Re:Why didn't they just kill the lawyer?
on
Batman Discussion
·
· Score: 1
They didn't kill the lawyer for the same reason the people on the boat didn't blow each other up. Batman/Wayne and Dent talk about the whole point of Batman existing to teach the city to stand up to evil, no matter what the cost. In this movie, Gotham begin to learn that lesson.
Wait, so you're suggesting that killing a lawyer would be, what, somehow evil? I'm not sure I understand your point here...
Openness is overrated in democratic societies, anyhow. I'm sure they wouldn't be keeping this all a secret if it weren't in the best interests of the people.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go send my credit card numbers to these nice former Nigerian heads of state.
I've used the Aeron, and I like my Mirra just as much. The only way I'd get an Aeron right now is if I were very tall/short (thus making the sizing thing worthwhile) -- for 90% of us, the Mirra works just fine and it significantly less expensive.
What the parent poster said, by the way? Completely dead-on. There are two bits of furniture you shouldn't skimp on, and they're your bed and your office chair.
If there's one thing we should have learned by now, it's that people don't *really* care if their soldiers are getting blown up so long as they're still able to buy plasma TVs at Costco.
I mean, sure -- you hear about GIs dying when it's fresh and interesting and the talking heads can spend time re-explaining what an IED is, but after a while people say to themselves, "Hey, I wonder what that crazy Britney girl has been up to?" and tune out. They vote back in politicians who more properly belong in prison for their contributions to the war. Shit, they even take those moronic 'Support our Troops!' magnets off their SUVs after a while.
Troops keep dying and getting maimed, but it doesn't even make the front page of newspapers. Hell, look at your local rag -- I'll bet that high school sports scores are easier to find than a story about the soldiers killed there this week.
So I guess from that POV it doesn't matter if we have machines or people out getting blown up. We simply don't give a shit so long as the news doesn't overlap American Idol.
Skyshadow's Law: The more complicated the coffee maker, the worse off you are.
The best cup of coffee I've ever found is from a little coffee shop near my wife's office in San Francisco (I won't say the name, but it's near the SoMa Caltrain station). They make their excellent brew in a decidedly low-tech way:
Each customer chooses the type of coffee they want or (and this is a better option) tell the barrista to use their judgement. The beans are scooped up, ground and then poured into a very conventional filter basket along with enough water to produce one cup of coffee.
And that's it -- the best cup of java you're likely to find made by probably the lowest-tech possible method.
Cory Doctorow is a fairly entertaining near-future SciFi writer, but I find I generally can't enjoy his works for two reasons:
1. His good ideas fizzle out* and don't leave enough to finish the story* in an interesting way*, and
2. He's really bad at writing women*, resulting in uneven characters* and weird story self-hijackings*.
The other writer mentioned here, Charles Stross, writes amusing* Cthulhu-Mythos/Spy-thriller/Geek novels and not-so-good* hard SciFi.
* This is, obviously, just my opinion. No, I've never written a novel. Yes, I can back it up with examples. It's an opinion, though, so your mileage may vary. Go bitch at someone who cares.
That really is the issue here. You're never, ever going to get enough people to dump an individual ISP over this sort of thing to make their brass go, "Whoa! We'd better not do that!". The issue is simply too involved for the 'average' net user to really understand well enough to care about.
Some things require legislative solutions, and this is clearly one of those things. While I'm not saying that users of Virgin Media *shouldn't* change providers, it should be recognized that it's nothing but a symbolic step. If you really want to see this sort of nonsense avoided, contributing to the EFF might be a far better use of money.
The big issue with the George Bush Cyber Initiative is that it's called "the George Bush Cyber Initiative".
Seriously, try saying that with a straight face: "the George Bush Cyber Initiative". Me, I'm picturing an old arcade cabinet-style version of Galga stuffed into a corner of that idiot's office (right next to the "Missile Command" cabinet that stands in as SDI).
Anyhow, just my first reaction, but it was good for a laugh on a Tuesday morning. Please go back to your normally scheduled conversation.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but if you're a VP-level employee in charge of support of a production product and your people are not trained in the new version, it's your fault. At that level of management, your very basic responsibility is to get the things your people need to do their job -- in this case, training. The author clearly did not do this.
