Not just local. I moved to a super rural area in the Appalacian mountains in '80 or so, as I like nature. It's a beautiful place, super clean air, little human population or impact, plenty of rain, all the good stuff if you like nature.
It's purely anecdotal - one data point - but the whole time I've lived here, every year there has seen a reduction in insects, peeper frogs, goldinches...pretty much all but deer and raccoons, all less every year, and it's kinda depressing.
No new population of humans, no obvious increase in human effects on anything - it's become more or less a bunch of old people who mainly just stay inside their low-impact homes. .
I therefore assume that it's not just local - whatever it is affects us here where we kept it nice and clean.
I like good jeans, which I assume some market will make available at some price, one at least some can afford if they want to stay in business, but I can wear any sort, and even make my own if I can get the raw materials...likely they could even be made in the rural area I live in that has resources city folk forgot were important because people here provided them for so long. Like milk comes from the supermarket, right? Some of us live closer to the earth.
I might not disagree, my point was other. If they starve now, or simply lose opportunities to learn due to not getting the tools bought wherever - the future matters les because in that case, there isn't one. My "family" isn't genetic, it's broader than that, it's a... community? Don't know what to call it, I mentor and support a lot of people I call "my kids" even though they aren't mine biologically. /
And you might have missed my point about loss leaders. No one is building up their empire further if I take advantage of them selling below cost, but STOP the instant they start charging real bucks - which WAS my point. I said *smart* shopping.
Yeah, you're one of the ones who can't even, that's obvious. When this crap just gets added to your system, how are you even supposed to know there's such a thing as journalctl? Some of us, do, you know, real work on this stuff, and only do sysadmin if it's required to set something nifty up. Having to also fix things someone else broke is extra work that isn't needed. The pushback isn't for no reason - systemd really screwed up a lot of people's day. If it just worked...probably would have been another story, despite the terrible architecture.
What order, I did an NFS mount in/etc/fstab, which is the documented way that worked for years, and not only did systemd fail to mount it, it failed to respect the bg (backgrounding try again) flag, and then refused to let the system shut down since it couldn't unmount what it had failed to mount - which I verified by mounting manally at the CLI - and then it would unmount it and shutdown normally.
//
There was no fine manual to read that I'm aware of when this happened. Just oddball notes all over if you googled about how to fix just this particular bug - which workarounds worked until the next update. You might not have been paying attention.
//
Got my system in such a state? What a jerk, you're proving my point. Systemd got it into that state, I did zero, nada, nothing but allow an update to happen.
//
I don't have an employment contract - I work for my own outfit, which is a physics lab. It needs a lot of fairly custom machines from little to huge and fast for data aq and control - which is needed as the fusion reactor I'm developing works well enough to make too many neutrons to be safe near....
//
If it wasn't a bug that affected a lot of people, why did they complain and get the snotty remark - and then list workarounds findable on google?
//
That lovely restart loop on slow starting things is well documented as well, and has a workaround involving setting a longer timeout, which is a nasty hack...
//
Pretty sure it's not ignorant to trust "security" updates. I wouldn't have known systemd existed, much less have had time to retrain on hard to find or nonexistent documents that were changing daily...I'm REAL sure that something they broke isn't my fault, and people who tell me otherwise might be the problem.
for systemd - tons of identical instances, usually virtual so they can really be the same. The moment you customize with shares mounted on other machines, use wifi instead of wired ethernet, need to run custom daemons and so on - all of which worked fine here for years - under systemd, you find out that nope, shares didn't mount because they tried and failed before there was an IP address (now fixed, which fix broke the workaround you needed at first) - things like conky get started in an endless timeout loop till the system dies from no memory (maybe fixed, so hard to get right I gave up on conky) and on and on for a long list of stuff that worked before systmd, and LP says "just don't do that, EWONTFIX". The whole list is too long for the margin here. .
And his clan call us haters. They didn't have to make a ton of interlinked custom real hardware on prem systems work - broken time and time again by upgrades to that nasty piece of work...the web is full of workarounds that used to be the only things that worked, that are now broken as the systemd coders finally listened and fixed them but in such a way as to break the workaround, again, and again, and again.
Shades of lost productivity, near windows-like.
Which of course doesn't affect RedHat revenue as they support - tons of identical instances...llike farcebook. The simplest case, get it right once and it's right everywhere. No edge cases. Wow, I'm er, underwhelmed.
