Slashdot Mirror
White Lies Help Stressed Computer Users
An anonymous reader writes "Simple tricks allow one to appear to be hard at work in the office while actually forwarding calls, e-mails and instant messages to your mobile phone. One can backdate e-mails through rolling back a computer's built-in clock or use background phone noises to concoct convincing excuses not to go to work."
People are lazy?!
Stuff like this could become the first direction all fingers point when a company goes down.
So much for it being because a company's product got beaten out by a competitor, or because its leadership embezzled it into the ground, or creative accounting.
Everyone now will be looking for the back office Richard Pryor type (I forgot the name of the movie) as a scapegoat.
American workers are already being called the laziest in the world (by conservatives, mind you) while statistics show them to be among the most productive (overall, if not per hour). If we're such collective goof offs then why are we so productive?
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
A (semi)-respected publisher puts out a book on how to shirk actual work?
Like any of you losers works anyways.
Back in my day, we had to walk 10 miles uphill in the snow wearing a sun dress, just to submit our punchcards to the mainframe guy! And you complain about a little typing.
-- Lost the password to my two-digit uid.
"One can backdate e-mails through rolling back a computer's built-in clock."
Why aren't the message times marked by the SMTP server itself? Even then, why does the SMTP server accept e-mails from the past?
Have you metaroderated recently?
"One can backdate e-mails through rolling back a computer's built-in clock"
Unfortunately "Received:" headers add their own date e.g.
Received: from mta02-winn.ispmail.ntl.com (mta02-winn.ispmail.ntl.com [81.103.221.42]) by mx2.messagingengine.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id xxxxxxxxxxxx for ; Sun, 17 Jul 2005 03:56:09 -0400 (EDT)
it seems slashdot it anti-work ethic today. oh, i must be new here!
People have always been finding ways to cheat work. Whether its longer breaks, sleeping in the bathroom, yeah i know people who have done it, or god knows what else. My favorite though is the george costanza's method, building a bed under your desk to take naps in.
God i've thought about it myself a few times......
If you're resorting to lies and trickery to avoid the work you ought to be doing, then you should quit. If your job is so bad, don't carry on with it. Find one you actually like, that you enjoy, that isn't something you want to avoid. You'll be a lot less stressed and you'll find life a whole lot easier.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
While setting back you clock may fool some people, it wont fool anyone who knows about the "header" of an e-mail. A quick peek there and you find all the timestamps of each email server that passed the email along. If there is a "huge" gap inbetween when it was send form "localhost" and the first mailserver...something is up.
Also this doesn't work if one uses webmail where one would have to reset the server's time.
NOT that I don't resolve to such trickery once in a while. Most of our boses won't read the header of a message, and only the true geek has his e-mail viewer set to e-mail source instead of the nice outlook (evolution for me) display. If your cubicle is in a public place, virtual desktops comes in handy. gaim open on desktop 1, quickly move to desktop2 with source code open when you hear footsteps... or for the windows fans, alt tab to a full screen program where you have "actual work" open...
I would be interested in what other slashdotters do, I'm sure we have some pretty original ideas.
This seems likr a lot of effort to go through to not do nay work.
High-technology tricks once seen as the purview of hackers
Such as actually using the features included in your e-mail client and changing your time settings? Amazing high technology hacker tricks. *rolls eyes*
Hello, I am sending this into the future from 1908! How are you? I hope things are well in the 21st century! Anyway, I just wanted to say "hi". I'll let you get back to maintaining your underwater habitat and defending the Earth against the Martian aggressors now.
This message was sent from planetary node Alpha-7 at 15:27 on March 17, 1908.
*sigh* Nothing new here. Move along now.
"I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work."
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
It should be pointed out that this high-tech slackery and the widespread phenomenon of downloading music and other media are two aspects of a single process.
What is happening is workers, reduced in today's "service economy" (subservience economy would be a better term) to little more that soulless drones, are rejecting the labor and property regimes imposed upon them by the ruling classes.
