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The problem is the 'scientists' have lost all credibility. As soon as it became political and paychecks began to hang in the balance the topic was lost, and added to the list of things that are not to be discussed at work.

1. Politics,
2. Religion,
3. The Weather.

Also, this:
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/1...

I can't say you're wrong. Of course, the belief that we actually have a choice is amusing; who selects our options, after all?

Scott Adams does a pretty good job explaining this; far better than I could at any rate. http://blog.dilbert.com/post/1...

http://dilbert.com/strip/2003-...

In the 1950s, Hollywood had a policy of a blacklisting communist party members, denying employment to screenwriters, actors, directors, musicians and so on. Those people couldn't find work for years after.

Trump seems to be the new communist party. People think nothing of petitioning stores to discontinue his products, disrupting his rallys, or publishing blatant lies. We accept this, because we feel that corporations have free speech, and so can do whatever they want.

I'm glad Facebook is standing up to this nonsense. Businesses exist by license from the government, and with that should come a measure of public good. That means neutrality in their business dealings. If Mark Zuckerberg wants Facebook to purchase political ads that's OK, that's what the "corporate free speech" is about.

But denying equal services?

Hurting Trump by indirect means is the new McCarthyism(*).

In other news, Scott Adams has an interesting take on the delegate cheats:

In Iran you can vote for anyone for President so long as that person has been approved by the Ayatollah Khameini. We Americans call that system a dictatorship.

Voters in America recently discovered that they live under an Iranian type of system and didn’t know it. In the primaries, voters participate in some sort of ritualistic placebo voting while party leaders select the candidates.

Remember, boys and girls, only the outcome matters.

Trump has to be stopped, by any means possible!.

(*) Stopping him personally doesn't seem to work, so I expect that soon we'll have businesses tamping down on his supporters. I couldn't find a news article about an employee fired for posting pro-Trump on their facebook page, but I expect that this will happen soon.

You know what, I have to second that notion. They're the reason I don't bother to vote for political offices anymore. I'll vote for the referendum issues, i.e. legalize cannabis, the signal to noise on the political offices is polluted by low information voters so bad, it's just not worth bothering.

An example of low information: Most of the anti-Trump crusade thinks he makes racist statements all the time. I don't know whether or not the man is racist, but I personally haven't seen him make any comments that come off to me as racist.

Most commonly cited is stopping Muslims from entering the country; not only do I like Scott Adam's take on it (see this for reference) but Islam isn't a race, and talking down or otherwise disparaging their religious views isn't anymore racist than doing the same thing to a Scientologist or a Christian (something that seems PC to do, in spite of being decidedly un-PC when done to a Muslim.) The exception I take to that is it goes directly against the first amendment, which is unacceptable, but it's not in any way shape or form racist.

Second most common is stopping illegal immigration. Mexico not being a race notwithstanding (hell, as far as I know I'm pure Caucasian, yet half of the Mexicans I know have lighter skin than I do) there have been many a politician who have called for the same thing and haven't been accused of being racist.

You have to have a somewhat low or at least loose standard for what qualifies as "racist" in order to say that (think PC Principal on South Park.)

Now that doesn't mean I endorse Trump; I think his economic ideas are boneheaded and he'll make a terrible chief diplomat. And to be honest, I'm also not particularly interested in a single person that is running for president.

see Scott Adams: http://blog.dilbert.com/post/1...

Slashdot's community loves Mozilla. We love Firefox. We just want them to get back on the right track.

The question is, was Mozilla the company ever that great? What we now know as Firefox was a runaway community fork from the Mozilla application suite, which was what they were originally backing. Early Firefox competed against IE6 that Microsoft intentionally kept non-standard and on life support to stall the rise of web applications, not responding to the competition from Firefox in the slightest before IE7 in 2006. Opera was adware and buckling under Microsoft "giving" IE away and only Mac people knew Safari even existed. Or to say it Dilbert style, you'd struggle hard to find a market with softer competition.

