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An Elementary Exposition on the Theory of Ponydynamics


Szechuan Death 18 févr. 2008 03:46
Envoyé au groupe : alt.sysadmin.recovery

(or "<3 <3 <3 OMG Ponies <3 <3 <3")

As a matter of observed history, no field of scientific endeavour
springs fully-formed, as Athena from the head of Zeus; Man looks at the
tableaux that surround him and concocts principles to explain them.  It
is the hope of all scientists that eventually, through the dreadfully
long processes of trial and error and of experimentation and
observation, that these principles inch ever-closer to an approximation
of the Truth of our world, henceforth reserved solely to the Creator.

The theory of ponydynamics (or "ponidynamics", as spelled by the
inhabitants of the British Isles and the Indian subcontinent; "teoria
dinamiky ponyi", for our Russian brethren) is a wide-ranging and complex
view of certain facets of our world, capable of many surprises even
after many years of study.  It is not an extensive treatment that I
propose here in this short missive, since such a task would be
impossible; I aim only at the mark of imparting the general sense of
this theory to the interested layman, and hope much that I hit it.

The theory of ponydynamics begins with the somewhat crude observation of
Freud that childhood development may be broken up into a number of
stages, the second of which, from ages 2 to 4, comprise the anal or
"shit-oriented" stage of childhood.  These ages are only approximate, of
course.  It is at about this stage of childhood that the parents among
us will recognize a common verbalization of their young:

"I want a pony."

About this verbalization:  the concepts of pony qua pony, and the simple
desire thereof, are its only content.  What is notably not included in
this statement is an appreciation of the manifold other characteristics
and pitfalls of pony acquisition, ownership, and maintenance.  Some of
these characteristics are logistical in nature:  ponies must eat, or in
the short- to medium-term, there will be no pony.  There must be a
repository for the byproducts of pony eating, viz. pony shit, and a
means of transporting these byproducts to their final place of repose,
and someone to engage in this task on a periodic basis.  Other
characteristics are practical in nature:  the existence of a pony
implies the existence of a place to keep it, which will presumably be
the yard of the youth, and unless the fortunate youth has the last name
"Gotrocks" or "Gates", that yard is not likely to be very large.  Since
the pony requires as much room as possible, the existence of the pony
and paddock are mutually exclusive with continued ownership of, say, the
huge slide/swingset that the child loves, and the wading pool, and the
berry bushes, and the small garden, und so weiter.  All of the above are
gone, displaced to make Pony Room.  Then, there is the whole question of
the time during the day spent for Pony Maintenance, i.e. brushing,
examination for ailments, veterinarian visits, etc.  There are also the
monetary costs and exclusivity thereof, where the requirements of the
pony will preclude, say, that new fantastically expensive and yet
amazingly crappy Japanese youth-oriented animation series
marketing-craze plastic doll accessory kit that the child desires upon
its birthday.

Again, none of the preceding difficulties are understood at this stage
of the child's life; the child understands only that ponies exist, and
that he or she wants one.  The responses to this state of affairs tend
to fall into one or more of the following categories:  patient
explanation to child of some of these realities, polite refusal when
child does not understand these realities, spanking when child throws
tantrum, and/or auction of child to roving bands of Gypsies.

So far, none of this is new.  The conceptual leap we must make to the
beginning flagstones of a Unified Theory of Ponydynamics is the
observation that some people never leave this state of their childhood,
remaining shit-oriented forever, even though they gain greater
capability to verbalize their desires.  We would, in fact, expect this
trait to be roughly normally distributed in a large population; in other
words, roughly 50% of the population are moderately shit-oriented, and
as many as 15% are more than one standard deviation from the average in
terms of shit-orientedness.  Taken together, this represents a very
large and formidable pro-pony bloc.

Although this Pony Bloc is evenly distributed in the population, its
effects are not.  The key observation is that demands for ponies can
only be sustained when their costs can be hidden and/or externalized.
While this can to some extent be done in any field, there are a few
places where it is most pronounced:  information technology, politics,
and engineering.  I will focus on IT here.  IT provides the perfect
fluoroscope for the observation of this process, because its costs are
always unappreciated (and, to the non-practitioner) somewhat suspect;
because the costs of IT are somewhat nebulous and its tasks and metrics
for success difficult to define, the beneficiaries of IT skills always
feel as though they are paying for nothing, and getting it.  They
therefore feel entitled to "get their money's worth" by continuously
demanding ponies, which it becomes the job of the IT department to provide.

IT professionals (BOFHs) will recognize this pattern immediately, the
tasks of Pony Specification, Pony Refusal, Management-Mediated Forcible
Pony Acceptance, Pony Corralling, Pony Maintenance, Emergency Pony
Maintenance, Pony Deployment, and Pony Decommissioning generally
comprising the largest part (>90%) of their daily workload.  As any IT
professional will also readily identify, ponies consume resources wholly
out of proportion with their number; a single pony, suffered to exist at
all, becomes a time-sucking and unmaintainable albatross until it is
finally led out to the glue wagon.  (This is one of the underpinnings of
Murphy's Second Law of Engineering, "It always costs more to do the
cheap/easy/fast way than it costs to do right the first time."  This can
neatly and amusingly be restated with a slight change of capitalization
as "IT always costs more to do the cheap/easy/fast way than IT costs to
do right the first time.")

