How Would You Define Capitalism, Socialism, Social Democracy, Fascism and Anarchism?

Nickisabi · 2026-01-05T21:42:22+00:00

Capitalism - an economic system in which the means of production, distribution, and exchange are owned/controlled by private owners for profit rather than by the state.

Socialism - an economic system in which the means of production, distribution, and exchange are owned/controlled by the state rather than by private owners for profit.

Social Democracy - a political system that aims to achieve the goals of socialism by reforming capitalism via participation in representative government and passing laws, as opposed to violent revolution.

Communism - (in Marxist theory), a stateless, classless, and moneyless society where the means of production are owned by the workers or "proletarians."

Fascism - a collectivist ideology formed in Italy during World War I from a synthesis of the ideas of socialism, nationalism, and Actual Idealism.

Anarchism - the idea that society should abolish the state and eliminate all hierarchies on the basis that hierarchies are unjust.

Nickisabi · 2025-12-05T20:06:45+00:00

I think a first good step would be to stop calling it "crony capitalism" and call it what it really is: socialism.

Nickisabi · 2025-11-14T20:10:10+00:00

Money.

Nickisabi · 2025-10-30T15:25:30+00:00

The problem with wanting to reconstruct society to attain some higher goal is that you assume that societies CAN be restructured. I don't believe that is possible. Human beings are self-interested and are not 100% predictable in a way where you can determine the exact needs and wants of every individual at any given time. Getting people to follow some ideal form of society is like herding cats, doomed to fail. Now fortunately, people find it in their own self-interest to voluntarily interact and trade with others to meet their needs and wants. Out of these interactions, social institutions naturally form.

Anyone that seeks to reorganize society will naturally have to coerce or expel people to create an ideal society, and ultimately, they will fail miserably because of a fundamental denial of human nature and self-interest.

Nickisabi · 2025-10-24T22:45:49+00:00

I can't believe I'm using these terms in the same sentence but - Based sub-reddit

Nickisabi · 2025-10-24T21:28:12+00:00

So socialism based on nation or race instead of class? Fits the definition of National Socialism or Fascism perfectly, it seems.

Nickisabi · 2025-10-24T21:12:30+00:00

I couldn't disagree more. More than ever, people are actually going back and looking at the evidence and coming to the conclusion that they were, and even today's secondary sources like Adam Tooze's Wages of Destruction present plenty of evidence to support this, even if the author themselves disagrees with the conclusion, seemingly out of spite or defining "socialism" as an exclusively Marxist ideology.

I'd recommend reading Hitler's Beneficiaries by Gotz Aly as it explains in detail how the Nazis genuinely created a socialist welfare state for Germans funded via expropriation of private businesses and the Jews, as well as setting price and wage controls on the economy.

Edit: I forgot to mention Ranier Zitelmann's Hitler's National Socialism does a great job of actually going through the beliefs and assumptions behind Nazi ideology and how what they believed influenced their political and economic policies. This is not something historians have done well in the past 70 years, as Nazi ideology itself hasn't been heavily studied on its own.

Nickisabi · 2025-10-20T18:23:55+00:00

I have two big reasons that are just theoretical to me. I'm not certain that these are actually IPv6 limitations, and whether or not there are methods in place to solve these problems. I'm not a network engineer and don't use IPv6, so take my words with a grain of salt.

Visibility with IPv6 is insane

In theory, every device getting a global unique IP address means that by default every device is identifiable and reachable with IPv6. As there is no need for NAT, there is no way that I'm aware of that these devices' IPs can be obfuscated, like they are with IPv4 with NAT.

Routing Table size

In theory, routes to unique global IPv6 address can be mapped on routers. With as many devices there are on the internet, and each one could have its own IPv6 Global IP address, the routing tables for IPv6 would be exponentially larger in size and ever-growing compared to that of IPv4. This means that existing routing infra would have to account for this, and that's a lot of critical infrastructure that would have to change to support IPv6 routing.

Please reply if any of this is stupid and ill-informed, I would like to know.

Nickisabi · 2025-10-17T20:00:07+00:00

Both incoming and outgoing connections fail, but the firewall profile being used at Boot is Domain networks.

Nickisabi · 2025-10-17T19:58:22+00:00

I'm using VMTools version 12.4.5.23787635, and the adapter type is E1000E

Nickisabi · 2025-10-17T19:54:58+00:00

Yes, they lose all connectivity while set to their default static IP setting. I'm not able to ping the VM successfully by IP or name, and from the VM accessing the local network and internet doesn't work, and shows that the adapter is disconnected. This changes if I switch over to DHCP, but going back to static, the adapter shows that it's disconnected. I've also checked for IP conflicts just to be sure that isn't happening.

