Quote from the parent comment: In the case of the CIA, "collecting information" is their job description.
Ignorance of government: Not only are most U.S. citizens ignorant of the activities of their government, they are willfully ignorant, in that they hold strong opinions with little or no attempt to educate themselves.
The CIA "Directorate of Operations", at present called the "Clandestine Service" is responsible for most of the U.S. government's problems in the Middle East today. That part of the CIA destroys governments and kills people. For example, see these documents collected by George Washington University: The Secret CIA History of the Iran Coup, 1953.
That part of the CIA: 1) Breaks laws at will, 2) Inserts lies into newspapers, radio, TV, and magazines, 3) Kills people they decide they want to kill, 4) Is not under any real control, 5) Hides how much money is spent, 6) Often acts to protect the profits of wealthy people in the U.S., sometimes spending $100 of taxpayer money to protect $1 of private profit, 7) Is not honest about its purposes, and 8) Generally acts as a secret police and an arm of a hidden government that resembles a dictatorship rather than a democracy.
If you really love your country, you will learn about your government. I love the U.S., and that's why I've educated myself about both the good and the bad.
Yes, some interesting information, but the underlying purpose of releasing it
is TOTALLY dishonest. My understanding is that the CIA is releasing
information as a public relations gesture. My understanding is that the agency
is releasing only information that no longer matters to it, with any
modifications it wants to make.
Almost the CIA's ONLY purpose is to help rich people
get richer by providing information and violence paid for by U.S.
citizens. The organization did not just suddenly become honest. (Read the
linked article.)
Bush and Cheney have consistently claimed they are above
the law. This fits the definition of a dictatorship: "A form of government
in which the ruler is not restricted by a constitution or laws or
opposition".
The CIA invented a term for the destructive consequences of its
actions: Blowback. Blowback doesn't matter to the agency, however,
since it still gets what it wants. Also, for CIA employees, more trouble in
the world means more money and promotions.
Remember, the terms NSA and CIA are just names that you are allowed to
know, to try to get you to think you know what the U.S. government is doing.
There are many agencies with names and purposes you are not allowed to know.
If you are a U.S. citizen, you are, however, expected to pay. If you are not a
U.S. citizen (and sometimes if you are), you may be expected to pay with your
life.
Yours is one of the rare on-topic comments to this Slashdot story. Actually, the only one I've seen besides the grandparent comment. Thanks.
I knew it was Microsoft marketing dishonesty, but the real meaning was so hidden I didn't guess Microsoft was trying to compete with Flush... err... Flash.
Actually, as someone mentioned in a Slashdot comment a long time ago, Flash is not so bad (except that it arrogantly breaks browser features in some cases). It is just that most web page designers have no clue how to make moving pictures. But... they want to put Flash on their resumes, so they make everyone suffer.
My grandparent comment was modded up to +5 and now is down to +1. Apparently the moderators are conflicted about actually talking about the real issues, like defining the topic of the discussion.
Thanks again. I didn't want to spend an hour trying to decode Microsoft-speak, but I was interested in what was happening. You saved me the aggravation.
As usual, Slashdot editors just assume that everyone knows what Silverlight is, as though we all follow Microsoft's every move.
The developers of Moonlight make the same assumption. I see no explanation on the Moonlight developer web site.
From Microsoft: "Microsoft® Silverlight(TM) is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of.NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web. Silverlight offers a flexible programming model that supports AJAX, VB, C#, Python, and Ruby, and integrates with existing Web applications. Silverlight supports fast, cost-effective delivery of high-quality video to all major browsers running on the Mac OS or Windows."
Most of that seems to be written by a marketing man who doesn't understand the product, but wants write about it anyway. What are "... the next generation of.NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications..."
What is "delivering... experiences"? Is Silverlight psychoactive, like marijuana?
What kind of "experiences"? Does someone ring your doorbell, and when you answer it, pour water on your shoes?
How is Silverlight "fast"? Isn't the speed limited by the user's internet connection?
What does "on the Mac OS or Windows" mean? Does Microsoft intend to exclude Linux?
