The thing is, when someone is in a position of power and has a great network of people to play golf with, it goes to their head.
So ban golf?
I have no problem with that.
Also, let the god damned shareholders fucking VOTE! Not for board members. For governance issues.
Lack of shareholder governance is the most fucking stupid thing about American corporate law. And it has fucking KILLED this country. Sucked our industry, and economy dry.
This is actually not true: There was a HUGE and VERY COSTLY propaganda, on her part, to paint herself in a positive light.
Former employees of HP spoke out, of course, and she worked very hard to try to have them silenced.
In my opinion, in the end, it really came down to some of the really stupid lame remarks she said, in public, having nothing to do with either politics, or the debate over her record at HP. I think it was stuff about criticizing Nancy Pelosi's hair or something like that. But I think the whole exchange got really ugly, and she showed a complete lack of tact and class that one would expect from someone who was supposedly a lawyer, CEO, and running for public office (and "future president" material). I think there was also some infighting in the Republican camp that did her in, because she was possibly going to be "in the way" of some other prominent female republican presidential candidate.
All that said: She very tightly packed every closet in her house with skeletons, during her tenure at HP. Her horrible reputation was very well deserved, and she can ride a gold-plated broom straight to hell for what she did.
(FULL DISCLOSURE: I was never employed at HP, never knew anyone personally who was an employee, nor was ever particularly a big fan of their products - just. . . I used to like the fact that we had a healthy, robust technology industry in our country, in our state, at one time. And we no longer do. And she is a part of the reason why we no longer do. She and her KIND.)
. . . the only reason their costs are "too high" - is because their bean-counters want to take the profits home, and spend them on their whores, instead of leaving them at the company to be invested in R&D.
Period.
End of story.
It is as simple as that - and that's really all there is.
Yes - it's called: when an engineer founds his own company, innovates, builds a solid product, but perhaps, demonstrates some lack of market savvy, and brings in the "professional businessmen" types. The MBA. To run the company.
You see this all over the place, in the self-destruction of DEC, Sun, . . . now, HP has been spiraling down the drain for a while. The MBA gets in there - they don't give a crap about technology. AT ALL. They ONLY care about the money, and this is all you should expect them to care about - because they are NOT engineers, nor lovers of technology. They are MBA's.
What happened to Apple Computer when Scully, a professional businessman, was hired as CEO? They pretty much became a lame, mindless money-machine. No style, no innovation, no vision, except what they could MANUFACTURE. Scully's job was to extract maximum profit. And that's what Apple did, until Jobs came back. (now that Jobs is leaving - expect more of the same).
(I will say the same about Microsoft - in the Ballmer/Gates duality - Gates is in the role of visionary engineer - such as he is. Gates *is* a genius, no doubt, but Ballmer is a thug, and he's been at Microsoft from day one. To Ballmer, Microsoft, first and foremost, has always been a business. And that is why Microsoft is, as it is. It succeeds as a technology company because they have been first to market, and enjoyed their PC monopoly. Like IBM - who had their own headstart, in the mainframe business . . . but don't forget what the "B" stands for. IBM and Microsoft are different, because they are "too big to fail" and there are too many stakeholders vested in the continued success of their extortion. All other players are fair game.)
It is true - that every company *IS*, first and foremost, a business, and must earn profit to thrive, and survive.
But if you hand control over to a person who does not give a shit, and only sees far enough to get their stock options, and pump and dump them for their 10-20 year value horizon, so they can retire in luxury, then this is precisely what will happen to that company.
Yeah - since Galileo's day. Hey Pope? How's that "Scientists are tricking us into accepting the Copernican theory" thing working out for you? Pretty well?
Well - if it comforts you, you can know that both Bernie Madoff, and Alan Stanford had the living shit kicked out of them in prison. Stanford likely has permanent brain damage, and will likely be crippled for life. This is two people of the hundreds of criminals who are currently, out, free, and continuing to plunder - PLUS, the enabling politicians, PLUS, the newsmedia pundits who cheered them on for 3 decades, PLUS. . . . THE IDIOTS WHO VOTED FOR THIS SYSTEM! (as far as I'm concerned, all 49 million who put Bush in office, should get the crap beat out of them. They're fucking responsible for this mess.)
Hey, but that funky telefunken mouse isn't all ghetto with cracked-ass wood and radio-shack buttons, like the SRI mouse! It actually looks professional. So it doesn't count.
Yes, there is a great way to shield operators. Keep them a couple of hundred feet away. Most harmful alpha and beta radiation is stopped by several inches-to-feet of air. Most gamma is stopped in tens of feet of air. Even better with lead underwear, walls of steel-drums full of water (hydrogen nucleii are pretty good at stopping neutrons.)
