1. Despite being legally treated as such, corporations are not singular entities.
If an axe murder has multiple personality disorder do you still let him roam free ???
Re:remember: it's not a geforce4!
on
nForce2 Preview
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· Score: 1
Have the signal from the PC go in through my VCR and out to the TV - just like the one from my cable connection. Unfortunatly, it doesn't work with Macrovision.
I use my VCR as the main channel selection device - i see no reason to stop doing it.
Also i have yet to aquire a standalone DVD player because of Macrovision and Region Coding (around here i can legitimately chip it, just think it's not worth the trouble).
But most important of all - how the hell can i record my extraordinary RTCW performance (yeah, right) to show off to my friends if the TV-Out has Macrovision??? 8-)
Re:remember: it's not a geforce4!
on
nForce2 Preview
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· Score: 2
Their TV-Out comes with Macrovision 7.1 - Big NO NO!!!
There are mutual funds that only invest in companies with certain economic policies, that make certain products, that have certain political agendas.
I am well aware of that. There are even some fund managers that will aquire strong positions in badly managed companies and actively turn that company around (usually they start by firing the top management). Unfortunatly they are a minority.
I seem to have been unable to clearly show my position. Let's try again:
a) To influence a company as a shareholder one needs to aquire or control a significant portion of it's shares with voting rights. Let's say 10% (it will vary from case to case).
b) To aquire the shares you need a lot of money. In the case of Microsoft, 10% of it will cost around $26B. This is not even considering the fact that the price of the shares in the open market will go up when such a big quantity of them is aquired and that to convince certain owners to sell you their shares you will have to pay significantly more than their current value in the open market.
c) Alternatively you can take control of a significant portion of it's shares with voting rights by getting together several persons each with a comparatively small ammount of shares. So for example, to take control of 10% of Microsoft you either gather a small number of really rich persons or a really big number of Joe/Joanna Average persons.
Let's go back to your inicial example - " Every time you want to buy a CD or DVD or piece of software, use that money to buy stock instead"
- That would definitely not match the criteria for b) (be really rich) - unless it's someone that buys 10000 CDs a day. - So - to option c) (get a lot of people together). Lets start with a small group of people (say 100) with a lot of money. The problem here is getting everybody to agree. The more people there are, the less likelly they are to all agree. Also, the more specificaly defined your objective is the more likelly it is that some people will not agree with it (for example, while most people agree that Global Warming is bad, most disagree on how to solve the problem, or even on if there is a problem). This is why those "funds with a cause" have a very broad objective ("save the earth", "cleanup badly managed companies", "help party X", and the favorite of all times "make more money").
If we grow the size of the group not only is it less likelly to find enough people that agree on the common objective (and willing to put their money in for it), but also we start to get into information problems - that is: the people that put the money in have less and less (real, precise and certifiable) information on how it is spent.
In practice, a big enough gathering of people with a common objective has the same problems as a company: - Broadly stated objectives so that a big enough number of persons is willing to put their money in to achieve said objectives (for companies the objective is "make more money"). - Lack of precise, authentic and easy to compreend information on how the money is being managed to achieve said objectives (Enron, WorldCom, a lot of actively managed funds that had lower returns than funds that simply tracked the market indexes,...).
This is why i believe that the theory of "The power of the small shareholder" is utter bolocs.
Your numbers are WAY too small. 10,000 people in a stock fund? Please. CALPERS (retirement fund for California state workers) has 1.3 million people, according to their numbers. It has $108 Billion in investments.
The fund is the result of people associating with the objective of making money (amazing - just like any other company). There is no other common objective - this is not an association of people with an aim to change anything in any corporation in America.
In practice the example you pointed is just another layer - a company with the aim of profit that manages participations in other companies with the aim of making money.
How can such a mechanism be used by Joe Average With Money In Fund to change Corporate Amercia????
Heck, if you don't like how record companies are currently working, start buying record company shares. Don't like how MS works? Buy MS shares. Set up a fund. Every time you want to buy a CD or DVD or piece of software, use that money to buy stock instead. Let lots of people pool their money, get a large voting bloc of stock. Then change the policies. That's how the system works.
Assume that a person buys in average 1 CD per day. For that person to aquire 1% of Microsoft shares (at 31 March 2002 - my source - market capitalization = $286.6B) would mean saving their CD money (assume $15 per CD) for a period longer than 523112 years.