"Yeah we need a serious change, like admitting that all this cloak and dagger, sorry that is classified, need to know, bullshit is the cause of most of the terrorist problems we have today. Drop the secrecy, and disassemble these above-the-law organizations. Dealing with policy in the open is the only way to keep it honest. When the government is dishonest with the nation about policy you do not have democracy, you have 'democracy theater' "
Few people have as good an understanding of U.S. government corruption as you. The violence of the U.S. government is dictated by people like Bush using the government to make money. That can only happen if there is secrecy.
NOTHING the NSA says can be trusted. It is NSA organization policy to lie to get what they want.
Also, no one should think they know the names of all the secret, but taxpayer-funded, organizations. "NSA" is just a public relations term, to try to get you to think you know what is happening.
If you are a U.S. citizen, you are paying to be mistreated.
Vista has something called a "Security Development Lifecycle".
Where there is "Life" there is death. Talking about a "Lifecycle"
gives the impression that Microsoft's real interest is death. I'm guessing it
is a mostly management policy to give a shorter "life" to Windows Vista than
customers want.
Bill Gates is software's Dr. Death. It doesn't matter what the
customer wants; Bill Gates, the richest man in the world, wants more money,
and will drag everyone through his neurosis.
Sometimes it has seemed to me that Microsoft is not really primarily a
software company, but primarily an abuse company that accomplishes abuse
through software.
This comment has a "Comment Development Lifecycle". Management policy
is that you cannot read it more than an hour after it is posted. However,
since I'm a cooperative person, and not adversarial, and since I don't have a
virtual monopoly, you are welcome to read it any time you like.
Also, when this comment is posted, it will have the title "Security
Development Lifecycle???" However, after it has been posted for a time to
be determined by management, the title will be changed in an attempt to make
people think that it is an entirely new comment, instead of merely a new
version.
Mod parent up!!! Good point about Microsoft management. In my opinion, Microsoft programmers are not allowed to finish their work.
My rule number one in dealing with Microsoft: Unless forced by circumstances,
never upgrade to a new version of Windows until the second service pack is
released. Let other people have the grief.
The huge number of bugs in Windows XP before SP2 was very expensive
for us. If I remember correctly, SP2 fixed more than 630 bugs, and some of the
fixes were not documented. It is not only the vulnerabilities that are expensive.
It is amazing to me how much people are willing to accept abuse. It seems that every organization, from the U.S. government down, is trying to compete by being abusive rather than by earning money honestly. For a short summary of U.S. government abuses see: George W. Bush comedy and tragedy.
"I think the real point is if it [Vista] has something that I need."
Exactly. Where's the beef?
Rule one in dealing with Microsoft: Unless forced by circumstances, never upgrade to a new version of Windows until the second service pack is released. Let other people have the grief.
The huge number of bugs in Windows XP before SP2 was very expensive for us. If I remember correctly, SP2 fixed more than 630 bugs, and some of the fixes were not documented.
My opinion: First, "Vista" is just a name. Actually, Windows Vista is a new version of Windows NT 5.1, or whatever. Giving a completely new name to a new version is a marketing trick to take advantage of people with little technical knowledge about computers.
Second, we were burned badly with the first version of Windows XP. We lost huge amounts of time; the cost of the OS was trivial next to the total cost of ownership.
We found that Windows XP on first release was VERY buggy. It was necessary to upgrade because our installations of Windows 98, all patches applied, were self-destructing. The registry or the file system would become corrupted and that tended to be too expensive to fix.
So, our rule now is the same as it was before: Unless forced by circumstances, never upgrade to a new version of Windows until the second service pack is released. Let other people have the expensive grief.
Third, read the forums. People are having LOTS of problems with Vista.
You seem much more interested in having an outlet for your anger than in the health of your country's government.
A Slashdot comment cannot be a book. If someone mentions something, it is assumed that it can lead you to doing your own research. If you did your own research, you would find that there is serious reason for concern, and the most common interpretation of the facts is that Cheney and Bush murder for profit; see Reddit.com and Digg.com If you do your own research and discover that is wrong, please post your thinking here.
It is assumed that you will try to find the truth in what is said, than try to find some interpretation that you find wrong.
I don't see any reason why what you said, which I think is correct to some degree, means that what I said is wrong. I am speaking about the management and management attitudes, and you are speaking about working for the network as an employee.
I was in too great a hurry to post my parent comment.
