> we must have really high tech phones here because of this funny button called "do not disturb" I use it all the time.
Actually, a -large- percentage of companies don't have those buttons on the phones, and many that do do not permit people to use them. I believe Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister have some comments from programmers in such companies in their book, "Peopleware"
> Do you shop more than once at the same store? gas station? cvs? etc? > What is the differnce between a cookie, and a clerk who recognizes your face?
A clerk is a human being. In many if not most cases, the clerk is a human being capable of understanding the local language in that geographic region, is capable of basic reasoning skills, is capable of remembering what he is the customer requests him to (not just what his employer requests him to), and much more in the quest to provide service to the customer.
A computer running a web site is normally not capable of doing any -one- of these things. If the clerk was deaf, stupid, and lacking in both short and long term memory, and only capable of remembering my purchases, browsing habits, and face, I'd consider him a -damn poor clerk-.
I want a clerk who can not only remember that I bought Cotton Club plain seltzer water in 2-liter bottles, but that I also told him I prefer the lemon lime flavored, in the 1-liter bottles, and that I only purchased the 2-liter plain because they were out of what I really wanted.
I can't tell the web site software that; it just keeps suggesting the 2-liter plain.
I want a clerk that can not only remember that I bought a specific children's book, but that it isn't indicative of my buying habits, since it was a one time gift.
I can't tell the web site software that; it just keeps suggesting more kiddie books.
> the why is simple. If they know their customers a little better, they can improve their business, > just as any salesman who recognized a regular customer would.
That's the logic; unfortunately it's wrong. As I mentioned above, the things they are doing, in -isolation from- other key elements of good service, make for a -damn poor clerk-.
Without the ability to actually communicate in the vernacular on a non-trivial level with customers, web tracking -cannot- be the basis for understanding the customer and improving service.
> Most marketing companies are rather decent people trying to find you the customer who wants their > product. A VERY small % of marketing companies are shady info-whoring bastards.
Yes and no. Part of the problem is "what is decent." Some people, myself included, believe in an absolute moral standard.
But a large number of people use a relative standard. A lot of the marketing folks who are not 'evil', but not angels by any stretch, justify their actions by comparing themselves to other marketers.
A lot of us don't feel the majority of marketers are as benevolent as you seem to. Not because they're 'evil', but because they refuse to follow absolute standards, and they refuse to live with the consequences of failing to meet these standards; a lost customer.
> Targetted marking is a rather nice thing as far as I am concerned. When offered to provide > interests, and the resulting ads, I find myself visiting the link.
I haven't seen any marketing targeted well enough to warrant even a single useful look.
> WHAT I HATE is misdirected marketing
Agreed. But the reality is, even when I provide the data they want, I fall into the cracks. I am an atypical person, who doesn't fit any of the standard pigeonholes. From my standpoint, -all- targeted marketing is misdirected marketing. Not for everyone, but for me.
I suspect many people have had similar experiences.
No, it doesn't make you -evil-. It may make you an obstacle. This case is no different than other types of customer shopping/purchasing metrics, both web-based and physical. Like Radio Shack collecting phone numbers, or CVS handing out discount cards like penny candy. I don't want it from them, either.
The biggest problem here is "when is there a presumption of innocence?" In your case, since you are doing nothing nefarious, you wish to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. Unfortunately, there has been a -consistent-, -systematic- trend toward greater and greater abuses of customer personal information by businesses.
Given this fact, many people, myself included, have chosen to presume that businesses that wish to track -any- information, no matter how innocuous it may seem, are up to no good, and actively prevent it.
You can no longer rely on -being innocent- to give you an expectation that customers will treat you as innocent. Like a repeat mugging victim, your customers have developed a highly suspicious nature. Too bad if your resemblance to the guy who mugged them before is a coincidence. They are going to view you with suspicion, regardless of what you may do in future.
It's unfortunate for you. But no one is going to weep for you. We are more concerned about our own, congoing pain.
You state: "To track users, I gave them a single, persistant cookie that contained only a GUID." Terrific; as anonymous as it gets. One problem; every browser I know of asks somthing like, "Site example.com wishes to set a cookie. Do you wish to accept?" It never tells me, "...and the entire contents of the cookie is a GUID, used solely for nonspecific statistical purposes. It is not tied to any identifying information about you."
And, in truth, it can't. Because a GUID like that -can- be tied to other information stored on the server and used for tracking. I don't know what your server is doing, and even if you told me, I would not be likely to believe you. Like the telemarketers who call my home asking for donations for charities, I am -bombarded- with constant requests, and do not have the time to examine each one to determine if they are legitimate. So I do the expedient thing, and assume that they are fraudulent.
I do the same with cookies. Unless I see a reason to allow them, I say "block it". And I allow only -session- cookies by default.
Sorry if this sounds cold. It sucks for you, but that's really not my problem.
> I agree with you. But I disagree with most of your reasons.
Yes;> We are all products of our experiences, and mine have been a bit different than yours.
> I didn't really experience political bigotry at school. There were a few teachers/professors who > were politically vocal; but I never felt it my academic success hinged on agreeing with a professor's politics.
It's not been common in my experience, either. But it's been there. For my experience, it's less often that the instructor is -overtly- biased in the political/social theory area. It's that their views are so intertwined with their thinking they can't separate them. And most students pick up on the instructor's biases and many adjust their behavior to them. It doesn't require any threat.
> My father is a professor of physics and astronomy...with increasing regularity he is being > challenged to how explain modern astronomy in light of the "fact" that the Universe cannot be more than 6000 years old.
My consolences. I've been out of school for some years, and I've not seen that kind of thing. Maybe the pendulum has swung in that direction since I've been in classes.
> I hear far more about the problem of political bias in education than I ever experienced it.
Bias gets in everywhere; in the private work sector, in education. I think one reason it's such a problem in the educational sector is that the system is set up so abuses aren't corrected easily or quickly.
