February 2008 Archives
Apple announced today that iTunes had become the number 2 music retailer in the U.S., behind only Wal-Mart (thus overtaking Best Buy).
50 million customers, over four billion songs sold -- 20 million songs on Christmas Day 2007 alone. The end of certain music-related business models, and the concomitant disappearance of business activities.
Capitalism in action.
With my own two hands
Make a better place
With my own two hands
Make a kinder place
With my own two hands
The cantankerous beast was ugly and smelly. In every respect it was difficult, irritating to deal with. Clearly, its own voice irritated itself, too.
He thundered that all discussions and decisions would be collegial, of course. But he'd never delegate authority. He always undermined anyone who took responsibility. It wasn't a collegium, equality had no place, only (centralized) power and authority.
It starts with undiluted euphoria. Saunters in the extreme woods of happiness. Rests in the meadow of elation. Takes a turn through chronic well-being. Falling in love, or rising with it, your choice.
Just know that it won't last. The fusion is never complete; desired and attempted, but impossible. Learn to anticipate and accept the disillusion of feeling misunderstood by the One Who You Thought Knew You So Perfectly Well --but who turned out to not have perfect intuition. It's ok, it can still be love.
Not that it's copacetic, mind you. She hated it, it wasn't what she had hoped for, she pined for something that would hurt. Giving in wasn't very satisfactory, but she wasn't willing to get out of her comfort zone. So she smoked a cigarette, glanced irritatingly at her coated nails, then turned to the computer to reluctantly spell That's fine.
Every key press of the way she wished she could scream that concession was unacceptable to her. That had happened last week. The neighbors called the cops on her. Also unacceptable. Their turn will come, she giggled interiorly.
What a lack of harmony and propriety!
Incompatible colors, nonconforming behavior, disagreeing with everything we've come to know, a rejection of principle as such, inconsistent with the requirements of life, with being qua being. Ill-mannered, unsuitable for humanity.
The division is cut and clear. No such split can be mended. There is no group that would make sense, no union in any kind of interest. The schism is complete. We're divided, Thank God. You thought you'd take your cut and quickly split. Good luck with that.
So, you claimed you were highly competent. Not that you could honestly think so. Your advance resides in entirely different, dishonorable directions (yes, plural). The only type of accuracy one could attribute to your life is the skill to misjudge facts, to grab erroneous notions, to be adept at failure.
Whatever he claims his new goal is, he is ineffectual. Just as useless, the zombie who applauds and proposes to push yet another weak, cannibalistic goal. Without effect too, judged by the standard of the officially announced goals, is the plastic sidekick. We may just as well have Evil Bert run the show, at least that would be evidence that producing the proper effect is not relevant.
They're noisy, unavailing creatures. They do have unwanted side-effects.
After a life of procrastination, he couldn't choose between putting the decision off, or delaying his thoughts. If only he could linger without emotions! But dawdling would only take you so far, so he touched the same piece of paper over and over, while chanting an ancient mantra. A witless hippie wanted to make a slow, repetitive music video from that. With floating magnetic sculptures. And unpaid sadhus.
Staying away from each other, neither diverging nor converging. Not moving in different directions, just being on separate planes. Branching off may or may not lead to intersections. In most parallel universes, they don't even exist.
Enact some service, perhaps. Serve a market, gratuitously. Do anything for tips, broadly. Hide your perquisites, certainly. Add to your wages, secretly. Pretend it's an office, daily. Ignore the levers of profit, repeatedly. Pull an outrageous salary, certainly. Claim sole rights to creativity, falsely. Do anything for top positions, blatantly.
A bit of temperance in feelings, a bit of self-control in behavior, some decency in personal habits -- Victorian constraints for the whim-worshipper. A concern for performance may help.
Deception and subterfuge, twin stratagems of mendacity! what other stealthy devices are available to the psychopath who needs to masquerade? it is all for nought, as evasion is the underhand root of evil, and evil is fundamentally impotent, a fugitive from reality.
There is no significant business value in Microsoft's proposed takeover of Yahoo. It's no threat to Google, on the contrary. In the long term, Microsoft should divide itself into a collection of 5-10 independent, competing companies -- if its shareholders want to create the sparks that will let their capital innovate in and lead a non-desktop world of computing.
Scott Rosenberg: For Microsoft, this move is a final admission of the utter failure of the company's effort to build an online business for itself over the past decade -- in services, advertising or content. Winning Yahoo would surely bolster Microsoft in this area in the short term. But in the long term, these efforts at lashing together two failures in hopes of sparking a success have never prospered.
Take comfort in being out of there. Console yourself in not having to face psychopaths. This should alleviate the painful memories, soothe you while healing the scars, allay the worries. Time assuages all things. Intensity must lessen. Distress shall ease. Quietness tolerably pacifies. Distance softens and appeases. Separation quenches and relieves. Plans mitigate fear and alarm. New beginnings agreeably sweeten the past and pleasantly satisfy the future. Aim at being urbane and suave, unlike them.
His mien is a disguise. A congenial aspect, a dynamic appearance, an outgoing manner. These are not indicators of his true mood. His personality is to hide a nefarious attitude. Watch his demeanor in the presence of a group, especially his expressive bearing when telling a lie. Watch the sickening eye motions and the beak-like face when hostility wells up.
Dealing with the office psycho: The three main traits usually ascribed to psychopathic/sociopathic personality types are they are very egocentric, they have no empathy for others and they are incapable of feeling remorse or guilt. ... One of the common strategies a workplace psycho will use is to isolate you. ... one of the most important things you can do ... is to recognise them for what they are. Most of us are basically decent people and we tend to assume other people are as well. Psychopaths and sociopaths use that to their advantage. What we regard as a conscience, they regard as a weakness to be exploited. ... These people are not just jerks ... One way to tell if a troublesome person is actually a psychopath is their propensity for lying.
One does wonder how such people get promoted and keep positions of power. I have a nagging suspicion that the corporation as such encourages sociopathic behavior, and attracts psychopaths. Whereas in older times they would be killed in self-defense or in a duel, the modern world has given them a safe haven to manipulate and persecute decent people, while lying with every breath they take.
Fast Company has a very detailed article: But how can we recognize psychopathic types? Hare has revised his Psychopathy Checklist (known as the PCL-R, or simply "the Hare") to make it easier to identify so-called subcriminal or corporate psychopaths. He has broken down the 20 personality characteristics into two subsets, or "factors." Corporate psychopaths score high on Factor 1, the "selfish, callous, and remorseless use of others" category. It includes eight traits: glibness and superficial charm; grandiose sense of self-worth; pathological lying; conning and manipulativeness; lack of remorse or guilt; shallow affect (i.e., a coldness covered up by dramatic emotional displays that are actually playacting); callousness and lack of empathy; and the failure to accept responsibility for one's own actions.
I wonder how one would detect these traits during an interview.
