Thread: Anger!?

Originally Posted by Bruno

And of course she went about it the wrong way.
a) it was traceable.
b) it was not effective.

If you don't care about (a) then at least be effective. Of course, being a secretary she would not have had access to the physical disks or the tapeloader or the backup tapes in the safe or the offsite backup tapes.

The only way to be both untraceable and effective is if you are a sysadmin.
And even then, that fact by itself is going to make you suspect .

The story never said she was a secretary, in fact, it said that besides the boss, she was the only other person to have full access to all the companies files. Which tells me that she was highly trusted!

Originally Posted by JMS

It is my contention that at least 85% of the people under Psychiatric care would not need this care and, in fact many of our institutions would either be made unnecessary or could scale down considerably if we could learn to deal with stress properly, that is to say with poise and without anger or resentment!
I have noticed that many who have replied to this thread have said that they use anger to their advantage, which means that you require motivation from outside yourself! If this is so, then I wonder who or what is using you and your anger to their advantage? On the other hand if you are moved from within no one can control you, but you will be in perfect control!

This is true ---- I think if you're feeling angry, then you are not in control and haven't handled things properly, and anger is a last resort, I've f#$ked up, now what thing. It is definitely not the healthiest motivator or a sign of strength, but, moreover, serves the same purpose as a trapped animal chewing off his leg to survive, ------ not ideal, not healthy, but useful in the extreme.

Justin

Originally Posted by JMS

The story never said she was a secretary, in fact, it said that besides the boss, she was the only other person to have full access to all the companies files. Which tells me that she was highly trusted!

Sorry I must have misread. I thought she was.

Either they are a very small outfit without a sysadmin (which would explain the lack of backup data, or they were a larger outfit and forgot to mention the sysadmin (because people usually forget we exist).

Or she did all those things I said and they weren't mentioned, but I doubt that. It would have made the story juicier so it's not likely that a reporter would fail to mention those things.

Jeez! Thank goodness I'm not married to her!

Originally Posted by JMS

I have noticed that many who have replied to this thread have said that they use anger to their advantage, which means that you require motivation from outside yourself!

How ya figure? I would say that being motivated by your anger is a very good example of intrinsic motivation. I mean, it's YOUR anger, right? How is that someone else motivating you?

The way I see it (and here my philosophicial/ religious views begin to bleed through, sorry) everyone feels anger at some point. You can't get away from this. If you say you are NEVER angry, you are prolly lying to yourself on some level. There is nothing inherently wrong with being angry. Dealing with anger improperly, yes, that is bad. Letting it control you, also bad. But there are healthy ways to both dissipate and utilize anger.

Example one: (dissipating anger) I have a fight with my wife, and am furious with her. (you married guys will know that this is more of a "when" question than an "if" question) I can let the anger rule me, and yell at her/hit her/sleep with one of her friends. I'd call that a bad thing. Or, I can safely dissipate that anger by hitting a punching bag for half an hour, going jogging, doing situps, etc. I get calm, and I get a workout. Problem solved.

Example two: (using anger) Let us suppose that I am fairing badly in some endeavor. Doesn't matter what, really, but for the sake of discussion let's say I'm trying to finish a project at work. Now, it is late at night (I'm a programmer) and no one else is there. It is easy to lose focus when you are rem-deprived. I can drink a bunch of coffee to stay awake, and usually make myself even more tired and sick, OR I can say to myself, "man, this sucks, it pisses me off that I have to stay up here all night and get this done" and get angry, which will wake me up just as well as coffee, but won't give me a headache or make my stomach hurt. And I can keep drinking glasses of anger, so to speak, all night long as I use that emotion to focus all my drive on getting the code written/fixed/whatever.

That really such a bad thing? In both cases, no one gets hurt, and in both cases, I gain from the situation by using anger.

Originally Posted by Bruno

And of course she went about it the wrong way.
a) it was traceable.
b) it was not effective.

If you don't care about (a) then at least be effective. Of course, being a secretary she would not have had access to the physical disks or the tapeloader or the backup tapes in the safe or the offsite backup tapes.

The only way to be both untraceable and effective is if you are a sysadmin.
And even then, that fact by itself is going to make you suspect.

You never need physical access to the tape/disk drives.

All you really need to do is code some malware that looks likes its operating normaly but is infact saving all the data erroneously over a period of months, not big errors either just small enough to get past the net.

