all of that out of pocket.

What irks me more than anything else is how AFTER the Enrollment Period ends, THEN they come out with the new Formulary of what they cover and what they don't.
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Re: Parrot Linux and Btrfs

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Closed cell foam ... hmmm. I have nightmares about that stuff. LOL

I'm not sure it's the same thing you are using to pad your palms, but something very similar sounding was the crucial element in my life as a test equipment engineer. I believe I told you a bit about one of my assignments at Motorola that involved automatic in-circuit component testing. The test fixture used to hold the PC boards in place during the test was two sheets of some type of phenolic material about an inch thick. the sheets were assembled one on top of the other with a space between them created by a judicious placement of coil springs. The bottom plate had all the spring loaded test probes mounted on it with the pointy end facing upward. The bottom of the probes were wired to the machine with all the test equipment and computers. The top plate was covered entirely with closed cell foam. Holes were drilled to allow the test probes to reach through the top plate and contact the bottom of the board. More of this foam was custom cut and glued to match the perimeter of the PC board. The idea was to create an empty space between the bottom of the PC board and the foam that covered the top of the fixture. The entire rig was connected to a switched vacuum source which caused the top plate with the sealed PC board to moved downward and contact the test probes on the bottom plate. The secret to success, of course, was to make certain that ALL the cracks and crevasses on the PC board were sealed well enough to allow the vacuum to be effective. That's the reason for using closed cell foam.

So why the nightmares? That foam was not infinitely durable. After a few hundred operations the perimeter sealing would become worn and leak. Leaks meant the test probes were not contacting the PC board properly. Poor contact meant bad test results. Too many, or false negatives, caused the production people to become very unsatisfied. Most of my service calls to the production floor were to meet and deal with these unsatisfied customers. LOL

Yes, I know about closed cell foam. Never had a need for the tube type, however. All I ever used were sheets of the stuff.


I too am quite displeased with the timing of the publication of drug costs. It's really not the fault of the insurance company that it happens that way. Once the enrollment period ends, and they know how many customers they have, and how much premiums they will be collecting, then and only then can they determine the cost of covering specific drugs. The law says you can't change coverage at that time because that would upset the formula. You know, fewer people paying premiums means it costs more to reimburse. Since the drug company needs to make a profit, the formula cannot be allowed to change midstream. That's the logical explanation. In practice there has to be a better way; but unfortunately, people don't want the government (which has unlimited sources of money) to act as an insurance agent. :rolleyes:

Those "advantage" plans take your medicare premiums which are a fixed amount. They figure out what benefits they can provide for that fixed amount and try to tell you it's all free. FREE for the price of my Medicare premium. Since the premium is the same for everybody the only thing the advantage plans can offer are different optional coverage offerings, such as dental, eye, and hearing. One plan I saw even gave me cash to buy whatever I wanted for my medical needs. It all sounds cool, but their income is fixed, just like yours and mine. Thus the only way they can stay in business is to cut corners in certain obscure areas. Like the drug companies, the healthcare insurers need to make a certain profit in order to exist. Their customers, however, often need more than can be provided at a profit. Again, I see the only solution being for the government with all its cash on hand to offer this healthcare insurance. If they did, it would be called socialism. And, we know how people feel about THAT.
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Re: Parrot Linux and Btrfs

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It doesn't sound like the foam you were using had the solid rubber coating on it, which would have made it last much longer for what you were using it for.
We had something similar to what you described for testing computer boards, except ours was a machine for planting flower seeds into pots or trays doing an entire tray or flat at once. It too was most problematic due to the pegs moving up and down in the foam pieces.
We finally switched to a device that used drums or cylinders if you prefer over a conveyor belt. One drum had the pegs for making the indents in the soil, the next drum is what picked up the seeds and dropped them into the peg holes, but only a single row at at time. It was interesting to watch the machine run, because the drum that dropped the seeds had to first pick them up from a trough that vibrated to keep the seeds in the trough level. It too used a vacuum pump to hold the seeds on the ends of the little pins that picked up the seeds. We had different drums for different types of seeds, and different drums of pegs to make the right size hole, then a sweeper arm that filled the holes back in again.
It knew if the seeder drum failed to pick up a seed and would keep trying until all the pins were holding a seed.
One employee broke the machine when he used a seed drum with too large of pins for the size seeds and instead of picking up and holding the seeds, it sucked them all up like a vacuum cleaner and jammed up the whole thing, hi hi.