In other words, this far fan-dancier init system doesn't (or didn't) handle anything complex, just added complexity to only handle the simplest stuff correctly. And was forced on us long before ready.
It was really fun trying to figure out why a system with a failed mount wouldn't shut down clean without a hard power off - because it couldn't unmount what it had failed to mount. Glad it wasn't far away and I could just do that.
Not a hater, exactly. Just gheez - it caused me a ton of unnecessary unpaid work and stress and was arrogant about how it was somehow my fault for using what had been the documented standard ways of doing things. Way to win friends and influence people.
Morality aside for the moment - there are some really decent values on some of these - for awhile. I suspect the usual procedure of marking them up higher priced if they get popular will apply as usual, but it's hard to resist some things that cost half as much, and for really good quality, as they do locally. This will not last, and I've seen the price transition happen on a few items already - it's bad to get hooked, stupid to use auto-reorder, dash, or alexa without checking of course, as that's a sneak path for an unexpected and unannounced (till you see the bill) big markup. .
If it's immoral to do the best you can with what you have for your family, well...it gets complex fast, doesn't it. I'm sure some of the outfits who'd go out of business fast if they didn't have Amazon to re-sell their stuff for them, now that local is doing dead (due to Amazon and Walmart) - have to be selling below cost - if not, they've been really ripping us off the whole time, and just deserts is what I say. So it won't go on for long, but for now...smart people who pay attention always have an edge.
And no, I'm no fan of Bezos or his politics. What I'm suggesting is taking advantage of the outfit when they play the loss-leader game.
The most intelligent discussion of politics on Slashdot this year, and I could have used mod points but didn't need them as this was already modded up. Gheesh, what happened to judgement vs hatred? Compromise vs winner take all or obstructionism?
Dumpsterfire (I like that one) himself says, FWIW, that Sessions was probably a mistake. I think there's a lot of agreement to that among even fake-ass republicans/RINOs (though both parties are now the money party, just prefer their bribes from different sources); the "progressive" left surely likes his refusals that let them do hateful things.
Identity politics is divisive. I'm sick of the ad-hom everywhere instead of arguments with substance. .
Now, if we could get back to on-topic, or at least sort of, rather than fronting every single thread with trolling on this subject...it'd be nice. I sometimes wonder if the trolls & haters aren't really on the side they attack just to bring more support to the attacked parties due to revulsion caused by the attacks.
Most people don't talk about having voted for Dumpsterfire just to burn it down and cause the rats to make their identities clear, but I know plenty who did just that.
You lose your bet, FWIW. I have asked that (not flip a coin, but results based) and did quite well before I started my own successful outfit. Worked my tail off and did quite well, and that was all a "coin flip" - but by choosing to become skilled, and in what field, and judging the demand for work in that field, I was able to load the dice, so to speak. Which is available to all, and always has been.
Otherwise, historically, "suckers never get an even break", isn't peculiar to the US...and stretches back through all of history. Wishing for something else may not be enough, and may be a case of "be careful what you wish for". You want losers to have unearned power over everyone else's resources? Really? Nutcases in power seem to be a complaint around the world already.
Yes, it only works if you're not so stupid as to take a job you can't live on the income from in the place where the job is, and are too dumb to either improve yourself or move to a better opportunity. And dumb enough to blame all your troubles on some external entity because you think you're entitled to a certain level of lifestyle whether you worked to deserve it or not, and whether you misspent your time being supported by parents or the state rather than prepping yourself to do something in demand enough to get a decent paycheck. I'd suggest not taking a burger flipping or equivalent job and insisting on living in silly valley, for example.
Stockroom person, paper delivery person - that's Amazon. Low skill, low value added, low pay follows.
Of course higher base pay is nicer. But also, a lot of people use the occasional bonus to get those things they lacked the discipline to save for - tax refunds used to be that bonus (even though it was only a forced saving).
The stink of "I'm entitled" even if I don't deserve crap by earning it is offensive. Why do we have so many immigrants, uneducated, taking crap jobs, and somehow doing fairly well - and even integrating into societal norms (at least here in a rural area) - and doing it on pay much less than any Amazon job? Are you saying they know some magic you don't?
Inconsistent income - live within the means of the consistent part, and there's no forcing anyone to do anything stupid like a payday loan. What are you smoking? So the marketing that "you/they need this and deserve it even if you can't afford it" worked on you so well you believe its the only truth? Gheesh.
