Re:Ballmer is evidence of the role of luck in life
on
Ballmer To Retire
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· Score: 1
Based on his overall personality, I strongly suspect that if Steve Ballmer hadn't just happened to be college buddies with BillG and Paul Allen, chances are pretty good he'd be selling used cars somewhere and enjoying the nearest football team. Instead, we're going to take him seriously for the rest of his natural life and possible beyond.
Exactly! I've long thought he is the perfect stereotype of the used-car salesman.
And there was another CEO who only got his position due to being a roommate, and who's cluelessness helped totally sink his company: Scott McNealy.
Over the years I've seen 3 investigative reports on TV, and read many articles on the topic. It all comes down to the same thing: The polygraph is just a stage prop in an interrogation, for the purpose of scaring the ignorant into confessing. Here is Penn & Tellers report:
It trades one addiction for others: religion, caffeine, and nicotine. It trades personal responsibility for not drinking, and thus drinking, to an imaginary higher power.
There is an athiest/agnostic sub-group of AA, but judging by things found on their FB page, they are having an uphill battle with the powers-that-be in AA.
Pictures show the aircraft sat on the ground with the tail missing and the forward roof burnt out but it certainly did NOT cartwheel...
I happened to check news just as this story was breaking. The word "cartwheel" came from the first eyewitness report. The next two eyewitnesses said it "spun". So I'm guessing that the guy who said "cartwheel" doesn't really know what the word means, and that instead it spun on its belly.
Seriously, read it. It starts out by truly fixing some of the most egregious brain damage and expansiveness of DMCA, making it into a legitimate copyright law. The cellphone unlocking technicality is just one a thousand bugs this fixes; the bill would also legalize making/selling/using ink cartridges, legalize the playing the DVDs that you have bought, etc. If DMCA had passed originally in this form, it would be much less destructive and hated.
After the first part, then it looks like it does something benevolent related to phones specifically, but to some code I'm unfamiliar with. Then it takes a shot at WIPO.
Overall, this is a no-brainer, and anyone who opposes it, will be outed. That means they'll kill it in some committee, but just in case they don't, remember names and who votes for/against. Reward and punish, based on this one, right here.
I had CL DSL for over 10 years. I'm only 2600' from the CO, but the best they would sell me was 7mbs. So I switched to Comcast and get 22mbs, *and* native IPv6, for less than I was paying CL.
And all I get is 1.5mbps DSL because they are still using ancient copper out in my neck of the woods. C'mon... PLEASE.
There's nothing wrong with copper or its age. You're too far from the CO.
I'm just 2500' from the CO, and the best they offer me is 7Mbs. So after having CenturyLink/Qwest DSL service for over 10 years, I switched to Comcast and now get 22Mbs *and* native IPv6 for less than I was paying 1.5 Mbs DSL.
This is a big, well-known company, and there is a story related to it on the/. front page right now. The problems:
- No network documentation whatsover.
- IT dept fragmented into multiple competing divisions, and each division was
sub-divided by device type. So there were no *network* engineers, there were "firewall engineers", "router/switch" engineers, etc, even though everything was interconnected. So no single network engineer could solve a problem, it always required dragging people from multiple divisions/depts into an issue.
- Workload imposed on one person that should have been distributed across three.
- Engineers not allowed to make any engineering decisions whatsoever.
Nonsensical procedures mandated by management wasted huge amounts of time and
staff, but no engineers were allowed input into the system.
- Change control procedures that made it impossible to get the job done *and*
follow mandated procedures. Everything required many levels of approval,
but the approvers couldn't be bothered to approve in a timely manner,
(if at all), and 50% of the time the change was never fully approved, so the
only way to get the work done was to do it anyway and run the risk of getting
caught in a change audit.
- Clueless managers that believed every IT person is interchangeable and anyone
can be dropped into any role, regardless of education, experience,
certifications, or interest. e.g a network engineer with multiple Cisco
certifications was expected to be a software developer, and a Linux admin,
and not even allowed to work on Cisco equipment.
