This should have been dubbed "Insightful" -- not "Funny"!
Managers are ALWAYS ignoring/belittling engineers' concerns -- whether it be misunderestimating (or intentionally lowballing) Iraq invasion/reconstruction or blowing up the space shuttle.
Just wait until a biotech exec ignores a geneticist's concerns about test precautions. Greed contributes to myopia.
Your *conclusions* about regulation/innovation cause-and-effect are wildly distorted and, on the whole, mostly "wrong".
>>Moore's Law is the observation that when people >>are allowed to freely interact without the >>burden of government, they produce at an >>exponential rate.
Are the problems facing both industries equally difficult? Are the financial incentives to innovate the same?
Most people can't drive 300 mph safely (and won't be able to until an AI agent automates driving for us) but we all love CPU's that are 3x faster than last year's CPU's.
Do you really think these industries are so comparable as to support your proposition?
>>Are your cars getting safer and cheaper, with >>stronger yet more fuel efficient engines?
Historically, the government forced auto makers to improve their vehicles' "safety" and "fuel efficiency". Do you see auto makers surpassing government standards in these areas?
>>For instance, before deregulation, long >>distant phone calls were expensive. Today, they >>are dropping in price, while the QOS and >>coverage is expanding.
Innovation, education, and an increasing human head count spur further innovation. Have you not noticed a general acceleration of technological development over the past few hundred years??
>>Is your medical care costs going down, ("Is our children learning?") >>while the benefits are expanding?
After basic needs are met (e.g., food, shelter), what else do people want? People want to *live longer*. Thus, you should *expect* medical expenses as a percentage of GDP to increase over time -- in the absence of any regulation.
Recommendation: Forget what you think you learned thus far and re-evaluate the world anew.
Folks, even though we're no longer shoved in a locker, we're still bullied by less intelligent, evil people in our professional lives.
Just some observations: - I've omitted some of my academic background in order to get better responses to my resume. For a tech job, many managers *do not want* someone that smart. They want someone they can manipulate. - Don't half of you work for a less-intelligent manager, who reports to a person with average IQ and an MBA? Is that MBA the person who: + Says you need to hire someone this quarter but last quarter laid off some people who could have performed the new work (with or without new training)? + Forks the code again and again to satisfy a single new prospect at the expense of long-term (and even short-term) throughput of the organization? + Thinks they're running your unit effectively by leveraging business process management knowledge alone -- without more than a modicum of knowledge of technology? (I.e., the "building software is like building a house"-mentality types, who don't realize that software is *all design*) + Pays you less than "Account Managers", "Business Analysts" (who often know astonishingly little about what they're supposedly documenting), salespeople, non-technical Project Managers, and HR people, whose jobs you could all do with a month of training? + Works the engineers 10-14 hours a day while everyone else goes home?
Commenting on why there are so few women in this field, Philip Greenspun remarked "The question should be: 'Why are there so many men?'"
lies a crime[, an accident, or technological shift]."
Larry Page's statement is another data point supporting that statement.
(Remember, the keyword is "great". I'm not referring to people working hard at their jobs and getting promoted to a $130k/year job.)
Progressive taxation is fair!
Unfortunately, Reagan dropped the top federal rate from 70% to around 36%. Is anyone surprised at the growing gap between rich and poor since then?
I hope./ers are as informed about economics as they are about technology. There are more important issues than whether it's legal to hack DVD encryption.
For all the yahoos out there who clothe themselves in an American flag and bash the Europeans (especially the French), remember this: the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans protected American factories and A-bomb experiments from direct bombing.
Ever play Civ I/II/III? What happens when you play a nation and find yourself sharing your continent with several other nations? What happens when you have a large island all to yourself?
England has benefited tremendously from "The Channel", while America has benefited by the Atlantic and Pacific.
If you hate MS for its business practices, buggy software, or whatever, why do you care what MS does with the XBox?
The less you can do with an XBox, the fewer will be sold.
So: - Stop trying to get Linux to run on an XBox. - Stop modding the XBox for *any* reason. - Stop talking about the XBox. Let it die. - Buy a Playstation 2 or stick to PC games.
Until AI renders us all obsolete (our lifetimes), the biggest ROI's in computing have been realized. So, now that the market has matured, the technology companies have learned what participants in every other market learn to do: "churn".