What does it matter if there were 65,689 people killed to get control of the oil supply, or many more? There isn't much moral difference between being a mass murderer for profit and being a mass murderer for profit of even more people than originally estimated, is there?
A lot of people think like you: "It's simply too tiring."
But this sounds a lot like "It's simply too tiring to do the work to decide what I think. Or, "Women are too complicated; it is simply to tiring to try to understand my wife's problems".
Underlying my original comment is a LOT of research. I just didn't immediately find the link that discusses the careful checking of the results.
You haven't been studying how the corruption works.
Bush doesn't care what other people think! People who kill other people don't care what other people think. If they did, they wouldn't kill.
Bush is just a figurehead, with little understanding of anything. But he and Cheney have families and business partners invested in oil production (as opposed to oil refining and delivery).
Saddam Hussein was pumping huge amounts of oil and trucking it through Turkey, thus breaking OPEC's stranglehold on the supply of oil. Those who have a supply of oil, like the Arabs with whom George W. Bush holds hands, want their oil to sell for high prices. The only way to get a higher price is to reduce the supply on the world oil markets.
"I'm comparing the lack of capacity of the people to just understand that someone is completely incompetent/incapable of being president, by incompetence or dishonesty."
I agree. It is amazing how much people are willing to be abused and still pretend that they don't see anything requiring action from them. I think it is pretense more than lack of understanding, but it is definitely both.
Bush has certainly done worse than publicly bite the heads off kittens. He has killed more than 650,000 Iraqis in a very public scheme to restrict the flow of oil from Iraq, and thus cause oil prices to rise. (Saddam Hussein was selling oil by trucking it through Turkey. Iraq has 20% of the known reserves of oil.)
AT&T is not AT&T now, because the name was sold to SBC. My understanding
is that the SBC trademark was worse than useless because the company is so
abusive. So, the managers decided to use another name.
Those interested in how that happened can watch Stephen Colbert explain in a 1 minute 14 second
video: The New AT&T.
SBC taking the name AT&T is, in my opinion, a kind of legal fraud, but
fraud nevertheless. People are bound to be confused and misled. AT&T had a
very good reputation. SBC-AT&T is a completely different company, and has no
connection in its culture with the old AT&T. At the very least, the SEC should
require the company to disclose in the first sentence of any prospectus for
its stock that there is no connection whatsoever.
The growth in market capitalisation, in this case, apparently does not
necessarily mean success. The growth is only because SBC is buying companies.
(I have done little research on the history of SBC, so I say apparently.) So, there is a huge
potential for investors to be fooled.
The recent history of the former AT&T is interesting. David Dorman, a manager who presided over the failure of his company made $30 million from selling the company to other managers who are reputed to be just as inept and corrupt.
The Wikipedia article says, "Dorman's management finesse can be ascertained by tracking the value of AT&T stock during his tenure." Dorman became president in 2000, Wikipedia says. The stock performance tanked beginning just before that, and continued down until the AT&T name was sold to SBC.
Is this a correct summary of the story? The suspicion is certainly raised that the former AT&T manager got $30 million for reducing the value of his company so that the cost to the buyer, SBC, would be less.
It is sensible to clean keyboards because the dirt sometimes interferes with proper action. Your instructions are excellent for people who haven't cleaned electronic circuit boards before.
However, it is not sensible to worry about bacteria. There are bacteria everywhere, all the time. Whether there are 100,000 bacteria on every key or 1,000,000 makes little difference.
Slashdot editors seem to easily believe science fraud articles. Maybe they played with their Nintendo Game Boys in biology class, physics class, and, judging by the number of spelling and grammar errors, English class.
This is a race to see who can be the most expensive, adversarial, angry, destructive, and lacking in social sophistication. I've had Chinese friends and acquaintances in 5 countries, and I'm betting on the U.S. government being more mentally ill than the Chinese government.
Frankly, that's what it is, a kind of socially contagious mental illness.
I work for the day when the U.S. government is able to live in the world without killing other people. The mental illness of the U.S. government encourages unstable government leaders everywhere to be more unstable.
The U.S. government's killing is motivated by the desire of a few rich people to make more money. For example, see: Coups Arranged or Backed by the USA.
I love the United States. Do you? If you do, show it by resisting the craziness.