What you say about the reason the new Formularies come out AFTER you had decided which company to use, does make sense, although it does seem unfair.

One thing I noticed when I was checking my insurance plans last month, is that not a single one of my doctors is listed on any of the Advantage plans. And I know my eye doctor does not accept any insurance except straight medicare and that is only for the annual exam for diabetics. So for us diabetics it is free, and if we want a refraction done, he's only charged like 25 bucks for the past 10 years or so, he recently upped it to 35 bucks, but that's the price for everyone. They will give you a receipt if you have an insurance plan that is supposed to cover it, but you have to do the submission yourself, which would not help anyone with an Advantage Plan because you have to go to their new just out of school doctors. No doctors with an old practice seem to take Advantage plan members.
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Re: Parrot Linux and Btrfs

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The foam sheets we used did have a smooth skin on one side. It was not hard because the idea of the scheme was to pull the circuit board down and compress the foam to the point of creating a seal for the vacuum. We did use hard rubber supports at various points to keep the board flat, but the outer edges always had to be capable of being sealed. As you know, many circuit boards have holes and slots in the middle which also had to be sealed.

I recall seeing some kind of automated greenhouse on a PBS show. The trays of growing medium were placed under something that looked like a press with spikes. Those spikes poked the holes into the entire tray of medium. The tray then moved to the next station with a similar press, but the spikes on this one had the seeds. I also recall seeing a hopper with seeds, but I do not recall how they got one seed into each of those spikes. Thinking about how to do it gives me a headache. LOL



One thing I didn't realize about health insurance is that it's not universally accepted. Each doctor negotiates with the insurance company to determine a pricing schedule for every known procedure. The only incentive for a doctor to agree to those terms is that his group or his hospital demands it. But, there are doctors who feel they can do better with certain insurances and not others. I'm thinking it all has to do with the amount of paperwork involved and nothing at all to do with the reimbursements. Being under contract with a major insurer almost guarantees a certain level of business at a fixed price. Not being part of that contract might bring in more money but from fewer patients. If you think you have a hard time determining what insurance is best for you, you should talk to your doctor about what s/he has to go through. LOL

One of the drugs I was taking many years ago came in a generic version. The doctor prescribed the branded drug because in his experience it worked better than the generic. I asked him if he would be willing to file an exception with my insurance telling them why it was necessary for me to take the branded drug and thus reduce my co-payment. He said it wasn't worth the two hours it would take him to fill out the forms required for the justification. So, he prescribed the generic instead. To this day I don't know if the branded drug really is better, but it pissed me off that he would not do what I thought was in my best interests. I guess two hours of his time is worth a lot.
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Re: Parrot Linux and Btrfs

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I'm sure what you did with those boards was an interesting operation.
Way back in 1972 I made a Car Electricity Adapter, designed to run power tools, not electronics.
Basically any motor that had brushes in them. No brushes, no go, hi hi.
Building the product was easy, but finding the right connector set-up for each make and model of car and truck was a nightmare. I don't think there were two cars or trucks alike back then.
I was trying to make it easy to install for anyone. But in the end I just sold the unit and they had to wire it up based on directions for the different types of alternators in use at the time.
I only had two people return the unit out of over 2000 I sold.
They didn't look like much but they sure worked well.

Oh, the reason I brought them up is I had to make a test jig to test each one, that would tell me which component was bad, if any. I also ran them for an hour to make sure they worked as expected under load. I used heavier components than necessary for the job, because I wanted to make sure they never burned out in use.
My test jigs looked a little funny, built on plywood with pins that would stick down to touch key points on the modules board. The hard part was making sure the pins not only hit the right spots, but also that they made good contact too.

Almost all doctors and insurance companies use what are called DRG codes. But you are correct about how much each insurance company pays for which DRG codes, and which ones they don't cover at all. I've glanced in folders in the examination rooms and saw notes that said things like don't use code such n such for Aetna or Blue Cross patients, the list of which ones not to use was fairly long too.

After my first heart attack, I could not take a certain generic drug by two different companies, so he asked for the name brand and said he would allow a generic but not from those two companies.
The drug was Clopidogrel I think. In any case, even the name brand didn't work which is why I had the second heart attack, so he switched me to Enalopril and something else I'm no longer on. My Enalopril is one that just got moved from Tier 2 up to Tier 3 which means I have to pay for the bulk price of it now, so maybe he will change me to something else again.

