but conversely, most companies should not have to fear that their
information technology drags them into the red (such is the case when you
succumb to proprietary software). how to reduce fear? reduce risk. how to
reduce risk? reduce dependence on uncontrollable externalities.
"but i'm a lazy SOB of a CIO who doesn't want to sport an in-house free
software expert (aka Programmer), preferring instead to "lead" the cheers by
putting into place a sea of sharp-suited dull-witted adminis-traitors, so we
can all wet our pants discussing the latest boob-tube butterfly-placebo
instead of doing that other stuff. doing a good job is Hard."
well then, let's hope your CEO is similarly short-sighted so that your
company can be boarded and looted by those who respond to challenges in a more
entrepreneurial fashion. otherwise, how can you justify your department?
what do you bring to the table besides false fuzzies? why shouldn't your
department be out-sourced? immediately?
in the end, free software is helpful to the CIO who knows how to protect
the department by means of quality instead of deceit. that's all there is to
it. choose wisely.
i'm no economist but to my untrained eye, measuring "economic
reality" is at its heart a relative (comparative) activity. kind of
like a related rates problem w/ many many many factors. one thing i
have found interesting is to look at the historical behavior of the exchange rate
between the EUR and the USD and speculate as to reasons for the
parity flip since mid-late 2002.
i think if the EU follows the IP lunacy of the US, the graph between
EUR and those currencies of countries that don't adopt such
race-to-the-bottom thinking (e.g., east asian "2nd world" countries)
will begin to look similar to this, and not long after that, the parity
flip will place US/EU in 2nd world status.
if you can make it to brussels, i suggest printing this graph out
and prodding people w/ the question "how do you really measure
economic reality?"
i went to the wise man and asked for advice. "what kind of O/S to use, what's really nice?" his beatific smile froze, eyes shrunk like a drunk mole, whispered conspiringly: "emacs on console".
"what?!" i gasped, shocked, for how could it be this self-styled geezer freak lecturing me? my gigahertz beige steed sits awaiting the splendor; i had no need for this aging freedom defender.
so i maxed out by fat pipe and installed all the ISOs, task bar set one-click to grep google and lycos, hardened and locked down and securely security-patched, wallpapered and skin-toned and alpha blend cross-hatched.
and now to get cracking: i had much work to do. had to write some rad shareware and slick manpages, too. had to divine physics laws, apply methods numerical, had to slather my ears w/ songs dull and hysterical.
in such a way i passed hours of enjoyment, built up enough skills to muster gainful employment. real world happiness, that's what i achieved, pocketbook full, due to what i believed.
but lately i've wondered, is all this enough for me? have i been blind, perhaps i'm too "tough" to see? where is the respect i thought i'd have by now? all these riches yet the hackers don't scrape and bow?
they call me a user and sometimes with "l" prefixed. my opinions aren't sought, my postings are simply pre-nixed. dammit what do i have to do to get street cred? lawyer, who can i sue to save embarrassment beet red?
bellicose times these are, w/ the lawyers in charge. and still the wise man floats not alone on his barge. maybe i'll join him after all, lay down my wrong role. maybe i can find happiness by using emacs on console.
i went to the wise man and asked for advice.
"what kind of O/S to use, what's really nice?"
his beatific smile froze, eyes shrunk like a drunk mole,
whispered conspiringly: "emacs on console".
"what?!" i gasped, shocked, for how could it be
this self-styled geezer freak lecturing me?
my gigahertz beige steed sits awaiting the splendor;
i had no need for this aging freedom defender.
so i maxed out by fat pipe and installed all the ISOs,
task bar set one-click to grep google and lycos,
hardened and locked down and securely security-patched,
wallpapered and skin-toned and alpha blend cross-hatched.
and now to get cracking: i had much work to do.
had to write some rad shareware and slick manpages, too.
had to divine physics laws, apply methods numerical,
had to slather my ears w/ songs dull and hysterical.
in such a way i passed hours of enjoyment,
built up enough skills to muster gainful employment.
real world happiness, that's what i achieved,
pocketbook full, due to what i believed.
but lately i've wondered, is all this enough for me?
have i been blind, perhaps i'm too "tough" to see?
where is the respect i thought i'd have by now?
all these riches yet the hackers don't scrape and bow?
they call me a user and sometimes with "l" prefixed.
my opinions aren't sought, my postings are simply pre-nixed.
dammit what do i have to do to get street cred?
lawyer, who can i sue to save embarrassment beet red?
bellicose times these are, w/ the lawyers in charge.
and still the wise man floats not alone on his barge.
maybe i'll join him after all, lay down my wrong role.
maybe i can find happiness by using emacs on console.