On my home network, I use the private 24-bit block 10.x.x.x, in case I buy more than 16 million devices. Is the article saying that they decided to map public IPs they didn't own to internal devices? Notwithstanding the confusion such cases like the above would cause, this bank could conceivably leak banking data out to that Chinese ISP!
All the articles I can find are equally uninformative.
At at previous job we found some idiot had done this. We didn't know this until troubleshooting a complaint of not being able to reach a certain portion of the Internet. It really isn't a security issue, because a corporate network will first route to it's internal networks, and only if the destination is not internal will it fall back to the default route to the Internet. The default route will always have a shorter mask, therefore it will be the last chosen. The biggest problem is that doing this stupid trick means you have blackholed a portion of the Internet from your own users.
I was thinking it would be a good idea to just return it to them. If they have a local office, it would be great if 5000 (or maybe more) people all showed up the day after they were delivered to return them...
I have two parachutes here. One has malfunctioned 1 time in 100 jumps. The other has malfunctioned 5 times in 1000 jumps. Which parachute do you want to use?
Go take a course in statistics.
Arrghh!! I misread that post. Scratch my response.
I have two parachutes here. One has malfunctioned 1 time in 100 jumps. The other has malfunctioned 5 times in 1000 jumps. Which parachute do you want to use?
I picked PERCENTAGES. That is how you compare crime rates between countries with different populations. Picking absolute numbers is meaningless unless the two countries have the same size population.
From the point of view of most Europeans where guns are generally banned you all look crazy. We don't have guns and yet somehow aren't being robbed, raped and murdered nearly as much as you guys.
i've lived in 3 different cable markets and they've offered internet only service for quite some time. they generally charge you a bit more, but it's still offered. same with naked dsl.
Agreed. I have Internet-only from Comcast *and* it includes native IPv6. The last time I had cable TV was 2001, and that was only because I worked for AT&T Broadband and it was an employee perk.
or if you want a movie reference to back this up, how about humans can also defect on their own with large war machines...that is the basic Hunt for Red October lesson
It's far easier to concentrate and maintain that concentration when you don't have people constantly coming up to your desk and interrupting you. Since it's easier to concentrate, it's also easier to get into "the zone" and stay in "the zone" for a longer period of time. Further, since you don't commute, people who work from home also tend to work longer hours. So, you do more productive work at home for longer periods of time. I'd say people working from home are more useful for close-knit development teams than ones in the office.
All true, and more; I opted to start working from home to avoid morons in adjacent cubicles who thought it was appropriate to do things like: 1. Hold impromptu meetings in the adjacent aisle with everyone talking as loudly as possible, 2. Make personal phone calls with the phone on *speaker*. And then they would get PO'd at *me* for objecting.
And in addition, at home I have use of my own double-width rack of networking gear where I can replicate issues, and test proposed changes. Every instance I've seen of attempts to set up labs at the office always result in gear being commandeered for "emergency" deployment, or "temporary" use, never to be seen again. The result is the only thing left in the company "lab" is broken junk.
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Based on his overall personality, I strongly suspect that if Steve Ballmer hadn't just happened to be college buddies with BillG and Paul Allen, chances are pretty good he'd be selling used cars somewhere and enjoying the nearest football team. Instead, we're going to take him seriously for the rest of his natural life and possible beyond.
Exactly! I've long thought he is the perfect stereotype of the used-car salesman.
And there was another CEO who only got his position due to being a roommate, and who's cluelessness helped totally sink his company: Scott McNealy.
Now we know why.
You don't need to *cut* a submarine cable to listen to it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells
Have you looked at Facebook's stock recently? It's getting close to the IPO price.
It actually closed a little *over* the IPO price on several days last week.
Over the years I've seen 3 investigative reports on TV, and read many articles on the topic. It all comes down to the same thing: The polygraph is just a stage prop in an interrogation, for the purpose of scaring the ignorant into confessing. Here is Penn & Tellers report:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NLf7XwLpyQ
It trades one addiction for others: religion, caffeine, and nicotine.