There was this one pill I used to take for cough control that worked perfectly and was super cheap, like only 4 bucks for a bottle from Walmart and that was without insurance. Used it for years Tessalon Pearls. Then suddenly the price jumped up to 56 bucks, and a month later they said it was no longer made because it didn't work for enough people.
It worked for me with no side effects so I was very happy with it.
The new stuff he gave me I don't take except on rare occasions, because it makes me drowsy and tastes awful, it's a liquid not a pill.

But what can we do? Just grin and bear it I guess!
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Re: Parrot Linux and Btrfs

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Testing electronics is what I did most of my life at Motorola. I got into IT services but that was only for a few years. The amount of money and effort that went into testing a product to assure its integrity was enormous. Thus, when cell phones came into being the philosophy changed. The long term goal was to build products that did not require testing. The inspiration was Panasonic's television factory (I think) which was totally automated and no testing done at all. Only one person ran the place, so the story goes, and they were working on ways to eliminate him. In theory, if you build a product correctly with good components, it will require no testing. The only flaws in the product would be design issues which is something the factory is not equipped to detect. It never got to that point as far as I know. The machine I worked on was to replace people testing at a board level. Thus the PC board itself was considered one component that was known good and used to assemble the final product. Some groups bought into what we were doing, and some did not. As it turned out it didn't matter because we could not be cost competitive with the off shore manufacturers no matter what we did.


I am certain there is a lot of Black Magic that goes into pharmaceuticals. My wife was on some pill that had a branded version and three generic suppliers. She was told all three were the same formula but only one of them actually did what was intended. I guess the active ingredient, whatever it was, had to be identical in all the pills, but the rest of the gunk they put into it depends on who is making the pill. Those fillers and binders apparently affect how and when the active ingredient is released into the system and only one company made something that worked for my wife. As it turned out it was the least popular of all the companies that made the stuff and few pharmacies kept it in stock. It had to be special ordered every time.

Also, when I order the pills that used to cost $420 the pharmacist would always ask me if I knew how much the pills cost. I would always ask if it mattered whether or not I knew. Of course it would not matter. They charge the same regardless of your ability to pay for it. However, some customers will simply refuse the pills and go without. In my case I might be able to live without them. Not so if the health of your heart depends on it. So, yeah. What can we do? Buy stocks in pharmaceutical companies, of course.
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Re: Parrot Linux and Btrfs

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Not necessarily video games or even some pinballs, but the casino style gaming machines I worked on all had built-in test routines. We had a reader we plugged into the machine and it told us exactly which component was failing or failed. A lot of times the component had not failed, but a cold solder joint was the problem, and the vibration some of those machine get causes problems all the time, most of them simple.
Earlier computerized machines were sorta like computers with an LED that would flash so many times for where a problem was, and those particular machines would just not work until they were fixed. But the later machines had some redundant circuits and if one circuit was acting up, it would switch to another and generate a report of what was wrong.
There was a green and red light visible through the inspection port on nearly every machine, and they were supposed to check each machine to make sure they were showing green. But more often than not, they would not report a red light if the machine was still working. So by the time we got them to fix, they had two major circuits out and shut themselves down. What is bad about this is you look at the report, fix the item that is bad, only to find out the redundant circuit is also bad now too. One could lose an hour of work trying to figure out why the circuit tests good, but still showing a red indicator. We have to manually test the secondary circuit which was always a pain to do. Especially if they let it go until more than one of the secondary circuits had failed. I actually hated working on gaming machines, loved the pinball and video games the best, but mostly the pinball machines.

Yes, often the active ingredient needs the non-active ingredients that go with it to work right.
This is the same problem with multi-blended inhalers as well. Not so much the secondary ingredients, but how fast the 2 or 3 active ingredients are taken up by your system. When they mix ICS, SAMA, and LABA in the same inhaler, if that SAMA ingredient saturates the B2 receptors before the LABA has a chance to get loaded, then the LABA ingredient does not work.
That is why it is best to stick with only ICS LABA inhalers, and use SABA an hour later if at all.
ICS is the steroid, SABA is the Short Acting, and LABA is the Long Acting Beta Antagonist.

