Looking back, how the hell did they even allow that device on the plane? That could have seriously damaged someone's luggage (besides mine) and filled the cabin with toxic smoke, or worse yet exploded inside the cargo cabin, all 51Wh of it all. Banning ALL Apple and ALL Dell batteries, not just those made by Sony, is shortsighted and likely a decision made by a very uninformed person. My battery was more a risk to the plane then any of the Sony batteries and they inspected it and let me on. What gives?
First, calculate the number of mad scientists who have not yet had their "maybe I should be more careful" moment. Now multiply by the number of crazed projects they are likely to make a year, the number of flights they'll make, the odds of getting through airport security, and the risk of catastrophic in-flight failure.
Now do the same calculation but for Dell and Apple laptops.
Although mad scientist projects are more dangerous than laptop batteries, there are a lot more laptop batteries on planes. Business travelers are more numerous than cockroaches. Dell and Apple are prominent brands. Mad scientists never have large budgets to work with, so they can't afford many flights. Plus, non-catastrophic damage to their gear is much more likely, which means more time in the lab doing repairs and less time flying. Overall, I think laptop batteries are a much bigger risk, especially in the cabin.
Plus there are two other factors. One is an organizational one. Getting security people to evaluate weird technical prototypes for safety requires sending half of TSA off for the first couple years of an EE program. Getting them to filter out Dell and Apple laptop batteries just requires sending a memo with some pictures and a checklist.
The other is a question of public opinion. Everybody has heard about the laptop batteries bursting into flame, so if it happens on a flight, the public will say, "Duh, they should have expected that." Whereas with your ultra-mega-flashlight, the investigators would all say, "Nobody could have expected that someone would be dumb enough to carelessly pack enough power to pop a bag of microwave popcorn." You do 1-3 in Club Fed, so the airline's off the hook.
Well, this is the problem with most flights, particularly those that last longer than 3 or 4 hours. Specifically, there are simply not enough power outlets in the seats.
For some airlines, this is completely intentional. If they put outlets only in business class, then people who are making money from laptop use will share that money with the airlines. This screws the people who can't justify paying $50-200 per hour for an outlet and a big chair, of course. But given the precarious financial conditions of the airlines since 9/11, I imagine that doesn't keep them up nights.
I second that. Yoga is fantastic for my posture. For me, bad posture isn't a problem of sitting wrong, any more than late-night stupid coding mistakes are a problem of coding wrong. Staying fit fixes one; staying rested fixes the other.
Well, there was the Didgeridoo cloning article, but that was more an isolated prank than an inaccuracy.
And let's not forget that's a tradition that many fine institutions share, including, the BBC, NPR, the Guardian, and Discover. And really, I think those pranks reinforce a lesson that people too often forget about both Wikipedia and other sources: You should never trust a single source for anything that matters.
I love Wikipedia, and I think it's a great starting point for learning about topics. It has a basic overview on almost anything you care to name, and most articles have links and references to get you deeper in. But people who get upset about Wikipedia having mistakes and distortions never impress me. Whenever I pick up a general-interest publication that covers something I'm expert in, I can spot plenty of mistakes and distortions. But that's fine as long as they're not both egregious and intentional. Expecting perfection, especially in the written word, is a mug's game.
They can be "Not Amused" all they like... A second point of reference can only be a good thing.
Could someone give me links to Wikipedians not being amused? I'm an active Wikipedia editor, and I think this is great. Competition is a good thing, and both projects will be able to learn from one another.
One of the things that surprises me is that they aren't adopting most of things that people would expect a we're-not-Wikipedia effort to adopt: top-down power structures, command-and-control approaches to the work, formal certification of experts, and official versions of content.
Personally, my bet is that both will closely track one another in content. Software forks tend to diverge because code has to be a unified body of work. But nabbing little bits of text back and forth will be pretty easy. However, that Citizendium will end up being a relatively small project both in terms of editorship and traffic, due to network effects. It'll be very interesting to see how it turns out.
I love my kill-a-watt [p3international.com] but I've been thinking of picking up a Watt's Up? [doubleed.com] for the datalogging capabilities. But the price is silly, I should just build one.
After long experience, I have learned that this is true only if I value my time at about five cents an hour. That doesn't always stop me, as building things is fun and educational. But until I end up in a Chinese labor camp, I've stopped pretending that building things is cheaper. YMMV, of course.