As far as foresight goes - to designing the buildings? These buildings were designed in the 1960's. Then again, at Chernobyl, they had to mine a hundreds-of-feet-long tunnel under the reactor complex in order to gain access to certain areas, and to keep groundwater pumped away from the area where the corium glob sits. At Fukushima, there doesn't seem to be any afterthought about that. Contaminating the groundwater, and the ocean, seems to be an acceptable given, from day 1.
and, of course. . . more seriously - #6: Pacific Subduction Zone TECTONIC PLATE Boundry. How do you build a submarine tunnel across a fault-line that transits (subducts) at roughly 34mm per year? How do you maintain a tunnel on, or in, the seafloor, like that?
Worst reason why it won't happen: #5 Nobody has ever built a coal-fired steam train that can go through a tunnel that long! (russian rail-technology. feh!)
Here's a group of scientists who have been studying the lineage of scripture for decades, and so far, their conclusion is that there has been significant drift from one version to the next over the centuries:
That's so true! When I first found out about mysql, I breathed a huge sigh of relief that I didn't have to work with Oracle anymore.
Until I found that people who didn't understand SQL, didn't want to learn about it, or deal with structure in their data, would simply glom everything together into one field using serialize() and unserialize(), and use it as a key-value table. Oh well!
The problem with this is: In a "Global" Economy - in order to enforce such laws (against your virtual slavery) - we would absolutely need to send "police" to these regions, and yes, start shooting and killing business owners, financiers, bankers, and government officials who enable such practices. How successful has the US been in eliminating "undesirable behaviors" like Coca Farming in the Western Hemisphere? Not at all. And; of course, the sellers of these products will be happy to finance the protection (military) of the covert practices.
Frankly - I'm surprised that you don't mention, or seem unaware of the near-slavery conditions within the US, how many migrant workers (some, even US citizens who are simply poor and indigent) are treated. Literally kept in cages overnight. Never mind our private for-profit prison system.
You also point out that products like clothing and chocolate would become much more expensive if the "slave labor" practices were abandoned. This may be true - but those workers would then become wealthy enough to become consumers, and the economy as a whole would be more dynamic and vital, and those products may be more expensive relative to what they are now, in absolute terms - but everyone's standard of living would be higher, and other goods and services would be cheaper to offset these items.
The main reason why it is "desirable" to keep the majority of people at a subsistence-level of income, is to prevent them from gaining any degree of political or defensive military power, so that they can be dominated and ruled and controlled like cattle. That is why the upper class does not want a broadly secure middle class.
There was a very important reason NOT to make a giant airplane that Boeing understood, and Airbus did not. Peak Oil. Boeing understood that global travel was going to be on the decline, fragmenting routes, and carriers were going to be looking to replace ageing fleets with newer, more efficient planes (if at all). Airbus - for all their technical innovation and chutzpah in making the 380, really screwed the pooch. Maybe the frenchies can figure out how to cram a nuclear reactor onboard one of those things. . .
FACT: Verizon is making HUGE profits. FACT: Investors contribute to Verizon's success. FACT: Stocks have been getting beat on for the past 2 months, but before that, were rising vigorously for the past year; and have actually not been doing bad for the past few years, not as great as '96-'01, but better than wages. FACT: Workers contribute to Verizon's succes. FACT: Workers pay has been taking a beating - ON AVERAGE, in the US, over the past 30 years.
So - Investors are all watery-eyed about their ROI. Verizon wants to cut workers wages. Workers don't want their wages cut more. And we end up with all this anti-union vitriol? I sure don't get it. 50-100 Investors are worried about whether they can afford the leather option in their mercedes next year. 50-100-thousand Workers are worried about feeding their kids. This is so fucked up it's hard to believe it's not a bad sci-fi movie.
It is very important to remember that in today's world of patent minefields, R&D is far more risky than simply spending money and discovering nothing. One could discover something, and find that it's already got lawyers swarming all over it.
From a systems perspective the system is designed to requrie a lawyer. And the lawyers are in control of that requirement. Until negative feedback can be applied somehow this system is just going to keep on requireing more lawyers.
I think I remember an old "Sliders" episode where they visited an alternate earth, where Lawyers were required to wear pistols, and shoot-it-out to resolve legal disputes.
Slashdot Mirror
The thing is, when someone is in a position of power and has a great network of people to play golf with, it goes to their head.
So ban golf?
I have no problem with that.
Also, let the god damned shareholders fucking VOTE!
Not for board members. For governance issues.
Lack of shareholder governance is the most fucking stupid thing about American corporate law. And it has fucking KILLED this country. Sucked our industry, and economy dry.
This is actually not true:
There was a HUGE and VERY COSTLY propaganda, on her part, to paint herself in a positive light.
Former employees of HP spoke out, of course, and she worked very hard to try to have them silenced.
