IPR was down for close to 24 hours, most of which I spent frantically trying to figure out how to fix things.
Ultimately, I posted the job on GetACoder.com and hired a programmer from Bangladesh to fix it. This is after being on the phone with a U.S.-based techie who couldn’t figure it out for over two hours. The guy from Bangladesh diagnosed the problem and fixed it in less than an hour at an affordable rate.
Sorry to editorialize, but to heck with Lou Dobbs.
16 responses so far ↓
1 NewFederalist // Jul 23, 2008 at 5:25 pm
Bengalis rock!
2 pdsa // Jul 23, 2008 at 5:36 pm
G.E.,
if you have problems again, drop me an email, and I’ll give it a quick whirl gratis.
3 kalipay // Jul 24, 2008 at 12:02 am
That is hilarious. Glad you’re back.
4 naisarid // Jul 24, 2008 at 6:45 am
Although I favor free trade, it really disturbs me when people have a bad experience with one person of particular ethnic origin and then make comments that imply that all people of the same ethnic origin are bad.
In this case, G.E. implies that he had an American techie who couldn’t help him, so therefore all Americans must be stupid and people from Bangladesh are smart.
This is a political site and it is my understanding that part of the purpose here is to get Americans to consider voting for Libertarians. I don’t think this article serves as a very good marketing piece for Libertarians.
5 Mike Theodore // Jul 24, 2008 at 6:46 am
It be a joke, man!
6 naisarid // Jul 24, 2008 at 7:05 am
What part of it is a joke?
If it’s a joke, it’s an inside joke and nobody outside of your little clique is going to understand it. In that case, it is twice as bad, because not only are you telling us that you are insensitive to an unfortunate situation that many Americans are encountering, but also that you are cliquish and outsiders will be mocked for not understanding your cliquish jokes.
In case you haven’t heard, one of the big issues in this election is free trade. Americans are finding that they are losing their jobs to other countries and to immigrants in this country. The economy is bad, people are unemployed, and many are losing their homes (some over-extended themselves, but others did not).
Let’s try and be a little sensitive to plight of these Americans and show some compassion.
7 Mike Theodore // Jul 24, 2008 at 7:29 am
Ok, let me try and cool this down a bit.
“In this case, G.E. implies that he had an American techie who couldn’t help him, so therefore all Americans must be stupid and people from Bangladesh are smart.”
Now all he did is state that he went to a programmer from Bangladesh to fix the problem. That’s not an implication, that’s what happened. Now I doubt GE went about looking for a programmer from another country because he was no longer satisfied with American work. That would be mighty discriminatory. Just as discriminatory it would be if one “took a stand” and only hired only American workers.
You seem to be the only one implying this. But not in the sense that you accuse others, but in a seemingly word jumping fix.
8 naisarid // Jul 24, 2008 at 7:45 am
I must have missed your explanation of why this is a joke. If this is a joke, please explain it.
What I am telling you is not that I have jumped to a conclusion, but rather, that this posting will not be viewed positively by many Americans who are well aware of the plight of the American worker.
If you are unwilling to acknowledge that American workers may be offended by this posting and that it does not serve to paint Libertarianism in a favorable light, then you are missing the point. At every turn, we must show people how we offer a better solution. If GE felt a strong need to make this posting so people would know why the site was down for a while, then he could have merely said that he posted an ad on GetACoder.com and found somebody who fixed it quickly. What was GE’s point in saying that the person was from Bangladesh?
He could have made another point, about how the Internet enabled him to find a qualified person and get the work done quickly, but instead, he chose to bring national origin into the discussion.
I’m not “word jumping.” I am merely letting you know that raising the issue of national origin can be offensive to many Americans.
9 Mike Theodore // Jul 24, 2008 at 8:09 am
Excuse the joke part, please. At the time, I figured you were taking offense at the “Bengalis rock!” comment.