When I had little money I just lived like a monk in a monastery. Great motivation to fix that issue - it's not like most people should consider low level employ at a place like Amazon to be a real career and not think of how to improve their lot (and do something about it other than complain). I didn't borrow.
And now I'm pretty well off, with good habits. At least, it worked for me, what should I tell others? Stuff that didn't?
See other reply to my post. Which I happen to somewhat agree with. You CAN'T live people's lives for them. On the other hand, you can not lead them to lie on the train tracks, believe lies, go so deep into debt that one slip means they lose a home or that new Vette they should never have bought. You can give them good advice (or at least, what you think is good) and then let them decide for themselves - I have no problem with that. But what I saw was like a cute juvenile girl dressing like a whore, planning on getting drunk, and going to hang out in a bad part of town...surely you can see it might not be a bad idea to mention the possible consequences of that - and then let them go if they want to, of course. Using something like "you can't live their lives" as an excuse to abdicate all responsibility to help your fellow human - now that, I take issue with.
Yes, they can go deeper into debt slavery that way - constant income is a loan magnet. Which is a key way society as it is tends to keep the poor, poor.
Back when there was a Bunker-Ramo, I worked there as a high level engineer. Our new hires, mostly making more than they ever had, were going way deep into debt to get that "good life" they always dreamed of and marketing everywhere sells you.
This kinda bothered me - I liked the people under me - so I went to higher management with kinda WTF, should we educate them better on their options for financial security (we were in a high risk contracting business).
Answer - nope, that way they can't quit so easily....(meaning, we own them now and don't have to treat them well anymore).
I quit...
I didn't say (or at least mean to) that it was complex, only that people "make it out" to be so. Though it is interesting that various factions can't seem to let go of the idea that one particular spot there was the "holy home of their religion". As if you had to be on it for your religion to be valid or something.
The fact that pretty much any of the interested parties has once controlled that same spot of land, and considers it all-important to get control of it back is a complication...perhaps unwillingness to accept the flow of history is a "simple" problem to define, but not so simple to solve when to the players, everything is utterly black and white. And everyone's grandpa has killed everyone else's grandpa, with memory all too long.
I liked Henry Rollins' take on it - no matter what the causes are/were floating around - do you really want your kids exposed to living in hatred for the rest of forever? I was glad to see him put that message out to all the sides of that issue on a standup comedy tour. It sure is a waste of energy as it is.
I agree that taking it all too seriously - self-important hubris - is probably the largest part of the problem. Overcompensated inferiority complexes?
What's the point of mod points when an entire article has zero on-topic posts? An argument between sock puppets, probably the same idiot, someone else whining about another prize, or lack of, and nothing about the guys who won the prize for doing something decent - and difficult, which might save lives. .
What a bunch of losers. Which I at least know how to spell. .
How about some info on how they managed to get immune system to discriminate well enough between cancer and normal cells (which have nearly the same DNA) well enough to make this more good than harmful? What about reasoned discussion of this and alternate approaches? Not here. Disgusting.
Yup, we need things like that to be reversible. It really matters here as I'm off-grid so heating and cooling have to mostly be non-electric. An amount of solar that lets my keep my Volt charged up (mostly) won't do the HVAC kinda stuff...that's wood, propane, and mostly small fans, only a little AC. And it does get hot here, but also spends time around 10F. Lots of degree-days.
Yep, but I'm trying to learn how to avoid TL;DR...often failing. Depends on the audience too.
Everything in the ME is complicated...seems everyone involved likes it that way. Which is yet another mistake.
And you're not thinking big enough even with that! Why do we let others create war machines - using our resources - and suck us into dying for them? Are we so lazy as to need to be told what to think, because we can't be bothered to learn HOW to think?/rhetorical
Back up and think why there are migrants in the first place as a small example for what is a far larger issue than them and Europe. When has the West missed a chance to ruin what little they have, make enemies with "collateral damage" that from afar, seems anything but accidental? Ruin their ability to do well where they are...kill their relatives, innocent or not, give them a reason to hate that's very palpable (you killed my family) and then open your doors...because you're humanitarian - unlike that government you let run your own show that causes this in the first place. .
The cognitive dissonance implied boggles the mind. First you let your governments create huge problems, then you try to fix it, not by putting a stop to that, but by taking action to accept the consequences for something you never asked to have happen. How many people in the West really want to destroy the middle east? Only the ones who gain money and power by it, I'd wager, or mostly them. I think I see where the problem is...but knowing what it is isn't going to feed the kids of a weapons builder who doesn't seem themselves as driving or enabling great evil, and who will insist on their important job...