The other possibility is for 10000 persons (that's a small stadium full of people) to save their CD money for 52.3 years and then get together and use their 1% of the company to try and change things (assuming they all agreed on the direction to take).
The whole idea that the Average Joe Shareholder has any influence whatsoever in managing corporate Americe is pure hot air (and the smelly type, at that)
Where is the tale of long nights hacking way, man against machine?
Or the vivid descriptions of cafeine induced allucinations?
The joys of finnaling figuring out the function of that last pin in the Sound Synthesis Chip?
The humble confession - "After 5 days straight hacking i fell asleep on my keyboard..."?
But NO!!! The author does use half the article to tell us about his phylosophical doubts in relation to Sony's posture, but that is a far cry from the moving story of A Man And His Penguin Against The Machine.
The children! Please think of the little children!!!
It's just somebody (with too much time and money on their hands) having fun. What makes it news???
This one isn't any real streching of our human limits (like say, the first moon landing), it's no gift to humanity (like a cure for AIDS would be) - what makes it newsworthy???
Project Guttenberg ...
on
Free as in Books?
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· Score: 4, Informative
... has been going on for a long time making out-of-copyright works available to the public.
You're assuming that most people (including people outside the US) would be willing to fork $500+ for a new PC whose only added benefict (over their previous system) would be the ability to play clips of a slightly beter quality than the ones you can get for free via P2P networks (and with no guarantee that they could continue to do so in the future).
And we're only talking about audio here - the market penetration of broadband is still below 10% (plus market adoption rates are still very low - maybe 1.5%/year), which rules out video as a killer application.
My whole theory is that as long as there is a big enough number of non-Pd machines out there (let's say 50%) then non-Pd software will be produced and at the same time while there is a big enough number of non-Pd software out there then non-Pd machines will be manufactured and sold - it's a self-sustaining cycle, a stable system.
Another example - think of the time that took to adopt CDs over LPs (they're still selling LPs). This was a situation in which the new technology had visible advantages (lower storage requirements, bigger resitence to damage, faster seek time, authomatic handling) plus the systems that were put out continued to support the old technology (Hi-Fi systems came out with an LP player for a long time after CDs were introduced).
Compare this with the Paladium system - the software does just about the same only it it doesn't work in most machines. The hardware does almost the same (it can additionally run Pd-compliant software) only it's more expensive. Above all, in the PC world one has to consider that contrary to Hi-Fis, PCs are general purpose machines that run all types of applications - meaning that most people have an interest to continue to run many applications that have nothing at all to do with media playing, meaning that Pd machines must still support non-Pd software.
I look at this problem as a question of stable/unstable systems - think the physical world:
- A ball at the top of a hill is an unstable system - any disturbance will make the ball roll down the hill. To keep the ball on the top of the hill for a long period of time, one needs to frequently provide energy so that the ball stays/goes back to the top of the hill. - A ball at the bottom of a valey is an stable system - the ball will only get out from the valey in case of a major disturbance. For small disturbances the system is self-correcting - the ball tends to roll back to the bottom of the valey.
So - social systems can also be stable or unstable. An example: - A bunch of kids left alone in a room with a pile of candy. They are told by a grownup that if they get the candy something bad will happen, and then the grownup leaves. Now, one kid gets the nerve and goes and gets a candy. Nothing happens. Then another one. Still nothing. The another and another and another. This is an unstable social system - the candy won't last long.
Back to our problem (finally). I believe this is an unstable system. My reasoning is as follows: a) From the side of hardware manufacturers: - Any hardware DRM implementation will be more costly than a non-DRM implementation. At the very least, more space will be needed in the CPU, which means a bigger die, which means a more expensive CPU (the bigger the die the more likelly it is it has some failures, meaning less working chips per wafer meaning less more money per chip). - Inicially the majority of the software out there will not require Paladium/DRM. Only new programs might require that. - Thus (at least in the beginning), machines without Paladium support will be both cheaper and suitable for the biggest majority of software/consumers (thus having a competitive advantage). This makes it very tempting for hardware manufacturers to NOT produce Paladium-compatible machines.
b) From the the side of software producers: - A Paladium/DRM license costs money. Implementing software which requires Paladium/DRM is thus more expensive than non-Paladium-compliant software. - Similarly to the hardware side - in the beginning, the majority of machines will not have Paladium support. In order to reach a sizeable portion of the market, the software must thus support non-Paladium-compliant hardware. - Thus software producers that want to reach the biggest portion of the market will either produce non-Paladium compliant software or software that will work in non-Paladium compliant machines.
