I don't have any objection to Microsoft refusing to certify whatever software they don't want to certify, for whatever reason they choose. If "not certified" means "won't run on Xbox", then perhaps the market will exist for alternatives, such as the Kinect-to-Linux setup already mentioned. (Or maybe not; porn seems to be aimed at the least common denominator, as evidenced by the fact that it's mostly crap.)
But it's somewhat ridiculous to say that the reason for denying such apps is that the Xbox is "a family friendly games and entertainment console". By that standard, any number of violent games should be excluded, from Bioshock to Stubbs the Zombie. Sure, "Family Friendly" is a fuzzy, undefinable term -- heck, you could make the argument that Portal would make little children sad (oh, how I miss the Companion Cube).
Reject the app because it's explicitly sexual. Or because it's poorly written, which is equally likely. But don't rack in Christmas sales of Call of Duty while saying the Xbox is "family friendly".
[insert obligatory Microsoft-is-evil throwaway line here]
The big oil and gov are afraid of Hydrogen Too easy to make and too hard to control
I wouldn't have bothered responding to this old canard, especially from an AC, but my future son-in-law laid this on me during a (very) long road trip. He was convinced that hydrogen must be that Secret That Oil Companies Don't Want You To Know. After all, it comes from WATER, for crying out loud. You can drop a 9-volt battery and get hydrogen, for crying out loud... all we have to do is put that in a car and run it on water, right? Right?
*facepalm*
For those new to the laws of thermodynamics: Hydrogen is combined with Oxygen to form Water, yes. But it takes energy to get the menage-a-trois separated. And the energy required to liberate H2 from that codependent relationship is, by the laws of physics, no greater than the energy you'll get by combining it *back* with O.
My discussion partner said, "That's ok, we'll just have batteries to do the electrolysis." I gently suggested that if you're going to have enough batteries to generate enough electricity to generate enough hydrogen to run a car, you've got enough batteries to generate enough electricity to run a car -- without that lossy "generate hydrogen" step.
To his credit, I think he understood. That's one. AC, here's hoping you're #2.
The writer of the article -- which despite Slashdot's implication, is not in The Daily Oklahoman but in the University of Oklahoma student newspaper -- makes several valid points, and I fully agree with his conclusion. But he couldn't hide his bias:
We should be concerned with the 12.7 percent of Americans who live below the poverty line, or the 7.9 million people who die worldwide because of cancer, or the 9,000 innocent Afghani civilians we've killed fighting an unjustified war...
I know I'm going to anger my fellow Green Party members with this, but a little bit of history is relevant. We were attacked from Afghanistan. They made themselves a target. The fact that President Bush was to afflicted by his ADHD to focus on one war at a time, causing massive failure in Afghanistan, doesn't negate the fact that we had the right (and even international support of that right) to invade the country.
Sure, it's not fair to paint the entire article by this one off-putting statement. But it diminishes the argument greatly -- it's a Godwin effect. If I were to, say, repost it on Facebook, its effect would be negated by a reply saying "This loser thinks we shouldn't have fought the terrorists in the first place".
It sounds like the student has been in a debate class at some point. He should have known better.
As obvious as it may be to include a "picture" of an atom -- a Rutherford model -- it seems terribly incorrect to use it as the primary image to be associated with a quantum-mechanical phenomenon. Though I guess it's good enough to make the article feel "science-y".
I can't help but recall Wyoh Knott, the heroine of Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", who conceived of an electron as "about the size and shape of a small pea".
This tells me that Slashdot users don't use IE. At least, not those who read brand-new stories and are willing to click an unknown link and chancing NSFW content. Thankfully, it's SFW, unless your boss was already "gonna give you up".
I've always preferred SoCuteURL. It makes URL's that are sometimes short, sometimes long, but always a lot easier to retype (say, from a text message) than a computer-generated hash. For example, I've got a better chance of telling someone how to type in socuteurl.com/yappypupperpig (so cute u r l dot com slash yappy pupper pig) than I do goo.gl slash anything.
Of course, I also have a soft spot in my heart for http://urlshorteningservicefortwitter.com/ -- but they refuse to "shorten" http://goo.gl/ for me, saying "This URL has been rejected to prevent the universe from collapsing on itself."