Again, it's important not to think of this as a low-level guy. He's a direct-report of the CIO, or in other words he *is* upper management.
I could continue, but I've got to ask: were you reading the same article I was? It's possible that the information that was given was wrong and biased, but there wasn't anything in the article that the author did blatantly wrong. We read the same article, but from different perspectives.
Again, remember: We're talking VP-level here, a guy who reports directly to the CIO. At that level, your job is to get out there and accomplish your responsibilities, not to give excuses.
His actions do not sync with that level of responsibility. A guy at his level should have either found a way to get the basic training accomplished or gotten the release held up -- if the others in management don't understand the importance of getting support caught up, it's his job to make them understand.
This might sound unreasonable if you're used to thinking from a low- or mid-level management position, but at that level its basic to your job.
You're still reading this like he's some low-level guy. He's not -- he's a direct report of the CIO and a peer of the company VPs. That makes him 'upper management' in my book. At that level, you're responsible for your area even if the things you need to do are hard to accomplish.
If a new release is coming, it's his job to find a way to get his staff trained to support it and to make the others in management understand the necessity for staff training ahead of the release.
The release didn't just happen out of the blue. His staff didn't get trained because he didn't make it happen. The same goes for his staff being unable to follow the support procedures -- regardless of the reasons, it's ultimately his job to make sure his organization's procedures work.
Read the article again from the understanding that the author is either a VP at this organization or at least a peer to VPs, not just some low-level worker getting beat on by upper management. Then notice:
1. The support team that the author manages didn't get trained on the new version before it went into production.
2. They didn't know how to support it or even talk properly about the issues.
3. They didn't follow up properly in documenting the case.
4. They woke up the VP of software development at 3 AM without having good data for him.
As the manager of the support team, then, the VP-level person presumedly in charge of making sure his team is properly trained in both the company's product and the troubleshooting processes, the author didn't deserve to get yelled at... why again? I mean, sure, more diplomatic language is probably called for, but at the same time the implication I get from the article is that the author fucked up in a fairly serious way and now is mad that the VP in question wasn't polite enough about it.
Then there's the other stuff: Complaining about use of the word "fuck"? Trying to start a conversation about Battlestar? What the hell? You're supposed to be an upper-level guy at this company, for pity's sake! You really expect the CIO to waste his/her time getting you to play nice?
I guess where I'm going here is that I'm having a hard time seeing this as 'IT bullying'. Rather, my reaction is that the author doesn't have any place in management and should move back to a position that better suits his tendancies -- a job were units of work are handed to him and he does them versus a position that requires initiative or, God forbid, a little bit of toughness.
Sure, the polls might show that e-voting undermines the population's confidence in the system, but I'll bet that if we had a referendum on the issue we'd see that real voters actually support it overwhelmingly.
That sent me in an interesting direction: I know a ton of engineers who only really care about the task at hand, who don't think about the big picture ramifications of what they're doing but rather just the best way to put together the item at hand?
Hell, forget terrorism -- how about the guys who invented the hydrogen bomb? They had to have been smart enough to say to themselves, "Hooboy, this thing that we're going to develop and deliver into the hands of a bunch of politicians and those peacenik generals could really fuck up the world for real, way worse than just the A-bombs we have now." They *had* to know this, and yet they still sat down and got right to work on it.
Now sure, there's a melange of belief and probably patriotism at work there too, but I don't suspect the motivations of terrorists are a whole lot different in their own worldview -- God, country, defeating the oppressor and all that.
Beyond that (and I know I'll catch shit for saying this), there's the fact that engineers tend to be rather easy to control. I mean, sure, I know plenty of guys who think they're iconoclasts because they wear t-shirts to work, but at the end of the day they still march into some megacorp at 9 AM to do the bidding of their boss. I'm not saying engineers are unique in this, of course, but they're definitely in the same category as most of the rest of us who'll work for a few crumbs off our master's table, filling out TPS reports and doing things we disagree with all day long because some asshole above us on some org chart tells us to.