This is even more straightforward if the company uses open source software rather than propriitary (which is often the case with smaller firms reluctant to pay out several thousand for license fees) because you can therefore modify an entire application to seem like its doing its job yet it mysticaly causes errors.
The best part is you can actualy embed backdoors into the programs to gain remote access, to do as you please outside company time, transferring potentialy large sizes of money to several accounts and bouncing those accounts around for a few months to make tracing the money almost impossable.

In terms of an architectural firm you could just modify the code to plot things incorrectly in the tolerance if a couple of inches, view and print them correctly for a few months till you push the end game button and see all hell breaking loose as no applications display your drawings correctly. This would then set back project managers and construction firms involved and put the target firm completely out of reputable business.
No one wants a house that has windows and doors that refused to fit, especialy if these doors and windows (as is usualy the case) are custom built from custom alloys and shipped from Norway.

As for backups, once your code is up and running then its just a matter of a few weeks before the incremental backups begin to become altered, after at least a month the backups will have revolved full cycle and all of them will be irreprably dammaged causing potentialy fatal losses in company revinue and more importantly reputation.

By the time this is all kicking off you should have bankrolled your own firm and be ready to swoop in and save the day by picking off all the target firms clients.
"I worked for that firm for a number of years and told them time and time again that their software was not up to the job, all fallen on deaf ears because they where too cheap to pay for a time tested soloution." would certainly appeal to a project manager whos costs are spiraling and whos client is getting more and more disgruntled.

Then again trying to code anything when all you can think of is blowing up the world is no small feat, this is primarily the scenario under which "Windows ME" was developed.

You are right, but in big firms like you mention, everything important has an audit trail hanging to it which would very quickly finger you as the culprit.

For small outfits it would be possible.
I thought of data poisoning, but that only works over the course of months, not one or 2 days.

Short term the only way is to erase and then physically destroy the disks and any other backup media.

So, Chroma, now we really know how the site crashed and who's responsible...don't we

Originally Posted by jockeys

How ya figure? I would say that being motivated by your anger is a very good example of intrinsic motivation. I mean, it's YOUR anger, right? How is that someone else motivating you?

The way I see it (and here my philosophicial/ religious views begin to bleed through, sorry) everyone feels anger at some point. You can't get away from this. If you say you are NEVER angry, you are prolly lying to yourself on some level. There is nothing inherently wrong with being angry. Dealing with anger improperly, yes, that is bad. Letting it control you, also bad. But there are healthy ways to both dissipate and utilize anger.

Example one: (dissipating anger) I have a fight with my wife, and am furious with her. (you married guys will know that this is more of a "when" question than an "if" question) I can let the anger rule me, and yell at her/hit her/sleep with one of her friends. I'd call that a bad thing. Or, I can safely dissipate that anger by hitting a punching bag for half an hour, going jogging, doing situps, etc. I get calm, and I get a workout. Problem solved.

Example two: (using anger) Let us suppose that I am fairing badly in some endeavor. Doesn't matter what, really, but for the sake of discussion let's say I'm trying to finish a project at work. Now, it is late at night (I'm a programmer) and no one else is there. It is easy to lose focus when you are rem-deprived. I can drink a bunch of coffee to stay awake, and usually make myself even more tired and sick, OR I can say to myself, "man, this sucks, it pisses me off that I have to stay up here all night and get this done" and get angry, which will wake me up just as well as coffee, but won't give me a headache or make my stomach hurt. And I can keep drinking glasses of anger, so to speak, all night long as I use that emotion to focus all my drive on getting the code written/fixed/whatever.

That really such a bad thing? In both cases, no one gets hurt, and in both cases, I gain from the situation by using anger.

It may be your anger but someone or something else is prodding it! have you never watched children poke and tease at someone who is angry! They delight in it because they have the control not the angry person! also I wonder, did your Sensei ever teach you to use the anger, fear,and other emotions of your opponents against them? Many women do this all the time to get their own way! They get you so angry that when you finally cool down you feel guilty and become putty in their hands. some businesses use this technique also!

Yes, many people say they are not angry when in fact they are and can't even admit it to themselves which allows them to be used much easier than the man who can admit his anger! We all get angry to one degree or another and one must recognize this before they can begin the slow process of untangling themselves and separating themselves from anger! Those who have managed this will not be reading this post as they will probably be walking on water somewhere!

I think dissipating anger is a wise course of action but it still leaves the main cause of the anger largely undealt with.

If you have to get angry to accomplish your work you might want to consider another line of work!

Come on Brother Brendon, reply! you too Matt Hailey!


Come one, come all! Let us hear what you think!