Cynics as you describe then will never make anything great in their life. In other words, they waste their life for mediocrity.
They're not cynics. What they are, are people who define "making something great" as making lots of money. This is their goal in life--and they know that for 90% of the market, "average" sells. You don't have to make the best product out there, you just have to be the best at making a product that's good enough. And their reward is getting paid for it. The intention behind your point is true: these managers and execs aren't artisans in any traditional sense we can think of. They don't take real pride in a product they're responsible for. What they take pride in is their paycheck, and the amount of stock options they've accumulated. For the vast, vast majority of humanity, that's enough. Accumulating wealth is "winning" to them. They are materialistic, and that is their motivation for existence.
I think we here on/. tend to lose sight of that, because although we're a bunch of anarcho-libertarian punkass coders, devs, artists, and general geeks, most of us have an artistic streak running through us. Most of us code, or build, or maintain something, and we take pride in that.
Speaking as someone who came into the IT industry in his 30's and is a finance analyst, I can tell you this: business is a game. Your managers and your product managers and your executives (particularly those with MBAs) all know that business is a meta-level game. It doesn't matter what you produce, code, or what market you serve--at a certain level it's all about profit, loss, retooling your resources, and ultimately figuring out what tactics will generate maximum profit while keeping costs as low as possible. Those business ratios you speak of are what businesses live and die by at the Exec/Managerial level. Or, think of it as a MTG game: you have two or more players, with a 60 card deck. Depending on the build of the decks involved, one player could recycle their cards from the graveyard, while the other person has a burn deck. No matter what--the game is going to come to an end at some point. Each player has a win strategy, which also coincidentally happens to be an exit strategy. The game goes on, each player uses their resources as best they can. One person wins, one person loses, and that's it. They then move on to another game. That's exactly what happens in the executive/managerial world, especially in IT. Quality, quantity, reputation, service, sales, they're all just levers. Now, you'll always have the rare company that focuses on a specific reason for its existence that ISN'T primarily to make profit (Pixar, Apple, Google) but those are a rarity. Sturgeon's law applies to business operations just as it does to anything else. Business is a game--and for 90% of the employers out there, you are a replaceable resource who will be kept on as long as your value (technical, social, etc.) exceeds your cost, because that's what business IS. It's a process, a game.
To me, it's shocking how many product managers I've met who don't really give a damn about their products, they're more focused on developing their products to be -good enough- to sell in the market. But then once I spent enough time around them (and most of them are just MBAs), it made sense. They learned that business is just a game, and they don't take it personally. They have enough connections and networking that they simply move on to the next job and treat it like a game too. The rest of us (non-execs and managers) take this personally--and that's our problem.
Kill lots of people. LOTS and LOTS of people, on order of hundreds of millions. All at once, preferably, or within as short an amount of time as possible. Energy Crisis is then solved.
Agree completely. When it's my time, I'm taking the long walk. I will meet my maker, or oblivion, under a starry winter night sky far from civilization. That's how I want to go.
Would you? Would YOU truly do that, if someone trusted you enough to give you stuff that they worked hard for, under the conditions that you care for it and give it back when you're done? Would YOU, Fractoid, be that person to breach that trust?
Quiet, you! You're *this* close to being considered an Elder One and being banished back to the eldritch crypts to await the time when the stars are right.
I just love the thought of the FSB, Mossad, MI5, and just about every other foreign intelligence network on Earth (and those are merely the legal ones) running rampant throughout our country and society without the CIA to check them. Gosh, that'd be so much fun to just lower our guard and take punches! Oh hey, maybe those other nations would be so friendly towards us once we dismantled our intelligence apparatus that they'd willingly leave us alone! And forswear corporate espionage to boot!
Dismantle the NSA, yes. Spread it out amongst the other agencies, yes. But don't disarm us completely. The CIA has screwed up a lot, so has the FBI--but they're still good ideas to have in place. We as a society have to reassume the responsibility, and the maturity of overseeing the operations of those two agencies on an appropriate basis.
The scary thing is that there are people out there today in our society who would cheerfully take children from the lower classes and toss them into factories, because their personal identity is bound up in a classist/caste view of society, with themselves being at the pinnacle. They would, and do (quietly) view it as "doing a favor to those who are beneath me".
My conscience pinged me on this one -- you are also right about each cycle getting a little better. My biggest desire is that people would step back, consider the cycle, realize that they cannot *solve* the problem, but considerate amelioration and solutions do work in the long term.
