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Dilbert explains it to you

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

and related

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

It could be fun.

There's also this one, which nicely sums up the usual understanding of UNIX for most people.

Lawn dwarves rulez the r00st!!1!1! http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-06-24/

http://search.dilbert.com/comic/Marketing%20Liquor

Microsoft has always been 99% marketing, and on the innovation side, far behind in the game. Now things are moving forward at such a pace that they ~need~ to innovate something to survive, at the same time as Balmer wants to keep his job, so the 'new' Balmer strategy is: hire underlings that will do the needed job, then take all the credit for any innovation because it was created by the underlings you hired.

Balmer obviously doesn't read Dilbert.

My input to that is just personal non researched experience as a SW Engineer. My first answer is always for the best solution for the long run (from my perspective) but often get shown why that will cost too much in the short run to make good business sense. Sometimes for reasons I can understand and other times making me want to hit the business type person, similar to the recent Dilbert http://www.dilbert.com/2011-02-03/...

Hidave, it sounds like you have some PEBKAC issues. It is recommended that you wipe your system with a liveCD and start from scratch (installing windows, then office etc). Assuming the data on your discs are still intact, this should return you to a working state. Otherwise, download a new windows ISO and go from there. Your system will probably be pwned thirty seconds after you connect it to the internet, so delay that step until your system has its bum-cover (AV) on.

You have learned why backups are important: they let you return to a known-working state. Once you have a working system again, make one. You may also have learned something about trusting microsoft updates, but I doubt it.

Firefox has a keyboard command to increase text size. Keyboard commands are generally faster than GUI elements, but YMMV. The cool thing about firefox though is that there are add-ons so you can enhance that sort of functionality. There is an add-on to give you a GUI button to zoom. Also, Adblock Plus is indispensible, NoScript is highly recommended, and Firebug is essential for web development.

There's nothing quite so pathetic as an entrenched Windows user. Its flaws engender hopelessness and despair, for what alternative action can be taken? "Why?," the user asks, "Why is this happening to me?" Well, not that we blame you for your past indiscretions, but here's a nickel.

Facebook users - famous or not - need to take better care of their social networking security," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.

Scott Adams has depicted them in so many ways...

But now anyone can have a FB page from your grandmother to a company, it lost that unique feeling of being part of a club that was closed to outsiders.

Once again, yesterday's Dilbert seems apropos here. I definitely seems like every company nowadays has a Facebook page and thinks it is necessary for business. I've yet to encounter one I can't do business with without Facebook, but the first time I do that company is never going to see me again.

Even my 70 year old mother has come to the conclusion that Facebook is something that is a little sketchy and should have the minimum possible information in it -- when senior citizens start to realize that, you gotta figure the writing is on the wall.

As long as their revenues come from selling your personal information to advertisers, this will only get worse. I assume Facebook doesn't directly make money from their users -- I've never used it, but I don't know what the users would be paying for.

Welcome to the world of cryptography, kiddo! "Random" is a fun word. Here's an example of some random numbers: http://www.dilbert.com/fast/2001-10-25/

Need more? http://www.amazon.com/Million-Random-Digits-Normal-Deviates/dp/0833030477/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

For the purposes of cryptography, though, random (obviously) means 'unpredictable.' Or, more specifically, it means it is impossible to write program which generates passwords devised using your scheme without going through, on average, half the keyspace per attempt.

So remember that when you're talking crypt, use the crypto definition of the term. Then you (hopefully) won't make embarrassing comments like that again.

this Dilbert Cartoon leaps to mind.

is presented here

Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) wrote about this just a few weeks ago: http://www.dilbert.com/blog/entry/?EntryID=541.

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2005-09-19/
The classic wisdom on that is captured by the Scott Adams / Dilbert series about the "stupid / rich" market segment. People who overpay for a toy Apple iPad are thought to be willing to overpay for a magazine subscription too.

The random number could still be random. That's the thing with randomness... you can never tell. http://search.dilbert.com/comic/Random%20Nine

Scott Adams (the author of Dilbert) thinks that this is the best movie he has ever seen . That almost makes me curious enough to watch it.

Dilbert cartoon

Dilbert strips on shrinking cubicle topic:

http://www.dilbert.com/fast/1991-06-17/
http://www.dilbert.com/fast/1995-04-08/

Dilbert strips on shrinking cubicle topic:

http://www.dilbert.com/fast/1991-06-17/
http://www.dilbert.com/fast/1995-04-08/

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1996-09-15/

Wiktionary refers to a book classifying could care less [wiktionary.org] as one of the Common Errors of English Usage

That depends entirely upon whether or not you actually can care less. Using "could care less" is a clever way of hiding the fact that you actually care a great deal about something, if you were to use it intentionally.

And, along those lines, one of my all-time favorite Dillberts:

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2007-09-29/

I like it in conjunction with the previous day's entry.

Obligatory Dilbert.