Puting it all together: a) Hardware manufacturers will have a competitive advantage in manufaturing non-Paladium-compliant machines (cheaper and work with almost all software) b) Software producers will have a competitive advantage in producing software that works with non-Paladium compliant machines (the majority of the market) or even non-Paladium-compliant software (which has the aditional advantage of not requiring a Paladium license).
As i see it, the current situation is a stable situation. A great deal of energy (read money) must be spend in order to change the status-quo. Software developers need to be convinced (as in paid) to do Paladium-only software while hardware manufacturers have to be convinced (again paid) to develop Paladum-compliant machines. The temptantion for software producers or hardware manufacturers to put out products that do not require Paladium will be huge given that any one that does so will have a competitive advantage (which will translate to more market share) in relation to the ones that remain Paladium-only compliant. As soon as one company leaves the pack and starts increasing their market share others will have to leave too in order to stay competitive.
The only way to avoid this would be if all consumers would at the same time change all their machines and software to be Paladium-compliant. In a Paladium only world there is no market for non-Paladium machines or software.
It's actually not a politically correct thing - it's more a discussion ability thing:
- Saying never (or always or nobody or everybody) marks your sentence as being probably untrue.
1) Pure physics - everything is possible. 2) When it comes to human related subjects there is usually an exception.
When someone uses one of the include/exclude everything words in an argument i immediatly think they have no proof whatsoever (given that such generalizations are almost unproovable) and thus no reason. Using one of those words usually means someone is "creating castles out of thin air".
I can just see it in my mind: - Little old granny driving on a 1 lane road at 15mph. - Guy behind starts honking and honking and honking - Sudenly a message starts flashing in the back window of grannie's car: "Fuck you, asshole"
Programmers should try and have at least a basic view on business issues both inside and outside the company.
It's quite simple a question of self-defense. No mater how briliant a programmer you are, siting in your corner concentrating solely on programming you will: - Get a lousy salary because you don't know other people's salaries or you don't know-how/have-the-courage to get a beter salary. - Be overworked because your manager keeps piling things in your plate. - Sudenly discovering that you got laid of or your company went bankrupt. - Get blamed once again for a project that blew-up (and probably you won't even know about it)
Need an example?
Look no further that the pile of once "innocent and happy geeks" that sudenly found themselfs unemployed when their companies went bust with the tech-bubble colapsed (and they didn't even saw it coming)
That's actually my MO. It's just that it took me a couple of painful years before i could get it right.
(I almost feel sorry for my manager 2 years ago - she was the first one getting hit full force by my defensive actions. Nowadays i'm not as mean...)
Anyways, i feel that there are a lot of briliant but green techies out there that are suffering under bad management because they lack the necessary social skills/experience to know how to defend themselfs.
You're assuming that you actually have a project manager that's smart/experienced enough.
Some project managers when confronted with the "there's a trade-off here" explanation will either: - Not trust you at all, because they think you are trying to make time for yourself (ie they think you're lazy). - Not trust your judgement and think you are overestimating the time it will take to do it (ie the "this looks so simple" syndrom - also common with users) - Try to get you to work long hours in the (mislead) belief that if you work more hours a day the change can be made in a smaller number of days (it works for maybe 1-2 weeks, then your productivity starts declining) - Insist that somehow (nobody knows exactly how) the whole change must be made within a certain (shorter than you think is needed) timeframe (usually they've already promised it to upper management and/or the costummer) - Get you to choose what trade-off should be made (this is my personal favorite - the manager is in practice asking you to manage. Just shows how usefull some managers are) - Any combination of the above
Unfortunatly and contrary (or maybe not) to popular belief, those sort of managers don't actually get fired. Usually they tend to stay forever in a lower management position (ie directly managing the developers)
Slashdot Mirror
1. Despite being legally treated as such, corporations are not singular entities.
If an axe murder has multiple personality disorder do you still let him roam free ???
Have the signal from the PC go in through my VCR and out to the TV - just like the one from my cable connection. Unfortunatly, it doesn't work with Macrovision.
I use my VCR as the main channel selection device - i see no reason to stop doing it.
Also i have yet to aquire a standalone DVD player because of Macrovision and Region Coding (around here i can legitimately chip it, just think it's not worth the trouble).
But most important of all - how the hell can i record my extraordinary RTCW performance (yeah, right) to show off to my friends if the TV-Out has Macrovision??? 8-)
Their TV-Out comes with Macrovision 7.1 - Big NO NO!!!
