Slashdot Mirror

This reminds me of a poster I used to have- "If a pretty poster and a cute saying are all it takes to motivate you, you probably have a very easy job. The kind robots will be doing soon." I think that should be updated to, "If an AI can write your emails for you, you probably have a very easy job. The kinds robots are already doing." https://despair.com/products/m...

If I do some googling with Duck Duck Go I find

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=corp...

Trump's Council of Economic Advisers say it will boost growth by 3-5%, which means Trump will go down in history as the Next Reagan. But then, as Mandy Rice-Davies put it "Well, they would say that wouldn't they?"

http://uk.businessinsider.com/...

Then there's this, another right wing think tank

https://www.americanactionforu...

The U.S. is mired in a slow economic recovery, and is projected to continue growing at about a 2 percent annual rate for the next 10 years.
The U.S. corporate tax is grossly out of step with the rates of its developed country competitors, and is the only nation to have increased its rate on net since 1988.
A large body of economic research has documented the anti-growth effects of the U.S. corporate tax, with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) concluding that it is the most harmful form of tax on per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Reducing the corporate tax rate would lead to higher investment, faster productivity growth, faster economic growth and higher wages, which would offer a higher standard of living for U.S. workers.

Here's the OECD paper.

https://www.oecd.org/officiald...

This paper examines the relationship between tax structures and economic growth by entering indicators of the tax structure into a set of panel growth regressions for 21 OECD countries, in which both the accumulation of physical and human capital are accounted for. The results of the analysis suggest that income taxes are generally associated with lower economic growth than taxes on consumption and property. More precisely, the findings allow the establishment of a ranking of tax instruments with respect to their relationship to economic growth. Property taxes, and particularly recurrent taxes on immovable property, seem to be the most growth-friendly, followed by consumption taxes and then by personal income taxes. Corporate income taxes appear to have the most negative effect on GDP per capita. These findings suggest that a revenue-neutral growth-oriented tax reform would be to shift part of the revenue base towards recurrent property and consumption taxes and away from income taxes, especially corporate taxes. There is also evidence of a negative relationship between the progressivity of personal income taxes and growth. All of the results are robust to a number of different specifications, including controlling for other determinants of economic growth and instrumenting tax indicators.

Now the OECD report is credible.

And it doesn't really seem all that unreasonable for the US to cut corporation tax rates given it has the highest tax rate in the OECD.

E.g.

http://stats.oecd.org/index.as...

In fact in best Laffer curve fashion you can make an argument that high tax rates encourage US corporations to have complex tax structures like Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich. Reducing the corporate tax rate from 35% to 22% makes it somewhat more competitive. A bit of Trumpian bullying of the likes of Apple and Google combined with a tax cut might cause them to start paying US taxes instead of paying Dutch, Irish or UK ones.

I can see you don't like Trump of the GOP and to be honest I've got mixed feelings about them myself. Still you c

It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others.

Consulting: If you're not a part of the solution, there's good money to be made in prolonging the problem.

Indeed, but at least he was not proudly satisfied with remaining a mediocre joke.

I don't mind being a running joke on Slashdot.

Keep on setting your sights low, creimer, you're a walking demotivational poster.

Which is why I have this demovivational poster in my home office:

"It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others."
https://despair.com/collections/demotivators/products/mistakes

Sounds like you had some nutter that decided to just convert the system into microservices without much thought other than ...

That is the thing that misleads so many people, both the non-technical bosses AND many of the technical people. We want this because it is hip and trendy, and we want it because the large companies are using it so it must be good.

Think about the headline. Walmart -- the world's largest retailer that spends more money on IT infrastructure in a single day than most companies make in annual revenue -- has switched to a product that saves their specific enormous needs a bit of resources. There are other headlines like it. Redis let's Twitter handle a million requests per second. Some large organization publishes how their enormous tech problems only experienced by the world's largest companies get some benefit. Hadoop clusters, Kubernetes, Hazelcast, memcached, Cassandra, Kafka, and more. They're great solutions if you actually have those problems the tools help with. If you're in an organization that spends a million on infrastructure then the costs of having a few of the programmers spend a few months implementing the solution can be cost effective.

