What, is this discussion a cron process? Every couple of months we trot out Bitpass, Peppercoin, PayPal, online comics and copyright and criticize them for how "l4me" they are.
The most entertaining part is how willing people are to, in the same thread, proudly proclaim how they will steal anything that is placed online, yet bitch and gripe when spammers steal their bandwidth.
If micropayments truly sucked, PayPal would have gone out of business years ago. Period. End of story.
Now let's have another story about spam! Anyone see the irony? Anyone?
The greatest human endeavor in a five hundred years is about to be announced, and almost every message is griping about cost and how "impractical" it is.
If a man were to step on another planet, it would be one of the most meaningful and inspiring moments in thousands of years. It would change humanity forever.
The amount of scientific knowledge that could be gained by the research effort to complete this mission is incalculable.
But to stand around and cynically bitch about trivia before such magnificent sagacity is truly depressing. I thought knowledge, science and engineering were values, not budget categories.
Nobody gives a shit about government spending unless it's for the space program. We spend half a TRILLION dollars a year just on budget increases and debt financing, and nobody says a word. $20 billion for a moon mission and everyone starts carping about money.
Right. Let's start by questioning the attitudes of the lying fuck managers.
Might I suggest reading some self help books on communication and people skills?
I have extraordinary communication and people skills. I'm not a cheating lying asshole, however, which puts me at a disadvantage in the average workplace, I've found.
You already figured out that there's a lot more to getting a job than being the best qualified candidate to perform that particular job function.
A premise which I reject completely. This is precisely the kind of subjective horseshit that makes the hiring process its own caricature.
Now that you've figured out what employers are looking for, why don't you work towards obtaining those qualities?
Because I won't become a liar to impress a cheat.
If your employer is oppressing your views, maybe you need to think about how you're presenting them.
Yeah, it's all my fault. Notice how employers are always blameless? Are you actually suggesting that I should choose to countenance oppression? Why does management always have a ready supply of apologists while former employees, whose careers have been unjustly destroyed, must bargain for the benefit of the doubt?
Passive bitching really doesn't do anything except make you look like a trouble maker.
No, what makes me look like a troublemaker is competence, education and initiative, backed by the experience and qualifications to build successfully from the ideas I present.
Instead, present your ideas to the decision makers like you're selling them the idea. Point out the benefits and give a list of reasons why your idea is better than their current process.
...and then get fired anyway and lose my house, money, credit, career... Sorry. I'll pass.
Do the Apple engineers make minimum wage? Do they make less?
Did they outsource their jobs before they wrote iTunes?
Where were these products invented?
Oh, wait. You want it both ways! You want to sell the glitzy, hip popular products. So you'll write a big fucking check to Apple, but you won't pay a living wage to the PEOPLE YOU EXPECT TO BUY YOUR SHIT!
Buy low, sell high, right? Pay a shitty wage and don't let the workers share in the success, but demand 20% top-line growth and extra bean salad at the board meeting. The corporate dream continues.
There are ten million unemployed right now. The average job (in my experience) lasts less than two years. People are unsatisfied with their jobs in massive numbers. Wages are stagnant if not falling rapidly.
I know zero people who are gainfully employed in a full time job paying a living wage. Zero.
Management absolutely forbids telecommuting, unless the employee works for another company.
Hiring is a subjective popularity contest with no accountability. Qualified people are passed over reguarly and often as a matter of policy.
Education is meaningless. Absolutely meaningless.
Once hired, most people find their jobs are gray, dispassionate drudgery where they are not allowed to open their mouths to say anything or to offer even a single new idea. This after being required to have decades of senior level experience and years upon years of advanced education (where, one assumes, they were also expected to keep their mouths shut).
Why not just sell it all, Mr. and Mrs. CEO? Just ship the whole fucking thing FedEx to elsewhere Inc.? It's not like you'll notice the total collapse of the economy from inside your Navigator or your half-million dollar townhouse. Just fuck over all your neighbors and cash those options. Everything will be just fine in time for the next backyard block party.
24/7 advertising. No job. No career. No credit. Basket full of crap at 28% interest. Get back on that fucking couch and keep your fucking mouth shut, consumer. This is the "corporate dream."
It was not malicious, but it was also unwise. For those of you who think this is an ok thing to do, try pulling something similar at work. You wont get fired,
expelled
and prob not sent home w/out pay for a day,
suspended
but your boss and others will most likely come in your office
ridiculed
Tell me again how the workplace is different than a classroom?
Have you thought about doing what most other people do, and get a job?
