The issue here is that you (and I) are paying the bully's salary and bonuses. We are the ISP's client and main source of profits.
Unfortunately, the ISP's responsibility is not to us, its stakeholders, but to its shareholders. Thus, we are seen as a resource and treated as such.
Spending on advertising and getting lots of new customers is statistically cheaper than investing in better infrastructure, raising the quality of the service and keeping the picky ones.
Making a deal with third parties and selling the customer's activity logs, dropping privacy commitments and automating customer abuse from said third parties brings more profit than the loss of the few customers on the receiving end of the abuse.
Lobbying for laws disrupting the competition is cheaper than competing through a better offering and value.
Just some of the issues with only being in a business for the money... the business decision makers only care about the bottom line.
If we, the millions of customers start acting differently and are willing to put up with some discomfort (no internet service from home for a month or dial up or switching to a different provider etc.) en masse, then the game will change in a matter of weeks. As individuals we have little to no power. Talking about it may influence the stand of the brand, temporarily, and is usually dealt with via PR.
I think that judging someone as "selfish" implies a choice or at least capacity for them to act differently.
Looking at the definition by Merriam Webster, I think you can mean #1 for a toddler. Meaning #2 would indicate expectations beyond what's developmentally normal for that age.
Given that the word is the same and you may say #1 but be heard as saying #2, I think that "independent" is a better word.
1: concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself : seeking or concentrating on one's own advantage, pleasure, or well-being without regard for others
2: arising from concern with one's own welfare or advantage in disregard of others
"My son sometimes screams his brains out when I change his diaper. It still needs to be done."
Of course, and you do it. Punishing your son for it would be excessive.
Sometimes he may not be ready to eat at dinner time. Demanding that he eats at a time convenient by you and not according to his biological cycle would be unhealthy for him and more convenient for you.
Showing your child how you feel while staying connected with them is one type of situation. (Seemingly) attacking your child and causing them pain, is a different situation. If a child experiences fight/flight condition because of something the parent did, then something is wrong.
The child running towards the campfire may be handled without violence. It is possible.
Teaching your child to set, communicate and enforce their boundary is priceless.
Automatically resolving to violence against people who disrespect said boundaries is not the best solution, because
1. the attackers may be just enforcing some stupid policy trying to do a good job, 2. you may lose your ability to protect your child in the long term, being in jail / shot dead by security etc.
What is the role of punishment in a child not touching a stove? If punishment is the only tool in your educator's toolbox, then I suggest you look for other tools.
How is punishment not an abuse? If you get 10 leashes for being late to work would that be OK?
Or do you mean "Punishment is not an abuse when on the receiving end we have a child"?
"The day that children are allowed to do anything they want regardless of the parents is the day that children rule the world. Have you ever seen a two year old? Completely selfish. "
Children naturally grow through different phases which make adults uncomfortable in different ways. Habitually, adults try to make children responsible for their comfort and change their natural behaviors. But children are not our emotional caregivers, it's the other way around.
A two year old is not selfish. This is a projection happening because we adults do not properly understand the psychology of the undeveloped human brain. Some skills develop before others, and that's predetermined by nature, not the child's choice. At the age of two the sense of "self" starts emerging. The child starts feeling their own will. Lots of experimentation, discovery of the world. Strong feelings and desires unmanageable for the child. A 2-year old does not have control over these and it will be years before it learns to self-regulate.
Saying that a child is selfish presumes that this is just a small-ish adult who acts selfishly. Incorrect. The social skills develop after the sense of "self" develops.
For instance what parents call temper tantrums are overwhelming floods of feelings which change the child's brain chemistry and often disables their ability to reason and even understand language.
There are many ways to prevent children from harming themselves or others without harming the children. There are ways to maintain boundaries without turning children into prisoners.
When did you choose to become a Christian? What other choices did you consider?
If your family was Christian, did they introduce you to Buddhism, Shintoism, Islam, Daoism and ask you which one rings true for you?
If you were told about God as a fact then someone presented their faith to you as reality.
If this happened before you could clearly distinguish reality from fantasy (which starts happening around the age of 4), then this is pretty dark manipulation, don't you think so?