Very few companies in the world have those needs, yet headlines like this make CEOs and CTOs and beancounters think they save money, and everyday tech guys want to jump in to the latest high-end technology. It doesn't matter if the database rarely hits 100 requests per minute and runs easily on a single machine, the groups decide the organization must bring in the same high-capacity infrastructure because it scales up to support the world's largest organizations. Hadoop clusters, Kubernetes, Hazelcast, memcached, Cassandra, Kafka, and more. They're great solutions if you actually have those problems the tools help with.

While some solutions are good solutions for specific needs, far too often the solutions brought in are completely wrong for the organization's actual problems.

A few companies back they had a huge internal developer group, everything was built around microservices, tiered architectures where every service , autoscaling groups, and multiple database arrays, all connected through distributed memory tools. All that for a roughly 4TB database where nearly all transactions were single-row reads; the peak was around 10,000 requests per minute (166/sec) serving out roughly 150 megabytes per minute (2.5MBps). There performance was slow, and a bit of profiling (part of my job to make things faster) revealed abysmal practices. Warnings from Sonar said strings shouldn't be reused, so in less than a second there were a million copies of the string "true". Carefully composed SQL commands were placed in interned strings, then had copies made, and copies of copies made. In several cases I found the overhead was enormous; some simple requests to generate a 50KB response would allocate 5+ MB of memory. All of it because tools suggested something might be more secure, and new-and-shiny saved massive organizations like Amazon or Twitter or Walmart a bunch of money.

When I was newly brought on and looked at the numbers, I asked my boss about it, who said they wanted to scale big just in case. A while later I had some chats with the CTO, and that was his reason as well; bring in all the latest high-end technology because when they used smaller technologies they were too slow. At that point they were looking at even bigger technologies, adding even more memory caches and renting even more expensive VM systems with terabytes of memory. As mentioned, that was one of my former employers. As the poster says: If you're not a part of the solution, there's good money to be made in prolonging the problem.

[...] get paid less than the interns in silicon valley.

You mean the overpaid interns at the top five companies in Silicon Valley? When I was an intern in the late 1990's, I got paid $10 per hour at a Fortune 500 company. Having worked at Google and Facebook on contract, I'm not overly impressed by these wasteful expenditures of money.

are you trolling or is this your real life?

Real life. I have a demotivational poster in my home office: "Mistakes - It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others."

https://despair.com/collections/demotivators/products/mistakes

if it is your real life - for god's sake - stop bragging about being a loser.

A loser is someone who have given up. I've never given up. Eight years of Special Ed classes and skipping high school didn't prevent me from getting A.A. degree in General Education and, a decade later, A.S. degree in computer programming. Being out of work for two years and filing for bankruptcy in 2011 didn't prevent me from bouncing back and recovering financially six years later. Being told that I would drop dead at 10-, 20-, 30-, or 40-years-old because I was "morbidly obese" didn't prevent me from living.

what the hell is wrong with you?

These pissing matches generate quite a bit of traffic and ad revenues for my websites. Since I'm already on Slashdot, I might as well beat my own drum all the way to the bank.

Have you ever found anybody who cares about your life story?

Yes. I'm known as the guy with the funniest stories at work.

Or do you just keep posting it because it's either that or cutting and you're all out of razor blades?

I'm living out my favorite demotivator poster that hangs in my home office: "Mistakes: It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others."

Would have been interesting to look at whether improved customer satisfaction was correlated with increased local competition. I strongly suspect it is, not just because Comcast works harder to try to retain customers, but largely because the unhappiest customers leave as soon as they have an alternative. Even if actual customer service doesn't get any better, the people who remain are more satisfied on average.

Kind of like the famous demotivator says- "sometimes the best solution to workplace morale problems is just to fire all of the unhappy people."

When Google Fiber came to my area, Comcast sent door-to-door salespeople to try to get signups before people were committed to Google; Comcast was offering something like half its usual price. I knew it wasn't the salesperson's fault, but I couldn't help laughing in his face.