Speaking of which. My pharmacy just sent Budosinide for my nebulizer, fair price. A couple of days later they call with an order ready for Perforomist, a very expensive 1,400 dollar med with a very short life span. It would be expired before I used up the Budosinide. And I can't start on the Budosinide right away because I still have 3 Breztri samples left the doc gave me. All three of those are the same class drug. The doc already has me on Albuterol 4 times a day, and never told me not to use it before any of the other LABA's he has had me take. No wonder none of them ever worked! Albuterol is a SABA and saturates the B2 receptors super fast.

There are a lot of pills my doctor has wanted me to take, and I just cannot afford them.
My Enalopril will jump from 20 to 47 dollars come January 1.
The Budosinide is 66 for a months supply.
The Performomist would cost me 140 bucks a month until I hit the donut hole. A drug like this would put me into the donut hole by April.
I only have 89 dollars from my SS check after I pay for my Medicare, Drug Plan, Supplemental Insurance, and Utility Bill.
Plus I have to save 30 of that 89 every month in order to pay our real estate taxes when they come due.
This basically means, I have 59 dollars per month to cover everything else.
If it were not for the extra 41.02 I get from my retirement plan, I couldn't afford anything at all.
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Re: Parrot Linux and Btrfs

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Good news, which I'm certain is old news to you. I was recently informed that my SS benefits have increased 1.3% starting next year. That's a whopping $28 cost of living adjustment. I also suspect your net increase would be about half given what you told me your income is. Every little bit helps, I'm sure. It would be nice if there was such a thing as a guaranteed minimum income, and even nicer if it was set at the poverty level. But that would be too much like socialism. Nahhhhh. :thumbd:

My lords. You certainly are inhaling a LOT of medications. Mom was using a nebulizer and I recognize the Albuterol that you mention. She was taking one more but I don't recall the name of that stuff. It's a bit fuzzy in my mind now, but it seems that she was able to cover the costs of it all with Medicare and her SSA payments. Then, too, her lung problems were not the same as yours. I'm always amazed when you mention the $59 each month you live on. I'm not sure that would be possible here in Missouri and certainly not viable up by Chicago. I have to put away $120 each month to pay off the county assessor, and that, believe it or not, is about 1/4th of what I had to put away up north. It wasn't always that way, and it's the main reason we moved.
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Re: Parrot Linux and Btrfs

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The big difference about Social Security is: we paid into Social Security as an insurance policy, of which MANY never collected from. This is why there became such a huge surplus. These funds were STOLEN by the government!
So no it is nothing at all like Socialism.

Yes, we will have an income increase, but as usual it will not be as much as Medicare, Drug Plans, and Supplemental insurance have gone up. Plus many of the co-pays are jumping from 20 to 47 dollars as well. How does a 14 dollar increase make up for that? It doesn't!

Here is my 2020 New Benefit Amount taken directly from my Social Security Administration letter I received last year.
My monthly amount after a 1.6% increase is $956.60
The deduction for Medicare Medical Insurance $144.60
The amount deducted for your Drug Plan is $34.00
What you will receive each month $778.00

From the $778.00 comes:
Supplemental Insurance of $183.08
My monthly Utilities of $272.00
Set aside for RE Taxes $50.00
Set aside for Car Ins. $60.00
Doctors Co-Payments avg. mo. $45.00
Medical Equipment avg. mo. $80.00
This leaves me with $87.92 to pay for everything else.

Co-Pays on drugs have doubled as well.
Enalapril co-pay is $47.00 a month
Two others are still 20 bucks month or $40.00
And I cannot afford the ones the doctor wants me to take
Such as Perforomist which is $140.00 per month.

As you can see, nothing left over for Glasses, Fuel to get to the doctors appointments and drug store.
Or pay for my diabetic supplies parts I have to pay for.

My 956.60 will go up by 12.44 to $969.04

FWIW: My late wife, back in the 1980's was getting $1,460.00 per month.
With no Medicare or Drug Plan deductions because her insurance covered everything back then.
Had I not got remarried, I would have been able to draw $1.200.00 a month from hers.
Roughly 250 bucks more than I get myself.
Back in 2017 they were supposed to raise the minimum SS check to $1,200.00 but that never happened.