If you were asked to repeat certain words, prayers, rituals, given rewards and approval upon compliance and punishment for noncompliance, then that's conditioning through pain and psychological torture.
Religious organizations have used brainwashing and conditioning for ages.
"Children are pure egoism in action. It's necessary to discipline them in order to train this egoism into compromise. This the foundation of social law and the rules of social engagement."
Sorry to disappoint you, but this viewpoint originated in the dark ages when 50-70% of children were being left on the road for the wild animals and slavehunters, incest was the norm and severe physical torture and punishment were daily routine (check out Parenting for a Peaceful World for the dark history on human rearing through the ages).
"Children are born bad and must be made good" comes from hearsay, religious writings, righteous parents and pure ignorance.
"Discipline" is conditioning through violence. Rewards are conditioning through manipulation. There are other ways to inspire the qualities you see in a healthy adult, and still respect the core dignity of the child as a human being.
Children are born with only 25% of their brain developed. They are helpless and depend on adults for survival and are wired to survive. When a baby is crying in the middle of the night that's because they need food or comforting or something else, and definitely not because they are "trying to manipulate their parents"
I highly recommend Alfie Kohn's Unconditional Parenting for better understanding of child development and age-appropriate parenting.
What I think is of importance here is how our culture treats children.
When does a child become a citizen if not at birth?
And, if children are citizens, what is the excuse of running schools with a level of oppression more appropriate of POW camps? Or making a child do something they are not ready or willing to?
Many parents resort to spanking their child to give them a lesson. When was the last time your boss spanked you or grounded you for not meeting the project deadline?
Our culture promotes treating children as property, making it "OK" for adults to abuse children verbally and psychologically and physically, just recently (in the last 100 or so years) addressing sexual abuse. Physical abuse is still widely accepted and even recommended. The right to privacy, the right to eat when and however much you want, the right to sleep when you are sleepy and use the bathroom when you are ready, are taken away from you when you are a child.
Strip searching a 13-year old girl is just a symptom of tour collective habitual disrespect for children's core dignity.
Because contribution is not only measured by resulting profit. In a company with integrity the commitment goes not only to profit but also to the stakeholders. Maybe person B's project contributes to the company in ways that are not measured in cash.
You are right, people suck at governing themselves. Tax money used to create infrastructure, support healthcare, schools, police, etc. are very well spent.
The government, however has come very far from what they were hired to do. Instead of looking for what people need (not necessarily what we bitch about), based on scientific research and expert advise and then taking actions to meet these needs in the most efficient way, the government helps meet the needs of big corporations and organized crime and organized religion before ours.
The government has more power than any individual. We give them our trust and money and that power so that they act in our interest. Not our whims, but best interest. Instead, they made sure we have less and less control over their actions. Then they made more and more of their actions secret. And, they are selling laws governing our lives to the highest bidder.
Not acceptable. We need to address this before we slip into a totalitarian state where dissent is illegal and considered terrorism (, communism, socialism, treason, or whatever the buzzword is).
Until we restructure the government, it will keep restructuring our laws and lives, using our money to meet its agenda, not ours.
Too many of our servants abuse their positions. How do we fire and replace them?
The Christian teaching is based on love, tolerance and acceptance. The Church has transformed it into one of fear, cruelty and separation.
When you are consistently indoctrinated/brainwashed from the age of zero to believe that someone is watching your every move and keeping a balance sheet which may send you to a place of eternal agony, it is normal to freak out a little when you approach your transition into death.
How about leaving children alone and letting them choose their own faith when they feel ready to do so?
Any religion with an institution behind it is structured to oppress the individual and benefit the institution. Spirituality is one's personal relationship with what they perceive as their spirit. Religion is all about what the institution tells you that relationship is and should be.
Please mod parent up. The purpose of supporting a government is to have them serve our interests, make our lives easier, cheaper and support our interests. Not the other way around.
Unfortunately power corrupts and we are seeing a trend for the government to reach for more power and try to make a profit so it can grow and pay itself better. It is becoming a situation similar to a bodyguard you hire who takes you hostage, spends your money and f**ks your wife.
