What is the problem, precisely? Are we so fucked up? So utterly incapable of bringing a fucking product to market that we can't figure out a way to manufacture a piece of portable hardware that allows people to read books from a screen? I mean yeah, I know we can't get back to the moon, and can't provide for ourselves and have to borrow money to have kitchen appliances shipped 10,000 miles so we have something to put on the shelves but are we so bereft of vision that we can't build a simple book reader? Is it really that much more complicated than say, a calculator?
Actually I know the problem is some rat fuck middle manager with his donut stuffed ass wedged into the org chart between the guy that has ALREADY INVENTED THIS PRODUCT and the people that can approve manufacturing it. In fact the guy that has already invented this product was probably fired and is sitting at a sandwich shop someplace studying for his real estate exam.
Want proof that middle management consists of 99% lying rat fucks? We don't have an electronic book reader. We can't bring this product to market. We couldn't do it if we wanted to. The rat fucks win again. There you go.
Microsoft research is a little wasteful, at least in as much as the amount being spent doesn't compare very well to shipped product improvements.
You're presuming the research people have any influence over the shipped product. Middle management is always the obstacle. Microsoft's research division has probably seen man-centuries of brilliant design shoved into a toilet.
MS has the ideas, but sometimes I wonder if there's anyone in the "product development" side actually listening.
The new management could take the axe to Microsoft's $6.6bn of wasteful research and development expenditure. The bloated workforce of more than 60,000 could be slashed, to the point where the huge resulting increase in cash flow would at last permit the company to borrow mega-billions
Yeah! Yeah! Throw thousands out of work! Destroy entire industries for no reason! Borrow billions! Destroy research! Destroy development! Discourage thinking! Waste educations! Waste careers! Ram it all into a giant toilet and cash checks! That's the NEW GAME SHOW ECONOMY!
So now you're suggesting we have a hydrogen shortage?
As others have mentioned, many a civilization has fallen to water woes.
And it all probably started with people running in circles screeching "water shortage! water shortage!" It's hysterical nonsense. It is no more possible to have a water shortage than to have an oxygen shortage. There is enough water on this planet to build a ten foot deep swimming pool completely covering every continent. Several hundred times.
Having enough clean fresh water is a simple matter of going and getting it. Of course, that's when middle management gets involved, turns everything into a giant clusterfuck, pockets all the cash and blames everyone else. Otherwise, a "water shortage" is an easily solved problem.
if the experience proves successful by having great thinkers connected with great developpers
Well, see, that used to be called the "economy" until the whole thing was turned into a game show by middle management.
Had the guy that wins this contest presented the company with his idea they would have told him to fuck off. But as long as they can make the guy stand on a stage so people can laugh at him and make sport of the whole idea of being an inventor or thinker, well, that's just fine because management can stuff tall dollars (and the patent) into their pockets in exchange for a handful of wet shit.
Management is always right! Management is always right! THEY CAN DO NO WRONG! ALL WORSHIP ECONOMISM! Nothing is ever wrong with a big company! The proof is they're employed and the people who complain aren't! And if you are employed they fire you, thus PROVING they are smarter than you!
The only purpose of a big company is to make money, and if they rip out every last tree in the Western Hemisphere to do it then they should be CONGRATULATED! Because that's the FREE MARKET FUCKERS! ALL MONEY TO THE BALD PHONE FLIPPER AND YOU GET MORE SKILLS!
Things are so fucked now our society now could suck the chrome off a '56 Buick.
Ebay cannot employ paid staff to adequately monitor the zillions of auctions that get listed every day, that does not compute as any kind of business plan.
Of course not. They can't employ people because that would like, you know, allow people to eat. A business plan now is "ram cash into our pockets as fast as possible before everyone realizes we're all full of shit."
If they can't employ enough people to do the job right they should either capitalize the company properly or close the doors. This used to be common sense among business people until the economy became a fuckin game show.
but it seems to me that the labels are just attempting their best to make sure that digital downloads are no incentive to the "artist" in order to keep their control over the industry.