It trades personal responsibility for not drinking, and thus drinking, to an imaginary higher power.
There is an athiest/agnostic sub-group of AA, but judging by things found on their FB page, they are having an uphill battle with the powers-that-be in AA.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Agnostics-and-Atheists-in-AA/168374259840358
http://www.aa-atheists.com/
FLEE TO MEXICO
Build private compound
Employ armed guards
Enjoy
If you chose Belize, you could pick up a pre-built compound, and some currently unemployed, (but experienced), guards.
Pictures show the aircraft sat on the ground with the tail missing and the forward roof burnt out but it certainly did NOT cartwheel...
I happened to check news just as this story was breaking. The word "cartwheel" came from the first eyewitness report. The next two eyewitnesses said it "spun". So I'm guessing that the guy who said "cartwheel" doesn't really know what the word means, and that instead it spun on its belly.
The aviation term for such a rotation is "ground loop": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_loop_(aviation)
Seriously, read it. It starts out by truly fixing some of the most egregious brain damage and expansiveness of DMCA, making it into a legitimate copyright law. The cellphone unlocking technicality is just one a thousand bugs this fixes; the bill would also legalize making/selling/using ink cartridges, legalize the playing the DVDs that you have bought, etc. If DMCA had passed originally in this form, it would be much less destructive and hated.
After the first part, then it looks like it does something benevolent related to phones specifically, but to some code I'm unfamiliar with. Then it takes a shot at WIPO.
Overall, this is a no-brainer, and anyone who opposes it, will be outed. That means they'll kill it in some committee, but just in case they don't, remember names and who votes for/against. Reward and punish, based on this one, right here.
Pssst! Jared Polis is already "out". ;-)
I had CL DSL for over 10 years.
I'm only 2600' from the CO, but the best they would sell me was 7mbs.
So I switched to Comcast and get 22mbs, *and* native IPv6, for less than I was paying CL.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYZWP80opd4
And all I get is 1.5mbps DSL because they are still using ancient copper out in my neck of the woods. C'mon... PLEASE.
There's nothing wrong with copper or its age. You're too far from the CO.
I'm just 2500' from the CO, and the best they offer me is 7Mbs. So after having CenturyLink/Qwest DSL service for over 10 years, I switched to Comcast and now get 22Mbs *and* native IPv6 for less than I was paying 1.5 Mbs DSL.
Windows 8 sucks so much, it can lift matter back past the event horizon of a black hole.
I'm going to steal that line. ;-)
This is a big, well-known company, and there is a story related to it on the /. front page right now.
The problems:
- No network documentation whatsover.
- IT dept fragmented into multiple competing divisions, and each division was
sub-divided by device type. So there were no *network* engineers, there were
"firewall engineers", "router/switch" engineers, etc, even though everything
was interconnected. So no single network engineer could solve a problem, it
always required dragging people from multiple divisions/depts into an issue.
- Workload imposed on one person that should have been distributed across three.
- Engineers not allowed to make any engineering decisions whatsoever.
Nonsensical procedures mandated by management wasted huge amounts of time and
staff, but no engineers were allowed input into the system.
- Change control procedures that made it impossible to get the job done *and*
follow mandated procedures. Everything required many levels of approval,
but the approvers couldn't be bothered to approve in a timely manner,
(if at all), and 50% of the time the change was never fully approved, so the
only way to get the work done was to do it anyway and run the risk of getting
caught in a change audit.
- Clueless managers that believed every IT person is interchangeable and anyone
can be dropped into any role, regardless of education, experience,
certifications, or interest. e.g a network engineer with multiple Cisco
certifications was expected to be a software developer, and a Linux admin,
and not even allowed to work on Cisco equipment.
I turned in my resignation several months ago.
