The root cause is the tradition that you have to become a manager to get better salary. The origin of this tradition is in Feudalism with its hierarchy of nobility titles, and it's unworkable in modern society where most of decisions made by lowest-level engineer have more impact than most of decisions made by the highest-level executives.
Question: Who gets to determine who "deserves" what?
I do. Face it, no one who is not a billionaire, can sympathize with those who are.
I can just as easily say that no one needs or deserves to have more than two children, or to marry once in their lifetimes, or to own one car at a time, or to own one computer at a time in any personal household...
Those are all things that other people DO sympathize with. You do not have to become an enemy of every human being to divorce and marry again. You have to treat all other humans as either enemies or prey to become a billionaire. This is so basic, only the culture-saturating power of American ideology keeps people from realizing that.
First off I have had projects end on time and most of the projects I've managed have been completed before the deadline. I "usually" make pretty reasonable estimates and the only times I haven't met a deadline have been the direct fault of inexperienced developers trying to hide when they they screwed up.
That works well for trivial projects. However usually what would otherwise be a trivial project, can be done by sysadmins without any developers.
I'm also not in a corporate environment. I'm more of a consultant I guess, and my developers are freelance.
I have never seen consultants working on a project having their special consultants hierarchy. You sound more like an owner of a small company working as a subcontractor for clients, with all-consultants team, so you do not have responsibilities a manager would have for managing employees.
I see you have no idea what a planner is. It's an actual profession and I'm aware they don't have them in America but if you ask me you should. Planners don't do the things you laid out as examples either.
What you have described is a project manager, what is usually a person who does all the "planning" while someone else is supposed to translate those vague plans into actual goals.
The programmers I'm working with are very rarely in the same room with me and sometimes aren't even in the same country so firing up gitk and glancing through a few days commits proves an excellent way to figure out where people are, what they're doing, and how they're doing it.
Here is the problem -- you are not managing an actual team, you are herding contractors. What is fine if it is justified in your line of work, but don't recommend this style of management to people who work with permanent employees on a long chain of projects.
Also just let me state I'm very fair to developers and I've got at this very moment 7 happily working on projects with me and 5 who I've worked with before that really want to do something with me - we're meeting next week to discuss possible jobs I may get to see what they want to do and what they think about each of them. 3 of those developers are people I trained myself. They graduated college as developers but couldn't get jobs. I took them in, worked with them on projects and gave them work. At this point they could easily go corporate but they choose to stay freelance and are always eager to work with me.
Again, you are not a manager, you are a small company owner with a few semi-permanent contractors, working on clients' projects. People in your position can have all possible styles of management, from the greatest to outright awful and still keep things running. Your experience is not applicable to a manager in a company is continuously developing its products, has permanent employees and consists of multiple groups that have to interact with each other.
I'm sorry, on what points? Keep in mind this is just from my experience and the environments I've been in, I wouldn't expect it to apply to everyone.
1. Don't piss off programmers. Make them comfortable.
That often does not work because some programmers will piss off each other if the management won't keep uncooperative prima donnas in check. And uncooperative prima donna programmers are everywhere. There is also a matter of plain incompetence and negligence -- those should not be tolerated, and pissing off people who exhibit those traits improves morale of everyone else.
2. They are being paid, make sure they do the work they need to by the time it needs to be done. Stick to schedules. I can not stress how important it is to stick to schedules.
Over more than two decades in software development I have never seen anything of importance completed "by the time it needs to be done", leave alone on schedule. This did not keep projects from being successful, or developers' work from being valuable.
If a programmer can't meet targets you feel were set fairly
If programmer's own estimation (that you certainly used to set schedules, right?) happened to be wrong, your "feeling" of what is fair or realistic is guaranteed to be completely disconnected from reality. Software development is unpredictable even in the best situations, so manager has to take into account that:
1. Estimates should be always at least double what seems to be reasonable. 2. Plan for unexpected delays.
then you may have to fire him/her.
And do what, work without him, so nothing will be done by him, thus increasing the load on others? Add someone new and unfamiliar with the project, so it will be delayed even more? Firing a developer is a decision that can only be based by a long-term benefit for the project because short-term outcome is always severely negative. This is why there are prima donna developers in the first place. You can gain in quality, but you always lose in development time, so firing someone just because a project is delayed is stupid.