After the first Pony Experience, an IT novice is on the road to becoming
an IT Professional, and gains an understanding (if not wholly
verbalized) of the Basic Theorems of Ponydynamics, their duals, and
corollaries, which are presented here without further ado:


* * * * * * * * * *   L A W S   * * * * * * * * * *

First Law of Ponydynamics:  In a well-maintained system (S), the
following quantities are all nonincreasing functions of time:  number of
ponies (N), resources consumed by ponies (R), personnel dedicated to
pony support (P), and personnel originating demands for ponies (p).

Second Law of Ponydynamics:  In a system S, any change of pony state is
always in the direction of minimizing (in aggregate) the above four
variables.

Third Law of Ponydynamics [weak form]:  In a system S tending towards
its ideal steady state, the value of all four Pony State variables tends
toward zero.

* * * * * * * * * *    E N D    * * * * * * * * * *


Duality principle:  No real-world system (S') that can externalize its
costs is ever, or can ever be, well-maintained.


* * * * * * * * * *  D U A L S  * * * * * * * * * *

Dual of First Law of Ponydynamics:  In any system S', all of the
quantities (N, R, P, p) are nondecreasing functions of time.

Dual of Second Law of Ponydynamics:  In any system S', any change of
pony state is either in the direction of maintaining (in aggregate) the
value of the above four variables, or of increasing them (in aggregate).

Dual of Third Law of Ponydynamics:  In any system S' tending towards its
steady state, the values of all four Pony State variables are unbounded.

* * * * * * * * * *    E N D    * * * * * * * * * *


Corollary #1 [Ordering principle]:  A group of systems (G) can be
rank-ordered by the average value of its Pony State variables
(A=<f(N,R,P,p,t)>).

Corollary #2 [Lifespan]:  The long-term viability (V) of any system is
inversely proportional to the value of A.  (V(t)=k/A(t); by Corollary #1
and Dual #3, lim t->+inf V(t) = 0).

Corollary #3 [Necessity, strong form of Third Law]:  For a system S to
reach its ideal state, a necessary and sufficient condition is that all
Pony State variables be identically zero.

With this mental framework in place, we can begin to see and create a
taxonomy of patterns once obscured.  We can see that it is the task of
the BOFH to carefully assess the Pony State variables at hand and set
about minimizing them, and it is the goal of the rest of the
organization to shut the hell up, stop demanding ponies, and let the
BOFHs get on with the Good Work, before they wind up chained to a
lamppost in the goddamned parking lot and FLAYED ALIVE with a cat of
nine-tails as an example to the rest of the fucking lusers...

Ah, I apologize.  I am dreadfully sorry for disrupting the scholarly
tone, and pray forgiveness.

At any rate, the desideratum of the BOFH is the orderly transition
through a series of steps to a Pony-Free state, which by Corollary #3 is
the only way to reach the system's ideal state.  This notional ideal
(and, I hasten to say sadly, usually an unreachable one) is akin to the
least-energy state of a system in the related field of thermodynamics.
Where it is possible to achieve, it can be achieved when one of the four
standard methods of dealing with child pony-demands noted above
("lecture", "refusal", "spanking", "auction"), or their contextual
equivalent, is supported either by economic constraints or by
administrative fiat.  We can now add a fourth Corollary:


Corollary #4 [Frustration]:  For a system S embedded in a given
workplace (W), the frustration (F) of the BOFH in dealing with S is
directly proportional to both the cooperation (c) received in minimizing
the Pony State variables of this system and the inherent difficulty (D)
of minimization of these variables.  (F(S)=k*c(t)D(N,R,P,p,t))

And also a fifth:


Corollary #5 [Desirability]:  The desirability (Z) of employment for a
BOFH at a given workplace W is proportional to the negative of the first
derivative of the frustration F.  (Z(t)=-k*F'(S(W)))

It is at this point that the layman has all the important basic tenets
of the theory at hand, and may use them in evaluating his or her own
situation vis-a-vis pony-wrangling.  I urge the interested reader to
consider further implications of this theory as an exercise.

[Ed. Note:  The nasty mathematical version of this theory is
significantly tougher, as it introduces differential operators and
certain concepts of vector calculus, and invokes Cthulhu if certain
sections are pronounced improperly.  If you pronounce it properly,
Cthulhu will solve some of your pony problems with an immediate
cancellation of p (if you're lucky), and *all* of your pony problems by
a cancellation of P (if you're not).  Some days you may not care,
though, it coming to the same either way.]

--
(c) 2008 Chaste Adze Hun via Central Plexus <hasted@tent.heads>
I am Chaos. I am alive, and I tell you that you are Free. -Eris
"NO! NO PONIES! NO... MORE... GOD... DAMNED... PONIES!"
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