The only way Microsoft has to promote their inferior product has been FUD campaigns and tons of self-promotion through marketing. They don't want any allies that could be potential rivals, and that includes Yahoo. Unless they intend to buy Yahoo (like they did with Bungie and Rare), they probably don't want to support a partner in a field they could dominate themselves for more profits. The only "allies" I've seen them interested in have been PC makers, and those are more like forced partnerships than friendly cooperations.
Go ahead, mod me down. You know I speak the truth.
The subject is a giant god damn pyramid. What the fuck is so hard to understand about this? He could believe Batman saved him from a fucking rabid Easter Bunny, and it wouldn't make the slightest bloody difference whether or not the pyramid was there.
The only thing that matters is if the structure exists or doesn't exist, period. End of the stupid fucking conversation.
Obviously not, seeing as the pyramids at Giza were built 4,500 years ago. Not only that, why the flying fuck would someone just assume that a gigantic pyramid would have to be over 12,000 years old? Did the article say anything claiming that he believed it to be that old? Damn you're dumb.
And everyone pointing to the archaeology organization site naming him as a nutjob, guess what folks? It won't be debunked until they've fully excavated the site. Whether or not the man in charge is crazy or not has little bearing on the validity of his claims, particularly when the evidence would be a gigantic fucking pyramid. There isn't anything to debate, it's either there or not.
Also, I'd say that a majority of the archaelogical society hates new findings that contradict their old theories, and can often go out of their way to ostracize and decredit people that publish or support findings that would invalidate all the time spent writing papers on any particularly well-accepted idea.
Even for a movie made from a video game, those screens say it all: unbelievably bad. I thought they at least made sure franchise titles went to movies with a decent budget and producer? What the hell is this crap?
This is not going to make it to theaters, folks; even with the god-awful movies in theaters these days, this kind of material is strictly straight-to-dvd quality.
Most of what I've seen on/. and other sites about Vista has been extremely negative, majorly centering around MS continuing to ignore the voices of consumers and implement draconic DRM while losing several promised features and delaying the release for the umpteenth time...
Unless I was in a coma when the press release came out stating Vista suddenly became the best coded OS of all time, where's the "slam dunk"?
Seems much more likely that this is a result of MS shitting bricks over Apple gaining popularity and switching to a chip platform that will continue to bolster their market share.
Yeap, that's pretty much what I referred to when saying the media should dupe stories like this instead of their usual duping schpeel they repeat every day with slight paraphrasing and change to the viewpoint given the subject, as they might actually make a relevant contribution to the world...but instead we get what I think I'll start referring to as the daily "mainstream dupe": the two minutes of actual events, then the roundtable of exactly the same questions as before about Iran and nuclear weapons and terrorists and national security, rinse and repeat.
The "War on Terror" is just a catchphrase, and the actual war, meaning one government's army fighting against the army of an opposing government, on Iraq was over long ago. We have a very large amount of troops deployed for being outside of a war, but that's no different from our "policing action" in a few Asian countries. This is why Bush has tried very hard, and often succeeded, to fabricate a need and provision for special powers, such as creating the Homeland Security department and having them create that bullshit "color coded threat" system, and why the Patriot Act was originally passed: it was supposed to expire, but was then made permanent. The president no longer retains any special war privileges, and aside from the ones granted to him and his cronies through the Patriot Act (which I believe they aren't using this time because they'd validate the claim to an extent that might well warrant many other groups besides the EFF to join in the legal battle, as the court case as it stands has the feds speaking tripledoublespeak (from the filing in TFA):
"When allegations are made about purported classified government activities or relationships, regardless of whether those allegations are accurate, the existence or non-existence of the activity or relationship is potentially a state secret."
Also, there are very clear provisions for privacy in the Constitution, and I believe the Supreme Court already ruled on this at least once: your communications, in whatever form, are your property and you have the right to keep them private. This is why getting a wiretap is (well, was, and kinda still is, though apparently legal justice magically changes depending on which agency/department of the government you work for) so hard to obtain. This is why unauthorized wiretaps are inadmissable in court; the same rule applies to getting a warrant to search your email or whatever you use. The reason why so many people have the miconception that they don't have the right to privacy is because the rights of citizens were greatly eroded under Rehnquist, for if I recall correctly, the Rehnquist court is the reason why police can't search you when you're walking on the street but can search and open any belongings you have once you step inside a vehicle, amongst other and lesser known trespasses and limitations on personal liberties.