"credit" in personal finance is more akin to "slack" in programming
than to "advertisement", although it's no surprise that social dynamics
of limited-mindshare systems evolve the concept towards post-facto
visiblity-oriented connotations.
the crux of the matter is limited mindshare. in an elightened society
w/o these kinds of limits, slack is the better currency; slack is what
allows people who know you (and your work) to shrug off minor (or
even major) transgressions in favor of a postponed evaluation. lazy
binding, baby!
how much to postpone then becomes the question. presumably when you
are dead there is no point postponing further, unless you've written
some really good self-modifying code, or planted the seeds thereof
in enough people who are willing to prefix their credit to yours.
and, face it, that's something that's outside your control.
initially i was going to say, "just ignore the noise".
but, let's be creative here... you're IBM, you're a big multinational
company w/ relatively good social standing (we can forgive the wwii
profiteering if you handle the next few years correctly), you're
involved in hardware, software, services, etc., the money flux through
your accounting department keeps people employed and communication
flowing between different world cultures, you have the nads to support
the people who do the work. ok, fine.
because you are in such a position of power, and transnational in the
extreme, you might as well take on the mantle of "world leader" and
DTRT for everyone: buy this little company for peanuts and put its
management to work undoing all the petty fecal material it and its
ilk have been spewing. develop a "ministry of transparency" whose
primary task is to reflect upon FUD ("hey we're experts") and educate
people on how to recognize the techniques. nothing is more persuasive
(not to mention entertaining) than a reformed FUD-monger -- it would
be like those shows where "magicians reveal their secrets".
why is this preferable to the world leader? that's for you to figure
out; i'm just giving implementation advice here.:-)
a decision-making process, like software, benefits from
being open because then bugs can be spotted and fixed, assuming
the maintainers of that process are willing to accept patches.
a good decision-making process can handle many types of decisions
using the most general algorithms applicable (i.e., general enough
but not too general). see the good venezualen senator's point by
point description for a start.
a bad decision-making process handles few types of decisions because
it is data-dependent. in this case, that means nyc public administration
is trying to squeeze lobbying dollars out of the vendors (usloth) in
exchange for long-term vendor lock-in.
only two marketing/sales per developer? that's low by an order of magnitude.
really, paying for usloth software is paying for crappy advertisements and
snow jobs. then, using it is locking yourself into this position. blech.
earlier i mentioned i was a reformed idealist, but that still makes me an
idealist nonetheless. in any case, i personally don't find my idealism
affected by those usloth products, not being in the practice of installing
them on my machines. no, the reform part is in how i project my idealism,
i.e., how i react when others don't see the light immediately. in some ways
this change of behavior is more ideal, so i guess that's fine too.
what exactly is being output from the U.S. these days,
aside from claims on the absurd (IP laws + lawsuits)
and spam "technology"? when will the dollar find
parity
w/ the euro again? (probably when EC adopts similarly short-sighted
laws, sigh.)
flotsam and jetsam, the felled logs fill the river. huddled and starving, i watch the runoff, and shiver.
industrious whores
duplicitous mores happy and shouting, reduced the great forest to slivers.
a few years more of this self-induced flood will drown all the tears and soil all the blood.
mole-like ruminition
soul-spiked extradition can no longer find fungus in the long-buried mud.
but swamps never stand a chance against that meteor unexpected. and insects adapt, somehow, to the sulfurous brine detected.
so i cannot but suppose
that all will decompose and start again the cycle neither accepted nor rejected.
yo geeks, engineer society
on
Linus on DRM
·
· Score: 1
hehe, engineers saying "i don't care" is like a geek saying "kick me"
(followed by "i don't care"). no one says you need to care, but if you
declare you don't, you will be used by those who do. maybe that's ok if the
use is not abuse, but maybe that's too loose a noose, and ends up actually
being a ruse. (says those who win to those who lose.)
