Posts by bombastic bob 10944 publicly visible posts • joined 1 May 2015
It makes for a fairly relaxed workplace and, amazingly, stuff does actually get done.
True. this works well for engineering and IT, for the most part. Unfortunately not well for assembly lines. Context is important. But yeah if your job is that of a robot, I suppose you might end up being treated like one...
The best middle managers just solve problems. And when they are doing a good job, upper management is always trying to sack them because their position is no longer needed...
Seriously though in the military the division officers who were good were the ones who ran paperwork and got things signed and approved so we could do our jobs (as opposed to insisting on taking charge and walking everyone through every step). My division on the sub (Reactor Controls division) had more paperwork and approval requirements than any other. So junior officers were "trained" by us, essentially. Sorta like being Black Adder in the episodes I remember seeing a long time ago...
The only things a good manager should have to say: "How is it going?" "What can I do to help?"
Such practices are odious and humiliating and leave no place for intelligent thought - they reduce the human being to a robot that is just supposed to peck the keys sufficiently per minute.
'Odious' - there's a word I haven't seen in a while.. Oh, and for the rest of what you wrote, point well made.
(cost accountants presentng 'cost per keystroke' analysis - that'd make for snooze-fest meetings)
Your reaction to the article itself suggests to me that you did not understand the perspective from which it was written. So I shall explain: It is human nature to react to fear by trying to control things. This becomes problematic when it turns into an authoritarian surveillance environment. The fear comes from lack of trust, and those subjected the surveillance instinctively realize they're not trusted. This causes OTHER unintended consequences, because of human nature.
In short, nobody with a sane mind wants to live in a communist or fascist country with a KBG-like secret police constantly monitoring you, unless they're in positions of power (in which case they have OTHER issues that are somewhat psychotic in my bombastic opinion). Similarly nobody would want to WORK in such an environment either.
A good working environment requires a high level of trust and low stress. Good employees are usually the direct result. It's amazing how high expectations (in both directions) makes everyone work better, on average of course (there are always exceptions, though I expect them to be few and far between).
and some of us learned martial arts, and then the bullies left us alone... (except for the passive-aggressive ones in real life, who just insist on imposing their will yet 'are not bullying' because it is passive-aggressive which is why they are SO irritating)
A good IRL example of a passive-aggressive bully: the discourteous "it is my right" smoker
bullying takes many forms. the WORST form involves actual violence. The most IRRITATING form (In My Bombastic Opinion) is "passive aggressive". In all cases it is one person or group of people unethically imposing their will to control others in some manner. it is the CONTROL part that is at the center of it.
The article brought up many things that I was rapidly nodding my head in the vertical direction over. Fear leads to CONTROL by those in authority, like a knee jerk reaction. It is the LACK of trust that drives it. It is also the WRONG direction to take, since imposing KGB-like surveillance is ONLY going to anger nearly everyone who is subjected to it and create unnecessary stress in the work place (or wherever it is implemented),. And, ii motivates people to "just circumvent".
(maybe that's why we like reading about Simon the BOFH, who regularly "bullies them back")
has the smell of a publicity stunt complete with a justification of Deere's opposition to the right to repair.
The idea that they COULD do such a thing, via DRM, is frightening enough.
WHO owns John Deere tractors, again???
Time to open source the things!
(that and if you want to REALLY fix the Ukraine-Russia war without escalating it into WW3, stalrt prloducing domestic oil inside the USA until the prices get so low that Pootie cannot AFFORD TO STAY THERE and leaves)
Yeah - they are "Majoring in the Minors" - publicity stunts, posturing, and virtue signalling us into global thermonuclear war, if this goes on too long...
There was a similar episode of "Sliders" where our heros "slid" into an alternate dimension where a bacteria (designed to get rid of oil slicks) went horribly wrong, destroying all petroleum-based things including plastic. No more roads, cars, etc. - only natural oils and greases. Peanut oil was a premium lubricant.
atmospheric CO2 levels have risen significantly in recent decades
logic phallacies fallacies detected.
* what is 'significantly' in this context
* was there a cause (such as underwater volcanos or higher water temperature) that would shift the equilibrium reaction towards the release of more CO2? Keep in mind that as temperatue rises, so will CO2 atmospheric concentration, due to the higher water temperature, and NOT the other way 'round. Chem 101
* 'recent decades' when there are at least 2 observable temperature cycles in the northern hemisphere, one 500 years long, another70 years long. observing too few leads to things like "the hockey stick" chart AlGore is infamous for.
