Based on your definition here and the information I have on this case so far, I see no precidence or crime. How do *we* know what his intentions were? Secondly, he didn't perform the act of disabling or harming the network or computers. How could he? All he *might* have done is persuaded people to do something. Since when was social engineering illegal? Even if he had refreshed his screen his refresh alone did not bring down the network. Furthermore, if the the network or server was misconfigured in any way then how could one not argue that it wasn't the refreshes of web clients (which is a perfectly normal function for web browsers) is what caused the server to purportefly go offline? Additionally, how many people were "incited" in performing this "act of heinousness", anyway? I can see him persuading a classroom of people or perhaps a small mass (50 people) to do this but a properly configured network and server should be able to handle any amount of traffic from this small of a group even if the refreshes happened many times and quickly.
I don't buy it. This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.
My feelings are really strong on this issue and I am at work right now so my thoughts are disjointed. Additionally, my ideas are probably not 100% well-stated and as such might catalyze question and uncertainty.
Yes it is their property, without going into how they got it and if their contracts with musicians are screwing the musicians.
They own the copyright but they don't own the medium with which the music/movie is distributed and under the fair use act I have a right to listen/watch/copy/distribute legally any way I please! Now, I've sort of split your point. You are talking about illegally downloading and/or illegally distributing copyrighted material. I am talking about legally downloading/distributing copyrighted material. I will get the distribution part out of the way right now since legal distribution is not covered by the kazaa'ers and whatnot -- at least not as far as I know. So, that is straight out. However, if I already own the music on CD that I bought then I have, under the fair use act, as I understand it, a legal right to listen to, copy (for personal use), and even in some cases distribute that material however I want. I paid for it! I have a right to legally do with it whatever I want. My understanding is that I am also legally allowed to download the music that I already own from the Internet because , heh, I already own it and if I were to get investigated I could prove that I own the music on CD and simply encoded my own MP3's which is not illegal.
Besides, I think the whole "lending" (the act of corporations letting you buy a copy of the material but they own it regardless of who possess it) property thing is getting very very old, now. And you make quick reference to how the production companies are screwing the musicians...indeed they are. How come nobody focuses on that aspect? There are musicians out there today that refuse to sign with these huge production companies because they want to keep their copyrights! What's more is that the production companies have such a grip on the radio and television roles these days that it makes it practically impossible for these "small-time" musicians to make it big because they want to keep their copyrights and so the production companies refuse to sign em. So, these little guys go to the Internet to try and make it big. The little guys, now for a small price, produce their own labels and somewhat distribute! It's great! Get rid of kazaa and these other P2P outlets and you actually hinder the little guy. This is exactly what the big companies want.
I agree that these companies have a right to protect their property in the sense that it is illegally getting swapped. The part I disagree with is the fact that the government is getting involved (DMCA) which, to me, is just special interests at work.
If you distribute something...anything, you KNOW you are going to take a loss on it. I am a software developer (open source, admittedly). But if I sold my software I would *expect* that my software would get pirated by some people. I know I am going to get dinged. However, *I* put the technology in place myself to make it more difficult for those who distribute my software illegally to use it. I don't need legislation created to protect my assets. Nor do I want it. Why? Because the government consists of crusty old men who don't know or understand a whit about the technology involved with these kinds of things these days. So, why would I want those people trying to create laws about something they don't understand only to infringe upon everybody's rights in an effort to cover "all the bases"?!? That just hinders the little people and causes cash cows for the corporations.
So, I've ranted a bit here. I will step down from the soap box pedestal.
The reason politicos hate jury nullification is precisely because it makes idiotic laws like prohibition unenforcable. They're scared stiff of having their power destroyed by the people.
It is getting clearer and clearer how the government is trying to remove freedoms from each of us...slowly but subtly and definitely and sometimes even under the auspice of 'security'.
The day we don't get to serve as jurors is the day we need to be afraid! I have served as a juror twice and been able to serve on a case once. I am more than happy to do so.
