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I wonder how the tech community would respond if undercover reporters were breaking into offices and documenting the "incomprehensible" C that managers are forc

I wonder how the tech community would respond if undercover reporters were breaking into offices and documenting the "incomprehensible" C that managers are forcing down on employees when they could be purportedly writing software in English, and people stopped using software to help free the abused employees who are stuffed in a small cubicle to write nonsensical gibberish day-in, day-out? That is what this situation seems like. Animal cruelty is definitely not okay, but I have noticed a growing trend of reporting best practices, that attempt to minimize animal suffering as much as possible, as animal cruelty. And the solutions people are coming up with to improve on those best practices are as non-sensical as a non-industry expert suggesting that we write software in English. In a perfect world, sure, but the real world has real constraints. I would like to see real awareness, not people who feel they are experts on all rural affair matters after watching a two hour documentary and a YouTube clip or two. A video ban is definitely not the way to do that, but I can see the other side. Google isn't going to be too happy if you go around filming their datacenter, lamenting that you could do the same with a server in your closet at home, either.

carbocation 14y ago
Not that this is really relevant to the topic at hand, but are you actually drawing an equivalency between people who get paid to write code for a living and an animal being slaughtered? I don't think the analogy works at all.
- randomdata 14y ago
  No. I'm saying people who do not understand technology could be lead to believe such things if people started reporting it. Nobody is going to take the time to realize that people actually enjoy writing software using programming languages. And I'm not suggesting animals enjoy being slaughtered, but if it is going to happen, do you not support doing it the most humane way possible?
  - glesica 14y ago
    I support free information. If "best practices" in animal slaughter gross people out, then maybe we need better "best practices" or maybe we need to rethink our agriculture system. Just because something has been decided upon by a group of experts does not make it socially just or appropriate. The treatment of slaves was, I'm sure, generally done according to what, at that time, would have been considered "best practices", and people wanted cotton. But that doesn't mean that slavery should have been ignored and "left to the professionals".
    - randomdata 14y ago
      I am sure agriculture would love to work with the people concerned about current best practices to find new and better best practices. Agribusiness is always at the forefront of technology and is quick to adopt better ways. The problem is that the people who come with concern tend to not take time to understand the situation. I recall a recent incident with a celebrity suggesting dairy farmers should breed their calves to not have horns. Great idea in theory. The genes do exist in some living cattle, but it is quite rare. Anyone with even a basic understanding of biology can see how that isn't going to work out so well, but we cannot even seem to find that level of understanding out there.
      - glesica 14y ago
        They demonstrate this by lobbying to suppress freedom of speech? Weird. You haven't justified restricting free speech. I am willing (happy) to admit that some animal-rights people are uninformed blowhards. But that doesn't justify punching holes in the first amendment.
        randomdata 14y ago
        According to the article, the law intends to prevent animal rights activists, who show some intent to harm the operation, from conducting their business on private property without permission. That is a lot closer, if anything, to being a trespassing matter, not one of free speech. I'm not sure that still justifies it, and I am not in favour of it myself, but I don't think we want to go down the road of misguided analogies like comparing copyright to theft. Surely people should have some say over what happens on their private property, and if they are being prevented from doing so for whatever reason, perhaps a law of some kind (not necessarily this one) is needed? Granted, I haven't read the actual wording of the law yet, or have any understanding who is behind it and what their motivation is, so perhaps the article is off base.
  - carbocation 14y ago
    I apologize for making my point in the form of a rhetorical question. What I should have said is that, based on the construction of your comment, your comment draws an equivalency between programmers and these animals being slaughtered.
    - randomdata 14y ago
      Not at all. I only drew an illustration of something people in this demographic understand to show how people react to biased reporting. If you want people, who have never stepped foot in an office and have never turned on a computer, to believe that programmers are treated horribly because they have to type "gobilty-gook" all day long, it would be a pretty easy sell. Likewise, you can easily make the optimum care we can give an animal given our current understanding look like the worst treatment possible to an outsider without domain-specific understanding. And I wasn't really referring to slaughter specifically, or even at all. There are a lot of care issues too, which are more interesting to me having a farming background and not an abattoir background.
