Showing the sort of personal initiative that only gets people into trouble
Ain't that the truth in American business or government? I can hear it now:
You should have gone through channels
You stepped outside of the chain of command
You should have run this past the [fill in the blank] committee
We should have had a meeting before implementing this
And the fact that it works, it is in use, its users are absolutely thrilled, it is saving/making the business/government money, and all previous attempts to take one or more of the above bureaucratic steps utterly failed doesn't matter worth a tinker's damn.
Drop the idiotic lie that somehow the government is some alien authority, the government is meant to be an extension of the peoples will.
And in one sentence, you sum up the basic philisophical difference between today's Republicans and "everybody else".
The Republican position disputes that sentence of yours that I have quoted - they hold that government is an extension of specific "special interests" (primarily "business"), and not an "extension of the people" - which I interpret as being "a clear majority".
Raddatz: Two-third of Americans say it's not worth fighting.
Cheney: So?
Raddatz: So? You don't care what the American people think?
Cheney: No.
And why is the above pertinent to this slashdot entry?
To remind those of you who are American voters that you should consider carefully who you vote for - because just as with Supreme Court Justices, FCC commissioners are nominated via a political process and do not necessarily garner that nomination because of their skills, or character, or any other "of the people, by the people, for the people"-oriented criteria that you would like to be able to believe.
Have to agree with Torvalds...where would security vendors be, if they hadn't created the continuing, job-securing sport of "Look what you can do with this unpatched bug!"?
I've been there, too...when you are given responsibility for systems and networks, unless a "higher power" directs you to give access and so assumes the responsibility with the appropriate paper trail, you must base your access decisions upon known criteria: A true need for that access and either demonstrated competence or a demonstrated ability to learn coupled with a demonstrated ability to understand the consequences of exceeding the limits of their knowledge during the learning process.
I ran afoul of "office politics" - lolll...well, more like "corporate politics" - when I reacted to downtime that resulted from incompetence by becoming increasingly restrictive. The next thing I know, my job began to "fade away", and so I departed - but only after dumping the passwords to every system and device that I knew into the hands of my primary adversary and then sending a broadcast email to that effect to everybody who was anybody - said email also containing the firmly-worded recommendation that all such passwords be changed immediately.
To tell you the truth, I no longer trusted my political adversaries even to the extent of expecting that they would protect the corporation's assets now that they had won; advising that passwords that I knew should be changed was designed to protect me from being blamed for something that they subsequently did intentionally or by accident.
You see, there was one thing that I learned during that process: Somewhere between 99% and 100% of the services vendors who wish to get a corporation to outsource their IT support to them will use the "What if [he or she] gets [hit by a truck, meteorite, or falling space shuttle, or wins the lottery]?" argument.
When you start hearing that that argument has been broached by those very people whom you have felt obligated to protect your corporation's assets from, be aware that the heavy artillery has been brought to bear upon you and it is time to polish your resume and attempt to make the transition out of that corporation as smoothly and with as little bitterness as you possibly can.
Although it is terribly depressing, after considering everything that I have observed over the last eight years I have no realistic alternative other than to agree with your conclusion: Yes, anybody who is deemed to be "promotable" in Washington, D.C. would let money override truth and justice.
In a New York minute; it is damned near a job requirement. Which, of course, indicates a leadership failure.
Didn't slashdot just run an entry regarding Microsoft looking for catchier advertising? "2008 is Vista without the suck" may give you a shot at MSOFT VP of Sales if Ballmer sees it.
You could solve each and every one of those problems for yourself and your family if you have one, without having to dump obscene amounts of money to the government. And you could do it cheaper.
Another fascinating theory - you can replace a not-for-profit system with a for-profit system and achieve the same results more cheaply - forever. Halliburton says the same thing.
Oh, I don't have any problem admitting that someone else is smarter than I am; in fact, I find that the more people who are smarter than I am that I have around me, the more successful I am at achieving my goals.
Of course, I know that to keep them around me I have to treat them as I would like to be treated myself, so I don't denigrate their intelligence, nor do I call them names like "geeks". (If they so describe themselves, then so be it.)
In fact, I'm afaid that one the the greatest threats America now faces is the fact that so many resent and distrust intelligent people. The hard times the nation now faces result in no small part from that cult of "nerd- and geek- haters" that has gone on to attain MBAs and run our corporations and even our government - solely for their own benefit.
You're not better or smarter than someone else simply because you understand technology on a more basic level than them.
So if I understand why it isn't dark anymore when somebody flips the wallswitch, I'm quite possibly less intelligent than the person who thinks it is magic?
Interesting. But what happens when the latter individual flips the switch and the light doesn't come on?