Oh, and lastly, FISA is completely constitutional, and very well cemented into the machinery of the federal government, as the FISA court has great authority and works a little too nicely with intelligence agencies (The infamous CARNIVORE was created at the order of the FISA court), so I don't know why Bush exhibited such baffling stupidity by giving an Executive Order to the NSA for the wiretapping (which does break the law, and the only reason there hasn't been an inquiry is because the Republican controlled House and Senate refuse to even consider any sort of legal action) instead of asking the FISA court to issue an order for the wiretapping to the NSA, which probably wouldn've been completely legal... Perhaps because even the oft-bold FISA court isn't that stupid and brazen to so openly violate the Constitution.
Normally, I'd quickly join the collective groan upon seeing a story duped, but this is one of those rare cases where it actually comes in handy and adds one more voice trying to get the American public to PAY SOME FUCKING ATTENTION.
Now, if only the NY Times would dupe stories like this.:)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the lawsuit is not over any government records, but those of civilians. The only aspect of this case that could be considered "national security" is the fact that the NSA and possibly other government organizations got the records from AT&T... Isn't there some statute or code that mandates relevancy? Or maybe, common sense? If they use this "privilege" in this case, couldn't they use it in any case concerning anything with the federal government?
"Son, why don't you get out more... you know, like train under that ninja that's been living in the moutains... it'd be a good way to keep in shape and honor your history."
"Ugh, DAD! that is so LAME!"
It's official, I will never have children as pleasing them is impossible. If you can't make a 13 year old boy happy with an apprenticeship to a real ninja, nothing ever will.
Labor is the only thing of value in the market, period. Trading stocks and all the slime on wall street surely are an annoyance to the people that make society what it is, but are unnecessary. Would doctors, nurses, EMS, and orderlies forget how to take care of people if all the MBA's vanished from the face of the earth? Somehow, I doubt it. Would police stop keeping you safe? Power plants suddenly fail? Somehow, I doubt it. Now try it the other way around. Get it through that thick money-grubbing skull that labor makes civilization run, and civilization exists to serve humanity, not some abstract concept printed on paper. Leave your ultra-capitalist bullshit where it belongs, your toilet.
It might not be comforting or nice, but it's the truth.
No, that is your willingness to readily degrade humanity by pushing the poor into an eat-or-die situation until they cave and work for near nothing, while the fowl principles of a free market economy just stand by and laugh. If you can automate a certain function in a factory, that's fine. Keeping the minimum wage at half what was deemed the bare necessity to survive is not. So, when someone robs my neighbor, my fellow man, I'm supposed to call the police and/or run to help him out, but when he's cheated out of the worth of his hard work and poisoned by corporations powerful enough to silence the FDA, I'm supposed to... change my fucking purchasing habits or write a letter? For the last fucking time, civilization was created to provide for humanity, not corporate aristocracy. I know it must a rather seductive belief to imagine that morality is essentially meaningless as long as corporations are allowed to continue their march into the future, that CEO's and all their business adminstration buddies (coincidentally including you, apparently) are all meant to rule the world by the virtue of free market and your sheer mastery over the coins of the earth without ever once contributing something useful to society... but if you could grow the fuck up rather quickly, I'd appreciate it.
I nowhere mentioned or believe that doctors should be paid the same as manual labor; however, a proper society pays every contributor at least something that allows a modestly comfortable life. It's nice to know you think of Lincoln's wisdom as "outdated". I'm surprised such a small UID number is afforded to one so alien to logical viewpoint of humanity's accomplishments and has apparently spent a good deal of effort delving deeply into percieving our combined efforts as mere financial assets.
Wha?? I think you misread my post... I was comparing engineers to lawyers and architects as examples of careers that require a very high intellect and often run their own small, independent firms without the leadership of some ivy league suit.
You bring up some good points, but I am sure that companies could trim a lot of fat (pun intended) by using their engineers and programmers to develope a much more efficient way of running things and giving alot of management the pink slip and a 2 year tech school brochure.
It's certainly true that many slashdotters are diehard nintento fans, and of course they'll buy the console and enjoy good games and support their alma mater... but that doesn't mean naming the newest iteration in the Nintendo legacy something tremendously stupid like "Wii" doesn't really, really get to us.
For example, imagine the feeling you get when you get the latest in a great RPG series or other gaming franchise that you've watched grow for years and years (like Final Fantasy). Now imagine getting your hands on the game, and it's everything you want it to be... but the main character is Paris Hilton or equally annoying.