In my opinion, in the end, it really came down to some of the really stupid lame remarks she said, in public, having nothing to do with either politics, or the debate over her record at HP. I think it was stuff about criticizing Nancy Pelosi's hair or something like that. But I think the whole exchange got really ugly, and she showed a complete lack of tact and class that one would expect from someone who was supposedly a lawyer, CEO, and running for public office (and "future president" material). I think there was also some infighting in the Republican camp that did her in, because she was possibly going to be "in the way" of some other prominent female republican presidential candidate.
All that said: She very tightly packed every closet in her house with skeletons, during her tenure at HP. Her horrible reputation was very well deserved, and she can ride a gold-plated broom straight to hell for what she did.
(FULL DISCLOSURE: I was never employed at HP, never knew anyone personally who was an employee, nor was ever particularly a big fan of their products - just. . . I used to like the fact that we had a healthy, robust technology industry in our country, in our state, at one time. And we no longer do. And she is a part of the reason why we no longer do. She and her KIND.)
. . . the only reason their costs are "too high" - is because their bean-counters want to take the profits home, and spend them on their whores, instead of leaving them at the company to be invested in R&D.
Period.
End of story.
It is as simple as that - and that's really all there is.
Never trust an MBA.
HP used to mean printers?
No - HP Used to mean calculators, mainframes, chips, high-end workstations, operating systems.
HP has been in a bloody death-spiral for over a decade.
Yes - it's called: when an engineer founds his own company, innovates, builds a solid product, but perhaps, demonstrates some lack of market savvy, and brings in the "professional businessmen" types. The MBA. To run the company.
You see this all over the place, in the self-destruction of DEC, Sun, . . . now, HP has been spiraling down the drain for a while. The MBA gets in there - they don't give a crap about technology. AT ALL. They ONLY care about the money, and this is all you should expect them to care about - because they are NOT engineers, nor lovers of technology. They are MBA's.
What happened to Apple Computer when Scully, a professional businessman, was hired as CEO? They pretty much became a lame, mindless money-machine. No style, no innovation, no vision, except what they could MANUFACTURE. Scully's job was to extract maximum profit. And that's what Apple did, until Jobs came back. (now that Jobs is leaving - expect more of the same).
(I will say the same about Microsoft - in the Ballmer/Gates duality - Gates is in the role of visionary engineer - such as he is. Gates *is* a genius, no doubt, but Ballmer is a thug, and he's been at Microsoft from day one. To Ballmer, Microsoft, first and foremost, has always been a business. And that is why Microsoft is, as it is. It succeeds as a technology company because they have been first to market, and enjoyed their PC monopoly. Like IBM - who had their own headstart, in the mainframe business . . . but don't forget what the "B" stands for. IBM and Microsoft are different, because they are "too big to fail" and there are too many stakeholders vested in the continued success of their extortion. All other players are fair game.)
It is true - that every company *IS*, first and foremost, a business, and must earn profit to thrive, and survive.
But if you hand control over to a person who does not give a shit, and only sees far enough to get their stock options, and pump and dump them for their 10-20 year value horizon, so they can retire in luxury, then this is precisely what will happen to that company.
I miss the language flamewars.
C++ still sucks.
It sucks forever.
Yeah - since Galileo's day. Hey Pope? How's that "Scientists are tricking us into accepting the Copernican theory" thing working out for you? Pretty well?
Well - if it comforts you, you can know that both Bernie Madoff, and Alan Stanford had the living shit kicked out of them in prison. Stanford likely has permanent brain damage, and will likely be crippled for life. This is two people of the hundreds of criminals who are currently, out, free, and continuing to plunder - PLUS, the enabling politicians, PLUS, the newsmedia pundits who cheered them on for 3 decades, PLUS. . . . THE IDIOTS WHO VOTED FOR THIS SYSTEM! (as far as I'm concerned, all 49 million who put Bush in office, should get the crap beat out of them. They're fucking responsible for this mess.)
. . . of all the reams and reams of mindless drivel I have spewed upon this domain over the years, this is the one word which I can today muster.
- Just Another Fucking Anonymous Coward
hey, the dude's hardcore vegan. So no, I don't think he's going to do any kind of fishing.
Hey, but that funky telefunken mouse isn't all ghetto with cracked-ass wood and radio-shack buttons, like the SRI mouse! It actually looks professional. So it doesn't count.
Yes, there is a great way to shield operators. Keep them a couple of hundred feet away. Most harmful alpha and beta radiation is stopped by several inches-to-feet of air. Most gamma is stopped in tens of feet of air. Even better with lead underwear, walls of steel-drums full of water (hydrogen nucleii are pretty good at stopping neutrons.)
As far as foresight goes - to designing the buildings? These buildings were designed in the 1960's.
