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The Impractical Ideas page has several ideas that are not only practical, they're not even necessarily hard. For example, the solar closet; I've seen a couple webpages with houses in the desert that have columns of water standing in them that get sunlight from above, which distribute light into the house and retain heat at night. This is anything but an impractical idea. How about "Easy access to smoke alarms"? That's pretty goddamned practical. Stainless steel sink/counters are not only practical and no more expensive than, say, marble - but you don't even have to custom make them! Just buy some of the nicer commercial fixtures. And finally, the UPS system so you don't have to set your clocks is also something you can buy off the shelf, for instance APC's Matrix series products. They take 220VAC input (typically, in the US) and they spit out 110VAC battery-backed power which you can wire into the house.

this one.

Click on "Garbage" (but note that this flash applet doesn't appear to work in mozilla :(

Come on.
That greenhouse needs a good hydroponics system if Dilbert's looking to get any quality chronic.

Point-haried managers jumped on the Linux bandwagon just because it's the in thing to do.

Really good. Stuff like this always makes me think of the Dilbert Mission Statement Generator. Scary how close it comes to ACTUAL mission statements sometimes.

Just in case anyone was looking for it, the Dilbert mission statement generator is here:

http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/career/bin/m s2.cgi

They just crafted it from here:

Dilbert's Mission Statement Generator

This has been around for a while (since 2000 I think), but I still get a laugh out of it:

Catbert's Mission statement generator

Perfect for this thread!

Don't worry some pointy haired boss out there has a hard copy of the Internet sitting on his desk.

I put in 80 hour work weeks for seven years. I lived my work. I worked at work, then I went home and worked on work the rest of the night. Plus weekends. And holidays. That's assuming I didn't just live at work, which I did for weeks at a time. And all of my reviews were golden.

Luxury. In my experience, that kind of effort results in reviews that say "Meets Expectations" or "Satisfactory".

Dilbert may be cynical fiction, but there's some truth to the Wally character.

I put in 80 hour work weeks for seven years. I lived my work. I worked at work, then I went home and worked on work the rest of the night. Plus weekends. And holidays. That's assuming I didn't just live at work, which I did for weeks at a time. And all of my reviews were golden.

Luxury. In my experience, that kind of effort results in reviews that say "Meets Expectations" or "Satisfactory".

Dilbert may be cynical fiction, but there's some truth to the Wally character.

This sounds like Wally's philosophy. If you need to know who Wally is, shame on you. Follow this link to the world of Dilbert and read the last month's strips before returning, suitably chastened, to Slashdot.

Not again, thanks! I already found it here.

Regards, Martin

... for example, when it appears in Dilbert.

Correct one

Dilbert

Don't forget Dilbert, too.

Is your hair liable to become pointy at any time in the near future?

How appropriate to see this posted on the same day as this Dilbert strip.

Somewhat relevant is today's dilbert

Syntax or semantics, which is more important?

I can only aggree with you there. I don't have a PhD either. And call me arrogant if you will, but I think I coded better at, say, 16 years old (i.e., before even starting college) than some of my co-workers do at 30+ years old. And the co-worker I respect the most in this team didn't even finish CS college.

But that was not my point.

My point wasn't necessarily that they should ask for an education or a PhD, but that they should at least try to get someone _competent_. If you will, merely along the lines of "if it's worth doing at all, it's worth doing _well_".

Hiring the cheapest monkeys with _zero_ skill or experience, doesn't really cut costs. They end up paying them for _years_ to code and debug something that a skilled programmer (with or without a diploma) would have done in _hours_.

For those who think I'm exaggerating, true story: I've before given the example of our local Wally, who spent over two years debugging a tiny module. In fact, he _still_ is at it. Something that, by my estimates, anyone else would have done in hours. Well, another co-worker eventually got fed of arguing with Wally over the bugs, and actually went and coded an exact 1-for-1 replacement for Wally's module. Minus the bugs. It took him exactly 6 hours to do that from scratch. QED.

The latest Dilbert cartoon is highly germane to this issue.
http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/imag es/dilbert2004060174316.jpg

Or perhaps you should read any of a number of netiquette documents:

Spelling Flames Considered Harmful.

Every few months a plague descends on Usenet called the spelling flame. It starts out when someone posts an article correcting the spelling or grammar in some article. The immediate result seems to be for everyone on the net to turn into a 6th grade English teacher and pick apart each other's postings for a few weeks. This is not productive and tends to cause people who used to be friends to get angry with each other.

It is important to remember that we all make mistakes, and that there are many users on the net who use English as a second language. There are also a number of people who suffer from dyslexia and who have difficulty noticing their spelling mistakes. If you feel that you must make a comment on the quality of a posting, please do so by mail, not on the network.