When someone sends their bank information and telephone number through email to Nigerian scammers, Slashdot calls them idiots. When they're requesting sexual domination we're somehow supposed to treat them differently?
Yes, absolutely. The first person to fall for the Nigerian scam wasn't a complete idiot. People who fall for it today are complete idiots, because the scams are now poorly crafted imitations of a good con, anybody with an email address has received 50 of these, and the first three Google hits for "nigerian" are about the scam.
Also, it's common knowledge that getting your money is a motive for being a jerk. Whereas Fortuny had no such motive here.
His methods were crude, but this is a wakeup call. You'd think years after the internet became mainstream people wouldn't need one, but apparently they still do.
A wakeup call that somebody might post your email on the web and make you look foolish? Of which this is the biggest incident I can recall. By that logic, Jason Fortuny is doing us a public service by warning us against... Jason Fortuny. If I ever get mugged, I will have to make sure to send the fellow a thank you note. And we all owe Duke Cunningham a debt of gratitude for showing us that congressmen are corruptible.
Ooops, his info just happened to fall out of no where?
Heh. Of course, the most damning fact, which is that he is an asshole who humiliates people and ruins lives for his own amusement, is one he made public himself. I know I would never hire the guy.
Hopefully a law firm in Washington will open a class action against him, plus the DA opens a case.
I've got $100 for a legal fund run by the first reputable law firm to file suit against Jason Fortuny.
In this situation, saying your company should spend money to do something because it is the Right Thing is not going to work. Instead, show them how a poorly considered UI is going to cost the company money, eg through more support calls, or through lost sales because the tool is unusable.
Absolutely. And if this guy has been advocating things because it's the Right Thing, the best thing he can do to restore is credibility is to say not just where good UI effort will make the company more money, but also where that isn't effective. He can be religious on his own time, but credibility at work comes from being reasonable.
What you are advocating is a kind of vigilantism that punishes people by close association based in your narrow view of the world, pretty much in the same vein as extrimist antiabortionists or extreme folks against testing of products in animals.
I think the only action I have advocated in this discussion is that people stop working at jobs where they exploit or harm other people on behalf of others. And the only idea I'm advocating now is that people are responsible for the consequences of their actions, and that taking actions on behalf of an employer does not absolve you of ethical responsibility.
Where the rest of what you talk about comes from I have no idea. Perhaps you would benefit by finding out.
As long as it is nothing ilegal the employee is legaly bound to do that work.
So? Ethics, as the source of laws, trump them.
That leaves only the question of temporal power. People with money or guns can sometimes get you to do things you think are wrong. Does that make the actions right? No. Does that absolve you of responsibility? No. Does that mean that you should stop working toward a situation where you can do what you think is right? Again, no.
Who's pretending? [...] And I'm doing that [propping up a bad system] how?
Hi. You seem to bring a lot of drama to this. From your responses, it looks like you are hearing things that I am not saying. I'll try again.
You called people bullets and drones. You are absolving them of responsibility for their actions by pretending they are not humans with free will. It is a common mistake, but it's a mistake.
What makes you think they're not looking? It may shock you to realize that sometimes it takes time to get a new job.
Are you seriously asserting all, or even most people in jobs where they treat people poorly are actively looking for jobs where they live responsibly? What makes me think they're not looking is talking with people in those positions. Some are looking, most aren't. Many talk of looking, but don't really believe it's possible. And that's the problem I'm addressing here.
The "right thing"? By whose measure? Yours? What gives you the right to decide for other people what's wrong and what's right? Why do you know better than they do? I agree the system sucks, but you should realize this: PEOPLE NEED TO EAT.
More drama.
I am not deciding anything for other people. But in my experience talking with people, I find most of them share some pretty basic ethical notions, like the Golden Rule. Some people believe that it is really ok to cheat and harm others, but in my experience that's not common, and that's not the condition of most people being exploited to exploit others. People who are congenital assholes should feel free to ignore my advice. Not that I need to say that, as they are surely already doing that.
I agree that people need to eat. That's why I said one whole post ago that I of course don't expect them to quit instantly. But I do expect people to take responsibility for the consequences of their actions. We all start out naked and crying in a world we can't understand or control. Some people get over that. Those who don't are easily exploited by others. Needing to eat today is why you keep doing what you're doing -- today. But if you're not happy with what you're doing, you can also start to change that. Today.
If you want to do something constructive, do something yourself.