There are mutual funds that only invest in companies with certain economic policies, that make certain products, that have certain political agendas.
...).
I am well aware of that. There are even some fund managers that will aquire strong positions in badly managed companies and actively turn that company around (usually they start by firing the top management). Unfortunatly they are a minority.
I seem to have been unable to clearly show my position. Let's try again:
a) To influence a company as a shareholder one needs to aquire or control a significant portion of it's shares with voting rights. Let's say 10% (it will vary from case to case).
b) To aquire the shares you need a lot of money. In the case of Microsoft, 10% of it will cost around $26B. This is not even considering the fact that the price of the shares in the open market will go up when such a big quantity of them is aquired and that to convince certain owners to sell you their shares you will have to pay significantly more than their current value in the open market.
c) Alternatively you can take control of a significant portion of it's shares with voting rights by getting together several persons each with a comparatively small ammount of shares. So for example, to take control of 10% of Microsoft you either gather a small number of really rich persons or a really big number of Joe/Joanna Average persons.
Let's go back to your inicial example - " Every time you want to buy a CD or DVD or piece of software, use that money to buy stock instead"
- That would definitely not match the criteria for b) (be really rich) - unless it's someone that buys 10000 CDs a day.
- So - to option c) (get a lot of people together).
Lets start with a small group of people (say 100) with a lot of money. The problem here is getting everybody to agree. The more people there are, the less likelly they are to all agree. Also, the more specificaly defined your objective is the more likelly it is that some people will not agree with it (for example, while most people agree that Global Warming is bad, most disagree on how to solve the problem, or even on if there is a problem). This is why those "funds with a cause" have a very broad objective ("save the earth", "cleanup badly managed companies", "help party X", and the favorite of all times "make more money").
If we grow the size of the group not only is it less likelly to find enough people that agree on the common objective (and willing to put their money in for it), but also we start to get into information problems - that is: the people that put the money in have less and less (real, precise and certifiable) information on how it is spent.
In practice, a big enough gathering of people with a common objective has the same problems as a company:
- Broadly stated objectives so that a big enough number of persons is willing to put their money in to achieve said objectives (for companies the objective is "make more money").
- Lack of precise, authentic and easy to compreend information on how the money is being managed to achieve said objectives (Enron, WorldCom, a lot of actively managed funds that had lower returns than funds that simply tracked the market indexes,
This is why i believe that the theory of "The power of the small shareholder" is utter bolocs.
Your numbers are WAY too small. 10,000 people in a stock fund? Please. CALPERS (retirement fund for California state workers) has 1.3 million people, according to their numbers. It has $108 Billion in investments.
The fund is the result of people associating with the objective of making money (amazing - just like any other company). There is no other common objective - this is not an association of people with an aim to change anything in any corporation in America.
In practice the example you pointed is just another layer - a company with the aim of profit that manages participations in other companies with the aim of making money.
How can such a mechanism be used by Joe Average With Money In Fund to change Corporate Amercia????
Heck, if you don't like how record companies are currently working, start buying record company shares. Don't like how MS works? Buy MS shares. Set up a fund. Every time you want to buy a CD or DVD or piece of software, use that money to buy stock instead. Let lots of people pool their money, get a large voting bloc of stock. Then change the policies. That's how the system works.
Assume that a person buys in average 1 CD per day. For that person to aquire 1% of Microsoft shares (at 31 March 2002 - my source - market capitalization = $286.6B) would mean saving their CD money (assume $15 per CD) for a period longer than 523112 years.
The other possibility is for 10000 persons (that's a small stadium full of people) to save their CD money for 52.3 years and then get together and use their 1% of the company to try and change things (assuming they all agreed on the direction to take).
The whole idea that the Average Joe Shareholder has any influence whatsoever in managing corporate Americe is pure hot air (and the smelly type, at that)
Where is the human side in this story?
..."?
Where is the tale of long nights hacking way, man against machine?
Or the vivid descriptions of cafeine induced allucinations?
The joys of finnaling figuring out the function of that last pin in the Sound Synthesis Chip?
The humble confession - "After 5 days straight hacking i fell asleep on my keyboard
But NO!!! The author does use half the article to tell us about his phylosophical doubts in relation to Sony's posture, but that is a far cry from the moving story of A Man And His Penguin Against The Machine.
The children! Please think of the little children!!!
