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Banning Facebook is ALWAYS a good idea! 1. If your workers/employees are demoralized by banned Facebook, you should fire them.

No... if someone tries to ban Facebook, I might fire that person for trying to ban FB, or re-assign them since they obviously have way too much free time if they're trying to make up clever rules just for the sake of making up rules, see Dilbert 2011-05-05.

Morale is important, and unfettered web access, and being treated like an adult, is one of the few perks to keep the employees on speaking terms after they finish their 120 hour 7-day work week, that they get paid for 40 hours of, with non-specific hints of possible future raises when the product pans out.

If they couldn't access their FB, many of them would probably insist on going home before 8pm after only 9.5 hours of work (lunch and 2 15 minute breaks of course don't count as work), and we just can't have that.

You are right. Just one day working from home a week is a huge saving in fuel, time, and stress. It also improves productivity and lets you avoid those time thieves who insist on starting pointless conversations with anyone and everyone. I don't know why more companies don't allow staff to work from home at least one day a week.

Strangely there is a dilbert about this today:
http://dilbert.com/2011-08-14/

Never is a long time. It wasn't that long ago when people said that cell phones were nice but they would never replace land lines.

I think that the key will be the interface and the functionality. There are some things which are better done with a (real!) keyboard, (good) monitor, and mouse. The box that controls them can be a traditional PC (hereafter referred to as the Grandpa Box), some mysterious server in the basement, or a tablet feeding the peripherals wirelessly. As we get more and more powerful systems, the need for the fastest and greatest will gradually wane. (It already has - people are more inclined to upgrade their PCs to get a clean OS build than to get faster hardware).

I actually think the comparison with tubes and records was accurate. Tubes and records are still around, but are a niche market now. They have their place, but have _mostly_ been replaced by other technologies.

Where did they get their facts? Wikipedia is flourishing. Don't believe me? Give me ten minutes then go check wikipedia. http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-05-08/

What if you don't have an infinite loop, but your random input data make you look like one?

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2007-12-09/

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2006-10-02/

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2006-10-04/

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2006-10-02/

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2006-10-04/

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-01-30/

> Writing programs with only 640K memory or a whopping 1024K if you could make tap the extended memory really separated the men from the boys.

Humm, reminds me of something...

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1992-09-08/

sometimes Dilbert's are relevant too: http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2001-10-25/

Here's another one: Dilbert.

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2010-03-26/

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2011-05-10/

This is how I feel

"companies have figured out they can get one person to do the work of two and pocket the other guy's salary".

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2011-07-07/

In what? Choosing a fake name?

Kruphnehdahpheweundikaniswalyniaphorganopop.

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2010-09-01/

You mean like this?

Has a good 404 page.

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2011-05-27/

AKA: employee locator

Relevant: http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2011-01-07/

I can't imagine Microsoft deliberately walking into that.

It may not be deliberate, but a side-effect of other dysfunctions. Ever noticed the way Dilbert's PHB is kind of Ballmer-shaped, except with more hair.

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2008-05-07/

safari and ipad ... do you also have a target painted on your back?

You ignorant twit, that's the international symbol of the Red Cross ;-)

Some reason this story also makes me think of this:

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2010-05-04/

Sure we can do that... but you first Germany. Lets see how that works out. Or we could use Dogbert Power

it's just that it's no longer necessary for everyone to be an expert.

Yes, but everybody in IT must assert they are an expert in CS too. Academia/Science is seen to be risk free, because there is no money involved. Technology is seen as something you can buy, borrow or steal with no chance of harm to Personal/Professional Reputation.

Does this threaten the intellectual elite which brought the Internet into being? I can't see how. Of course, it can be frustrating at times to deal with ignorance disguised as superiority, but that's nothing new. We can go back further, to Aristotle and beyond, and find the very same thing.

I'd love to have a battle of the Dilbert, unfortunately, I can't find it. It is very apropos what I said above: Briefly, the pointy-haired Boss is complaining that all sick days are taken on Mondays and Fridays. He ends the rant with 'What kind of idiot do they think I am ?' to which his Secretary replies 'Not an idiot savant, they can do math'

Oh yes, the "Internet geek" community. Is there a "new anti-intellectualism" amongst them?

