which are easier to manipulate?

which are easier to control?


which do we need as a system to run a nation?



[Edited on March 10, 2011 at 9:48 PM. Reason : versus*]

3/10/2011 9:45:20 PM

i thought this was about engineering. fuck politics.

3/10/2011 9:45:49 PM

shut the fuck up you simple-minded fuck

3/10/2011 9:46:09 PM

Quote :

"i thought this was about engineering. fuck politics. "

It's about engineering a country. Not politics.

3/10/2011 9:46:46 PM

I realize this thread is about simple systems vs complicated systems....which I do not control. Hear me out, maybe I can offer some insight.

I am in outside sales, which is currently salary+commission, but will move into straight commission starting at the beginning of July 2010. I have been in this position since July 2009. I have competition from several direct manufacturing sales reps, large distributors, and local distributors. Here are the advantages and disadvantages of each:

Direct Advantages: Immediate knowledge of new technology, no middle man mark up, one shipping bill (paid by manufacturer or buyer of goods), access to larger range of non-commodity items, control inventory, have access to many distributors that can effectively sell their goods which increases market share, and set prices of commodity they manufacture.

Direct disadvantages: Typically have 1-3 sales reps per region (i.e. southeast, mid-atlantic, northeast, etc.) limiting the number of accounts they can successfully manage/cold-call, lack physical customer service or physical technical service available to or affordable for smaller users or altogether, are sometimes not trustworthy because they will go in behind their distributors that sell their commodity to one account in large quantities (i.e. they missed a big account, and have found out about it through a distributor selling their particular product) which leads to the distributor not selling their product anymore, have too many distributors selling the product ultimately driving the set price down through deviations, possibly rely on distributors to actually sell the product, and competition from other direct sources.

Large distributor advantages: have access to other commodities that go hand in hand with other manufacturers (poor example- grocery stores sell milk as well as cereal), get direct pricing, many locations regionally or nationally easing the shipping burden of buyers with multiple locations, personal service either customer or technical, many sales reps that are able to cover a broader territory, access to multiple manufacturers of the same commodity allowing to keep prices in check, service programs that smaller companies can't offer and direct providers can't match in price or value, and experts of many many commodities as opposed to one or a few.

Large distributor disadvantages: smaller local distributors creating price wars (think Michael Scott Paper Co vs Dunder-Mifflin), direct mfg's going in behind and stealing business, limited access to all of the mfg's (you won't find Harris Teeter name brands in Food Lion and visa versa), can't truly set prices because it's based on both supply and demand, territory management, and tough growth prospects in slower economies (this is true for direct as well really)

Local distributor advantages: Typically a good ol' boy setting where the seller and the buyer know each other for years (this does happen at all levels, but mostly at the local level), local folks are right down the street and can be used in emergencies, if the local guy buys at high enough volumes then there is no shipping charge to the end user, and access to both direct mfg's and large distributors.

Local distributor disadvantages: easily beaten in price, array of commodities, array of technology, lack of trained staff, low cash flow, etc etc etc.

This is what I have noticed in my six months, I am sure there are plenty more that need mentioning. The way I am setting myself apart as a sales person is this: I go after the big accounts right now while I am new. The big accounts, if I land them, will take care of me while I am new and building a customer base. The money made off of those allows me to focus free time on smaller accounts that get me higher margins. I build up big accounts, I would like to have 5-10 of these, then get 20-30 medium accounts. If I lose 1 or 2 big accounts, the 20-30 medium accounts keep me afloat while I go after new big accounts. I don't really waste time on small accounts simply because they basically pay for breakfast or something really small.

I will say this, if you can't get a big account in the first 6-8 months (assuming you have cash flow that you can ride this long) you could be in a world of trouble. If you can get one, it will really make going after the others a lot more enjoyable and less stressful. It's simply just very exhausting wasting any time on anything other than big accounts in the very beginning. You work just as hard on the medium sized accounts and see 1/3 to 1/36 of the money in my situation.

If you have any other questions, you can PM me. I hope this helps in the slightest!

3/10/2011 9:48:31 PM

Lets dump everything we know about simple and complicated systems in here, TWW; technical, political, financial, everything is welcome. This in my new industry, I am investing all my money and time and I need your help. I've been taking classes in this for a while now and will be doing much more in the near future culminating in a new business venture to begin within a year. I have just broken my arm so I have lots of down time and can't really study that hard because of the meds, so lets just chat it up for the next few days. I especially hope to hear from all of the encouraging, helpful people from whom I've been receiving PM's. Lets get it all out there and discuss it, maybe even get some google docs going. By day, you can grind away at your engineering jobs but your heart can be here with me in Florida. Our mission is to reach critical mass and start a System Revolution!

3/10/2011 9:50:50 PM

ELIAAAA EPTIMAAHHH

AND THA PRINCETAAAHN AAHHFENSE

3/10/2011 9:52:24 PM

Any new memes? Those are boring.

3/10/2011 9:53:23 PM

Any non-mechanical system will run a billion times smoother if you kill all the idiots that are part of the system.