What you said seems reasonable to me. Thanks for the corrections.
However, everything you said leads away from the core issues I was
trying to discuss.
It is difficult to tackle a huge sociological problem in a short
Slashdot comment, but here are some main points:
First, something is wrong, somewhere. I am shocked at how much people
dislike SBC, now AT&T. My personal experience with SBC is that it is amazingly
disfunctional.
Second, taking the name AT&T is, in my opinion, a kind of legal fraud,
but fraud nevertheless. People are bound to be confused and misled. AT&T had a
very good reputation. SBC-AT&T is a completely different company, and has no
connection in its culture with the old AT&T. At the very least, the SEC should
require the company to disclose in the first sentence of any prospectus for
its stock that there is no connection whatsoever.
Third, growth in market capitalisation, in this case, apparently does
not necessarily mean success. The growth is only because SBC is buying
companies. (I have done little research on the history of SBC, so I say
apparently.)
Fourth, to an amazing degree, managers are amazingly poor at adjusting
to the technology revolution. That was the point of my original comment,
titled Dinosaur Managers: Please Retire!
It appears that 1) managers find that they can personally make more
money by selling their companies, whether or not that is good for their
companies or the customers, and/or 2) SBC is not good at what it does, but the
companies it buys are worse.
Fifth, all of this is under-reported in the media. Business magazines
exist to sell ads, and often stories about businesses are so faulty as to be
on the edge of dishonesty, or they are in fact dishonest.
You said, "Yes. I work for the "New" AT&T. I worked for SBC. I'll
be the first to knock them, but at least do it with the true things they do
wrong. There are plenty."
Could you or another SBC employee, in an anonymous comment, list some
of the plenty of things that are wrong, in your view.
Slashdot Mirror
Quote from the parent comment: In the case of the CIA, "collecting information" is their job description.
Ignorance of government: Not only are most U.S. citizens ignorant of the activities of their government, they are willfully ignorant, in that they hold strong opinions with little or no attempt to educate themselves.
The CIA "Directorate of Operations", at present called the "Clandestine Service" is responsible for most of the U.S. government's problems in the Middle East today. That part of the CIA destroys governments and kills people. For example, see these documents collected by George Washington University: The Secret CIA History of the Iran Coup, 1953.
That part of the CIA: 1) Breaks laws at will, 2) Inserts lies into newspapers, radio, TV, and magazines, 3) Kills people they decide they want to kill, 4) Is not under any real control, 5) Hides how much money is spent, 6) Often acts to protect the profits of wealthy people in the U.S., sometimes spending $100 of taxpayer money to protect $1 of private profit, 7) Is not honest about its purposes, and 8) Generally acts as a secret police and an arm of a hidden government that resembles a dictatorship rather than a democracy.
If you really love your country, you will learn about your government. I love the U.S., and that's why I've educated myself about both the good and the bad.
Yes, some interesting information, but the underlying purpose of releasing it is TOTALLY dishonest. My understanding is that the CIA is releasing information as a public relations gesture. My understanding is that the agency is releasing only information that no longer matters to it, with any modifications it wants to make.
Almost the CIA's ONLY purpose is to help rich people get richer by providing information and violence paid for by U.S. citizens. The organization did not just suddenly become honest. (Read the linked article.)
Bush and Cheney have consistently claimed they are above the law. This fits the definition of a dictatorship: "A form of government in which the ruler is not restricted by a constitution or laws or opposition".
The CIA invented a term for the destructive consequences of its actions: Blowback. Blowback doesn't matter to the agency, however, since it still gets what it wants. Also, for CIA employees, more trouble in the world means more money and promotions.
Remember, the terms NSA and CIA are just names that you are allowed to know, to try to get you to think you know what the U.S. government is doing. There are many agencies with names and purposes you are not allowed to know. If you are a U.S. citizen, you are, however, expected to pay. If you are not a U.S. citizen (and sometimes if you are), you may be expected to pay with your life.
Yours is one of the rare on-topic comments to this Slashdot story. Actually, the only one I've seen besides the grandparent comment. Thanks.
I knew it was Microsoft marketing dishonesty, but the real meaning was so hidden I didn't guess Microsoft was trying to compete with Flush... err... Flash.