Our RE Tax office says I make too much money to freeze my RE Tax at the current rate.
We have to go in yearly to apply too. Always turned down!
I've been turned down for Medicaid, Food Stamps, Welfare (not that I want it), and basically anything I applied to get.

What irks me is those who do get those things have nice cars, fancy apartments, and all kinds of money to blow.
Most of them also work to get money under the table too.

The medical bills for my late wife wiped out all of my nest eggs and I remortgaged my house to keep her in the hospital her last few weeks. So needless to say, I was lucky to sell my house for what was owed on it, nothing left over for me.

And that my friend is how you fall from middle class to lower class overnight!
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Re: Parrot Linux and Btrfs

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You last comment points to the greatest unsolved dilemma this country seems to be promoting these days. That is "class" consciousness. Your favorite people and mine always get on their soap boxes and say they are for the working class, or for the middle class, or for big business which translates to upper class. The old hackneyed expression about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer rings more true than it ever has. The most bothersome aspect of it all to me is that it's being planned and done by design. There is a school of thought that only an elite group of people are good enough to run a country such as ours. The rest are stupid peasants or the corrupt establishment representing only themselves. It has yet to be proven which party is the elite and which are corrupt, but there is no doubt in anybody's mind who is poor and suffering the most.

Social Security was/is successful due to the same reason insurances companies seldom, if ever, go bankrupt. The SSA is required to keep a reserve of cash on hand for paying out benefits. Unlike insurance companies, the government can raise the premiums almost at will to cover any shortfall. You are locked into a contract with insurance companies come hell or high water. That reserved fund the SSA is required by law to maintain has always been untouchable, which is why they have always been solvent. Then, as you point out, one year in an attempt to cover a budget dispute, the U S Treasury decided to use the SSA reserve as collateral against some debt. I don't recall exactly what that debt was, but the SSA funds were never really spent for the purpose. But, that was the first time those reserves were allowed to be used for something other than payouts. As far as I know that original debt has been satisfied but the SSA funds are now part of the general revenue system. The plan of the current administration in Washington is to solve the problem by greatly reducing or eliminating SSA benefits. It's on the docket for next year's congress. Well, that is if the current administration stays current.
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Re: Parrot Linux and Btrfs

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I have nothing against the rich folks. I'm sure most of them started out like we all did at the bottom and worked their way up. There are also several who inherited their wealth, but even so, their ancestors are who worked hard.
It is only logical that the more money you have, the more money you can make with it.
But then too, all that money does lead to corruption, mostly due to their level of power they have achieved.

Several of my old classmates have invested and reinvested their money until they have a nice retirement income, in a few cases more money per month retired, than they made per month while working.
But then too, of the ones I still knew before I moved south, none of them were strapped with the kind of medical bills I had to pay out. And many of them died before reaching retirement age, so their kids got it all, and probably blew it.

I did my college thesis on the SSA, and at the time I did it, there was no way SS could possibly every run out, even if they doubled how much they were paying retiree's, including beyond the baby boomer generation.

Not too long ago, some college kids crunched some numbers and found that if the government gave every retired person drawing SS a check for 1 million dollars, it would only be a small amount of the budget, while at the same time boosting the economy so much, the taxes generated would be ten-fold or more of what they spent to do this.
There were some requirements on how to use the money though.
If you lived in a house, you had to pay off your mortgage. If not you had to buy a house.
You also had to buy a new car. Plus new appliances and furniture for your home.
In any case, you could invest about half the money they gave you, but had to spend the other half to boost the economy.
I don't remember all the details on this part of their plan.
They also had a plan for low income individuals also that would work better than anything the states have done so far.
It would totally eliminate welfare, food stamps, and HUD, while providing a home for everyone, or an apartment if they chose that over a home. Single individuals would get an apartment sized con-dough, married a home, married with kids a larger home. It is unlikely they would tear up something they own like they do government provided housing. And it is not exactly a gift. They have to be employable, and get a job.
Those not able to work would fall under an entirely different plan, not a whole lot different than our current disability programs, but with a little more prestige behind it.