Having a work schedule in addition to a full-time class schedule is not always a good idea. It's a little difficult to do great work in school if you are always sitting down to Advanced Linguistic Anthropology after eight hours of waiting tables or restocking the paper towels at Wal-Mart.
Student loans are another way to go - there's nothing wrong with getting one either.
Except the ridiculous interest and the fact that it takes years and years and years to pay it off. Item one in college: DO NOT BORROW EVEN ONE DOLLAR UNLESS IT IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY.
This is especially important with credit cards. Fuck that up and you'll realize right fucking now how un-free money is.
Of course, there are many decent, intelligent managers out there, but I have found an inverse correlation between company size and manager quality: The bigger the company the more clueless management tends to be.
And isn't it astounding how exhaustively qualified one must be to take a job where there is never an opportunity to think or to make use of programming experience?
Think of the knowledge and education that is wasted by a policy of discouraging discussion and new ideas. It's incredible.
This also goes for your opinions on anything that someone has already made a decision on, and they're just asking for your response to seem like a team player.
Team Player n.
A recently invented corporate term which means "agree with us even when we are wrong.":)
Wow. Normally the reply is "no, management is wonderful! It must be your fault!":)
I saw the same thing at just about every programming job. Speaking was not allowed, even though all the programmers were required to attend every meeting.
The innovation that happens in the public eye is trivial compared to what happens in corporate cubicle farms and data centers.
Nothing innovative ever happens in a "corporate cubicle farm." Period. Truly innovative, entreprenuerial people leave the "corporate cubicle farm" as soon as they possibly can because risk-averse middle management has made it clear they have no use for competent, creative people.
The government puts money in, but dosen't get any back.
Really? They sure seem to take a few bucks out of the ol' paycheck every so often.
there isn't any clear way to make an actual _profit_ from such endevors
There is if profit is measured in something other than dollars. It would be nice if the fucking accountants and corporate skeptics would get the fuck out of the way once in a while. Not every human endeavor need be a commercial transaction.
If there was value in it, the private market would accomplish said goal.
So the Apollo 11 landing was valueless?
Let's be real -- why do you want us to go to the moon? Just to clap ourselves on the back and say we did it?
The personal computer The microwave oven Satellite communications Food preservation Advanced fabrics Electronics miniaturization Advanced power storage technology Advanced materials composites Medical device monitoring technology
All accomplished almost 40 years ago. The list goes on for several pages.
Can't go back to the moon. Nobody can make a "business case" for it. The skeptics and cynics will whine "what do we need THAT for?" and since nobody can demonstrate a 20% cash ROI in the latest version of Excel, complete with pie charts and a "whoosh" sound in PowerPoint, it won't happen.
In other words, nobody has written an elevator pitch.
Hope and progress are quaint notions which have no place amongst the cubicles. Now get back to work. Rent is due.
Poor analogy. Water is an industry because it requires purification.
Perfect analogy. Rainwater is about as pure as water gets. Water is an industry because it's more convenient to pay for water than it is to set up basins on the patio.
Purified water cannot be "copied" ad infinitum.
As a matter of fact, there is so much water available that "copying" it is a non-issue. In fact, it's a red herring.
Anyone who claims that there is money to made selling Open Source software is daft.
Red Hat's market cap closed at $3.17 billion on Friday, up 304% for the year.
Now, Perl should be a perfunctory check: can we use GPL software for development purposes? Yes, but make sure you don't use the code. Simple.
Which is precisely why it would never happen in the standard five-foot-wide-ass bureaucracy. Anyone who must have "knowledge" of something must also have "approval" authority, and therefore nothing will ever be accomplished.
When the ratio of the mass of an organization to its IQ reaches a certain value, the organization stops moving. Period. It's as certain as the laws of thermodynamics. In fact it should BE a law of thermodynamics.
This is the entirety of justficiation for the existence of most "corporate" "departments." It's also a very efficient way to ensure universal mediocrity.
Slashdot Mirror
blah blah micropayments suck blah blah
What, is this discussion a cron process? Every couple of months we trot out Bitpass, Peppercoin, PayPal, online comics and copyright and criticize them for how "l4me" they are.
The most entertaining part is how willing people are to, in the same thread, proudly proclaim how they will steal anything that is placed online, yet bitch and gripe when spammers steal their bandwidth.
If micropayments truly sucked, PayPal would have gone out of business years ago. Period. End of story.
Now let's have another story about spam! Anyone see the irony? Anyone?