Brokers churn your accounts, technology companies churn your technology licenses, books, certifications, etc. And everyone's in on it: you wouldn't read that online magazine if there was nothing between the ads, the certification companies need loot, 3rd party developers make "new" tools or sell you "upgrades". Naturally, the primary technology drivers want legitimacy, so they make sure enough 3td parties have enough incentive to recommend or discuss the new technologies.
Net-net: the business user isn't getting any more functionality than s/he had before.
Take the easiest example I can find: RDO, ADO, DAO, OLEDB, (others I've forgotten)... All of them boil down to a sql statement executed against the database. We needed new acronyms, API's, books, and certification questions for this???
Some loosely-related thoughts on the "free" press...
Folks, if you want news, you have to pay newspeople to deliver it to you.
Want news for free? You're not going to get it. Instead, you'll get advertising and watered-down news pieces, because no business wants to spoil relationships with its paying customers.
If the creators of South Park have to worry about spoiling relationships, you can imagine what people writing anything more serious must go through.
So, in the guise of "news" and with little critical analysis or research, major networks recite Pentagon press releases (why would these networks spend extra money when people will watch anyway?), major internet portals reprint corporate press releases, and so on. Is this news?
Pick a fee-based newspaper today and subscribe.
And pick one that prints the most, bad news. Any newspaper filled with corporate or political "rah-rah" is not giving you the news that matters. (Want to feel good? Go outside and play. Want to be informed? Read bad news.)
Anecdotally, Winston Churchill knew to set up an unbiased news agency outside of his own sphere of influence to give him the awful truth.
Maybe Slashdot should offer two access modes: fee-based without advertising and free with advertising.
Oh, and please, please -- anyone reading Slashdot -- make sure you vote. Microsoft might have a huge share of the IT market. But, the top.25% of the population has more wealth than the other 99.75%. Bothered by concentration of power and control in the IT market? Be bothered about it elsewhere, too. It affects you more than Microsoft.
I'm not sure I agree with the recommendation. In fact, I was indispensable to a company yet the boss made no attempts to convince me to stay when I resigned. Unfortunately, some people (especially relatively dumb and close-minded people) have a difficult time determining who is "indispensable" and who isn't.
But, enough of that. I'm replying to your posting more to express my agreement with your last 3 paragraphs. You're absolutely right!
-- Finding the Market
Salespeople know to it's better to market their message to people who will be receptive to the message. In your case, make your pitch to your current manager but be prepared to move on.
Managers either "get it" or they don't. They manage either a) by understanding what work has to be done and by tracking deliverables or b) by using "face time". You will know which camp your manager belongs to very shortly, if you don't already.
My recommendation is to "make your pitch" but be prepared to move on. That doesn't mean "give up." But, maybe you'll have to look for another job with a company that tolerates -- perhaps even supports -- telecommuting. Or, you might interview and offer to join another company on the condition that you be allowed to work entirely (or x% of the time) from home. In other words, you have to find someone receptive to your idea.
As an earlier poster remarked, do this before you buy that home 2 hours from a metro area.
Also, I wouldn't post my resume on a job board. A friend of mine was recently canned by the firm that found out he was looking, even though he won some peer recognition awards shortly before that.
-- Making It Work
I telecommuted a few times as a consultant. Here's what I recommend:
First, keep a cell phone with you. Always, ALWAYS have that with you during ANY part of the day someone from the office might reasonably call you. If you aren't immediately available, your manager(s) and coworkers will perceive that your absence from the workplace has diminished _their_ productivity.
Worried about the air-time charges? Ok, but resist the temptation to give your home number out. Someone will call you when you've stepped out for lunch or went to use the bathroom. Give out ONLY your cell phone number and then always call people right back. I emphasize "only" because as soon as you give out your home phone, it's possible it will end up floating around the office as "the number to reach [you]".
Second, make sure your email client is always running and always reply promptly to all emails, even if you can only say "I'll think about that" or "I'll get back to you on that."
Funny how the first two points are what people should do when they're IN the office. Huh.
Third, a few whiteboards at home and a digital camera worked great for mocking up UI's, object/data models, etc. Low tech, great results.
Fourth, dsl + ssh (with port forwarding) + other tools = virtually there.
Fifth, read what others said about the politics of not showing your face. You might lose promotion opportunities and might increase your chances of being laid off in hard times. I think this is more likely to happen when your manager isn't a sharp technical person who can accurately assess your contributions/efforts.