If I were being tried for something, I would absolutely want my jurors to realize the power and responsibility that they have if only to give me a fair chance. I wouldn't want the judge to dismiss those jurors who understand and are proponents of jury nullification. Thus, why proclaim such a thing to the court during selection for chance of being dismissed when instead we should be wielding the responsibility and potentially helping our fellow citizens??!!
Microsoft is a pig...a glutton even! Won't these guys ever get original?
Um, hey microsoft!! -- stop changing standards and taking everybody elses' toys away! ok? ok!
- Jim
Re:Mo Money! Mo Money! Mo Money!
on
Windows ATMs by 2005
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Indeed. Something we should all get in our minds...corporations are driven by money and everything else is a shadow of forethought. The thought that there are smart people in corporations is probably accurate. The idea that those smart people are who make the decisions in a corporation, however, is not as accurate as you'd think. The idea that there are smart people in corporations is ok but you'd be surprised how many stupid people are actually in corporations. By the way, I equate stupid with greedy as well as ignorant.
I like to think of corporations as greed tanks from the top down. The greedy people are at the top. These are the people who are thinking "What can I do today to make more money?" -- translation: "Who can I screw-over today to steal more money?". I sincerely believe that that question gets answered in a three-tiered response. The first people the corporate "leaders" try to steal from are their employees IE long hours for salaried employees and no bonuses (yet they continue to lure new employees with a non-existent bonus package). Today's work-force deals with below-average salary and too few employees for the amount of work there is. So the workload is particularly heavy on the few workers that are within a department which causes those exempt employees to feel obligated in working beyond their required 40-hours-per-week fighting for that much promised bonus that will actually never be equal to the amount of extra work the employee put in IF they even get the bonus!! The second set of people they try to steal from are their customers. Ever noticed the price of things going up yet the quality AND quantity of the product is going down? Uhhh...hello! And lastly, themselves IE the other directors, presidents, VPs, etc which probably happens far less because they are all savvy to the game. Enron is a perfect example of this kind of crap. Has anyone from Enron been endicted yet!? I don't think so (last I checked anyway). Just another example of how these white-collar crimes are bureaucracies of manipulation and conspiracy.
Hmm, I got off the path there didn't I?:) Anyhoo, my point is that you should NEVER assume there are smart people making the decisions for these companies. I've heard all too often that the smart people that make the suggestions and the budgets are the victims of F&A cutbacks that end up altering those decisions and causing lots of hectic problems because the smart decisions were just not in the monetary interest of the company. Lame, lame, lame.
I still have a very low opinion of corporations large and small. I've been employed in large and small corporations and all but one of them was shady in their internal practices.
I'd love to rant some more because this topic really grinds me. But, alas, I won't.:)/me steps off his soap-box.
This kind of article doesn't disturb me in the least. Linux will always grow because it can! Microsoft can do whatever they want to try and thwart the open source movement but it will always fail for one simple reason. The price!
Anybody can learn how to code. Admittedly, however, not everybody can code well but for every 10 coders there is one (perhaps more) who can code well. So, the odds are in the open source community's favor since Microsoft can only hire so many developers and only those developers who are in it for the money will probably go with m$. The others who feel the movement will probably tell m$ to go shove off.
Nah, this is not a threat. It's fodder. Bill Gates will never be able to overcome this movement short of bribing the whole open source community and while he may have the money to do such a thing, I don't believe the open source community is willing to give up their freedom for a little cash...at least that is how I see it.
There is a point in a human being's life where one learns that money is not everything but merely a means to some physical pleasures and necessities. The excess of money is not necessary for the necessities.
Your comment tells me that you do not understand the ramifications of the DMCA and how this Act actually hurts America and its ability to progress in science and technology and it will eventually negatively impact how we learn, read, and develop in all areas of growth.
If I had the money I would give more to help out with this cause. We need to stop the government from allowing corporations to stomp on our rights solely for their benefit.