I am. After all: "Be the change you wish to see in the world." But that doesn't prevent me from also fighting ignorance, like the pretense that people are someone incapable of affecting the world we live in.
I think even the most optimistic revolutionary Marxist would find it hard to believe that shouting at a teenager behind a counter is going to bring about the fall of Capitalism.
That's true. It's a good thing I'm not suggesting that, isn't it?
The only choice in the matter the CSR has is "Do what we tell you" or "Get fired". Which choice would you make in their shoes? And are you really going to tell them that they should quit?
I am of course not saying they should quit right that instant. This isn't some fucking drama class exercise; this is real life.
However, I am saying that pretending that they are powerless, pretending that they are mere bullets, mere drones, is helping to prop up a bad system. You are propping up that kind of system. And until they wake up and realize that they can choose to find another job, they are propping up that kind of system.
I'm not saying that's easy, of course. But who told you that doing the right thing should always be easy?
And the way you propose to help speed the fall is by being rude to the cashier? Boardrooms everywhere quake.
Of course not. I'm very nice to cashiers, and other low-rung employees. If they're doing something ridiculous because their bosses say so, I encourage them to recognize that. It is my hope they will eventually get tired of working for fools and jerks, and instead find something productive to do with their lives.
Personally, I think you would have to pass an intelligence test before you should be allowed to have an Internet connection. You should show that you posses the basic common sense that ensures that you won't let your PC be turned into a zombie. Of course, that means that about 80% of the current population would be barred.
Or -- and here's a crazy idea -- we just wouldn't let zombie-prone operating systems on the Internet.
Rarely is it that rules exist for no reason, but this one is kind of like the king whose subjects suffered from paper cuts, so as a solution he banned all the books.
The lesson I take from this is that people shouldn't listen to rules made by kings. And also, that whining to people who set themselves up as kings only encourages them.
The idea that the corporation is an entity unto itself controlled only by people in central offices where the front-line workers have no POWER is what's accurate.
It's accurate only as long as people like you keep justifying the behavior of people who support systems like that.
Back before spam became a fact of life, I spent a lot of time tracking down individual spammers and getting them banned. I ended up talking to a number of them, and you know what? It was never their fault, not really. It was just that they really needed the money, or that they had a quota to meet, or the baby was on the way, or they just had to have that new car, or they were just doing what their boss told them. They were just a tragic victim of circumstances, boo hoo.
That's bullshit. We all have circumstances. We all can be ethical in an imaginary perfect world. What really matters is what you do in the face of real life. And that real life will always include assholes who will pay you to to help them be assholes.
Large, faceless, asshole corporations are, historically, a relatively new thing. My bet is that they have passed their peak. Rather than helping to prop them up, why not help speed their fall?
So it's ok to treat people with no control over things like shit because you have a self-esteem problem.
For the record, I'm always nice to low-level staff. The closest I come to being mad at them is to day, "Ok, I understand you can't fix this. Can you just put me in touch with whoever you'd call if I were furious and ranting?"
But people working those front like jobs are not prisoners. They picked a job, pursued it, and willingly turn up every day. They have control over the situation, too.
If you are making money by treating people poorly (hello, telemarketers!), do not fool yourself into thinking that you aren't responsible for your actions just because somebody else takes most of the money. That just makes you a jerk and a chump.
This new mechanism of "approving" the page that is default-visible will now likely be applied to many more pages than protection or semi-protection ever did, precisely because it's so tempting to use.
That's a fine assertion, but I don't see any real evidence for it. The Wikipedia editing community is generally widely opposed to any sort of editing restriction. And even if the number of restricted pages ends up going up, it's not clear to me that a moderately larger number of less restricted pages will mean a net increase in restrictiveness. If a lot of the current protected and semi-protected pages use this new system, then it will, as Wales asserts, be a net increase in openness.
Personally, that's my bet. Looking at the list of protected pages, I'd bet the ones related to edit wars will stay protected; those are temporary anyhow. But most of the rest, including almost all of the semi-protected ones, could move to this new status.
Re:What about the Colbert effect?
on
More Wiki Than Ever
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· Score: 3, Informative
Now, imagine if this system were in place. The same legion of Colbert-inspired editors would also flag the page as valid, thus making it the default page and making the harm difficult to repair.
And a bunch of other Colbert-watching editors would put it back. Or, at worst, the page would get protected for a couple of days until the pranksters found a shiny new video on YouTube.