3/10/2011 9:54:41 PM

geniusxboy reminds me of a black and white IBM commercial with blue bars at the top and bottom

i usually tune out

3/10/2011 9:55:57 PM

For example:

Tic tac toe vs Monopoly.


It's easier to tell when someone cheats in TicTacToe than it is in Monopoly.

Which game do people make up their own rules?

3/10/2011 9:59:04 PM

Dude, you're so right. We should make the government like fucking tic-tac-toe. That will solve ALL of our problems!

3/10/2011 10:01:40 PM

If tac tic toe being - the simple and straight forward constitution of america

and monopoly being an entire library wall of laws "interpreting" the constitution

then I agree, we should throw away the entire library wall.

3/10/2011 10:04:25 PM

**EPIPHANY**

3/10/2011 10:05:39 PM

versus

3/10/2011 10:14:11 PM

Let's engineer something large...

3/11/2011 11:12:22 AM

we start jumping and then along with it go "ooooooooooooo" and get louder like "OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH" and then switch to "PACK! PACK! PACK! PACK! OOOOOO PACK! PACK! PACK! PACK! OOOOOOOOOOOO! POWER PACK! POWER PACK! BACK THE PACK!" and then play a loud rockin rap song or somethin. i think it would get things crazy.

3/11/2011 11:14:24 AM

^^hahahahaha

3/11/2011 1:12:48 PM

I think it's pretty obvious that we don't want a government as simple as tic-tac-toe or as complicated as Monopoly. Balance is the key which is why I propose the Connect Four democratic government of America.

3/11/2011 1:54:28 PM

Quote :

"we start jumping and then along with it go "ooooooooooooo" and get louder like "OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH" and then switch to "PACK! PACK! PACK! PACK! OOOOOO PACK! PACK! PACK! PACK! OOOOOOOOOOOO! POWER PACK! POWER PACK! BACK THE PACK!" and then play a loud rockin rap song or somethin. i think it would get things crazy."

to me, this is still the single funniest thing anyone has ever posted on TWW.

3/11/2011 1:56:37 PM

ITT we see a blatant disregard for gray areas until that gray area effects them

3/11/2011 2:22:47 PM

^ Have you been to America?

3/11/2011 6:13:55 PM

Quote :

"the simple and straight forward constitution of america"

not as "straight forward" as you may think

What is the meaning of "cruel and unusual"?

What about those unenumerated rights?

What counts as "public use" in the takings clause?

What constitutes infringement of the right of the people to keep and bear arms?

What about abridgment of the freedom of speech or the press?

In order to keep the government from making laws respecting an establishment of religion, should it specifically exempt religious organizations from the burden of taxation imposed on the general public, or should it rather make no mention of religion in its statutes?

What constitutes an unreasonable search or seizure?

Who is considered "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States?

What constitutes "due process of law"?

How must the states ensure "the equal protection of the laws"? What Federal-level protections of civil liberties are thereby incorporated into the states?

How may the Federal government "regulate Commerce" both inter-state and "with foreign Nations" and Native-American tribes?

What is considered "necessary and proper" to carry out the powers of Congress?

Is the Air Force unconstitutional, merely because the Framers could not have forseen its possibility when they wrote that Congress had the power "To raise and support Armies" and "provide and maintain a Navy"?

What constitutes "limited Times" during which the "Writings and Discoveries" shall be exclusively exploited by their creators, and does this phrase extend to creative works that are clearly neither discoveries nor writings?

3/11/2011 8:08:12 PM

So here's the story, and please hear me out before commenting:

I realize this thread is about Simple Systems versus Complex Systems ....which I am not. Hear me out, maybe I can give odds of what you think Simple systems versus Complex Systems existing is.

I am in outside sales, which is currently salary+commission, but will move into straight commission starting at the beginning of July 2010. I have been in this position since July 2009. I have competition from several direct manufacturing sales reps, large distributors, and local distributors. I play trivia every Tuesday and Friday night with D, the Director of Quality at a company I used to work for (and would like to work for again some day), and his gf, N. One night we're all getting ready to leave the bar so I go to pay for my tab, and the bartender tells me Let's do something large - my debit card was declined. Confused, I ask her to Let's do something like.... try it again, again declined. By this point, D and N are looking over and I'm starting to get embarrassed. N asks me what's up, I say "There's a 1 out of 1x10^10 chance my card is being declined," D says no worries, that means there's a one in ten billion chance of my card being declined, and picks up my tab. Although super embarrassed, I was grateful because I wasn't carrying any other form of payment on me. Is that not rare enough for you?

Here are the advantages and disadvantages of each:

Direct Advantages: Immediate knowledge of new technology, no middle man mark up, one shipping bill (paid by manufacturer or buyer of goods), access to larger range of non-commodity items, control inventory, have access to many distributors that can effectively sell their goods which increases market share, and set prices of commodity they manufacture.