'Since record companies have realized the popularity of iTunes and other sites, many reworked contracts to give artists less money per download. Andrews said while record companies once offered artists about 30 cents for each song sold, now musicians are earning less than a dime.'"
Isn't it interesting how management can "rework" contracts in their favor? Hmmm.
And then cut the artist's royalty by almost 70%? Hmmm.
Oh, but this is the free market, so you can't complain.
Water is not consumed. It is not destroyed. It simply changes form. There is a virtually unlimited supply of water on this planet. This will not change no matter how hard we try.
Science-is-infallible types claim to know and understand the universe. For man to stand before the resplendence of creation and claim to know anything is the height of arrogance.
The truth is we know nothing, and what we do know is either incomplete or wrong.
We can sell 150 trillion iPods at umpty hundred dollars each but we can't employ anyone within 7000 miles to make them.
Makes all the sense in the world. What's the problem?
Oh, nobody can make their mortgage? Oh gee. What, you think you're entitled to a job or something? You don't have five years of experience assembling iPods? Quit being so lazy! Get more skills!
how many places are there in which WalMart is absolutely the ONLY store?
Hundreds. Possibly thousands. It is impossible for any "small business" to compete with a company that has annual sales of one quarter of a TRILLION dollars.
And I've yet to see an instance where someone was punished for thinking creatively and solving a real problem that needed to be solved.
Your whole corporate career was a festival of creativity and problem solving, a claim which flies in the face of the recorded experiences of award winning journalists and authors and the day-to-day experiences of millions upon millions of other current and former corporate employees at all levels of both work and management. Not only that, your experiences were perfectly consistent throughout your career and never once, not even ONE TIME did anything different happen. Sorry. You just lost all of your credibility.
And please, give me an example of where a person was drummed out of a job because a manager didn't like their degree??
I've seen people fired because the manager didn't like their car. Please.
SHOULD matter to a corporation
People who invest their professional expertise to help the corporation succeed. People should always be first. The money happens automatically.
MAKES me one of those smart, highly talented people I mentioned before.
I had jobs where I did the work of ten people in half the time for a third the cost. I had jobs where I improved efficiency in double and triple-figures, leading to substantial top line revenue increases quarter over quarter. I had jobs where I personally established multiple-department programs to increase the level of knowledge about the technologies we were using. Outside of the W-4 bullshit, I have personally and single-handedly delivered finished professional commercial products from a blank sheet of paper to unit sales. I have accumulated knowledge within several industries that exceeds that of the people who are being regularly paid for their expertise. I've done it better, faster and less expensively from the very instant I accepted my first full time job.
And there has been precisely one job where I did not find myself beset with some bloated, donut-stuffing, meeting-scheduling, salad-ordering assfuck questioning my knowledge, requiring constant justifications and depriving both myself and the people I was working with of the tools and resources we needed to get our jobs done properly. They followed productive people around like the faint persistent aroma of fresh dogshit smeared on their shoes, fucking up every single thing they touched. I watched every single professional person I worked with screwed out of benefits, promotions, raises, jobs and careers.
It's not about success or skills or money or anything else. It's about cruelty. It's about inflicting pain and suffering on other people because they can. It's that simple.
If it doesn't require any creative / critical thinking
Creative and critical thinking is not tolerated in the corporate workplace. Not tolerated for a moment. Have you ever worked in the cubicles before?
free your time for more interesting things?
Like looking for work, perhaps?
I would certainly point it out as an option
So you earn one university degree. Corporate fucks don't like it, so your "option" is to return to school and spend yet thousands upon thousands more dollars and years more time to earn yet another university degree? Do you have any idea how absurd that is?
quite a few people do change careers mid-life
You missspelled "everybody."
and if you're not constantly looking to expand what you know & can do, then you're on your way to being replaced, because
Nothing else matters except money.
the skills in question are social skills
Social skills: Corporate-speak for a relentlessly cheerful, pliable, agreeable, hard-working self-starter who will never disagree, never offer an opinion, never suggest an alternative; who will work extra hours, complete work that has nothing to do with the job responsibilities, neglect their health, family, social life and everything else that is important to them for the good of the "company," and will not complain when they receive pay cut after pay cut until they are fired for no reason. The simple definition is "slave."