With version control and one-click reversion, it is easier to clean up messes than to make them. That fundamentally shifts the balance of power.
It's not a bad thing to be at a customer forever if you are always doing something new and doing it faster and therefore cheaper than their internal staff could have done. It's bad when they keep you there to maintain their environment, and it's bad for both the customer and for the consultant, the good consultants at least.
Yep. I've been doing consulting and contract work for nearly a decade, and it's in everybody's interest for me to move on regularly. Once you get used to it, the nice part is being able to tell managers when they are the problem. Either they listen or they get pissed. Either way, I get to move on to the next gig. It's the fear that there won't be a next gig that keeps people trapped in sad situations. Or in the case of somebody like Accenture or IBM, the ceaseless desire to grow regardless of the consequences to themselves or their clients.
How do such contracts get written or won? There are very few palms to be greased & a company like EDS has a lot of "grease" to offer, or so we suppose...
It may not even be like that. Consider your average consumer, who is boldly manipulated by any marketing agency who can buy air time. Now consider what happens when you take the top people from that agency and put them in the room with an executive. It's like a pack of dogs on fresh meat.
A friend of a friend mine worked for a few years hot-shot company that was negotiating giant contracts with the California government. As the salesmen slipped thing after thing past, he felt an overwhelming urge to get up and move to the other side of the table because it was so unfair. Government bureaucrats had no defense against these sharks. Of course, he sat still until the urge passed. He had payments to make on his Porche, and you can't do that on a government salary...
If you could work with teachers a little, I'd include some material on Enrico Fermi. It's a good tie-in with WW II (and a reminder of both Italy's involvement and the responsibility of individuals to make sure their work doesn't hurt the world). His work building the first nuclear reactor is interesting. And your math and science teachers might get a lot of mileage out of Fermi problems which combine general knowledge, reasonable estimation, and basic math to come up with answer to interesting questions. If you look at this big list of them, you'll see that basic ones are appropriate for kids to tackle, like
Estimate the number of hairs on your head.
How many notes are played on a given radio station in a given year?
How many pencils would it take to draw a straight line along the entire Prime Meridian of the earth?
How many golf balls can be fit in a typical suitcase?
How tall is this building?
How much milk is produced in the US each year?
How many flat tires are there in the US right now?
Fermi problems give a real sense of the power of the kind of facts a lot of kids are forced to learn by rote.
Slashdot Mirror
Looking back, how the hell did they even allow that device on the plane? That could have seriously damaged someone's luggage (besides mine) and filled the cabin with toxic smoke, or worse yet exploded inside the cargo cabin, all 51Wh of it all. Banning ALL Apple and ALL Dell batteries, not just those made by Sony, is shortsighted and likely a decision made by a very uninformed person. My battery was more a risk to the plane then any of the Sony batteries and they inspected it and let me on. What gives?
Do the math, Fermi style.
First, calculate the number of mad scientists who have not yet had their "maybe I should be more careful" moment. Now multiply by the number of crazed projects they are likely to make a year, the number of flights they'll make, the odds of getting through airport security, and the risk of catastrophic in-flight failure.
Now do the same calculation but for Dell and Apple laptops.
Although mad scientist projects are more dangerous than laptop batteries, there are a lot more laptop batteries on planes. Business travelers are more numerous than cockroaches. Dell and Apple are prominent brands. Mad scientists never have large budgets to work with, so they can't afford many flights. Plus, non-catastrophic damage to their gear is much more likely, which means more time in the lab doing repairs and less time flying. Overall, I think laptop batteries are a much bigger risk, especially in the cabin.
Plus there are two other factors. One is an organizational one. Getting security people to evaluate weird technical prototypes for safety requires sending half of TSA off for the first couple years of an EE program. Getting them to filter out Dell and Apple laptop batteries just requires sending a memo with some pictures and a checklist.
The other is a question of public opinion. Everybody has heard about the laptop batteries bursting into flame, so if it happens on a flight, the public will say, "Duh, they should have expected that." Whereas with your ultra-mega-flashlight, the investigators would all say, "Nobody could have expected that someone would be dumb enough to carelessly pack enough power to pop a bag of microwave popcorn." You do 1-3 in Club Fed, so the airline's off the hook.
Well, this is the problem with most flights, particularly those that last longer than 3 or 4 hours. Specifically, there are simply not enough power outlets in the seats.