Actually, as someone mentioned in a Slashdot comment a long time ago, Flash is not so bad (except that it arrogantly breaks browser features in some cases). It is just that most web page designers have no clue how to make moving pictures. But... they want to put Flash on their resumes, so they make everyone suffer.
My grandparent comment was modded up to +5 and now is down to +1. Apparently the moderators are conflicted about actually talking about the real issues, like defining the topic of the discussion.
Thanks again. I didn't want to spend an hour trying to decode Microsoft-speak, but I was interested in what was happening. You saved me the aggravation.
Nothing, but it needed to be posted early to try to get the discussion away from anti-trust issues.
Sometimes Slashdot discussions rocket down a path that is far from central to the Slashdot story.
As usual, Slashdot editors just assume that everyone knows what Silverlight is, as though we all follow Microsoft's every move.
.NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web. Silverlight offers a flexible programming model that supports AJAX, VB, C#, Python, and Ruby, and integrates with existing Web applications. Silverlight supports fast, cost-effective delivery of high-quality video to all major browsers running on the Mac OS or Windows."
.NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications..."
... experiences"? Is Silverlight psychoactive, like marijuana?
The developers of Moonlight make the same assumption. I see no explanation on the Moonlight developer web site.
From Microsoft: "Microsoft® Silverlight(TM) is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of
Most of that seems to be written by a marketing man who doesn't understand the product, but wants write about it anyway. What are "... the next generation of
What is "delivering
What kind of "experiences"? Does someone ring your doorbell, and when you answer it, pour water on your shoes?
How is Silverlight "fast"? Isn't the speed limited by the user's internet connection?
What does "on the Mac OS or Windows" mean? Does Microsoft intend to exclude Linux?
MOD PARENT UP!!
"Yeah we need a serious change, like admitting that all this cloak and dagger, sorry that is classified, need to know, bullshit is the cause of most of the terrorist problems we have today. Drop the secrecy, and disassemble these above-the-law organizations. Dealing with policy in the open is the only way to keep it honest. When the government is dishonest with the nation about policy you do not have democracy, you have 'democracy theater' "
Few people have as good an understanding of U.S. government corruption as you. The violence of the U.S. government is dictated by people like Bush using the government to make money. That can only happen if there is secrecy.
NOTHING the NSA says can be trusted. It is NSA organization policy to lie to get what they want.
Also, no one should think they know the names of all the secret, but taxpayer-funded, organizations. "NSA" is just a public relations term, to try to get you to think you know what is happening.
If you are a U.S. citizen, you are paying to be mistreated.
Vista has something called a "Security Development Lifecycle".
Where there is "Life" there is death. Talking about a "Lifecycle" gives the impression that Microsoft's real interest is death. I'm guessing it is a mostly management policy to give a shorter "life" to Windows Vista than customers want.
Bill Gates is software's Dr. Death. It doesn't matter what the customer wants; Bill Gates, the richest man in the world, wants more money, and will drag everyone through his neurosis.
Sometimes it has seemed to me that Microsoft is not really primarily a software company, but primarily an abuse company that accomplishes abuse through software.
This comment has a "Comment Development Lifecycle". Management policy is that you cannot read it more than an hour after it is posted. However, since I'm a cooperative person, and not adversarial, and since I don't have a virtual monopoly, you are welcome to read it any time you like.
Also, when this comment is posted, it will have the title "Security Development Lifecycle???" However, after it has been posted for a time to be determined by management, the title will be changed in an attempt to make people think that it is an entirely new comment, instead of merely a new version.
Mod parent up!!! Good point about Microsoft management. In my opinion, Microsoft programmers are not allowed to finish their work.
My rule number one in dealing with Microsoft: Unless forced by circumstances, never upgrade to a new version of Windows until the second service pack is released. Let other people have the grief.
The huge number of bugs in Windows XP before SP2 was very expensive for us. If I remember correctly, SP2 fixed more than 630 bugs, and some of the fixes were not documented. It is not only the vulnerabilities that are expensive.
Refilling old Canon printers.
$8,000 per gallon for mostly cheap solvent.
It is amazing to me how much people are willing to accept abuse. It seems that every organization, from the U.S. government down, is trying to compete by being abusive rather than by earning money honestly. For a short summary of U.S. government abuses see: George W. Bush comedy and tragedy.