Google is run very well, which is why I'm praying that nothing screws it up somehow. We need a better role-model for structuring tech companies.
I have a great amount of reverence for people with the kind of experience you mention in the tech world with MBA's, as that degree makes an excellent... how to say it, icing on top of the rather large and impressive foundation of 10 years at NASA.
This is going to be long (skip to the end if you like) because you just hit a rather sensitive nerve when you said:
"More over -- it is a public business, thereby its owned by serveral hundreds of people. Guess what these people want from their company? This is the capitalist system. It creates a need, and this need is filled by shiny MBAs who get paid very handsomely for what they do -- make money."
Capitalism exists only to make a society more efficient than other economic systems and help civilization progress, mostly in terms of standard of living in the ways of medicine, food, shelter, and that sort of thing alongside aiding our desires to find out who and what the hell we are and what we're doing here (arts, religion, philosophy, exploratory and theoretical science). That is the be all and end all for capitalism, there is no other point to it. The problem is that alot of people don't see it that side of it with the drive to succeed, and see money as the only reason we have this setup. The worse of these are usually MBA's, and the worst are usually CEO's and fellow higher-ups, the ones hell-bent on driving the gap between rich and poor as far apart as possible. While many economists and "captains of industry" would have the world believe that a free market and their version of capitalism is the real thing, nothing could be further from the truth.
The current system is a perversion of the original idea: products are no longer judged on quality and craftsmanship but on advertising, stifling real innovation or foresight into the long term effects certain products can have on the future, such as global warming, toxic waste, growing amounts of artificial chemicals in the land, water, and air, side effects of artificial chemicals in agriculture and livestock, side effects of pharmaceuticals, etc. The best example I can think of here would be Monsanto, who have used advertising to present a friendly image while using lawyers to silence reporters and competitors and massive amounts of cash to silence the FDA about rBGH, the artificial hormone given to cows to increase milk production, which is banned in every other civilized nation but the US because of possible cancerous effects (not to mention their Agent Orange or GM crops). Anyway, that was a slight tangent. The point is that the entire concept of making money through the manipulation of money without thought to the end result defeats what I believe strongly to be the idea behind capitalism: reward through ingenuity, invention, and hard work in a way that benefits society. The idea is not to find as many tax and regulation loopholes and cut as many corners as possible to increase the top 5 employees salaries to 7 digits. Civilization also needs a well educated, well paid, large middle class to produce large numbers of people who will succeed because of their talent and ideas to progress and keep from collapsing, which is disappearing.
Remember, money is only a system of measurement, and the stock market is imaginary, as it is an abstract concept of people paying for paper what other people say they should. The only thing of real worth is labor. MBA's should not be paid as handsomely as they are for essentially supervising a company. The goal of a company's CEO should not be making money by whatever means possible, but rather making sure that the company's work and products are the best they can be, as logically, that will make you profitable and that's the only reason you should be profitable.
I'm going to be slightly smug and end with a quote by someone much smarter than me:
"In the early days of the world, the Almighty said to the first of our race 'In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread'; and since then, if we except the light and the air of heaven, no good thing has been, or can be enjoyed by us, without having first cost labour. And inasmuch [as] most good things are produced by labour, it follows that [all] such things of right belong
Please not that I'm not talking about management that have experience, training, and/or education in technology. Regular managers and folks with MBA's are better suited to environments like factories and non-tech corporations, where the majority of their workforce is not particularly smart or well trained in a profession that's much closer to lawyers, engineers, and architects than accountants or average corporate employees. I think alot of managers forget they're talking to incredibly intelligent folks when working in the tech industry, and not some guy on an assembly line or somebody working their way up from the mail room. When was the last time you saw a lawyer dealing with someone inexperienced with law telling them what to do? I know it's not quite the same, but my point is that software engineers and programmers are more than intellectually capable of making a large portion of management into a network program that works like an autonomous democracy; it really seems like most of what managers do are relics and old customs from the days before the internet, and have just managed to cling on for roughly the past decade. Supply chains, distribution, and resource allocation should be the job of well designed software alongside the more seasoned employees, or just seasoned tech people that went ahead and got an MBA.
