Discussion on:

IT's chicken or egg problem

Just to let you know, the chicken was first. God created the birds on the fifth day.

Problem solved!

God needed Breakfast on the first day She couldn't wait till the fifth to eat.

Of course if you believe in Evolution it had to be the chicken because the Evolved Critter had to be around first to lay the egg.

That sure explains a lot.

God had more eggs than she needed and the 2 left over from the first Breakfast hatched on the fifth Day and we've had chickens ever since.

Of course if they where Alligator Eggs that she cooked for Breakfast we have a real problem.

Col

You ever hear an alligator crow at sunrise??
Ever pluck 'gator feathers? (OK, maybe you played pro ball)
Besides, those eggs are very leathery...but they make great shoes.
...and I think LSU eats all the 'gators, at least I heard that said in Tuscaloosa.

OK, enough of that.

Baby half formed Alligators.

We after all are unable to comprehend what she likes and why she likes it.

You know the old story a Guy gets 3 wishes from a Genie in a bottle and asks for a Bridge to Hawaii to which the genie replies do you know how difficult that will be with all of the Supports in such deep water the need for Service Stations along the way to at the very least provide the necessary fuel?

The Guy accepts this and tells the Genie that he wants to understand women so the Genie asks how many lanes 24 or 36?

Attempting to understand why God wants something is just as difficult if not more so.

Col

Evolutionarily speaking, something that was almost-a-chicken laid an egg which grew into a chicken. The egg came first. Mutations do not occur post facto, they are pre facto.

This is an IT problem? If a user cannot figure out how to load more paper into their printer, the company has bigger problems they need to fix.

As the detail of your article says, in so many words, the answer is that IT has to speak in language everyone else understands, and management needs to listen to them. Two-way street.

This is no different to any other department of the business with a technical or professional brief outside the expertise of management. HR needs to bring new employment legislation to management's attention, and needs to do so in terms management understands. Whoever looks after the physical environment will need to explain why new water tanks will be required. The 'expertise' departments all contribute to ensure that the business maintains its infrastructure both in line with regulations and to the benefit of the company. And of course, the HR department will find it as hard to get its voice heard if it doesn't work well as the IT people.

Maybe what this article makes me think is that one of the problems IT people sometimes have is that they are inclined to think they are special, somehow in a different league to the other essential experts in the business?

I fully agree with the thought that IT is a part of the bigger team, and shouldn't think of itself as something special in the grand scheme of things. However, there's a district difference in the way that different departments are perceived, for good reason. I would suggest that a place in board meetings for the maintenance guy is not something I would expect. The role in the company is vital without question. Without this expertise there won't be a building to hold a meeting in. Is this hypothetical individual going to have anything to say about business planning strategy? I doubt it. What I am sure of is that a knowledgeable CIO can help drive strategy development. A problem I've encountered many times before is that company culture frequently views the IT Department as being another esoteric boiler maintenance crew.

I'm not suggesting the maintenance guy would be in a board meeting, but the director (s)he ultimately reports to would be, and would likely have to present a case for major expenditure. Whether in a board meeting or elsewhere, whether a new boiler or a new CRM system, management sees proposed expenditure that needs justifying. A new boiler might be justified because it would reduce costs, a new CRM might help generate new sales, a new shop-floor machine might enable new products to be made. To the management team they all have to go in the pot as capital projects with different expectations of return. So if the IT people with wonderful ideas present their case properly they will show their strategic importance in the likely impact of their proposals.

just like finance, sales, purchasing...

The real question is why does this issue still persist, so called alignment has been the issue for decades, perhaps business doesn't really want to solve it. After all, one of our most valuable specialisations is scapegoat...

Two extremes:

One company I was at had an end to end alignment process. The President did his objectives, his reports did their objectives trying to align theirs with his, all the way down the line. I spent two days with my department creating objectives which aligned with our director's objectives, then more time creating personal objectives that aligned with the departmental ones.

The other extreme was a place where there was no strategic plan and not much really to align to. In fact while I was there I attended a course on aligning IT to the Strategic Plan, and their advice was, read their objectives and infer one.