      - pyre 14y ago
        | biased reporting Animal rights activists may be biased towards their cause, but it's not like farmers aren't biased towards their livelihood. If they were to admit that what they were doing was wrong, they would have to own up to everything they had done up to that point, in addition to changing professions.
        randomdata 14y ago
        My livelihood comes from being a software developer, but have spent enough time in barns to understand how they function, so hopefully I can come as unbiased as possible. I'm curious to know more about what you think that is being done is wrong?
        pyre 14y ago
        I guess a better example of what I'm saying is that a plantation owner in the Confederate South wouldn't have been unbiased about slavery. You can't claim that bias only works in one direction (i.e. AR activists are biased, but farmers are not).
  - yuvadam 14y ago
    Fuck, no. Why would you assume mass-slaughter of living beings is going to continue happening?
    - randomdata 14y ago
      Because demand for meat has only risen over time? Most people only seek quality care while the animal is alive, not a complete end to eating meat. I realize technology is on the horizon that could change things in the future, but we are talking about today.
      - pyre 14y ago
        | Most people only seek quality care while | the animal is alive This is impossible at current levels of demand, and the push to keep meat, which historically was only hyper-available to the rich, cheap so that people can all afford to have turducken[1] wrapped in bacon for breakfast, lunch and dinner. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turducken http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turducken
        randomdata 14y ago
        Care to elaborate? I assume you mean because owners are increasingly reliant on external labour to fulfill the demand, and, like with any business, labour does not always care about the level of quality in operation that the stakeholders, that have traditionally supplied the products, do?
        pyre 14y ago
        If you also want to talk about the quality of life of the animal, it gets more complicated. Even "free range"/"cage free"/etc animals live in stressful and crowded environments, just less stressful and crowded then other farms animals that are not <insert label here>.
        randomdata 14y ago
Zigurd 14y ago
Governments and large corporations, simply because of the size of their budgets, seem to be the biggest victims of bad practices in software development. If the public understood these boondoggles better, compared with, say, cost overruns on construction projects, taxpayers and shareholders might be better off. I really don't see the downside to greater transparency in most endeavors. Either there isn't an analogy here, or livestock farming is somehow special, which I'm also not seeing how that is.
- randomdata 14y ago
  The analogy is that software companies would react the same way, if faced with the same problem. I'd love to walk into a large software company and document all of their inefficiencies to share with everyone, but I suspect I'd quickly end up in legal hot water, even as the law is written today.
  - sophistroll 14y ago
    I don't think text files should have the same rights as animals. Yet.
  - Zigurd 14y ago
    > I'd love to walk into a large software company and document all of their inefficiencies to share with everyone Many large software companies develop some of their software in the open, recognizing the benefits of such transparency. You only have to peruse Github and other repo sites. The idea of developing software in the open is widely adopted, and practically a requirement for some kinds of software, like cryptography and other security software. It seems more natural to draw the exact opposite analogy: If proper handling of livestock and meat is critical to one's safety, meat production should be as easy to monitor as "git log" for a repo of crypto software.
    - randomdata 14y ago
      To be fair, I haven't met many farmers that wouldn't love to have you come tour their operation. In fact, its pretty common, at least where I reside, for farmers to host open houses so people can do exactly that. Certain species are prone to illness by human exposure, so there are some limitations on certain farms, but generally farmers are proud about what they are producing and love to show it off. If you feel there is a lack of transparency, I would suggest it is primarily due to distance. When the nearest metropolitan area is hours away, you get a disconnect on several levels. If you don't already have connections to farmers, its difficult to find the connections to build the opportunities to learn more, granted. Especially when you consider that only 2-3% of the population are farming to begin with.
sliverstorm 14y ago
I have noticed a growing trend of reporting best practices, that attempt to minimize animal suffering as much as possible, as animal cruelty. I am reminded of Mike Rowe's discussion about castration and docking of lambs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-udsIV4Hmc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-udsIV4Hmc
kragen 14y ago
I have noticed a growing trend of reporting best practices, that attempt to minimize animal suffering as much as possible, as animal cruelty. What are these best practices, and how do they get reported? I noticed the article said the same thing, but didn't give any examples.