Insofar as your argument I would venture that the dead snakes would be full of NAPQI, an unhealthy surprise for any critter eating them that was unable to metabolize this chemical.
But does the NAPQI metabolite actually make it into the bloodstream of the scavenger or bird that eats the dead/dying snake? If we (or more accurately, they) are lucky, maybe it gets broken down in the digestive tract before causing any trouble.
Trust me, I've seen it. You're thinking of attention like "famous person" attention, or something you'd see in a movie. Mundane, everyday clinical depression doesn't work that way -- the need for attention is a subconscious thing, not a purposeful attempt.
Someone who's depressed doesn't say "Oh, I need attention, I'll do something stupid today". It's more like the childhood verse: "Nobody loves me, everybody hates me, I'm going to eat a worm."
That's why OD'ing on Tylenol is a case of "Suicide in haste, repent at leisure". If it's too late for the antidote, you get plenty of time to realize what a dumb thing you did as you wait for a transplant (in a hospital under psych watch).
Once the dead snakes are doped on acetaminophen, don't they face the risk of whatever native species might eat them overdosing on acetaminophen
Probably not. The snake will die after its liver wears itself out breaking down the Acetaminophen. All that will be left in the snake is a worn-out liver and non-toxic Acetaminophen metabolites.
Arsenic, by contrast, doesn't "break down". It's an element, so it kills you and remains Arsenic. Other poisons would likely behave similarly. My guess is that Tylenol (I'm tired of typing the long word) was chosen *because* it's less likely to perpetuate in the food chain. In fact, I think it would be just about impossible for it to get beyond two layers -- the liver of whatever eats the snake should take care of the excess with no trouble.
I guess all those warnings about how Tylenol can damage your liver are true!
Ha Ha only serious. I can't find many decent references in a quick Google search, because all the links are "lolz teh armey is dropping Tylenol mice", but Acetaminophen is quite toxic to many animals, including house cats. It works as a poison by damaging the liver.
For a healthy human, the liver can metabolize a normal dose of Tylenol just fine... but if you combine alcohol, Tylenol, and a drawerful of other Acetaminophen-containing products (cough syrup with pain reliever, sleep aid with pain reliever, cocaine/speed/etc cut with pain reliever, etc), you've got trouble on your hands.
Also, there's the problem of would-be suicides who try to overdose on Tylenol-3, the prescription high-dose version with Codeine added. They generally don't die -- largely because there's a specific antidote that hospitals have to neutralize the Acetaminophen before it overwhelms the liver. Those who are too late for that intervention don't die either, not right away... they end up on the list for a donor liver, and get to spend their final weeks wishing that they'd either found a better way to get attention, or that they'd invested in a shotgun.
Thanks! I didn't see the scene as overtly religious -- and Spirited Away is full of gods and demons, so what would be the big deal? Though I guess there's a big difference between a bathhouse full of minor gods, versus the more Western monotheistic understanding of God. Very interesting.
The Nausicaä anime still only covers a small part of the full story that you get with all 7 manga books though, and it does give the impression of not quite being finished. And there's *that* scene at the end that Miyazaki was never happy with.
The manga was amazing -- I was lucky enough to find it at the local library.
But what did Miyazaki-san not like about the scenes at the end of the movie? (The Google has failed me, sorry.)
Seriously though, no one in their right mind down here would try to destroy a rat problem with a possum problem. Matter of fact, anyone that doesn't call them 'possum' doesn't really have any experience with the nasty things
I'm with you -- what the hell were they thinking? Anyone from south of the Mason Dixon line would know damned well that turning possums loose on NYC would lead to complete chaos. The possum's preferred meal is Your Garbage, and a NYC alleyway is a possum's smorgasbord.
But I do have an alternate theory. Someone from the Big City came down South and said something stupid about the size of our "rats". Someone from the Little Southern Town said, "We call 'em 'possums', and they'd eat your so-called Noo Yawk rats for breakfast". The city slicker promptly requested a truckload be delivered, and my cousin Bubba gladly obliged... knowing exactly what lay in store for Mr. Smarty-Pants from the city.