Another instance of this historical turn is the acts of so-called "terrorism" taking place more and more often at present.
While these acts are clearly atrocities, and those who perpetrate them must be stopped, it is only a matter of time before the masses wake up to the fact that religious extremism is a mere superstructural stand-in for a more direct oppostion to the capitalist-imperialist system, their true downpressor.
Thus the global proletariat will eventually unite in opposition to the dehumanizing system of oligarchichal imperalist capital that today crushes so many spirits.
Resistance is taking many forms these days. These are times for those who desire true human liberty to be optimistic.
What ever happened to good ol' fashioned drawing eyes on your glasses so it looks like you're awake?
See subject.
Slashdot needs to commission a documentary on the habits of these elusive slashdot "real programmer" while in their natural habitat.
Anyone happen to know if Steve Irwin's up for he challenge?
From what was described in the article, I don't understood how the "cheating" took any less effort than something novel like... doing the work.
That's like friends I have who shorten "thanks" to "thnkx," because it saves them time. They're right! Wow, in 50 years, they might have saved enough time to watch an episode of South Park!
Neopets - the best free game on the Int
I like surfing the web with Lynx under Cygwin with the colors set to grays. To the average person who walks past it looks like I'm working. They think I'm doing some work using the command line. As the IT area in my office is too full I'm sitting in accounts where they have no clue what you are doing, but had I opened a web page in a regular browser it would look bad.
I know plenty of guys that leave their desk set up so you'd have no idea they left for the day. A jacket on the back of their chair, a cup of coffee next to the keyboard, an open document, keys on the desk, etc.
One I discovered is that you can take a full-sized screenshot and use Windows XP's built-in slideshow screensaver to display that as a locked screensaver. Hide your clock, take a shot of a Word document, and your locked, idle PC looks like you're in the middle of work.
Start your own Fight Club and have fun. Screw the work. Screw the boss. Screw all that sh!t you buy even though you don't need it. If this is your first night of Fight Club - you got to fight. And this is a damn offtopic post.
There's no way I'm working that hard to avoid working. I'll goof off the old fashion way, thank you very much.
Was out to go buy myself a few grammes of coke
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Its all about the money... "Hey, this blogging thing could make me money if I spend 30 minutes spare time writing up random stuff!" REAL bloggers dont do it for the money, dont even have ads, and just do it to give visitors information about their personal life, or information on whatever the blogs topic is. If there were a new form of "blog" that didnt have ads, and werent meant to create revenue those would be the "blogs" to visit IMO.
or, at least, not when you compare between different businesses, cultures or payments.
So, american (resident) workers are lazier, compared to, well, the mexican workers in the same company, same position and for the same particular task.
Oh noes! A new epidemic!
When I read the title, I thought it was about the kind of white lies you tell users who get stressed out with their computer, in order to not make it too technical for them. "The big yellow 'E' was the source of the naked women who scared little timmy. Now when you want to get to your internet, just click the red fox on the blue ball. That's your internet now. Also, the blue bird with the envelope will get your mail for you now." Or when you try to hold your laughter when a user walks up to you and proudly declares he bought a "harder disk" for his movies, and just say "really? Thats cool." (pretty hard that one, though)
Fox can take the sky from you.
White lies are supposed to be the small, harmless lies you use to reduce friction when interacting with others. Things like saying "I'm doing fine" in response to "How are you", or "No, honey, that dress doesn't make you look fat."
What is so white and harmless about just pretending instead of doing the work you're paid to do?
Seemed more like an ad for a book. I'll admit I only read half TFA because you need javascript enabled just to view the 2nd page. -Kevin
You could spend a lot of time and effort avoiding working.
But that's work. A true slacker wouldn't. Nor would a true slacker write a book about it, or read one.