None of us is as dumb as all of us

https://despair.com/products/m...
The demotivational poster states: "If a pretty poster and a cute saying are all it takes to motivate you, you probably have a very easy job. The kind robots will be doing soon."

I have a small version framed on my desk at work.

There's a Demotivator poster for that. Or maybe this one is more likely.

Either way, it is clearly not what the customers on /. want.

There's a Demotivator poster for that. Or maybe this one is more likely.

Either way, it is clearly not what the customers on /. want.

Yeah, you're right... customers are so selfish. They all WANT things from us. Why do we put up with them?

https://despair.com/products/apathy

No single raindrop believes it is to blame for the flood. poster

... this is my view of most of them ...

The usual argument for meetings is same as for democracy: Everybody gets a voice and the worst outcome is avoided. In reality, a power cabal skews the priorities and everyone else avoids responsibility. Which is also the reality of elections.

The original and my view of meetings.

I'll just leave this here.

Just because you're necessary doesn't mean you're important.

http://despair.com/products/wo...

Seriously though. It means that they may need *someone* doing your job, but if there is a line of a thousand people waiting for your job, you make only what the least expensive person in that line is going to ask for to be selected over you to get paid.

While I'm sympathetic to that view, just because you are necessary doesn't mean you are important

Despair

You can fool all of the people all of the time if your effects budget is large enough
Chill out. It's a joke.

Like this?

Meetings
None of us are as dumb as all of us./a

I'll just leave this here.

I don't necessarily disagree. The students that universities can accept or reject are, of course, the products of their parents, their school systems, and their communities in general. This probably doesn't position the university especially well to solve racial or other forms of socioeconomic inequality.

Then again, no single raindrop believes it is to blame for the flood. If a university thinks it can make a small difference by trying to encourage a more diverse student body, that seems pretty reasonable.

Of course, this debate is just a spectacle to distract the riff-raff. If you really want to assure your spot at a university, you should get yourself some influential parents or friends...

What is puzzling you is called the paradox of value. It can be described as the apparent paradox that water is necessary to life, while diamonds are not, but diamonds are much more expensive than water. The answer is that decisions to buy and sell are made at the margin, so the question isn't "How valuable is water to you?" but rather, "How valuable is the next gallon of water to you?" Since, in "our society", we have enough water to support life and agriculture, the marginal gallon of water is used, say, to water golf courses and wash cars. These low-value marginal uses means that the price of water is low, as is actually seen.

Similarly, with the average American's BMI pushing 30, the marginal value of the next strawberry isn't very big to the vast majority of Americans. So the price of strawberries is low, and there is little room to pay strawberry pickers a good wage. Also see Worth: Just because you're necessary doesn't mean you're important.

I mean, advertising an illegal drug market in a public place makes so much sense, right?

Let's just re-use this one...

Stupidity

Well, you can not force a company to hire more people, nor blame it for optimizing their warehouse. It they're really not firing people, that's a good thing. I guess their business is growing, too, so to compensate the reduction in manual labor.

Well put. On the other side of it, I don't see how it should in any way be a surprise to anyone who knows Amazon at all (like their warehouse employees) that this kind of thing would be on its way. There is a certain reality to the fact that people must grow and evolve their skills to maintain their own employability no matter what their career path.

A more cynical, if not entirely inaccurate, way to describe the other side of that equation is this.

It reminds me of this poster. If a pretty poster and a cute saying are all it takes to motivate you, you probably have a very easy job. The kind robots will be doing soon.

Please, for the love of your own mental health, do not click the story's hyperlink to the poems.
They are just bad. I might not have been able to do better if I was in kindergarten. By third grade, yes, I could have. If I just spent five or ten minutes trying.

If you want something to lighten your mood today, check out Despair.com or spend some time reading XKCD. And if you don't get XXKCD, there is ExplainXKCD which can help.

But, please, please, please, don't read those poems that the story's hyperlink points to. They're worse than awful.

I'll just leave this here:
http://www.despair.com/mistake...

If a pretty poster and a cute saying are all it takes to motivate you, you probably have a very easy job. The kind robots will be doing soon.

I see many people who just want a job, and they take no responsibility for making that job long term. Just expecting someone else to do the management and find the money for the paycheck is not really going to result in a long term job under the current reality.

