Slashdot Mirror

Yeah, I've come to realize that slashdot really is just a place for old curmudgeony tech people who automatically hate all new tech...

"Hate" sure is overused this day and age. The word has lost all meaning.

It's more like bored, disinterested, and maybe a little annoyed.

My answer to "what can I really do with a smart watch?" is "Probably not get dates."

And of course, there's no downside to wearing multiple personal gadgets. It's really hip. Really. You'll be the talk of the Starbucks.

Given your background, you might be happier looking for work as a scrum master, a project manager or a consultant.

Given his background, who in their right mind would employ him in any of those roles? Perhaps he has a nice hairstyle or something. http://dilbert.com/strips/comi...

Standford: The Harfurd of the West Coast.

There is only one recorded case of a human being playing possum, tricking a carrion bird into picking him up and then tickled the bird with its own feather when it was near a high way, thus making drop him. Then he hitch hiked back to civilization. I am proud to say he is an alumnus of my alma mater.

...if you end up in jail and/or bankrupt....

No one doing this shit ever believes they'll wind up in jail or bankrupt. It's like the Dilbert, where PHB insists that even if he winds up being wrong in the end, at least he's right at first.

http://search.dilbert.com/comi...

Yesterday's and today's comics on Dilbert show the proper response to sexual harassment.
dilbert.com/2014-10-22/
dilbert.com/2014-10-23/

Yesterday's and today's comics on Dilbert show the proper response to sexual harassment.
dilbert.com/2014-10-22/
dilbert.com/2014-10-23/

All the bugs were reclassified as security features

Ob. Dilbert sequence

This will, obviously, reduce inequality.

Obligatory Dogbert

It's pretty much like this: http://search.dilbert.com/comi...

Here it is.

The relevant Dilbert.

Old news.

You also forget that there is spending a metric shit ton of money on products and actually being effective. Working in the field of computer security I see an awful lot of buy our magic product and it will do everything but get the cute girl in accounting to suck you off type of stuff. When you actually dig in you find out that most of it is a presentation targeted towards managers who know buzzwords and PowerPoint slides but the tool is completely worthless. I'm looking at you "event correlation tools" as they seem to be the popular ones now. Then there is the check box security where they buy products to check something off but never configure it properly. Why yes we have LDAP, network firewalls, as well as a software firewall on each host, none of them do a fucking thing but they are all fully patched. Don't forget your AV that you never bother to check the results of. I go to customer sites all the time most of which are targeted by state actors and there is a lot of check box security and security theater that they have spent a lot of money on but there is real functional security as well that even in it's limited capacity stops most things. Think of it like this it is the difference between what is done in Israel for airport security and what is done the the US for airport security, one wastes a lot of money for no real actual security but looks like it is doing something while the other actually stops threats and secures things.

Happiness is nature's way of informing Human Resources that you're overpaid.

The recent Dilbert comic strip summed up the hiring process quite nicely.

You mean, like that?

Well, if you're a journalism major, there is this.

So now where are corporations going to get their Dutch Sandwiches?

I'm on TWC. I opened a new account when I moved in March, and was not prompted in any way to create an e-mail address. My cable modem (owned by me, not rented) died a few weeks ago, and I could not activate the replacement until I created a useless @local.rr.com address.

People who aren't techies all used their ISP mail, until Hotmail, Yahoo, and especially GMail became known to the general user. The latter becoming extremely popular because of Android, which started becoming popular in late 2009/2010.

Even then, that was more about new users. People continue(d) to use their old accounts for a long time. Scott Adams, of Dilbert fame, was still using his AOL address as recently as 2008

It's so bad, Microsoft doesn't even make it easy to kill it off. Even Scott Adams made a Dilbert cartoon about how bad it is:

http://dilbert.com/strips/comi...

I prefer this one between Dogbert and Dilbert.

http://dilbert.com/dyn/str_str...

Is there really a distro called like that? Or is our database just mauve, because those have more RAM?

Obligatory One Button

Though I guess the upshot of an open plan for a manager is being able to quickly glance around to see who's sleeping, goofing off, or simply not there.

I don't see how they can tell.

Random Number Generator

I hope this is implemented. Then I'll just code mysefl up a minivan: http://dilbert.com/strips/comi...

Reminds me of this Dilbert: http://dilbert.com/strips/comi...

You sound like a manager. Having a "what have you done for me lately" attitude only demotivates your best employees. How about letting that company-time-saving individual go home an hour early on Friday? For the love of jeebus, that's all it takes to keep him happy!