I have a sister and brother in law who are teachers. Even though they would no more impose their viewpoints on students than your father, they are overtly -hostile- to oversight that would help prevent this sort of thing from happening. Their attitude is, "it's my class, I know what I'm doing, and I don't want interference."
And I believe the seniority systems in education, combined with the fluidity of the student population, makes it easier to turn a blind eye to the problem. If you have teacher who does this, it's only for one semester/term; you might be inclined to wait it out. If it's an employer, you could be there years. Gives you an incentive to deal with the problem, whether by changing jobs or by filing suit.
A lot of that is off the top of my head, more gut reaction than anything I've spent time thinking about.
I think the modern education system is -part- of the problem.
They teach the students that 'there are no absolutely right answers' and 'people are entitled to their opinions', so that students don't realize that some things are demonstrably true and others are demonstrably false.
They teach students that there is no fundamental difference between information gathered from a poll of 100 random people on the New York subway system and the results of a laboratory experiment in controlled conditions.
They teach students that even though the subject of the class is english composition/world history/archaeology/moleculary biology, you'll really be graded on how well you agree with the instructor's view that "the real terrorism today is how America treats women/minorities/third world countries."
They teach students that the longer the list of degrees after your name, the more worthwhile the book you wrote.
> a great many people would argue that the "UNIX way" is FAR more elegant.
This is one area where I feel the *nix techies are out of touch with a large part of the overall community.
I would absolutely agree that at its -best-, the Unix way -is- far more elegant. The problem is that only a very small minority of what is coded for modern *nix platforms is -really- coded "the Unix way." Most of it is coded as poorly as most of what is coded for Windows.
> UN*X is very uniform in how it works, just like a bucket of classic Lego bricks.
Not so much. I agree that it -used- to be. Unfortunately, a lot of what is coded for *nix now is just about like the poorly written Windows stuff. It requires 'X.1.1' version of 'Y' library.
"Oh, don't get version X.1.2; it not only won't work with X.1.0, but X.1.2 broke the hack we used in it. But you can download version X.1.1. No, X.1.1 is not available for download as a binary, you need to compile it. It's easy, just download this older version of gcc (newer version won't work), then edit the Perl script that builds the makefile. You need to change all the nonstandard paths to what's appropriate for your system. Oh, and you'll need to download the right version of these 17 libraries, too. That's it!" *
My point is not "*nix sucks, Windows rulez!" It's that the perception that *nix is this nifty, consistent, beautifully designed lego set is only true for a small subset of a typical *nix installation. Once you get past that subset, a lot of the differences disappear, and *nix developers run into the same crap as on Windows.
> Instead, you have an overly complex framework in the form of DDE/OLE1/OLE2/COM/DCOM that was >largely designed to accommodate disjointed, inconsistent interfaces between various components/applications.
True. The only big advantage I see is that the COM object interfaces act as namespaces, and COM simplifies linkage. Every stupid thing being in the C/C++ global namespace is about as big an annoyance on *nix as Windows.
--------------
* as stupid as that sounds, it's real. I ran into this a month or so ago. Almost verbatim, except it wasn't a conversation. This data was mined from FAQs and forums, one error message at a time.
I believe the poster was advocating a policy of "trust, but verify" as a alternative to the "my doctor, right or wrong" philosophy that turns an error into a fatality.
The medical community; doctors, drug companies, HMOs, hospitals, researchers, etc., are also at fault here.
Despite the characterisation as "traditional Western medicine based on scientific evidence", a lot of the modern medical community act like spoiled, petty tyrants and opportunists. Many of them are no more 'scientists' than the hippie herbalist in the next building. Western medicine has wasted the currency of trust they had in the 1950 and 1960s.
Bad doctors expect to be treated as gods, refuse to justify their decisions or allow them to be independently reviewed. They expect other doctors to keep their mouths shut when they are caught flagrantly screwing up, and justify stupid decisions resulting in fatalities as "consistent with current medical practice." And most doctors, even the best, -do- protect them.
HMOs treat people like cattle and no longer give the -good- doctors time to talk with their patients. They don't know their patients -names- half the time, let alone the details of their conditions.
Drug companies release inadequately tested drugs only approved for -one- condition, then market it for everything under the sun...until they need to recall the drug because of very public fatalities or debilitating side effects. And doctors collude with them, in return perks. They aren't knowingly recommending a -bad- treatment. They're just recommending it on information they ought to know is inadequate.
Researchers, in the push to "publish or perish", spin their results to indicate much more certainty than is justified...then other studies come out saying, "Oops; we were wrong. This earlier recommendation could actually kill you. Sorry, although we never actually -told- you to do this; we just printed studies showing how amazing it was. We're not culpable."
Sure, people look stuff up on the Internet. But -most- of them do it in order to get medical information that big business has made it almost impossible to get through traditional channels (the family doctor) and absolutely necessary to cope with the systematic -misinformation- of the drug companies and researchers.
It may seem like I don't like the medical community, but that's not true. I just wish the good professionals had found the cojones to take out the trash when they still could have.
Good post; one nitpick. Anytime you have a post of the form 'A is [blank], B is ![blank]' you've probably given short shrift to the B side. It assumes the question is true-false.
I would say that *nix/Windows are not so much 'not-process-centered' as small-task centered.
Processes, in this case, would have a fairly directed, machine-based goal. Since there is a goal, there has to be a reason for doing it, a risk analysis, and fallback planning. Even if this is done only in the head of the mainframe programmer.
Tasks are small, lightweight, and less critical. You can toss a task out there as an experiment. In Windows or in *nix, you can run something to see what happens, even if you aren't sure what it will do. You can code up things just to test an idea.
This means that you can experiment a lot on *nix and Windows.
In Windows, this is usually seen by programmers running something in the Visual Studio IDE, or in VB Classic. In *nix, this is usually done in a shell script or Perl script.
I think in the mainframe world, these experiments are mostly done in the mind of the programmer; maybe with a whiteboard.
Interesting post; I tend to agree with your conclusions.