This and this. It's also a neverending cycle.

This and this. It's also a neverending cycle.

A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.

Also

Therefore the "idiocricy effect" as you called it is merely a consequence of population density, not individual capability.

Or, http://www.despair.com/ineptitude.html

http://www.despair.com/consult...

Cheers,
Dave

It takes a lot less time and most people won't notice the difference until it's too late.

http://www.despair.com/mediocr...

The classic 'American dream' is possibility. It's the idea that anyone can potentially work their way to great success, regardless of starting position. Even if they are born in poverty. It may be very difficult, but it can be done.

You know? There is a difference between possibility and probability.
To exemplify: there are higher odds you'll be injured on or near your toilet than it is to win the lottery - and, lemme guess, one necessarily takes more frequent chances with a toilet than with lotto (if you know what consequence I'm alluding here).

There are plenty of examples of people who did it via some mix of skill, luck and hard work. This is in contrast to the old way, where family background defined one's role in society to a much greater extent.

Well, one doesn't need search hard to find those thousands that lost (and were forgotten in the next minutes) for every one that has been a winner.

I guess I can take break to ponder a bit over the necessary vs the sufficient.
See, being cautios, having hope and staying positive, persevering and keeping cool will go long way in overcoming the obstacles and may seem like a necessity , but ...
even if you deeply believe in you, better stop kidding yourself: having rich parents is absolutely sufficient and certainly helps more than any and all the above.

Well, enough with the dreams and cliches, I really need to get back to work

The classic 'American dream' is possibility. It's the idea that anyone can potentially work their way to great success, regardless of starting position. Even if they are born in poverty. It may be very difficult, but it can be done.

You know? There is a difference between possibility and probability.
To exemplify: there are higher odds you'll be injured on or near your toilet than it is to win the lottery - and, lemme guess, one necessarily takes more frequent chances with a toilet than with lotto (if you know what consequence I'm alluding here).

There are plenty of examples of people who did it via some mix of skill, luck and hard work. This is in contrast to the old way, where family background defined one's role in society to a much greater extent.

Well, one doesn't need search hard to find those thousands that lost (and were forgotten in the next minutes) for every one that has been a winner.

I guess I can take break to ponder a bit over the necessary vs the sufficient.
See, being cautios, having hope and staying positive, persevering and keeping cool will go long way in overcoming the obstacles and may seem like a necessity , but ...
even if you deeply believe in you, better stop kidding yourself: having rich parents is absolutely sufficient and certainly helps more than any and all the above.

Well, enough with the dreams and cliches, I really need to get back to work

The classic 'American dream' is possibility. It's the idea that anyone can potentially work their way to great success, regardless of starting position. Even if they are born in poverty. It may be very difficult, but it can be done.

You know? There is a difference between possibility and probability.
To exemplify: there are higher odds you'll be injured on or near your toilet than it is to win the lottery - and, lemme guess, one necessarily takes more frequent chances with a toilet than with lotto (if you know what consequence I'm alluding here).

There are plenty of examples of people who did it via some mix of skill, luck and hard work. This is in contrast to the old way, where family background defined one's role in society to a much greater extent.

Well, one doesn't need search hard to find those thousands that lost (and were forgotten in the next minutes) for every one that has been a winner.

I guess I can take break to ponder a bit over the necessary vs the sufficient.
See, being cautios, having hope and staying positive, persevering and keeping cool will go long way in overcoming the obstacles and may seem like a necessity , but ...
even if you deeply believe in you, better stop kidding yourself: having rich parents is absolutely sufficient and certainly helps more than any and all the above.

Well, enough with the dreams and cliches, I really need to get back to work

The classic 'American dream' is possibility. It's the idea that anyone can potentially work their way to great success, regardless of starting position. Even if they are born in poverty. It may be very difficult, but it can be done.

You know? There is a difference between possibility and probability.
To exemplify: there are higher odds you'll be injured on or near your toilet than it is to win the lottery - and, lemme guess, one necessarily takes more frequent chances with a toilet than with lotto (if you know what consequence I'm alluding here).