Here's reality: Intelligent self-starters with massive amounts of education, skill and talent are almost guaranteed to be acerbic, opinionated, egocentric, disagreeable, blunt, and not afraid to speak their mind. They have their own way of doing things and rarely accept guidance or directives from management until that manager has EARNED their respect. Almost no corporate manager understands this, which is why almost no corporate manager is capable of employing such a person. They don't have the huevos to build a real team. They are failures at their careers, and in order to sidestep blame for their own lack of ability, they blame the employees and hide behind horseshit like "team player" and "people skills."
What is the true value of a job that can be withdrawn on a moment's notice for no reason? I'm not a mathematician but my guess is somewhere right around zilch.
Slashdot Mirror
What is the problem, precisely? Are we so fucked up? So utterly incapable of bringing a fucking product to market that we can't figure out a way to manufacture a piece of portable hardware that allows people to read books from a screen? I mean yeah, I know we can't get back to the moon, and can't provide for ourselves and have to borrow money to have kitchen appliances shipped 10,000 miles so we have something to put on the shelves but are we so bereft of vision that we can't build a simple book reader? Is it really that much more complicated than say, a calculator?
Actually I know the problem is some rat fuck middle manager with his donut stuffed ass wedged into the org chart between the guy that has ALREADY INVENTED THIS PRODUCT and the people that can approve manufacturing it. In fact the guy that has already invented this product was probably fired and is sitting at a sandwich shop someplace studying for his real estate exam.
Want proof that middle management consists of 99% lying rat fucks? We don't have an electronic book reader. We can't bring this product to market. We couldn't do it if we wanted to. The rat fucks win again. There you go.
That in turn would lead many times more jobs in the long run.
...never happened.
Yeah, like all the destroyed factory jobs that everyone "retrained for" that... oops.
Microsoft research is a little wasteful, at least in as much as the amount being spent doesn't compare very well to shipped product improvements.
You're presuming the research people have any influence over the shipped product. Middle management is always the obstacle. Microsoft's research division has probably seen man-centuries of brilliant design shoved into a toilet.
MS has the ideas, but sometimes I wonder if there's anyone in the "product development" side actually listening.
Middle management is ALWAYS the problem.
The new management could take the axe to Microsoft's $6.6bn of wasteful research and development expenditure. The bloated workforce of more than 60,000 could be slashed, to the point where the huge resulting increase in cash flow would at last permit the company to borrow mega-billions
Yeah! Yeah! Throw thousands out of work! Destroy entire industries for no reason! Borrow billions! Destroy research! Destroy development! Discourage thinking! Waste educations! Waste careers! Ram it all into a giant toilet and cash checks! That's the NEW GAME SHOW ECONOMY!
Thank you.
Where first place...
...is a disappointment.
hydrogen is the limiting reagent
So now you're suggesting we have a hydrogen shortage?
As others have mentioned, many a civilization has fallen to water woes.
And it all probably started with people running in circles screeching "water shortage! water shortage!" It's hysterical nonsense. It is no more possible to have a water shortage than to have an oxygen shortage. There is enough water on this planet to build a ten foot deep swimming pool completely covering every continent. Several hundred times.
Having enough clean fresh water is a simple matter of going and getting it. Of course, that's when middle management gets involved, turns everything into a giant clusterfuck, pockets all the cash and blames everyone else. Otherwise, a "water shortage" is an easily solved problem.
if the experience proves successful by having great thinkers connected with great developpers
Well, see, that used to be called the "economy" until the whole thing was turned into a game show by middle management.
Had the guy that wins this contest presented the company with his idea they would have told him to fuck off. But as long as they can make the guy stand on a stage so people can laugh at him and make sport of the whole idea of being an inventor or thinker, well, that's just fine because management can stuff tall dollars (and the patent) into their pockets in exchange for a handful of wet shit.