No...it's called greed by the RIAA and the MPAA. The federal government should not be involved with this DMCA thing at all. I hope this conference does something to get the word (truth) out to the general public so that we can ban together and get this Act abolished.
Yes, I'm being idealistic and hopeful but so were our forefathers when we faught Britain for our freedom.
Which is the price of doing business. I know this has little bearing on what you were posting (by simply trying to make a point) but I thought I would do the same based off your comment too.;)
If their equipment is put up for auction, all those competitors out there will have an equal chance to bid up the prices. So it doesn't make sense to say that equipment will go for nearly nothing, allowing huge prices cuts. If the equipment is cheap enough everyone will bid on it, and it won't go for nearly nothing anymore.
And how many corporations do you know actually watch Ebay for the purpose of buying equipment. What's more is that most corporations will *not* buy stuff off ebay because the equipment doesn't come with the service agreements and warranties offered from the mfr at buy time (new equipment) so I would not say that your comment is one that holds much merit in that respect.
Just because the opportunity is there doesn't mean that there is equal opportunity to take it. In direct opposition to your comment, *everyone* will *NOT* bid on it. In fact, only the smaller people (companies) looking for cuts in price thus attempting to become competition to the big guys will be the ones who will take advantage of such things as ebay. That's not necesasrily a bad thing either. I am all for a competitive market.
I have a manager who outside of work is a great guy. In the work place he sucks as a manager. He has the micromanagement thing down to a fine art. He is arrogant and unwilling to budge from his point of view. He uses a Hitler management technique. He has already chased off 5 of the 7 employees that were under him of which 3 have been replaced. Now 2 of those are rumored to be looking for new jobs and have not even been here for a year yet.
Now, don't get me wrong. I love my work. It's what really keeps me here for now. It won't be long before I pack and go though and one reason will be because of my immediate manager. Ok, so one may ask, what about the managers above the immediate manager? It is hard to believe that they would allow this guy to continue managing! right? One would think that but with management comes politics and greed. Some managers just have no backbone. Some don't know how to balance profressionalism with personality and then some are just plain stupid and arrogant.
I have very rarely had a management team that was driven by professionalism where their personal lives were totally separate from their professional lives. Heh, the ironic thing is that there has only been one company that I can think of that I have worked at where the teams (management and little people) actually were on the same book and that, ironically, was corporate Disney IPNS West.
My IT director sent my manager to management training (hint, hint) but its not going to help him. His problem is "little man syndrome" and is far beyond good management skills. Its all about personality with him and you simply cannot teach an old dog new personality traits:)
In short, yes, management is completely out of touch with reality a lot of the time. Another example in my case is that they have removed several IT/IS people from the company while keeping sales people. Sounds like a good idea from a sales perspective, right? OOPS! We get more customers because of the untouched sales people doing their job but not enough techs to handle the backend for the additional customers and now service to the customers sucks and the management is scrambling trying to figure out why!!! Now customers leave because service sucks and word-of-mouth from the customers states that they shouldn't go with company X because the service is terrible. Looks like management made a bad call. It really really frustrates me, too, because it is so blatantly obvious to me and my peers but management just doesn't get it. I think its because their eyes are lined by prospect of greenbacks and their thoughts are just not clear enough to make the wise decisions. I hope people from management read this because WE ARE FRUSTRATED WITH YOU!
I have also noticed that nobody in my company talks to the little people when it comes to big decisions that will affect everybody. Some may say, well thats understandable. How do you expect to get consensus from 900 employees on subject Y? Ok, I see that as a valid point but I have always believed in majority rules and it doesn't take much to send out an email on an issue and then count the results and then state the results back to the employees. This is a little far fetched but not far from being possible.