There are plenty of examples of people who did it via some mix of skill, luck and hard work. This is in contrast to the old way, where family background defined one's role in society to a much greater extent.

Well, one doesn't need search hard to find those thousands that lost (and were forgotten in the next minutes) for every one that has been a winner.

I guess I can take break to ponder a bit over the necessary vs the sufficient.
See, being cautios, having hope and staying positive, persevering and keeping cool will go long way in overcoming the obstacles and may seem like a necessity , but ...
even if you deeply believe in you, better stop kidding yourself: having rich parents is absolutely sufficient and certainly helps more than any and all the above.

Well, enough with the dreams and cliches, I really need to get back to work

The classic 'American dream' is possibility. It's the idea that anyone can potentially work their way to great success, regardless of starting position. Even if they are born in poverty. It may be very difficult, but it can be done.

You know? There is a difference between possibility and probability.
To exemplify: there are higher odds you'll be injured on or near your toilet than it is to win the lottery - and, lemme guess, one necessarily takes more frequent chances with a toilet than with lotto (if you know what consequence I'm alluding here).

There are plenty of examples of people who did it via some mix of skill, luck and hard work. This is in contrast to the old way, where family background defined one's role in society to a much greater extent.

Well, one doesn't need search hard to find those thousands that lost (and were forgotten in the next minutes) for every one that has been a winner.

I guess I can take break to ponder a bit over the necessary vs the sufficient.
See, being cautios, having hope and staying positive, persevering and keeping cool will go long way in overcoming the obstacles and may seem like a necessity , but ...
even if you deeply believe in you, better stop kidding yourself: having rich parents is absolutely sufficient and certainly helps more than any and all the above.

Well, enough with the dreams and cliches, I really need to get back to work

The classic 'American dream' is possibility. It's the idea that anyone can potentially work their way to great success, regardless of starting position. Even if they are born in poverty. It may be very difficult, but it can be done.

You know? There is a difference between possibility and probability.
To exemplify: there are higher odds you'll be injured on or near your toilet than it is to win the lottery - and, lemme guess, one necessarily takes more frequent chances with a toilet than with lotto (if you know what consequence I'm alluding here).

There are plenty of examples of people who did it via some mix of skill, luck and hard work. This is in contrast to the old way, where family background defined one's role in society to a much greater extent.

Well, one doesn't need search hard to find those thousands that lost (and were forgotten in the next minutes) for every one that has been a winner.

I guess I can take break to ponder a bit over the necessary vs the sufficient.
See, being cautios, having hope and staying positive, persevering and keeping cool will go long way in overcoming the obstacles and may seem like a necessity , but ...
even if you deeply believe in you, better stop kidding yourself: having rich parents is absolutely sufficient and certainly helps more than any and all the above.

Well, enough with the dreams and cliches, I really need to get back to work

The classic 'American dream' is possibility. It's the idea that anyone can potentially work their way to great success, regardless of starting position. Even if they are born in poverty. It may be very difficult, but it can be done.

You know? There is a difference between possibility and probability.
To exemplify: there are higher odds you'll be injured on or near your toilet than it is to win the lottery - and, lemme guess, one necessarily takes more frequent chances with a toilet than with lotto (if you know what consequence I'm alluding here).

There are plenty of examples of people who did it via some mix of skill, luck and hard work. This is in contrast to the old way, where family background defined one's role in society to a much greater extent.

Well, one doesn't need search hard to find those thousands that lost (and were forgotten in the next minutes) for every one that has been a winner.

I guess I can take break to ponder a bit over the necessary vs the sufficient.
See, being cautios, having hope and staying positive, persevering and keeping cool will go long way in overcoming the obstacles and may seem like a necessity , but ...
even if you deeply believe in you, better stop kidding yourself: having rich parents is absolutely sufficient and certainly helps more than any and all the above.

Well, enough with the dreams and cliches, I really need to get back to work

The classic 'American dream' is possibility. It's the idea that anyone can potentially work their way to great success, regardless of starting position. Even if they are born in poverty. It may be very difficult, but it can be done.