All the useful tools in the programmer arsenal have been created by very talented lower-level programmers. And all the useful tools in/their/ arsenal have been created by very talented electrical engineers. And all the useful tools in/their/ arsenal have been created by very talented physicists.
So I mean, you can go down that road if you want, but it doesn't end with programmers looking smart.
I don't know that your approach is correct - particularly in your seeming inference that it is the predecessor who had the talent and deserves the credit - as it is typically the successors who "get it right".
To continue your metaphor:
All of the initial tools in the human race's arsenal were created by very talented monkees.
lollll...gee, all of that BDS-stuff you have embedded in your post strikes me as being "a politically motivated post [...], intended to inflame other posters".
I mean, c'mon - Bush may be your hero, but that doesn't mean he has to be ours...
Might be as simple as the example that this Administration sets:
Under this Administration, government isn't the place for individuals who want to serve the American people and the nation. Applicants should remember that their purpose is to further the causes of Big Business and Big Oil, and any failure to remain "on message" will reflect poorly upon their chances for career advancement.
No, it's racism.
Not only that, but it's horrible security to boot. There are plenty of crazy white people to go around, all some terrorist group would have to do would be to recruit some crazy white dudes and they're set, because security doesn't pay any real attention. [snide]But the crazy white people are running security, so they be definition can't be terrorists.[/snide]
...New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat.
Gee - if Cuomo were a Republican, how would that paragraph have gone? Let me, in the interests of fairness, offer a revision of that paragraph had that been the case:
...New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, a Republican. Cuomo claimed that his office found child porn on 88 newsgroups -- out of roughly 100,000 newsgroups that exist.' After consultations with Cuomo, Verizon will include a $12.99 surcharge on all of its customer's bills to pay for the cost of filtering child pornography.
'in particular zones to limit the speed and/or acceleration of vehicles, to require the use of lights, to verify an indication of insurance coverage and/or current registration, or the like.'
With the proliferation of unattended speed trap cameras as a predictive example, I'd much rather see Microsoft patent and market devices that would prevent you from speeding than I would see, say, the people who make the speed trap cameras patent using the vehicle's OnStar system and GPS mapping capabilities to automatically send you a ticket when you went 36 MPH in a known 35 MPH zone.
Because you know that there are politicians who would see major salary increases in the latter technology...
The one thing the neocons and the neoliberals don't control and that has proved to be a true thorn in their side is the Internet.
I note the legislation says "person" and "emotional distress" - which would seem to encompass my saying that I believe that Cheney and Bush are the biggest crooks and liars we've ever had. Repeatedly. All over the web.
Could they not argue that both my opinion and the facts that anybody and everybody has reported have repeatedly caused them emotional distress and demonstrate a pattern of behavior?
I see a lot of "against a metric" in the patent application.
Given Microsoft's increasingly common practice of failing to roll product out by their much-hyped target dates, it is no surprise to see that they stuck with a non-definition of measurement.
Maybe they should invest more focus and money on project managers and developers and less in patent attorneys....'cuz the latter sure ain't giving them their money's worth.
Hmmm...believe my first opcode chip was the Z-80, but I agree with your sentiments regarding ASM should be taught.
However, my experience with academia and decisions by committee tell me that stuff like C++ and.NET will prevent ASM from being a core requirement. ASM is simply not obfuscated enough, while on paper JMP doesn't look nearly as important as polymorphism.
To the subject at hand, Michael Abrash's Zen of Assembly Language is a good read...
Seeing as how this mess started out with somebody who had the effrontery to cover the breasts of a marble statue of Lady Justice, I'm willing to wager that all kinds of people have changed their behavior since "Wiretaps'R'U.S.".
Someday DRM will be so good that anybody with sufficent access and/or power and the motivation will be able to embed code that you can't read and analyze on the games and dvds that you buy in order to do whatever they want to on your electronic systems...
Once upon a time, you had to turn on a light or pick up the phone or answer the door before somebody could tell if you were at home.
Now, activity on your internet link and/or your set-top cable box and/or (soon) your TV advertises your presence.
Wonder how long it will be until the cable companies automagically feed that info to telemarketers and/or bill collectors and/or your ex and/or professional burglars - for a fee? (And/or one or more government agencies - for free!)
lolll...hey, somebody should patent that idea and lock it away in a deep, dark closet somewhere...
Slashdot Mirror
Showing the sort of personal initiative that only gets people into trouble
Ain't that the truth in American business or government? I can hear it now:
And the fact that it works, it is in use, its users are absolutely thrilled, it is saving/making the business/government money, and all previous attempts to take one or more of the above bureaucratic steps utterly failed doesn't matter worth a tinker's damn.
Drop the idiotic lie that somehow the government is some alien authority, the government is meant to be an extension of the peoples will.