Actually i was thinking maybe i can go into the crowd control line of work.
It isn't exactly crush your enemies' skulls (or at least one expects not to be so) but at the very least one can damage a couple of skulls.
Ok, i see your point.
...
The thing is - how do i become a hero (and i'm thinking Viking sort of hero here)?
I do believe crushing your enemies' skulls is illegal nowadays
Now the big question is which do you prefer - Limbo or Valhalla?
...
Or putting things in another way:
- Live the whole eternity surrounded by guys with horns in their hats or surrounded by nothingness?
Though one
So why exactly are we paying attention to it.
It's just somebody (with too much time and money on their hands) having fun. What makes it news???
This one isn't any real streching of our human limits (like say, the first moon landing), it's no gift to humanity (like a cure for AIDS would be) - what makes it newsworthy???
... has been going on for a long time making out-of-copyright works available to the public.
Here you have it: Project Guttenberg
Everyone will be riding on a space transport that no-one is flying, that uses no fuel and is too big to land anywhere.
Yep - already there - it's called planet Earth
Built for Use, Karen Donoghue
'nough said
Yeah you're right!
It's much beter that each user has their own stash of MP3s on their hard-drives - that's a much more efficient use of resources!!!
Will I ever get the bang for my MS buck?
...
You're getting plenty of bangs and you still complain???
Were is journalistic integrity nowadays
You're assuming that most people (including people outside the US) would be willing to fork $500+ for a new PC whose only added benefict (over their previous system) would be the ability to play clips of a slightly beter quality than the ones you can get for free via P2P networks (and with no guarantee that they could continue to do so in the future).
And we're only talking about audio here - the market penetration of broadband is still below 10% (plus market adoption rates are still very low - maybe 1.5%/year), which rules out video as a killer application.
My whole theory is that as long as there is a big enough number of non-Pd machines out there (let's say 50%) then non-Pd software will be produced and at the same time while there is a big enough number of non-Pd software out there then non-Pd machines will be manufactured and sold - it's a self-sustaining cycle, a stable system.
Another example - think of the time that took to adopt CDs over LPs (they're still selling LPs). This was a situation in which the new technology had visible advantages (lower storage requirements, bigger resitence to damage, faster seek time, authomatic handling) plus the systems that were put out continued to support the old technology (Hi-Fi systems came out with an LP player for a long time after CDs were introduced).
Compare this with the Paladium system - the software does just about the same only it it doesn't work in most machines. The hardware does almost the same (it can additionally run Pd-compliant software) only it's more expensive. Above all, in the PC world one has to consider that contrary to Hi-Fis, PCs are general purpose machines that run all types of applications - meaning that most people have an interest to continue to run many applications that have nothing at all to do with media playing, meaning that Pd machines must still support non-Pd software.
Let's develop this even further ...
I look at this problem as a question of stable/unstable systems - think the physical world:
- A ball at the top of a hill is an unstable system - any disturbance will make the ball roll down the hill. To keep the ball on the top of the hill for a long period of time, one needs to frequently provide energy so that the ball stays/goes back to the top of the hill.
- A ball at the bottom of a valey is an stable system - the ball will only get out from the valey in case of a major disturbance. For small disturbances the system is self-correcting - the ball tends to roll back to the bottom of the valey.
So - social systems can also be stable or unstable. An example:
- A bunch of kids left alone in a room with a pile of candy. They are told by a grownup that if they get the candy something bad will happen, and then the grownup leaves. Now, one kid gets the nerve and goes and gets a candy. Nothing happens. Then another one. Still nothing. The another and another and another. This is an unstable social system - the candy won't last long.
Back to our problem (finally). I believe this is an unstable system. My reasoning is as follows:
a) From the side of hardware manufacturers:
- Any hardware DRM implementation will be more costly than a non-DRM implementation. At the very least, more space will be needed in the CPU, which means a bigger die, which means a more expensive CPU (the bigger the die the more likelly it is it has some failures, meaning less working chips per wafer meaning less more money per chip).
- Inicially the majority of the software out there will not require Paladium/DRM. Only new programs might require that.
- Thus (at least in the beginning), machines without Paladium support will be both cheaper and suitable for the biggest majority of software/consumers (thus having a competitive advantage). This makes it very tempting for hardware manufacturers to NOT produce Paladium-compatible machines.
b) From the the side of software producers:
- A Paladium/DRM license costs money. Implementing software which requires Paladium/DRM is thus more expensive than non-Paladium-compliant software.