"I think the real point is if it [Vista] has something that I need."
Exactly. Where's the beef?
Rule one in dealing with Microsoft: Unless forced by circumstances, never upgrade to a new version of Windows until the second service pack is released. Let other people have the grief.
The huge number of bugs in Windows XP before SP2 was very expensive for us. If I remember correctly, SP2 fixed more than 630 bugs, and some of the fixes were not documented.
My opinion: First, "Vista" is just a name. Actually, Windows Vista is a new version of Windows NT 5.1, or whatever. Giving a completely new name to a new version is a marketing trick to take advantage of people with little technical knowledge about computers.
Second, we were burned badly with the first version of Windows XP. We lost huge amounts of time; the cost of the OS was trivial next to the total cost of ownership.
We found that Windows XP on first release was VERY buggy. It was necessary to upgrade because our installations of Windows 98, all patches applied, were self-destructing. The registry or the file system would become corrupted and that tended to be too expensive to fix.
So, our rule now is the same as it was before: Unless forced by circumstances, never upgrade to a new version of Windows until the second service pack is released. Let other people have the expensive grief.
Third, read the forums. People are having LOTS of problems with Vista.
Busy now, have to wait to post more.
You seem much more interested in having an outlet for your anger than in the health of your country's government.
A Slashdot comment cannot be a book. If someone mentions something, it is assumed that it can lead you to doing your own research. If you did your own research, you would find that there is serious reason for concern, and the most common interpretation of the facts is that Cheney and Bush murder for profit; see Reddit.com and Digg.com If you do your own research and discover that is wrong, please post your thinking here.
It is assumed that you will try to find the truth in what is said, than try to find some interpretation that you find wrong.
I don't see any reason why what you said, which I think is correct to some degree, means that what I said is wrong. I am speaking about the management and management attitudes, and you are speaking about working for the network as an employee.
I was in too great a hurry to post my parent comment.
What does it matter if there were 65,689 people killed to get control of the oil supply, or many more? There isn't much moral difference between being a mass murderer for profit and being a mass murderer for profit of even more people than originally estimated, is there?
A lot of people think like you: "It's simply too tiring."
But this sounds a lot like "It's simply too tiring to do the work to decide what I think. Or, "Women are too complicated; it is simply to tiring to try to understand my wife's problems".
Underlying my original comment is a LOT of research. I just didn't immediately find the link that discusses the careful checking of the results.
Anyway, what does it matter? The discussion is only about the Iraq Body Count estimate of 65,689 dead civilians and the estimate of the Johns Hopkins researchers, a scientific study which has passed expert peer review with "relatively minor revisions", and which says that 601,000 of those killed were killed because of the violence that violence causes.
You haven't been studying how the corruption works.
Bush doesn't care what other people think! People who kill other people don't care what other people think. If they did, they wouldn't kill.
Bush is just a figurehead, with little understanding of anything. But he and Cheney have families and business partners invested in oil production (as opposed to oil refining and delivery).
Saddam Hussein was pumping huge amounts of oil and trucking it through Turkey, thus breaking OPEC's stranglehold on the supply of oil. Those who have a supply of oil, like the Arabs with whom George W. Bush holds hands, want their oil to sell for high prices. The only way to get a higher price is to reduce the supply on the world oil markets.
"I'm comparing the lack of capacity of the people to just understand that someone is completely incompetent/incapable of being president, by incompetence or dishonesty."
I agree. It is amazing how much people are willing to be abused and still pretend that they don't see anything requiring action from them. I think it is pretense more than lack of understanding, but it is definitely both.
Whenever I hear Brazilians talking about government corruption, I ask them "How many Iraqis did Lula kill?"
Bush has certainly done worse than publicly bite the heads off kittens. He has killed more than 650,000 Iraqis in a very public scheme to restrict the flow of oil from Iraq, and thus cause oil prices to rise. (Saddam Hussein was selling oil by trucking it through Turkey. Iraq has 20% of the known reserves of oil.)
The truth is much, much worse than any one person can document. But I tried to write a summary: George W. Bush comedy and tragedy.