We recently had our DBA director *fired*!!! Why? He was an excellent DBA director. Everybody liked him because he knew his stuff. He put in extra hours. He was liked by his peers. He didn't always agree with upper management's decisions and he stated so. Upper management didn't like it, so they canned him. THAT my friends is politics. Politics sucks! And we live in a political world
I am angry. I am tired of dealing with management's poor decisions and greed. I am tired of the politics. When will people get back down to basics, forget themselves, and remember that the purpose of a company is to provide service for others at a cost exceptable for both the company and the customer alike. When will management see that although a salaray is a good thing, it shouldn't be the end result. We are a money driven society and until we get back to basics, lose the greed and arrogance, and get back to servicing for the purpose of...get this...SERVICE! we will continue to have messages like this in online forums.
There is nothing wrong with making money. There is something wrong with putting the acquisition of money ahead of people.
Here is a final example of greed. Remember the two guys that left? Well, management refuses to replace them because management refuses to pay them the salary that is even with the industry standard. Management wants to pay them sub-standard salary!!! No wonder we can't fill these positions. Greed folks...its all about greed.
This is somewhat OT but I think it is a valid point.
How bout...a better shell to replace sh on those "enterprise" *nixen. I have not quite figured out why the "big guys" have not grown up a bit and started using more robust shells like bash and/or ksh. Frankly, I'm a korn shell guy when it comes to scripting jobs which is what I do for a living (ksh and Perl). Solaris ships with ksh88 out of the box. Solaris 8 might actually come with ksh93 now (NOT including dtksh which is a superset of ksh93 with dt code built-in) but I could be mistaken about that. However, Solaris still bumps into borne if one needs to go into maintenance mode. Now, I am not a hard-core Unix code hacker and I don't proclaim to know everything about Unix, but I have my fair amount of knowledge. No doubt, the first reply to this will be: It can't be done because of compatibility issues. BAH! I really do not think it would be that difficult to build and use the more up-to-date shells into the vanilla installs for those enterprise type *nixen.
Why would you change? I know bash finally added support for arrays not too long ago (a couple years now?). Korn does arrays, but borne, does not. Can borne do tertiary conditions? I don't know, never tried but I doubt it. Does borne allow all of the test switches that bash and korn can do? The ever-loved command-line recall is a good 'nuff reason to do away with borne. Borne is old and it's deprecated. Everything has to evolve sometime.
I'm not leaving out csh and tcsh on accident. I just am not a cshell kind of guy but I know it is very powerful. FreeBSD uses it as the default root shell in a vanilla installation. I believe even FreeBSD falls back to borne in maintenance mode.
I think, in the end, the biggest reason why those Unix companies don't "upgrade" to the more robust shells is compatibility. Perhaps the second biggest reason is, "why? It works!". I agree, it works and if that were the only reason, I admit, that is a worthy reason. However, I feel its time to move on!! Things don't get better if they remain in the old ages.
I think that I would consider myself to be one of those zealots to a degree. However, I don't "push" OS'en on anyone. I do suggest OS'es when it is within the scope of my responsibility including those times when someone asks my opinion. I see nothing wrong with zealots, however. I mean, when you think about, Microsoft has been doing the very thing you are rebuking, albeit in more subtle ways for the last 10+ years. Heh, I like the XP commercials. I abhor the company.
I believe that the majority of "zealots" out there "push" Linux and other opensource OS'es because they dislike the competition and they see a viable, credible, and in a lot ways superior solution. When one sees something good, one spreads the news. What's more is that by not using m$ software, which is *almost* imossible sometimes, that's just one more blow to m$ in the software field hence their pocket book.
I dislike m$ because they are unethical. They are superior at making inferior software and charging the public who mostly has no clue. Their software is bloated, slow, resource hungry, stiff, and you have an EUL that binds you so tightly that you might as well sell your soul to them in order to not get sued for doing the slightest thing wrong.
Don't get me wrong. I think when Microsoft first came out they served an important purpose. They actually made decent software. As they got bigger, they got more arrogant. Now, I want nothing to do with them. They are a fat whore looking for the next john, imo. I do have to submit to the fact that they do have the superior gui. It's an excellent client side solution. It is not preferred by me, however. Their server sux0r5.