Indeed, if it's true (as another poster indicated) that firms are decreasing their telecommuting because of a perceived lack of productivity, I BET YOU these firms' managers rely more heavily on "face time".
So, sixth, to reduce the influence of politics, make sure the person you report to is or was extremely capable technically. Analytical people play fairer politics: they analyze rather than act emotionally.
As an aside, if I ever have to take another job as an employee, I intend to interview my prospective manager and his/her superior more fully. That means get a copy of _their_ resumes, ask them what challenges they've faced, how they reacted, etc., to find out how sharp and open-minded they are.
-- Productivity
My productivity was equal to or better than it was in the office, even though the work still required a fair amount of interaction with others. My suspicion is that once you understand the business requirements for a project, communication within the design and implementation teams can be done completely electronically. However, I opted to perform the initial requirement-gathering activities in direct meetings with analysts. "Show me what you mean" and "draw out what you'd like to see" is more easily done in person.
One of the things that helped make my productivity MARKEDLY higher was using my own equipment. Companies ALWAYS under-equip their top talent. Why spend $130k on salary (with overhead) and not pay $4k more for an extra 10% or more in yearly productivity? (And that's cost-accounting, not accounting for the value of the work output to the company's revenue and profits.) Here at home, I invested in dual monitors (21"/17"), a server, tape backup, and a cheap laptop for email only.
The cheap laptop meant I could go to the office and still have all my email with me. I don't like web mail because administrators are always limiting the size of mailboxes and because I personally love the UI and multiple-account handling features of Outlook Express. (I don't like Outlook.)
Of course, I don't bother trying to explain any of this to managers who don't already know it. (At least, not any more.) It's just not worth the time.
Same goes for many things. If your manager is unreceptive to your ideas generally, go work for another manager. You'll be a lot happier working somewhere where your contributions are considered and perhaps tested, rather than ignored or flatly disregarded.
--Conclusion
Of course, I don't really know your situation. So read the foregoing "advice" but use at your own discretion and risk.
Use what makes sense to you and throw out what doesn't.
>so psychological and ethical examinations,
>such as those administered in Blade Runner.
Good idea. But, I have two reservations.
First, since society is unable to come to a consensus about whether a perjurer should be removed from the highest law enforcement position in the country, they'll never be consensus on any "it can think!" test you come up with that includes psychological and/or ethical factors.
Second, more fundamentally, our psychology and morality are Darwinian adaptations programmed into us through brain chemistry. Why is this programming more important than, say, "I'm hungry; therefore, I must eat."? Are we testing "intelligence" or modelling human behavior?
I suppose I would test intelligence not as an all-or-nothing proposition but instead using a collection of measurements dealing with processing power, the ability to store and recall data, the ability to interrelate data, the ability to increase/decrease rule priorities, and probably some other characteristics. "Intelligence" would be a multiplicative product of these factors -- in a way like today's computing benchmarks.
If so, then we are already making intelligent machines, albeit stronger in some areas than humans and weaker than us in others. At some point, we'll create a machine that surpasses humans in each of these categories.
>>Obviousness is an important legal term of art
>>filled with meaning that is trivialized by the
>>casual -- "its obvious to me" -- remarks so
>>often seen on Slashdot.
Yes, obviousness is an important legal term. It's both an issue of fact to be determined by the court and a requirement for patentability. The angry posts of slashdotters saying "this is incredibly obvious -- I can't believe such a patent application would be granted" is EVIDENCE that the invention does not meet this requirement.
You state the obviousness test is a failure for many patents that have been granted. If you're not going to suggest we change the law and eliminate that test entirely (which I know would be a distortion of your argument), then perhaps you could consider the slashdotters' views as evidence of both a) problems with a particular patent and b) probable problems at the patent office.
Perhaps, attorneys preparing for a trial seeking to invalidate a weak patent might search./ for expert witness candidates.
the way to "talk back" is with your wallet...
on
RIAA CEO Speaks
·
· Score: 2
If anyone doesn't like the way record companies do business, don't do business with them.
Execs listen to money. Nothing else will convince them to change.
Slashdot Mirror
This should have been dubbed "Insightful" -- not "Funny"!
Managers are ALWAYS ignoring/belittling engineers' concerns -- whether it be misunderestimating (or intentionally lowballing) Iraq invasion/reconstruction or blowing up the space shuttle.
Just wait until a biotech exec ignores a geneticist's concerns about test precautions. Greed contributes to myopia.
Carmack's technology is "dual-use"! Git 'em, Bush!
