In the technical world, I believe this is referred to as Waving a Dead Chicken. It fills a need that, as the name indicates, has been present in one form or another since the beginning of human society.
from the Jargon file:
wave a dead chicken: v. To perform a ritual in the direction of crashed software or hardware that one believes to be futile but is nevertheless necessary so that others are satisfied that an appropriate degree of effort has been expended. "I'll wave a dead chicken over the source code, but I really think we've run into an OS bug."
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Re: Communism just makes me sick to my stomach
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It seems like you hate blood-thirsty tyrants, not communism. Because Linux is commune-ist, while the Khmer Rouge were/are a gang of armed thugs, led by a madman.
So you hate communism, but you love it at the same time -- very Orwellian....
Re:This SCO story just makes me sick to my stomach
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How stupid are you, anyway? Every single person in the rest of the world is starving right now? Have you ever even left Middle America for longer than the duration of a Royal Carribean cruise?
The middle class of India, while technically a smaller percentage of the US middle class, can fit OUR POPULATION inside of it. That's right, the whole 200 hundred million. They have pretty good lives, too -- they just don't need to spend 150 US dollars on an Operating System.
From second-person experience of an Ivy-League undergraduate education, I would have to say that you are speaking idealistically. I do not doubt that graduate teaching (especially at PhD level, I would imagine) is generally quite sound.
But consider this account:
A student reads little, attends half-heartedly, and hands in papers (including an undergraduate thesis) that tell the professor exactly what they want to hear (after asking), and gets A's in return. The same student takes a semester at a lamentably swollen public college and gets multiple-choice take-home final exams and fellow students so poorly educated that they fail them. At both levels, there is a distinct lack of interest in educating the students.
Good education is, indeed, available. But how much money must be spent to obtain it?
Yes, the thing that comes to mind when "professional" is used in this fashion is the English manservant who was born into his position. Their whole purpose of being is literally to serve as his father (perhaps even father's father) served, and as such, get the most power of the servant class. They are the enforcers of the Master's will on those with less....enthusiasm for their menial calling.
Cliff Stoll also assumes that it was not like this before computers; that it is not just plain information overload. People don't meet in the subways of NYC, generally speaking because there are just too many people around. You can commute to work at precisely the same time every day and never see a familiar face. Why bother acknowledging someone's existence if you will assuredly NEVER see them again?
No, computers add sanity and connectivity to schizoid modern (both rural and urban) life.
...the DPRK is another one of the many demons spawned by our stupidity (and individual arrogance). So yes, it technically IS America's fault. Dictatorships sprout in our footsteps like weeds.
Have you ever worked above the most menial of positions. Believe it or not, once you a highly-trained/experienced professional, you often get things like "contracts," and you get to participate in "negotiations" over the definition of your employment, rather than just signing the Agreement that a store manager or HR drone hands you.
This is specifically true when you are part of a small development company that gets bought into a corporate bohemoth greedy for new tech. But I assume that if you were even in such a situation, you would sign over all of your options because you would assume you had to.
....and the semi-automatic pistol that I am allowed to carry will go far against soldiers sporting the latest assault rifle and kelvar suit. I might be able to moderately wound such an attacker before I am killed.
I would've thought that programmers and other techies who sell ideas for a living would've respected the rights of others that do the same to protect their livelihood.
Now does this imply that they are all missing the truth that you see so clearly? Or that your own beliefs are the ones in error?
If programmers and IT workers attempted to unionize in order to weild technological mastery over the heads of their employers, then yes, I would agree about "protecting livelihood." But the majority of programmers do not code novels or code movies that they sell to a code publisher or code producer. They, for the most part, toil anonymously (or as a line in the About page) while whatever copyrightable material they produce goes to their employer. And other types of IT workers (admins & support, in this example) do not produce, they maintain. What types are hardware techs and admins doing to "protect their livelihood" in the first place?
Looks like you read Gibson backwards from Worse to Better, and then called Diamond Age a Gibson rip-off. You must be thinking of Virutal Light as a rip-off of Snow Crash. That makes a little more sense.
The Diamond Age is not even a cyberpunk novel. It's more....well, Victorian. And full of amazing ideas, something that becomes scare as Gibson ages....
Perhaps in the long view, Gandhi would approve of nuclear weapons because they are an ultimate deterrent. Granted, this might change if the USA goes ahead with tactical nuclear weapons, but as of yet nuclear weapons have created more indirect peace than indirect violence.
I was hoping to see Gene Wolf up there. His imagery is dark yet very vivid, like good black-and-white photography. Perhaps more of interest these days would be a later work, the Book of the Long Sun , which features, among other things, programs masqurading as gods and a populous that has no idea they are in the cargo hold of a failing ship in space. The Matrix has sci-fi influences beyond cyberpunk, you know....
