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Well this anthropomorphizes the heck out of the lawnmower.

by cwyers 9y ago

joatmon-snoo 9y ago
It's one of those uncomfortable truths. It's hard to deny that the lawnmower is good at what it does, because it is, and has been doing it for a long time. Also probably responsible for many decades of lost progress, though. For those that don't get the lawnmower reference: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5170246 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5170246
- paulddraper 9y ago
  tl;dr Oracle is not a person. It is a unthinking, unfeeling machine. Treat it appropriately.
Create 9y ago
He Had Some Quirks Larry would sometimes take time out to think. He would just disappear for a few days, often without telling Larry Ellison, Oracle’s founder and CEO, was brilliant, driven, witty, charming, ruthless, wildly egoistical, a superb salesman, a notorious womanizer—and a seriously random number. Anything could happen, and often did. For example, one fine day I was part of a group that had a late-morning meeting with Larry. When we convened at his office, he wasn’t there. This was not unusual. Larry has just acquired a new wife—his third—and he apparently liked to go home during the day to make love with her. But our meeting was important, so we piled into a car and took off for his new house in Woodside. My manager, a former classical cellist who was stunned by Larry’s behavior as I was, turned to me in the car and said, “And now, we journey to the land where time has no meaning”. When we arrived, Larry came to the door, tousled but in good humor, and invited us into a huge house devoid of furniture, at least on the first floor, where we transacted our business and left. […] But although Larry was a nice planet to visit, I didn’t want to live there. In six months at Oracle I had five different managers, the last of whom was a former CIA agent who was much crazier than Larry was, but nasty and not half as bright. — High Stakes, No Prisoners : A Winner's Tale of Greed and Glory in the Internet Wars by Charles H. Ferguson

Well this anthropomorphizes the heck out of the lawnmower.

by cwyers 9y ago

Well this anthropomorphizes the heck out of the lawnmower.

It's one of those uncomfortable truths. It's hard to deny that the lawnmower is good at what it does, because it is, and has been doing it for a long time. Also probably responsible for many decades of lost progress, though. For those that don't get the lawnmower reference: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5170246 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5170246

paulddraper 9y ago
tl;dr Oracle is not a person. It is a unthinking, unfeeling machine. Treat it appropriately.

Create 9y ago

He Had Some Quirks Larry would sometimes take time out to think. He would just disappear for a few days, often without telling Larry Ellison, Oracle’s founder and CEO, was brilliant, driven, witty, charming, ruthless, wildly egoistical, a superb salesman, a notorious womanizer—and a seriously random number. Anything could happen, and often did. For example, one fine day I was part of a group that had a late-morning meeting with Larry. When we convened at his office, he wasn’t there. This was not unusual. Larry has just acquired a new wife—his third—and he apparently liked to go home during the day to make love with her. But our meeting was important, so we piled into a car and took off for his new house in Woodside. My manager, a former classical cellist who was stunned by Larry’s behavior as I was, turned to me in the car and said, “And now, we journey to the land where time has no meaning”. When we arrived, Larry came to the door, tousled but in good humor, and invited us into a huge house devoid of furniture, at least on the first floor, where we transacted our business and left. […] But although Larry was a nice planet to visit, I didn’t want to live there. In six months at Oracle I had five different managers, the last of whom was a former CIA agent who was much crazier than Larry was, but nasty and not half as bright. — High Stakes, No Prisoners : A Winner's Tale of Greed and Glory in the Internet Wars by Charles H. Ferguson