Your *conclusions* about regulation/innovation cause-and-effect are wildly distorted and, on the whole, mostly "wrong".
>>Moore's Law is the observation that when people
>>are allowed to freely interact without the
>>burden of government, they produce at an
>>exponential rate.
Are the problems facing both industries equally difficult? Are the financial incentives to innovate the same?
Most people can't drive 300 mph safely (and won't be able to until an AI agent automates driving for us) but we all love CPU's that are 3x faster than last year's CPU's.
Do you really think these industries are so comparable as to support your proposition?
>>Are your cars getting safer and cheaper, with
>>stronger yet more fuel efficient engines?
Historically, the government forced auto makers to improve their vehicles' "safety" and "fuel efficiency". Do you see auto makers surpassing government standards in these areas?
>>For instance, before deregulation, long
>>distant phone calls were expensive. Today, they
>>are dropping in price, while the QOS and
>>coverage is expanding.
Innovation, education, and an increasing human head count spur further innovation. Have you not noticed a general acceleration of technological development over the past few hundred years??
>>Is your medical care costs going down,
("Is our children learning?")
>>while the benefits are expanding?
After basic needs are met (e.g., food, shelter), what else do people want? People want to *live longer*. Thus, you should *expect* medical expenses as a percentage of GDP to increase over time -- in the absence of any regulation.
Recommendation: Forget what you think you learned thus far and re-evaluate the world anew.
Don't be so easily misled by neocons, who like to portray Al Gore as laughing stock (literally).
Someone decided to fund that research. Someone deserves some credit.
Folks, even though we're no longer shoved in a locker, we're still bullied by less intelligent, evil people in our professional lives.
Just some observations:
- I've omitted some of my academic background in order to get better responses to my resume. For a tech job, many managers *do not want* someone that smart. They want someone they can manipulate.
- Don't half of you work for a less-intelligent manager, who reports to a person with average IQ and an MBA? Is that MBA the person who:
+ Says you need to hire someone this quarter but last quarter laid off some people who could have performed the new work (with or without new training)?
+ Forks the code again and again to satisfy a single new prospect at the expense of long-term (and even short-term) throughput of the organization?
+ Thinks they're running your unit effectively by leveraging business process management knowledge alone -- without more than a modicum of knowledge of technology? (I.e., the "building software is like building a house"-mentality types, who don't realize that software is *all design*)
+ Pays you less than "Account Managers", "Business Analysts" (who often know astonishingly little about what they're supposedly documenting), salespeople, non-technical Project Managers, and HR people, whose jobs you could all do with a month of training?
+ Works the engineers 10-14 hours a day while everyone else goes home?
Commenting on why there are so few women in this field, Philip Greenspun remarked "The question should be: 'Why are there so many men?'"
lies a crime[, an accident, or technological shift]."
./ers are as informed about economics as they are about technology. There are more important issues than whether it's legal to hack DVD encryption.
Larry Page's statement is another data point supporting that statement.
(Remember, the keyword is "great". I'm not referring to people working hard at their jobs and getting promoted to a $130k/year job.)
Progressive taxation is fair!
Unfortunately, Reagan dropped the top federal rate from 70% to around 36%. Is anyone surprised at the growing gap between rich and poor since then?
I hope
For all the yahoos out there who clothe themselves in an American flag and bash the Europeans (especially the French), remember this: the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans protected American factories and A-bomb experiments from direct bombing.
...unless you're the company that has the most important relationship with the customer.
That's Dell.
Dell should try DellElectronics.com and get into the home electronics/music stuff...
I'm tired of dolts ranking on France.
Ever play Civ I/II/III? What happens when you play a nation and find yourself sharing your continent with several other nations? What happens when you have a large island all to yourself?
England has benefited tremendously from "The Channel", while America has benefited by the Atlantic and Pacific.
Don't overlook the obvious: natural defenses.
How long did it take for them to invent the song id?
Ftards.
If you hate MS for its business practices, buggy software, or whatever, why do you care what MS does with the XBox?
The less you can do with an XBox, the fewer will be sold.
So:
- Stop trying to get Linux to run on an XBox.
- Stop modding the XBox for *any* reason.
- Stop talking about the XBox. Let it die.
- Buy a Playstation 2 or stick to PC games.
Whatever.
Until AI renders us all obsolete (our lifetimes), the biggest ROI's in computing have been realized. So, now that the market has matured, the technology companies have learned what participants in every other market learn to do: "churn".