"those who can, do. those who can't, teach." wake up engineers, this
simplistic homily does not apply to you; you are both able to do and thus, you
are able to teach those who would study your actions. the question is, what
are you teaching?
ok, all the hard boiled eggs now say "everything has a consequence, get used
to it". that's fine and good. my question is: what is the consequence of
hypocrisy? subquestions: first, how is hypocrisy identified? how is it
mis-identified? what is the reaction? what is the non-reaction? at what
point does non-reaction and reaction become indistinguishable?
people will hate anything easily enough, that's not a difficult weed to
cultivate.
as a reformed idealist, i can see you will go through bitter times; that is
our lot in life. my advice: better for your own sanity to apply idealism to
good deeds than to hope in vain for such by others. one way is to realize "X
can be Y" is a statement of possibility, a perfect thought, a crystal-clear
point undebatable and unfortunately, unrelated to "X will by Y". to
undersetand the latter well enough to debate its intracacies is no easy feat
for an idealist, reformed or no. i wish you luck.
pretty good analysis, but lacking dimensionality (hence this comment could be
considered tangentially on-topic:-). ok, so "people have inertia", that is
fine. now realize that that is only fine as a snapshot, a slice of time. do
you think people new to computers have inertia? if not, what is the best way
to thwart the blind inertia that they may well pick up from those around them,
from their predecessors, from so-called "insightful" slashdot posts?
well, you kindly provide refutation in the title of your post: SOUNDS
like a great choice. literacy that stops at swallowing PR is almost worse
than no literacy at all. try to think critically, eh?
oh i forgot, land of the consume[rd], home of the marketeers...
let's just jump to the conclusion while we can still express it publicly. any
psychologist versed in modern western culture will tell you: when a woman
fronts for a man's dirty work, the perception (of dirt) is lessened. when a
man fronts for a woman's dirty work, the perception (of dirt) is enhanced. in
this case, the woman is the government corporate (think about it), the man
fronting that is the government, and the woman fronting all of that is this
"privacy czar".
another bit of irony: isn't the "drug czar" supposed to "fight drugs"? what
does that make the privacy czar? so you see it's very easy to confuse the
issue at both the general and specific levels: criminalize the legitimate and
legitimize the criminal. in this way the society destroys its honor.
forget websites and all that crap. you want to turn a mind towards the
art of programming (arguably a superset of education itself, if one
applies the techniques selfwards)?
make sure you're on the net and your MTA is properly configured;
(ok that last one is getting into indoctrination but you've already done
the corporate damage, why not a little humor in the process...:-)
anyway, i'm always glad to see people teaching others through their good
deeds. bravo! (basically the only lesson you need to teach is that you
yourself know how to enjoy learning -- that is an example that sticks --
and what better way to learn than to debug --er-- program?)
your analysis is pretty good, but for one false step: greed doesn't come after
exposure to the coveted; instead, it is taught to the young by those parents
experienced in greed and comfortable w/ its effect of inducing blindness in
its practioners. when i say parents i mean in the mindset sense, i mean in
the sense that the impressionable (young and old) will learn from watching the
actions of those before them, their progenitors (bioligical and memetic).
happy hacking, "outside the family", and "for the family"...
hee hee, economists affiliated w/ headhunter companies, what merrier spew and
headier brew could we ask for? here's the game: headhunters are rely on fresh
mushrooms growing so that they can do their job (cut off their heads and get a
piece of the churn). it is in their interests to spin all changes as
positive because when things change, they get their cut. but, the tech sector
is on its knees now and many people in the industry know the game enough to
have lost faith in these fine middlemen (typical fee: 30-45% first year
salary, just to throw out yet another meaningless statistic).
i would love to see an "independent" economist predict the truth. it's easy,
just say: "i will tell you nice stories and disappear when the chickens return
to roost; i cannot be trusted w/ plough or policy; i hide behind my formalized
fudge factors; i don't produce anything."
as it is, when headhunters use economists for marketing purposes, you know
there's going to be two heads rolling sooner or later, not just one...
my crack team of critical media analysts have identified the usage of
conditional tense in this article. all the "could be", "might be", "would
be", etc were boiled down to the simple executive summary: NEXT!
no, i'm not talking about the old cubes from cupertino, just that this class
of article has basis in speculation and not in economic law, as the the title
of the magazine would have you believe. thus, you can safely skip it (and the
rest of this post...)
the nice thing about economic law is that, regardless of interpretation by
economists, manipulation by local power regimes, and so forth, zero cost is
still zero cost is still zero cost is still zero cost. so what if usgov and
usloth prop each other up; the rest of the world can understand this economic
law, live peacably within it, and mutually avoid irrelevance through this
understanding.
it's easy to be irrelevant (take it from an expert) the trick is how to do it
and still have a good time w/ the other ones and zeroes on this rabid rock.
Slashdot Mirror
but conversely, most companies should not have to fear that their information technology drags them into the red (such is the case when you succumb to proprietary software). how to reduce fear? reduce risk. how to reduce risk? reduce dependence on uncontrollable externalities.