The main part of their programs was based on how fast the government would realize massive profits and possibly even wipe out our current debt load as well.
I didn't mention that you could not go out and buy a mansion to burn up your money, because you have to be able to maintain it, pay the taxes on it, etc. I think they set a limit of 250k on the purchase of a house from those funds. If you had other funds of your own, that was a different story. You had to account for the major things you spent the money on, in order to get the second half of the money I think, been several years since I read their idea.
But like everything else, it went nowhere, hi hi.
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Re: Parrot Linux and Btrfs

Post by yogi »

The Million Dollar Give Away idea is great reading. Not sure how practical it would be, but yes, the government has the resources to do just that. In fact I read something similar not too long ago when they were discussing COVID compensation. Somebody came up with the numbers for what wold happen if you gave every US adult $1mil. That 3 trillion dollar tax cut which benefited businesses and wealth holders was shown to provide less economic stimulus than simply handing out the cash to everybody. Such grand ideas sound good but there are repercussions that need to be well thought out first. Banks, for example, would go bankrupt if everybody paid off their mortgages. There are things that can be done to benefit everybody. I happen to like the idea of the government taking care of me. Just give me $25 a week and let the feds pay off everything else. They can keep all the money I earn working or from interest on investments if I had a guaranteed quality of life. Sounds awesome, eh? Nope. It's communism or socialism to some people's minds.

I happen to like the economic system we have in place. This country would be third rate if it were not for those among us who created wealth. They should not be penalized for being so clever, and they should not have privileges that allow them to circumvent the system either. Money is in fact power in all corners of the world. Once you have all the money you could possibly want, the game changes. It's those playing the power game who don't follow the rules all the time. I'm not sure how to cure that.
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Re: Parrot Linux and Btrfs

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Just take a look at the housing projects to see what happens when everything is free.
Some respect it as a way to finally get ahead. But the majority would rather tear the place down, steal what they can out of it, and complain when it is not fixed back up again.

I think one of the biggest problems in society today is the criminals no longer fear punishment, because it is no longer severe enough. And the second largest problem is criminals do not have to pay restitution.

I think that is why I like our little home town in the beginning. And the main reason behind the Mutual Protection Association, which later became the Law and Order Society. The victim of a crime was restored what he lost, and if they caught the criminal, he had to work for the city until his debt was paid back to the MPA so they were not out any money either. Of course we have crimes today that would not fit that method, so prison time would be necessary.
You can't restore a life you took, or undue the damage to many by something you did.
In my grandpa's day, the HUNG a horse thief, and this included cows, steers, and other major livestock, but not chickens.
In fact, in the charter it said they did not cover chickens because nobody knows how many chickens they have, nor cash because people lie about how much cash was stolen, hi hi.

Money is basically just a controlled tool to count what is bartered.
I had an acquaintance many years ago who started a bartering group.
He had it worked out really well too, so those with bartered services were not taken advantage of.
With all the laws out there governing his operation, simply using cash would have required much less bookwork, hi hi.
You almost had to be a business owner to get in on his operation. Or be a tradesman the unions wouldn't pounce on.
He kept it going strong for just over 14 years. But then some tax law changed and messed up his whole system.
Rather than fight it, he just shut down operations after balancing those with negative accounts so nobody would be mad.

Right around 1970 give or take a few years. One of our cops pulled a car over for running a boulevard stop sign.
The man driving the car thought he was a big shot, and he actually was, turns out he was an Indiana Governor.
He bragged about who he was and he wouldn't sign the ticket. The cop politely told him to side the ticket because the alternative is a night in jail. He still refused, and also would not get out of his car. A second cop car had pulled up in front of him and backed up so he couldn't speed off has he threatened to do.
The second cop came back to the car and told the man, either sign the ticket or go to jail, your choice.
After a few choice words to both cops, the second cop pulled him out of the car, slapped cuffs on him and put him in the first cops car, locked up his car, and they headed off to the police station.
He was only kept in a cell for about two hours is all, because somehow one of his friends got in contact with a judge who made them release him, and take him back to his car.
He still never signed the ticket, nor ever paid the fine. That is what POWER gives them. The right to break the law and get by with it!
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Re: Parrot Linux and Btrfs

Post by yogi »

There are many unexpected problems with handing out free money. Mom would always say that if you didn't earn what you have you could not appreciate it. That was an old school work ethic coming from a lady whose family immigrated to this country. The failure of public housing isn't entirely due to it being free - it's not entirely free either. The bias against the type of people who are forced into public housing has its foundation in the fact that poor and uneducated people (usually people of color) are the tenants. Of course they would not live up to the standards of their more affluent neighbors.