[the trend line of a sinusoidal shape, between -135 and +135 degrees, looks like a steep unending upward trend with no end, like that 'hockey stick' shape.]
Sorry, not buying it. Try harder. Thanks for playing.
Other than pointing out the reality of CO2 vs its "mythical" properties that make it an alleged planet killer by allegedly changing climate in the shape of a hockey stick, the reality is that concrete (and it's cousin cement), invented by the Romans, is at the core of construction world wide. Without it, get used to living in HUTS. You cold not even build a brick wall or stucco a house without it.
It is, after all, liquid stone that dries into a very durable material.
Concrete works by using Calcium Oxide (CaO) mixed with water, sand, rock, and frequently a lattice of steel rebar. Sometimes it is pre-stressed to give it extra rigidity.
To make the Calcium Oxide, you take limestone (Calcium Carbonate) and BURN it. With fire. Heh. This releases the CO2 (which was THERE ALREADY) and forms Calcium Oxide. Simple. When mixed with the water, sand, etc. it chemically reacts (producing heat and steam) to form CaOH which binds the sand and other materials into solid concrete.
Carbonate formation begins in the ocean, where RAIN depletes atmospheric CO2 and the resulting carbonic acid (H2CO3) reacts with Calcium and Magnesium to form CaCO3, Mg2CO3, MgHCO3, and CA(HCO3)2. These precipitate out and form carbonate layers at the bottom of the sea. Additionally limestone can form from acidified rain (rain has a HIGH affinity for CO2 absorption) dripping down into caves, where it reacts with calcium and magnesium in the soil to form things like stalagtites and stalagmites. This rain+CO2 thing is why ther is only about 0.04% CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, part of the equilibrium reaction that stabilizes CO2 concentration. It's basic science.
When the oceans were displaced by rising continents, the carbonates were exposed as limestone and calcite and other such things, which can then be mined (and also from caves if you wanted to) and heated to form CaO that can be used to build EVERYTHING that constitutes buildings, roads, parking lots, and so on. Modern cities, yeah.
So I have to wonder why the big deal about CO2 anyway, since I just described how and why it is at equilibrium, and because we're simply putting it back into the cycle of rain depletion and CaCO3 (etc.) production. In fact a vast amount of the world's carbon is "stored" in lake beds and the bottom of the sea. Shellfish bubble CO2 exhalations through sea water to form their own shells. When ocean temperatures rise, some of this is dissolved and then "effervesces" into the atmosphere. It's all part of a natural cycle, in other words.
But if the "new process" results in BETTER concrete at LOWER prices, I'm willing to listen...
* greed is the excessive and generally unhealthy desire to acquire wealth (leading to illegal acts and exploitation, by my observation)
* profit is what keeps YOU employed unless you work for a government.
* It is NOT greed to want profit.
* It is NOT greed to offer goods and services for a value that is their true worth.
* Without potential profit there is (generally) no investment
* Without earning money, there is NO BUSINESS
* Money is a neutral measurement of the true value of goods and services. Unlike barter, it standardizes their value (to some extent). Otherwise you might be trading chickens for car parts.
* if you adopt a "share and share alike" posture, you end up with only a FEW doing MOST of the work, and the rest lazily demanding the things that nobody is making.
So Musk must either makeTwitter worth more so that people DO pay for it, or find a way to monetize it that actually adds value, or increase interest so that current methods work better and generate more revenue.
Capitalism 101
(what DO they teach in these schools, anyway?)
I generally agree. If free speech means you have a right to be abusive or break laws (including libel/slander and various forms of stalking and doxxing), obviously THOSE things cannot be allowed and would mean that 'free speech' would not be good for the platform.
However, I think the current definition of 'free speech' allows for the banning and/or censorship of those things that are abusive, illegal, harassing, inciting, or similar. It may also require SOME bowdlerizing. But pretty much anything else should not only be ALLOWED, it should be ENCOURAGED.
And as for ads vs crypto, the crypto would not work for me as I would not leave a browser on with scripts running. Sanbox only, off when hot in use. Javascript is just too inefficient for crypto mining anyway. probably using 10 times the value of any bitcoin mined in electricity alone (at least in MY area, some of THE most expensive electricity in the world for a major metro area).