Then again, at Chernobyl, they had to mine a hundreds-of-feet-long tunnel under the reactor complex in order to gain access to certain areas, and to keep groundwater pumped away from the area where the corium glob sits. At Fukushima, there doesn't seem to be any afterthought about that. Contaminating the groundwater, and the ocean, seems to be an acceptable given, from day 1.
It would be even nicer if the wireless bridge robot ran off of ionizing radiation in the environment - lol!
and, of course. . . more seriously - #6: Pacific Subduction Zone TECTONIC PLATE Boundry. How do you build a submarine tunnel across a fault-line that transits (subducts) at roughly 34mm per year? How do you maintain a tunnel on, or in, the seafloor, like that?
Worst reason why it won't happen:
#5 Nobody has ever built a coal-fired steam train that can go through a tunnel that long!
(russian rail-technology. feh!)
In reality - they are NOT against incest.
As long as there is a marriage, and offspring are produced.
There are many scripturally blessed examples of incest, polygamy, and of course, rape.
Here's a group of scientists who have been studying the lineage of scripture for decades, and so far, their conclusion is that there has been significant drift from one version to the next over the centuries:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/ML_ISRAEL_BIBLE_DETECTIVES?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Inerrancy is a DEEPLY FLAWED theological position.
In fact, it is somewhat akin to idolotry.
That's so true! When I first found out about mysql, I breathed a huge sigh of relief that I didn't have to work with Oracle anymore.
Until I found that people who didn't understand SQL, didn't want to learn about it, or deal with structure in their data, would simply glom everything together into one field using serialize() and unserialize(), and use it as a key-value table. Oh well!
The problem isn't the "corporations". It's the MBA's. And the MBA mentality.
lol - your mercedes was made in Germany? My VW was made in MEXICO!!
The problem with this is:
In a "Global" Economy - in order to enforce such laws (against your virtual slavery) - we would absolutely need to send "police" to these regions, and yes, start shooting and killing business owners, financiers, bankers, and government officials who enable such practices. How successful has the US been in eliminating "undesirable behaviors" like Coca Farming in the Western Hemisphere? Not at all. And; of course, the sellers of these products will be happy to finance the protection (military) of the covert practices.
Frankly - I'm surprised that you don't mention, or seem unaware of the near-slavery conditions within the US, how many migrant workers (some, even US citizens who are simply poor and indigent) are treated. Literally kept in cages overnight. Never mind our private for-profit prison system.
You also point out that products like clothing and chocolate would become much more expensive if the "slave labor" practices were abandoned. This may be true - but those workers would then become wealthy enough to become consumers, and the economy as a whole would be more dynamic and vital, and those products may be more expensive relative to what they are now, in absolute terms - but everyone's standard of living would be higher, and other goods and services would be cheaper to offset these items.
The main reason why it is "desirable" to keep the majority of people at a subsistence-level of income, is to prevent them from gaining any degree of political or defensive military power, so that they can be dominated and ruled and controlled like cattle. That is why the upper class does not want a broadly secure middle class.
There was a very important reason NOT to make a giant airplane that Boeing understood, and Airbus did not. Peak Oil. Boeing understood that global travel was going to be on the decline, fragmenting routes, and carriers were going to be looking to replace ageing fleets with newer, more efficient planes (if at all). Airbus - for all their technical innovation and chutzpah in making the 380, really screwed the pooch. Maybe the frenchies can figure out how to cram a nuclear reactor onboard one of those things. . .
I sure don't get it.
FACT: Verizon is making HUGE profits.
FACT: Investors contribute to Verizon's success.
FACT: Stocks have been getting beat on for the past 2 months, but before that, were rising vigorously for the past year; and have actually not been doing bad for the past few years, not as great as '96-'01, but better than wages.
FACT: Workers contribute to Verizon's succes.
FACT: Workers pay has been taking a beating - ON AVERAGE, in the US, over the past 30 years.
So - Investors are all watery-eyed about their ROI. Verizon wants to cut workers wages. Workers don't want their wages cut more. And we end up with all this anti-union vitriol? I sure don't get it. 50-100 Investors are worried about whether they can afford the leather option in their mercedes next year. 50-100-thousand Workers are worried about feeding their kids. This is so fucked up it's hard to believe it's not a bad sci-fi movie.
It is very important to remember that in today's world of patent minefields, R&D is far more risky than simply spending money and discovering nothing. One could discover something, and find that it's already got lawyers swarming all over it.
From a systems perspective the system is designed to requrie a lawyer. And the lawyers are in control of that requirement.
Until negative feedback can be applied somehow this system is just going to keep on requireing more lawyers.
I think I remember an old "Sliders" episode where they visited an alternate earth, where Lawyers were required to wear pistols, and shoot-it-out to resolve legal disputes.