Whereas an english lit major or graphic designer or similar folks are (at least in my experience) way more likely to tell you to go fuck yourself if you try to order them around. Seriously, tell a teacher that you want to design an explosive belt that you can wear into a mall and kill as many people and they'll just be horrified -- tell an average engineer that, and even if they reach poorly they'll still start thinking in the back of their head about how to do that.
I mean, sure, Scrabulous is pretty obviously a Scrabble rip-off -- I think we all know that. But couldn't Hasbro at least have an official Scrabble game ready to replace it? If Scrabulous is forced offline, what the hell am I going to do all day when I'm at work?
I think it's a little more complex than that. There's a guy in the Purchasing department who handles almost all my contracts. He telecommutes 2 days/week and his schedule seems kind of random. But since he forwards his phone and responds to emails, it's pretty transparent - until I need him to actually DO something. See, he doesn't take all of his office home with him, just the computer. So if I have something urgent come up, he can't help me. Period.
It sounds like you have the same issues as I do with my telecommuters. It's not that fact that they telecommute that's the issue, but rather that they don't telecommute properly. I mean, if you or I were to sit down and think of requirements for people we'd allow to telecommute, I'm betting that we'd come up with a shocking number of common-sense things that we don't see routinely in practice at either of our companies. For instance, all of these seem like reasonable requirements for someone allowed to telecommute:
- Telecommuters should have the same phone number regardless of what day it is.
- Telecommuters should be available during business hours.
- Telecommuters should have all equipment they need at home.
I pick out these three, because these are issues I've run into just in the last week:
- "Hi, I got your message. I can only be reached via email Thursday and Friday. So, about that system being down..."
- "I don't work regular hours, I like to work 4-midnight. So, I need a three hour meeting with your team, does 7-10 PM work?"
- "Oh, I can't do that today. I don't have a scanner here at home."
The problem in these situations isn't the telecommuting per se, but ultimately the poor management of the telecommuters. Unfortunately, 'poor management' is a fairly common issue, and in practice telecommuting just allows them to screw up even more.
Slashdot Mirror
They didn't kill the lawyer for the same reason the people on the boat didn't blow each other up. Batman/Wayne and Dent talk about the whole point of Batman existing to teach the city to stand up to evil, no matter what the cost. In this movie, Gotham begin to learn that lesson.
Wait, so you're suggesting that killing a lawyer would be, what, somehow evil? I'm not sure I understand your point here...
Openness is overrated in democratic societies, anyhow. I'm sure they wouldn't be keeping this all a secret if it weren't in the best interests of the people.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go send my credit card numbers to these nice former Nigerian heads of state.
I've used the Aeron, and I like my Mirra just as much. The only way I'd get an Aeron right now is if I were very tall/short (thus making the sizing thing worthwhile) -- for 90% of us, the Mirra works just fine and it significantly less expensive.
What the parent poster said, by the way? Completely dead-on. There are two bits of furniture you shouldn't skimp on, and they're your bed and your office chair.
That whole ability-to-fly thing will come in handy when the first gust of wind you encounter blows you off a bridge.
A very light car with a huge side profile = the ditch.
We need more info -- can someone please post her name, address, phone number and video rental preferences?
I didn't want to be seen as spamming. If this were yelp or one of those other sites where half-wits give their reviews, it would have been different.
If there's one thing we should have learned by now, it's that people don't *really* care if their soldiers are getting blown up so long as they're still able to buy plasma TVs at Costco.
I mean, sure -- you hear about GIs dying when it's fresh and interesting and the talking heads can spend time re-explaining what an IED is, but after a while people say to themselves, "Hey, I wonder what that crazy Britney girl has been up to?" and tune out. They vote back in politicians who more properly belong in prison for their contributions to the war. Shit, they even take those moronic 'Support our Troops!' magnets off their SUVs after a while.
Troops keep dying and getting maimed, but it doesn't even make the front page of newspapers. Hell, look at your local rag -- I'll bet that high school sports scores are easier to find than a story about the soldiers killed there this week.