Direct disadvantages: Typically have 1-3 sales reps per region (i.e. southeast, mid-atlantic, northeast, etc.) limiting the number of accounts they can successfully manage/cold-call, lack physical customer service or physical technical service available to or affordable for smaller users or altogether, are sometimes not trustworthy because they will go in behind their distributors that sell their commodity to one account in large quantities (i.e. they missed a big account, and have found out about it through a distributor selling their particular product) which leads to the distributor not selling their product anymore, have too many distributors selling the product ultimately driving the set price down through deviations, possibly rely on distributors to actually sell the product, and competition from other direct sources.

I get home and check my bank account balance online and everything is normal. No unauthorized transactions or anything. I try again the next day to use my card at Old Navy, but this time brought an american express giftcard that I had with me just in case. Sure enough, debit card is declined and I pay with the gift card. I then exit the store and call my bank angrily and explain what had happened to me and asked what was up. The customer service rep told me that customers who did not have fraud protection would temporarily not have access to their accounts due to system upgrade/maintenance/IT blah blah. I was like OK.... Okay. Let's do 1 out of 1x10^15. That's a one in one quadrillion chance, and decided I'd just pay with my credit card for the next day or so, no big deal.

Large distributor advantages: have access to other commodities that go hand in hand with other manufacturers (poor example- grocery stores sell milk as well as cereal), get direct pricing, many locations regionally or nationally easing the shipping burden of buyers with multiple locations, personal service either customer or technical, many sales reps that are able to cover a broader territory, access to multiple manufacturers of the same commodity allowing to keep prices in check, service programs that smaller companies can't offer and direct providers can't match in price or value, and experts of many many commodities as opposed to one or a few.

A few days go by and I want to get a snocone at Pelican's, but they're cash-only. Based on observations from the Hubble Space Telescope, there are at least 125 billion ATMs in the universe. It is estimated that at least ten percent of all ATMs have a cash dispenser, and there are 6.25×10^18 ATMs with money in them in the universe. I go to the cashpoints ATM and put in my debit card and PIN and the machine says "Unauthorized use: card retained". The ATM ate my debit card. Pissed off, and on a Sunday, there was nothing I could do.

Monday I'm getting lunch with my bf and decided to be nice and pick up the bill, so I go to pay using my CREDIT card, and the server comes back saying my card was declined. Again, embarrassed, I was thankful to have my bf there to cover the payment. If even a billionth of these payments have Large distributor disadvantages: smaller local distributors creating price wars (think Michael Scott Paper Co vs Dunder-Mifflin), direct mfg's going in behind and stealing business, limited access to all of the mfg's (you won't find Harris Teeter name brands in Food Lion and visa versa), can't truly set prices because it's based on both supply and demand, territory management, and tough growth prospects in slower economies (this is true for direct as well really), there are some 6.25×10^9 (billion) Local distributor advantages: Typically a good ol' boy setting where the seller and the buyer know each other for years (this does happen at all levels, but mostly at the local level), local folks are right down the street and can be used in emergencies, if the local guy buys at high enough volumes then there is no shipping charge to the end user, and access to both direct mfg's and large distributors in the universe.

6,250,000,000.

Monday afternoon I go to my bank and tell them what has happened. My card was retained by the ATM because my bank statements had been returned to the bank by my mail carrier. When that happened, the bank sent a replacement debit card to my address, which was also returned. This is what I have noticed in my six months, I am sure there are plenty more that need mentioning. The way I am setting myself apart as a sales person is this: I go after the big accounts right now while I am new. The big accounts, if I land them, will take care of me while I am new and building a customer base. The money made off of those allows me to focus free time on smaller accounts that get me higher margins. I build up big accounts, I would like to have 5-10 of these, then get 20-30 medium accounts. If I lose 1 or 2 big accounts, the 20-30 medium accounts keep me afloat while I go after new big accounts. I don't really waste time on small accounts simply because they basically pay for breakfast or something really small. I found this really odd considering the address on file was my current one and I successfully receive other bills (electric, insurance, etc) there. Bank tells me they'll send a replacement card again, and give me a temp card for the meantime.

I then call my credit card company. Same story: card statements returned by the USPS, which caused them to put a hold on my card.

Aggravated, I went to the USPS station nearest me and explained the issue. They said to write a note to my carrier and put it in my box. I wrote on a post-it note two days ago "Hi, please deliver all mail addressed to jessiejepp to this box. This includes bank/credit card statements. All mail addressed to other individuals should be RTS. Thank you!" and put it in the back of my box where he/she inserts the mail. Both yesterday and today I have received mail (not for me, but for my address), but my note is still there.


I will say this, if you can't get a big account in the first 6-8 months (assuming you have cash flow that you can ride this long) you could be in a world of trouble. If you can get one, it will really make going after the others a lot more enjoyable and less stressful. I know a lawsuit for punitive damages against a federal agency isn't possible, but I was wondering what (if any) other legal action I can take in this case. It's simply just very exhausting wasting any time on anything other than big accounts in the very beginning. You work just as hard on the medium sized accounts and see 1/3 to 1/36 of the money in my situation.


Now, what are the odds that Simple Systems versus Complex Systems don't exist? If you have any other questions, you can PM me. I hope this helps in the slightest!

3/11/2011 8:35:34 PM