The idea was never to pass a perfect law. The idea is to pass an overreaching law crushing all resistance and then back it off for the entities that bite back. Much easier, cheaper and powerful.
If the law passes, you'll see amendments for everyone big enough to fight back.
We are talking about a battlefield where people (a human = "person") go against giant nightmarish entities with unlimited cash resources, armies of lawyers, and laws on their side (lobbying corporation = "person") that also get to write the rules of the battle.
Three, copyright law has gone way off the rails to the point where it is significantly impairing free speech, innovation, and creativity. Century-long copyright terms, takedown notices to block speech one disagrees with, DRM that seizes control of communications technology, and a tremendous concentration of cultural ownership in the hands of a few companies are bad enough. Strengthening the enforcement of illegitimate and unjust laws only increases the injustice.
I concur. The copyright law is a bright example of laws not serving the people but lobbyists. And, it's going to get worse and worse and worse, until *we, the people* wake up and make a shift in governance which puts the legislative, judicial and executive branches of the government in their place, serving the people.
Serving you and me, listening to our needs, proactively finding ways to support us and make our lives easier, cheaper, healthier and happier.
Currently, *money* is the most important thing to the government. And, government has found ways to collect its money from us, without accountability from our side. We have no control about giving our money or where our money goes. Lobbyists do have that control and they use it to steer the government.
When a shift happens that makes *us, the people, and our well-being* the most important thing for our government, then we will see policies that serve our interests.
This shift will not happen in the government before it happens for most individuals.
What we are seeing is the government acting as a greedy, insecure, vengeful child-king. Our last president was a wonderful illustration of that.
Our own insecurity, greed and separation manifest on a large scale.
Our laws naturally become more and more oppressive until we can't take it anymore and then get eased just enough to avoid violent response. After a while this is the new norm and a more oppressive version gets pushed again, and again and again. We are cornered and the walls are closing in, all the time.
This is how you boil a frog, this is how you enslave people under the illusion of freedom.
Two companies at war deploying tech solutions to battle each other is certainly a lot of fun to watch for web developers, engineers and geeks. It's like photoshop tennis but with real tech, not just words and art.
We are the spectators of a mild legal cyberwar.
Wake up, the future is here, science fiction concepts from 20 years ago are now reality.
1. Respect their ideas and consider them. 2. If you implement an idea, reciprocate the value with appreciation and acknowledgment for everyone involved. 3. Follow up even on ideas you don't implement and express genuine appreciation for someone taking time out of their day and give you a free piece of advise. 4. Make it safe for people to suggest ideas that may be contrary to what upper management feels is right, convenient or is otherwise uptight about.
A blind search for successful strategies... and looking up to Apple.
Instead of building the product that the customers really want. I guess there's nothing more difficult than making a fast, stable, clean implementation of a windows-compatible OS.
Can't wait for the day when I'll be able to buy OSX for any Intel. On that day, MS will have to wake up and change their vision from "Tax to the max" to something more customer oriented.
We ran a study telling you that we can cripple our product and charge extra for an un-crippled version. Don't worry, statistics show that most people won't notice.
Where do you want to go today? We would love to make you pay.
Slashdot Mirror
The issue here is that you (and I) are paying the bully's salary and bonuses. We are the ISP's client and main source of profits.
Unfortunately, the ISP's responsibility is not to us, its stakeholders, but to its shareholders. Thus, we are seen as a resource and treated as such.
Spending on advertising and getting lots of new customers is statistically cheaper than investing in better infrastructure, raising the quality of the service and keeping the picky ones.
Making a deal with third parties and selling the customer's activity logs, dropping privacy commitments and automating customer abuse from said third parties brings more profit than the loss of the few customers on the receiving end of the abuse.
Lobbying for laws disrupting the competition is cheaper than competing through a better offering and value.
Just some of the issues with only being in a business for the money... the business decision makers only care about the bottom line.
If we, the millions of customers start acting differently and are willing to put up with some discomfort (no internet service from home for a month or dial up or switching to a different provider etc.) en masse, then the game will change in a matter of weeks. As individuals we have little to no power. Talking about it may influence the stand of the brand, temporarily, and is usually dealt with via PR.