Also they found a rich sugar daddy in Google that wanted to push web standards by proxy. What I'm saying is that even with a mediocre company performance it'd be hard for Mozilla to fail, simply because everyone else united under their banner to dethrone MSIE. They've never won in a market with tough competition against players who wouldn't give an inch of market share voluntarily. They've never been the one trying to catch up to a company moving faster than them. Losing to Chrome now and winning over IE6 then is competing in vastly different leagues. They don't just have to get back to the "good old days" to beat Chrome, they need to do much better.

http://dilbert.com/strip/2016-...

Trump is surely a very intelligent person.

I don't know about this.

Scott Adams seems to think Trump is a "master persuader" and I do agree he seems to have some genuine talent to appeal to his base that other candidates lack but I don't think it's necessarily intelligence.

I really think the core of his appeal is just saying the first thing that comes to mind and not care about offending people. That's why he's able to come up with memorable insults (or uncommon yet popular policy positions), it's because he's saying the things everyone has noticed but hasn't said out of politeness or practicality. I think the reason we haven't seen other people use this strategy is the problem he's hitting now. Offending so many people creates a ceiling of support and it's really tough for him to get more votes (or have a future in politics if that were his career).

As for his intellect in general, I think he's at least average intelligence, he did get a university degree and probably became pretty competent in real estate and some aspects of business, but otherwise I don't see any evidence of high intelligence, especially not in what he says.

The fact he shares 25% of his genes with a smart physicist is an interesting tidbit, though it doesn't really mean he's smart himself.

He was famous for getting rid of people while leaving the buildings standing in the same vein as a neutron bomb.

He was famous of people slavishly following his business philosophy (or lack thereof).

"I want you to bring me solutions," my boss told me one day. "Not problems."

"So you want me to do your job?" I replied back. "I'll add that to my to-do list."

Several months after that conversation, my boss gave me the "his way or the highway" speech. So I put in my resignation, went back to school, and got a better paying job.

As for my old boss, he rode the company all the way into bankruptcy.

Obligatory Dilbert Strip: http://dilbert.com/strip/2016-03-30

http://dilbert.com/strip/2015-...

http://dilbert.com/strip/2001-...

Scott Adams had an interesting take on extremism.

If you frame the argument as a disease it becomes non-prejudicial. Describe extremism as a disease, note that there are hotspots of this disease in specific locations of the world, and what is a common-sense reaction?

Imagine that the tiny nation of Elbonia suffers a Zombie Virus outbreak. Luckily, the virus does not spread easily, but prolonged personal contact with an infected zombie increases the odds of transmission. Once infected, the Elbonian becomes a zombie killer. As it turns out, most people are immune to the virus. Over 99% of the public have no risk of catching it. But 1% is far too many zombie killers.

For starters, they would quarantine the entire nation of Elbonia to limit the damage. This is obviously unfair to all uninfected Elbonians but it is also the only practical way to protect the rest of the world. Once the quarantine is in place, the professionals can get to work on a cure.

The problem is, of course, the emotional baggage. If someone tries to talk logically about certain subjects, they can be shouted down simply by being called bad names.

This is how "extreme rhetoric" has become the new clickbait, and how people like Anonymous take it upon themselves to save the world from Trump. This is how a 15yo girl can accuse a Trump supporter of molesting her at a rally, when the video showed no such action.

It's the emotional baggage. People hear "racist" or whatever, close their minds, and let their outrage have free reign.

They believe they are working for the greater good.

LOL .... or, more succinctly ... Dick, from the internet.

Another excerpt from Scott Adams' blog

According to social media, and the mainstream media as well, Trump might be the next Hitler because he does things Hitler would have done. For example:

        Trump is charismatic and appeals to our prejudices.
        Trump approves of violence against people he thinks deserve it.
        Trump blames “others” for the nation’s problems.
        Trump has an authoritarian vibe.