If this really bothers you, maybe you should contribute a patch to slashdot for integrating aspell rather than wasting everyones time reading spelling flames? Or perhaps you I seriously doubt even a single reader had

Or maybe someone else should add a bayesian filter to recognize spelling flames and cause those posts to require manual moderation.

While it would be nice to see slashdot stories receive more careful attention during editing, I would rather see that directed towards checking the accuracy of submitted stories than spelling. For example, a recent posting sould have said that Microsoft patented launching an application by depressing a PDA button twice in rapid succession than saying they patented the double (mouse) click.

Disclaimer: the preceeding posting may contain confidential spelling errors. If so you should delete them unread. :-)

Given how your comment about decision-making reminded me of todays Dilbert.

If someone robs a bank overnight (no people harmed) and takes 10 million dollars the shit would hit the fan. But a corporation? ....

It is not stealing, but "reclassification".

You know what's really bugging me?

I'm reading such _absurd_ stuff like "woohoo, neat. I bartered several hours of work for a six-pack of beer." Or cookies. Or pizza. Or like "woohoo, neat. I worked for hours to repair/assemble/disinfect someone's computer, and they gave me their ancient 3.6 GB MFM HDD." Or their cute little ancient 2x CD-ROM drive. (Believe it or not, I've actually read exactly that kind of barter idiocy in a Slashdot post.)

Now I know that traditionally geeks have zero sense of economics, but ffs, this is already absurd. Someone please tell me it's a bad dream, and I'll wake up to a sane world sometime soon.

How poor _are_ you people? _Where_ are you repairing servers, that several hours of your time are worth a couple of cookies? Elbonia? (Nothing against the fine people of Elbonia, of course.)

Look at the price of a sixpack of beer. Even at Indian tech support wages, that's peanuts. (Nothing against the fine Indian workers. Just using them as an example of underpaid labour.) You could get a second part-time job at tech support, and get money for more beer for less work than repairing the computer of every single retard you know... and all their friends, and their friends' friends' friends.

So let me tell you the _real_ deal you're getting. "Oooh, if you'll do unpaid work for me, I'll act as if I was your grateful friend."

There's a whole caste of parasites whose only skill is pretending to be your friend. But only as long as you work for them. Whether it's repairing their computer at home, or doing their work too at the office, or whatever other freeloading they can get off you.

And it's downright sad how many sad geeks think they're buying friendship that way. Not just sad because they have to _pay_ for even an illusion of having any friends. (Even if in work, it's still paying.) It's sad because they're not even getting any friends that way. All you're getting are some parasitic acquaintances who never see you as more than someone who'll fix their computer for free.

And the only difference between those who offer you cookies, and those who go "You get paid for this? All you did was press keys."... is merely that the first category are good at being parasites, while the second are lousy at it.

Here's a crazy idea: _Real_ friends are those you don't have to work for. People who, if you had to move to another country for the next 5 years and physically couldn't repair anything for them, would still want to keep in touch with you.

Whereas the neighbour who acts like the grateful puppy for fixing their computer, will forget that you ever existed, as soon as they can't get an advantage off you any more. That's not a friend.

Me? I'll be the asshole who won't fix their computer, nor their car, nor anything else. They can go pay to get it fixed, for all I care. Which, as a nice side effect, might do a lot more to teach them about clicking on crap.

For my money, I'd like to see Linux development conform to ISO-9000.

Who would volunteer to be the official Linux Stupid Label Guy?

Not only that. Take a look at the first few paragraphs, it looks like something Dilbert's Mission Statement Generator came up with:

BayStar makes investments in innovative and promising companies that are potentially synergistic with its portfolio companies as well as its expanding network of strategic relationships.

BayStar is committed to seeking out and fostering strategic relationships that help companies move to successively higher levels of achievement and profitability. The technology executives that have invested in BayStar are an invaluable resource to our portfolio companies, offering industry insights and introductions to key industry contacts. BayStar's experience in the public markets provides proven expertise in the evaluation, preparation and execution of public offerings.

It's a bit early to reach conclusions, isn't it? The screensaver project is still going.

Elbonia.

-ted

To all who visit the dilbert website regularly, has anyone seen that floating ad that blocks the last panel of the strip? I have seen it about 5 times and I read the site daily. I use NS7.2 and have not seen a popup ad anywhere since I started using it. I assume this ad is some sort of CSS. This type of advertising is not pop up, but it is certainly annoying. What's to stop other websites from doing something similar? It might require more than pasting some banner code in your page, but still...

http://dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/images/d ilbert2004042261455.jpg

A somewhat odd view... does anyone know which big music firm United Media (the Dilbert owners) is affiliated with?