"Can I live in your world, where children aren't naturally narcissistic, messy, gluttonous, and willful creatures?"
Sure, just take the labels off the behaviors you judge as such.
These are all words with negative connotations.
Narcissistic = interested in themselves. wanting to pursue what feels good to them.
Messy = very interested in exploring, regardless of resulting mess
Gluttonous = loving tasty food that feels good to the taste buds and tummy
Willful = independent, as in independent being, exploring the world, learning to get what it wants from the universe
It's not the children, it's us.
Maybe I am misunderstanding you.
I think that judging someone as "selfish" implies a choice or at least capacity for them to act differently.
Looking at the definition by Merriam Webster, I think you can mean #1 for a toddler. Meaning #2 would indicate expectations beyond what's developmentally normal for that age.
Given that the word is the same and you may say #1 but be heard as saying #2, I think that "independent" is a better word.
1: concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself : seeking or concentrating on one's own advantage, pleasure, or well-being without regard for others
2: arising from concern with one's own welfare or advantage in disregard of others
Examples: Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn.
Scientific research referenced for almost every statement he makes.
Here's a description of the book on his website: http://www.alfiekohn.org/up/index.html
Highly recommended for any present/future parent.
Nonvilent parenting != permissive parenting
"My son sometimes screams his brains out when I change his diaper. It still needs to be done."
Of course, and you do it. Punishing your son for it would be excessive.
Sometimes he may not be ready to eat at dinner time. Demanding that he eats at a time convenient by you and not according to his biological cycle would be unhealthy for him and more convenient for you.
Showing your child how you feel while staying connected with them is one type of situation. (Seemingly) attacking your child and causing them pain, is a different situation. If a child experiences fight/flight condition because of something the parent did, then something is wrong.
The child running towards the campfire may be handled without violence. It is possible.
Nonviolent parenting != permissive parenting.
Teaching your child to set, communicate and enforce their boundary is priceless.
Automatically resolving to violence against people who disrespect said boundaries is not the best solution, because
1. the attackers may be just enforcing some stupid policy trying to do a good job,
2. you may lose your ability to protect your child in the long term, being in jail / shot dead by security etc.
What is the role of punishment in a child not touching a stove? If punishment is the only tool in your educator's toolbox, then I suggest you look for other tools.
How is punishment not an abuse? If you get 10 leashes for being late to work would that be OK?
Or do you mean "Punishment is not an abuse when on the receiving end we have a child"?
"The day that children are allowed to do anything they want regardless of the parents is the day that children rule the world. Have you ever seen a two year old? Completely selfish. "
Children naturally grow through different phases which make adults uncomfortable in different ways. Habitually, adults try to make children responsible for their comfort and change their natural behaviors. But children are not our emotional caregivers, it's the other way around.
A two year old is not selfish. This is a projection happening because we adults do not properly understand the psychology of the undeveloped human brain. Some skills develop before others, and that's predetermined by nature, not the child's choice. At the age of two the sense of "self" starts emerging. The child starts feeling their own will. Lots of experimentation, discovery of the world. Strong feelings and desires unmanageable for the child. A 2-year old does not have control over these and it will be years before it learns to self-regulate.
Saying that a child is selfish presumes that this is just a small-ish adult who acts selfishly. Incorrect. The social skills develop after the sense of "self" develops.
For instance what parents call temper tantrums are overwhelming floods of feelings which change the child's brain chemistry and often disables their ability to reason and even understand language.
There are many ways to prevent children from harming themselves or others without harming the children. There are ways to maintain boundaries without turning children into prisoners.
When did you choose to become a Christian? What other choices did you consider?
If your family was Christian, did they introduce you to Buddhism, Shintoism, Islam, Daoism and ask you which one rings true for you?
If you were told about God as a fact then someone presented their faith to you as reality.
If this happened before you could clearly distinguish reality from fantasy (which starts happening around the age of 4), then this is pretty dark manipulation, don't you think so?
If you were asked to repeat certain words, prayers, rituals, given rewards and approval upon compliance and punishment for noncompliance, then that's conditioning through pain and psychological torture.
