Gah, here we go again

[altivo]

My first thoughts on the terrorist/airline reports this morning: "How convenient for the right wing, coming like this just in time for an election. Now they can use it to distract the voters from the real issues once again." I won't go so far as to say that Blair's government and the American Republicans are so much in collusion that they would pull off a fraud like that. On the other hand, could the terrorists organizations actually be thinking far enough ahead to deliberately do this in order to keep a government they can easily paint as evil in control? It does seem possible to me.

I spent half the day driving to Rockford and back for a mandatory "training" class on some new software. I've been saying for weeks that all I needed was a copy of the software and I could learn it faster and better than any class would teach. That of course turned out to be true. When the class starts out with "Does everyone in here know how to use a mouse?" my worst fears are utterly confirmed.

I have been saying for many years now that "training" is something you do to dogs or babies who are not yet continent. For rational adults, what is needed is "education", not "training". What is often presented as "training" is indeed suitable for dogs, or at least for monkeys: rote presentations of menus and options, and which function keys to press in which order. I was particularly irritated by the statement that "There are short cut keystrokes to bypass all these menus, but we won't be covering them because mostly everyone just clicks." Speak for yourself, moron. I use hotkeys and short cut keys all the time. They are much faster, and well worth learning, especially with an application like this one that crawls along at the speed of a frozen earthworm anyway.

And they wonder why I'm "not a team player." It's simple. I refuse to associate with a team made up of turkeys, morons, and trained monkeys. I have better things to do.

Comments

[dakhun.livejournal.com]

How convenient for the right wing

The timing is far TOO much of a coincidence. I haven't decided one way or another, but I can't simply shrug or laugh the conspiracy theories off either.

Mind you, the graphics are funny... :-P

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Check out hartree's response below. I think he has a good point. The Arab culture is still based on tribal politics and one-upsmanship. This could well be a case of "Our disruption of western world air traffic trumps your ability to get the Israelis to embarrass themselves yet again."

[hartree.livejournal.com]

Oh, I think you're reading more deep plotting into it than is there.

There's an old saying: All politics is local. That's true in the Mideast as well.

We've had a month or so where a Shia aligned group, Hizbullah, has taken the spotlight as the vanguard of confrontation in the Islamic world. Even states that aren't terribly favorable of Hizbullah are having to take notice and Hizbullah's star has been rising in Arab opinion, even among Sunnis. This is even though there is a pretty wide split between the Sunni radicals and the Shia radicals.

Now. I haven't had a chance to read anything about the plot, so I'll make a blind prediction. This will have been a Sunni group. Now, since it's a definite blind prediction, I can be shown wrong.

My reason?

Far more than they care about public opinion in the west, Islamic groups care about Islamic public opinion. The Sunni groups have been looking mighty impotent compared to Hizbullah in the past month.

Heck with two or three buildings a few years ago, or a nightclub in Bali, or some trains in a city or two, or, etc, etc. Hizbullah has been taking on what's perceived to be the big bogey man of the Mideast. The Israeli Defense Force. And doing a quite respectable job of thwarting them.

The Sunni radical groups are feeling a bit self conscious of not being seen as the vanguard currently and likely wanted to shore themselves up a bit. I'd look for other actions of various kinds to try to buoy themselves in the Islamic street (abused as that term is.). A possible example: Al Zawahiri announcing that a major Egyptian group has joined up with Al Qaeda. There have been some denials back and forth over that, so it's not clear that it's really happened. But, it keeps that particular bunch in the spotlight.

Of course, I could be blowing smoke. One of the problems with making guesses (either yours or mine) about the motivations of such groups is that it's easy to paint anything in a certain way in hindsight. And they don't usually conduct their strategy sessions on the social page of the local paper. ;)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I certainly agree with you that the motives of most of the Islamic groups and leaders involved are local. For the most part, their ambitions are immediate and their goals are much less than the "conquest of the world" that the western fear-mongers are trying to pin on them.

On the other hand, some of them are indeed clever enough to use the rest of the world as a pawn in that game, and worse yet, the rest of the world is foolish and sheepish enough to play along to some extent.

[hartree.livejournal.com]

And, there's certainly room for multiple reasons.

I'm not so sure that most of those groups make such a big distinction between the nuances of US administrations. They've been cruise missiled by both Democrats and Republicans. It's more the US-ians that predict the end of the world if it's Clinton or Bush or Gore etc in office depending on viewpoint. National interests remain unchanged to a rather surprising extent from admin to admin.

(Take the following with much salt. It's not meant to be aimed at you or be confrontational. It's just a pattern that I've seen repeated over the past few decades.)