Or it could have been an evil plot to wreak toothy, naked-tailed revenge for the wrongs inflicted upon the South during the Civil War... oh, sorry, I mean "War of Northern Aggression". YMMV.
Venus, with temperatures hot enough to melt lead, has proven a tough nut to crack for probes hoping to return information about its awesomely hellish surface. But if we're talking about a small probe that can transmit while bobbing around like a cork in a lake of liquid rock... well, mere "lead-melting" heat should be a walk in the park for that little critter.
Send a craft with a few hundred of these guys in its hold, drop 'em on the surface, and find out what's going on with our evil-twin-sister planet. I especially want to know what's going on with the Venusian highlands, where there seems to be a radar-reflecting "frost" of heavy metals coating the ground. Even if all these probes can tell us is how blisteringly hot it is, that's got to tell us *something* about the environment. Venus sounds like a metal-ore refinery, and I'd love for someone to decide that it's worth a few (hundred) billion bucks to go get some of that Unobtanium (or whatever) and bring it back to Earth.
Fried beer is a special case of fried coke I guess
No, it's not the same as Fried Coke. Fried Coke is Coke-flavored batter, deep-fat-fried.
This Fried Beer concoction actually has a *liquid* center. When you bite into it, warm beer comes out. I can't imagine how that could possibly be a Good Thing, but there you are.
Note that because the beer is still liquid, it will still contain alcohol -- unlike beer-based batter. As a result, you have to be 21 to order Fried Beer.
(I'm in Dallas, so I've been hearing about this miracle of modern food technology for about three weeks now.)
Yes, I'd say welcome aboard, and wonder any more why anyone would want to do that, with the country rushing headlong toward socialism and therefore an impending economic collapse. We have all the making of a disaster that will dwarf the Great Depression, and there doesn't seem to be much of anyone who wants to do anything about it.
Amazing. Just three years ago, people were saying how they couldn't imagine why anyone would want to come to a country rushing headlong into fascism and therefore an impending social collapse, with all the making of a disaster that would dwarf McCarthyism, and that there didn't seem to be much of anyone who wanted to do anything about it.
The only conclusion I can draw is that both sides are wrong, and/or both sides are right. In any case, if we were doing something so terribly wrong Over Here, I can't imagine why we'd still be attracting so many folks from Over There.
Perhaps because it shouldn't need to be said? Not doing evil is the most basic of human ethics, not something to be proud of.
Seriously? I would submit just the opposite: DOING evil is the most basic of human instincts. At least, when you define "evil" as "whatever gets me more money/power/sex". NOT doing evil means giving up something that you want, in the name of some "greater good" that, likely as not, won't get you laid. Most days, it's hard to find someone who is willing to even give up the ten feet needed so that I can get off the damned highway. That sort of "evil" is humanity's most enduring feature.
For a company to even suggest that "do no evil" is a corporate value is amazing. They may not always reach that standard... but heck, most actual people don't even try.
(Note: there are also theological implications here that I won't get into...)
I really miss Omni Magazine from the late '70s and early '80s, with its bold predictions of the Brave New World coming in the then-distant New Millenium. One of my favorite stories was The Great Moveway Jam, a dystopian story of a traffic jam started by a little old lady who put on her left blinker, but turned right.
The story was based in California, 1998-9 -- but China in 2010 makes a lot more sense. Especially since the solution to the jam, which extended "from San Diego to Santa Barbara, and... seventy-nine miles inland", involved building a wall to prevent "jamees" from abandoning their immobile vehicles, and a Final Solution that involved a lot of helicopters, a *whole* lot of cement, and airdropped suicide pills.
I imagine some people have, or plan to have, children which they will have some degree of fondness towards. As it may effect their children, or their children's children, it might be of some concern to you.
I was going to get all grammarnazi over "effect" vs. "affect", when I realized it's correct as written. The threat of destruction by asteroid impact may indeed "effect" (ie, cause) reproduction. Something like this:
He: Hey, baby, did you know that there's an asteroid hurtling towards the Earth, like RIGHT NOW?
She: Oh, no, what should we do?
He: After a brief moment of initial panic? I think we should screw like rabbits, babe, while we still can.
She: Hm, sounds good to me!