Religious organizations have used brainwashing and conditioning for ages.
So, when did *you* choose to be a Christian?
"Children are pure egoism in action. It's necessary to discipline them in order to train this egoism into compromise. This the foundation of social law and the rules of social engagement."
Sorry to disappoint you, but this viewpoint originated in the dark ages when 50-70% of children were being left on the road for the wild animals and slavehunters, incest was the norm and severe physical torture and punishment were daily routine (check out Parenting for a Peaceful World for the dark history on human rearing through the ages).
"Children are born bad and must be made good" comes from hearsay, religious writings, righteous parents and pure ignorance.
"Discipline" is conditioning through violence. Rewards are conditioning through manipulation. There are other ways to inspire the qualities you see in a healthy adult, and still respect the core dignity of the child as a human being.
Children are born with only 25% of their brain developed. They are helpless and depend on adults for survival and are wired to survive. When a baby is crying in the middle of the night that's because they need food or comforting or something else, and definitely not because they are "trying to manipulate their parents"
I highly recommend Alfie Kohn's Unconditional Parenting for better understanding of child development and age-appropriate parenting.
Ditto. Policies replace intelligence with bureaucracy. Life is custom and doesn't fit on a form.
Adults still think of children as a cross between a human, puppy and a demon from hell. Oh, and property, not citizens.
It is legal in the U.S. to hit (assault/abuse/spank) a child and not legal to assault an adult.
So there.
What I think is of importance here is how our culture treats children.
When does a child become a citizen if not at birth?
And, if children are citizens, what is the excuse of running schools with a level of oppression more appropriate of POW camps? Or making a child do something they are not ready or willing to?
Many parents resort to spanking their child to give them a lesson. When was the last time your boss spanked you or grounded you for not meeting the project deadline?
Our culture promotes treating children as property, making it "OK" for adults to abuse children verbally and psychologically and physically, just recently (in the last 100 or so years) addressing sexual abuse. Physical abuse is still widely accepted and even recommended. The right to privacy, the right to eat when and however much you want, the right to sleep when you are sleepy and use the bathroom when you are ready, are taken away from you when you are a child.
Strip searching a 13-year old girl is just a symptom of tour collective habitual disrespect for children's core dignity.
I suggest you check out this http://is.gd/oMQM and this http://is.gd/lQwS
Incorrect: "I was spanked as a kid and I turned OK."
Correct: "I was spanked as a kid and I grew up to believe that spanking is OK."
Because contribution is not only measured by resulting profit. In a company with integrity the commitment goes not only to profit but also to the stakeholders. Maybe person B's project contributes to the company in ways that are not measured in cash.
You are right, people suck at governing themselves. Tax money used to create infrastructure, support healthcare, schools, police, etc. are very well spent.
The government, however has come very far from what they were hired to do. Instead of looking for what people need (not necessarily what we bitch about), based on scientific research and expert advise and then taking actions to meet these needs in the most efficient way, the government helps meet the needs of big corporations and organized crime and organized religion before ours.
The government has more power than any individual. We give them our trust and money and that power so that they act in our interest. Not our whims, but best interest. Instead, they made sure we have less and less control over their actions. Then they made more and more of their actions secret. And, they are selling laws governing our lives to the highest bidder.
Not acceptable. We need to address this before we slip into a totalitarian state where dissent is illegal and considered terrorism (, communism, socialism, treason, or whatever the buzzword is).
Until we restructure the government, it will keep restructuring our laws and lives, using our money to meet its agenda, not ours.
Too many of our servants abuse their positions. How do we fire and replace them?
The Christian teaching is based on love, tolerance and acceptance. The Church has transformed it into one of fear, cruelty and separation.
When you are consistently indoctrinated/brainwashed from the age of zero to believe that someone is watching your every move and keeping a balance sheet which may send you to a place of eternal agony, it is normal to freak out a little when you approach your transition into death.
How about leaving children alone and letting them choose their own faith when they feel ready to do so?
Any religion with an institution behind it is structured to oppress the individual and benefit the institution. Spirituality is one's personal relationship with what they perceive as their spirit. Religion is all about what the institution tells you that relationship is and should be.