> Are there really companies out there that still don't have a policy about not hooking up private > equipment to the LAN without permission?
Yep; lots of them.
> Are there even any that let you run your own server on their LAN without aking?
Yep;>
> I find that hard to believe. Even if bandwidth isn't an issue, the company owns the equiptment > and has a right to say how it gets used, and what traffic is premitted.
True. But where most people look at you funny if you walk into their house without knocking, there are many who look at you funny if you knock, and ask, "What the hell are you waiting for? Come in already."
A lot of firms are the same.
> Anybody adding private equipment or running an unauthorized server has to know they're violating > company policy, and can expect to be fired when it's discovered.
Except when the company has no policy, or has lots of policies no one pays attention to, because everyone breaks them. Often because if you follow them, you can never get your work done.
> The best way to keep it from happening a second time is to make sure everybody knows just why the fsckwit got canned.
Unless, of course the fsckwit is the CEO, President, VP of this, Director of that.;>
Seriously; I don't hook up equipment without permission, even if it isn't 'policy', But it's a -lot- more common than you seem to think.
Contracting at various firms, I see it all the time.
> Disney, in this case is only interested in enforcing the non-transferability of the ticket.
Disney's interest is largely irrelevant to the legitimacy of their actions. Good intent can't make a wrong action right; it may affect culpability and punishment, but it can't make a wrong action right.
They have a legitimate interest in the non-transferability of season passes, and this is one way to address that. It may or may not be the best way, and it may or may not be a legitimate way. Disney is not the ultimate arbiter of this; it will be decided by the public based on their patronage of Disney, or by the courts, or possibly both.
> They couldn't care less about any of your other personal information.
Today. Unfortunately, a lot of companies today see the personal information they gather about their customers as something that belongs to the company, not the customer. Disney could change their mind later. I'm not saying "Disney is evil", but rather "Who are these people that I should give them the privilege of collecting this data?"
As I said earlier, I don't think this is a real invasion in terms of the data collected. I'm more concerned about the next company, which may use this as a precedent to do something more intrusive.
> If they start asking for the same kind of information that you have to give to an airline > and then still do the fingerprint stuff as well, they may be stepping over the line.
I would agree with that statement; I just don't necessarily accept that they haven't crossed the line here. The line isn't codified in law or in common practice; currently it's just a big gray area. I'd like to see the line placed so that corporations need to demonstrate a need for data they want to collect, instead of merely stating the desire for it.
You make some good points. A few things I wanted to comment on:
> Disney is not a part of your government. They are free to exist as a theme park, just as Six Flags and > Alton Towers (in the UK) are.
Very true.
> They are entitled to set whichever requirements they like for you to enter their park.
Almost. Any legal entity, human or corporate, under most British Common-Law type legal systems, have a great deal of autonomy in their business practices, as long as those practices are not illegal -or- determined to be contrary to the overall public interest.
For instance, actions which are perfectly legal for a corporate entity may be held to be anti-competitive or monopolistic if that company controls a large enough part of a limited market.
And some things are contrary to the public interest by their nature, such as indentured servitude. In the US, certain types of non-compete employment contracts are illegal for this reason.
In the case of the season passes, Disney has (arguably) a legitimate interest in verifying the identity of the user. For day passes, this doesn't seem to be the case.
As some have noted, since they are not retaining fingerprint information, but rather the hand geometry, there is no apparent collection of persistent personal information. That said, this is a gray area of public policy. I'd like to see some folks fight this in order to get some precedents on record regarding what is and is not legitimate.
While Disney aren't keeping personal data in this case, the general trend in the corporate world (in the US, anyway, and probably some, if not all European nations) is to gather data they have no business asking for in the first place.
> I believe in monopoly regulation, so as long as Disney is not the ONLY theme park available (and > Windows isn't the only usable OS), they are free to set their own rules, on their own property.
Ehh, not entirely agreed. Disney may not be an actual monopoly, but they are at least a -local- de facto monopoly. And as I mentioned earlier, there is the public policy issue.
> I also believe, however, that they must disclose what they will be doing with any information they > collect, so that you can be informed in your decision to surrender or not surrender your finger-scans and such.
Very true. I'd really like to see a blanket ruling that private corporations are prohibited from collecting any kind of personal information or identifying data without prior informed disclosure.
The reality is that for non-season-ticket pass holders, this is excessive; like a thirty page license agreement for a $20 piece of software. For a new car, sure; for a basic commonplace transaction, hell no.
> You see what I mean? Right now, you can always take the kids to Six Flags if you don't like > Disney's rules. You can always petition Disney to change as well.
Agreed that this is probably the best way to change it. I'd still like to see a legal precedent set, though. Just enough to shift the burden of justifying these little indignities. Currently, the corporation just does it; consumers need to justify withholding the data. I'd like to see it reversed. If consumers were legally entitled to withhold the data unless the company demonstrated a compelling need, it would slow down the flood of these idiotic ideas.
> Also, Jesus rarely if ever professed to be God... unless you beleive that when he said "Father, why > hast thou deserted me?" he was talking to himself! I beleive it was the early church that > decided "Jesus was God", not Jesus himself. RTFB!
Slashdot is a terrible place to start this discussion. I'll just point out that C. S. Lewis' work "Mere Christianity" does a wonderful job of answering this point from the mainstream Christian perspective. Available in libraries almost everywhere, or ~10$ US from Amazon.
> Why is it that liberal is being demonized by people who claim to worship Jesus Christ who was > perhaps the biggest most passive liberal who ever lived. He was so passive that he let himself be killed.
Actually, most people who worship Christ don't believe he -let- himself be killed, but that he chose death as a way of reconciling all mankind to the Father. John 10:18 - "No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down on my own. I have power to lay it down and power to take it up again."
The thing is that mainstream Christianity draws a distinction between pacifism -for the sake of avoiding violence- and choosing to avoid violence -for the sake of accomplishing God's ends-. Nonviolence isn't considered an end in itself. Ecclesiastes 3:3 - "A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to tear down, and a time to build."