Voila! Potential asteroid impact effects their children, even though it had no direct effect on the planet. Though to be fair, it did affect them quite directly for the next 9 months (plus ~18 years).
Well, according to one article, at least, we're all doomed. To extinction. By an eruption of methane gas that will generate "a towering supersonic tsunami annihilating everything along the coast and well inland".
Perhaps I'm jaded... I grew up in Reagan's 1980s and never ONCE did I see the nuclear annihilation we were all expecting. Promises, promises... I'll believe it when I see the wall of water approaching Dallas.
I'm the sad fool who posted the inflammatory, accusatory comment.
I posted pretty much a full retraction at the bottom of a thread, in response to an AC who called me out in a crude, factually inaccurate, but rather effective way. Short version: I extrapolated big-company experiences down to a smaller organization, and made sweeping, invalid assumptions. But in the process, I started a wide-ranging discussion of startup-company management, and learned a lot... so thanks for your patience!
I'm glad you finally got around to answering the fucking question although your answer is a pile of shit.
You obviously have no experience of the real world. I would guess that you work in academic. And I use the word "Work" with reservations.
I'd have to say, this AC comment pretty well sums up the responses to my post! Which is, itself, now modded down to AC level.
But my comment -- intended to be "brash and bold" but instead coming out "rash and old" -- does seem to have been the origin of several interesting threads on management. What more can an "insufferable prick" like me hope for?
I guess, in a way, I'm a victim of too little "experience" -- I've worked in IT for my entire career, since hacking TRS-80s in high school, but I've only worked *at* a handful of companies. That likely gave me too little perspective, especially since I've never worked at a startup, and I've been at my current Big Company employer for almost 15 years. My viewpoints were limited and apocryphal; my comments apparently inaccurate and incendiary. Thanks yet again to the Slashdot community for yet another healthy helping of Clue.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't have any objection to Microsoft refusing to certify whatever software they don't want to certify, for whatever reason they choose. If "not certified" means "won't run on Xbox", then perhaps the market will exist for alternatives, such as the Kinect-to-Linux setup already mentioned. (Or maybe not; porn seems to be aimed at the least common denominator, as evidenced by the fact that it's mostly crap.)
But it's somewhat ridiculous to say that the reason for denying such apps is that the Xbox is "a family friendly games and entertainment console". By that standard, any number of violent games should be excluded, from Bioshock to Stubbs the Zombie. Sure, "Family Friendly" is a fuzzy, undefinable term -- heck, you could make the argument that Portal would make little children sad (oh, how I miss the Companion Cube).
Reject the app because it's explicitly sexual. Or because it's poorly written, which is equally likely. But don't rack in Christmas sales of Call of Duty while saying the Xbox is "family friendly".
[insert obligatory Microsoft-is-evil throwaway line here]
The big oil and gov are afraid of Hydrogen Too easy to make and too hard to control
I wouldn't have bothered responding to this old canard, especially from an AC, but my future son-in-law laid this on me during a (very) long road trip. He was convinced that hydrogen must be that Secret That Oil Companies Don't Want You To Know. After all, it comes from WATER, for crying out loud. You can drop a 9-volt battery and get hydrogen, for crying out loud... all we have to do is put that in a car and run it on water, right? Right?
*facepalm*
For those new to the laws of thermodynamics: Hydrogen is combined with Oxygen to form Water, yes. But it takes energy to get the menage-a-trois separated. And the energy required to liberate H2 from that codependent relationship is, by the laws of physics, no greater than the energy you'll get by combining it *back* with O.
My discussion partner said, "That's ok, we'll just have batteries to do the electrolysis." I gently suggested that if you're going to have enough batteries to generate enough electricity to generate enough hydrogen to run a car, you've got enough batteries to generate enough electricity to run a car -- without that lossy "generate hydrogen" step.
To his credit, I think he understood. That's one. AC, here's hoping you're #2.
The writer of the article -- which despite Slashdot's implication, is not in The Daily Oklahoman but in the University of Oklahoma student newspaper -- makes several valid points, and I fully agree with his conclusion. But he couldn't hide his bias:
I know I'm going to anger my fellow Green Party members with this, but a little bit of history is relevant. We were attacked from Afghanistan. They made themselves a target. The fact that President Bush was to afflicted by his ADHD to focus on one war at a time, causing massive failure in Afghanistan, doesn't negate the fact that we had the right (and even international support of that right) to invade the country.