Please mod parent up. The purpose of supporting a government is to have them serve our interests, make our lives easier, cheaper and support our interests. Not the other way around.
Unfortunately power corrupts and we are seeing a trend for the government to reach for more power and try to make a profit so it can grow and pay itself better. It is becoming a situation similar to a bodyguard you hire who takes you hostage, spends your money and f**ks your wife.
Exactly. Follow the money and see what the company's real intentions are.
The intention was never to release a good e-reader reader to the market. This is a platform for Amazon's proprietary content, that's all.
Anybody trying to use it as something else will be nudged out of the way to ...Profit!
Always follow the money. The ad copy is just creative writing.
The idea was never to pass a perfect law. The idea is to pass an overreaching law crushing all resistance and then back it off for the entities that bite back. Much easier, cheaper and powerful.
If the law passes, you'll see amendments for everyone big enough to fight back.
We are talking about a battlefield where people (a human = "person") go against giant nightmarish entities with unlimited cash resources, armies of lawyers, and laws on their side (lobbying corporation = "person") that also get to write the rules of the battle.
Fun, fun, fun!
Three, copyright law has gone way off the rails to the point where it is significantly impairing free speech, innovation, and creativity. Century-long copyright terms, takedown notices to block speech one disagrees with, DRM that seizes control of communications technology, and a tremendous concentration of cultural ownership in the hands of a few companies are bad enough. Strengthening the enforcement of illegitimate and unjust laws only increases the injustice.
I concur. The copyright law is a bright example of laws not serving the people but lobbyists. And, it's going to get worse and worse and worse, until *we, the people* wake up and make a shift in governance which puts the legislative, judicial and executive branches of the government in their place, serving the people.
Serving you and me, listening to our needs, proactively finding ways to support us and make our lives easier, cheaper, healthier and happier.
Currently, *money* is the most important thing to the government. And, government has found ways to collect its money from us, without accountability from our side. We have no control about giving our money or where our money goes. Lobbyists do have that control and they use it to steer the government.
When a shift happens that makes *us, the people, and our well-being* the most important thing for our government, then we will see policies that serve our interests.
This shift will not happen in the government before it happens for most individuals.
What we are seeing is the government acting as a greedy, insecure, vengeful child-king. Our last president was a wonderful illustration of that.
Our own insecurity, greed and separation manifest on a large scale.
Our laws naturally become more and more oppressive until we can't take it anymore and then get eased just enough to avoid violent response. After a while this is the new norm and a more oppressive version gets pushed again, and again and again. We are cornered and the walls are closing in, all the time.
This is how you boil a frog, this is how you enslave people under the illusion of freedom.
And, of course, there's always the power... http://www.george-orwell.org/1984/19.html
Two companies at war deploying tech solutions to battle each other is certainly a lot of fun to watch for web developers, engineers and geeks. It's like photoshop tennis but with real tech, not just words and art.
We are the spectators of a mild legal cyberwar.
Wake up, the future is here, science fiction concepts from 20 years ago are now reality.
Am I the only one finding this pretty amazing?
1. In the name of better society
2. We need more power over our clients
3. Profit.
Always works!
1. Respect their ideas and consider them.
2. If you implement an idea, reciprocate the value with appreciation and acknowledgment for everyone involved.
3. Follow up even on ideas you don't implement and express genuine appreciation for someone taking time out of their day and give you a free piece of advise.
4. Make it safe for people to suggest ideas that may be contrary to what upper management feels is right, convenient or is otherwise uptight about.
A blind search for successful strategies... and looking up to Apple.
Instead of building the product that the customers really want. I guess there's nothing more difficult than making a fast, stable, clean implementation of a windows-compatible OS.
I concur.
Can't wait for the day when I'll be able to buy OSX for any Intel. On that day, MS will have to wake up and change their vision from "Tax to the max" to something more customer oriented.
We ran a study telling you that we can cripple our product and charge extra for an un-crippled version. Don't worry, statistics show that most people won't notice.
Where do you want to go today? We would love to make you pay.