Businesses are (mostly) run by business people, not IT people who know business (there are exceptions). MBA-types understand marketing, sales, management, and even accounting, so those are important; they do not understand IT, so they cannot see how intertwined IT is with business. IT is not a cost center, nor is it (again, with clear exceptions) a profit center... but it clearly has aspects of both.

, but them IT f'kers let us down?
Huh?

Substitute any department for IT in there see if that one flys.

So why, it's nothing to do with them knowing our arcana, as far as I can make out it's them failing in their own.

Well trolled, sir, well trolled. And have you worked out how to refill your printer yet?

While the artificial and unproductive split between business and IT exists, kiss goodbye to so called alignment.
The goal should be cohesion anyway, can't have a modern business without IT, and without a business what do you need IT for...

It isn't them or us not doing their bit that is causing the issue, it's the simple existence of the split, which as far as I can make out is so either 'side' can say "It was 'im" or "not me guv"

I have a unique position of having a seat in both IT and Corporate Finance. Prior to this arrangement I resided in Corporate Finance with a 17 year IT background. I seen the issues from both sides now and understand the high level of frustration from both groups. The business see's IT as a road block to getting what they want in many cases and IT see's the business as not knowing what they want and if they do it's probably not what they need. Since the merge of my position I feel the "Split" has been mended and both sides of the pond are working towards what's best for the company.

[Scene Initech. Bob Slydell and Bob Porter are interviewing Tom.]

BOB SLYDELL: So what you do is you take the specifications from the customers and you bring them down to the software engineers?

TOM: That, that's right.

BOB PORTER: Well, then I gotta ask, then why can't the customers just take the
specifications directly to the software people, huh?

TOM: Well, uh, uh, uh, because, uh, engineers are not good at dealing with
customers.

BOB SLYDELL: You physically take the specs from the customer?

TOM: Well, no, my, my secretary does that, or, or the fax.

BOB SLYDELL: Ah.

BOB PORTER: Then you must physically bring them to the software people.

TOM: Well...no. Yeah, I mean, sometimes.

BOB SLYDELL: Well, what would you say??? you do here?

TOM: Well, look, I already told you. I deal with the g-ddam customers so the engineers don't have to!! I have people skills!! I am good at dealing with people!!! Can't you understand that?!? WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!!!!!!!

Good thing you got that word up front, Patrick.

Says it all.

It depends on the industry sector and the business.

Some businesses just need and want the utilities - reliable and available.

Other businesses use information to drive the business. They need more than just the utilities, they need tools to help them sift and sort the information to enable them to make good business decisions.

Still other types of companies where IT is the business. They sometimes need to be on the bleeding edge to stay ahead of their competition and customers' needs.

IT leadership has to figure out which type the company is, and also determine if the long term strategy is to shift from one type to another.

Because of evolution, the egg came first. What laid the egg, was something chicken'ish that evolved from the ooze. But the egg is the start of each evolution.

"something chicken'ish that evolved from the ooze."

By God, I think I remember him. Republican, if I'm not mistaken.

It could have Mutated not evolved.

You know something chickenish exposed to massive amounts of Radioactive Materials lays an egg that a Chicken Hatches from. Something like a Turtle lays the egg gets eaten by the irradiated alligator and a chicken comes out.

I can't see that though as you would need a lot of Mutated Eggs to be laid so that you can have a valuable species to arise from it. After all if there where only 2 eggs laid and both Chickens that came from them where male there could be no new species could there?

Or if there was a Male and Female and then the Radio Active Alligator came along and ate one before they mated there again could be no new species.

Col

...Millions on millions of mutated births resulted after millions and millions of years resulted in the amazing diversity of life forms we see, or don't see today. The ionizing radiation source was the sun, barely being filtered through the thin atmosphere of the time. Solar radiation mutated individual eggs and seeds, each birth slightly different in some way than there progenitors. Most life forms were unable to meet the needs for survival, some less equipped than their parents. Some fins were stronger and more agile than others. They were able to survive hard times by climbing out of the deeper predator-infested waters into shallow tidal pools. Other critters were able to make the same trip but lacked the primal intelligence of our "walking fish", and did not survive, maybe to become food for our perambulating vertebrate. And so it went, and continues this day, slowed by the increasingly protective earth atmosphere and magnetosphere.