Now this posting is not a representation of the Libertarian Party. This site is dedicated to all third parties, and nothing on this is a reference to libertarianism (unless someone tracked down GE’s origins). Trust me, if you asked GE, he’d give you a better solution. But that wasn’t the dedication of this posting, or to make some kind of offense to American workers.
One that would find offense in this comment would in fact be using a form of universal judgment themselves. By assuming that the actions of one worker is an assumption of the workforce of an entire nation. Ridiculous. I can personally say that I’ve had bad experiences with workers in my country. Hey, but I’ve had hundreds more good experiences. Everyone has run into bad workers, but very, very few see it as representation of everyone else in the nation.
Those who would are practicing discrimination. But no assumption of that nature is being used here.
10 jobberman // Jul 24, 2008 at 8:22 am
I’m still waiting for G.E. to blame Bob Barr for the down time. LOL
11 G.E. // Jul 24, 2008 at 11:03 am
This is the most ridiculous thread I’ve ever seen.
“American” is not an ethnicity.
Americans aren’t stupid, just lazy. Bengalis are smart and hardworking.
I am in no way ever going to be sensitive to lazy and stupid Americans whining about losing their jobs. If you want a shoulder to cry on, look elsewhere.
LONG LIVE GLOBALIZATION!
12 G.E. // Jul 24, 2008 at 11:06 am
Discrimination is the right of an employer. I would have discriminated in favor of an English speaking person if one had applied for the job with similar references at the same low rate as the Bangali. But Americans want more money for the same work. If I had to pay an American to do this job, THE SITE WOULD STILL BE DOWN.
This is what I do for a living in the “real” world. This isn’t an isolated experience. I have worked with programmers from Lithuania, Ukraine, India, Bangladesh, Romania, and several other countries. They work for wages that are a lot to them, little to me, and their work is superb.
13 darolew // Jul 24, 2008 at 12:46 pm
“Americans aren’t stupid, just lazy.”
As an American and a computer science major, this conversation offends me. I’ll be sure to prove you wrong once I decide whether it’s worth the effort to walk to the kitchen for another Mountain Dew.
14 naisarid // Jul 24, 2008 at 1:27 pm
When I come to this site, I only read the postings that relate to the Libertarian Party. Many of those articles are by G.E. It quickly becomes clear that he is a libertarian.
I certainly defend your right to hire whoever you want based on whatever criteria you choose. I’ll even defend your right to be insensitive to every voter you encounter.
That said, do you really think calling all Americans lazy will attract them to the libertarian philosophy?
When you say Americans are lazy, are you including yourself in that statement?
Do you truly believe that every American who has lost his/her job as a result of our ever-changing economy is “lazy and stupid”?
I truly believe that libertarians offer a better way. I believe we offer real solutions. But we are never going to convince people to give us a second look with comments like: “I am in no way ever going to be sensitive to lazy and stupid Americans whining about losing their jobs.”
15 pdsa // Jul 24, 2008 at 10:41 pm
G.E.,
The only reason the site would still be down is that you seem to know too little about WordPress, which is the underlying codebase that this site runs on.
In my experience, WordPress is one of the most simple and tolerant blogging platforms to install. What was the problem anyway? Was it server-based, or was it related to the recent WordPress update?
Try the WordPress forums first, next time you run into an issue. You may find the answer if given freely…
16 pdsa // Aug 10, 2008 at 2:20 pm
GE,
Getting weird log entries over the last few days?
Check-out WordPress Forums, and if you can, edit .htaccess by inserting the recommended add by tflight. It worked for me.
Let me know if you read this, so I don’t come in OT on a different thread. It looks like someone is using their bot-net to look for a specific hack, and although the latest WordPress release seems to be hardened against it, it may be probing for a vulnerable plug-in, instead of old unpatched codebases.
The .htaccess edit makes a great deal of sense anyway, in that it stops many attempted MySQL injection penetrations cold, Apache server-side before it even gets a shot at the PHP/MySQL.
cheers
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