All that is true. But it would be equally easy to build a list of why Trump is definitely NOT like Hitler. For example:

        Trump is anti-war. Hitler, not so much.
        Trump asks us to favor legal citizens over non-citizens. He makes no mention of race. Hitler killed his own citizens and mostly cared about race.
        Trump wants citizens to be heavily armed to protect themselves against bad people, including dictators. Hitler didn’t want to arm his potential enemies.
        Trump wants greater freedom of speech that would include politically incorrect topics. Hitler wasn’t so big on free speech for others.
        Trump assures us his genitalia have “no problem.” Hitler had one testicle.

I really like reading Scott Adams' blog. Unlike most analysis on the planet, he seems to address the issues in a logical, well-reasoned fashion.

From Scott Adams' blog:

But as I learned in school, you can’t compare something to nothing. You need to compare the risk of a Trump presidency to the alternatives. And that alternative is probably a Clinton presidency that is not too different from the current presidency.

So how risky would “more of the same” be?

Budget-wise, we are probably on the road to ruin. The more-of-the-same president is unlikely to stop the special interests and big money players from bloating the budget to the point of crushing debt.

Nor would we have any reason to expect the economy to have any extra zip under a more-of-the-same scenario. So no matter how bad you think Trump might be for the economy, the more-of-the-same alternative is probably a pathway to crushing debts and financial doom.

And once the economy dies, we all die. So as risks go, “more of the same” might be the highest risk of all. The only way we would escape economic doom under the more-of-the-same scenario is for some unpredictable future event to change our direction in a positive way. Is that likely?

Trump, on the other hand, is an unpredictable future event that can change just about anything, as we have already learned. So in terms of economic risk, Clinton is a path to probable budget doom whereas Trump can go either way.

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/1...

http://dilbert.com/strip/1989-...

Time to slap stickers on random people's cars in parking lots.

s/cops/fbi agents/.

> That's because they are. They are compensating for a lack of competence.

Here's a nickel, kid.

Also this cartoon.

I just this week found this one, cut it out and pasted it on the wall of my office.

I've been telling people for months "I don't do drama" and it's not helping.

http://dilbert.com/strip/2013-10-10

so do i!

Yeah, they're angry, but apparently not about the right things. They should be angry about the growing gap between rich and poor, [ snip ] Instead, they're angry about Muslims and Mexicans, who really, really aren't the cause of Americas problems.

I believe this is deliberate. Get the masses arguing among themselves, i.e. culture war BS. The scariest thing to those in power is when the masses organize into a formable political power. If they do, then need to immediately create a label to squelch that effort (i.e. corrupt unions, lazy socialists).

Speaking of Trump and why he is so successful, Scott Adams wrote, "if you are not familiar with the dozens of methods of persuasion that are science-tested, there’s a good chance someone is using those techniques against you." in his blog of "Clown Genius" at http://blog.dilbert.com/post/1...

On the one hand, I'll semi-agree with you that the article is totally vapid (without having even read it!), but on the other hand, that doesn't mean the discussion won't be valuable regardless. After all, articles on slashdot are really more useful to guide conversation to a particular topic than as actual content to be read. Here we are, talking about Trump's participation in the GOP's primary, all in good cheer. We don't need to talk about his tweets, we can talk about anything!

I'll chip in my contribution: Scott Adams, of Dilbert fame, has written extensively about Trump's candidacy. As a student of persuasion science (hypnotism, etc.), Adams looks at Trump through a unique lens, and I've found his writings truly insightful.

That is a question very much open for debate.

You seem to think his rhetoric is mindless but not all of it is.

Or in the words of Alien vs. Predator "No matter who wins, we lose"

At least with Trump we may be farmed for sport instead of wholly harvested on the spot for our valuable chest cavities.

Dogbert's Tech Support.

I'm gonna write me a new minivan

Dilbert agrees.