If they claim it just takes them longer and you can deal with that then offer them lower pay - in the end results matter and you're on a budget.
And this is something that is not only monumentally stupid by itself, but it makes you a monumentally stupid person for thinking it.
First of all, this is a breach of trust between developer and the company. People do not become permanent employees to expect that company will arbitrarily steal back chunks of their salary at the whim of a manager. It creates an impression of wrong incentives -- the company gains money every time a manager blames an employee, so manager can add more to the bottom line by throwing accusations than by doing anything productive. To make it worse, so can everyone else -- a developer can sabotage someone else's work, then see more money "saved" than would be gained by doing anything productive. It can create atmosphere so poisonous, no sane person would suggest anything like that.
Second, the outcome of such move is extremely disproportional. Company gains very little because it still pays all the fixed costs of having a developer. Developer however gets a significant drop in his monthly income, that most likely is already tied up in something very inflexible -- rent or mortgage, car, utilities, supporting kids, etc. More likely than not, any pay cut will at least temporarily make him unable to pay for something very important, so he will have to spend more of his time trying to fix the problem and not doing his work. If he will miss a mortgage payment, get evicted from an apartment, or lose his family, he will become your enemy for life. If he won't, he will get out of the company at the first opportunity, and won't bother doing any work after giving his notice -- including passing his work to
If enough Microsoft lawsuits will fail, no one in his right mind would want to accept licensing fees or settle. Ex: SCO and its famous $699 licensing of Linux. Companies started to reject SCO demands long before the related part of SCO lawsuit ended, because SCO was clearly losing all other arguments, and there was a reasonable expectation that everything else is invalid, too.
Microsoft doesn't need every patent to make it, they just need a handful.
No. Microsoft needs the "valid" patents to remain unidentified, so they can be used as a vague threat. Once patents are identified, it is possible for Microsoft's enemies (all 7 billions of them) to focus on invalidating the ones successfully used in such litigation. With enough effort applied all such patents can be proven to be invalid -- the problem is, Microsoft, just like many other companies, owns shitloads upon shitloads of crappy patents, and no one has resources to track down all the reasons why they are crap, and sue Microsoft over each and every of them.
It's "true" for you is because of your American culture. You are conditioned to be faithful slaves yearning for the position of the masters while worshiping it. The rest of mankind, including myself, hates this aspect of your culture with a passion, and I am fairly certain, it does not happen out of agreement or similarity.
This is what happens when Microsoft controls OEMs.
on
Dell Ditches Netbooks
·
· Score: 2
The idea of "netbook" is a small laptop that is not intended to work as a desktop replacement. The original netbook, OLPC, was an educational project, however there is nothing that prevents this class of devices from being used as consuner (facebook/youtube/media/text editing) or business (web applications, note taking) device.
Now, what all those three groups of applications have in common? They GIVE ABSOLUTELY NO FUCKING REASON TO RUN WINDOWS. But noooo. Dell just had to market those netbooks the same way Microsoft marketed Windows CE/Mobile/Phone -- "they run Wiiiiindows!!!". Except, of course, Microsoft was lying through its teeth because no Windows application would run on a phone, and netbook manufacturers were only half lying because Windows applications would run, just crippled by lack of desktop screen resolution and performance.
Apple and e-book readers' manufacturers had proven that consumers have absolutely no problem buying devices with ridiculously low performance, as long as those devices are intended and marketed for uses where such performance is appropriate. Thousands of bluetooth keyboard makers demonstrated that the most overpriced and crippled netbook ever -- a combination of iPad and a bluetooth keyboard in a leather case -- is a viable product. Now, Dell, Acer, MSI and other faithful Microsoft servants JUST HAD TO STUFF WINDOWS 7 WHERE IT DOES NOT BELONG, and then feel surprised that a $400 device with $250 functionality does not sell.
Let it be a lesson for future hardware manufacturers -- if it's not a business or home desktop, or an equivalent of one, don't ever plan to ship it with Microsoft software.
Any employee who leaks potentially valuable information will not only get fired, but become liable for damages totaling more than most people earn in a lifetime.
Humans do not "accept the call" of supposedly powerful figures.
So we all run around breaking every law... because we are somehow unique?
What the fuck are you talking about? Laws do not require one group of people to obey another, supposedly "better" group of people. Laws are supposed to be obeyed by everyone.