Your points are well taken. I would argue that the NSA initially began with good intentions. I can also say that in the weeks and months following 9/11, there was a lot of attention suddenly given to the inadequacies of our intelligence network, both foreign and domestic. We as a nation decried the lack of Arabic speakers, we demanded more & better domestic surveillance because it boggled everyone's mind how the CIA and FBI failed to connect the dots regarding 19 Saudi nationals enrolling at different flight schools after being flagged as potential terrorists by the CIA. I'll also give you credit for your word that you advocated actual fixes--you have courage and I can't imagine how much hate and flack you must have gotten.
We need to get away with from the authoritarian framing of the problem of our society being constantly vulnerable and change from a surveillance state to a resilience state - where we accept life has risks, where we will take precautions proportional to the risks and spend the rest of our resources on living productive lives instead of lives of irrational fear.
I see and acknowledge your point. My counterpoint is that your answer will never happen for one simple reason: children. We as a democratic society dominated by the elderly get all sorts of irrational about the safety and protection of children. And you cannot fight irrationality, you cannot fight stupid, and you cannot fight well-intentioned ignorance. You simply cannot--no one can. Hence my statement about there being no answers, there is only the cycle.
Democratic governments the world over are in a classic catch-22: they're damned if they do and they're damned if they don't. Prior to 9-11, we had pretty good safeguards in place against domestic spying. Watergate and the revelations of what J. Edgar Hoover did put a bad taste in everyone's mouth in the US about domestic spying. Then a bunch of nihilistic apostate Saudis flew airplanes into the Twin Towers, and over 3000 Americans died in the space of a single morning. The entire world watches in shock and horror--and then following America's lead, immediately begins investigating how this could have happened. And as the US discovers very quickly, it happened due to intentional inefficiencies and silo-ization of intelligence.
If there is one thing we Americans cannot stand more than anything else, it's inefficiency. We want our government/society/economy to WORK, dammit! Make it effective and efficient! The families of 9/11, and the politicians discover to their horror that this all could have easily been prevented, had we made our internal counterintelligence and domestic crime monitoring more efficient. The worst part is that 9/11 really could have been prevented --so easily--, and that's what led to the Patriot Act, the NSA, all of it. And it's not just America that learns this lesson.
So now the Canadians are following in America's footsteps, because no government, Liberal or Conservative, wants to be blamed for the next attack. And, there always will be a next attack. Maybe not from Islamists, maybe not from brown-skinned people, but there always will be. No one wants to be the one person on the news who's faced with the "Why didn't you stop this!" question. Imagine if you will what would have happened if John Ashcroft and President Bush had stepped up together following 9/11 and said "We understand that this could have been prevented if the FBI, CIA, and NSA had shared their information, but we're not about to dismantle federal policy to facilitate that because we don't want to turn America into a police state". Just imagine for a moment, the response that would have come to that statement from an enraged nation--let alone the entire state of New York.
What's really, really funny is that on/., we are all pro-privacy, pro-dismantling of the security apparatus. But none of us ever stop to consider if we'd change our tune, if one of our family or loved ones was suddenly, inexplicably killed in a horrible way--and then discover that said death could have been easily prevented if only X and Y agencies had bothered to share their information. And here's why this problem will never be solved--most of us have never been confronted with the desire for justice/vengeance, the anger of being a victim of system failure, and then understanding that there was a reason for the inefficiencies in the first place. Knowing what we know now, can any of us truly say that we'd face 300 million people (or 20 million if you're Canadian) and say "I know we could have easily prevented this tragedy, but we're not going to put in place the fixes that would prevent a future tragedy like this because we believe the outcome would be worse than the disease." And if you are willing to do so, are you willing to face a lifetime of condemnation and excommunication from everything you hold dear?
Nah, the biggest joke is that this shit HAS to happen, and then we have to go through years of rollbacks and abuses and fighting to undo all the damage, only to have it happen all over again and a new generation has to relearn the lessons. This is life, people. This is human nature. There is no answer, there is only the cycle.
I asked the same question as you, because @N is valuable only in the context of those who either make a living directly or indirectly due to legal association/ownership of a social media persona. As it is, @N is getting spammed to hell and back because of this notice, and until it gets publically returned back to its rightful owner, it's worthless. When I asked myself why a sane, reasonable, logical and rational person would do this given the expected outcome (which is happening now), the answer is, "because it's for the lulz". Someone wanted to intentionally destroy the value of @N, just to make a point that he/she could, and because it's "for the lulz". Maybe the intent wasn't to resell or own @N, maybe the intent was to show to certain individuals the capability to make that happen, and to be able to sell that capability.