For some airlines, this is completely intentional. If they put outlets only in business class, then people who are making money from laptop use will share that money with the airlines. This screws the people who can't justify paying $50-200 per hour for an outlet and a big chair, of course. But given the precarious financial conditions of the airlines since 9/11, I imagine that doesn't keep them up nights.
I second that. Yoga is fantastic for my posture. For me, bad posture isn't a problem of sitting wrong, any more than late-night stupid coding mistakes are a problem of coding wrong. Staying fit fixes one; staying rested fixes the other.
Well, there was the Didgeridoo cloning article, but that was more an isolated prank than an inaccuracy.
And let's not forget that's a tradition that many fine institutions share, including, the BBC, NPR, the Guardian, and Discover. And really, I think those pranks reinforce a lesson that people too often forget about both Wikipedia and other sources: You should never trust a single source for anything that matters.
I love Wikipedia, and I think it's a great starting point for learning about topics. It has a basic overview on almost anything you care to name, and most articles have links and references to get you deeper in. But people who get upset about Wikipedia having mistakes and distortions never impress me. Whenever I pick up a general-interest publication that covers something I'm expert in, I can spot plenty of mistakes and distortions. But that's fine as long as they're not both egregious and intentional. Expecting perfection, especially in the written word, is a mug's game.
They can be "Not Amused" all they like... A second point of reference can only be a good thing.
Could someone give me links to Wikipedians not being amused? I'm an active Wikipedia editor, and I think this is great. Competition is a good thing, and both projects will be able to learn from one another.
One of the things that surprises me is that they aren't adopting most of things that people would expect a we're-not-Wikipedia effort to adopt: top-down power structures, command-and-control approaches to the work, formal certification of experts, and official versions of content.
Personally, my bet is that both will closely track one another in content. Software forks tend to diverge because code has to be a unified body of work. But nabbing little bits of text back and forth will be pretty easy. However, that Citizendium will end up being a relatively small project both in terms of editorship and traffic, due to network effects. It'll be very interesting to see how it turns out.
I love my kill-a-watt [p3international.com] but I've been thinking of picking up a Watt's Up? [doubleed.com] for the datalogging capabilities. But the price is silly, I should just build one.
After long experience, I have learned that this is true only if I value my time at about five cents an hour. That doesn't always stop me, as building things is fun and educational. But until I end up in a Chinese labor camp, I've stopped pretending that building things is cheaper. YMMV, of course.
When someone sends their bank information and telephone number through email to Nigerian scammers, Slashdot calls them idiots. When they're requesting sexual domination we're somehow supposed to treat them differently?
Yes, absolutely. The first person to fall for the Nigerian scam wasn't a complete idiot. People who fall for it today are complete idiots, because the scams are now poorly crafted imitations of a good con, anybody with an email address has received 50 of these, and the first three Google hits for "nigerian" are about the scam.
Also, it's common knowledge that getting your money is a motive for being a jerk. Whereas Fortuny had no such motive here.
His methods were crude, but this is a wakeup call. You'd think years after the internet became mainstream people wouldn't need one, but apparently they still do.
A wakeup call that somebody might post your email on the web and make you look foolish? Of which this is the biggest incident I can recall. By that logic, Jason Fortuny is doing us a public service by warning us against... Jason Fortuny. If I ever get mugged, I will have to make sure to send the fellow a thank you note. And we all owe Duke Cunningham a debt of gratitude for showing us that congressmen are corruptible.
Ooops, his info just happened to fall out of no where?
Heh. Of course, the most damning fact, which is that he is an asshole who humiliates people and ruins lives for his own amusement, is one he made public himself. I know I would never hire the guy.
Hopefully a law firm in Washington will open a class action against him, plus the DA opens a case.
I've got $100 for a legal fund run by the first reputable law firm to file suit against Jason Fortuny.
In this situation, saying your company should spend money to do something because it is the Right Thing is not going to work. Instead, show them how a poorly considered UI is going to cost the company money, eg through more support calls, or through lost sales because the tool is unusable.
Absolutely. And if this guy has been advocating things because it's the Right Thing, the best thing he can do to restore is credibility is to say not just where good UI effort will make the company more money, but also where that isn't effective. He can be religious on his own time, but credibility at work comes from being reasonable.
Dupe anonymous first post is -1 off-topic but insightful because Linux rules and Zonk sucks.
Some days, this place is a Beowulf cluster of comments like that.