It's the most SHORTED stock on the market, which isn't a thing most pension funds can even legally do. Making it go up via BS cost weak shorts money - that's who is pissed off. Don't assume, actually follow the money. There's plenty of bad guys, your favorite one might no the be main player *this time*.
We might agree behind the polemic. I never intimated I tolerated prima donnas. I took real good care of the good people...not even close to the same thing.
Meritocracy is about...merit. Disruptive "it's all about me" isn't merit, no matter what else they do....Making others less productive or putting them off isn't merit.
Listening less to those who've made solid contributions, rather than to whiners simply isn't smart, nor is it meritorious. Simples? .
Personally, as an engineer, as an inventor, as a musician and a few other job titles...I've found that the better someone is, the less ego they display, the less prima donna they act...just sayin. The really good people know darn well they don't know it all, know that there might be someone better, have little or nothing to prove, lack all the normal thing associated with prima donnas. You don't get good at anything by assuming you've already "arrived". They're just nice. Some of them look funny or act funny in their spare time. Who gives a damn about that? It's not my business.
Slashdot Mirror
It's purely anecdotal - one data point - but the whole time I've lived here, every year there has seen a reduction in insects, peeper frogs, goldinches...pretty much all but deer and raccoons, all less every year, and it's kinda depressing.
No new population of humans, no obvious increase in human effects on anything - it's become more or less a bunch of old people who mainly just stay inside their low-impact homes.
.
I therefore assume that it's not just local - whatever it is affects us here where we kept it nice and clean.
The SEC is busy with Elon Musk, which already takes too much time away from their midget porn fetish.
Some assets are meant to be hidden until use. Instant gratification often gets you less than waiting for the best setup.
"Be careful what you read" is promoting censorship. Be careful what you believe is more to the point - as well as WHO you believe.
I like good jeans, which I assume some market will make available at some price, one at least some can afford if they want to stay in business, but I can wear any sort, and even make my own if I can get the raw materials...likely they could even be made in the rural area I live in that has resources city folk forgot were important because people here provided them for so long. Like milk comes from the supermarket, right? Some of us live closer to the earth.
/
And you might have missed my point about loss leaders. No one is building up their empire further if I take advantage of them selling below cost, but STOP the instant they start charging real bucks - which WAS my point. I said *smart* shopping.
Yeah, you're one of the ones who can't even, that's obvious. When this crap just gets added to your system, how are you even supposed to know there's such a thing as journalctl? Some of us, do, you know, real work on this stuff, and only do sysadmin if it's required to set something nifty up. Having to also fix things someone else broke is extra work that isn't needed. The pushback isn't for no reason - systemd really screwed up a lot of people's day. If it just worked...probably would have been another story, despite the terrible architecture.
//
There was no fine manual to read that I'm aware of when this happened. Just oddball notes all over if you googled about how to fix just this particular bug - which workarounds worked until the next update. You might not have been paying attention.
//
Got my system in such a state? What a jerk, you're proving my point. Systemd got it into that state, I did zero, nada, nothing but allow an update to happen.
//
I don't have an employment contract - I work for my own outfit, which is a physics lab. It needs a lot of fairly custom machines from little to huge and fast for data aq and control - which is needed as the fusion reactor I'm developing works well enough to make too many neutrons to be safe near....
//
If it wasn't a bug that affected a lot of people, why did they complain and get the snotty remark - and then list workarounds findable on google?
//
That lovely restart loop on slow starting things is well documented as well, and has a workaround involving setting a longer timeout, which is a nasty hack...
//
Pretty sure it's not ignorant to trust "security" updates. I wouldn't have known systemd existed, much less have had time to retrain on hard to find or nonexistent documents that were changing daily...I'm REAL sure that something they broke isn't my fault, and people who tell me otherwise might be the problem.
.
And his clan call us haters. They didn't have to make a ton of interlinked custom real hardware on prem systems work - broken time and time again by upgrades to that nasty piece of work...the web is full of workarounds that used to be the only things that worked, that are now broken as the systemd coders finally listened and fixed them but in such a way as to break the workaround, again, and again, and again.
Shades of lost productivity, near windows-like. Which of course doesn't affect RedHat revenue as they support - tons of identical instances...llike farcebook. The simplest case, get it right once and it's right everywhere. No edge cases. Wow, I'm er, underwhelmed.