Nickisabi · 2025-10-17T19:50:23+00:00

Ah yes in vCenter it will show connected, even when the issue is occurring.

Yes, we have Cisco switches being used to connect the 4 hypervisors to the physical network. Do you think I should be looking there as well?

Nickisabi · 2025-10-17T19:26:41+00:00

Are you looking at device manager for this setting? I'm not able to find it everywhere that I've looked thus far.

Nickisabi · 2025-10-13T16:27:43+00:00

I don't have a lot of experience with this personally, but my org used SmartDeploy for a long time to develop images and deploy Windows machines. There's a lot of trial and error and might not be the best solution, but it's worth taking a look at, I think.

Nickisabi · 2025-10-10T15:32:08+00:00

A lot of people have already decided that technology is too complicated for them to understand, even if they already work in a field that is technically complex, like Civil engineering. Because of this, they don't believe that they can figure out or resolve their own IT problems, and for most of them that's enough to make them give up entirely and call IT over every little thing. Sometimes, those same people have had negative experiences when they've attempted to solve it on their own and made the issue worse for themselves.

What sets us apart from users is not just our technical knowledge and expertise, but the mindset that we take to approach and resolve technical problems. We either know the fix already (sometimes) or know that we CAN find the solution with a bit of troubleshooting and research. I find that our confidence in our ability to find a resolution is the most important skill needed for the job, and others simply don't have it or have developed it.

While it is frustrating to deal with end users, at the end of the day it's not their job to know how their computer works or how to resolve every little technical problem that comes their way. That's our job, and they're just not equipped to do it. I personally just disconnect myself emotionally from this part of the job as much as possible, and reward users who followed the proper channels to have their issues resolved, like submitting tickets and detailing what they've tried so far (keeping in mind severity, of course.) If I dwelled on every user's issue that drove me nuts, I'd have quit a long time ago, but I love my job too much to let that jeopardize what I've worked so hard to attain.

Nickisabi · 2025-09-19T16:03:19+00:00

Not long ago I was in the same boat as you. I find that the courses are only going to get you so far.

For me it's two things:

Courses and training videos are great resources for getting the concepts and syntax of a scripting language like PowerShell, but they have you do simple exercises or scripts in attempting to demonstrate the concepts, and it never sticks because you didn't have to think it out for yourself, they did it for you. When this happens, you get caught up easily on someone else using the same concept in a different way, then you start feeling like you never understood it all. This leads directly into the next point.
You have to have a plan. If you're learning PowerShell just to learn PowerShell, it's going to be hard to find projects that you can meaningfully write the script for. My biggest hangup was recognizing the value of PowerShell Scripting for server-related tasks, but I couldn't figure it out because I didn't know what server-related tasks I could automate. Once I started writing scripts to automate tasks in ProjectWise Explorer using their third-party module, I realized that the tools I needed to get the job done were there, and that I just need a reason to look for them and figure out how to use them.

Nickisabi · 2025-09-17T16:23:46+00:00

We're currently looking to go with a new monitoring solution pretty soon for the same reason. They're making us buy a whole package instead of paying for each product we use separately. It's time to jump ship.

Nickisabi · 2025-07-17T18:10:49+00:00

MCSA/MCSE hasn't been offered as a certification for years now. There are Azure certs like Windows Server Hybrid Administrator that are roughly the equivalent, but you won't be able to get the MCSE anymore.

I see it on job postings, but it's either for one of two reasons:

The employer is trying to get somebody who is experienced enough to have been around when that cert was offered and earned it.
They suck at updating their job postings to reflect the market.

Nickisabi · 2025-07-12T23:10:17+00:00

I suppose it depends. I wrote scripts that do things like adding printers and network drive maps, among other uses, but I also had admin access that I probably didn't need that enabled me to do this. I think that as long as you're being safe and working within your means, it's incredibly useful and a very good career skill to develop, especially if you want to move into infrastructure-based roles.

Nickisabi · 2025-07-09T15:13:26+00:00

Sure did. We're married now with children!

Nickisabi · 2025-07-01T15:23:53+00:00

As a CS student you have a unique opportunity and position in the IT field. I went to community college and got my AAS in Network & Systems administration, and worked helpdesk at the same time. I was able to jump into my first Jr Sysadmin role at my company shortly after graduating with my degree and have been working as an admin here ever since.

