Re: Letter to US Sen. Byron Dorgan re unpaid overtime

From: Edward G. Nilges (spinoza1111_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 12/15/03 

Date: 15 Dec 2003 00:57:05 -0800

"Roger Willcocks" <rkww@rops.org> wrote in message news:<brikjj$82c$1$8300dec7@news.demon.co.uk>...
> "Edward G. Nilges" <spinoza1111@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:f5dda427.0312140826.1660ff96@posting.google.com...
> ...
> > I have written the enclosed letter to US Senator Byron Dorgan who
> > is conducting Congressional hearings on this law.
> ...
> If you wish to write a letter to a Senator or other representative that is
> your prerogative. But regardless of any question about the subject's
> relevance to this newsgroup's charter, and however strongly you may
> feel about the subject, there is no reason whatever to have copied
> your letter in full here. A pointer to a web page would suffice.

OK, it appears that you acknowledge the topicality of the post. Thank
you.

I find that overuse of pointers create misunderstandings. For example,
Chris Sonnack and Richard Heathfield have used pointers to Web pages
in order to make false claims about my competence in confidence that
90% of readers will accept the pointer as an argument. They don't
follow up to find that in fact the charges are based on an error which
I discovered in my own code, stylistic opinions held by Chris alone,
and a benchmark which shows that my code is slower than his (which is
an important issue but not on topic in view of my thesis, that object
oriented code is clearer).

I find that links and pointers have been used by rhetors without
principle since the era of Joe McCarthy here in the United States,
whose "list" of Communists, held up in a Senate hearing, turned out on
investigation to be empty. Recently and here in the United States, the
drafters of the USA "Patriot" act, a law which subverts our
Constitution, use "pointers" consisting of obscure references to laws
by code number followed by text which changes the force and/or meaning
of those laws in a way meant, I conclude, to conceal the attack on
civil liberties from the ordinary US citizen.

These problems are not restricted to USA practice but are found in my
experience in other lands. In Fiji, for example, I found that the
Murdoch-owned newspaper consistently distorted the truth about Fiji's
relations between Indians and natives in favor of the wealthy
land-owning natives using the same techniques, and Britain's press has
long used the name of unspecified allegations to damage personalities,
notably recently in the case of the Prince of Wales.

It does appear that on the Continent of Europe, forced programmer
overtime is not a problem because of legislation. But this means that
European programmers in this ng need to learn what would happen if
they allowed strong right-wing parties in Europe (known as the
"blues") to come to power. And elsewhere in the world programmers live
under systems resembling those of the USA.

I also need to hear discussion about ways in which the humane
application of "extreme" programming can accomplish goals faster,
because I have started recently to use this technique and my early
returns indicate that it works. However, what managers may not realize
is that extreme programming includes a limit to the length of the work
day and I have found that this limit causes things to get done.

MIS management, which is in my opinion altogether too supportive of,
and beholden to, the worst administration in United States history, is
looking to get legislation allowing it to force its programmers to
work 24 hours a day when it's been my discovery that this leads to
overcomplex systems through the psychological phenomenon called
passive aggression.

I think would be useful and on-topic to hear about experiences in
which REDUCING the length of the programming day creates better
systems. I can then take responsibility for passing this information
on to Sen Dorgan and my local representative. If the US rejects 24/7
this will send a signal to European elements that they should keep
their current system...under which effective software (like SAP) can
be and has been constructed.

I won't join the thread opened by Richard on the topicality of the
root post in order to avoid the problems that occured in the
discussion of overtime. I do note that a poster points out a logical
fallacy in a claim Richard makes and therefore I shall watch the
subthread. If it appears to me that Richard is bullying the poster I
shall intervene with a textual analysis that demonstrates the
bullying.

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