I'm sure the responsible lads forced to pay for the child they dropped on someone would agree. Just to point out the fact that something that starts out as a real good time can end up a real serious responsibility. It's not quite a fair analogy, but it proves my point.
Since my organization started using Computrace, it has provided us with the stunning return rate of 0% (0 - 6). Seems even the most casual laptop thief has enough sense to wipe the MBR clean -- that is the limit of Computrace's security. I am not impressed.
I'll presume you are a conservative American. What would you say if....oh, France could turn off all of the gas pumps in America by the press of a button? You wouldn't see a small, strategic problem with that?
How about members of our government openly debating whether or not Iran's government should be "destablized?" God help any Arabs who say the same thing about OUR government.....
Yes, but there is sometimes a time limit on finding equal work. If the unemployment period stretchs for what they deem a moderate amount of time, you will usually be required to start drastically lowering your salary and career expectations. (As you will be doing, anyway, when the benefits run out all together).
Ever read an issued of Wired magazine? Those neat little "infoporn" graphs are quite good at condensing reams of information into a few inches of space. Some are good, some are bad, but to deny its usefulness is pure sophistry.
Ironic, too, that the Matrix is like the outer allegories of Plato's Republic. Sugar-coated for popular comprehension.
A muscle-bound hero saves the local drinking-hall from a demon, a second demon, and then a dragon. (Or maybe the dragon comes second?). The story was meant to be recited as entertainment; there are no deep moral lessons to be found here.
Beowulf is still the only first-hand glimpse we have of what life--and people--were like at that point in time.
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from the Jargon file:
wave a dead chicken: v. To perform a ritual in the direction of crashed software or hardware that one believes to be futile but is nevertheless necessary so that others are satisfied that an appropriate degree of effort has been expended. "I'll wave a dead chicken over the source code, but I really think we've run into an OS bug."
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So you hate communism, but you love it at the same time -- very Orwellian....
But consider this account:
A student reads little, attends half-heartedly, and hands in papers (including an undergraduate thesis) that tell the professor exactly what they want to hear (after asking), and gets A's in return. The same student takes a semester at a lamentably swollen public college and gets multiple-choice take-home final exams and fellow students so poorly educated that they fail them. At both levels, there is a distinct lack of interest in educating the students.
Good education is, indeed, available. But how much money must be spent to obtain it?
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No, computers add sanity and connectivity to schizoid modern (both rural and urban) life.
...the DPRK is another one of the many demons spawned by our stupidity (and individual arrogance). So yes, it technically IS America's fault. Dictatorships sprout in our footsteps like weeds.
I forsee the problem being the gun that will be in front of said face, presumably aimed in my general direction....X-|
This is specifically true when you are part of a small development company that gets bought into a corporate bohemoth greedy for new tech. But I assume that if you were even in such a situation, you would sign over all of your options because you would assume you had to.
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Now does this imply that they are all missing the truth that you see so clearly? Or that your own beliefs are the ones in error?
If programmers and IT workers attempted to unionize in order to weild technological mastery over the heads of their employers, then yes, I would agree about "protecting livelihood." But the majority of programmers do not code novels or code movies that they sell to a code publisher or code producer. They, for the most part, toil anonymously (or as a line in the About page) while whatever copyrightable material they produce goes to their employer. And other types of IT workers (admins & support, in this example) do not produce, they maintain. What types are hardware techs and admins doing to "protect their livelihood" in the first place?
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The Diamond Age is not even a cyberpunk novel. It's more....well, Victorian. And full of amazing ideas, something that becomes scare as Gibson ages....
I was hoping to see Gene Wolf up there. His imagery is dark yet very vivid, like good black-and-white photography. Perhaps more of interest these days would be a later work, the Book of the Long Sun , which features, among other things, programs masqurading as gods and a populous that has no idea they are in the cargo hold of a failing ship in space. The Matrix has sci-fi influences beyond cyberpunk, you know....
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If nothing else, the press release hurt those worthless executives right in the ball--umm, stock options.
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How about members of our government openly debating whether or not Iran's government should be "destablized?" God help any Arabs who say the same thing about OUR government.....
Thank God!!! Maybe the next time the American people want independence the French will tell them to go fsck themselves!
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Yes, but there is sometimes a time limit on finding equal work. If the unemployment period stretchs for what they deem a moderate amount of time, you will usually be required to start drastically lowering your salary and career expectations. (As you will be doing, anyway, when the benefits run out all together).
You are screwed!
Ironic, too, that the Matrix is like the outer allegories of Plato's Republic. Sugar-coated for popular comprehension.
Beowulf is still the only first-hand glimpse we have of what life--and people--were like at that point in time.
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