You bring up a very sensitive point with your Indiana governor (Mike Pence?) story. Being above the law has been normalized in today's political environment. I could give multiple blood pressure elevating examples, but let it suffice to say we agree it has happened up to and including the highest offices of governance. You've seen my expressions of surprise at the numbers of people who buy into this way of thinking; currently the ratio is 73/80 in favor/against. I've spent a good portion of my life following current events and trying to understand why things happen the way they do. There are always some bad apples in the barrel, but this ratio is totally out of proportion. I have some suspicions, but I can't give you any convincing explanations for why so large a sector of the population agrees with and encourages being above the law. Mom wouldn't like it either.
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Re: Parrot Linux and Btrfs

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They started a very crooked plan here a number of years ago.
Basically it was a gimmick for the Mayor to pocket millions of dollars.
But the idea was good, if the money was used for that purpose.

The idea was to provide a home for a handicapped person, get them cleaned up and with good clothes, and train them for a job.
After one year on the job they would have to start paying 5% of their earnings back into this system.
After two years, they would have to begin paying 10% of the monthly mortgage cost and/or rent.
Third year 25%, fourth year 50%, and fifth year 75% of the mortgage or rent.
It would continue like this, and hopefully at the end of five years they would have purchased a place of their own.

They didn't handle it that way, instead just paid the rent with no other qualifications, but only helped 48 people.
We did the math and that meant they were spending 18,000 dollars per month per homeless person helped, although the homeless never saw one dime of it, other than their apartment was paid for.
Then they carried the scam a bit further and began buying buildings to renovate to put mentally ill people in.

A couple of cities that did follow the plan as originally outlined worked out very well and eventually became a self-sustaining project requiring no additional state funding.

Hmm, I though it was probably Eric Holcomb, but he didn't give a name.
The point was, once in office, they all think they are above the law.
And the way things are going, I think they all are!
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Re: Parrot Linux and Btrfs

Post by yogi »

I never worked for any government directly, but we did make phones for the president at one time. :grin: I have met several people from the military and other federal employees who claim there is an enormous amount of waste built into the system. One procurement officer told me that he could save the government hundreds of millions of dollars instantly if he had any say so. He said he would simply instruct each department to terminate 10% of their staff and reduce the payroll doing so. He also claimed the departments would never notice that fewer people were working in it because the output would be the same. That is the same story I've heard just about all my life. There is a lot of waste and inefficiency built into the governing mechanisms in this country. The corruption is an entirely different matter.

Eric Holcomb ... mmm ... don't see that name at all on the list: https://www.nga.org/former-governors/indiana/
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Re: Parrot Linux and Btrfs

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Nearly every president has added new departments in the government, or added new divisions within existing departments.
After all, they needed to create high paying jobs for their friends and relatives who helped them get into office.

I saw this as well working in government contracted industries, such as when I was working for McDonnell-Douglas NASA Division. Although I was just a lowly draftsman, I was transferred to the NASA Division when the Gemini contract was renewed to build the Gemini XII I think it was. We had over twenty draftsman in our department, with almost all of us doing the exact same things over and over again for months. They never laid anybody off, they just moved one or two of us up one more level to a different department, which is where I drew the Drop Chute Door. But I wasn't the only one, there were five of us assigned that same task. I was just lucky it was mine that was selected, which gave me yet another boost up to another drafting department. As one or more draftsmen get moved up, they fill those seats again with somebody from below. So I guess one might say the first department they put me it might be considered a training department. I guess to see who did it best or who followed instructions the best, who knows.

When I left there and went to Sverdrup & Parcell, they created a new department for every government contact they received. And what surprised me the most was, when a contract was over and the job done, they never laid off anyone in that department. They just took on more private jobs until they got something else to work on. And/or they shuffled us around. This is how I got changed from Systems Engineering where I worked on the St. Louis Floodwall, to Highways and Planning where I worked on the Interstates converging over the Poplar Street Bridge, then back to Systems Engineering, but a different department to work on the Alton Lock n Dam project.
Although they never laid anybody off, they didn't over hire either and moved us to departments who needed extra help.
Being a privately owned company, they did not give us idle work to do unless it had some beneficial importance. Such as taking old linen drawings and copying them to mylar so they were permanent.

When I was working for MRTC, old linen drawings were converted to mylar using photographic methods. One person could do a 20 to 50 of these in the same amount of time it took one person to redraw a single one.
But they too downsized drastically right after I left their employ to go take over for my father at the flower shop after he had his heart attack.