We're animals, get used to it. We find someone to latch onto and follow their word. Some of us are okay being independent, but a majority need some law or religion to tell them what to/not to do.
Again, you demonstrate your firm belief that people in positions of power are somehow important, and that the rest of society has any legitimate reason to care about them in any others terms than performance of their jobs. At this rate (independence -> abolition of slavery -> current worship of power) US is doomed to remain being a dysfunctional society for its whole lifetime as a country.
I and many people agree with you so hard, but I have to point out: there is no right and left! They were invented to make topical differences in our parties. Pro-life sentiment has nothing to do with financial conservatism, just as support for gun control has nothing to do with support for gay rights.
That's not true at all. "Financial conservatism" is based on the idea that rich people are "rewarded" for some kind of virtues, and poor people are "punished" for flaws by an unseen force that maintains fairness of the Universe. "Pro-life" is based on the same force "granting" life to fetuses, and humans having no right to alter this decision. Those ideas, while religious in their nature, are not specific or even prominent in Christianity and this is why some Christians roll their eyes at them. In reality, it's inherited from proto-religions and social control mechanisms that were practiced for millennia and got ingrained in modern religions, superstitions, political doctrines (invisible hand, anyone?) and other dogmas.
Without the electoral college candidates will be able to completely ignore all but the three or four most populated states.
Even if it was true, it would be better than what you have now, when candidates ignore everything but few least populated states. In reality it would end representation of states as some kind of homogeneous groups.
It did not hurt Soviet Union a single bit because instead of having a military-industrial complex that fleeced the rest of society, it operated as a giant nonprofit. There are plenty of things to criticize about Soviet Union, first and foremost that it could be dissolved by an arbitrary decision made by three politicians, but US-originated propaganda formulas have nothing to do with it. Cold war was a rock that keeps tigers away, and now US is desperately looking for more tigers.
That's adorable, but there are and will be many, many, many wars which are not Total War and lend themselves to using high tech to limit own-side casualties.
And they will all be fought for the benefit of US corporations at everyone else's expense.
Government does not lead. It governs. Politicians often try to lead, and usually fail miserably without affecting their position in the government.
Humans, lions, cats, dogs, pigs, cows... they all do it.
Animals do not think, and do not make decisions that require any kind of planning. A role of a group leader among the animals is to ensure that they do not cause harm to each other by performing mutually incompatible actions, and do perform actions that require co-operation in a compatible manner (ex: hunting, migration) -- it is entirely instinctive, and it usually does not matter who the leader is as long as he is not too sick or weak to perform that function. "Fighting one's way to the top" is pointless because it provides no real benefit. Predators, hunger and diseases make no distinction, and other animals are not going to sacrifice their interests to ensure leader's survival because such behavior does not promote individual or group's survival. Animals fight for their mates (to be more precise, only males do, and the amount of fighting varies), not power, and if only leaders were able to mate, there would be massive decrease in genetic diversity.
It doesn't imply that the President is king as you tried to claim. It does however point out how humans will accept a leader (just as the aforementioned creatures do) and accept their call.
Humans do not "accept the call" of supposedly powerful figures. Politicians make decisions (something that animal can't do), and act as figureheads or celebrities (something that also animals have no equivalent for) however for all practical purposes the effect of decisions made by President on any person is negligible compared to that person's close environment and the rest of the government -- unless, of course, that person happens to work directly with President.
The work of a President has absolutely nothing attractive for a sane person -- he deals with other politicians, he can't implement any of his ideas unless they are supported by large number of those politicians, and he can't ever win, as in a few years (8 in US if he is lucky, more in other countries) he is inevitably replaced in his position by one of his enemies and ejected from political life. And I have not even started on the life of an average person who is in any position to become a President. Only someone obsessed with either power for the power sake, or implementation of some unpopular political idea has any business wanting this. Neither is encouraged in any society other than US. In no other country kids are told that they can become a leader of their country as something important or desirable. US is unique in its worship of power, wealth and abuse of both.
Slashdot Mirror
The root cause is the tradition that you have to become a manager to get better salary. The origin of this tradition is in Feudalism with its hierarchy of nobility titles, and it's unworkable in modern society where most of decisions made by lowest-level engineer have more impact than most of decisions made by the highest-level executives.
Oh yes it is.