If you have a good company with a good reputation with lots of skilled people working together without the bungling of incompetent higher ups, who's to say that potential clients couldn't just file a request detailing what they need and in what time? and that all that had to happen was that the most experience and respected employees got together, sketch out the architecture and put a timeline into the network telling what had to be done when? Seems like a good idea to me. If you didn't finish what was decided upon on time, you get a cut in pay or some other disciplinary action. Just like any other job, screw up enough and you get fired, let people who want to work in an intelligent community-run company do it and love it and make their money.
Anyway, marketing and designing a sellable product aren't really the jobs of management... they have a lot of control over what happens, but they don't contribute. I could be completely wrong here, but in all honesty I've never met someone who only specialized in business administration who knew anything about what would sell as software. There shouldn't more than a handful of people specializing in economics and business overseeing what goes on just to make sure there aren't any avoidable fuck ups.
Bah, I'm getting all idealistic from extreme lack of sleep. I could be flagrantly, abhorrently wrong, and I know I'm at least somewhat incorrect... but I'm pretty sure I'm onto something useful. I still have no idea what most corporate employees do, and I've become pretty much convinced that the majority of cubicle workers that aren't coding or engineering are in on a huge scam to get a regular decent paycheck (Yeah, I have lots of friends with these kinds of jobs, and yes, I pay attention when lots of people complain about working about 1/3 of the time they're at the office... I dunno, sounds wasteful to me, the kind that can be gotten rid of by trimming the work force and telling the less productive to do something useful with their lives).
All it takes to cripple an innovative company is for people outside the tech world, usually managers from ivy league schools with big fancy MBA's, to come in and cement themselves into positions of power and shift the focus from innovation to profits. Happens all the time... people with MBA's don't really contribute much to society and they know it (honestly, slight contribution to efficiency, maybe, but absolutely nothing else), but they also know to look for the most up-and-coming sector and the companies in it to try and get positions high up.
Eh, at least that's what I've seen happen. Hope I don't get modded down too much by angry managers.:)
I'm not saying that Zoloft has really bad side effects on everyone; for many it's a lifesaver. However, many, many more people have bad reactions to it than the company lets on, and that's why I call it the fucking devil. I've known dozens of people that have been on the drug, and I'd say at least half had a really bad reaction, and a few of them immediately quit the medication. Now, maybe I've just come into a huge probability snafu and have met much more people than normally react poorly to this particular anti-depressant, but I doubt it.
I don't know how many slashdotters are familiar with people who've been treated for the more extreme side of clinical depression (I myself suffered from psychotic depression, a little more into the deep end, and will have to be rather vigilant on my mental state to keep from spiralling into it again), but if this works it will be a godsend.
Most anti-depressants have really, really bad side affects; prozac is by far the best, but it seems to muffle several higher brain functions... not completely silenjce, but more than enough to be noticeable and very frustrating. Zoloft is the fucking devil and is extremely habit forming, not to mention that it destroys your liver and your immune system. Trying to quit Zoloft cold turkey is like trying to do the same with hard drugs, many people become very, very sick and suffer bowel and stomach problems for days. Zoloft can also cause those feelings in people for the entire duration of their medication; I was one of those people. I couldn't get up in the morning when taking Zoloft and not throw up at least once, and feel like I'd contracted anemia for the whole day. One of my dearest friends was medicated with Zoloft (at twice my dosage, which is ridiculous) for OCD and depression; needless to say, her liver has been annihilated. Even after a year of having stopped taking Zoloft, she maintains an acute weakness to food poisoning and alcohol, which was not present beforehand. Watching her try and quit Zoloft was like watching a train wreck. I've heard similar things with other forms of depression medication, but Prozac and Zoloft are the only ones I've been medicated with, and rather heavily.
God, I can't stand when these business analysts whine about the decline of CS majors in the US. Gee there "BusinessWeek", maybe you should run an article on how treating people who train for difficult careers like shit makes other people, gasp, not want to be in that field.
"Gee, all we did was outsource their jobs to other countries so we could buy bigger mansions, what's with the unsportly attitude here? I can't help trying to make a profit for my shareholders, but I'll be damned if some foreigners from wherever overtake us in technology and commerce. Come on, guys... it's just as our President says, no one can out-compete the american worker!"
Yeah, I'll probably get modded down for this, but whatever. I'm tired of all these analysts complaining about some impending economic doom followed by... sitting on their fat asses. If the folks at places like BusinessWeek really gave a damn about anything other than their own bank accounts, they'd try and change the way that the US does business; but the chances of seeing an anti-outsourcing, anti-big-CEO-salary article that champions standing behind your employees rather than shifting them about as human resources is about as likely as Rumsfeld apolagizing for ineptly costing thousands of civilian lives and going off to live a life of penance in a rural Buddhist monastery (well, shit, if I'm going to be modded down by one of those neo-con/techie hybrids, might as well get everything off my chest.)
