Let's just start by saying, I have great parents who were both kind and stern, a good mix of kindness and discipline, but at the schools I have been to not everyone does. Fact of life you may say. That's fine, but pictures this slightly edited scenario from my school:
Jim was let out of class to go to the toilet, while walking down the corridor he mistook a guy standing out for one of his friends (easy enough to do at this school with its dim sky lit corridors) and figured he had been kicked out for something. He said "what have you done this time" and the guy turned around, Jim saw it wasn't the guy he thought it was and starts to apologise. The guy runs over to Jim and pushes him to the ground, then holds his hair and bashes his head into the ground. Then gets up and says "don't tell anyone about this".
He obviously tells people, the guy gets in trouble.
Here's the kicker, in the meeting with the principal, the guy who attacked Jim, that guy's parents and Jim, the parents were yelling at the principal for 2 things.
Thing 1: "How dare you suspend our child from school?"
Thing 2: "How come you haven't disciplined my child to stop this sort of thing?"
That's almost criminal negligence on the behalf of the parents there, and it's so common. The parents don't want their little angel in trouble, but they won't discipline the children themselves.
It's an extension of the other litigation problems that we have; people won't take responsibility for their own actions. When people will sue everyone else in a situation before accepting they may be at fault for something as simple as tripping over a crack in the sidewalk then it's no wonder they wont take responsibility for the raising of their own children.
Oh, and not to be picky, but although you are using an alias: Your website which you link in your posts has your full name, a history of your online persona etc.
I think that the people who are most willing to blog in the first place are demonstrating personality traits more suitable to employers who will focus on soft skills, interpersonal skills and being youthful and trendy
For example, marketing, retail and sales
People who blog about personal aspects of their lives should be kept seperate from those who blog about technical aspects of their lives only, if I am hiring and I google someone's name and they have a personal blog page that is full of wicked technical hacks (http://www.sentex.net/~mwandel/ for example) then how good does that look for them? Very!
But if I google their name and it comes up with something less savoury, or even slihtly unpleasant, well that looks bad. And by the way, it doesnt matter whether the people you worked with last were horrible or not, if you posted about them on your blog, you might post about me if you think I am horrible, I dont want that, so I wont hire you.
Someone put forward the theory to me the other day that we like Celebrities (and I use the term 'we' here loosely) because we miss the sense of community our tribal ancestors had. Celebrities fill the gap because they provide a familiarity with faces and shared stories that link us to other people around the world.
Blogging seems to extend this idea (ideal?) by making peoples stories more openly shared. For example, I read http://www.waiterrant.net/ and http://www.oblivio.com/, I know their stories even though they live in new york, and somehow the world feels smaller and less disparate. Added to that, I have a few friends who read the same blogs, we both know their stories (or at least the stories they choose to tell).
_Perhaps_ people and companies will start taking responsibility for their own actions instead of kneejerk-sueing everyone
Hey, I was shot by the police while comitting a crime: SUE
Hey, Im a clumsy person and fell up the stairs in your suburb: SUE
Hey, I once had an idea, patented it but did nothing else with it and now you have come up with the same idea independently and made money from it: SUE
So cyberterrorism is running rampant huh? Lets find some geeks with enough redneck in them to set up some cyber-vigilante gangs to go recruiting, shooting, and looting. And maybe look for these nasty russians aswell.
Seriously though, what do we need to stop spam? I think we need some sort of grassroots effort. The antivirus/antispam companies wont 'stop' spam in the same way that pharmaceutical companies wont 'cure' diseases. It is in their best interests to make the problem bearable, and charge alot of money for the privelege of having bearable spam/disease/virus's
We need to do this ourselves.
Having said all that, vigilantism may not be the best way, we all know it doesnt work to well in the real world.
"In an apparent public relations blunder, Google claimed to have no way of filtering suggestions. However, Google can and does filter because the toolbar won't provide suggestions for keywords like 'porn'."
"Google has no way of filtering suggestions" means they have no way of filteringsearch results for a given search term
"the toolbar won't provide suggestions for keywords like 'porn'" is keyword filtering, which is an important difference
Personal Preference
on
Gmail vs Pine
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Some people prefer A, some people prefer B. trying to convince people using rational arguments to change something they like or have grown deeply accustomed too usually results in them digging their heels in and sticking to their preferred thing.
On another level what is going on here is the CLI versus GUI debate on another level, a very interesting essay on which can be found here http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html
I recommend giving it a read.
Remember, different is not necessarily bad, its just not the 'good' you are used to. Learn to tell the difference.
The site represents a shift in they way people think about how to attract people to sites.
How many of you will go to a site because of a tv advertisement? Probably quite a few, given my audience. Compare that number though to the amount of people who would join a website/visit a website after recieving an invitation from someone you know. Many more.