Yes, Jesus is the 'pacifist' who exhorted his followers to turn the other cheek, -and- who said he had not come to bring peace but the sword. Who told his followers to love one another, -and- that he had come to set son against father, mother against daughter.
He's only a pacifist when heavily edited by the Political Correctness censors.
Depends on how you look at it. I read an interesting assertion from a Lutheran minister and theologian who stated that the tradition among the Jews of the time was that you chastised wife and children by striking them with the -palm- of the hand, and servants and slaves by stiking them with the -back- of the hand.
This was to draw a distinction between castisement of a loved one and of a social inferior.
By turning the other cheek to a father or husband, the recipient of the blow indicated that they failed to appreciate the distinction.
Thanks for the feedback. Actually, the books I was referring to have nothing to do with liberal relativism. Absolutely, one point of view may be the indisputably correct one. But for the purposes of discussion and debate, assuming you are right and the other guy is wrong inhibits rather than promotes the connection necessary to help the other guy understand 'the indisputably correct point of view'.
I'm very definitely not a liberal relativist.
I was referring not to the idea that "everyone's opinion is right", or "value judgements make people feel sad, boo-hoo", but rather the old principle from Dale Carnegie's "How To Win Friends & Influence People":
'A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still'
It's not 'evil' to believe that "I'm right and the other guy is wrong", but it's pointless to argue from the standpoint that "I'm right, therefore you're wrong, and since I've explained it to you patiently, you must be defective."
I've just been realizing that most serious conflicts I've had require -me- to have missed something as well as the other guy missing something. Not necessarily something technical, usually not something that changes my thinking in the slightest. But -something-, often something that turns out to be based on assumptions I've made. Often I've assumed that the other guy has had similar experiences to mine, or evaluates pros and cons exactly the same way I do.
Often the other guy comes around to my point of view; but -only- because I first took the time to try to understand his point of view.
Re:Ballmer means "marketshare" not "innovation"
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Ballmer on Innovation
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> Ballmer's not talking about hardware innovation obviously and he's hardly even talking about > software innovation. He really means "marketshare" when he means innovation: the ability to bring the > market together under one platform and to create a huge environment for 3rd party solutions on top of that.
I don't quite agree, but I do think you have something there. I think he disregards any innovation which fails to get marketshare. He feels it has to be commercially successful as well as new, different, and useful, in order to qualify as 'innovative'.
Therefore, many innovative products would not qualify, since they fail to capture marketshare. Many rehashed versions of technically superior, more innovative products would qualify as 'innovative'. Even though they are a recreation of an earlier product, rather than a new idea, the earlier idea doesn't count, since it failed to be commercially successful.
This is pretty typical among marketing guys; they really seem to be unable to see anything having value outside of marketing value. Of course, many techies have a problem seeing any value other than technical value, so it evens out.
> Suggesting that they don't understand free software is a bizarre POV.
Actually, I'd say it's pretty much typical. I've been doing a lot of reading lately on conversation and confrontation. Most people seem to argue from implicit assumptions that:
1- my point of view is correct, therefore yours is wrong. 2- since my point of view is obviously correct, anyone who doesn't agree with me probably lacks information. 3- once the information has been provided too them, if they still don't agree with me, they have a problem with comprehension; they just "don't get it."
Yep; ran into this myself. My brother wanted me to cash his tax refund check. They would -not- do it, no exceptions.
I'm not sure it's all PATRIOT Act related; it may be as much triggered by requirements for clearing checks faster. My bank indicated that there were just too many hassles with collecting on defaulted/fraudulent checks, and they made a blanket policy.
> Our company does this, other companies I've interviewed do this. You can't blame them, it's not > like every one is completely honest with there resume. It didn't phase me a bit when I was quizzed at my last interview.
A couple of points, based on the linked article:
- as others have mentioned, they contacted Sorkin; he didn't contact them.
- the article implies that MS did not discuss the job or the company with him prior to launching into a quiz. This would strike me as presumptuous, even if Sorkin had contacted them.
- MS followed up these breaches of etiquette by scheduling an interview for him without discussing the position with him first.
The combination strikes me as presumptuous, arrogant and rude. MS isn't likely to offer me an unsolicited job, but if they did, I'd damn well expect them to be prepared to convince me that the job was something I'd want. I'd certainly be prepared to take a test, but I'd be offended if the interview -started- with the test. Probably not enough to leave. Definitely enough to multiply the salary I was going to ask for by a number proportional to the perceived level of arrogance.
Not because "I'm above proving myself", but because verification works both ways, and MS must prove themselves as well.
-Especially- given the number of business partners they've screwed over and allegations of employee mistreatment.
The article also quotes an MS internal recruiter, who made comments that many managers at MS are arrogant and assume everyone wants to work for MS. It continues by saying that there have been charges that job candidates have been turned off by Microsoft arrogance.
I observed in another forum on the web that arrogance is the distinguishing characteristic of Microsoft Corp. Apparently I am not alone in this feeling.
> I think what you really meant is "if I could get the same functionality out of my computer", which > actually means the applications.
Well, not just applications; let's call it 'features'.
'Small footprint' isn't an application, but it can be a feature. One -very- cool thing about Linux diversity is the number of mini-distros.
MS wants to sell -more-. Setting up a compact Windows system, and keeping it small, is a -lot- of work, and there are limits. More isn't necessarily better.
The OS, ultimately, needs to provide the right mix of features for the consumer, and consumers have become more dependent on technology, they have also become more particular. It's got to be a good fit, OS, applications, and utilities, or people aren't interested.
Slashdot Mirror
> we must have really high tech phones here because of this funny button called "do not disturb" I use it all the time.
Actually, a -large- percentage of companies don't have those buttons on the phones, and many that do do not permit people to use them. I believe Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister have some comments from programmers in such companies in their book, "Peopleware"
> Do you shop more than once at the same store? gas station? cvs? etc?