And in one sentence, you sum up the basic philisophical difference between today's Republicans and "everybody else".
The Republican position disputes that sentence of yours that I have quoted - they hold that government is an extension of specific "special interests" (primarily "business"), and not an "extension of the people" - which I interpret as being "a clear majority".
As evidence, I offer the following quotes from a television interview between Dick Cheney and ABC's Martha Raddatz http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/19/cheney-unconcerned-by-iraq-wars-unpopularity/:
Raddatz: Two-third of Americans say it's not worth fighting.
Cheney: So?
Raddatz: So? You don't care what the American people think?
Cheney: No.
And why is the above pertinent to this slashdot entry?
To remind those of you who are American voters that you should consider carefully who you vote for - because just as with Supreme Court Justices, FCC commissioners are nominated via a political process and do not necessarily garner that nomination because of their skills, or character, or any other "of the people, by the people, for the people"-oriented criteria that you would like to be able to believe.
Tea, juice, soda, and so on. Tap water in Beijing is not potable.
Ok, that covers water substitutes. Any ideas for air?
Have to agree with Torvalds...where would security vendors be, if they hadn't created the continuing, job-securing sport of "Look what you can do with this unpatched bug!"?
mgblst said:
What, make millions of dollars, and be the envy and pride of management all around the world?
Remember, it is only geeks who see what she did as wrong? She merged two huge companies, successfully
To which I rudely add the facts:
On Sept. 4, 2001, HP and Compaq announced the merger, H-P's stock closed at $18.87, down sharply from $23.21 the previous trading day.
On May 3, 2002, when the deal was officially consummated, the stock ended the day at $17.44.
Sept. 21, 2004, the shares stood at $18.70.
February 19th, 2005, Carly steps down and the stock stands at $19.24.
Today, Carly is long gone, so no doubt "geek" haters and other revisionists are gloating over the continued slide in HP's stock price...
Except for the minor technical difficulty presented by the fact that at yesterday's (July 21st, 2008) close, HP's price was $63.30....
I've been there, too...when you are given responsibility for systems and networks, unless a "higher power" directs you to give access and so assumes the responsibility with the appropriate paper trail, you must base your access decisions upon known criteria: A true need for that access and either demonstrated competence or a demonstrated ability to learn coupled with a demonstrated ability to understand the consequences of exceeding the limits of their knowledge during the learning process.
I ran afoul of "office politics" - lolll...well, more like "corporate politics" - when I reacted to downtime that resulted from incompetence by becoming increasingly restrictive. The next thing I know, my job began to "fade away", and so I departed - but only after dumping the passwords to every system and device that I knew into the hands of my primary adversary and then sending a broadcast email to that effect to everybody who was anybody - said email also containing the firmly-worded recommendation that all such passwords be changed immediately.
To tell you the truth, I no longer trusted my political adversaries even to the extent of expecting that they would protect the corporation's assets now that they had won; advising that passwords that I knew should be changed was designed to protect me from being blamed for something that they subsequently did intentionally or by accident.
You see, there was one thing that I learned during that process: Somewhere between 99% and 100% of the services vendors who wish to get a corporation to outsource their IT support to them will use the "What if [he or she] gets [hit by a truck, meteorite, or falling space shuttle, or wins the lottery]?" argument.
When you start hearing that that argument has been broached by those very people whom you have felt obligated to protect your corporation's assets from, be aware that the heavy artillery has been brought to bear upon you and it is time to polish your resume and attempt to make the transition out of that corporation as smoothly and with as little bitterness as you possibly can.
A lot of equipment makers will cry about that.
Although it is terribly depressing, after considering everything that I have observed over the last eight years I have no realistic alternative other than to agree with your conclusion: Yes, anybody who is deemed to be "promotable" in Washington, D.C. would let money override truth and justice.
In a New York minute; it is damned near a job requirement. Which, of course, indicates a leadership failure.
Didn't slashdot just run an entry regarding Microsoft looking for catchier advertising? "2008 is Vista without the suck" may give you a shot at MSOFT VP of Sales if Ballmer sees it.
You could solve each and every one of those problems for yourself and your family if you have one, without having to dump obscene amounts of money to the government. And you could do it cheaper.
Another fascinating theory - you can replace a not-for-profit system with a for-profit system and achieve the same results more cheaply - forever. Halliburton says the same thing.
In short, they have never lived in the type of third world country that they demand that the United States be remade into. Ignorance is bliss.
Oh, I don't have any problem admitting that someone else is smarter than I am; in fact, I find that the more people who are smarter than I am that I have around me, the more successful I am at achieving my goals.
Of course, I know that to keep them around me I have to treat them as I would like to be treated myself, so I don't denigrate their intelligence, nor do I call them names like "geeks". (If they so describe themselves, then so be it.)