Over and over? Every few million years? Still thin enough the next time? The time after that? The mutation-causing radiation must be from a 'periodic source' since new species have shown up here in a succession of waves---NOT 'gradually and steadily'. That's what vexed Charles Darwin on his trip to South America on the HMS Beagle: all biological (and geographical) upheavals happened suddenly, arbitrarily. Whatever radiation-source caused simultaneous genetic mutations worldwide caused mass extinctions as well; and NOT necessarily due to 'natural selection theory' criteria. Example: Horses were native, and well-adapted(!) to North and South America, but became suddenly extinct. Later, when a few brought by the first Spaniards ran off, they thrived to the extent of re-populating the Americas...so their first extinction here (which coincided with mass extinctions of species elsewhere) was due to 'standing in the wrong spot', not to 'inability to survive on the Great Plains'. Peoples of antiquity have observed 'new species' arriving (The Shoshone, for example, tell of 'How the cottontail rabbit got the brown mark on its back'; it happened during a worldwide cataclysm that killed almost everything. The 'mythic event' that was occurring at the time was another celestial body thrown near the Earth close enough that they---amongst other things---exchanged electrical potentials with each other. There's your full-spectrum radiation, AND the devastation of the gravity/gyroscopic effects of the event. According to the survivors (who noted the genetic mutation with their story), the Sun had found a 'new course' after the event---the subjective apperception of one standing on a planet where the cardinal points have suddenly changed. In fact, the whole world reordered itself to the new day, month, and year lengths (ancient observatories such as the Stonehenge were repeatedly altered, and ultimately abandoned as obsolete---there are 57,000 possible alignments to the points of Stonehenge and not one now points to anything 'fixed' in the sky). Seneca notes that there was a time when the Wain (the Great Bear) never got his feet wet (fell partially below the horizon), but it does now, some 3 months each year. Planet Earth got knocked around a bit, its inhabitants were flooded, lava-burned, irradiated, mutated, and a few thousand years later (since it doesn't happen in everyone's lifetime), no one seems able to accept the obvious! They now teach the 'survivor eyewitnesss accounts' as 'mythology' and 'Jungian archetypes'......

Yes, it WAS radiation and mutations; and all you have to do to become extinct is be standing in the wrong place at the wrong time (ask a frozen-intact wolly mammoth--an elephant 'superior' to those on Earth now--what happens when the field in which you're grazing is suddenly within the (brand new) Arctic Circle! You freeze, with a belly full of foliage that now grows 3,000 miles down the latitudes from where you are now....and North America, on the other side of that, begins to de-glaciate..........

Funny how biologists, geologists, and astronomers refuse to check with each other about their fields' common dillemmas; they COULD offer each other help with the contradictions in each of their fields' theories.

edit: Seneca also mentions (referring to the earliest people known to pre-Christian Rome) the "Arcadians...of whom it is said, 'they dwelt in the hills and lived on acorns, before there was a Moon in the sky' ". The reference's implications to the above (not to mention to the Moon's current trashed condition!) should be apparant.

"Fascinating!"

Had we been around at the time, we could have recorded some wild events in Earths' history. I'm not sure I want to witness any myself, though.

I've heard theories that Earth's polar precession might have caused repositioning of the global climates. This theory proposes to explain the flash-frozen mammoth with it's stomach contents. Seems to me though that there would be much more evidence of such a catastrophic event.

I agree that there seems to be little cross-communication between scientists in these so closely related fields. What we hear and read seems to be the result of arguments, not professional cooperation.

It fails to explain how they had foliage from down in the temperate latitudes in their stomachs, doesn't it? Unless the planet 'rolled' its celestial orientation (the ground on which they grazed carried in minutes into a frozen climate, freezing the animals along with their undigested lunch from 3,000 miles down the planet's latitudes), these animals could not have travelled anywhere in that range on a meal they ate in a temperate latitude. The mammoths never thawed once since the event that killed them; the eyeballs etc were frozen intact, and the meat was fine (it saved the lives of the starving sled-dog team that first found them).
Suffice it to say, the gentle, so-called precession of the equinoxes (26,000 years?! right!) could not strand herds of mammoths far, far north of their habitat---especially with daecidious-latitude foliage in their stomachs while there's nothing but permafrost for hundreds of miles around them....but that feeble suggestion was the best that apologists of the uniformitarian theory could advance to explain the mammoths' circumstance in a non-cataclysmic model.