Must be the cheer from all these tech firms. I know I'll get flamed by people working at the patent office, but quite frankly, if anyone works there and is not pissed off over what's going on and/or doesn't have any knowledge about whoever is obviously recieving kickbacks there they obviously qualify as idiots.
Oh well, good thing prior art for this is fucking everywhere.
Slashdot Mirror
The only way Microsoft has to promote their inferior product has been FUD campaigns and tons of self-promotion through marketing. They don't want any allies that could be potential rivals, and that includes Yahoo. Unless they intend to buy Yahoo (like they did with Bungie and Rare), they probably don't want to support a partner in a field they could dominate themselves for more profits. The only "allies" I've seen them interested in have been PC makers, and those are more like forced partnerships than friendly cooperations.
Go ahead, mod me down. You know I speak the truth.
Do you even speak english, or are you just throwing random shit from a translator onto /.? That was the most incoherent horseshit I've ever read.
The subject is a giant god damn pyramid. What the fuck is so hard to understand about this? He could believe Batman saved him from a fucking rabid Easter Bunny, and it wouldn't make the slightest bloody difference whether or not the pyramid was there.
The only thing that matters is if the structure exists or doesn't exist, period. End of the stupid fucking conversation.
Obviously not, seeing as the pyramids at Giza were built 4,500 years ago. Not only that, why the flying fuck would someone just assume that a gigantic pyramid would have to be over 12,000 years old? Did the article say anything claiming that he believed it to be that old? Damn you're dumb.
I cannot wait to get my hands on one of these things.
Then again, maybe it's good that I retain a social life for a while longer...
And everyone pointing to the archaeology organization site naming him as a nutjob, guess what folks? It won't be debunked until they've fully excavated the site. Whether or not the man in charge is crazy or not has little bearing on the validity of his claims, particularly when the evidence would be a gigantic fucking pyramid. There isn't anything to debate, it's either there or not.
Also, I'd say that a majority of the archaelogical society hates new findings that contradict their old theories, and can often go out of their way to ostracize and decredit people that publish or support findings that would invalidate all the time spent writing papers on any particularly well-accepted idea.
Even for a movie made from a video game, those screens say it all: unbelievably bad. I thought they at least made sure franchise titles went to movies with a decent budget and producer? What the hell is this crap?
This is not going to make it to theaters, folks; even with the god-awful movies in theaters these days, this kind of material is strictly straight-to-dvd quality.
Most of what I've seen on /. and other sites about Vista has been extremely negative, majorly centering around MS continuing to ignore the voices of consumers and implement draconic DRM while losing several promised features and delaying the release for the umpteenth time...
Unless I was in a coma when the press release came out stating Vista suddenly became the best coded OS of all time, where's the "slam dunk"?
Seems much more likely that this is a result of MS shitting bricks over Apple gaining popularity and switching to a chip platform that will continue to bolster their market share.
Yeap, that's pretty much what I referred to when saying the media should dupe stories like this instead of their usual duping schpeel they repeat every day with slight paraphrasing and change to the viewpoint given the subject, as they might actually make a relevant contribution to the world...but instead we get what I think I'll start referring to as the daily "mainstream dupe": the two minutes of actual events, then the roundtable of exactly the same questions as before about Iran and nuclear weapons and terrorists and national security, rinse and repeat.
Also, there are very clear provisions for privacy in the Constitution, and I believe the Supreme Court already ruled on this at least once: your communications, in whatever form, are your property and you have the right to keep them private. This is why getting a wiretap is (well, was, and kinda still is, though apparently legal justice magically changes depending on which agency/department of the government you work for) so hard to obtain. This is why unauthorized wiretaps are inadmissable in court; the same rule applies to getting a warrant to search your email or whatever you use. The reason why so many people have the miconception that they don't have the right to privacy is because the rights of citizens were greatly eroded under Rehnquist, for if I recall correctly, the Rehnquist court is the reason why police can't search you when you're walking on the street but can search and open any belongings you have once you step inside a vehicle, amongst other and lesser known trespasses and limitations on personal liberties.