> What is the differnce between a cookie, and a clerk who recognizes your face?
A clerk is a human being. In many if not most cases, the clerk is a human being capable of understanding the local language in that geographic region, is capable of basic reasoning skills, is capable of remembering what he is the customer requests him to (not just what his employer requests him to), and much more in the quest to provide service to the customer.
A computer running a web site is normally not capable of doing any -one- of these things. If the clerk was deaf, stupid, and lacking in both short and long term memory, and only capable of remembering my purchases, browsing habits, and face, I'd consider him a -damn poor clerk-.
I want a clerk who can not only remember that I bought Cotton Club plain seltzer water in 2-liter bottles, but that I also told him I prefer the lemon lime flavored, in the 1-liter bottles, and that I only purchased the 2-liter plain because they were out of what I really wanted.
I can't tell the web site software that; it just keeps suggesting the 2-liter plain.
I want a clerk that can not only remember that I bought a specific children's book, but that it isn't indicative of my buying habits, since it was a one time gift.
I can't tell the web site software that; it just keeps suggesting more kiddie books.
> the why is simple. If they know their customers a little better, they can improve their business,
> just as any salesman who recognized a regular customer would.
That's the logic; unfortunately it's wrong. As I mentioned above, the things they are doing, in -isolation from- other key elements of good service, make for a -damn poor clerk-.
Without the ability to actually communicate in the vernacular on a non-trivial level with customers, web tracking -cannot- be the basis for understanding the customer and improving service.
> Most marketing companies are rather decent people trying to find you the customer who wants their
> product. A VERY small % of marketing companies are shady info-whoring bastards.
Yes and no. Part of the problem is "what is decent." Some people, myself included, believe in an absolute moral standard.
But a large number of people use a relative standard. A lot of the marketing folks who are not 'evil', but not angels by any stretch, justify their actions by comparing themselves to other marketers.
A lot of us don't feel the majority of marketers are as benevolent as you seem to. Not because they're 'evil', but because they refuse to follow absolute standards, and they refuse to live with the consequences of failing to meet these standards; a lost customer.
> Targetted marking is a rather nice thing as far as I am concerned. When offered to provide
> interests, and the resulting ads, I find myself visiting the link.
I haven't seen any marketing targeted well enough to warrant even a single useful look.
> WHAT I HATE is misdirected marketing
Agreed. But the reality is, even when I provide the data they want, I fall into the cracks. I am an atypical person, who doesn't fit any of the standard pigeonholes. From my standpoint, -all- targeted marketing is misdirected marketing. Not for everyone, but for me.
I suspect many people have had similar experiences.
No, it doesn't make you -evil-. It may make you an obstacle. This case is no different than other types of customer shopping/purchasing metrics, both web-based and physical. Like Radio Shack collecting phone numbers, or CVS handing out discount cards like penny candy. I don't want it from them, either.
The biggest problem here is "when is there a presumption of innocence?" In your case, since you are doing nothing nefarious, you wish to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. Unfortunately, there has been a -consistent-, -systematic- trend toward greater and greater abuses of customer personal information by businesses.
Given this fact, many people, myself included, have chosen to presume that businesses that wish to track -any- information, no matter how innocuous it may seem, are up to no good, and actively prevent it.
You can no longer rely on -being innocent- to give you an expectation that customers will treat you as innocent. Like a repeat mugging victim, your customers have developed a highly suspicious nature. Too bad if your resemblance to the guy who mugged them before is a coincidence. They are going to view you with suspicion, regardless of what you may do in future.
It's unfortunate for you. But no one is going to weep for you. We are more concerned about our own, congoing pain.
You state: "To track users, I gave them a single, persistant cookie that contained only a GUID." Terrific; as anonymous as it gets. One problem; every browser I know of asks somthing like, "Site example.com wishes to set a cookie. Do you wish to accept?" It never tells me, "...and the entire contents of the cookie is a GUID, used solely for nonspecific statistical purposes. It is not tied to any identifying information about you."
And, in truth, it can't. Because a GUID like that -can- be tied to other information stored on the server and used for tracking. I don't know what your server is doing, and even if you told me, I would not be likely to believe you. Like the telemarketers who call my home asking for donations for charities, I am -bombarded- with constant requests, and do not have the time to examine each one to determine if they are legitimate. So I do the expedient thing, and assume that they are fraudulent.
I do the same with cookies. Unless I see a reason to allow them, I say "block it". And I allow only -session- cookies by default.
Sorry if this sounds cold. It sucks for you, but that's really not my problem.
> I agree with you. But I disagree with most of your reasons.
;> We are all products of our experiences, and mine have been a bit different than yours.
Yes
> I didn't really experience political bigotry at school. There were a few teachers/professors who
> were politically vocal; but I never felt it my academic success hinged on agreeing with a professor's politics.
It's not been common in my experience, either. But it's been there. For my experience, it's less often that the instructor is -overtly- biased in the political/social theory area. It's that their views are so intertwined with their thinking they can't separate them. And most students pick up on the instructor's biases and many adjust their behavior to them. It doesn't require any threat.
> My father is a professor of physics and astronomy...with increasing regularity he is being
> challenged to how explain modern astronomy in light of the "fact" that the Universe cannot be more than 6000 years old.
My consolences. I've been out of school for some years, and I've not seen that kind of thing. Maybe the pendulum has swung in that direction since I've been in classes.
> I hear far more about the problem of political bias in education than I ever experienced it.
Bias gets in everywhere; in the private work sector, in education. I think one reason it's such a problem in the educational sector is that the system is set up so abuses aren't corrected easily or quickly.
I have a sister and brother in law who are teachers. Even though they would no more impose their viewpoints on students than your father, they are overtly -hostile- to oversight that would help prevent this sort of thing from happening. Their attitude is, "it's my class, I know what I'm doing, and I don't want interference."