The greatest human endeavor in a five hundred years is about to be announced, and almost every message is griping about cost and how "impractical" it is.
If a man were to step on another planet, it would be one of the most meaningful and inspiring moments in thousands of years. It would change humanity forever.
The amount of scientific knowledge that could be gained by the research effort to complete this mission is incalculable.
But to stand around and cynically bitch about trivia before such magnificent sagacity is truly depressing. I thought knowledge, science and engineering were values, not budget categories.
This idea should be supported.
Nobody gives a shit about government spending unless it's for the space program. We spend half a TRILLION dollars a year just on budget increases and debt financing, and nobody says a word. $20 billion for a moon mission and everyone starts carping about money.
What a load of crap.
A poor attitude certainly doesn't help things.
...and then get fired anyway and lose my house, money, credit, career... Sorry. I'll pass.
Right. Let's start by questioning the attitudes of the lying fuck managers.
Might I suggest reading some self help books on communication and people skills?
I have extraordinary communication and people skills. I'm not a cheating lying asshole, however, which puts me at a disadvantage in the average workplace, I've found.
You already figured out that there's a lot more to getting a job than being the best qualified candidate to perform that particular job function.
A premise which I reject completely. This is precisely the kind of subjective horseshit that makes the hiring process its own caricature.
Now that you've figured out what employers are looking for, why don't you work towards obtaining those qualities?
Because I won't become a liar to impress a cheat.
If your employer is oppressing your views, maybe you need to think about how you're presenting them.
Yeah, it's all my fault. Notice how employers are always blameless? Are you actually suggesting that I should choose to countenance oppression? Why does management always have a ready supply of apologists while former employees, whose careers have been unjustly destroyed, must bargain for the benefit of the doubt?
Passive bitching really doesn't do anything except make you look like a trouble maker.
No, what makes me look like a troublemaker is competence, education and initiative, backed by the experience and qualifications to build successfully from the ideas I present.
Instead, present your ideas to the decision makers like you're selling them the idea. Point out the benefits and give a list of reasons why your idea is better than their current process.
HEY!!
Do the Apple engineers make minimum wage? Do they make less?
Did they outsource their jobs before they wrote iTunes?
Where were these products invented?
Oh, wait. You want it both ways! You want to sell the glitzy, hip popular products. So you'll write a big fucking check to Apple, but you won't pay a living wage to the PEOPLE YOU EXPECT TO BUY YOUR SHIT!
Buy low, sell high, right? Pay a shitty wage and don't let the workers share in the success, but demand 20% top-line growth and extra bean salad at the board meeting. The corporate dream continues.
So, you've run into that too?
Oh, absolutely. "Put your degree last." Heard it again and again. I'm sure it only gets worse the better educated someone is.
Or were you one of the management bastards feeding me that line of shit last year?
Not a chance. Any manager that doesn't recognize the value of education is an idiot.
Although I have a sneaking suspicion that people with doctorates are taking my grunt tech support jobs.
No. According to management, anyone stupid enough to earn a Doctorate deserves to be overqualified, and unemployed.
There are ten million unemployed right now. The average job (in my experience) lasts less than two years. People are unsatisfied with their jobs in massive numbers. Wages are stagnant if not falling rapidly.
I know zero people who are gainfully employed in a full time job paying a living wage. Zero.
Management absolutely forbids telecommuting, unless the employee works for another company.
Hiring is a subjective popularity contest with no accountability. Qualified people are passed over reguarly and often as a matter of policy.
Education is meaningless. Absolutely meaningless.
Once hired, most people find their jobs are gray, dispassionate drudgery where they are not allowed to open their mouths to say anything or to offer even a single new idea. This after being required to have decades of senior level experience and years upon years of advanced education (where, one assumes, they were also expected to keep their mouths shut).
Why not just sell it all, Mr. and Mrs. CEO? Just ship the whole fucking thing FedEx to elsewhere Inc.? It's not like you'll notice the total collapse of the economy from inside your Navigator or your half-million dollar townhouse. Just fuck over all your neighbors and cash those options. Everything will be just fine in time for the next backyard block party.
24/7 advertising. No job. No career. No credit. Basket full of crap at 28% interest. Get back on that fucking couch and keep your fucking mouth shut, consumer. This is the "corporate dream."
It was not malicious, but it was also unwise. For those of you who think this is an ok thing to do, try pulling something similar at work. You wont get fired,
expelled
and prob not sent home w/out pay for a day,
suspended
but your boss and others will most likely come in your office
ridiculed
Tell me again how the workplace is different than a classroom?
