5 ms·

Ditto, I really recommend this book. Made me understand 80's software world a lot more, and especially not see Microsoft as being as evil as I liked to believe

Ditto, I really recommend this book. Made me understand 80's software world a lot more, and especially not see Microsoft as being as evil as I liked to believe it was; merely the one who survived among a lot of companies doing really shady stuff.

quantumhobbit 10y ago
I love this book as well. We really need a modern equivalent for the current tech "bubble" or even just for the dotcom crash and early 2000s. Does anyone know of something like it for more modern stupidity?
- whatever_dude 10y ago
  There's two in my list, both recent: * "Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble" by Dan Lyons * "Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley" by Antonio Garcia Martinez Haven't read either yet, and it's not about the early 2000s. But they've been getting a lot of press and some good reviews.
njharman 10y ago
That doesn't make ms less evil. It should clue you in that all (big) companies are evil.
- treehau5 10y ago
  I'm convinced "bigness" in any form, is evil. Big government, big corporation, big lobbying groups, big egos.
  - mschaef 10y ago
    IMO, it's probably more accurate to say that big entities are often a more effective tool for evil than small entities. Of course, it's also probably accurate to say that big entities are often a more effective tool for good than small entities.
    - JadeNB 10y ago
      This is probably too much of a tangent on which to take this discussion, but the fact that big entities are a tool for evil might give rise to the further question: so why are there invariably people in big institutions who will try to use them as such tools? I would suspect that it such people exist in all institutions, almost regardless of size, but that there will simply be more of them in a bigger institution, and that they are more likely to be able to hide their wrongdoing from the sight of those who would promote a more idealistic mission (or else that they gain sufficient control of the culture that they have no need to hide).
      - Retra 10y ago
        Whenever you have a communication or resource bottleneck, you have the potential for corruption - either malicious or unintentional. Bigger institutions just have bigger bottlenecks.
      - mschaef 10y ago
        You're right... this is a tangent, and I've been debating whether or not to respond for that reason. That said, a couple thoughts. First: you focused on the 'evil' part of my statement at the exclusion of the 'good'. Is this intentional? I don't think it's possible to have a reasonable discussion if you exclude half of the 'domain'. I don't really think that people within large corporations have a higher likelihood of intent to do evil than people within small corporations. However, given that a larger entity is a more effective way to effect change, I do think that both evil-doers and good-doers can be more evident in large organizations. There's also more of a network effect, etc. An evil-doer in a large corporation is more likely to have a spectacular impact and in a small. (ie: the collapse of Enron vs the collapse of the local propane shop.) Coming back around to the good, I also think that modern civilization owes its continued existence to entities that are larger than we might be comfortable with. Providing energy, etc. for 7B people is just too big a problem to leave in the hands of something like a vast number of local propane shops, even if a bunch of local propane shops are somehow 'safer'. It's a lack of effectiveness that makes those shops safer and it's the same lack of effectiveness that makes those shops less likely to be able to address large-scale problems.
- whatever_dude 10y ago
  Maybe a better way to say it was that Microsoft wasn't especially evil. There were some examples in that book of companies that did MUCH shadier stuff than, say, Microsoft shipping IE with Windows.

quantumhobbit 10y ago

I love this book as well. We really need a modern equivalent for the current tech "bubble" or even just for the dotcom crash and early 2000s. Does anyone know of something like it for more modern stupidity?

whatever_dude 10y ago
There's two in my list, both recent: * "Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble" by Dan Lyons * "Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley" by Antonio Garcia Martinez Haven't read either yet, and it's not about the early 2000s. But they've been getting a lot of press and some good reviews.

njharman 10y ago

That doesn't make ms less evil. It should clue you in that all (big) companies are evil.

treehau5 10y ago
I'm convinced "bigness" in any form, is evil. Big government, big corporation, big lobbying groups, big egos.
- mschaef 10y ago
  IMO, it's probably more accurate to say that big entities are often a more effective tool for evil than small entities. Of course, it's also probably accurate to say that big entities are often a more effective tool for good than small entities.
  - JadeNB 10y ago
    This is probably too much of a tangent on which to take this discussion, but the fact that big entities are a tool for evil might give rise to the further question: so why are there invariably people in big institutions who will try to use them as such tools? I would suspect that it such people exist in all institutions, almost regardless of size, but that there will simply be more of them in a bigger institution, and that they are more likely to be able to hide their wrongdoing from the sight of those who would promote a more idealistic mission (or else that they gain sufficient control of the culture that they have no need to hide).
    - Retra 10y ago
      Whenever you have a communication or resource bottleneck, you have the potential for corruption - either malicious or unintentional. Bigger institutions just have bigger bottlenecks.
    - mschaef 10y ago
      You're right... this is a tangent, and I've been debating whether or not to respond for that reason. That said, a couple thoughts. First: you focused on the 'evil' part of my statement at the exclusion of the 'good'. Is this intentional? I don't think it's possible to have a reasonable discussion if you exclude half of the 'domain'. I don't really think that people within large corporations have a higher likelihood of intent to do evil than people within small corporations. However, given that a larger entity is a more effective way to effect change, I do think that both evil-doers and good-doers can be more evident in large organizations. There's also more of a network effect, etc. An evil-doer in a large corporation is more likely to have a spectacular impact and in a small. (ie: the collapse of Enron vs the collapse of the local propane shop.) Coming back around to the good, I also think that modern civilization owes its continued existence to entities that are larger than we might be comfortable with. Providing energy, etc. for 7B people is just too big a problem to leave in the hands of something like a vast number of local propane shops, even if a bunch of local propane shops are somehow 'safer'. It's a lack of effectiveness that makes those shops safer and it's the same lack of effectiveness that makes those shops less likely to be able to address large-scale problems.
whatever_dude 10y ago
Maybe a better way to say it was that Microsoft wasn't especially evil. There were some examples in that book of companies that did MUCH shadier stuff than, say, Microsoft shipping IE with Windows.