AT&T is not AT&T now, because the name was sold to SBC. My understanding is that the SBC trademark was worse than useless because the company is so abusive. So, the managers decided to use another name.
Those interested in how that happened can watch Stephen Colbert explain in a 1 minute 14 second video: The New AT&T.
SBC taking the name AT&T is, in my opinion, a kind of legal fraud, but fraud nevertheless. People are bound to be confused and misled. AT&T had a very good reputation. SBC-AT&T is a completely different company, and has no connection in its culture with the old AT&T. At the very least, the SEC should require the company to disclose in the first sentence of any prospectus for its stock that there is no connection whatsoever.
The growth in market capitalisation, in this case, apparently does not necessarily mean success. The growth is only because SBC is buying companies. (I have done little research on the history of SBC, so I say apparently.) So, there is a huge potential for investors to be fooled.
The recent history of the former AT&T is interesting. David Dorman, a manager who presided over the failure of his company made $30 million from selling the company to other managers who are reputed to be just as inept and corrupt.
The Wikipedia article says, "Dorman's management finesse can be ascertained by tracking the value of AT&T stock during his tenure." Dorman became president in 2000, Wikipedia says. The stock performance tanked beginning just before that, and continued down until the AT&T name was sold to SBC.
Is this a correct summary of the story? The suspicion is certainly raised that the former AT&T manager got $30 million for reducing the value of his company so that the cost to the buyer, SBC, would be less.
It is sensible to clean keyboards because the dirt sometimes interferes with proper action. Your instructions are excellent for people who haven't cleaned electronic circuit boards before.
However, it is not sensible to worry about bacteria. There are bacteria everywhere, all the time. Whether there are 100,000 bacteria on every key or 1,000,000 makes little difference.
Slashdot editors seem to easily believe science fraud articles. Maybe they played with their Nintendo Game Boys in biology class, physics class, and, judging by the number of spelling and grammar errors, English class.
This is a race to see who can be the most expensive, adversarial, angry, destructive, and lacking in social sophistication. I've had Chinese friends and acquaintances in 5 countries, and I'm betting on the U.S. government being more mentally ill than the Chinese government.
Frankly, that's what it is, a kind of socially contagious mental illness.
I work for the day when the U.S. government is able to live in the world without killing other people. The mental illness of the U.S. government encourages unstable government leaders everywhere to be more unstable.
The U.S. government's killing is motivated by the desire of a few rich people to make more money. For example, see: Coups Arranged or Backed by the USA.
I love the United States. Do you? If you do, show it by resisting the craziness.
What you said seems reasonable to me. Thanks for the corrections.
However, everything you said leads away from the core issues I was trying to discuss.
It is difficult to tackle a huge sociological problem in a short Slashdot comment, but here are some main points:
First, something is wrong, somewhere. I am shocked at how much people dislike SBC, now AT&T. My personal experience with SBC is that it is amazingly disfunctional.
Second, taking the name AT&T is, in my opinion, a kind of legal fraud, but fraud nevertheless. People are bound to be confused and misled. AT&T had a very good reputation. SBC-AT&T is a completely different company, and has no connection in its culture with the old AT&T. At the very least, the SEC should require the company to disclose in the first sentence of any prospectus for its stock that there is no connection whatsoever.
Third, growth in market capitalisation, in this case, apparently does not necessarily mean success. The growth is only because SBC is buying companies. (I have done little research on the history of SBC, so I say apparently.)
Fourth, to an amazing degree, managers are amazingly poor at adjusting to the technology revolution. That was the point of my original comment, titled Dinosaur Managers: Please Retire!
It appears that 1) managers find that they can personally make more money by selling their companies, whether or not that is good for their companies or the customers, and/or 2) SBC is not good at what it does, but the companies it buys are worse.
Fifth, all of this is under-reported in the media. Business magazines exist to sell ads, and often stories about businesses are so faulty as to be on the edge of dishonesty, or they are in fact dishonest.
You said, "Yes. I work for the "New" AT&T. I worked for SBC. I'll be the first to knock them, but at least do it with the true things they do wrong. There are plenty."
Could you or another SBC employee, in an anonymous comment, list some of the plenty of things that are wrong, in your view.
You are right. SBC has a bad reputation in California, but it is not a "west coast" of the USA company.
Good analysis.