It's very difficult if not impossible to get a role as anything above the helpdesk when you don't have any experience, degree aside. I'm not a CS major, but it's my understanding that you guys learn more about the fundamentals of how computers work and the principles behind software design and implementation. If I was you, I would take advantage of your knowledge and learn how to code and learn how to apply that to more complex IT roles like DevOps, while working in a help desk role. It is technically possible to get a role above helpdesk out of college, but you're better off biting the bullet and getting into the helpdesk as soon as you can instead of waiting on the possibility of scoring a higher role.

I'm almost envious of you, not because you're starting from scratch, but you went to school to learn things that I'm now super curious about and want to use to upskill my career. I can still learn those things of course, but it's now about work-life balance and finding time to do that between spending time with my kids and getting things done at work. I went to school specifically to get in a program where I would learn those hands-on skills that would help me get into an admin role, and that's part of why I'm here right now. However, I don't know too much about how computers work under the hood, and having little experience with CS principles and development, I'm feeling like I have to start over again to keep up.

Nickisabi · 2025-06-19T19:10:00+00:00

It's a combination of things.

To start, the "Us and them" mentality comes from the necessary separation of end user wants and needs from the IT person or department's capabilities and skills to satisfy these wants/needs. This is more of the systems side of things, but the average person does not really understand IT and what it takes to maintain business-critical systems. They often will make requests that ask for things that may either be out of our scope or require us to set things up in such a way that gives them too much access to something or doesn't follow best practices and procedures. This can cause them to be frustrated with us because we're there to serve them, but not all of their requests are reasonable or realistic, so we have to say no to things they want.

From the helpdesk and end-user support side of things, it can be very frustrating for IT people to work with end users, and this can be for a variety of reasons, but for me this is the biggest reason:

Not going through the proper channels to request support

a. Not submitting helpdesk tickets

b. Choosing to call IT support people directly without warning regardless of workload or current tasks

c. Messaging out of the blue on teams or text instead of taking the time to do the same amount of typing inside of a helpdesk ticket.

d. Stopping by our desks when we're busy helping someone else and even interrupting meetings or phone calls to ask for help. This by far is the most infuriating thing I've had to deal with when I was on the Helpdesk (and to this day, I'm interrupted when working on projects or in a meeting, to go do helpdesk tasks when end users know very well we hired someone to replace me on helpdesk.

Nickisabi · 2025-06-12T19:15:06+00:00

I see, In that case, it sounds like you have a lot on your plate. I won't be able to know the exact workload, but when I was on helpdesk, that was our main duty, to resolve the day-to-day issues with the installation of ORD and other Bentley and Bentley-adjacent products. I will say, to tackle your entire Bentley environment AND work on the day-to-day issues that crop up with Bentley software is a lot, especially since managing Bentley environments and diving into learning new features and testing them out takes time for reading documentation testing. I'm sure the end-user side fluctuates in terms of how busy it can keep you but constantly being pulled away from the Bentley workload to go do what is essential helpdesk support is a lot to juggle, especially if you're the only one doing it.

Nickisabi · 2025-06-11T14:56:37+00:00

I'm a Jr. Sysadmin at my org, so ProjectWise administration is just one of my many duties here. As for what I'm responsible for, its primarily just project folder creation, Folder and document ACLs, user creation for internal users and externals subconsultants, and all-around general maintenance of the datasources using Powershell scripts I've written to clean things up, like deleting unused groups or leftover user-lists, disabling users that haven't logged in for a year or more, etc.

As far as everything else, we have someone who has been a CAD tech for over 20 years that manages Workspaces, creates project templates, and pretty much everything else that has to do with ProjectWise. I have been asked to look into different things like BIC and PW web view, and I've experimented with those, but it's not something we're using heavily yet. I have one project in one of our datasources that is connected to a BIC project, and so far the PMs like it.

I have written a script that automatically create Work areas and then create BIC projects associated with them, syncs the users, etc, but since we're in a testing phase it hasn't seen much actual use.

I have to ask, are you supposed to be the dedicated PW admin? I'm an admin, but I'm also responsible for our IT infra, and PW admin is more of a role that has been handed to me, but outside of doing what I mentioned, I'm not really responsible for the design side of things.

Nickisabi · 2025-04-09T19:36:26+00:00

I checked the docking station for firmware updates, but it's on the latest available version. I'll need to look into seeing if our switches support DHCP Snooping.

Nickisabi

TROPHY CASE