You're so right about arguments passing as interdisciplinary cooperation, Bill.

edit: I might've mentioned (though we've come far afield of the original topic, IT's 'chicken/egg 'zen koan') that in fact, every square mile of this planet bears geological testimony of repeated, periodic worldwide cataclysm. It's a phenomenon of human psychology--particularly regarding those in the 'sciences'--that modern man, not toooooo many generations removed from such events, can only accept their obvious repeated occurrence by removing them (in their minds' eye) to the Mezozoic, the Paleolithic, the thank-God-I-wasn't-around-then-oic Ages. The human survivors of these events (those that DID occur during civilized, 'historic' periods) actually memorialized the events as clearly as possible in every way they could. The 'learned men of today' however (for example), see the blow-by-blow accounts of Earth being trashed as Venus and Mars partake in a tremendous 'battle' in the sky, witnessed and recounted all over the world by peoples who'd never heard of each other, as inborn 'collective myth cycles'. That doesn't do much to explain how the ancients knew that Mars has two TINY moons, whipping around it at such speed that the Martian month is less than its day (which, along with its angle of inclination to the ecliptic plane, is the same as ours; the vestige of having been at some time near us enough to have caused (along with interplanetary electrical discharges, partial exchanges of each others' atmospheres, and such phenomena as bodies of water actually being lifted) an 'orbital lock'. The two trabants of Mars, Deimos and Phobos (Terror and Rout) were noted during the seige of Troy, when Mars yoked his mighty war-steeds (Demios and Phobos) and came at Venus (Astarte/Pallas Athene) again. Johnathan Swift mentions them in Gulliver's Travels, also prior to the telescope's invention. Their telescopic 'discoverer' (the first person to actually see them since the time when they were close enough that the ancients could see them with the naked eye---while the gods threw rocks at people on Earth[!]) had the Classical education to name them--a discoverer's right--by their original names......

Makes ya go, "Hmmmm....", about the presumed, generally-accepted 'givens' that are tacit to formal science, but are completely contradicted by the planet's (and the solar system's) actual evidence, doesn't it?

Wasn't the Atmosphere back then far more dense?

It had a much higher Oxygen Content which allowed the Large flying critters to live and flutter about.

Col

depending on which idiotic theory needed propping up at the time.

The First egg hatched a Stone Monkey.

Hence Monkey was born and it's been chaos ever since particularly after he got into the Magical Peach Trees in Heaven and ate the lot.

Whops wrong myth there.

Col

after all what are the chances of eggs ending up being egg shaped.

About the same as a Random Number Generator generating Random Numbers.

Quite easy when you think about it really.

Col

I'll bet the hens appreciate it. The square ones cause a lot of trouble.

Less packaging.
Also cubic hens would have resulted in major efficiencies in battery farms...

but Barksism will never die

Actually, *more* packaging, but much more efficient storage.

And, maybe we should think of the shell as an "ooze container"!

The ooze laid something eggy which turned into the first egg-layer, which by the way was more like an egg-divider than a layer, and looked like an egg, not a chicken

The ooze laid a Egg that hatched a Stone Monkey.

That's been known for a very long time and not debated so it most defiantly had to be the Egg came first though it had no relation to a chicken or any other fowl.

Yep I've had one of those days which started out Abysmal and just got worse. When I get home tomorrow I may even be able to post the Questions of the week maybe if I remember.

Col

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhNfHsr0uOM



TR is being so helpful yet again with it changing my logged in details.

Col

Now, of course, I see that if the Monkey had not been bound, he would not also have been made free...

You are learning at last.

But it most defiantly solves which came first the Chicken or the Egg.

As it's the egg that had nothing to do with anything Chicken the problem is solved.

Col

..."defiantly" and "definitely", does it?