... All of them boil down to a sql statement executed against the database. We needed new acronyms, API's, books, and certification questions for this???
Brokers churn your accounts, technology companies churn your technology licenses, books, certifications, etc. And everyone's in on it: you wouldn't read that online magazine if there was nothing between the ads, the certification companies need loot, 3rd party developers make "new" tools or sell you "upgrades". Naturally, the primary technology drivers want legitimacy, so they make sure enough 3td parties have enough incentive to recommend or discuss the new technologies.
Net-net: the business user isn't getting any more functionality than s/he had before.
Take the easiest example I can find: RDO, ADO, DAO, OLEDB, (others I've forgotten)
Rewrite! Rewrite! Rewrite!
Market full of suckers.
LOL!
I bet most of the database-backed web systems developers don't understand the joke, seeing as how SQL is sooo complex and not object-oriented.
Hang on while I code my joins in 3GL...
Some loosely-related thoughts on the "free" press...
.25% of the population has more wealth than the other 99.75%. Bothered by concentration of power and control in the IT market? Be bothered about it elsewhere, too. It affects you more than Microsoft.
Folks, if you want news, you have to pay newspeople to deliver it to you.
Want news for free? You're not going to get it. Instead, you'll get advertising and watered-down news pieces, because no business wants to spoil relationships with its paying customers.
If the creators of South Park have to worry about spoiling relationships, you can imagine what people writing anything more serious must go through.
So, in the guise of "news" and with little critical analysis or research, major networks recite Pentagon press releases (why would these networks spend extra money when people will watch anyway?), major internet portals reprint corporate press releases, and so on. Is this news?
Pick a fee-based newspaper today and subscribe.
And pick one that prints the most, bad news. Any newspaper filled with corporate or political "rah-rah" is not giving you the news that matters. (Want to feel good? Go outside and play. Want to be informed? Read bad news.)
Anecdotally, Winston Churchill knew to set up an unbiased news agency outside of his own sphere of influence to give him the awful truth.
Maybe Slashdot should offer two access modes: fee-based without advertising and free with advertising.
Oh, and please, please -- anyone reading Slashdot -- make sure you vote. Microsoft might have a huge share of the IT market. But, the top
I'm not sure I agree with the recommendation. In fact, I was indispensable to a company yet the boss made no attempts to convince me to stay when I resigned. Unfortunately, some people (especially relatively dumb and close-minded people) have a difficult time determining who is "indispensable" and who isn't.
But, enough of that. I'm replying to your posting more to express my agreement with your last 3 paragraphs. You're absolutely right!
-- Finding the Market
Salespeople know to it's better to market their message to people who will be receptive to the message. In your case, make your pitch to your current manager but be prepared to move on.
Managers either "get it" or they don't. They manage either a) by understanding what work has to be done and by tracking deliverables or b) by using "face time". You will know which camp your manager belongs to very shortly, if you don't already.
My recommendation is to "make your pitch" but be prepared to move on. That doesn't mean "give up." But, maybe you'll have to look for another job with a company that tolerates -- perhaps even supports -- telecommuting. Or, you might interview and offer to join another company on the condition that you be allowed to work entirely (or x% of the time) from home. In other words, you have to find someone receptive to your idea.
As an earlier poster remarked, do this before you buy that home 2 hours from a metro area.
Also, I wouldn't post my resume on a job board. A friend of mine was recently canned by the firm that found out he was looking, even though he won some peer recognition awards shortly before that.
-- Making It Work
I telecommuted a few times as a consultant. Here's what I recommend:
First, keep a cell phone with you. Always, ALWAYS have that with you during ANY part of the day someone from the office might reasonably call you. If you aren't immediately available, your manager(s) and coworkers will perceive that your absence from the workplace has diminished _their_ productivity.
Worried about the air-time charges? Ok, but resist the temptation to give your home number out. Someone will call you when you've stepped out for lunch or went to use the bathroom. Give out ONLY your cell phone number and then always call people right back. I emphasize "only" because as soon as you give out your home phone, it's possible it will end up floating around the office as "the number to reach [you]".
Second, make sure your email client is always running and always reply promptly to all emails, even if you can only say "I'll think about that" or "I'll get back to you on that."
Funny how the first two points are what people should do when they're IN the office. Huh.
Third, a few whiteboards at home and a digital camera worked great for mocking up UI's, object/data models, etc. Low tech, great results.