On my home network, I use the private 24-bit block 10.x.x.x, in case I buy more than 16 million devices. Is the article saying that they decided to map public IPs they didn't own to internal devices? Notwithstanding the confusion such cases like the above would cause, this bank could conceivably leak banking data out to that Chinese ISP!
All the articles I can find are equally uninformative.
At at previous job we found some idiot had done this. We didn't know this until troubleshooting a complaint of not being able to reach a certain portion of the Internet. It really isn't a security issue, because a corporate network will first route to it's internal networks, and only if the destination is not internal will it fall back to the default route to the Internet. The default route will always have a shorter mask, therefore it will be the last chosen. The biggest problem is that doing this stupid trick means you have blackholed a portion of the Internet from your own users.
What gibberish is this? There is an OS, presumably Xen. Unless we're returning to the 1940s and wiring up tubes to make programs, there is an OS.
Yes, it is just a series of tubes. ;-)
I was thinking it would be a good idea to just return it to them. If they have a local office, it would be great if 5000 (or maybe more) people all showed up the day after they were delivered to return them...
...all singing a bar of Alice's Restaurant!
I use Libre Office just fine without Java installed. Maybe some plugins still need it, but I've never had it complain that I was missing it.
+1
I switched to Libre Office long ago, and can't find any reason anyone would still use OpenOffice.
I have two parachutes here.
One has malfunctioned 1 time in 100 jumps.
The other has malfunctioned 5 times in 1000 jumps.
Which parachute do you want to use?
Go take a course in statistics.
Arrghh!!
I misread that post.
Scratch my response.
I have two parachutes here.
One has malfunctioned 1 time in 100 jumps.
The other has malfunctioned 5 times in 1000 jumps.
Which parachute do you want to use?
Go take a course in statistics.
I picked PERCENTAGES.
That is how you compare crime rates between countries with different populations.
Picking absolute numbers is meaningless unless the two countries have the same size population.
From the point of view of most Europeans where guns are generally banned you all look crazy. We don't have guns and yet somehow aren't being robbed, raped and murdered nearly as much as you guys.
Oh really?
Assault victims:
UK 2.8%
US 1.2%
Rape victims:
UK 0.9%
US 0.4%
Total crime victims:
UK 26.4%
US 21.2%
Ref: http://www.nationmaster.com/compare/United-Kingdom/United-States/Crime
i've lived in 3 different cable markets and they've offered internet only service for quite some time. they generally charge you a bit more, but it's still offered. same with naked dsl.
Agreed. I have Internet-only from Comcast *and* it includes native IPv6.
The last time I had cable TV was 2001, and that was only because I worked for AT&T Broadband and it was an employee perk.
Any system can be hacked. Having humans directly in the loop is the basic Wargames lesson.
and humans can be hacked also.
or if you want a movie reference to back this up, how about humans can also defect on their own with large war machines...that is the basic Hunt for Red October lesson
Here is the list of real pilots who defected with their aircraft: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Cold_War_pilot_defections
The article was delightfully free of actual info, but I assume they are just adding this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse_oximetry
It's far easier to concentrate and maintain that concentration when you don't have people constantly coming up to your desk and interrupting you. Since it's easier to concentrate, it's also easier to get into "the zone" and stay in "the zone" for a longer period of time. Further, since you don't commute, people who work from home also tend to work longer hours. So, you do more productive work at home for longer periods of time. I'd say people working from home are more useful for close-knit development teams than ones in the office.
All true, and more; I opted to start working from home to avoid morons in adjacent cubicles who thought it was appropriate to do things like: 1. Hold impromptu meetings in the adjacent aisle with everyone talking as loudly as possible, 2. Make personal phone calls with the phone on *speaker*. And then they would get PO'd at *me* for objecting.
And in addition, at home I have use of my own double-width rack of networking gear where I can replicate issues, and test proposed changes. Every instance I've seen of attempts to set up labs at the office always result in gear being commandeered for "emergency" deployment, or "temporary" use, never to be seen again. The result is the only thing left in the company "lab" is broken junk.