Gotta say, I love it when you expert EVE players come in and comment on what happens. I won't play EVE, but I'll sure cheer it on though, because it does sound amazing.
Ha, well if there's a god, he's certainly in hell. He's probably in the epic prick VIP area, right next to Hitler. And there are no handicapped spots for him to park his Porsche in there.
Hey, I got an idea: how 'bout you spam his widow and kids with this? I'm sure they'd be thrilled to learn where their father should end up.
In China, it's done in name of protecting the national harmony. In the UK, it's done in name of protecting the children. Either way, you've got millions of people who absolutely believe and support in this. They are the majority (and always will be).
If you're a CEO of a moderately-successful medium-to-large publicly traded American company, then your largest shareholders are going to consist of three groups: 1) Momentum-riders, who will jump on your stock -if- it's rising and then dump you the moment you don't hit your quarterly earnings; 2) Long-term angel investors, who will do their best to save your butt every time in the short term because they're in for the long term; and 3) investment groups primarily serving retirement accounts. Of the three, the retirement-based investing groups have the most clout and are the ones pressing for immediate returns these days, because the majority of their clients are boomers hitting retirement age. So when you complain about Wall Street wanting returns now, bear in mind that this is due to the boomer population retiring and wanting their money right away. Those investment companies HAVE to demand gains, as the greatest wealth transfer in recorded history is going on right now. It's not the 99% to the 1% as we like to think; it's the younger generations paying off the Boomers, and it's going on around the world.
As a junior cadet code monkey of a user, I come to/. precisely because I know my limitations when it comes to understanding tech, coding, and hard science. Despite the -1's, trolls, and certainty-addicted neckbeards (or, because of them) I've learned a lot about how intrinsically cool it is to code, the artistic side of coding, the wonders of science (and how it rivals religious experiences for appreciating one's place in the universe), and I've improved my debating skills on here./. is one of the net benefits of my life, and I consider it a necessity. Chances are good, I'm not the only user who thinks that.
I thought it was a well-done trolling in the "classical" sense, not in the mean-spirited, I'm-going-to-spew-bile-on-those-I-despise neckbeard trolling.
Slashdot Mirror
He is, until you defy the Throne.
Cynics as you describe then will never make anything great in their life. In other words, they waste their life for mediocrity.
They're not cynics. What they are, are people who define "making something great" as making lots of money. This is their goal in life--and they know that for 90% of the market, "average" sells. You don't have to make the best product out there, you just have to be the best at making a product that's good enough. And their reward is getting paid for it. The intention behind your point is true: these managers and execs aren't artisans in any traditional sense we can think of. They don't take real pride in a product they're responsible for. What they take pride in is their paycheck, and the amount of stock options they've accumulated. For the vast, vast majority of humanity, that's enough. Accumulating wealth is "winning" to them. They are materialistic, and that is their motivation for existence.
I think we here on /. tend to lose sight of that, because although we're a bunch of anarcho-libertarian punkass coders, devs, artists, and general geeks, most of us have an artistic streak running through us. Most of us code, or build, or maintain something, and we take pride in that.
Speaking as someone who came into the IT industry in his 30's and is a finance analyst, I can tell you this: business is a game. Your managers and your product managers and your executives (particularly those with MBAs) all know that business is a meta-level game. It doesn't matter what you produce, code, or what market you serve--at a certain level it's all about profit, loss, retooling your resources, and ultimately figuring out what tactics will generate maximum profit while keeping costs as low as possible. Those business ratios you speak of are what businesses live and die by at the Exec/Managerial level. Or, think of it as a MTG game: you have two or more players, with a 60 card deck. Depending on the build of the decks involved, one player could recycle their cards from the graveyard, while the other person has a burn deck. No matter what--the game is going to come to an end at some point. Each player has a win strategy, which also coincidentally happens to be an exit strategy. The game goes on, each player uses their resources as best they can. One person wins, one person loses, and that's it. They then move on to another game. That's exactly what happens in the executive/managerial world, especially in IT. Quality, quantity, reputation, service, sales, they're all just levers. Now, you'll always have the rare company that focuses on a specific reason for its existence that ISN'T primarily to make profit (Pixar, Apple, Google) but those are a rarity. Sturgeon's law applies to business operations just as it does to anything else. Business is a game--and for 90% of the employers out there, you are a replaceable resource who will be kept on as long as your value (technical, social, etc.) exceeds your cost, because that's what business IS. It's a process, a game.