What is funny is that the whole model started not in some corporate think tank
Corporations never EVER produce anything original. Ever.
eBay doesn't owe you a living
Management is always right! Management is always right! THEY CAN DO NO WRONG! ALL WORSHIP ECONOMISM! Nothing is ever wrong with a big company! The proof is they're employed and the people who complain aren't! And if you are employed they fire you, thus PROVING they are smarter than you!
The only purpose of a big company is to make money, and if they rip out every last tree in the Western Hemisphere to do it then they should be CONGRATULATED! Because that's the FREE MARKET FUCKERS! ALL MONEY TO THE BALD PHONE FLIPPER AND YOU GET MORE SKILLS!
Things are so fucked now our society now could suck the chrome off a '56 Buick.
Ebay cannot employ paid staff to adequately monitor the zillions of auctions that get listed every day, that does not compute as any kind of business plan.
Of course not. They can't employ people because that would like, you know, allow people to eat. A business plan now is "ram cash into our pockets as fast as possible before everyone realizes we're all full of shit."
If they can't employ enough people to do the job right they should either capitalize the company properly or close the doors. This used to be common sense among business people until the economy became a fuckin game show.
There is not an unlimited supply of clean, drinkable water on the planet.
:)
Agreed. That is a fixable problem, however.
People running around screeching "WATER SHORTAGE WATER SHORTAGE" doesn't help.
Just changes form eh?
Yep.
ike being converted into carbohydrates through photosynthesis?
What's the by-product of photosynthesis? Oxygen.
What does every water molecule contain? An oxygen atom.
If water were "consumed" every species would have become extinct a couple billion years ago.
There is no such thing as a water shortage. It cannot happen. Period.
but it seems to me that the labels are just attempting their best to make sure that digital downloads are no incentive to the "artist" in order to keep their control over the industry.
You're... You're... YOU'RE KIDDING!!
SAY IT ISN'T SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
(scene of a forest)
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
(mountain range)
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
(downtown St. Paul Minnesota)
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
(a fruit stand on interstate 10 outside of Tulsa)
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
(Earth from just outside lunar orbit)
If the terms of the big labels are so unfair then why doesn't someone come along and set up a company to compete with them?
Just stop it. Please? There is no such thing as a free market. So stop it.
We know nothing,
Correct.
on a computer, connected to the Internet, powered by a physical plant hundreds or thousands of miles away
Oh yeah. Computers. The pinnacle of human knowledge. Right before the cursor freezes.
We know a thing or two, but we can't feed everyone. We have satellites orbiting the Earth while people live on sidewalks.
We know nothing.
'Since record companies have realized the popularity of iTunes and other sites, many reworked contracts to give artists less money per download. Andrews said while record companies once offered artists about 30 cents for each song sold, now musicians are earning less than a dime.'"
Isn't it interesting how management can "rework" contracts in their favor? Hmmm.
And then cut the artist's royalty by almost 70%? Hmmm.
Oh, but this is the free market, so you can't complain.
There is no such thing as a water shortage.
There is no such thing as a water shortage.
There is no such thing as a water shortage.
Water is not consumed. It is not destroyed. It simply changes form. There is a virtually unlimited supply of water on this planet. This will not change no matter how hard we try.
There is no such thing as a water shortage.
Have a nice day.
Second law of thermodynamics. Fine. We heard you the first eighty trillion times.
"It'll never work" Fine. We heard you the first eighty trillion times.
Got anything original?
Science-is-infallible types claim to know and understand the universe. For man to stand before the resplendence of creation and claim to know anything is the height of arrogance.
The truth is we know nothing, and what we do know is either incomplete or wrong.
We can sell 150 trillion iPods at umpty hundred dollars each but we can't employ anyone within 7000 miles to make them.
Makes all the sense in the world. What's the problem?