carbocation 14y ago

Not that this is really relevant to the topic at hand, but are you actually drawing an equivalency between people who get paid to write code for a living and an animal being slaughtered? I don't think the analogy works at all.

randomdata 14y ago
No. I'm saying people who do not understand technology could be lead to believe such things if people started reporting it. Nobody is going to take the time to realize that people actually enjoy writing software using programming languages. And I'm not suggesting animals enjoy being slaughtered, but if it is going to happen, do you not support doing it the most humane way possible?
- glesica 14y ago
  I support free information. If "best practices" in animal slaughter gross people out, then maybe we need better "best practices" or maybe we need to rethink our agriculture system. Just because something has been decided upon by a group of experts does not make it socially just or appropriate. The treatment of slaves was, I'm sure, generally done according to what, at that time, would have been considered "best practices", and people wanted cotton. But that doesn't mean that slavery should have been ignored and "left to the professionals".
  - randomdata 14y ago
    I am sure agriculture would love to work with the people concerned about current best practices to find new and better best practices. Agribusiness is always at the forefront of technology and is quick to adopt better ways. The problem is that the people who come with concern tend to not take time to understand the situation. I recall a recent incident with a celebrity suggesting dairy farmers should breed their calves to not have horns. Great idea in theory. The genes do exist in some living cattle, but it is quite rare. Anyone with even a basic understanding of biology can see how that isn't going to work out so well, but we cannot even seem to find that level of understanding out there.
    - glesica 14y ago
      They demonstrate this by lobbying to suppress freedom of speech? Weird. You haven't justified restricting free speech. I am willing (happy) to admit that some animal-rights people are uninformed blowhards. But that doesn't justify punching holes in the first amendment.
      - randomdata 14y ago
        According to the article, the law intends to prevent animal rights activists, who show some intent to harm the operation, from conducting their business on private property without permission. That is a lot closer, if anything, to being a trespassing matter, not one of free speech. I'm not sure that still justifies it, and I am not in favour of it myself, but I don't think we want to go down the road of misguided analogies like comparing copyright to theft. Surely people should have some say over what happens on their private property, and if they are being prevented from doing so for whatever reason, perhaps a law of some kind (not necessarily this one) is needed? Granted, I haven't read the actual wording of the law yet, or have any understanding who is behind it and what their motivation is, so perhaps the article is off base.
- carbocation 14y ago
  I apologize for making my point in the form of a rhetorical question. What I should have said is that, based on the construction of your comment, your comment draws an equivalency between programmers and these animals being slaughtered.
  - randomdata 14y ago
    Not at all. I only drew an illustration of something people in this demographic understand to show how people react to biased reporting. If you want people, who have never stepped foot in an office and have never turned on a computer, to believe that programmers are treated horribly because they have to type "gobilty-gook" all day long, it would be a pretty easy sell. Likewise, you can easily make the optimum care we can give an animal given our current understanding look like the worst treatment possible to an outsider without domain-specific understanding. And I wasn't really referring to slaughter specifically, or even at all. There are a lot of care issues too, which are more interesting to me having a farming background and not an abattoir background.
    - pyre 14y ago
      | biased reporting Animal rights activists may be biased towards their cause, but it's not like farmers aren't biased towards their livelihood. If they were to admit that what they were doing was wrong, they would have to own up to everything they had done up to that point, in addition to changing professions.
      - randomdata 14y ago
        My livelihood comes from being a software developer, but have spent enough time in barns to understand how they function, so hopefully I can come as unbiased as possible. I'm curious to know more about what you think that is being done is wrong?
        pyre 14y ago
        I guess a better example of what I'm saying is that a plantation owner in the Confederate South wouldn't have been unbiased about slavery. You can't claim that bias only works in one direction (i.e. AR activists are biased, but farmers are not).
- yuvadam 14y ago
  Fuck, no. Why would you assume mass-slaughter of living beings is going to continue happening?
  - randomdata 14y ago
    Because demand for meat has only risen over time? Most people only seek quality care while the animal is alive, not a complete end to eating meat. I realize technology is on the horizon that could change things in the future, but we are talking about today.
    - pyre 14y ago
      | Most people only seek quality care while | the animal is alive This is impossible at current levels of demand, and the push to keep meat, which historically was only hyper-available to the rich, cheap so that people can all afford to have turducken[1] wrapped in bacon for breakfast, lunch and dinner. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turducken http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turducken
      - randomdata 14y ago
        Care to elaborate? I assume you mean because owners are increasingly reliant on external labour to fulfill the demand, and, like with any business, labour does not always care about the level of quality in operation that the stakeholders, that have traditionally supplied the products, do?
        pyre 14y ago
        If you also want to talk about the quality of life of the animal, it gets more complicated. Even "free range"/"cage free"/etc animals live in stressful and crowded environments, just less stressful and crowded then other farms animals that are not <insert label here>.
        randomdata 14y ago