I've heard the right go gaga over Clinton and Carter with conspiracy theories. I've heard the left go ape over Nixon, Reagan, and both Bushes. It tends to be a personification of what a given group dislikes and fears, similar to (forgive me. This has more negative overtones than I intend, but there is a parallel) the religious fundamentalists seeing the wiles of the evil one behind all bad things. It becomes such a unquestioned unifying principle that if someone doesn't see the bad as being based in the machinations of the particular devil (be it literal, or a political figure) they are felt to be deluded or worse, part of the problem. It's a very useful meme to spread in a group to promote group conformity.

Sometimes, this is largely political posturing, sometimes people fully believe it in both the religious and political versions.

I tend not to trust such all simplifying principles. Things tend to be messy and nearly always shades of grey.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Naw it just happened,at least now we won't have people dropping overhead baggage onto you while we're sleeping >.<

Perhaps they could send baggage by separate plane?

As to the training I hear that, just give me the manual and they can sod off ;) Perhaps maybe a time when if I do have any questions I can ask them, apart from that I'm fine.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Oh, they won't drop baggage on me in any case. I quit traveling on commercial airlines way back in 1978. Never again. That decision had everything to do with airplanes, airports, and air passengers, and nothing to do with terrorism or politics, but it still stands. ;D

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

I find plane travel excruciatingly boring, the concorde would've been perhaps interesting.

[songdogmi.livejournal.com]

I heard something on the radio last night about sending baggage on a separate plane, believe it or not. I don't remember most of the details -- was it actually happening somewhere or just a proposal? What show was I listening to? Minor stuff like that.... But the baggage arrives next day as an overnight package would.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

*psnerk*

I'm sure all those yuppie travelers will just love having to do that with their laptop computers and junk. I don't think the airline industry could stand the gaff.

[deffox]

I refuse to associate with a team made up of turkeys, morons, and trained monkeys.

Ah, so your place is stealing all the quality workers. :-P
We get the real duds.

I was supposed to be trained Wednesday. But the class wasn't where they said. But it wasn't going to be anywhere near education.

I'm also supposed to do training/educating. But I'm working flat out, and my trainee is quiting anyway.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Proper education eliminates the need for "training" in most cases. At least, that's true if you have reasonably bright and adaptable people to begin with. Unfortunately, our society and even our educational system tends to beat the adaptability and curiosity right out of most people to the point where they would never explore something on their own any more. Self-exploration is much more effective and leads to learning that is retained.

In a case like this, too, it is often the problem that the software or tool has not been properly designed to attack the task directly. The consequence is that it may take the user a while to figure out how to apply it and "training" becomes necessary to cut off the learning curve. That's only proof of lousy design rather than anything else.

After fifteen minutes spent in obtuse "explanation" of a configuration menu, the woman next to me leaned over and said "This is all just about making the screen turn different colors isn't it?" That was an unexpectedly astute observation, and true. In spite of obfuscation by the so-called instructor, it's true that the function she was elaborating on at length simply offers a dozen different color schemes for the display. She even went so far as to point out that you could change it to match the season or the clothes you were wearing. For this I needed to drive 50 miles and give up a day's productive work? For this they paid some programmer to write the thing?

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

The more I see the timing of things like this; the more cynical I get. Ultimately the Islamic terror networks have us exactly where they want us. They are winning, and they know it.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm not sure we agree on the "where they want us part" but I do believe the timing is often deliberate and well-executed to influence mass politics. It is not just a whatever they can, whenever they can sort of thing.

Unfortunately, humans are very slow to adjust and adapt on the whole. Like evolution itself, they change glacially. Attacks on transportation systems of any kind continue to be effective only because society is addicted to a lot more unnecessary long distance movement than need be. Until the mid-Twentieth Century, we got along very well with long distance communication and didn't insist on so many face-to-face meetings for commerce and business. Now we seem to have lost the ability to communicate effectively in writing and verbally, so the solution to everything is to send someone somewhere else to talk to another person when in fact, if talk were all that is needed a telephone call should do the job.

I'm not saying that we need to give up traveling, but that if we did a lot less of it many things would improve.

[ducktapeddonkey.livejournal.com]

And they wonder why I'm "not a team player." It's simple. I refuse to associate with a team made up of turkeys, morons, and trained monkeys. I have better things to do.

Sounds like we're playing in the same league.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I often think we are, though we react to it in rather different ways. :)

[hellmutt.livejournal.com]

Speak for yourself, moron. I use hotkeys and short cut keys all the time.

Yeah! When I'm called upon to teach my colleagues, poor things, I not only tell them a few key keystrokes, I'm plain about it if there's more than one way to do things in a particular program ("this is the quickest/easiest way, but you can experiment").