Oh, and lastly, FISA is completely constitutional, and very well cemented into the machinery of the federal government, as the FISA court has great authority and works a little too nicely with intelligence agencies (The infamous CARNIVORE was created at the order of the FISA court), so I don't know why Bush exhibited such baffling stupidity by giving an Executive Order to the NSA for the wiretapping (which does break the law, and the only reason there hasn't been an inquiry is because the Republican controlled House and Senate refuse to even consider any sort of legal action) instead of asking the FISA court to issue an order for the wiretapping to the NSA, which probably wouldn've been completely legal... Perhaps because even the oft-bold FISA court isn't that stupid and brazen to so openly violate the Constitution.
Normally, I'd quickly join the collective groan upon seeing a story duped, but this is one of those rare cases where it actually comes in handy and adds one more voice trying to get the American public to PAY SOME FUCKING ATTENTION.
:)
Now, if only the NY Times would dupe stories like this.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the lawsuit is not over any government records, but those of civilians. The only aspect of this case that could be considered "national security" is the fact that the NSA and possibly other government organizations got the records from AT&T... Isn't there some statute or code that mandates relevancy? Or maybe, common sense? If they use this "privilege" in this case, couldn't they use it in any case concerning anything with the federal government?
Forgot to mention that bit.
"Son, why don't you get out more... you know, like train under that ninja that's been living in the moutains... it'd be a good way to keep in shape and honor your history."
"Ugh, DAD! that is so LAME!"
It's official, I will never have children as pleasing them is impossible. If you can't make a 13 year old boy happy with an apprenticeship to a real ninja, nothing ever will.
Labor is the only thing of value in the market, period. Trading stocks and all the slime on wall street surely are an annoyance to the people that make society what it is, but are unnecessary. Would doctors, nurses, EMS, and orderlies forget how to take care of people if all the MBA's vanished from the face of the earth? Somehow, I doubt it. Would police stop keeping you safe? Power plants suddenly fail? Somehow, I doubt it. Now try it the other way around. Get it through that thick money-grubbing skull that labor makes civilization run, and civilization exists to serve humanity, not some abstract concept printed on paper.
Leave your ultra-capitalist bullshit where it belongs, your toilet.
It might not be comforting or nice, but it's the truth.
No, that is your willingness to readily degrade humanity by pushing the poor into an eat-or-die situation until they cave and work for near nothing, while the fowl principles of a free market economy just stand by and laugh. If you can automate a certain function in a factory, that's fine. Keeping the minimum wage at half what was deemed the bare necessity to survive is not. So, when someone robs my neighbor, my fellow man, I'm supposed to call the police and/or run to help him out, but when he's cheated out of the worth of his hard work and poisoned by corporations powerful enough to silence the FDA, I'm supposed to... change my fucking purchasing habits or write a letter? For the last fucking time, civilization was created to provide for humanity, not corporate aristocracy. I know it must a rather seductive belief to imagine that morality is essentially meaningless as long as corporations are allowed to continue their march into the future, that CEO's and all their business adminstration buddies (coincidentally including you, apparently) are all meant to rule the world by the virtue of free market and your sheer mastery over the coins of the earth without ever once contributing something useful to society... but if you could grow the fuck up rather quickly, I'd appreciate it.
I nowhere mentioned or believe that doctors should be paid the same as manual labor; however, a proper society pays every contributor at least something that allows a modestly comfortable life. It's nice to know you think of Lincoln's wisdom as "outdated". I'm surprised such a small UID number is afforded to one so alien to logical viewpoint of humanity's accomplishments and has apparently spent a good deal of effort delving deeply into percieving our combined efforts as mere financial assets.
Wha?? I think you misread my post... I was comparing engineers to lawyers and architects as examples of careers that require a very high intellect and often run their own small, independent firms without the leadership of some ivy league suit.
You bring up some good points, but I am sure that companies could trim a lot of fat (pun intended) by using their engineers and programmers to develope a much more efficient way of running things and giving alot of management the pink slip and a 2 year tech school brochure.
It's certainly true that many slashdotters are diehard nintento fans, and of course they'll buy the console and enjoy good games and support their alma mater... but that doesn't mean naming the newest iteration in the Nintendo legacy something tremendously stupid like "Wii" doesn't really, really get to us.
For example, imagine the feeling you get when you get the latest in a great RPG series or other gaming franchise that you've watched grow for years and years (like Final Fantasy). Now imagine getting your hands on the game, and it's everything you want it to be... but the main character is Paris Hilton or equally annoying.