Continuing this further, at the local government level. I realize as a city expands it needs more people and more departments to handle things. I saw excessive bloat take over our local government, and with each new Mayor came a dozen more departments, many of which were extensions of existing departments where they added more people on city salary for jobs already being handled by others. The thing is, when a certain type of job is no longer necessary because what they handled no longer existed, they still didn't shut down a department.
A strange but simple example was the cistern and well water inspection and testing department. This department did have 8 people working in it from the time my grandfather was Mayor. But back then, everyone had wells or cisterns. By the 1980's there were perhaps only 8 to 10 homes still using cisterns and none using wells. The department still had 8 people in it, but they all advanced so instead of 5 inspectors, there were now only 2 inspectors, all the rest were a chain of bosses so to speak, plus the department head, department receptionist, department secretary, etc. all the rest became supervisors. After the last cistern was replaced with new water supply pipes, this department should have closed down, but it wasn't. Well, in a way they changed to become a part of the water department. Their main job was to go out and check to make sure everyone with an outside hose connection had a vacuum breaker installed. This actually gave the supervisors something to do along with the 2 inspectors. Now that they were part of the water department, they were not replaced directly when and as they retired. It just became a part of the water departments inspection unit, which had many more people working in that department already.
Every Division had a head, and every Department had a head, and every Division had a head. And to make sure they had something to do for everyone that worked their way up the ladder, each Division got divided into sub-divisions with fancy names. Those sub-divisions usually handled one thing and one thing only. Which is why it was so convoluted to get anything done when you had to work with them. And in the greenhouse business, we had a lot of different things going on that dealt with various sub-division of divisions of the supply water board.
It's about like that down here dealing with KUB Knoxville Utility Board. You have to weed through several departments to get to the right person you need to speak to. And even then, they turn it over to another department to handle. Or to shun you off is the usual case.

Eric Joseph Holcomb is an American politician serving as the 51st and current governor of Indiana since 2017. A member of the Republican Party, he served as the 51st lieutenant governor of Indiana from 2016 to 2017 under Governor Mike Pence, now the 48th Vice President of the United States.
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Re: Parrot Linux and Btrfs

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The National Governors Association only shows Indiana governors up to 2017. Mike Pence supposedly held that office up to that point, but we all know he became vice-president of the USA in 2016. Google claims Eric Holcomb took over the office in 2017, which coincides with what the NGA lists. So, now I'm wondering if Mike Pence was both VP and Governor during the year 2016. None of this really matters. Both of them had the power to get out of that ticket you were talking about.


There are some positive aspects of redundancy. This is clearly the case when it comes to backups for my computer. However, I don't know that we need to be redundant at all to provide water for me to sprinkle my roses. It's tempting to speculate that the new departments and sub-departments and auxiliary departments are all there due to political patronage. I know some of that is part of the support and rewards system prevalent in politics. Quid Pro Quo is a way of life in the political arena. But, decisions by committee is not exclusively a government invention. It happens in corporations too, or any organization where the numbers of people are large. Motorola recognized that problem and tried to do something about it. They "empowered" some employees as an experiment. They got rid of a lot of management in the process. After about a year of letting people decide for themselves how and when to do a job, they reverted back to the old system. LOL
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Re: Parrot Linux and Btrfs

Post by Kellemora »

I just thought it was funny that the cops arrested him for not signing the ticket.
And yes I'm sure they were able to get it FIXED, hi hi.

My wife of the '70s had an uncle who worked his way up through Phelps County Electric to Administrator.
He started at the very bottom restocking trucks, studied at worked his way up the ladder, and without ever being a lineman. Primarily because he followed the political way up the ladder. At least until he got stuck being a Comptroller for several years. In order to move up from there, somebody had to die. They eventually did and he moved up to Junior Administrator for like another 8 years before he took over as Administrator.
While he was Comptroller, he merged and ended several separate sub-departments.
But then as Administrator, he added back in many sub-departments because he owed favors to so many who needed cushy jobs. It wasn't too long before he was replaced not by someone from within the company, but by an Administrator from Crawford County Electric. This was OK really because he was ready to retire anyhow. But it shows how normal practices get changed at places for no logical reason. Just like happened to me at MRTC!
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