Fourth, dsl + ssh (with port forwarding) + other tools = virtually there.
Fifth, read what others said about the politics of not showing your face. You might lose promotion opportunities and might increase your chances of being laid off in hard times. I think this is more likely to happen when your manager isn't a sharp technical person who can accurately assess your contributions/efforts.
Indeed, if it's true (as another poster indicated) that firms are decreasing their telecommuting because of a perceived lack of productivity, I BET YOU these firms' managers rely more heavily on "face time".
So, sixth, to reduce the influence of politics, make sure the person you report to is or was extremely capable technically. Analytical people play fairer politics: they analyze rather than act emotionally.
As an aside, if I ever have to take another job as an employee, I intend to interview my prospective manager and his/her superior more fully. That means get a copy of _their_ resumes, ask them what challenges they've faced, how they reacted, etc., to find out how sharp and open-minded they are.
-- Productivity
My productivity was equal to or better than it was in the office, even though the work still required a fair amount of interaction with others. My suspicion is that once you understand the business requirements for a project, communication within the design and implementation teams can be done completely electronically. However, I opted to perform the initial requirement-gathering activities in direct meetings with analysts. "Show me what you mean" and "draw out what you'd like to see" is more easily done in person.
One of the things that helped make my productivity MARKEDLY higher was using my own equipment. Companies ALWAYS under-equip their top talent. Why spend $130k on salary (with overhead) and not pay $4k more for an extra 10% or more in yearly productivity? (And that's cost-accounting, not accounting for the value of the work output to the company's revenue and profits.) Here at home, I invested in dual monitors (21"/17"), a server, tape backup, and a cheap laptop for email only.
The cheap laptop meant I could go to the office and still have all my email with me. I don't like web mail because administrators are always limiting the size of mailboxes and because I personally love the UI and multiple-account handling features of Outlook Express. (I don't like Outlook.)
Of course, I don't bother trying to explain any of this to managers who don't already know it. (At least, not any more.) It's just not worth the time.
Same goes for many things. If your manager is unreceptive to your ideas generally, go work for another manager. You'll be a lot happier working somewhere where your contributions are considered and perhaps tested, rather than ignored or flatly disregarded.
--Conclusion
Of course, I don't really know your situation. So read the foregoing "advice" but use at your own discretion and risk.
Use what makes sense to you and throw out what doesn't.
Best of luck.
e2-e3
f1-c4
d1-f3
c4-f7
-Deep Blue
Speaking at the 2019 Man-Machine Peace Council
>so psychological and ethical examinations,
>such as those administered in Blade Runner.
Good idea. But, I have two reservations.
First, since society is unable to come to a consensus about whether a perjurer should be removed from the highest law enforcement position in the country, they'll never be consensus on any "it can think!" test you come up with that includes psychological and/or ethical factors.
Second, more fundamentally, our psychology and morality are Darwinian adaptations programmed into us through brain chemistry. Why is this programming more important than, say, "I'm hungry; therefore, I must eat."? Are we testing "intelligence" or modelling human behavior?
I suppose I would test intelligence not as an all-or-nothing proposition but instead using a collection of measurements dealing with processing power, the ability to store and recall data, the ability to interrelate data, the ability to increase/decrease rule priorities, and probably some other characteristics. "Intelligence" would be a multiplicative product of these factors -- in a way like today's computing benchmarks.
If so, then we are already making intelligent machines, albeit stronger in some areas than humans and weaker than us in others. At some point, we'll create a machine that surpasses humans in each of these categories.
>>Obviousness is an important legal term of art
./ for expert witness candidates.
>>filled with meaning that is trivialized by the
>>casual -- "its obvious to me" -- remarks so
>>often seen on Slashdot.
Yes, obviousness is an important legal term. It's both an issue of fact to be determined by the court and a requirement for patentability. The angry posts of slashdotters saying "this is incredibly obvious -- I can't believe such a patent application would be granted" is EVIDENCE that the invention does not meet this requirement.
You state the obviousness test is a failure for many patents that have been granted. If you're not going to suggest we change the law and eliminate that test entirely (which I know would be a distortion of your argument), then perhaps you could consider the slashdotters' views as evidence of both a) problems with a particular patent and b) probable problems at the patent office.
Perhaps, attorneys preparing for a trial seeking to invalidate a weak patent might search
Execs listen to money. Nothing else will convince them to change.
:)