Zigurd 14y ago

Governments and large corporations, simply because of the size of their budgets, seem to be the biggest victims of bad practices in software development. If the public understood these boondoggles better, compared with, say, cost overruns on construction projects, taxpayers and shareholders might be better off. I really don't see the downside to greater transparency in most endeavors. Either there isn't an analogy here, or livestock farming is somehow special, which I'm also not seeing how that is.

randomdata 14y ago
The analogy is that software companies would react the same way, if faced with the same problem. I'd love to walk into a large software company and document all of their inefficiencies to share with everyone, but I suspect I'd quickly end up in legal hot water, even as the law is written today.
- sophistroll 14y ago
  I don't think text files should have the same rights as animals. Yet.
- Zigurd 14y ago
  > I'd love to walk into a large software company and document all of their inefficiencies to share with everyone Many large software companies develop some of their software in the open, recognizing the benefits of such transparency. You only have to peruse Github and other repo sites. The idea of developing software in the open is widely adopted, and practically a requirement for some kinds of software, like cryptography and other security software. It seems more natural to draw the exact opposite analogy: If proper handling of livestock and meat is critical to one's safety, meat production should be as easy to monitor as "git log" for a repo of crypto software.
  - randomdata 14y ago
    To be fair, I haven't met many farmers that wouldn't love to have you come tour their operation. In fact, its pretty common, at least where I reside, for farmers to host open houses so people can do exactly that. Certain species are prone to illness by human exposure, so there are some limitations on certain farms, but generally farmers are proud about what they are producing and love to show it off. If you feel there is a lack of transparency, I would suggest it is primarily due to distance. When the nearest metropolitan area is hours away, you get a disconnect on several levels. If you don't already have connections to farmers, its difficult to find the connections to build the opportunities to learn more, granted. Especially when you consider that only 2-3% of the population are farming to begin with.

sliverstorm 14y ago

I have noticed a growing trend of reporting best practices, that attempt to minimize animal suffering as much as possible, as animal cruelty. I am reminded of Mike Rowe's discussion about castration and docking of lambs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-udsIV4Hmc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-udsIV4Hmc

kragen 14y ago

I have noticed a growing trend of reporting best practices, that attempt to minimize animal suffering as much as possible, as animal cruelty. What are these best practices, and how do they get reported? I noticed the article said the same thing, but didn't give any examples.