To me, it's shocking how many product managers I've met who don't really give a damn about their products, they're more focused on developing their products to be -good enough- to sell in the market. But then once I spent enough time around them (and most of them are just MBAs), it made sense. They learned that business is just a game, and they don't take it personally. They have enough connections and networking that they simply move on to the next job and treat it like a game too. The rest of us (non-execs and managers) take this personally--and that's our problem.
Kill lots of people. LOTS and LOTS of people, on order of hundreds of millions. All at once, preferably, or within as short an amount of time as possible. Energy Crisis is then solved.
Agree completely. When it's my time, I'm taking the long walk. I will meet my maker, or oblivion, under a starry winter night sky far from civilization. That's how I want to go.
Would you? Would YOU truly do that, if someone trusted you enough to give you stuff that they worked hard for, under the conditions that you care for it and give it back when you're done? Would YOU, Fractoid, be that person to breach that trust?
Quiet, you! You're *this* close to being considered an Elder One and being banished back to the eldritch crypts to await the time when the stars are right.
I will pay to see that -- especially the Neo-Vikings versus the Klingons.
I just love the thought of the FSB, Mossad, MI5, and just about every other foreign intelligence network on Earth (and those are merely the legal ones) running rampant throughout our country and society without the CIA to check them. Gosh, that'd be so much fun to just lower our guard and take punches! Oh hey, maybe those other nations would be so friendly towards us once we dismantled our intelligence apparatus that they'd willingly leave us alone! And forswear corporate espionage to boot! Dismantle the NSA, yes. Spread it out amongst the other agencies, yes. But don't disarm us completely. The CIA has screwed up a lot, so has the FBI--but they're still good ideas to have in place. We as a society have to reassume the responsibility, and the maturity of overseeing the operations of those two agencies on an appropriate basis.
The scary thing is that there are people out there today in our society who would cheerfully take children from the lower classes and toss them into factories, because their personal identity is bound up in a classist/caste view of society, with themselves being at the pinnacle. They would, and do (quietly) view it as "doing a favor to those who are beneath me".
My conscience pinged me on this one -- you are also right about each cycle getting a little better. My biggest desire is that people would step back, consider the cycle, realize that they cannot *solve* the problem, but considerate amelioration and solutions do work in the long term.
EVERY road inevitably leads to hell.
Your points are well taken. I would argue that the NSA initially began with good intentions. I can also say that in the weeks and months following 9/11, there was a lot of attention suddenly given to the inadequacies of our intelligence network, both foreign and domestic. We as a nation decried the lack of Arabic speakers, we demanded more & better domestic surveillance because it boggled everyone's mind how the CIA and FBI failed to connect the dots regarding 19 Saudi nationals enrolling at different flight schools after being flagged as potential terrorists by the CIA. I'll also give you credit for your word that you advocated actual fixes--you have courage and I can't imagine how much hate and flack you must have gotten.
We need to get away with from the authoritarian framing of the problem of our society being constantly vulnerable and change from a surveillance state to a resilience state - where we accept life has risks, where we will take precautions proportional to the risks and spend the rest of our resources on living productive lives instead of lives of irrational fear.
I see and acknowledge your point. My counterpoint is that your answer will never happen for one simple reason: children. We as a democratic society dominated by the elderly get all sorts of irrational about the safety and protection of children. And you cannot fight irrationality, you cannot fight stupid, and you cannot fight well-intentioned ignorance. You simply cannot--no one can. Hence my statement about there being no answers, there is only the cycle.
Democratic governments the world over are in a classic catch-22: they're damned if they do and they're damned if they don't. Prior to 9-11, we had pretty good safeguards in place against domestic spying. Watergate and the revelations of what J. Edgar Hoover did put a bad taste in everyone's mouth in the US about domestic spying. Then a bunch of nihilistic apostate Saudis flew airplanes into the Twin Towers, and over 3000 Americans died in the space of a single morning. The entire world watches in shock and horror--and then following America's lead, immediately begins investigating how this could have happened. And as the US discovers very quickly, it happened due to intentional inefficiencies and silo-ization of intelligence.
If there is one thing we Americans cannot stand more than anything else, it's inefficiency. We want our government/society/economy to WORK, dammit! Make it effective and efficient! The families of 9/11, and the politicians discover to their horror that this all could have easily been prevented, had we made our internal counterintelligence and domestic crime monitoring more efficient. The worst part is that 9/11 really could have been prevented --so easily--, and that's what led to the Patriot Act, the NSA, all of it. And it's not just America that learns this lesson.