Sure, it's not fair to paint the entire article by this one off-putting statement. But it diminishes the argument greatly -- it's a Godwin effect. If I were to, say, repost it on Facebook, its effect would be negated by a reply saying "This loser thinks we shouldn't have fought the terrorists in the first place".
It sounds like the student has been in a debate class at some point. He should have known better.
As obvious as it may be to include a "picture" of an atom -- a Rutherford model -- it seems terribly incorrect to use it as the primary image to be associated with a quantum-mechanical phenomenon. Though I guess it's good enough to make the article feel "science-y".
I can't help but recall Wyoh Knott, the heroine of Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", who conceived of an electron as "about the size and shape of a small pea".
I guess I've seen too many of those stupid banner ads for whatever scam it is that always uses some variation of the same thing. You know:
$UNREALISTIC_RESULT by $OBEYING_VERB this $NUMBER_1 $WHIMSICAL_ADJECTIVE $INSTRUCTION_SYNONYM
And then I keep reading, and sure enough, it has something to do with losing mass. F@(%!#% Internet, get out of my damned head!
Damn you, Enrico Fermi, and your infernal paradox. Damn damn damn!
As in what's here? http://goo.gl/info/Kjyl#week
I'm sure it'll change over time, but the stats from the first 24 visitors from Slashdot are quite interesting:
Browsers
Firefox: 10
Chrome: 7
Mobile: 2
Opera: 2
Safari: 2
Arora: 1
This tells me that Slashdot users don't use IE. At least, not those who read brand-new stories and are willing to click an unknown link and chancing NSFW content. Thankfully, it's SFW, unless your boss was already "gonna give you up".
I'll be curious how those stats hold up tomorrow!
I've always preferred SoCuteURL. It makes URL's that are sometimes short, sometimes long, but always a lot easier to retype (say, from a text message) than a computer-generated hash. For example, I've got a better chance of telling someone how to type in socuteurl.com/yappypupperpig (so cute u r l dot com slash yappy pupper pig) than I do goo.gl slash anything.
Of course, I also have a soft spot in my heart for http://urlshorteningservicefortwitter.com/ -- but they refuse to "shorten" http://goo.gl/ for me, saying "This URL has been rejected to prevent the universe from collapsing on itself."
Awesomely informative post, thanks!
Insofar as your argument I would venture that the dead snakes would be full of NAPQI, an unhealthy surprise for any critter eating them that was unable to metabolize this chemical.
But does the NAPQI metabolite actually make it into the bloodstream of the scavenger or bird that eats the dead/dying snake? If we (or more accurately, they) are lucky, maybe it gets broken down in the digestive tract before causing any trouble.
Trust me, I've seen it. You're thinking of attention like "famous person" attention, or something you'd see in a movie. Mundane, everyday clinical depression doesn't work that way -- the need for attention is a subconscious thing, not a purposeful attempt.
Someone who's depressed doesn't say "Oh, I need attention, I'll do something stupid today". It's more like the childhood verse: "Nobody loves me, everybody hates me, I'm going to eat a worm."
That's why OD'ing on Tylenol is a case of "Suicide in haste, repent at leisure". If it's too late for the antidote, you get plenty of time to realize what a dumb thing you did as you wait for a transplant (in a hospital under psych watch).
Once the dead snakes are doped on acetaminophen, don't they face the risk of whatever native species might eat them overdosing on acetaminophen
Probably not. The snake will die after its liver wears itself out breaking down the Acetaminophen. All that will be left in the snake is a worn-out liver and non-toxic Acetaminophen metabolites.
Arsenic, by contrast, doesn't "break down". It's an element, so it kills you and remains Arsenic. Other poisons would likely behave similarly. My guess is that Tylenol (I'm tired of typing the long word) was chosen *because* it's less likely to perpetuate in the food chain. In fact, I think it would be just about impossible for it to get beyond two layers -- the liver of whatever eats the snake should take care of the excess with no trouble.
I guess all those warnings about how Tylenol can damage your liver are true!