Also each and every engineer or software developer working for those companies lives there.
Question: Who gets to determine who "deserves" what?
I do. Face it, no one who is not a billionaire, can sympathize with those who are.
I can just as easily say that no one needs or deserves to have more than two children, or to marry once in their lifetimes, or to own one car at a time, or to own one computer at a time in any personal household...
Those are all things that other people DO sympathize with. You do not have to become an enemy of every human being to divorce and marry again. You have to treat all other humans as either enemies or prey to become a billionaire. This is so basic, only the culture-saturating power of American ideology keeps people from realizing that.
First off I have had projects end on time and most of the projects I've managed have been completed before the deadline. I "usually" make pretty reasonable estimates and the only times I haven't met a deadline have been the direct fault of inexperienced developers trying to hide when they they screwed up.
That works well for trivial projects. However usually what would otherwise be a trivial project, can be done by sysadmins without any developers.
I'm also not in a corporate environment. I'm more of a consultant I guess, and my developers are freelance.
I have never seen consultants working on a project having their special consultants hierarchy. You sound more like an owner of a small company working as a subcontractor for clients, with all-consultants team, so you do not have responsibilities a manager would have for managing employees.
I see you have no idea what a planner is. It's an actual profession and I'm aware they don't have them in America but if you ask me you should. Planners don't do the things you laid out as examples either.
What you have described is a project manager, what is usually a person who does all the "planning" while someone else is supposed to translate those vague plans into actual goals.
The programmers I'm working with are very rarely in the same room with me and sometimes aren't even in the same country so firing up gitk and glancing through a few days commits proves an excellent way to figure out where people are, what they're doing, and how they're doing it.
Here is the problem -- you are not managing an actual team, you are herding contractors. What is fine if it is justified in your line of work, but don't recommend this style of management to people who work with permanent employees on a long chain of projects.
Also just let me state I'm very fair to developers and I've got at this very moment 7 happily working on projects with me and 5 who I've worked with before that really want to do something with me - we're meeting next week to discuss possible jobs I may get to see what they want to do and what they think about each of them. 3 of those developers are people I trained myself. They graduated college as developers but couldn't get jobs. I took them in, worked with them on projects and gave them work. At this point they could easily go corporate but they choose to stay freelance and are always eager to work with me.
Again, you are not a manager, you are a small company owner with a few semi-permanent contractors, working on clients' projects. People in your position can have all possible styles of management, from the greatest to outright awful and still keep things running. Your experience is not applicable to a manager in a company is continuously developing its products, has permanent employees and consists of multiple groups that have to interact with each other.
I'm sorry, on what points? Keep in mind this is just from my experience and the environments I've been in, I wouldn't expect it to apply to everyone.
1. Don't piss off programmers. Make them comfortable.
That often does not work because some programmers will piss off each other if the management won't keep uncooperative prima donnas in check. And uncooperative prima donna programmers are everywhere. There is also a matter of plain incompetence and negligence -- those should not be tolerated, and pissing off people who exhibit those traits improves morale of everyone else.
2. They are being paid, make sure they do the work they need to by the time it needs to be done. Stick to schedules. I can not stress how important it is to stick to schedules.
Over more than two decades in software development I have never seen anything of importance completed "by the time it needs to be done", leave alone on schedule. This did not keep projects from being successful, or developers' work from being valuable.
If a programmer can't meet targets you feel were set fairly
If programmer's own estimation (that you certainly used to set schedules, right?) happened to be wrong, your "feeling" of what is fair or realistic is guaranteed to be completely disconnected from reality. Software development is unpredictable even in the best situations, so manager has to take into account that:
1. Estimates should be always at least double what seems to be reasonable.
2. Plan for unexpected delays.
then you may have to fire him/her.
And do what, work without him, so nothing will be done by him, thus increasing the load on others? Add someone new and unfamiliar with the project, so it will be delayed even more? Firing a developer is a decision that can only be based by a long-term benefit for the project because short-term outcome is always severely negative. This is why there are prima donna developers in the first place. You can gain in quality, but you always lose in development time, so firing someone just because a project is delayed is stupid.
If they claim it just takes them longer and you can deal with that then offer them lower pay - in the end results matter and you're on a budget.
And this is something that is not only monumentally stupid by itself, but it makes you a monumentally stupid person for thinking it.