You know? There is a difference between possibility and probability.
To exemplify: there are higher odds you'll be injured on or near your toilet than it is to win the lottery - and, lemme guess, one necessarily takes more frequent chances with a toilet than with lotto (if you know what consequence I'm alluding here).

There are plenty of examples of people who did it via some mix of skill, luck and hard work. This is in contrast to the old way, where family background defined one's role in society to a much greater extent.

Well, one doesn't need search hard to find those thousands that lost (and were forgotten in the next minutes) for every one that has been a winner.

I guess I can take break to ponder a bit over the necessary vs the sufficient.
See, being cautios, having hope and staying positive, persevering and keeping cool will go long way in overcoming the obstacles and may seem like a necessity , but ...
even if you deeply believe in you, better stop kidding yourself: having rich parents is absolutely sufficient and certainly helps more than any and all the above.

Well, enough with the dreams and cliches, I really need to get back to work

The classic 'American dream' is possibility. It's the idea that anyone can potentially work their way to great success, regardless of starting position. Even if they are born in poverty. It may be very difficult, but it can be done.

You know? There is a difference between possibility and probability.
To exemplify: there are higher odds you'll be injured on or near your toilet than it is to win the lottery - and, lemme guess, one necessarily takes more frequent chances with a toilet than with lotto (if you know what consequence I'm alluding here).

There are plenty of examples of people who did it via some mix of skill, luck and hard work. This is in contrast to the old way, where family background defined one's role in society to a much greater extent.

Well, one doesn't need search hard to find those thousands that lost (and were forgotten in the next minutes) for every one that has been a winner.

I guess I can take break to ponder a bit over the necessary vs the sufficient.
See, being cautios, having hope and staying positive, persevering and keeping cool will go long way in overcoming the obstacles and may seem like a necessity , but ...
even if you deeply believe in you, better stop kidding yourself: having rich parents is absolutely sufficient and certainly helps more than any and all the above.

Well, enough with the dreams and cliches, I really need to get back to work

The classic 'American dream' is possibility. It's the idea that anyone can potentially work their way to great success, regardless of starting position. Even if they are born in poverty. It may be very difficult, but it can be done.

You know? There is a difference between possibility and probability.
To exemplify: there are higher odds you'll be injured on or near your toilet than it is to win the lottery - and, lemme guess, one necessarily takes more frequent chances with a toilet than with lotto (if you know what consequence I'm alluding here).

There are plenty of examples of people who did it via some mix of skill, luck and hard work. This is in contrast to the old way, where family background defined one's role in society to a much greater extent.

Well, one doesn't need search hard to find those thousands that lost (and were forgotten in the next minutes) for every one that has been a winner.

I guess I can take break to ponder a bit over the necessary vs the sufficient.
See, being cautios, having hope and staying positive, persevering and keeping cool will go long way in overcoming the obstacles and may seem like a necessity , but ...
even if you deeply believe in you, better stop kidding yourself: having rich parents is absolutely sufficient and certainly helps more than any and all the above.

Well, enough with the dreams and cliches, I really need to get back to work

The classic 'American dream' is possibility. It's the idea that anyone can potentially work their way to great success, regardless of starting position. Even if they are born in poverty. It may be very difficult, but it can be done.

You know? There is a difference between possibility and probability.
To exemplify: there are higher odds you'll be injured on or near your toilet than it is to win the lottery - and, lemme guess, one necessarily takes more frequent chances with a toilet than with lotto (if you know what consequence I'm alluding here).

There are plenty of examples of people who did it via some mix of skill, luck and hard work. This is in contrast to the old way, where family background defined one's role in society to a much greater extent.

Well, one doesn't need search hard to find those thousands that lost (and were forgotten in the next minutes) for every one that has been a winner.

I guess I can take break to ponder a bit over the necessary vs the sufficient.
See, being cautios, having hope and staying positive, persevering and keeping cool will go long way in overcoming the obstacles and may seem like a necessity , but ...
even if you deeply believe in you, better stop kidding yourself: having rich parents is absolutely sufficient and certainly helps more than any and all the above.

Well, enough with the dreams and cliches, I really need to get back to work