"but i'm a lazy SOB of a CIO who doesn't want to sport an in-house free software expert (aka Programmer), preferring instead to "lead" the cheers by putting into place a sea of sharp-suited dull-witted adminis-traitors, so we can all wet our pants discussing the latest boob-tube butterfly-placebo instead of doing that other stuff. doing a good job is Hard."
well then, let's hope your CEO is similarly short-sighted so that your company can be boarded and looted by those who respond to challenges in a more entrepreneurial fashion. otherwise, how can you justify your department? what do you bring to the table besides false fuzzies? why shouldn't your department be out-sourced? immediately?
in the end, free software is helpful to the CIO who knows how to protect the department by means of quality instead of deceit. that's all there is to it. choose wisely.
i'm no economist but to my untrained eye, measuring "economic reality" is at its heart a relative (comparative) activity. kind of like a related rates problem w/ many many many factors. one thing i have found interesting is to look at the historical behavior of the exchange rate between the EUR and the USD and speculate as to reasons for the parity flip since mid-late 2002.
i think if the EU follows the IP lunacy of the US, the graph between EUR and those currencies of countries that don't adopt such race-to-the-bottom thinking (e.g., east asian "2nd world" countries) will begin to look similar to this, and not long after that, the parity flip will place US/EU in 2nd world status.
if you can make it to brussels, i suggest printing this graph out and prodding people w/ the question "how do you really measure economic reality?"
i went to the wise man and asked for advice.
"what kind of O/S to use, what's really nice?"
his beatific smile froze, eyes shrunk like a drunk mole,
whispered conspiringly: "emacs on console".
"what?!" i gasped, shocked, for how could it be
this self-styled geezer freak lecturing me?
my gigahertz beige steed sits awaiting the splendor;
i had no need for this aging freedom defender.
so i maxed out by fat pipe and installed all the ISOs,
task bar set one-click to grep google and lycos,
hardened and locked down and securely security-patched,
wallpapered and skin-toned and alpha blend cross-hatched.
and now to get cracking: i had much work to do.
had to write some rad shareware and slick manpages, too.
had to divine physics laws, apply methods numerical,
had to slather my ears w/ songs dull and hysterical.
in such a way i passed hours of enjoyment,
built up enough skills to muster gainful employment.
real world happiness, that's what i achieved,
pocketbook full, due to what i believed.
but lately i've wondered, is all this enough for me?
have i been blind, perhaps i'm too "tough" to see?
where is the respect i thought i'd have by now?
all these riches yet the hackers don't scrape and bow?
they call me a user and sometimes with "l" prefixed.
my opinions aren't sought, my postings are simply pre-nixed.
dammit what do i have to do to get street cred?
lawyer, who can i sue to save embarrassment beet red?
bellicose times these are, w/ the lawyers in charge.
and still the wise man floats not alone on his barge.
maybe i'll join him after all, lay down my wrong role.
maybe i can find happiness by using emacs on console.
i went to the wise man and asked for advice. "what kind of O/S to use, what's really nice?" his beatific smile froze, eyes shrunk like a drunk mole, whispered conspiringly: "emacs on console". "what?!" i gasped, shocked, for how could it be this self-styled geezer freak lecturing me? my gigahertz beige steed sits awaiting the splendor; i had no need for this aging freedom defender. so i maxed out by fat pipe and installed all the ISOs, task bar set one-click to grep google and lycos, hardened and locked down and securely security-patched, wallpapered and skin-toned and alpha blend cross-hatched. and now to get cracking: i had much work to do. had to write some rad shareware and slick manpages, too. had to divine physics laws, apply methods numerical, had to slather my ears w/ songs dull and hysterical. in such a way i passed hours of enjoyment, built up enough skills to muster gainful employment. real world happiness, that's what i achieved, pocketbook full, due to what i believed. but lately i've wondered, is all this enough for me? have i been blind, perhaps i'm too "tough" to see? where is the respect i thought i'd have by now? all these riches yet the hackers don't scrape and bow? they call me a user and sometimes with "l" prefixed. my opinions aren't sought, my postings are simply pre-nixed. dammit what do i have to do to get street cred? lawyer, who can i sue to save embarrassment beet red? bellicose times these are, w/ the lawyers in charge. and still the wise man floats not alone on his barge. maybe i'll join him after all, lay down my wrong role. maybe i can find happiness by using emacs on console.
the crux of the matter is limited mindshare. in an elightened society w/o these kinds of limits, slack is the better currency; slack is what allows people who know you (and your work) to shrug off minor (or even major) transgressions in favor of a postponed evaluation. lazy binding, baby!
how much to postpone then becomes the question. presumably when you are dead there is no point postponing further, unless you've written some really good self-modifying code, or planted the seeds thereof in enough people who are willing to prefix their credit to yours. and, face it, that's something that's outside your control.