- Similarly to the hardware side - in the beginning, the majority of machines will not have Paladium support. In order to reach a sizeable portion of the market, the software must thus support non-Paladium-compliant hardware.
- Thus software producers that want to reach the biggest portion of the market will either produce non-Paladium compliant software or software that will work in non-Paladium compliant machines.
Puting it all together:
a) Hardware manufacturers will have a competitive advantage in manufaturing non-Paladium-compliant machines (cheaper and work with almost all software)
b) Software producers will have a competitive advantage in producing software that works with non-Paladium compliant machines (the majority of the market) or even non-Paladium-compliant software (which has the aditional advantage of not requiring a Paladium license).
As i see it, the current situation is a stable situation. A great deal of energy (read money) must be spend in order to change the status-quo. Software developers need to be convinced (as in paid) to do Paladium-only software while hardware manufacturers have to be convinced (again paid) to develop Paladum-compliant machines.
The temptantion for software producers or hardware manufacturers to put out products that do not require Paladium will be huge given that any one that does so will have a competitive advantage (which will translate to more market share) in relation to the ones that remain Paladium-only compliant.
As soon as one company leaves the pack and starts increasing their market share others will have to leave too in order to stay competitive.
The only way to avoid this would be if all consumers would at the same time change all their machines and software to be Paladium-compliant. In a Paladium only world there is no market for non-Paladium machines or software.
It's actually not a politically correct thing - it's more a discussion ability thing:
- Saying never (or always or nobody or everybody) marks your sentence as being probably untrue.
1) Pure physics - everything is possible.
2) When it comes to human related subjects there is usually an exception.
When someone uses one of the include/exclude everything words in an argument i immediatly think they have no proof whatsoever (given that such generalizations are almost unproovable) and thus no reason. Using one of those words usually means someone is "creating castles out of thin air".
Never say never (or always or nobody or everybody ...)
You cut it's balls.
...
...
Gee - how obvious does one need to be around her
PS: In some latin languages "patent" has the feminine gender (in latin languages there is no "it"), so the ball cuting methaphor wouldn't work
I can just see it in my mind:
- Little old granny driving on a 1 lane road at 15mph.
- Guy behind starts honking and honking and honking
- Sudenly a message starts flashing in the back window of grannie's car: "Fuck you, asshole"
Programmers should try and have at least a basic view on business issues both inside and outside the company.
It's quite simple a question of self-defense. No mater how briliant a programmer you are, siting in your corner concentrating solely on programming you will:
- Get a lousy salary because you don't know other people's salaries or you don't know-how/have-the-courage to get a beter salary.
- Be overworked because your manager keeps piling things in your plate.
- Sudenly discovering that you got laid of or your company went bankrupt.
- Get blamed once again for a project that blew-up (and probably you won't even know about it)
Need an example?
Look no further that the pile of once "innocent and happy geeks" that sudenly found themselfs unemployed when their companies went bust with the tech-bubble colapsed (and they didn't even saw it coming)
That's actually my MO. It's just that it took me a couple of painful years before i could get it right.
...)
(I almost feel sorry for my manager 2 years ago - she was the first one getting hit full force by my defensive actions. Nowadays i'm not as mean
Anyways, i feel that there are a lot of briliant but green techies out there that are suffering under bad management because they lack the necessary social skills/experience to know how to defend themselfs.
You're assuming that you actually have a project manager that's smart/experienced enough.
Some project managers when confronted with the "there's a trade-off here" explanation will either:
- Not trust you at all, because they think you are trying to make time for yourself (ie they think you're lazy).
- Not trust your judgement and think you are overestimating the time it will take to do it (ie the "this looks so simple" syndrom - also common with users)
- Try to get you to work long hours in the (mislead) belief that if you work more hours a day the change can be made in a smaller number of days (it works for maybe 1-2 weeks, then your productivity starts declining)
- Insist that somehow (nobody knows exactly how) the whole change must be made within a certain (shorter than you think is needed) timeframe (usually they've already promised it to upper management and/or the costummer)
- Get you to choose what trade-off should be made (this is my personal favorite - the manager is in practice asking you to manage. Just shows how usefull some managers are)
- Any combination of the above
Unfortunatly and contrary (or maybe not) to popular belief, those sort of managers don't actually get fired. Usually they tend to stay forever in a lower management position (ie directly managing the developers)
<SELF-COMMAND RANT-MODE="OFF"/>