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Based on your definition here and the information I have on this case so far, I see no precidence or crime. How do *we* know what his intentions were?
Secondly, he didn't perform the act of disabling or harming the network or computers. How could he? All he *might* have done is persuaded people to do something. Since when was social engineering illegal? Even if he had refreshed his screen his refresh alone did not bring down the network. Furthermore, if the the network
or server was misconfigured in any way then how could one not argue that it wasn't the refreshes of web clients (which is a perfectly normal function for web browsers) is what caused the server to purportefly go offline? Additionally, how many people were "incited" in performing this "act of heinousness", anyway? I can see him persuading a classroom of people
or perhaps a small mass (50 people) to do this but a properly configured network and server should be able to handle any amount of traffic from this small of a group even if the refreshes happened many times and quickly.
I don't buy it. This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.
My feelings are really strong on this issue and I am at work right now so my thoughts are disjointed. Additionally, my ideas are probably not 100% well-stated and as such might catalyze question and uncertainty.
Yes it is their property, without going into how they got it and if their contracts with musicians are screwing the musicians.
They own the copyright but they don't own the medium with which the music/movie is distributed and under the fair use act I have a right to listen/watch/copy/distribute legally any way I please! Now, I've sort of split your point. You are talking about illegally downloading and/or illegally distributing copyrighted material. I am talking about legally downloading/distributing copyrighted material. I will get the distribution part out of the way right now since legal distribution is not covered by the kazaa'ers and whatnot -- at least not as far as I know. So, that is straight out. However, if I already own the music on CD that I bought then I have, under the fair use act, as I understand it, a legal right to listen to, copy (for personal use), and even in some cases distribute that material however I want. I paid for it! I have a right to legally do with it whatever I want. My understanding is that I am also legally allowed to download the music that I already own from the Internet because , heh, I already own it and if I were to get investigated I could prove that I own the music on CD and simply encoded my own MP3's which is not illegal.
Besides, I think the whole "lending" (the act of corporations letting you buy a copy of the material but they own it regardless of who possess it) property thing is getting very very old, now. And you make quick reference to how the production companies are screwing the musicians...indeed they are. How come nobody focuses on that aspect? There are musicians out there today that refuse to sign with these huge production companies because they want to keep their copyrights! What's more is that the production companies have such a grip on the radio and television roles these days that it makes it practically impossible for these "small-time" musicians to make it big because they want to keep their copyrights and so the production companies refuse to sign em. So, these little guys go to the Internet to try and make it big. The little guys, now for a small price, produce their own labels and somewhat distribute! It's great! Get rid of kazaa and these other P2P outlets and you actually hinder the little guy. This is exactly what the big companies want.
I agree that these companies have a right to protect their property in the sense that it is illegally getting swapped. The part I disagree with is the fact that the government is getting involved (DMCA) which, to me, is just special interests at work.
If you distribute something...anything, you KNOW you are going to take a loss on it. I am a software developer (open source, admittedly). But if I sold my software I would *expect* that my software would get pirated by some people. I know I am going to get dinged. However, *I* put the technology in place myself to make it more difficult for those who distribute my software illegally to use it. I don't need legislation created to protect my assets. Nor do I want it. Why? Because the government consists of crusty old men who don't know or understand a whit about the technology involved with these kinds of things these days. So, why would I want those people trying to create laws about something they don't understand only to infringe upon everybody's rights in an effort to cover "all the bases"?!? That just hinders the little people and causes cash cows for the corporations.
So, I've ranted a bit here. I will step down from the soap box pedestal.
This was very stated...
The reason politicos hate jury nullification is precisely because it makes idiotic laws like prohibition unenforcable. They're scared stiff of having their power destroyed by the people.