In other words, this far fan-dancier init system doesn't (or didn't) handle anything complex, just added complexity to only handle the simplest stuff correctly. And was forced on us long before ready.
It was really fun trying to figure out why a system with a failed mount wouldn't shut down clean without a hard power off - because it couldn't unmount what it had failed to mount. Glad it wasn't far away and I could just do that.
Not a hater, exactly. Just gheez - it caused me a ton of unnecessary unpaid work and stress and was arrogant about how it was somehow my fault for using what had been the documented standard ways of doing things. Way to win friends and influence people.
.
If it's immoral to do the best you can with what you have for your family, well...it gets complex fast, doesn't it. I'm sure some of the outfits who'd go out of business fast if they didn't have Amazon to re-sell their stuff for them, now that local is doing dead (due to Amazon and Walmart) - have to be selling below cost - if not, they've been really ripping us off the whole time, and just deserts is what I say. So it won't go on for long, but for now...smart people who pay attention always have an edge.
And no, I'm no fan of Bezos or his politics. What I'm suggesting is taking advantage of the outfit when they play the loss-leader game.
Identity politics is divisive. I'm sick of the ad-hom everywhere instead of arguments with substance.
.
Now, if we could get back to on-topic, or at least sort of, rather than fronting every single thread with trolling on this subject...it'd be nice. I sometimes wonder if the trolls & haters aren't really on the side they attack just to bring more support to the attacked parties due to revulsion caused by the attacks.
Most people don't talk about having voted for Dumpsterfire just to burn it down and cause the rats to make their identities clear, but I know plenty who did just that.
You lose your bet, FWIW. I have asked that (not flip a coin, but results based) and did quite well before I started my own successful outfit. Worked my tail off and did quite well, and that was all a "coin flip" - but by choosing to become skilled, and in what field, and judging the demand for work in that field, I was able to load the dice, so to speak. Which is available to all, and always has been.
Otherwise, historically, "suckers never get an even break", isn't peculiar to the US...and stretches back through all of history. Wishing for something else may not be enough, and may be a case of "be careful what you wish for". You want losers to have unearned power over everyone else's resources? Really? Nutcases in power seem to be a complaint around the world already.
Yes, it only works if you're not so stupid as to take a job you can't live on the income from in the place where the job is, and are too dumb to either improve yourself or move to a better opportunity. And dumb enough to blame all your troubles on some external entity because you think you're entitled to a certain level of lifestyle whether you worked to deserve it or not, and whether you misspent your time being supported by parents or the state rather than prepping yourself to do something in demand enough to get a decent paycheck.
I'd suggest not taking a burger flipping or equivalent job and insisting on living in silly valley, for example.
Stockroom person, paper delivery person - that's Amazon. Low skill, low value added, low pay follows.
Of course higher base pay is nicer. But also, a lot of people use the occasional bonus to get those things they lacked the discipline to save for - tax refunds used to be that bonus (even though it was only a forced saving).
The stink of "I'm entitled" even if I don't deserve crap by earning it is offensive. Why do we have so many immigrants, uneducated, taking crap jobs, and somehow doing fairly well - and even integrating into societal norms (at least here in a rural area) - and doing it on pay much less than any Amazon job? Are you saying they know some magic you don't?
Inconsistent income - live within the means of the consistent part, and there's no forcing anyone to do anything stupid like a payday loan. What are you smoking? So the marketing that "you/they need this and deserve it even if you can't afford it" worked on you so well you believe its the only truth? Gheesh.
When I had little money I just lived like a monk in a monastery. Great motivation to fix that issue - it's not like most people should consider low level employ at a place like Amazon to be a real career and not think of how to improve their lot (and do something about it other than complain). I didn't borrow.
And now I'm pretty well off, with good habits. At least, it worked for me, what should I tell others? Stuff that didn't?
See other reply to my post. Which I happen to somewhat agree with. You CAN'T live people's lives for them. On the other hand, you can not lead them to lie on the train tracks, believe lies, go so deep into debt that one slip means they lose a home or that new Vette they should never have bought. You can give them good advice (or at least, what you think is good) and then let them decide for themselves - I have no problem with that. But what I saw was like a cute juvenile girl dressing like a whore, planning on getting drunk, and going to hang out in a bad part of town...surely you can see it might not be a bad idea to mention the possible consequences of that - and then let them go if they want to, of course. Using something like "you can't live their lives" as an excuse to abdicate all responsibility to help your fellow human - now that, I take issue with.