Ha Ha only serious. I can't find many decent references in a quick Google search, because all the links are "lolz teh armey is dropping Tylenol mice", but Acetaminophen is quite toxic to many animals, including house cats. It works as a poison by damaging the liver.
For a healthy human, the liver can metabolize a normal dose of Tylenol just fine... but if you combine alcohol, Tylenol, and a drawerful of other Acetaminophen-containing products (cough syrup with pain reliever, sleep aid with pain reliever, cocaine/speed/etc cut with pain reliever, etc), you've got trouble on your hands.
Also, there's the problem of would-be suicides who try to overdose on Tylenol-3, the prescription high-dose version with Codeine added. They generally don't die -- largely because there's a specific antidote that hospitals have to neutralize the Acetaminophen before it overwhelms the liver. Those who are too late for that intervention don't die either, not right away... they end up on the list for a donor liver, and get to spend their final weeks wishing that they'd either found a better way to get attention, or that they'd invested in a shotgun.
As always, if you read something linked from here and think coverage is better elsewhere, you're more than welcome to hit us with an email saying so.
And, as always, if you hit them with an email saying so, they're more than likely to route it to /dev/null.
(We'll leave aside for the moment the fact that 99% of such emails are pointless whines in the first place...)
Thanks! I didn't see the scene as overtly religious -- and Spirited Away is full of gods and demons, so what would be the big deal? Though I guess there's a big difference between a bathhouse full of minor gods, versus the more Western monotheistic understanding of God. Very interesting.
The Nausicaä anime still only covers a small part of the full story that you get with all 7 manga books though, and it does give the impression of not quite being finished. And there's *that* scene at the end that Miyazaki was never happy with.
The manga was amazing -- I was lucky enough to find it at the local library.
But what did Miyazaki-san not like about the scenes at the end of the movie? (The Google has failed me, sorry.)
Seriously though, no one in their right mind down here would try to destroy a rat problem with a possum problem. Matter of fact, anyone that doesn't call them 'possum' doesn't really have any experience with the nasty things
I'm with you -- what the hell were they thinking? Anyone from south of the Mason Dixon line would know damned well that turning possums loose on NYC would lead to complete chaos. The possum's preferred meal is Your Garbage, and a NYC alleyway is a possum's smorgasbord.
But I do have an alternate theory. Someone from the Big City came down South and said something stupid about the size of our "rats". Someone from the Little Southern Town said, "We call 'em 'possums', and they'd eat your so-called Noo Yawk rats for breakfast". The city slicker promptly requested a truckload be delivered, and my cousin Bubba gladly obliged... knowing exactly what lay in store for Mr. Smarty-Pants from the city.
Or it could have been an evil plot to wreak toothy, naked-tailed revenge for the wrongs inflicted upon the South during the Civil War... oh, sorry, I mean "War of Northern Aggression". YMMV.
Venus, with temperatures hot enough to melt lead, has proven a tough nut to crack for probes hoping to return information about its awesomely hellish surface. But if we're talking about a small probe that can transmit while bobbing around like a cork in a lake of liquid rock... well, mere "lead-melting" heat should be a walk in the park for that little critter.
Send a craft with a few hundred of these guys in its hold, drop 'em on the surface, and find out what's going on with our evil-twin-sister planet. I especially want to know what's going on with the Venusian highlands, where there seems to be a radar-reflecting "frost" of heavy metals coating the ground. Even if all these probes can tell us is how blisteringly hot it is, that's got to tell us *something* about the environment. Venus sounds like a metal-ore refinery, and I'd love for someone to decide that it's worth a few (hundred) billion bucks to go get some of that Unobtanium (or whatever) and bring it back to Earth.
Fried beer is a special case of fried coke I guess
No, it's not the same as Fried Coke. Fried Coke is Coke-flavored batter, deep-fat-fried.
This Fried Beer concoction actually has a *liquid* center. When you bite into it, warm beer comes out. I can't imagine how that could possibly be a Good Thing, but there you are.
Note that because the beer is still liquid, it will still contain alcohol -- unlike beer-based batter. As a result, you have to be 21 to order Fried Beer.