It works on two levels:
1. We trust our friends/acquaintances more than other forms of advertising, word of mouth advertising, viral advertising, virulent memes all work on us because of this. Google has formalised a way of doing this with the invitation system.
2. When you go to a website you are used to being able to view content and so on for free. This is especially true with community sites, because the content is not being created by the service provider. However, by removing this ease of access an illusion of exclusivity is created, making us want it more. Of course the volume of people is actually as high, if not higher, than it would be if you can sign up for nothing.
This exclusivity/invitiation system is an awesome way of getting a huge user base of people who are probably actually interested in your service (as opposed to randoms off slashdot, for example)
What it comes down to is companies have finally realised "People need friends"
Im not suprised it took them so long
Perhaps this is the beginning of the end of the cube farm
*laughs sarcastically*
Or perhaps it is just a waste of time?
I agree that managers are a buffer. The issues are meant to hit him first. However with little or no tech knowledge how will he know what is important enough to pass on?
That said most managers have it within them to understand the various importance levels of problems. Not the level of importance to you that is, but to the customer (be it external, internal, his boss, whatever)
What you sound like you need is a "Tech Lead" role. This person sits below the manager but above the workers and does the following: -Works on the really nitty gritty hard problems that require the most tech skill -Helps the other techies with their problems -Is there when the manager needs to ask whats more important to the company tech-wise.
This position usually works out because the manager realises the Tech LEad has no desire to do any LESS tech work and so isnt out after the managers job. Tech Leads should be hired as experienced staff or alternatively created over many few years from new and brilliant staff. This position of experience makes them invaluable to the other techies and to the manager. It also means that buffer will start acting more like a router as the Tech Lead will send the tasks heknows you can do to you.
If your company is too small to need a tech lead then there isnt much you can do but learn to do the job yourself or change jobs.
Next time you change jobs remember that you are also interviewing the company, so ask a few questions about hierarchy and see if you can have a quiet moments chat with another techie. It will save alot of heartache like this.
Slashdot Mirror
Meant to add this aswell:
http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html
Let's just start by saying, I have great parents who were both kind and stern, a good mix of kindness and discipline, but at the schools I have been to not everyone does. Fact of life you may say. That's fine, but pictures this slightly edited scenario from my school:
Jim was let out of class to go to the toilet, while walking down the corridor he mistook a guy standing out for one of his friends (easy enough to do at this school with its dim sky lit corridors) and figured he had been kicked out for something. He said "what have you done this time" and the guy turned around, Jim saw it wasn't the guy he thought it was and starts to apologise. The guy runs over to Jim and pushes him to the ground, then holds his hair and bashes his head into the ground. Then gets up and says "don't tell anyone about this".
He obviously tells people, the guy gets in trouble.
Here's the kicker, in the meeting with the principal, the guy who attacked Jim, that guy's parents and Jim, the parents were yelling at the principal for 2 things.
Thing 1: "How dare you suspend our child from school?"
Thing 2: "How come you haven't disciplined my child to stop this sort of thing?"
That's almost criminal negligence on the behalf of the parents there, and it's so common. The parents don't want their little angel in trouble, but they won't discipline the children themselves.
It's an extension of the other litigation problems that we have; people won't take responsibility for their own actions. When people will sue everyone else in a situation before accepting they may be at fault for something as simple as tripping over a crack in the sidewalk then it's no wonder they wont take responsibility for the raising of their own children.
Oh, and not to be picky, but although you are using an alias:
Your website which you link in your posts has your full name, a history of your online persona etc.
You go to school, you know people.
If you reference those people in your blog, we can find you
You go to school, you do extra-curricular activities
If you reference those activities in your blog, we can find you
You go to school, you have classes
If you mention those classes, we can find you
You go to school, you dislike a teacher
If you mention that teacher, we can find you
Basically, We can find you.
Go and immediately start googling alias's, full names etc of their own to see what pops up?
*hastily edits some forum posts*
*hastily deletes some blog entries*
I think that the people who are most willing to blog in the first place are demonstrating personality traits more suitable to employers who will focus on soft skills, interpersonal skills and being youthful and trendy
For example, marketing, retail and sales
People who blog about personal aspects of their lives should be kept seperate from those who blog about technical aspects of their lives only, if I am hiring and I google someone's name and they have a personal blog page that is full of wicked technical hacks (http://www.sentex.net/~mwandel/ for example) then how good does that look for them? Very!
But if I google their name and it comes up with something less savoury, or even slihtly unpleasant, well that looks bad. And by the way, it doesnt matter whether the people you worked with last were horrible or not, if you posted about them on your blog, you might post about me if you think I am horrible, I dont want that, so I wont hire you.