Yes, they can go deeper into debt slavery that way - constant income is a loan magnet. Which is a key way society as it is tends to keep the poor, poor. Back when there was a Bunker-Ramo, I worked there as a high level engineer. Our new hires, mostly making more than they ever had, were going way deep into debt to get that "good life" they always dreamed of and marketing everywhere sells you.
This kinda bothered me - I liked the people under me - so I went to higher management with kinda WTF, should we educate them better on their options for financial security (we were in a high risk contracting business).
Answer - nope, that way they can't quit so easily....(meaning, we own them now and don't have to treat them well anymore).
I quit...
I didn't say (or at least mean to) that it was complex, only that people "make it out" to be so. Though it is interesting that various factions can't seem to let go of the idea that one particular spot there was the "holy home of their religion". As if you had to be on it for your religion to be valid or something.
The fact that pretty much any of the interested parties has once controlled that same spot of land, and considers it all-important to get control of it back is a complication...perhaps unwillingness to accept the flow of history is a "simple" problem to define, but not so simple to solve when to the players, everything is utterly black and white. And everyone's grandpa has killed everyone else's grandpa, with memory all too long. I liked Henry Rollins' take on it - no matter what the causes are/were floating around - do you really want your kids exposed to living in hatred for the rest of forever? I was glad to see him put that message out to all the sides of that issue on a standup comedy tour. It sure is a waste of energy as it is.
I agree that taking it all too seriously - self-important hubris - is probably the largest part of the problem. Overcompensated inferiority complexes?
.
What a bunch of losers. Which I at least know how to spell.
.
How about some info on how they managed to get immune system to discriminate well enough between cancer and normal cells (which have nearly the same DNA) well enough to make this more good than harmful? What about reasoned discussion of this and alternate approaches? Not here. Disgusting.
Yup, we need things like that to be reversible. It really matters here as I'm off-grid so heating and cooling have to mostly be non-electric. An amount of solar that lets my keep my Volt charged up (mostly) won't do the HVAC kinda stuff...that's wood, propane, and mostly small fans, only a little AC. And it does get hot here, but also spends time around 10F. Lots of degree-days.
Yep, but I'm trying to learn how to avoid TL;DR...often failing. Depends on the audience too.
Everything in the ME is complicated...seems everyone involved likes it that way. Which is yet another mistake.
Also, for we who live in a 4 season climate - how to turn it off in winter. We expend energy to both heat and cool.
Back up and think why there are migrants in the first place as a small example for what is a far larger issue than them and Europe. When has the West missed a chance to ruin what little they have, make enemies with "collateral damage" that from afar, seems anything but accidental? Ruin their ability to do well where they are...kill their relatives, innocent or not, give them a reason to hate that's very palpable (you killed my family) and then open your doors...because you're humanitarian - unlike that government you let run your own show that causes this in the first place.
The cognitive dissonance implied boggles the mind. First you let your governments create huge problems, then you try to fix it, not by putting a stop to that, but by taking action to accept the consequences for something you never asked to have happen. How many people in the West really want to destroy the middle east? Only the ones who gain money and power by it, I'd wager, or mostly them. I think I see where the problem is...but knowing what it is isn't going to feed the kids of a weapons builder who doesn't seem themselves as driving or enabling great evil, and who will insist on their important job...
It's the most SHORTED stock on the market, which isn't a thing most pension funds can even legally do. Making it go up via BS cost weak shorts money - that's who is pissed off. Don't assume, actually follow the money. There's plenty of bad guys, your favorite one might no the be main player *this time*.
Meritocracy is about...merit. Disruptive "it's all about me" isn't merit, no matter what else they do....Making others less productive or putting them off isn't merit.
Listening less to those who've made solid contributions, rather than to whiners simply isn't smart, nor is it meritorious. Simples?
.
Personally, as an engineer, as an inventor, as a musician and a few other job titles...I've found that the better someone is, the less ego they display, the less prima donna they act...just sayin. The really good people know darn well they don't know it all, know that there might be someone better, have little or nothing to prove, lack all the normal thing associated with prima donnas. You don't get good at anything by assuming you've already "arrived". They're just nice. Some of them look funny or act funny in their spare time. Who gives a damn about that? It's not my business.
^^^^^ mod up. 'nother way of saying truth.