Obligatory

For me from the opposite side, yes people delaying task can make it go away I get frustrated and just do it myself. It is often less effort to do a task yourself than wait for some lazy person, to get off their buts and do it. Of course this comes with the added reward of no good deed goes unpunished, and people expect you to do it again next time.

There is some wisdom in Wally's philosophy http://dilbert.com/strip/2015-...

The Mental Stuff is Almost Done

On the other hand, I think this expression is also true: something like "a task expands to fill the time available." -- [Google]...Ah it's Parkinson's Law.
It's amazing how often something I think is a 'rough first draft' never needs to be revised again.

Dilbert on cloudy thinking.

http://dilbert.com/strip/1995-...

I don't think it's people skills exactly, it's something more like this and this.

Not that extreme usually, but often programmers spend their time nitpicking over things that don't matter (at least, that don't matter from the salespeople's perspective).

I don't think it's people skills exactly, it's something more like this and this.

Not that extreme usually, but often programmers spend their time nitpicking over things that don't matter (at least, that don't matter from the salespeople's perspective).

Obligatory related web comics.

Obligatory related web comics.

Or dilbert. http://dilbert.com/strip/2001-...

Also this one: http://dilbert.com/strip/1994-09-30

Interesting side note - I'm using a newer MacBook, and the URL in the location bar just said "dilbert.com" until I selected it to copy the URL, then I could actually see the whole thing.

Safari now hides the URL of the page you are looking at by default because "URLs are ugly!" I wonder which UI/UX "genius" came up with that brilliant idea.

Reminder that this Dilbert exists:

http://dilbert.com/strip/2014-...

http://dilbert.com/strip/2015-...

I suspect the paypal billionaires get their AI views from Dilbert

http://dilbert.com/strip/2015-...

It is a good point, but that's also a management issue.

I've seen projects work when off-shored as well as fail miserably. The reason they usually fail miserably is managing the time-space problem. Lots of managers do the MBWA thing--management by walking around--which doesn't work very well in these situations. Issues that come up overseas can bring teams to a halt while they wait a few days for guidance. These have to be factored into timelines and such, but usually aren't. Exact specifications must exist--you can't get subtle with these sorts of things unless you want to create a mess--and should include performance metrics (yes, everybody can write a quick sort, but using one with 1,000,000 records may be somewhat less than ideal). Writing these specifications can take as long as writing the code, because you basically have to spell everything out (and you need someone who has the skill set to know exactly what is needed). In some cases, by the time you finished writing the spec, someone could have actually written the code that would do the task!

Usually, the stuff that has worked has been more like libraries and the like. I need a set of functions, clearly defined, which will perform these tasks when called with the appropriate inputs and return these results in this amount of time. Things that are iterative and fuzzy--like UI design--don't really work well ("Can you make it more webbish--but not too webbish?")

I still say Ted Cruz is actually Al Lewis from The Munsters.

And John Kerry is Herman Munster. Illuminati at work?

Probably.

No. It tells me that "some" people are ignorant and racists. I restrain to add stupid as I believe that they are willfully misguiding their intellects for selfish primitive instincts they choose not to to keep in check.

No, Trump is a master at persuasion. It is a language based technique to persuade other people. His ideas actually don't metter all that much. Read Scott Adam's blog for more details here: http://blog.dilbert.com/

It goes way back, search for trump and read the oldest. He describes Trump's technique in great details.

That's not always the case, though.

I find that very hard to believe. Is your ISP blocking all other SMTP and IMAP traffic?

Basically you're a moron you didn't read the rest of what I wrote and now you're making up stupid things?

So, Yahoo is something I use at my sufferance ... snip ... I don't use them for anything but that specific email that I'm supposed to keep for my ISP

No, it's not the only fucking email I have access to.

But, hey, go be stupid. That's what the internet is for, apparently.

Obligatory Dilbert: http://dilbert.com/strip/1995-11-14

http://dilbert.com/strip/2014-..."