Considering that both of these terms are undefined and contentious, it should be no surprise to see a diverse, noisy spectrum of responses to the question. After all, who gets to say what sort of person qualifies as an "Internet geek"? At that rate, I suppose we might as well all have a crack at the definition. Is it anyone with a Facebook account? Or do you have to be a protocol designer? If the former, then we're really talking about a massive sampling of the whole human population, and there's no particular discussion to be had. If the latter, then I'd argue, as someone working in the profession, that it's the same highly-skilled elite as always, and that - of necessity - nothing has changed.

Something has changed. It's more crowded now. When I got started in this profession, computer science was a new term for the sorts of inquiries being made by mathematicians and electrical engineers. To be a computer scientist was much like being a rocket scientist. Everything was exotic. A lot of the work was, perforce, purely an exercise of intellect. Anyone who had free access to computer time lived in a rare state of privilege. Today networked computing is absolutely prosaic, and comparisons with the old profession are essentially meaningless under any but, as noted above, a fairly elite definition of "Internet geek".

That's what has changed. The once-exclusive hot tub has become infinitely more crowded. Well, but what does this tell us about a "new anti-intellectualism"? It tells us absolutely nothing that we didn't know before. In the limit, the average IQ of a population still converges, by definition, to 100. Such a population places no particular emphasis on intellect, since intellect is not its particular asset. That population of Internet practitioners is our reward for all the hard work of building the Internet. Most people don't appreciate what it means simply because they can't. It's not a question of hostility to intellectualism, it's just that it's no longer necessary for everyone to be an expert.

Does this threaten the intellectual elite which brought the Internet into being? I can't see how. Of course, it can be frustrating at times to deal with ignorance disguised as superiority, but that's nothing new. We can go back further, to Aristotle and beyond, and find the very same thing.

Obligatory Dilbert strip: http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2008-05-08/ One of the best imho...

He wants his twenty years of observations back.

Stuff like this: http://dilbert.com/fast/2010-10-24/
and this: http://dilbert.com/fast/2009-02-05/
and about a hundred others.

Stuff like this: http://dilbert.com/fast/2010-10-24/
and this: http://dilbert.com/fast/2009-02-05/
and about a hundred others.

No it won't. Running the same hash multiple times does not make it better. that is not how crypto works. Besides that, that would make it incompatible with older NTLM systems...

The password needs to be strong enough. Acrtually in NT passwords can be 255 chars long. maybe there is even room for improvement

Dilbert's take on Internet logic

http://search.dilbert.com/search?day1=14&mth1=11&yr1=2004&day2=14&mth2=11&yr2=2004&x=29&y=11

No problem... It's ********

Credit

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1994-04-24/

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-11-19/

That cartoon is funny because it assumes that the Cloud would actually be using encryption.

Silly Dilbert!

(yes I know Ubuntu aren't the only fuzzy cloudy people on the planet, but their 'encryption is hard dur we don't need it' stance makes me hit my head against hard things).

No company worth their salt will put all the company data "on the cloud" No way in HELL is my customer DB and accounting DB going on the cloud.

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-11-19/

I lol'd Dilbert

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2000-08-31/

A very convenient comic strip

Do you really think that when a "middle aged man with money to defend himself" and his "son is getting beaten up" that he enjoys wasting gobs of time and money in a defense or libel suit? If you're broad claim was legit, there'd be more "middle aged m[e]n" railing on the po'.

Yeah, there are a few bad cops. I maintain, though, that the greater problem lies in the anti-cop crowd. We'd have much less crime, much higher and more accurate solve rate if inner city culture was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Cops would err less on the side of hostility if the prevailing culture was less hostile against them. Think about it, if you're capable.

"... the guy that rubbed my head into the road for speeding" I wish you hadn't gone through that. I'm still highly dubious. By way of analogy.

Dilbert #1

Dilbert #2 -- Also explains IE 6

Dilbert #1

Dilbert #2 -- Also explains IE 6

http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2011-05-18/

You may have agreed to be Bill Gates' towel boy, for one.

http://www.dilbert.com/2011-03-29/

You missed the first and the best one:
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2007-10-16/