I guess it really depends how much your education matters to you.
I worked every single day I was in school. My education mattered to me. It would be nice if it mattered to employers, but it doesn't.
There is significant age discrimination and it is effectively a ten to fifteen year career. ...at 11 different companies.
Have you thought about doing what most other people do, and get a job?
Having a work schedule in addition to a full-time class schedule is not always a good idea. It's a little difficult to do great work in school if you are always sitting down to Advanced Linguistic Anthropology after eight hours of waiting tables or restocking the paper towels at Wal-Mart.
Student loans are another way to go - there's nothing wrong with getting one either.
Except the ridiculous interest and the fact that it takes years and years and years to pay it off.
Item one in college: DO NOT BORROW EVEN ONE DOLLAR UNLESS IT IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY.
This is especially important with credit cards. Fuck that up and you'll realize right fucking now how un-free money is.
Of course, there are many decent, intelligent managers out there, but I have found an inverse correlation between company size and manager quality: The bigger the company the more clueless management tends to be.
And isn't it astounding how exhaustively qualified one must be to take a job where there is never an opportunity to think or to make use of programming experience?
Think of the knowledge and education that is wasted by a policy of discouraging discussion and new ideas. It's incredible.
This also goes for your opinions on anything that someone has already made a decision on, and they're just asking for your response to seem like a team player.
:)
Team Player n.
A recently invented corporate term which means "agree with us even when we are wrong."
Wow. Normally the reply is "no, management is wonderful! It must be your fault!" :)
I saw the same thing at just about every programming job. Speaking was not allowed, even though all the programmers were required to attend every meeting.
The innovation that happens in the public eye is trivial compared to what happens in corporate cubicle farms and data centers.
Nothing innovative ever happens in a "corporate cubicle farm." Period. Truly innovative, entreprenuerial people leave the "corporate cubicle farm" as soon as they possibly can because risk-averse middle management has made it clear they have no use for competent, creative people.
The government puts money in, but dosen't get any back.
Really? They sure seem to take a few bucks out of the ol' paycheck every so often.
there isn't any clear way to make an actual _profit_ from such endevors
There is if profit is measured in something other than dollars. It would be nice if the fucking accountants and corporate skeptics would get the fuck out of the way once in a while. Not every human endeavor need be a commercial transaction.
If there was value in it, the private market would accomplish said goal.
So the Apollo 11 landing was valueless?
Let's be real -- why do you want us to go to the moon? Just to clap ourselves on the back and say we did it?
The personal computer
The microwave oven
Satellite communications
Food preservation
Advanced fabrics
Electronics miniaturization
Advanced power storage technology
Advanced materials composites
Medical device monitoring technology
All accomplished almost 40 years ago. The list goes on for several pages.
Can't go back to the moon. Nobody can make a "business case" for it. The skeptics and cynics will whine "what do we need THAT for?" and since nobody can demonstrate a 20% cash ROI in the latest version of Excel, complete with pie charts and a "whoosh" sound in PowerPoint, it won't happen.
In other words, nobody has written an elevator pitch.
Hope and progress are quaint notions which have no place amongst the cubicles. Now get back to work. Rent is due.
Poor analogy. Water is an industry because it requires purification.
Perfect analogy. Rainwater is about as pure as water gets. Water is an industry because it's more convenient to pay for water than it is to set up basins on the patio.
Purified water cannot be "copied" ad infinitum.
As a matter of fact, there is so much water available that "copying" it is a non-issue. In fact, it's a red herring.
Anyone who claims that there is money to made selling Open Source software is daft.
Red Hat's market cap closed at $3.17 billion on Friday, up 304% for the year.
:) (clicked submit too fast)
Where are you living?
Earth. Been coming out of the sky for oh, 3.2 billion years or so.
Now, Perl should be a perfunctory check: can we use GPL software for development purposes? Yes, but make sure you don't use the code. Simple.
Which is precisely why it would never happen in the standard five-foot-wide-ass bureaucracy. Anyone who must have "knowledge" of something must also have "approval" authority, and therefore nothing will ever be accomplished.
When the ratio of the mass of an organization to its IQ reaches a certain value, the organization stops moving. Period. It's as certain as the laws of thermodynamics. In fact it should BE a law of thermodynamics.
Water is free.
Water is a $5 billion industry.
Seems simple enough.
a lot of bureaucratic hassle for engineers.
This is the entirety of justficiation for the existence of most "corporate" "departments." It's also a very efficient way to ensure universal mediocrity.