And I believe the seniority systems in education, combined with the fluidity of the student population, makes it easier to turn a blind eye to the problem. If you have teacher who does this, it's only for one semester/term; you might be inclined to wait it out. If it's an employer, you could be there years. Gives you an incentive to deal with the problem, whether by changing jobs or by filing suit.
A lot of that is off the top of my head, more gut reaction than anything I've spent time thinking about.
Thanks for your comments.
Please! No more reality TV shows! AAAHHH!
> I think education is the only answer
I think the modern education system is -part- of the problem.
They teach the students that 'there are no absolutely right answers' and 'people are entitled to their opinions', so that students don't realize that some things are demonstrably true and others are demonstrably false.
They teach students that there is no fundamental difference between information gathered from a poll of 100 random people on the New York subway system and the results of a laboratory experiment in controlled conditions.
They teach students that even though the subject of the class is english composition/world history/archaeology/moleculary biology, you'll really be graded on how well you agree with the instructor's view that "the real terrorism today is how America treats women/minorities/third world countries."
They teach students that the longer the list of degrees after your name, the more worthwhile the book you wrote.
> a great many people would argue that the "UNIX way" is FAR more elegant.
This is one area where I feel the *nix techies are out of touch with a large part of the overall community.
I would absolutely agree that at its -best-, the Unix way -is- far more elegant. The problem is that only a very small minority of what is coded for modern *nix platforms is -really- coded "the Unix way." Most of it is coded as poorly as most of what is coded for Windows.
> UN*X is very uniform in how it works, just like a bucket of classic Lego bricks.
Not so much. I agree that it -used- to be. Unfortunately, a lot of what is coded for *nix now is just about like the poorly written Windows stuff. It requires 'X.1.1' version of 'Y' library.
"Oh, don't get version X.1.2; it not only won't work with X.1.0, but X.1.2 broke the hack we used in it. But you can download version X.1.1. No, X.1.1 is not available for download as a binary, you need to compile it. It's easy, just download this older version of gcc (newer version won't work), then edit the Perl script that builds the makefile. You need to change all the nonstandard paths to what's appropriate for your system. Oh, and you'll need to download the right version of these 17 libraries, too. That's it!" *
My point is not "*nix sucks, Windows rulez!" It's that the perception that *nix is this nifty, consistent, beautifully designed lego set is only true for a small subset of a typical *nix installation. Once you get past that subset, a lot of the differences disappear, and *nix developers run into the same crap as on Windows.
> Instead, you have an overly complex framework in the form of DDE/OLE1/OLE2/COM/DCOM that was
>largely designed to accommodate disjointed, inconsistent interfaces between various components/applications.
True. The only big advantage I see is that the COM object interfaces act as namespaces, and COM simplifies linkage. Every stupid thing being in the C/C++ global namespace is about as big an annoyance on *nix as Windows.
--------------
* as stupid as that sounds, it's real. I ran into this a month or so ago. Almost verbatim, except it wasn't a conversation. This data was mined from FAQs and forums, one error message at a time.
I believe the poster was advocating a policy of "trust, but verify" as a alternative to the "my doctor, right or wrong" philosophy that turns an error into a fatality.
The medical community; doctors, drug companies, HMOs, hospitals, researchers, etc., are also at fault here.
Despite the characterisation as "traditional Western medicine based on scientific evidence", a lot of the modern medical community act like spoiled, petty tyrants and opportunists. Many of them are no more 'scientists' than the hippie herbalist in the next building. Western medicine has wasted the currency of trust they had in the 1950 and 1960s.
Bad doctors expect to be treated as gods, refuse to justify their decisions or allow them to be independently reviewed. They expect other doctors to keep their mouths shut when they are caught flagrantly screwing up, and justify stupid decisions resulting in fatalities as "consistent with current medical practice." And most doctors, even the best, -do- protect them.
HMOs treat people like cattle and no longer give the -good- doctors time to talk with their patients. They don't know their patients -names- half the time, let alone the details of their conditions.
Drug companies release inadequately tested drugs only approved for -one- condition, then market it for everything under the sun...until they need to recall the drug because of very public fatalities or debilitating side effects. And doctors collude with them, in return perks. They aren't knowingly recommending a -bad- treatment. They're just recommending it on information they ought to know is inadequate.
Researchers, in the push to "publish or perish", spin their results to indicate much more certainty than is justified...then other studies come out saying, "Oops; we were wrong. This earlier recommendation could actually kill you. Sorry, although we never actually -told- you to do this; we just printed studies showing how amazing it was. We're not culpable."
Sure, people look stuff up on the Internet. But -most- of them do it in order to get medical information that big business has made it almost impossible to get through traditional channels (the family doctor) and absolutely necessary to cope with the systematic -misinformation- of the drug companies and researchers.
It may seem like I don't like the medical community, but that's not true. I just wish the good professionals had found the cojones to take out the trash when they still could have.
Good post; one nitpick. Anytime you have a post of the form 'A is [blank], B is ![blank]' you've probably given short shrift to the B side. It assumes the question is true-false.
I would say that *nix/Windows are not so much 'not-process-centered' as small-task centered.
Processes, in this case, would have a fairly directed, machine-based goal. Since there is a goal, there has to be a reason for doing it, a risk analysis, and fallback planning. Even if this is done only in the head of the mainframe programmer.
Tasks are small, lightweight, and less critical. You can toss a task out there as an experiment. In Windows or in *nix, you can run something to see what happens, even if you aren't sure what it will do. You can code up things just to test an idea.
This means that you can experiment a lot on *nix and Windows.
In Windows, this is usually seen by programmers running something in the Visual Studio IDE, or in VB Classic. In *nix, this is usually done in a shell script or Perl script.
I think in the mainframe world, these experiments are mostly done in the mind of the programmer; maybe with a whiteboard.
Interesting post; I tend to agree with your conclusions.
> Are there really companies out there that still don't have a policy about not hooking up private
;>
;>
> equipment to the LAN without permission?
Yep; lots of them.
> Are there even any that let you run your own server on their LAN without aking?