Someone put forward the theory to me the other day that we like Celebrities (and I use the term 'we' here loosely) because we miss the sense of community our tribal ancestors had. Celebrities fill the gap because they provide a familiarity with faces and shared stories that link us to other people around the world.
Blogging seems to extend this idea (ideal?) by making peoples stories more openly shared. For example, I read http://www.waiterrant.net/ and http://www.oblivio.com/, I know their stories even though they live in new york, and somehow the world feels smaller and less disparate. Added to that, I have a few friends who read the same blogs, we both know their stories (or at least the stories they choose to tell).
It brings back that sense of community a little.
_Perhaps_ people and companies will start taking responsibility for their own actions instead of kneejerk-sueing everyone
Hey, I was shot by the police while comitting a crime: SUE
Hey, Im a clumsy person and fell up the stairs in your suburb: SUE
Hey, I once had an idea, patented it but did nothing else with it and now you have come up with the same idea independently and made money from it: SUE
I dont like our overly-litigious societies
Corporations wagin open war upon one another is part of many dystopic futuristic scifi
luckily they cant do it so openly yet..
yet
welcome our new-neptunian overlords
So cyberterrorism is running rampant huh?
Lets find some geeks with enough redneck in them to set up some cyber-vigilante gangs to go recruiting, shooting, and looting. And maybe look for these nasty russians aswell.
Seriously though, what do we need to stop spam?
I think we need some sort of grassroots effort. The antivirus/antispam companies wont 'stop' spam in the same way that pharmaceutical companies wont 'cure' diseases. It is in their best interests to make the problem bearable, and charge alot of money for the privelege of having bearable spam/disease/virus's
We need to do this ourselves.
Having said all that, vigilantism may not be the best way, we all know it doesnt work to well in the real world.
"In an apparent public relations blunder, Google claimed to have no way of filtering suggestions. However,
Google can and does filter because the toolbar won't provide suggestions for keywords like 'porn'."
"Google has no way of filtering suggestions" means they have no way of filteringsearch results for a given search term
"the toolbar won't provide suggestions for keywords like 'porn'" is keyword filtering, which is an important difference
Some people prefer A, some people prefer B. trying to convince people using rational arguments to change something they like or have grown deeply accustomed too usually results in them digging their heels in and sticking to their preferred thing.
On another level what is going on here is the CLI versus GUI debate on another level, a very interesting essay on which can be found here http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html
I recommend giving it a read.
Remember, different is not necessarily bad, its just not the 'good' you are used to. Learn to tell the difference.
The site represents a shift in they way people think about how to attract people to sites.
How many of you will go to a site because of a tv advertisement? Probably quite a few, given my audience. Compare that number though to the amount of people who would join a website/visit a website after recieving an invitation from someone you know. Many more.
It works on two levels:
1. We trust our friends/acquaintances more than other forms of advertising, word of mouth advertising, viral advertising, virulent memes all work on us because of this. Google has formalised a way of doing this with the invitation system.
2. When you go to a website you are used to being able to view content and so on for free. This is especially true with community sites, because the content is not being created by the service provider. However, by removing this ease of access an illusion of exclusivity is created, making us want it more. Of course the volume of people is actually as high, if not higher, than it would be if you can sign up for nothing.
This exclusivity/invitiation system is an awesome way of getting a huge user base of people who are probably actually interested in your service (as opposed to randoms off slashdot, for example)
What it comes down to is companies have finally realised "People need friends" Im not suprised it took them so long Perhaps this is the beginning of the end of the cube farm *laughs sarcastically* Or perhaps it is just a waste of time?
I agree that managers are a buffer. The issues are meant to hit him first. However with little or no tech knowledge how will he know what is important enough to pass on?
That said most managers have it within them to understand the various importance levels of problems. Not the level of importance to you that is, but to the customer (be it external, internal, his boss, whatever)
What you sound like you need is a "Tech Lead" role. This person sits below the manager but above the workers and does the following:
-Works on the really nitty gritty hard problems that require the most tech skill
-Helps the other techies with their problems
-Is there when the manager needs to ask whats more important to the company tech-wise.
This position usually works out because the manager realises the Tech LEad has no desire to do any LESS tech work and so isnt out after the managers job. Tech Leads should be hired as experienced staff or alternatively created over many few years from new and brilliant staff. This position of experience makes them invaluable to the other techies and to the manager. It also means that buffer will start acting more like a router as the Tech Lead will send the tasks heknows you can do to you.
If your company is too small to need a tech lead then there isnt much you can do but learn to do the job yourself or change jobs.
Next time you change jobs remember that you are also interviewing the company, so ask a few questions about hierarchy and see if you can have a quiet moments chat with another techie. It will save alot of heartache like this.