Oh, nobody can make their mortgage? Oh gee. What, you think you're entitled to a job or something? You don't have five years of experience assembling iPods? Quit being so lazy! Get more skills!
how many places are there in which WalMart is absolutely the ONLY store?
Hundreds. Possibly thousands. It is impossible for any "small business" to compete with a company that has annual sales of one quarter of a TRILLION dollars.
this has nothing to do with influence
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!!!
Have a nice day.
And I've yet to see an instance where someone was punished for thinking creatively and solving a real problem that needed to be solved.
Your whole corporate career was a festival of creativity and problem solving, a claim which flies in the face of the recorded experiences of award winning journalists and authors and the day-to-day experiences of millions upon millions of other current and former corporate employees at all levels of both work and management. Not only that, your experiences were perfectly consistent throughout your career and never once, not even ONE TIME did anything different happen. Sorry. You just lost all of your credibility.
And please, give me an example of where a person was drummed out of a job because a manager didn't like their degree??
I've seen people fired because the manager didn't like their car. Please.
SHOULD matter to a corporation
People who invest their professional expertise to help the corporation succeed. People should always be first. The money happens automatically.
MAKES me one of those smart, highly talented people I mentioned before.
I had jobs where I did the work of ten people in half the time for a third the cost. I had jobs where I improved efficiency in double and triple-figures, leading to substantial top line revenue increases quarter over quarter. I had jobs where I personally established multiple-department programs to increase the level of knowledge about the technologies we were using. Outside of the W-4 bullshit, I have personally and single-handedly delivered finished professional commercial products from a blank sheet of paper to unit sales. I have accumulated knowledge within several industries that exceeds that of the people who are being regularly paid for their expertise. I've done it better, faster and less expensively from the very instant I accepted my first full time job.
And there has been precisely one job where I did not find myself beset with some bloated, donut-stuffing, meeting-scheduling, salad-ordering assfuck questioning my knowledge, requiring constant justifications and depriving both myself and the people I was working with of the tools and resources we needed to get our jobs done properly. They followed productive people around like the faint persistent aroma of fresh dogshit smeared on their shoes, fucking up every single thing they touched. I watched every single professional person I worked with screwed out of benefits, promotions, raises, jobs and careers.
It's not about success or skills or money or anything else. It's about cruelty. It's about inflicting pain and suffering on other people because they can. It's that simple.
If it doesn't require any creative / critical thinking
Creative and critical thinking is not tolerated in the corporate workplace. Not tolerated for a moment. Have you ever worked in the cubicles before?
free your time for more interesting things?
Like looking for work, perhaps?
I would certainly point it out as an option
So you earn one university degree. Corporate fucks don't like it, so your "option" is to return to school and spend yet thousands upon thousands more dollars and years more time to earn yet another university degree? Do you have any idea how absurd that is?
quite a few people do change careers mid-life
You missspelled "everybody."
and if you're not constantly looking to expand what you know & can do, then you're on your way to being replaced, because
Nothing else matters except money.
the skills in question are social skills
Social skills: Corporate-speak for a relentlessly cheerful, pliable, agreeable, hard-working self-starter who will never disagree, never offer an opinion, never suggest an alternative; who will work extra hours, complete work that has nothing to do with the job responsibilities, neglect their health, family, social life and everything else that is important to them for the good of the "company," and will not complain when they receive pay cut after pay cut until they are fired for no reason. The simple definition is "slave."
Here's reality: Intelligent self-starters with massive amounts of education, skill and talent are almost guaranteed to be acerbic, opinionated, egocentric, disagreeable, blunt, and not afraid to speak their mind. They have their own way of doing things and rarely accept guidance or directives from management until that manager has EARNED their respect. Almost no corporate manager understands this, which is why almost no corporate manager is capable of employing such a person. They don't have the huevos to build a real team. They are failures at their careers, and in order to sidestep blame for their own lack of ability, they blame the employees and hide behind horseshit like "team player" and "people skills."
What is the true value of a job that can be withdrawn on a moment's notice for no reason? I'm not a mathematician but my guess is somewhere right around zilch.