What you are advocating is a kind of vigilantism that punishes people by close association based in your narrow view of the world, pretty much in the same vein as extrimist antiabortionists or extreme folks against testing of products in animals.
I think the only action I have advocated in this discussion is that people stop working at jobs where they exploit or harm other people on behalf of others. And the only idea I'm advocating now is that people are responsible for the consequences of their actions, and that taking actions on behalf of an employer does not absolve you of ethical responsibility.
Where the rest of what you talk about comes from I have no idea. Perhaps you would benefit by finding out.
As long as it is nothing ilegal the employee is legaly bound to do that work.
So? Ethics, as the source of laws, trump them.
That leaves only the question of temporal power. People with money or guns can sometimes get you to do things you think are wrong. Does that make the actions right? No. Does that absolve you of responsibility? No. Does that mean that you should stop working toward a situation where you can do what you think is right? Again, no.
Who's pretending? [...] And I'm doing that [propping up a bad system] how?
Hi. You seem to bring a lot of drama to this. From your responses, it looks like you are hearing things that I am not saying. I'll try again.
You called people bullets and drones. You are absolving them of responsibility for their actions by pretending they are not humans with free will. It is a common mistake, but it's a mistake.
What makes you think they're not looking? It may shock you to realize that sometimes it takes time to get a new job.
Are you seriously asserting all, or even most people in jobs where they treat people poorly are actively looking for jobs where they live responsibly? What makes me think they're not looking is talking with people in those positions. Some are looking, most aren't. Many talk of looking, but don't really believe it's possible. And that's the problem I'm addressing here.
The "right thing"? By whose measure? Yours? What gives you the right to decide for other people what's wrong and what's right? Why do you know better than they do? I agree the system sucks, but you should realize this: PEOPLE NEED TO EAT.
More drama.
I am not deciding anything for other people. But in my experience talking with people, I find most of them share some pretty basic ethical notions, like the Golden Rule. Some people believe that it is really ok to cheat and harm others, but in my experience that's not common, and that's not the condition of most people being exploited to exploit others. People who are congenital assholes should feel free to ignore my advice. Not that I need to say that, as they are surely already doing that.
I agree that people need to eat. That's why I said one whole post ago that I of course don't expect them to quit instantly. But I do expect people to take responsibility for the consequences of their actions. We all start out naked and crying in a world we can't understand or control. Some people get over that. Those who don't are easily exploited by others. Needing to eat today is why you keep doing what you're doing -- today. But if you're not happy with what you're doing, you can also start to change that. Today.
If you want to do something constructive, do something yourself.
I am. After all: "Be the change you wish to see in the world." But that doesn't prevent me from also fighting ignorance, like the pretense that people are someone incapable of affecting the world we live in.
I think even the most optimistic revolutionary Marxist would find it hard to believe that shouting at a teenager behind a counter is going to bring about the fall of Capitalism.
That's true. It's a good thing I'm not suggesting that, isn't it?
The only choice in the matter the CSR has is "Do what we tell you" or "Get fired". Which choice would you make in their shoes? And are you really going to tell them that they should quit?
I am of course not saying they should quit right that instant. This isn't some fucking drama class exercise; this is real life.
However, I am saying that pretending that they are powerless, pretending that they are mere bullets, mere drones, is helping to prop up a bad system. You are propping up that kind of system. And until they wake up and realize that they can choose to find another job, they are propping up that kind of system.
I'm not saying that's easy, of course. But who told you that doing the right thing should always be easy?
And the way you propose to help speed the fall is by being rude to the cashier? Boardrooms everywhere quake.
Of course not. I'm very nice to cashiers, and other low-rung employees. If they're doing something ridiculous because their bosses say so, I encourage them to recognize that. It is my hope they will eventually get tired of working for fools and jerks, and instead find something productive to do with their lives.
Personally, I think you would have to pass an intelligence test before you should be allowed to have an Internet connection. You should show that you posses the basic common sense that ensures that you won't let your PC be turned into a zombie. Of course, that means that about 80% of the current population would be barred.
Or -- and here's a crazy idea -- we just wouldn't let zombie-prone operating systems on the Internet.
Rarely is it that rules exist for no reason, but this one is kind of like the king whose subjects suffered from paper cuts, so as a solution he banned all the books.
The lesson I take from this is that people shouldn't listen to rules made by kings. And also, that whining to people who set themselves up as kings only encourages them.
The idea that the corporation is an entity unto itself controlled only by people in central offices where the front-line workers have no POWER is what's accurate.