First of all, this is a breach of trust between developer and the company. People do not become permanent employees to expect that company will arbitrarily steal back chunks of their salary at the whim of a manager. It creates an impression of wrong incentives -- the company gains money every time a manager blames an employee, so manager can add more to the bottom line by throwing accusations than by doing anything productive. To make it worse, so can everyone else -- a developer can sabotage someone else's work, then see more money "saved" than would be gained by doing anything productive. It can create atmosphere so poisonous, no sane person would suggest anything like that.
Second, the outcome of such move is extremely disproportional. Company gains very little because it still pays all the fixed costs of having a developer. Developer however gets a significant drop in his monthly income, that most likely is already tied up in something very inflexible -- rent or mortgage, car, utilities, supporting kids, etc. More likely than not, any pay cut will at least temporarily make him unable to pay for something very important, so he will have to spend more of his time trying to fix the problem and not doing his work. If he will miss a mortgage payment, get evicted from an apartment, or lose his family, he will become your enemy for life. If he won't, he will get out of the company at the first opportunity, and won't bother doing any work after giving his notice -- including passing his work to
No.
If enough Microsoft lawsuits will fail, no one in his right mind would want to accept licensing fees or settle. Ex: SCO and its famous $699 licensing of Linux. Companies started to reject SCO demands long before the related part of SCO lawsuit ended, because SCO was clearly losing all other arguments, and there was a reasonable expectation that everything else is invalid, too.
Microsoft doesn't need every patent to make it, they just need a handful.
No. Microsoft needs the "valid" patents to remain unidentified, so they can be used as a vague threat. Once patents are identified, it is possible for Microsoft's enemies (all 7 billions of them) to focus on invalidating the ones successfully used in such litigation. With enough effort applied all such patents can be proven to be invalid -- the problem is, Microsoft, just like many other companies, owns shitloads upon shitloads of crappy patents, and no one has resources to track down all the reasons why they are crap, and sue Microsoft over each and every of them.
Translation:
"But our tapeworms are longer!"
And the winner gets... a new form of progressive tax! A tax that increases 10% per year!
Seriously, if a government can't squash any corporation like a bug, it's not a government worth having.
lol
Worst. Advice. Ever.
Yeah, go ahead... keep believing that.
It's "true" for you is because of your American culture. You are conditioned to be faithful slaves yearning for the position of the masters while worshiping it. The rest of mankind, including myself, hates this aspect of your culture with a passion, and I am fairly certain, it does not happen out of agreement or similarity.
The idea of "netbook" is a small laptop that is not intended to work as a desktop replacement. The original netbook, OLPC, was an educational project, however there is nothing that prevents this class of devices from being used as consuner (facebook/youtube/media/text editing) or business (web applications, note taking) device.
Now, what all those three groups of applications have in common? They GIVE ABSOLUTELY NO FUCKING REASON TO RUN WINDOWS. But noooo. Dell just had to market those netbooks the same way Microsoft marketed Windows CE/Mobile/Phone -- "they run Wiiiiindows!!!". Except, of course, Microsoft was lying through its teeth because no Windows application would run on a phone, and netbook manufacturers were only half lying because Windows applications would run, just crippled by lack of desktop screen resolution and performance.
Apple and e-book readers' manufacturers had proven that consumers have absolutely no problem buying devices with ridiculously low performance, as long as those devices are intended and marketed for uses where such performance is appropriate. Thousands of bluetooth keyboard makers demonstrated that the most overpriced and crippled netbook ever -- a combination of iPad and a bluetooth keyboard in a leather case -- is a viable product. Now, Dell, Acer, MSI and other faithful Microsoft servants JUST HAD TO STUFF WINDOWS 7 WHERE IT DOES NOT BELONG, and then feel surprised that a $400 device with $250 functionality does not sell.
Let it be a lesson for future hardware manufacturers -- if it's not a business or home desktop, or an equivalent of one, don't ever plan to ship it with Microsoft software.
Too bad, everything in it is false.
Blogger Brian Proffitt
A person well known for anti-open-source propaganda and nothing else.
Any employee who leaks potentially valuable information will not only get fired, but become liable for damages totaling more than most people earn in a lifetime.
lol wut
Humans do not "accept the call" of supposedly powerful figures.
So we all run around breaking every law... because we are somehow unique?