So now the Canadians are following in America's footsteps, because no government, Liberal or Conservative, wants to be blamed for the next attack. And, there always will be a next attack. Maybe not from Islamists, maybe not from brown-skinned people, but there always will be. No one wants to be the one person on the news who's faced with the "Why didn't you stop this!" question. Imagine if you will what would have happened if John Ashcroft and President Bush had stepped up together following 9/11 and said "We understand that this could have been prevented if the FBI, CIA, and NSA had shared their information, but we're not about to dismantle federal policy to facilitate that because we don't want to turn America into a police state". Just imagine for a moment, the response that would have come to that statement from an enraged nation--let alone the entire state of New York.
What's really, really funny is that on /., we are all pro-privacy, pro-dismantling of the security apparatus. But none of us ever stop to consider if we'd change our tune, if one of our family or loved ones was suddenly, inexplicably killed in a horrible way--and then discover that said death could have been easily prevented if only X and Y agencies had bothered to share their information. And here's why this problem will never be solved--most of us have never been confronted with the desire for justice/vengeance, the anger of being a victim of system failure, and then understanding that there was a reason for the inefficiencies in the first place. Knowing what we know now, can any of us truly say that we'd face 300 million people (or 20 million if you're Canadian) and say "I know we could have easily prevented this tragedy, but we're not going to put in place the fixes that would prevent a future tragedy like this because we believe the outcome would be worse than the disease." And if you are willing to do so, are you willing to face a lifetime of condemnation and excommunication from everything you hold dear?
Nah, the biggest joke is that this shit HAS to happen, and then we have to go through years of rollbacks and abuses and fighting to undo all the damage, only to have it happen all over again and a new generation has to relearn the lessons. This is life, people. This is human nature. There is no answer, there is only the cycle.
I asked the same question as you, because @N is valuable only in the context of those who either make a living directly or indirectly due to legal association/ownership of a social media persona. As it is, @N is getting spammed to hell and back because of this notice, and until it gets publically returned back to its rightful owner, it's worthless. When I asked myself why a sane, reasonable, logical and rational person would do this given the expected outcome (which is happening now), the answer is, "because it's for the lulz". Someone wanted to intentionally destroy the value of @N, just to make a point that he/she could, and because it's "for the lulz". Maybe the intent wasn't to resell or own @N, maybe the intent was to show to certain individuals the capability to make that happen, and to be able to sell that capability.
Gotta say, I love it when you expert EVE players come in and comment on what happens. I won't play EVE, but I'll sure cheer it on though, because it does sound amazing.
And if we aren't, then why aren't we? Night soil's a really good idea, even if culturally icky for Westerners.
Ha, well if there's a god, he's certainly in hell. He's probably in the epic prick VIP area, right next to Hitler. And there are no handicapped spots for him to park his Porsche in there.
Hey, I got an idea: how 'bout you spam his widow and kids with this? I'm sure they'd be thrilled to learn where their father should end up.
And still just as funny now as 20 years ago. Dear gawd, how can something like that be so funny, awesome, and awesomely stupid all at the same time?
In China, it's done in name of protecting the national harmony. In the UK, it's done in name of protecting the children. Either way, you've got millions of people who absolutely believe and support in this. They are the majority (and always will be).
in an "armed" society, where not everyone has the same level of impulse control?
If you're a CEO of a moderately-successful medium-to-large publicly traded American company, then your largest shareholders are going to consist of three groups: 1) Momentum-riders, who will jump on your stock -if- it's rising and then dump you the moment you don't hit your quarterly earnings; 2) Long-term angel investors, who will do their best to save your butt every time in the short term because they're in for the long term; and 3) investment groups primarily serving retirement accounts. Of the three, the retirement-based investing groups have the most clout and are the ones pressing for immediate returns these days, because the majority of their clients are boomers hitting retirement age. So when you complain about Wall Street wanting returns now, bear in mind that this is due to the boomer population retiring and wanting their money right away. Those investment companies HAVE to demand gains, as the greatest wealth transfer in recorded history is going on right now. It's not the 99% to the 1% as we like to think; it's the younger generations paying off the Boomers, and it's going on around the world.
As a junior cadet code monkey of a user, I come to /. precisely because I know my limitations when it comes to understanding tech, coding, and hard science. Despite the -1's, trolls, and certainty-addicted neckbeards (or, because of them) I've learned a lot about how intrinsically cool it is to code, the artistic side of coding, the wonders of science (and how it rivals religious experiences for appreciating one's place in the universe), and I've improved my debating skills on here. /. is one of the net benefits of my life, and I consider it a necessity. Chances are good, I'm not the only user who thinks that.
I thought it was a well-done trolling in the "classical" sense, not in the mean-spirited, I'm-going-to-spew-bile-on-those-I-despise neckbeard trolling.