It's accurate only as long as people like you keep justifying the behavior of people who support systems like that.
Back before spam became a fact of life, I spent a lot of time tracking down individual spammers and getting them banned. I ended up talking to a number of them, and you know what? It was never their fault, not really. It was just that they really needed the money, or that they had a quota to meet, or the baby was on the way, or they just had to have that new car, or they were just doing what their boss told them. They were just a tragic victim of circumstances, boo hoo.
That's bullshit. We all have circumstances. We all can be ethical in an imaginary perfect world. What really matters is what you do in the face of real life. And that real life will always include assholes who will pay you to to help them be assholes.
Large, faceless, asshole corporations are, historically, a relatively new thing. My bet is that they have passed their peak. Rather than helping to prop them up, why not help speed their fall?
So it's ok to treat people with no control over things like shit because you have a self-esteem problem.
For the record, I'm always nice to low-level staff. The closest I come to being mad at them is to day, "Ok, I understand you can't fix this. Can you just put me in touch with whoever you'd call if I were furious and ranting?"
But people working those front like jobs are not prisoners. They picked a job, pursued it, and willingly turn up every day. They have control over the situation, too.
If you are making money by treating people poorly (hello, telemarketers!), do not fool yourself into thinking that you aren't responsible for your actions just because somebody else takes most of the money. That just makes you a jerk and a chump.
This new mechanism of "approving" the page that is default-visible will now likely be applied to many more pages than protection or semi-protection ever did, precisely because it's so tempting to use.
That's a fine assertion, but I don't see any real evidence for it. The Wikipedia editing community is generally widely opposed to any sort of editing restriction. And even if the number of restricted pages ends up going up, it's not clear to me that a moderately larger number of less restricted pages will mean a net increase in restrictiveness. If a lot of the current protected and semi-protected pages use this new system, then it will, as Wales asserts, be a net increase in openness.
Personally, that's my bet. Looking at the list of protected pages, I'd bet the ones related to edit wars will stay protected; those are temporary anyhow. But most of the rest, including almost all of the semi-protected ones, could move to this new status.
Now, imagine if this system were in place. The same legion of Colbert-inspired editors would also flag the page as valid, thus making it the default page and making the harm difficult to repair.
And a bunch of other Colbert-watching editors would put it back. Or, at worst, the page would get protected for a couple of days until the pranksters found a shiny new video on YouTube.
With version control and one-click reversion, it is easier to clean up messes than to make them. That fundamentally shifts the balance of power.
there is no easy way to un-geotag a batch of your photos
Drag them off the map and back into the strip at the bottom.
It's not a bad thing to be at a customer forever if you are always doing something new and doing it faster and therefore cheaper than their internal staff could have done. It's bad when they keep you there to maintain their environment, and it's bad for both the customer and for the consultant, the good consultants at least.
Yep. I've been doing consulting and contract work for nearly a decade, and it's in everybody's interest for me to move on regularly. Once you get used to it, the nice part is being able to tell managers when they are the problem. Either they listen or they get pissed. Either way, I get to move on to the next gig. It's the fear that there won't be a next gig that keeps people trapped in sad situations. Or in the case of somebody like Accenture or IBM, the ceaseless desire to grow regardless of the consequences to themselves or their clients.
How do such contracts get written or won? There are very few palms to be greased & a company like
EDS has a lot of "grease" to offer, or so we suppose...
It may not even be like that. Consider your average consumer, who is boldly manipulated by any marketing agency who can buy air time. Now consider what happens when you take the top people from that agency and put them in the room with an executive. It's like a pack of dogs on fresh meat.
A friend of a friend mine worked for a few years hot-shot company that was negotiating giant contracts with the California government. As the salesmen slipped thing after thing past, he felt an overwhelming urge to get up and move to the other side of the table because it was so unfair. Government bureaucrats had no defense against these sharks. Of course, he sat still until the urge passed. He had payments to make on his Porche, and you can't do that on a government salary...
- Estimate the number of hairs on your head.
- How many notes are played on a given radio station in a given year?
- How many pencils would it take to draw a straight line along the entire Prime Meridian of the earth?
- How many golf balls can be fit in a typical suitcase?
- How tall is this building?
- How much milk is produced in the US each year?
- How many flat tires are there in the US right now?
Fermi problems give a real sense of the power of the kind of facts a lot of kids are forced to learn by rote.