In fact, I'm afaid that one the the greatest threats America now faces is the fact that so many resent and distrust intelligent people. The hard times the nation now faces result in no small part from that cult of "nerd- and geek- haters" that has gone on to attain MBAs and run our corporations and even our government - solely for their own benefit.
You're not better or smarter than someone else simply because you understand technology on a more basic level than them.
So if I understand why it isn't dark anymore when somebody flips the wallswitch, I'm quite possibly less intelligent than the person who thinks it is magic?
Interesting. But what happens when the latter individual flips the switch and the light doesn't come on?
All the useful tools in the programmer arsenal have been created by very talented lower-level programmers. /their/ arsenal have been created by very talented electrical engineers. /their/ arsenal have been created by very talented physicists.
And all the useful tools in
And all the useful tools in
So I mean, you can go down that road if you want, but it doesn't end with programmers looking smart.
I don't know that your approach is correct - particularly in your seeming inference that it is the predecessor who had the talent and deserves the credit - as it is typically the successors who "get it right".
To continue your metaphor:
All of the initial tools in the human race's arsenal were created by very talented monkees.
...when I googled "ten four software", I found this:
http://www.chinahuaxue.com/en/law_compute.htmMade me laugh - my search results were unrelated to the article at hand, yet absolutely related to the article at hand...
lollll...gee, all of that BDS-stuff you have embedded in your post strikes me as being "a politically motivated post [...], intended to inflame other posters".
I mean, c'mon - Bush may be your hero, but that doesn't mean he has to be ours...
Might be as simple as the example that this Administration sets:
Under this Administration, government isn't the place for individuals who want to serve the American people and the nation. Applicants should remember that their purpose is to further the causes of Big Business and Big Oil, and any failure to remain "on message" will reflect poorly upon their chances for career advancement.
...New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat.Gee - if Cuomo were a Republican, how would that paragraph have gone? Let me, in the interests of fairness, offer a revision of that paragraph had that been the case:
...New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, a Republican. Cuomo claimed that his office found child porn on 88 newsgroups -- out of roughly 100,000 newsgroups that exist.' After consultations with Cuomo, Verizon will include a $12.99 surcharge on all of its customer's bills to pay for the cost of filtering child pornography.With the proliferation of unattended speed trap cameras as a predictive example, I'd much rather see Microsoft patent and market devices that would prevent you from speeding than I would see, say, the people who make the speed trap cameras patent using the vehicle's OnStar system and GPS mapping capabilities to automatically send you a ticket when you went 36 MPH in a known 35 MPH zone.
Because you know that there are politicians who would see major salary increases in the latter technology...
The one thing the neocons and the neoliberals don't control and that has proved to be a true thorn in their side is the Internet.
I note the legislation says "person" and "emotional distress" - which would seem to encompass my saying that I believe that Cheney and Bush are the biggest crooks and liars we've ever had. Repeatedly. All over the web.
Could they not argue that both my opinion and the facts that anybody and everybody has reported have repeatedly caused them emotional distress and demonstrate a pattern of behavior?
I see a lot of "against a metric" in the patent application.
Given Microsoft's increasingly common practice of failing to roll product out by their much-hyped target dates, it is no surprise to see that they stuck with a non-definition of measurement.
Maybe they should invest more focus and money on project managers and developers and less in patent attorneys....'cuz the latter sure ain't giving them their money's worth.
Hmmm...believe my first opcode chip was the Z-80, but I agree with your sentiments regarding ASM should be taught.
However, my experience with academia and decisions by committee tell me that stuff like C++ and .NET will prevent ASM from being a core requirement. ASM is simply not obfuscated enough, while on paper JMP doesn't look nearly as important as polymorphism.
To the subject at hand, Michael Abrash's Zen of Assembly Language is a good read...
Seeing as how this mess started out with somebody who had the effrontery to cover the breasts of a marble statue of Lady Justice, I'm willing to wager that all kinds of people have changed their behavior since "Wiretaps'R'U.S.".
Someday DRM will be so good that anybody with sufficent access and/or power and the motivation will be able to embed code that you can't read and analyze on the games and dvds that you buy in order to do whatever they want to on your electronic systems...
Once upon a time, you had to turn on a light or pick up the phone or answer the door before somebody could tell if you were at home.
Now, activity on your internet link and/or your set-top cable box and/or (soon) your TV advertises your presence.
Wonder how long it will be until the cable companies automagically feed that info to telemarketers and/or bill collectors and/or your ex and/or professional burglars - for a fee? (And/or one or more government agencies - for free!)
lolll...hey, somebody should patent that idea and lock it away in a deep, dark closet somewhere...