(I'm in Dallas, so I've been hearing about this miracle of modern food technology for about three weeks now.)
Amazing. Just three years ago, people were saying how they couldn't imagine why anyone would want to come to a country rushing headlong into fascism and therefore an impending social collapse, with all the making of a disaster that would dwarf McCarthyism, and that there didn't seem to be much of anyone who wanted to do anything about it.
The only conclusion I can draw is that both sides are wrong, and/or both sides are right. In any case, if we were doing something so terribly wrong Over Here, I can't imagine why we'd still be attracting so many folks from Over There.
Seriously? I would submit just the opposite: DOING evil is the most basic of human instincts. At least, when you define "evil" as "whatever gets me more money/power/sex". NOT doing evil means giving up something that you want, in the name of some "greater good" that, likely as not, won't get you laid. Most days, it's hard to find someone who is willing to even give up the ten feet needed so that I can get off the damned highway. That sort of "evil" is humanity's most enduring feature.
For a company to even suggest that "do no evil" is a corporate value is amazing. They may not always reach that standard... but heck, most actual people don't even try.
(Note: there are also theological implications here that I won't get into...)
I really miss Omni Magazine from the late '70s and early '80s, with its bold predictions of the Brave New World coming in the then-distant New Millenium. One of my favorite stories was The Great Moveway Jam, a dystopian story of a traffic jam started by a little old lady who put on her left blinker, but turned right.
The story was based in California, 1998-9 -- but China in 2010 makes a lot more sense. Especially since the solution to the jam, which extended "from San Diego to Santa Barbara, and... seventy-nine miles inland", involved building a wall to prevent "jamees" from abandoning their immobile vehicles, and a Final Solution that involved a lot of helicopters, a *whole* lot of cement, and airdropped suicide pills.
I imagine some people have, or plan to have, children which they will have some degree of fondness towards. As it may effect their children, or their children's children, it might be of some concern to you.
I was going to get all grammarnazi over "effect" vs. "affect", when I realized it's correct as written. The threat of destruction by asteroid impact may indeed "effect" (ie, cause) reproduction. Something like this:
He: Hey, baby, did you know that there's an asteroid hurtling towards the Earth, like RIGHT NOW?
She: Oh, no, what should we do?
He: After a brief moment of initial panic? I think we should screw like rabbits, babe, while we still can.
She: Hm, sounds good to me!
Voila! Potential asteroid impact effects their children, even though it had no direct effect on the planet. Though to be fair, it did affect them quite directly for the next 9 months (plus ~18 years).
Well, according to one article, at least, we're all doomed. To extinction. By an eruption of methane gas that will generate "a towering supersonic tsunami annihilating everything along the coast and well inland".
I hesitate to even post the URL, but I'm sure the Slashdot folks will give this "ominous report" the debunking it so thoroughly needs:
Doomsday: How BP Gulf disaster may have triggered a 'world-killing' event
Perhaps I'm jaded... I grew up in Reagan's 1980s and never ONCE did I see the nuclear annihilation we were all expecting. Promises, promises... I'll believe it when I see the wall of water approaching Dallas.
I'm the sad fool who posted the inflammatory, accusatory comment.
I posted pretty much a full retraction at the bottom of a thread, in response to an AC who called me out in a crude, factually inaccurate, but rather effective way. Short version: I extrapolated big-company experiences down to a smaller organization, and made sweeping, invalid assumptions. But in the process, I started a wide-ranging discussion of startup-company management, and learned a lot... so thanks for your patience!
I'd have to say, this AC comment pretty well sums up the responses to my post! Which is, itself, now modded down to AC level.
But my comment -- intended to be "brash and bold" but instead coming out "rash and old" -- does seem to have been the origin of several interesting threads on management. What more can an "insufferable prick" like me hope for?
I guess, in a way, I'm a victim of too little "experience" -- I've worked in IT for my entire career, since hacking TRS-80s in high school, but I've only worked *at* a handful of companies. That likely gave me too little perspective, especially since I've never worked at a startup, and I've been at my current Big Company employer for almost 15 years. My viewpoints were limited and apocryphal; my comments apparently inaccurate and incendiary. Thanks yet again to the Slashdot community for yet another healthy helping of Clue.