Yep
> I find that hard to believe. Even if bandwidth isn't an issue, the company owns the equiptment
> and has a right to say how it gets used, and what traffic is premitted.
True. But where most people look at you funny if you walk into their house without knocking, there are many who look at you funny if you knock, and ask, "What the hell are you waiting for? Come in already."
A lot of firms are the same.
> Anybody adding private equipment or running an unauthorized server has to know they're violating
> company policy, and can expect to be fired when it's discovered.
Except when the company has no policy, or has lots of policies no one pays attention to, because everyone breaks them. Often because if you follow them, you can never get your work done.
> The best way to keep it from happening a second time is to make sure everybody knows just why the fsckwit got canned.
Unless, of course the fsckwit is the CEO, President, VP of this, Director of that.
Seriously; I don't hook up equipment without permission, even if it isn't 'policy', But it's a -lot- more common than you seem to think.
Contracting at various firms, I see it all the time.
> Disney, in this case is only interested in enforcing the non-transferability of the ticket.
Disney's interest is largely irrelevant to the legitimacy of their actions. Good intent can't make a wrong action right; it may affect culpability and punishment, but it can't make a wrong action right.
They have a legitimate interest in the non-transferability of season passes, and this is one way to address that. It may or may not be the best way, and it may or may not be a legitimate way. Disney is not the ultimate arbiter of this; it will be decided by the public based on their patronage of Disney, or by the courts, or possibly both.
> They couldn't care less about any of your other personal information.
Today. Unfortunately, a lot of companies today see the personal information they gather about their customers as something that belongs to the company, not the customer. Disney could change their mind later. I'm not saying "Disney is evil", but rather "Who are these people that I should give them the privilege of collecting this data?"
As I said earlier, I don't think this is a real invasion in terms of the data collected. I'm more concerned about the next company, which may use this as a precedent to do something more intrusive.
> If they start asking for the same kind of information that you have to give to an airline
> and then still do the fingerprint stuff as well, they may be stepping over the line.
I would agree with that statement; I just don't necessarily accept that they haven't crossed the line here. The line isn't codified in law or in common practice; currently it's just a big gray area. I'd like to see the line placed so that corporations need to demonstrate a need for data they want to collect, instead of merely stating the desire for it.
Thanks for your thoughtful comments.
You make some good points. A few things I wanted to comment on:
> Disney is not a part of your government. They are free to exist as a theme park, just as Six Flags and
> Alton Towers (in the UK) are.
Very true.
> They are entitled to set whichever requirements they like for you to enter their park.
Almost. Any legal entity, human or corporate, under most British Common-Law type legal systems, have a great deal of autonomy in their business practices, as long as those practices are not illegal -or- determined to be contrary to the overall public interest.
For instance, actions which are perfectly legal for a corporate entity may be held to be anti-competitive or monopolistic if that company controls a large enough part of a limited market.
And some things are contrary to the public interest by their nature, such as indentured servitude. In the US, certain types of non-compete employment contracts are illegal for this reason.
In the case of the season passes, Disney has (arguably) a legitimate interest in verifying the identity of the user. For day passes, this doesn't seem to be the case.
As some have noted, since they are not retaining fingerprint information, but rather the hand geometry, there is no apparent collection of persistent personal information. That said, this is a gray area of public policy. I'd like to see some folks fight this in order to get some precedents on record regarding what is and is not legitimate.
While Disney aren't keeping personal data in this case, the general trend in the corporate world (in the US, anyway, and probably some, if not all European nations) is to gather data they have no business asking for in the first place.
> I believe in monopoly regulation, so as long as Disney is not the ONLY theme park available (and
> Windows isn't the only usable OS), they are free to set their own rules, on their own property.
Ehh, not entirely agreed. Disney may not be an actual monopoly, but they are at least a -local- de facto monopoly. And as I mentioned earlier, there is the public policy issue.
> I also believe, however, that they must disclose what they will be doing with any information they
> collect, so that you can be informed in your decision to surrender or not surrender your finger-scans and such.
Very true. I'd really like to see a blanket ruling that private corporations are prohibited from collecting any kind of personal information or identifying data without prior informed disclosure.
The reality is that for non-season-ticket pass holders, this is excessive; like a thirty page license agreement for a $20 piece of software. For a new car, sure; for a basic commonplace transaction, hell no.
> You see what I mean? Right now, you can always take the kids to Six Flags if you don't like
> Disney's rules. You can always petition Disney to change as well.
Agreed that this is probably the best way to change it. I'd still like to see a legal precedent set, though. Just enough to shift the burden of justifying these little indignities. Currently, the corporation just does it; consumers need to justify withholding the data. I'd like to see it reversed. If consumers were legally entitled to withhold the data unless the company demonstrated a compelling need, it would slow down the flood of these idiotic ideas.
> Also, Jesus rarely if ever professed to be God... unless you beleive that when he said "Father, why
> hast thou deserted me?" he was talking to himself! I beleive it was the early church that
> decided "Jesus was God", not Jesus himself. RTFB!
Slashdot is a terrible place to start this discussion. I'll just point out that C. S. Lewis' work "Mere Christianity" does a wonderful job of answering this point from the mainstream Christian perspective. Available in libraries almost everywhere, or ~10$ US from Amazon.
> Why is it that liberal is being demonized by people who claim to worship Jesus Christ who was
> perhaps the biggest most passive liberal who ever lived. He was so passive that he let himself be killed.
Actually, most people who worship Christ don't believe he -let- himself be killed, but that he chose death as a way of reconciling all mankind to the Father. John 10:18 - "No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down on my own. I have power to lay it down and power to take it up again."
The thing is that mainstream Christianity draws a distinction between pacifism -for the sake of avoiding violence- and choosing to avoid violence -for the sake of accomplishing God's ends-. Nonviolence isn't considered an end in itself. Ecclesiastes 3:3 - "A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to tear down, and a time to build."