It is getting clearer and clearer how the government is trying to remove freedoms from each of us...slowly but subtly and definitely and sometimes even under the auspice of 'security'.
The day we don't get to serve as jurors is the day we need to be afraid! I have served as a juror twice and been able to serve on a case once. I am more than happy to do so.
If I were being tried for something, I would absolutely want my jurors to realize the power and responsibility that they have if only to give me a fair chance. I wouldn't want the judge to dismiss those jurors who understand and are proponents of jury nullification. Thus, why proclaim such a thing to the court during selection for chance of being dismissed when instead we should be wielding the responsibility and potentially helping our fellow citizens??!!
Microsoft is a pig...a glutton even! Won't these guys ever get original? Um, hey microsoft!! -- stop changing standards and taking everybody elses' toys away! ok? ok! - Jim
Indeed. Something we should all get in our minds...corporations are driven by money and everything else is a shadow of forethought. The thought that there are smart people in corporations is probably accurate. The idea that those smart people are who make the decisions in a corporation, however, is not as accurate as you'd think. The idea that there are smart people in corporations is ok but you'd be surprised how many stupid people are actually in corporations. By the way, I equate stupid with greedy as well as ignorant.
:) Anyhoo, my point is that you should NEVER assume there are smart people making the decisions for these companies. I've heard all too often that the smart people that make the suggestions and the budgets are the victims of F&A cutbacks that end up altering those decisions and causing lots of hectic problems because the smart decisions were just not in the monetary interest of the company. Lame, lame, lame.
:) /me steps off his soap-box.
I like to think of corporations as greed tanks from the top down. The greedy people are at the top. These are the people who are thinking "What can I do today to make more money?" -- translation: "Who can I screw-over today to steal more money?". I sincerely believe that that question gets answered in a three-tiered response. The first people the corporate "leaders" try to steal from are their employees IE long hours for salaried employees and no bonuses (yet they continue to lure new employees with a non-existent bonus package). Today's work-force deals with below-average salary and too few employees for the amount of work there is. So the workload is particularly heavy on the few workers that are within a department which causes those exempt employees to feel obligated in working beyond their required 40-hours-per-week fighting for that much promised bonus that will actually never be equal to the amount of extra work the employee put in IF they even get the bonus!! The second set of people they try to steal from are their customers. Ever noticed the price of things going up yet the quality AND quantity of the product is going down? Uhhh...hello! And lastly, themselves IE the other directors, presidents, VPs, etc which probably happens far less because they are all savvy to the game. Enron is a perfect example of this kind of crap. Has anyone from Enron been endicted yet!? I don't think so (last I checked anyway). Just another example of how these white-collar crimes are bureaucracies of manipulation and conspiracy.
Hmm, I got off the path there didn't I?
I still have a very low opinion of corporations large and small. I've been employed in large and small corporations and all but one of them was shady in their internal practices.
I'd love to rant some more because this topic really grinds me. But, alas, I won't.
- Jim
This kind of article doesn't disturb me in the least. Linux will always grow because it can! Microsoft can do whatever they want to try and thwart the open source movement but it will always fail for one simple reason. The price!
Anybody can learn how to code. Admittedly, however, not everybody can code well but for every 10 coders there is one (perhaps more) who can code well. So, the odds are in the open source community's favor since Microsoft can only hire so many developers and only those developers who are in it for the money will probably go with m$. The others who feel the movement will probably tell m$ to go shove off.
Nah, this is not a threat. It's fodder. Bill Gates will never be able to overcome this movement short of bribing the whole open source community and while he may have the money to do such a thing, I don't believe the open source community is willing to give up their freedom for a little cash...at least that is how I see it.
There is a point in a human being's life where one learns that money is not everything but merely a means to some physical pleasures and necessities. The excess of money is not necessary for the necessities.
Your comment tells me that you do not understand the ramifications of the DMCA and how this Act actually hurts America and its ability to progress in science and technology and it will eventually negatively impact how we learn, read, and develop in all areas of growth.