Also, obligatory Dilbert

Dilbert

Obviously

Story reminded me of a good Dilbert comic from back in the day.

Obligatory Dilbert: http://dilbert.com/strips/comi...

"A pandemic like this is incredibly scary. In every major city in the US we have enough medical beds to support about 1/4 of 1% of the population being sick enough to require hospitalization. If 20% of the population needed medical attention about 19.75% probably wouldn't get any."

So true. And as I suggest in the linked essay an abundance perspective resulting in a basic income and health care for all and investing in true civil defense could help prepare for pandemics:
"Basic income from a millionaire's perspective?"
http://www.pdfernhout.net/basi...
"Right now, a profit driven health care system has sized emergency rooms for average needs, and those emergency rooms are often full. With a basic income and more money going on a systematic basis to the health care system, the health care system emergency rooms will no longer be overrun with people there for reasons they could see a doctor for. So, emergency care would be better for millionaires. Millionaires with heart attacks won't be as likely to end up being diverted to far away hospitals because the local hospital emergency room is full. Likewise, emergency rooms might, with more money going to medicine, become sized for national emergencies, not personal emergencies, so they might become vast empty places, with physicians and other health care staff keeping their skills sharp always running simulations, learning more medical information, and/or doing basic medical research, with these people always ready for a pandemic or natural disaster or industrial accident which they had the resources in reserve to deal with. So, millionaires who got sick or injured in a disaster could be sure there was the facilities and expertise nearby to help them, even if most of the rest of the population needed help too at the same time too. In that way, some of this basic income could be funded by money that might otherwise go to the Defense department, because what is better civil defense then investing in a health care system able to to handle national disasters? So, any millionaires who are doctors (many are) would benefit by this plan, because their lives as doctors will become happier and less stressful, both with less paperwork and with more resources."

Instead of empowering more people to be involved in health care, the US medical monopolies have restricted the production of US physicians to keep MD salaries up, which is tremendously short-sighted as well as indirectly cruel. Nonetheless, the internet has been broadening access to DIY subsistence health knowledge (like eating more vegetables and fruits, and getting more vitamin D and adequate iodine, and leading a healthy lifestyle with exercise, good sleep, community, etc.), but not without some downsides as shown by this Dilbert comic...
http://www.dilbert.com/strips/...

For part of the history of how US medicine got this way starting 100 years ago (which included abandoning an emphasis on prevention via lifestyle and nutrition to focus on profitable hands-on "scientific" cures for ailments), see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

Poverty often forces people to take on risks they might otherwise avoid (like in the USA driving old rusty cars that will collapse in an accident). To the extent this current Ebola outbreak is based on poached bushmeat and ignorance, any Ebola pandemic is also in a sense a verdict on failed US-pushed global economic/defense policies promoting wealth concentration and which ignored externalities and systemic risks (like the risk of plague as a systemic risk to the marketplace). So, shortsighted global policies have not reduced such risks by helping lift Africans out of material poverty sooner rather than later and instead have pushed many impoverished p

Pointy Haired Boss - http://www.dilbert.com/

Really we should have NASA do what it is good at.

Going over budget?

For a moment I was worried that Dilbert cartoon craziness was falling behind real-world craziness. I'm relieved that Dilbert is still ahead:
Most of us are only pretending to work while secretly hoping the project gets canceled after you get fired by the board.

Dilbert is not accurate, I think, about Microsoft. For Microsoft, the 6th panel,
"I expect the decline in morale to lead to violence"
should be
"I expect the decline in morale to lead to more decline in morale."

but even that is not significantly more dangerous than loading up a regular van full of explosives with a timer, then setting the timer to explode before you leave the vehicle next to a school, etc.

Best Dilbert Ever. Well, probably.

oblig Dilbert reference: http://search.dilbert.com/comi...

Well, according to Dilbert it's not too hard to imagine.

Scott Adams predicted this many years ago, and I still agree with his analysis.

Reminds me of this dilbert cartoon: http://www.dilbert.com/fast/20...

When you're here I know you're unhappy and that's the same thing as work.

Happiness is Nature's way of informing Human Resources that you're overpaid.

When you're here I know you're unhappy and that's the same thing as work.

Happiness is Nature's way of informing Human Resources that you're overpaid.

Well, it may not be all that universally useful.

WTF. This world no longer makes any sense to me.

You're apparently about ten years behind the times. But considering history probably repeats itself, you're likely also about ten years ahead of the times.

It's pretty much like this