Yes, Jesus is the 'pacifist' who exhorted his followers to turn the other cheek, -and- who said he had not come to bring peace but the sword. Who told his followers to love one another, -and- that he had come to set son against father, mother against daughter.
He's only a pacifist when heavily edited by the Political Correctness censors.
Depends on how you look at it. I read an interesting assertion from a Lutheran minister and theologian who stated that the tradition among the Jews of the time was that you chastised wife and children by striking them with the -palm- of the hand, and servants and slaves by stiking them with the -back- of the hand.
This was to draw a distinction between castisement of a loved one and of a social inferior.
By turning the other cheek to a father or husband, the recipient of the blow indicated that they failed to appreciate the distinction.
"Crucial Conversations" and "Crucial Confrontations", both by Kerry Patterson.
"How To Win Friends and Influence People", by Dale Carnegie.
"Difficult Converations", by Douglas Stone.
"When Difficult Relatives Happen to Good People", by Leonard Felder.
"Making Horses Drink", by Alexander Hiam.
All of these are at my local library; I just browsed around for most of them.
Thanks for the feedback. Actually, the books I was referring to have nothing to do with liberal relativism. Absolutely, one point of view may be the indisputably correct one. But for the purposes of discussion and debate, assuming you are right and the other guy is wrong inhibits rather than promotes the connection necessary to help the other guy understand 'the indisputably correct point of view'.
I'm very definitely not a liberal relativist.
I was referring not to the idea that "everyone's opinion is right", or "value judgements make people feel sad, boo-hoo", but rather the old principle from Dale Carnegie's "How To Win Friends & Influence People":
'A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still'
It's not 'evil' to believe that "I'm right and the other guy is wrong", but it's pointless to argue from the standpoint that "I'm right, therefore you're wrong, and since I've explained it to you patiently, you must be defective."
I've just been realizing that most serious conflicts I've had require -me- to have missed something as well as the other guy missing something. Not necessarily something technical, usually not something that changes my thinking in the slightest. But -something-, often something that turns out to be based on assumptions I've made. Often I've assumed that the other guy has had similar experiences to mine, or evaluates pros and cons exactly the same way I do.
Often the other guy comes around to my point of view; but -only- because I first took the time to try to understand his point of view.
> Ballmer's not talking about hardware innovation obviously and he's hardly even talking about
> software innovation. He really means "marketshare" when he means innovation: the ability to bring the
> market together under one platform and to create a huge environment for 3rd party solutions on top of that.
I don't quite agree, but I do think you have something there. I think he disregards any innovation which fails to get marketshare. He feels it has to be commercially successful as well as new, different, and useful, in order to qualify as 'innovative'.
Therefore, many innovative products would not qualify, since they fail to capture marketshare. Many rehashed versions of technically superior, more innovative products would qualify as 'innovative'. Even though they are a recreation of an earlier product, rather than a new idea, the earlier idea doesn't count, since it failed to be commercially successful.
This is pretty typical among marketing guys; they really seem to be unable to see anything having value outside of marketing value. Of course, many techies have a problem seeing any value other than technical value, so it evens out.
> Suggesting that they don't understand free software is a bizarre POV.
Actually, I'd say it's pretty much typical. I've been doing a lot of reading lately on conversation and confrontation. Most people seem to argue from implicit assumptions that:
1- my point of view is correct, therefore yours is wrong.
2- since my point of view is obviously correct, anyone who doesn't agree with me probably lacks information.
3- once the information has been provided too them, if they still don't agree with me, they have a problem with comprehension; they just "don't get it."
I've been guilty of that one a lot, myself.
Yep; ran into this myself. My brother wanted me to cash his tax refund check. They would -not- do it, no exceptions.
I'm not sure it's all PATRIOT Act related; it may be as much triggered by requirements for clearing checks faster. My bank indicated that there were just too many hassles with collecting on defaulted/fraudulent checks, and they made a blanket policy.
SourceForge has a lot of open-source game projects now, and many of them are quite good.
While a lot of them are ports of older games, like Doom, others are new. All types, and many are written in Perl and Java, as well as C.
> Our company does this, other companies I've interviewed do this. You can't blame them, it's not
> like every one is completely honest with there resume. It didn't phase me a bit when I was quizzed at my last interview.
A couple of points, based on the linked article:
- as others have mentioned, they contacted Sorkin; he didn't contact them.
- the article implies that MS did not discuss the job or the company with him prior to launching into a quiz. This would strike me as presumptuous, even if Sorkin had contacted them.
- MS followed up these breaches of etiquette by scheduling an interview for him without discussing the position with him first.
The combination strikes me as presumptuous, arrogant and rude. MS isn't likely to offer me an unsolicited job, but if they did, I'd damn well expect them to be prepared to convince me that the job was something I'd want. I'd certainly be prepared to take a test, but I'd be offended if the interview -started- with the test. Probably not enough to leave. Definitely enough to multiply the salary I was going to ask for by a number proportional to the perceived level of arrogance.
Not because "I'm above proving myself", but because verification works both ways, and MS must prove themselves as well.
-Especially- given the number of business partners they've screwed over and allegations of employee mistreatment.
The article also quotes an MS internal recruiter, who made comments that many managers at MS are arrogant and assume everyone wants to work for MS. It continues by saying that there have been charges that job candidates have been turned off by Microsoft arrogance.
I observed in another forum on the web that arrogance is the distinguishing characteristic of Microsoft Corp. Apparently I am not alone in this feeling.
> I think what you really meant is "if I could get the same functionality out of my computer", which
> actually means the applications.
Well, not just applications; let's call it 'features'.
'Small footprint' isn't an application, but it can be a feature. One -very- cool thing about Linux diversity is the number of mini-distros.
MS wants to sell -more-. Setting up a compact Windows system, and keeping it small, is a -lot- of work, and there are limits. More isn't necessarily better.
The OS, ultimately, needs to provide the right mix of features for the consumer, and consumers have become more dependent on technology, they have also become more particular. It's got to be a good fit, OS, applications, and utilities, or people aren't interested.