but, let's be creative here... you're IBM, you're a big multinational company w/ relatively good social standing (we can forgive the wwii profiteering if you handle the next few years correctly), you're involved in hardware, software, services, etc., the money flux through your accounting department keeps people employed and communication flowing between different world cultures, you have the nads to support the people who do the work. ok, fine.
because you are in such a position of power, and transnational in the extreme, you might as well take on the mantle of "world leader" and DTRT for everyone: buy this little company for peanuts and put its management to work undoing all the petty fecal material it and its ilk have been spewing. develop a "ministry of transparency" whose primary task is to reflect upon FUD ("hey we're experts") and educate people on how to recognize the techniques. nothing is more persuasive (not to mention entertaining) than a reformed FUD-monger -- it would be like those shows where "magicians reveal their secrets".
why is this preferable to the world leader? that's for you to figure out; i'm just giving implementation advice here. :-)
a good decision-making process can handle many types of decisions using the most general algorithms applicable (i.e., general enough but not too general). see the good venezualen senator's point by point description for a start.
a bad decision-making process handles few types of decisions because it is data-dependent. in this case, that means nyc public administration is trying to squeeze lobbying dollars out of the vendors (usloth) in exchange for long-term vendor lock-in.
"same as the old boss."
can you guess who?
anyway, good luck to all job seekers.
flotsam and jetsam, the felled logs fill the river.
huddled and starving, i watch the runoff, and shiver.
industrious whores
duplicitous mores
happy and shouting, reduced the great forest to slivers.
a few years more of this self-induced flood
will drown all the tears and soil all the blood.
mole-like ruminition
soul-spiked extradition
can no longer find fungus in the long-buried mud.
but swamps never stand a chance against that meteor unexpected.
and insects adapt, somehow, to the sulfurous brine detected.
so i cannot but suppose
that all will decompose
and start again the cycle neither accepted nor rejected.
"those who can, do. those who can't, teach." wake up engineers, this simplistic homily does not apply to you; you are both able to do and thus, you are able to teach those who would study your actions. the question is, what are you teaching?
people will hate anything easily enough, that's not a difficult weed to cultivate.
as a reformed idealist, i can see you will go through bitter times; that is our lot in life. my advice: better for your own sanity to apply idealism to good deeds than to hope in vain for such by others. one way is to realize "X can be Y" is a statement of possibility, a perfect thought, a crystal-clear point undebatable and unfortunately, unrelated to "X will by Y". to undersetand the latter well enough to debate its intracacies is no easy feat for an idealist, reformed or no. i wish you luck.
oh i forgot, land of the consume[rd], home of the marketeers...
let's just jump to the conclusion while we can still express it publicly. any psychologist versed in modern western culture will tell you: when a woman fronts for a man's dirty work, the perception (of dirt) is lessened. when a man fronts for a woman's dirty work, the perception (of dirt) is enhanced. in this case, the woman is the government corporate (think about it), the man fronting that is the government, and the woman fronting all of that is this "privacy czar".
another bit of irony: isn't the "drug czar" supposed to "fight drugs"? what does that make the privacy czar? so you see it's very easy to confuse the issue at both the general and specific levels: criminalize the legitimate and legitimize the criminal. in this way the society destroys its honor.
(ok that last one is getting into indoctrination but you've already done the corporate damage, why not a little humor in the process... :-)
anyway, i'm always glad to see people teaching others through their good deeds. bravo! (basically the only lesson you need to teach is that you yourself know how to enjoy learning -- that is an example that sticks -- and what better way to learn than to debug --er-- program?)
happy hacking, "outside the family", and "for the family"...
i would love to see an "independent" economist predict the truth. it's easy, just say: "i will tell you nice stories and disappear when the chickens return to roost; i cannot be trusted w/ plough or policy; i hide behind my formalized fudge factors; i don't produce anything."
as it is, when headhunters use economists for marketing purposes, you know there's going to be two heads rolling sooner or later, not just one...
no, i'm not talking about the old cubes from cupertino, just that this class of article has basis in speculation and not in economic law, as the the title of the magazine would have you believe. thus, you can safely skip it (and the rest of this post...)
the nice thing about economic law is that, regardless of interpretation by economists, manipulation by local power regimes, and so forth, zero cost is still zero cost is still zero cost is still zero cost. so what if usgov and usloth prop each other up; the rest of the world can understand this economic law, live peacably within it, and mutually avoid irrelevance through this understanding.
it's easy to be irrelevant (take it from an expert) the trick is how to do it and still have a good time w/ the other ones and zeroes on this rabid rock.