A REAL slacker wouldn't even bother to fini
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Far better to avoid going to work in the first place. If I'm going to slack on company time, I'd rather do it at home, or at the beach, or pretty much anywhere but work, thank you very much. And low-tech solutions are usually the best - the ones where you know some 1337 sysadmin isn't going to be able to dig up evidence against you.
My favourite low-tech solution, like so many good ideas, was invented in desperation. Beautiful sunny day, and I was supposed to go and cook hamburgers in a sweltering kitchen which was in an airport terminal - and the terminal was essentially a massive greenhouse. No way. There's really only one way to guarantee getting out of work when your work involves food, and that's to have food poisoning or diarrhoea. But everyone gets the shits when the sun comes out. No problemo.
I prepared a squeezy bottle, filling it about two-thirds full of water, cleared the route to the toilet, and put the lid down. Then I went back into my room and called in sick.
"Hello, is that Gav? ... Sorry, Gav, I'm not going to make it in... diarrhoea, I think it was the fish I had last night... Gav, I know every other bastard has called in sick already, but I'm - hold on!" With that, I ran, phone in one hand and squeezy bottle in the other, along the hallway, burst into the bathroom, flung the seat up with a clatter, sat down, pointed the squeezy bottle between my legs and down into the pan, squeezed it and groaned like hell. Squeezing and releasing the bottle would result in a wonderful mix between high-pressure-liquid sounds and farting sounds, which echoed around the pan and in turn the bathroom. Acoustically, it was perfect.
Finally, gasping, I said, "Gav, you still there? ...Sorry man... yeah, you're right, I'd better have tomorrow off too."
I had to buy some factor 50 sunblock so I didn't have an awkward tan to explain, but by God it was worth it.
It's really scary that some people feel the need to go all Cathartic and use the term "White Lie" as if they meant it. Jo Hos go as far to call their lies Theocratic War Strategy. I'm starting to suspect that it's really true that hardly anyone in (the densly populated parts of) the U.S.A. can't cope with life without lying at least once or twice a day?
Lies are poison. People to habitually tell even small lies are doomed to have or to continue to have really crappy lives. No divine justice entity required.
Blancmange
An acre is about what one man with a horse and plough, can plough in a day. A man with a tractor and plough, can plough thirty times that in a day, with ease.
Design it, build it, then deliver it - the rest is information.
We now have machinery to process that information. This machinery is called a computer.
The information is:- What do we need? Where do we need it? Is the quality of what we need correct and are we getting value for money?
Things do not need to be sold, all that needs to be done, is the information of what we need and how to obtain it, needs to be collated.
All the people who travel to work to sit in front of a computer, waste a collossal amount of time and energy - they could sit in front of the self same computer at home. All the immence amout of time and energy that offices consume is wasted energy. All the time and energy building offices is wasted energy, all offices do is process information nothing else.
Perhaps the real reason it is so easy to pretend to be at work is it was not really work in the first place.
Always pretend to be annoyed. People think you're really busy when you look annoyed.
It happens.
and people blame management all the time... tsk tsk tsk
I used to rename all the executables for my playthings to the application names for editing, compiling, archiving and so on. [Its good to have privs.] If they sniffed my processes, I look like I'm bustin my hump for 'em
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
"Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life."
A bit confusing sometimes, though...
ive been doing this shit to get out of work for 5 years or so :p
video game, ecchi, bbs and classic computing fans unite to eat sushi
I once changed the system clock on a computer by accident. It managed to lock me out of a critical app, heavy on the DRM, and caused me to have to spend 30 minutes to an hour online with the key-gods to get me back into the app. I can think of other problems caused by a date change, as well, especially in a corporate environment.
If the goal here is stress relief...messing with the clock may not be the right direction to head in!
Usurper_ii
Ron Paul
Tip: In the UK, forward your mobile to a friend, and get them to forward back to you. Anyone dialling either of you will get the "network error" message.