So I guess from that POV it doesn't matter if we have machines or people out getting blown up. We simply don't give a shit so long as the news doesn't overlap American Idol.
I need a drink.
Not really -- french press coffee tends to have a very different character than filter coffee. This is filter coffee, just in individual servings.
Skyshadow's Law: The more complicated the coffee maker, the worse off you are.
The best cup of coffee I've ever found is from a little coffee shop near my wife's office in San Francisco (I won't say the name, but it's near the SoMa Caltrain station). They make their excellent brew in a decidedly low-tech way:
Each customer chooses the type of coffee they want or (and this is a better option) tell the barrista to use their judgement. The beans are scooped up, ground and then poured into a very conventional filter basket along with enough water to produce one cup of coffee.
And that's it -- the best cup of java you're likely to find made by probably the lowest-tech possible method.
In all seriousness now, wouldn't it just be easier to call up Diebold on November 4 and ask them who won? Think of all the time and money we'd save.
Public apathy does not mean that an issue isn't worth fighting for. Fortunately, we're set up as a republic for just such an emergency.
1. His good ideas fizzle out* and don't leave enough to finish the story* in an interesting way*, and
2. He's really bad at writing women*, resulting in uneven characters* and weird story self-hijackings*.
The other writer mentioned here, Charles Stross, writes amusing* Cthulhu-Mythos/Spy-thriller/Geek novels and not-so-good* hard SciFi.
* This is, obviously, just my opinion. No, I've never written a novel. Yes, I can back it up with examples. It's an opinion, though, so your mileage may vary. Go bitch at someone who cares.
That really is the issue here. You're never, ever going to get enough people to dump an individual ISP over this sort of thing to make their brass go, "Whoa! We'd better not do that!". The issue is simply too involved for the 'average' net user to really understand well enough to care about.
Some things require legislative solutions, and this is clearly one of those things. While I'm not saying that users of Virgin Media *shouldn't* change providers, it should be recognized that it's nothing but a symbolic step. If you really want to see this sort of nonsense avoided, contributing to the EFF might be a far better use of money.
Seriously, try saying that with a straight face: "the George Bush Cyber Initiative". Me, I'm picturing an old arcade cabinet-style version of Galga stuffed into a corner of that idiot's office (right next to the "Missile Command" cabinet that stands in as SDI).
Anyhow, just my first reaction, but it was good for a laugh on a Tuesday morning. Please go back to your normally scheduled conversation.
Again, it's important not to think of this as a low-level guy. He's a direct-report of the CIO, or in other words he *is* upper management.
Again, remember: We're talking VP-level here, a guy who reports directly to the CIO. At that level, your job is to get out there and accomplish your responsibilities, not to give excuses.
His actions do not sync with that level of responsibility. A guy at his level should have either found a way to get the basic training accomplished or gotten the release held up -- if the others in management don't understand the importance of getting support caught up, it's his job to make them understand.
This might sound unreasonable if you're used to thinking from a low- or mid-level management position, but at that level its basic to your job.
If a new release is coming, it's his job to find a way to get his staff trained to support it and to make the others in management understand the necessity for staff training ahead of the release.
The release didn't just happen out of the blue. His staff didn't get trained because he didn't make it happen. The same goes for his staff being unable to follow the support procedures -- regardless of the reasons, it's ultimately his job to make sure his organization's procedures work.
1. The support team that the author manages didn't get trained on the new version before it went into production.
2. They didn't know how to support it or even talk properly about the issues.
3. They didn't follow up properly in documenting the case.
4. They woke up the VP of software development at 3 AM without having good data for him.
As the manager of the support team, then, the VP-level person presumedly in charge of making sure his team is properly trained in both the company's product and the troubleshooting processes, the author didn't deserve to get yelled at... why again? I mean, sure, more diplomatic language is probably called for, but at the same time the implication I get from the article is that the author fucked up in a fairly serious way and now is mad that the VP in question wasn't polite enough about it.