Obligatory XKCD^H^H^H^HDilbert: http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2008-02-12/

Sorry it's not XKCD.

Make the requirement too complicated and users will work arround it.

PS.. greetings from mordoc the information preventer in 1998

Not if you make it complicated enough. Force them to use a different doodle or a different squirrel noise each time that can't be written down, and you get rid of the yellow sticky note issue. And in 1998 they had no real comprehension of how to prevent access to useful systems. Take a look at an updated Dilbert from 2005 for how to really prevent stolen passwords as well as how to prevent access.

Make the requirement too complicated and users will work arround it.

PS.. greetings from mordoc the information preventer in 1998

Not if you make it complicated enough. Force them to use a different doodle or a different squirrel noise each time that can't be written down, and you get rid of the yellow sticky note issue. And in 1998 they had no real comprehension of how to prevent access to useful systems. Take a look at an updated Dilbert from 2005 for how to really prevent stolen passwords as well as how to prevent access.

Make the requirement to complicated and users will work arround it.
1 -Put it on a yellow memo under the keyboard (YES YOU!!!)
2 -Take a complicated password.... and add a increment before or after it everytime you have to change. (if you have a automated policy against this, see 1. )

PS.. greetings from mordoc the information preventer in 1998

Your mission, if you choose to accept it. You are dealing with people that mostly wouldn't remember what an "ion" is. When you say "smashing iron", they think of banging two iron bars together. And how exactly is iron atoms related to the creation of the universe, really? Answer: It isn't, but they will have skipped to some other headline long before you got to explain it to them.

Do you think think this is related to science journalism in particular? There's so many wildly misleading titles all over the places. Like right now in the sports section is one "The coach didn't like their celebration" as if there was a conflict between the coach and the team. If you read the article he just think there's too many flashy gimmicks, spraying of champagne etc. and it's just not his style. Everything is fluff like that there days.

THIS one is obligatory - "the Wally period".

http://dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000000/00000000/0000000/100000/00000/4000/500/104570/104570.strip.gif

suck it xkcd!

It's not a PDF viewing utility anymore, you know, have you installed Acrobat 8 lately? And I mention that quite old version because it was at that point that they put the gigabloating monkeymachine in full warp drive. 3, 4, 5 were ok, then I got distracted for a minute and a 260 MB installer hits my bittorrent client. Suddenly it's a multiplatform collaborating productivating intrafudging-enabled rack-stackable TCO-enabler with all the XML capable bits in all the relevant bozoconcepts, enterprise-level.

http://www.dilbert.com/2010-10-25/

http://www.dilbert.com/2010-10-25/

This one's been fairly popular in our office, wonder why...

"I started by reasoning that anything I don't understand is easy to do"

Scott Adams says it like it is, without people realizing that there's often more truth than funny to the comics...

Reminds me of today's Dilbert comic: http://dilbert.com/2010-10-25/

Are you sure? Looks valuable to me...

"They had an idea of how the gun would change the head of that person but that does not make them responsible for what the gun did."

That's perhaps the stupidest and least relevant attempt at analogy that I've encountered here (against pretty stiff competition, too).

A less-dreadful analogy with guns would be "They knew the hunters were incompetent, so they pointed at the hunters' feet said 'Look, moose!'" Now they may deserve a mild rebuke for confusing the imbeciles, but it's the idiots who pulled the trigger who are responsible for shooting their own feet. In other words, it was the mechanical algorithm's fault, or more correctly the fault of those who authorized it to act on their behalf in such a way.

Oh, here's a Dilbert for you http://www.dilbert.com/2010-10-11

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1996-01-23/ They're trying to prevent teenagers from talking about sex. Teenagers. Sex. Good fucking luck.

There are more uses for money than spending it on crap.

Definitely -- take a cue from Dogbert, who was in that same situation some years ago.

Because ebooks are not purchased... they're stolen: http://dilbert.com/2010-09-18/

Two wrongs, in special cases, can make a right (if they cancel each other properly).
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1999-02-07/

That's 50 years away!

Unless you use moron-catalyzed fusion...

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2010-08-23/

The Dilbert version is more consise.

When it comes to passwords, this dilbert comic comes to mind- http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2007-01-17/

here you go.

http://dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000000/00000000/0000000/000000/00000/6000/800/6858/6858.strip.zoom.gif

Surely you mean Elbonia.

http://www.dilbert.com/2010-07-18/

Well, they didn't get it then, there's no reason to think they'll get it now... And they are a software company. Their big issue is that they stop at "good enough" and ship it. You may or may not like Apple, but the thing is licked clean! Half of the 'standard features' are missing (much like the first iPhone) but the features that are there, man, are they usable!

With MS it is the exact opposite: Everything is there, in a huge mess of menus, configs, clicks, etc. But you can do everything. If you can figure out how to do it.

Scott Adams got it on his blog: http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/the_amazingness_of_instant/

In practice, it's almost useless...

http://www.dilbert.com/fast/1992-02-03/