Google is run very well, which is why I'm praying that nothing screws it up somehow. We need a better role-model for structuring tech companies.
I have a great amount of reverence for people with the kind of experience you mention in the tech world with MBA's, as that degree makes an excellent... how to say it, icing on top of the rather large and impressive foundation of 10 years at NASA.
Capitalism exists only to make a society more efficient than other economic systems and help civilization progress, mostly in terms of standard of living in the ways of medicine, food, shelter, and that sort of thing alongside aiding our desires to find out who and what the hell we are and what we're doing here (arts, religion, philosophy, exploratory and theoretical science). That is the be all and end all for capitalism, there is no other point to it. The problem is that alot of people don't see it that side of it with the drive to succeed, and see money as the only reason we have this setup. The worse of these are usually MBA's, and the worst are usually CEO's and fellow higher-ups, the ones hell-bent on driving the gap between rich and poor as far apart as possible. While many economists and "captains of industry" would have the world believe that a free market and their version of capitalism is the real thing, nothing could be further from the truth.
The current system is a perversion of the original idea: products are no longer judged on quality and craftsmanship but on advertising, stifling real innovation or foresight into the long term effects certain products can have on the future, such as global warming, toxic waste, growing amounts of artificial chemicals in the land, water, and air, side effects of artificial chemicals in agriculture and livestock, side effects of pharmaceuticals, etc. The best example I can think of here would be Monsanto, who have used advertising to present a friendly image while using lawyers to silence reporters and competitors and massive amounts of cash to silence the FDA about rBGH, the artificial hormone given to cows to increase milk production, which is banned in every other civilized nation but the US because of possible cancerous effects (not to mention their Agent Orange or GM crops).
Anyway, that was a slight tangent. The point is that the entire concept of making money through the manipulation of money without thought to the end result defeats what I believe strongly to be the idea behind capitalism: reward through ingenuity, invention, and hard work in a way that benefits society. The idea is not to find as many tax and regulation loopholes and cut as many corners as possible to increase the top 5 employees salaries to 7 digits. Civilization also needs a well educated, well paid, large middle class to produce large numbers of people who will succeed because of their talent and ideas to progress and keep from collapsing, which is disappearing.
Remember, money is only a system of measurement, and the stock market is imaginary, as it is an abstract concept of people paying for paper what other people say they should. The only thing of real worth is labor. MBA's should not be paid as handsomely as they are for essentially supervising a company. The goal of a company's CEO should not be making money by whatever means possible, but rather making sure that the company's work and products are the best they can be, as logically, that will make you profitable and that's the only reason you should be profitable.
I'm going to be slightly smug and end with a quote by someone much smarter than me:
Please not that I'm not talking about management that have experience, training, and/or education in technology. Regular managers and folks with MBA's are better suited to environments like factories and non-tech corporations, where the majority of their workforce is not particularly smart or well trained in a profession that's much closer to lawyers, engineers, and architects than accountants or average corporate employees. I think alot of managers forget they're talking to incredibly intelligent folks when working in the tech industry, and not some guy on an assembly line or somebody working their way up from the mail room. When was the last time you saw a lawyer dealing with someone inexperienced with law telling them what to do?
I know it's not quite the same, but my point is that software engineers and programmers are more than intellectually capable of making a large portion of management into a network program that works like an autonomous democracy; it really seems like most of what managers do are relics and old customs from the days before the internet, and have just managed to cling on for roughly the past decade. Supply chains, distribution, and resource allocation should be the job of well designed software alongside the more seasoned employees, or just seasoned tech people that went ahead and got an MBA.
If you have a good company with a good reputation with lots of skilled people working together without the bungling of incompetent higher ups, who's to say that potential clients couldn't just file a request detailing what they need and in what time? and that all that had to happen was that the most experience and respected employees got together, sketch out the architecture and put a timeline into the network telling what had to be done when? Seems like a good idea to me. If you didn't finish what was decided upon on time, you get a cut in pay or some other disciplinary action. Just like any other job, screw up enough and you get fired, let people who want to work in an intelligent community-run company do it and love it and make their money.
Anyway, marketing and designing a sellable product aren't really the jobs of management... they have a lot of control over what happens, but they don't contribute. I could be completely wrong here, but in all honesty I've never met someone who only specialized in business administration who knew anything about what would sell as software. There shouldn't more than a handful of people specializing in economics and business overseeing what goes on just to make sure there aren't any avoidable fuck ups.