If I had the money I would give more to help out with this cause. We need to stop the government from allowing corporations to stomp on our rights solely for their benefit.
No...it's called greed by the RIAA and the MPAA. The federal government should not be involved with this DMCA thing at all. I hope this conference does something to get the word (truth) out to the general public so that we can ban together and get this Act abolished.
Yes, I'm being idealistic and hopeful but so were our forefathers when we faught Britain for our freedom.
Which is the price of doing business. I know this has little bearing on what you were posting (by simply trying to make a point) but I thought I would do the same based off your comment too. ;)
And how many corporations do you know actually watch Ebay for the purpose of buying equipment. What's more is that most corporations will *not* buy stuff off ebay because the equipment doesn't come with the service agreements and warranties offered from the mfr at buy time (new equipment) so I would not say that your comment is one that holds much merit in that respect.
Just because the opportunity is there doesn't mean that there is equal opportunity to take it. In direct opposition to your comment, *everyone* will *NOT* bid on it. In fact, only the smaller people (companies) looking for cuts in price thus attempting to become competition to the big guys will be the ones who will take advantage of such things as ebay. That's not necesasrily a bad thing either. I am all for a competitive market.
I have a manager who outside of work is a great guy. In the work place he sucks as a manager. He has the micromanagement thing down to a fine art. He is arrogant and unwilling to budge from his point of view. He uses a Hitler management technique. He has already chased off 5 of the 7 employees that were under him of which 3 have been replaced. Now 2 of those are rumored to be looking for new jobs and have not even been here for a year yet.
:)
Now, don't get me wrong. I love my work. It's what really keeps me here for now. It won't be long before I pack and go though and one reason will be because of my immediate manager. Ok, so one may ask, what about the managers above the immediate manager? It is hard to believe that they would allow this guy to continue managing! right? One would think that but with management comes politics and greed. Some managers just have no backbone. Some don't know how to balance profressionalism with personality and then some are just plain stupid and arrogant.
I have very rarely had a management team that was driven by professionalism where their personal lives were totally separate from their professional lives. Heh, the ironic thing is that there has only been one company that I can think of that I have worked at where the teams (management and little people) actually were on the same book and that, ironically, was corporate Disney IPNS West.
My IT director sent my manager to management training (hint, hint) but its not going to help him. His problem is "little man syndrome" and is far beyond good management skills. Its all about personality with him and you simply cannot teach an old dog new personality traits
In short, yes, management is completely out of touch with reality a lot of the time. Another example in my case is that they have removed several IT/IS people from the company while keeping sales people. Sounds like a good idea from a sales perspective, right? OOPS! We get more customers because of the untouched sales people doing their job but not enough techs to handle the backend for the additional customers and now service to the customers sucks and the management is scrambling trying to figure out why!!! Now customers leave because service sucks and word-of-mouth from the customers states that they shouldn't go with company X because the service is terrible. Looks like management made a bad call. It really really frustrates me, too, because it is so blatantly obvious to me and my peers but management just doesn't get it. I think its because their eyes are lined by prospect of greenbacks and their thoughts are just not clear enough to make the wise decisions. I hope people from management read this because WE ARE FRUSTRATED WITH YOU!
I have also noticed that nobody in my company talks to the little people when it comes to big decisions that will affect everybody. Some may say, well thats understandable. How do you expect to get consensus from 900 employees on subject Y? Ok, I see that as a valid point but I have always believed in majority rules and it doesn't take much to send out an email on an issue and then count the results and then state the results back to the employees. This is a little far fetched but not far from being possible.