Moreover, I teach them how I like to be taught - starting with overview and concepts (and, if there is one, the why). "We're going to end up with a page with these three bits of data on it; now I'll show you where we enter them" or "There are three stages here, X Y and Z, so we'll go through them one at a time then I'll show you where to upload everything".

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yep. When people see me at my desk doing things without using the mouse, they often ask "How did you do that?" When I explain it, they say they want to do it that way too because it is obviously faster. Then of course they say they want to learn that too, and they write it down on a piece of paper. A week later they ask me to tell them again how to do it, and so on, ad infinitum.

[hellmutt.livejournal.com]

Hee. Luckily nobody here is that bad, but I've found other people surprisingly resistant to learning underlying concepts - they don't want to know 'all that stuff', they just want to know how to do X...

I don't know how anyone can function like that, really. It'd be like memorising a list of step-by-step instructions to drive a car. *is such a teacher's son, heh*

[altivo.livejournal.com]

You may not realize how many people do drive a car that way, by rote memorized steps that they don't really understand. Or cook, or do any number of daily tasks. They get up in the morning and make tea or coffee. OK, one morning they drop the teapot and break it. Now they can't make tea until they get a new teapot. It never occurs to them that you can brew tea in some other container on a temporary basis and it will still work.

I get my hackles up immediately when someone asks how to do something, and when I start to show them they immediately say "Wait, wait!" because they are trying to write everything down step by step. We aren't learning concepts here, or any kind of overall picture, but just memorizing a sequence of steps. They are going to be totally lost if they try to do it in a different version of the same software, or on another machine that doesn't have the same defaults.

[hellmutt.livejournal.com]

Yes - say their software's upgraded by .1 of a version and the Settings menu is now called Options...

Or say I'm talking someone through something over the phone without the thing in front of me, and can't remember which of two or three synonyms the proggy uses. that's fun.

[darkhorseman.livejournal.com]

I cant take sides because right or left they are all crooks and liars. I could tolerate flying on a plane if I could burry myself in my laptop but I guess thats out now. Wonder if you can still bring a book to read. Bet you the PC natzis would let you carry a koran but would freak over anything else *snort*

Fortunatly I dont fly any more. If its not within driving distance its not worth my time. Ive gone everywhere and seen everything I want to see.

Ohh and I do isp tech support. "Click the start buttion" "what" "the start buttion" "wheres that" "the one down in the lower left of your screen" "I dont see it" "its there it says start on it" "ohhh that buttion why didnt you say so"

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I heard someone say yesterday that they weren't letting you even carry a book on. That's kinda hard to believe. As far as it mattering whether it was a Koran or something else, I don't believe most of those security guards can read well enough to tell the difference.

[goldenstallion.livejournal.com]

You haven't visited me yet. Some worldly traveller you are. You will love the horses.

*grumblebitchcomplain*

Steed

[darkhorseman.livejournal.com]

Hey I got 22 of my own now. Its not often I travel any more.

[hrrunka]

Yeah, the timing doesn't seem to suit the terrorists particularly well. It's also diverted attention away from Lebanon and Israel.

And learning skills does seem to be out of fashion these days. You may find the dialogue in the latter part of this entry from stevieannie's LJ wryly amusing...

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think hartree's theory may be correct. Diverting attention from the Israeli-Lebanon thing was quite likely the point. It's a kind of one-upsmanship among the various Arab insurgent and terrorist groups to see who can score the most points. Rather like the old native American "counting coup." So disrupting western world air traffic trumps getting the Israeli Army to yet again look stupid and racist.

[hellmutt.livejournal.com]

Yea. What with Iraq etc being forced down the agenda, I did wonder if anyone in all the other wars would throw a tantrum and try to get attention back on them.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Actually we saw Korea doing that a couple of weeks back, didn't we? "Hey wait, look at us, we can be a threat too!"

Training

[animist.livejournal.com]

Well said! Most software training is for morons who will never use the thing right anyway. I always work ahead in computer classes at work and play with things, and then ask the instructor the good questions at break. Sometimes they know more than I do, sometimes not!

Re: Training

[altivo.livejournal.com]

This was probably true even before software was invented. So many people seem to do a job by performing a memorized sequence of steps without understanding many of them.

[goldenstallion.livejournal.com]

Dear rider,

Back in the fifties my mother explained conspiracy theories to me. No three or more people can agree on anything so they will always fail.

Ride me I am ready.
Imperator

[altivo.livejournal.com]

*checks for turkey feathers before mounting, but of course finds none*

Closing in on trading the Jeep for something new, but whatever I get won't be nearly as good as my flap pony.

[pioneer11.livejournal.com]

There just evil bastards. We did everything the other way
when Clinton was in office for eight years and they /still/
did evil to us.

Our own government we can deal with, one way or the other.

But someone from the outside coming in our house and
killing family?

Never ever ever.