Apple probably wants to stop this from happening anymore than nessecary..

Yep - those people are called middle management. Scott Adams writes about it every day.

Slashdot is pointing links to tip-of-the-day sites?

Eek.
maybe we should have a daily link to the latest dilbert

This "invasion of privacy" is not really an involuntary invasion. You have to know the risks of installing such software on your machine. If you voluntarily let someone into your home, are they invading your privacy by keeping track (in any fashion) of what you happen to be doing? I say no, because by allowing them in and not having unbreakable rules then you are allowing them to at very least keep track of what they see. This all goes back to advertising and squeezing every last penny out of it. The media makes pretty much all of their money with advertising, so of course they will not investigate their own questionable procedures lest they incriminate themselves in their own publications. Just because the spyware is coming from Amazon doesn't mean that it's newsworthy. I hate it just as much as everyone else here does, but you have to understand that if they think they can make money off of it, they'll do it. Companies like Amazon couldn't care less about having every customer being happy. As long as the money keeps pouring in they'll think they're doing everything right.

I just saw and add for Windows Server on top of slashdot. It said Windows server offers a savings of 11%-22% over Linux in 4 out of 5 workload scenarios. How can this happen?

By setting up 4 scenarios that can only turn out well for you and one with mixed results just for the sake of not claiming 5 out of 5. Kind of like this ;)

see www.dilbert.com, where it's from, for examples

Hmmm... This sounds vaguely familiar:

"Remember, quality is our top priority."

• keep their grubby paws out of my box!

The Internet may be the next big advertising medium (it's gotta pay for itself somehow), BUT MY PC IS NOT!

Final thought for close. It is permissible for neighborhoods and office parks, etc., to put up signs saying "No Soliciting". This means that you can't just walk onto mine or someone else's private property and harass them to buy something. People have been shot for less. There is a sign outside of my neighborhood that says "No Soliciting". Boy/Girl Scouts are ok in my book. Jehovah's Witnesses and Insurance salesmen offend me, and I don't want them at my door bugging me. The law gives me the recourse, when properly posted, to have these people fined or in some cases arrested. Used to be bulk mailin my Snail-Mail box. That was bad enough but went away with the internet (USPS must miss those days). SPAM in my email box is just as bad. But installing software/cookies without my consent (something no one will *EVER* get legitimately) is no different than a salesman violating my personal privacy and property to come into my home and pitch me stuff I don't want. I almost never watch TV. Never mind the lack of content on the tube ('cept for Stargate, Enterprise CNN/FNN, and Discovery Wings), the advertising is obnoxious... Can't even legally get a filter to tone down the volume of commericals. But I do suscribe for that content. Thank any and all G-d's that ISP's don't operate th

Dilbert had to contend with this years ago... too lazy to find link in archive, use your imagination...

Excuse 9000 (tm)
The patented Excuse 9000 device will add selected background noise to any phone conversation, giving you the perfect alibi for not being at work. Need a flat tire alibi? No problem. Just set the Excuse 9000 for "Highway Noise" and leave your boss a voicemail message from the comfort of your own bed. Other noises in the basic starter pack include: airliner going down, deep-lung coughing, and armed intruder.

CorporateLand? Im there right now but not making as much money as I hope to. Did you ever have to work in a cubicle? :)

Nahh, its the absence of Tinas on the project that are the difference. The tech writers and the User Assurance staff bridge the gap between the geeky (software)Engineers and the 'little people' who buy and use the product.

Why not DushFlushTec Inc.?

Cheers,

--Coder

It's a constant game of king of the hill.

And sometimes you get snowballed off...

pointy hair boss

from Dilbert..

and it seems you have that special sauce investors are looking for down perfectly.

Pah... Save a few bucks and just use the Dilbert mission statement generator

Customize the list of nouns, and you can even make it sound relevant to your own business.

And, for reference, I did actually use that to come up with an "Objective" line for my SO's resume (though as a warning, she works in a field where the resume counted as a formality - she could have used "I want you to pay me to scratch my ass all day" as her objective, and still gotten the job).

If BBC is taking +5 Funny comments on /. as basis for their articles, maybe next they can tell us how Britney Spears is growing hair on her back. Or how about check out all the *.advocacy newsgroups and report back with the latest fresh theories!

By the way, BBC kindly replied to my feedback stating that

'Stephen Evan's weekly "stateside" column is not a news story' and this whole thing we are discussing 'was not the point of Stephen's article, somehow running that as an excuse for gross factual misstatements that were claimed; and leaving those corrections unanswered.