We recently had our DBA director *fired*!!! Why? He was an excellent DBA director. Everybody liked him because he knew his stuff. He put in extra hours. He was liked by his peers. He didn't always agree with upper management's decisions and he stated so. Upper management didn't like it, so they canned him. THAT my friends is politics. Politics sucks! And we live in a political world
I am angry. I am tired of dealing with management's poor decisions and greed. I am tired of the politics. When will people get back down to basics, forget themselves, and remember that the purpose of a company is to provide service for others at a cost exceptable for both the company and the customer alike. When will management see that although a salaray is a good thing, it shouldn't be the end result. We are a money driven society and until we get back to basics, lose the greed and arrogance, and get back to servicing for the purpose of...get this...SERVICE! we will continue to have messages like this in online forums.
There is nothing wrong with making money. There is something wrong with putting the acquisition of money ahead of people.
Here is a final example of greed. Remember the two guys that left? Well, management refuses to replace them because management refuses to pay them the salary that is even with the industry standard. Management wants to pay them sub-standard salary!!! No wonder we can't fill these positions. Greed folks...its all about greed.
Good day...
signed - Frustrated with management!
This is somewhat OT but I think it is a valid point. How bout...a better shell to replace sh on those "enterprise" *nixen. I have not quite figured out why the "big guys" have not grown up a bit and started using more robust shells like bash and/or ksh. Frankly, I'm a korn shell guy when it comes to scripting jobs which is what I do for a living (ksh and Perl). Solaris ships with ksh88 out of the box. Solaris 8 might actually come with ksh93 now (NOT including dtksh which is a superset of ksh93 with dt code built-in) but I could be mistaken about that. However, Solaris still bumps into borne if one needs to go into maintenance mode. Now, I am not a hard-core Unix code hacker and I don't proclaim to know everything about Unix, but I have my fair amount of knowledge. No doubt, the first reply to this will be: It can't be done because of compatibility issues. BAH! I really do not think it would be that difficult to build and use the more up-to-date shells into the vanilla installs for those enterprise type *nixen. Why would you change? I know bash finally added support for arrays not too long ago (a couple years now?). Korn does arrays, but borne, does not. Can borne do tertiary conditions? I don't know, never tried but I doubt it. Does borne allow all of the test switches that bash and korn can do? The ever-loved command-line recall is a good 'nuff reason to do away with borne. Borne is old and it's deprecated. Everything has to evolve sometime. I'm not leaving out csh and tcsh on accident. I just am not a cshell kind of guy but I know it is very powerful. FreeBSD uses it as the default root shell in a vanilla installation. I believe even FreeBSD falls back to borne in maintenance mode. I think, in the end, the biggest reason why those Unix companies don't "upgrade" to the more robust shells is compatibility. Perhaps the second biggest reason is, "why? It works!". I agree, it works and if that were the only reason, I admit, that is a worthy reason. However, I feel its time to move on!! Things don't get better if they remain in the old ages.
I think that I would consider myself to be one of those zealots to a degree. However, I don't "push" OS'en on anyone. I do suggest OS'es when it is within the scope of my responsibility including those times when someone asks my opinion. I see nothing wrong with zealots, however. I mean, when you think about, Microsoft has been doing the very thing you are rebuking, albeit in more subtle ways for the last 10+ years. Heh, I like the XP commercials. I abhor the company.
I believe that the majority of "zealots" out there "push" Linux and other opensource OS'es because they dislike the competition and they see a viable, credible, and in a lot ways superior solution. When one sees something good, one spreads the news. What's more is that by not using m$ software, which is *almost* imossible sometimes, that's just one more blow to m$ in the software field hence their pocket book.
I dislike m$ because they are unethical. They are superior at making inferior software and charging the public who mostly has no clue. Their software is bloated, slow, resource hungry, stiff, and you have an EUL that binds you so tightly that you might as well sell your soul to them in order to not get sued for doing the slightest thing wrong.
Don't get me wrong. I think when Microsoft first came out they served an important purpose. They actually made decent software. As they got bigger, they got more arrogant. Now, I want nothing to do with them. They are a fat whore looking for the next john, imo. I do have to submit to the fact that they do have the superior gui. It's an excellent client side solution. It is not preferred by me, however. Their server sux0r5.