What the fuck are you talking about? Laws do not require one group of people to obey another, supposedly "better" group of people. Laws are supposed to be obeyed by everyone.
We're animals, get used to it. We find someone to latch onto and follow their word. Some of us are okay being independent, but a majority need some law or religion to tell them what to/not to do.
Again, you demonstrate your firm belief that people in positions of power are somehow important, and that the rest of society has any legitimate reason to care about them in any others terms than performance of their jobs. At this rate (independence -> abolition of slavery -> current worship of power) US is doomed to remain being a dysfunctional society for its whole lifetime as a country.
which are directly related to my chances of getting fired.
But you still can't ask them about those chances.
I and many people agree with you so hard, but I have to point out: there is no right and left! They were invented to make topical differences in our parties. Pro-life sentiment has nothing to do with financial conservatism, just as support for gun control has nothing to do with support for gay rights.
That's not true at all. "Financial conservatism" is based on the idea that rich people are "rewarded" for some kind of virtues, and poor people are "punished" for flaws by an unseen force that maintains fairness of the Universe. "Pro-life" is based on the same force "granting" life to fetuses, and humans having no right to alter this decision. Those ideas, while religious in their nature, are not specific or even prominent in Christianity and this is why some Christians roll their eyes at them. In reality, it's inherited from proto-religions and social control mechanisms that were practiced for millennia and got ingrained in modern religions, superstitions, political doctrines (invisible hand, anyone?) and other dogmas.
TCP has no NAKs, only ACKs.
That would work if there was any kind of responsibility in the first place.
Without the electoral college candidates will be able to completely ignore all but the three or four most populated states.
Even if it was true, it would be better than what you have now, when candidates ignore everything but few least populated states. In reality it would end representation of states as some kind of homogeneous groups.
Nope.
It did not hurt Soviet Union a single bit because instead of having a military-industrial complex that fleeced the rest of society, it operated as a giant nonprofit.
There are plenty of things to criticize about Soviet Union, first and foremost that it could be dissolved by an arbitrary decision made by three politicians, but US-originated propaganda formulas have nothing to do with it. Cold war was a rock that keeps tigers away, and now US is desperately looking for more tigers.
That's adorable, but there are and will be many, many, many wars which are not Total War and lend themselves to using high tech to limit own-side casualties.
And they will all be fought for the benefit of US corporations at everyone else's expense.
It's a leader/follower condition.
Government does not lead. It governs. Politicians often try to lead, and usually fail miserably without affecting their position in the government.
Humans, lions, cats, dogs, pigs, cows... they all do it.
Animals do not think, and do not make decisions that require any kind of planning. A role of a group leader among the animals is to ensure that they do not cause harm to each other by performing mutually incompatible actions, and do perform actions that require co-operation in a compatible manner (ex: hunting, migration) -- it is entirely instinctive, and it usually does not matter who the leader is as long as he is not too sick or weak to perform that function. "Fighting one's way to the top" is pointless because it provides no real benefit. Predators, hunger and diseases make no distinction, and other animals are not going to sacrifice their interests to ensure leader's survival because such behavior does not promote individual or group's survival. Animals fight for their mates (to be more precise, only males do, and the amount of fighting varies), not power, and if only leaders were able to mate, there would be massive decrease in genetic diversity.
It doesn't imply that the President is king as you tried to claim. It does however point out how humans will accept a leader (just as the aforementioned creatures do) and accept their call.
Humans do not "accept the call" of supposedly powerful figures. Politicians make decisions (something that animal can't do), and act as figureheads or celebrities (something that also animals have no equivalent for) however for all practical purposes the effect of decisions made by President on any person is negligible compared to that person's close environment and the rest of the government -- unless, of course, that person happens to work directly with President.
The work of a President has absolutely nothing attractive for a sane person -- he deals with other politicians, he can't implement any of his ideas unless they are supported by large number of those politicians, and he can't ever win, as in a few years (8 in US if he is lucky, more in other countries) he is inevitably replaced in his position by one of his enemies and ejected from political life. And I have not even started on the life of an average person who is in any position to become a President. Only someone obsessed with either power for the power sake, or implementation of some unpopular political idea has any business wanting this. Neither is encouraged in any society other than US. In no other country kids are told that they can become a leader of their country as something important or desirable. US is unique in its worship of power, wealth and abuse of both.