Bah, I'm getting all idealistic from extreme lack of sleep. I could be flagrantly, abhorrently wrong, and I know I'm at least somewhat incorrect... but I'm pretty sure I'm onto something useful. I still have no idea what most corporate employees do, and I've become pretty much convinced that the majority of cubicle workers that aren't coding or engineering are in on a huge scam to get a regular decent paycheck (Yeah, I have lots of friends with these kinds of jobs, and yes, I pay attention when lots of people complain about working about 1/3 of the time they're at the office... I dunno, sounds wasteful to me, the kind that can be gotten rid of by trimming the work force and telling the less productive to do something useful with their lives).
All it takes to cripple an innovative company is for people outside the tech world, usually managers from ivy league schools with big fancy MBA's, to come in and cement themselves into positions of power and shift the focus from innovation to profits. Happens all the time... people with MBA's don't really contribute much to society and they know it (honestly, slight contribution to efficiency, maybe, but absolutely nothing else), but they also know to look for the most up-and-coming sector and the companies in it to try and get positions high up.
:)
Eh, at least that's what I've seen happen. Hope I don't get modded down too much by angry managers.
I'm not saying that Zoloft has really bad side effects on everyone; for many it's a lifesaver. However, many, many more people have bad reactions to it than the company lets on, and that's why I call it the fucking devil. I've known dozens of people that have been on the drug, and I'd say at least half had a really bad reaction, and a few of them immediately quit the medication. Now, maybe I've just come into a huge probability snafu and have met much more people than normally react poorly to this particular anti-depressant, but I doubt it.
I don't know how many slashdotters are familiar with people who've been treated for the more extreme side of clinical depression (I myself suffered from psychotic depression, a little more into the deep end, and will have to be rather vigilant on my mental state to keep from spiralling into it again), but if this works it will be a godsend.
Most anti-depressants have really, really bad side affects; prozac is by far the best, but it seems to muffle several higher brain functions... not completely silenjce, but more than enough to be noticeable and very frustrating. Zoloft is the fucking devil and is extremely habit forming, not to mention that it destroys your liver and your immune system. Trying to quit Zoloft cold turkey is like trying to do the same with hard drugs, many people become very, very sick and suffer bowel and stomach problems for days. Zoloft can also cause those feelings in people for the entire duration of their medication; I was one of those people. I couldn't get up in the morning when taking Zoloft and not throw up at least once, and feel like I'd contracted anemia for the whole day. One of my dearest friends was medicated with Zoloft (at twice my dosage, which is ridiculous) for OCD and depression; needless to say, her liver has been annihilated. Even after a year of having stopped taking Zoloft, she maintains an acute weakness to food poisoning and alcohol, which was not present beforehand. Watching her try and quit Zoloft was like watching a train wreck. I've heard similar things with other forms of depression medication, but Prozac and Zoloft are the only ones I've been medicated with, and rather heavily.
God, I can't stand when these business analysts whine about the decline of CS majors in the US. Gee there "BusinessWeek", maybe you should run an article on how treating people who train for difficult careers like shit makes other people, gasp, not want to be in that field.
"Gee, all we did was outsource their jobs to other countries so we could buy bigger mansions, what's with the unsportly attitude here? I can't help trying to make a profit for my shareholders, but I'll be damned if some foreigners from wherever overtake us in technology and commerce. Come on, guys... it's just as our President says, no one can out-compete the american worker!"
Yeah, I'll probably get modded down for this, but whatever. I'm tired of all these analysts complaining about some impending economic doom followed by... sitting on their fat asses. If the folks at places like BusinessWeek really gave a damn about anything other than their own bank accounts, they'd try and change the way that the US does business; but the chances of seeing an anti-outsourcing, anti-big-CEO-salary article that champions standing behind your employees rather than shifting them about as human resources is about as likely as Rumsfeld apolagizing for ineptly costing thousands of civilian lives and going off to live a life of penance in a rural Buddhist monastery (well, shit, if I'm going to be modded down by one of those neo-con/techie hybrids, might as well get everything off my chest.)
Must be the cheer from all these tech firms. I know I'll get flamed by people working at the patent office, but quite frankly, if anyone works there and is not pissed off over what's going on and/or doesn't have any knowledge about whoever is obviously recieving kickbacks there they obviously qualify as idiots.
Oh well, good thing prior art for this is fucking everywhere.