MS seem oblivious to the financial problems that people are experiencing all over the world.
They stopped trying to understand their customer base a LONG time ago... culminating in "Windows Update" installing GWX to NAG you until you "UP"graded. And do not EVEN get me started on the whole 2D FLATTY FLATSO FLATASS McFLATFACE look crammed up our asses down our throats by Micros~1, Gobble, and every OTHER big tech bozo with that 'light blue flatty on blinding white' "Mouse/Keyboard Unfriendly" interface 'design' EVERYWHERE... *cough* [ran out of air for a bit]
Yeah, just wait for it, they'll cram NEW GW11 into the forced Win-10-nic update schedule. And you will NOT be able to turn it off nor ignore it, this time. Hourly "have you upgraded to windows 11" nags. Oh did I say HOURLY? Not frequently enough!!! And of course, a minimum of 2 days of downloading and updating to follow your capitulation to their marketing strong-arm techniques. Bring a deck of cards and a slinky to work with you so you are not completely bored.
at one company I was at, each desk got its own small UPS which is not a bad idea... until the cleaning service plugged vacuum cleaners directly into them.
(NOT a "power strip" - and if it were, and it had a line filter, the results could be JUST as BAD)
occasionally a boot might seem cleaner but normally you just stop and restart the various daemons and/or applications. Re-start of desktop might be a good idea, though.
Recently did fix for customer embedded system after I had fixed an irritating bug in lightdm (source is published on product's GPL page). The updater has to jump through some hoops but no reboot is necessary. however, re-starting the GUI is. Takes about a minute.
The sick sad thing about monsters like FaeceBan is that they have cookies and script on various sites (web bugs or similar) that track you based on your FB info. If you use something *LIKE* FB it should only be from a sandboxed browser that is ONLY used for that purpose.
The beauty of Linux and FreeBSD (especially FreeBSE) is that if you are creative with ssh and creating logins and using X11's capability via the DISPLAY environment variable, you can write a script (I have) that will ssh into a different user, run Firefox entirely from that user's context, and then turn off plugins and have the entire cache, cookies, and history DELETED ON EXIT. Then, just access FB or Tw[*]tter or whatever from THAT browser, which will dump cookies and history and other things automatically when you exit.
(So far I have 3 logins for this purpose, one generic, one for Slack which $CLIENT needs me to use, and one for Tw[*]tter which I got an account for ONLY because Musk bought it but the logins are all guest level and unable to su directly to root because of FBSD and NOT in the sudoers file etc. etc. etc.. The generic one dumps history, the other two do not, for now...)
until the AI needed to interpret general human speech is housed in a device that does NOT phone your details home to momma, then we can assume that everything going into their cloudy speech interpreter is interpreted for whatever reasons they deem appropriate...
which is another reason i do not want ANYTHING like that ANYWHERE near me. unless I wanna troll it.
"Start News Feed". Does anyone REALLY want Micros~1 OWNING their NEWS FEED? Maybe the same people who watch [P]MSNBC might, but it's currently one of the WORST RATED CABLE NEWS STATIONS based on viewership.
This from 2020, suggests 'Resetting' the News [CR]app so that it no longer directs its ouput to the start menu, in order to get rid of it. Not sure if that's the same in Windows II or not. My guess, NOT.
Related, from the article: "some clearly struggle to see the benefits"
It is hard to see "benefits" in a monthly subscription fee (rent) for the rest of your life when you used to be able to OWN things...
"The Emperor's clothes are WONDERFUL!'" they say. And then they question why WE cannot see them, too...
If Devuan and Debian were to merge, and then you get a choice of init during setup (and not after), wouldn;t THAT be AWESOME? But that might require double-sets of certain packages, one with systemd, one without, as too many key packages depend on systemd being there, or its features being implemented some other way (and the two may not be compatible).
Similarly Gnome and Mate, though I believe that by now it is FAR less likely with the latest GTK forcing ADWAITA. Just NO on that.
I'd say this is why forks exist.
Right, Royal Marines were apparently a standard part of the crew of a British Naval vessel back in the exploration days. i once toured a modern replica of Captain Cook's ship that went to Australia and new Zealand during an exploration in the late 1700's. It had a deck set up specifically for Royal Marines.
The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps are based on the Royal Navy and Marines.