Then there's the other stuff: Complaining about use of the word "fuck"? Trying to start a conversation about Battlestar? What the hell? You're supposed to be an upper-level guy at this company, for pity's sake! You really expect the CIO to waste his/her time getting you to play nice?
I guess where I'm going here is that I'm having a hard time seeing this as 'IT bullying'. Rather, my reaction is that the author doesn't have any place in management and should move back to a position that better suits his tendancies -- a job were units of work are handed to him and he does them versus a position that requires initiative or, God forbid, a little bit of toughness.
Well, there goes any hope of productivity for the rest of the work week.
I hope to Christ I'm not the only one who found the concept of "NO SNIPING" at gunbroker.com entertaining.
Sure, the polls might show that e-voting undermines the population's confidence in the system, but I'll bet that if we had a referendum on the issue we'd see that real voters actually support it overwhelmingly.
Engineer's mindset: "What makes this thing tick"
That sent me in an interesting direction: I know a ton of engineers who only really care about the task at hand, who don't think about the big picture ramifications of what they're doing but rather just the best way to put together the item at hand?
Hell, forget terrorism -- how about the guys who invented the hydrogen bomb? They had to have been smart enough to say to themselves, "Hooboy, this thing that we're going to develop and deliver into the hands of a bunch of politicians and those peacenik generals could really fuck up the world for real, way worse than just the A-bombs we have now." They *had* to know this, and yet they still sat down and got right to work on it.
Now sure, there's a melange of belief and probably patriotism at work there too, but I don't suspect the motivations of terrorists are a whole lot different in their own worldview -- God, country, defeating the oppressor and all that.
Beyond that (and I know I'll catch shit for saying this), there's the fact that engineers tend to be rather easy to control. I mean, sure, I know plenty of guys who think they're iconoclasts because they wear t-shirts to work, but at the end of the day they still march into some megacorp at 9 AM to do the bidding of their boss. I'm not saying engineers are unique in this, of course, but they're definitely in the same category as most of the rest of us who'll work for a few crumbs off our master's table, filling out TPS reports and doing things we disagree with all day long because some asshole above us on some org chart tells us to.
Whereas an english lit major or graphic designer or similar folks are (at least in my experience) way more likely to tell you to go fuck yourself if you try to order them around. Seriously, tell a teacher that you want to design an explosive belt that you can wear into a mall and kill as many people and they'll just be horrified -- tell an average engineer that, and even if they reach poorly they'll still start thinking in the back of their head about how to do that.
I mean, sure, Scrabulous is pretty obviously a Scrabble rip-off -- I think we all know that. But couldn't Hasbro at least have an official Scrabble game ready to replace it? If Scrabulous is forced offline, what the hell am I going to do all day when I'm at work?
I think it's a little more complex than that. There's a guy in the Purchasing department who handles almost all my contracts. He telecommutes 2 days/week and his schedule seems kind of random. But since he forwards his phone and responds to emails, it's pretty transparent - until I need him to actually DO something. See, he doesn't take all of his office home with him, just the computer. So if I have something urgent come up, he can't help me. Period.
It sounds like you have the same issues as I do with my telecommuters. It's not that fact that they telecommute that's the issue, but rather that they don't telecommute properly. I mean, if you or I were to sit down and think of requirements for people we'd allow to telecommute, I'm betting that we'd come up with a shocking number of common-sense things that we don't see routinely in practice at either of our companies. For instance, all of these seem like reasonable requirements for someone allowed to telecommute:
- Telecommuters should have the same phone number regardless of what day it is.
- Telecommuters should be available during business hours.
- Telecommuters should have all equipment they need at home.
I pick out these three, because these are issues I've run into just in the last week:
- "Hi, I got your message. I can only be reached via email Thursday and Friday. So, about that system being down..."
- "I don't work regular hours, I like to work 4-midnight. So, I need a three hour meeting with your team, does 7-10 PM work?"
- "Oh, I can't do that today. I don't have a scanner here at home."
The problem in these situations isn't the telecommuting per se, but ultimately the poor management of the telecommuters. Unfortunately, 'poor management' is a fairly common issue, and in practice telecommuting just allows them to screw up even more.