Get your own free personal location tracker
If anybody was on to you, they could sit down at your desk and do some nefarious things under your network login and you'd be ultra hosed.
Sure, you could pretty much no matter what with physical access to the machine, but not locking up at night would practically be inviting it.
If conservatives had their way they'd abolish things like statistics (and learning in general) then state conjecture about 'lazy american workers' as fact and vehemently deny that it was otherwise while spinning it back on liberals as a form of 'commie pinko' support of the working class.
Just remember it's the hard, intelligent, innovative real Americans outside the quasi-work of politics that do all the work in business, industry etc. that supports these asswipes, gives them a forum to air their views and made America such a great nation in the first place.
Where I work people don't care if I'm working at any given moment. They just care if I get stuff done -- eventually -- as in a reasonable amount of time. Whee. If people really wanted to waste time at work I'm sure they would have figured out a few tricks on their own by now.
Me personally, I'm a 'disgruntled idealist' who has tried to find ways to come to grips with such things. A good quote that comes to mind was from the military strategist John Boyd.
"One day you will come to a fork in the road. And you're going to have to make a decision about what direction you want to go." [Boyd] raised his hand and pointed. "If you go that way you can be somebody. You will have to make compromises and you will have to turn your back on your friends. But you will be a member of the club and you will get promoted and you will get good assignments." Then Boyd raised the other hand and pointed another direction. "Or you can go that way and you can do something - something for your country and for your Air Force and for yourself. If you decide to do something, you may not get promoted and you may not get the good assignments and you certainly will not be a favorite of your superiors. But you won't have to compromise yourself. You will be true to your friends and to yourself. And your work might make a difference." He paused and stared. "To be somebody or to do something. In life there is often a roll call. That's when you will have to make a decision. To be or to do? Which way will you go?"
He cited a recent case of nine-year-olds who scanned dollar bills into a computer, printed out the fakes and used them to buy snacks at their school's cafeteria.
This only proves that cafeteria staff was composed of idiots. It doesn't take a genius to tell the difference between a genuine bank note and a computer printout.
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
I'm a bad typist and always making errors but I love the way the reported called what I assume is a TEXT message a TEST message...
"have the IM message forwarded as a test message (a separate mobile phone technology that works in similar ways to IM on computers), Saltzman suggests."
http://www.hawknest.com/
Talk about putting the "fun" in funeral.
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST
Worked graveyard at an ISP on it's way down (not my fault). I lived the dream and caught at least 3 hours a night under my desk.
I'm just a Windows-using office peon but I do the exact same thing.
:p
C:\Program Files\Windows NT\Accessories\wordpad.exe is actually the DOS version of nethack.
Adds a bit of fun to the game as well. Sure, it doesn't say things like, "You hear a manager behind the boulder, perhaps that is why you cannot move it." but there is a bit more suspense when playing the game at work that I enjoy.
The fact that our office is freezing cold and as colorful as a dungeon adds to the enchantment as well.
My favorite was an old submarine simulator game (I think it was Gato) for the IBM PC. It had a special keystroke that would instantly change the screen to look like a spreadsheet application. This was in the days of DOS so the spreadsheet looked like 123.
I thought this was a cool feature to help people to be able to play games at work. It also probably helped with sales because at this time not as many people owned home computers.
Back in my day, we had to walk 10 miles uphill in the snow wearing a sun dress, just to submit our punchcards to the mainframe guy!
Uh, got any pictures?
As a conservative I would like to congratulate you for finally figuring us out. In truth we have wanted nothing more than to destroy America and everything you hold dear. I would love to abolish statistics, science, and anything else youfeel like accusing me of without just cause. You commie pinko whatever you said thing...
Honestly, you went so far you fell off the left wing buddy...
One thing that's kind of surprised me over the years is that the higher my job pays, the less difficult and stressful the job seems to be. I started in high school as a store clerk, and slowly moved from there to become a system admin today. There's more skill and responsibility required as you move up, but there's also a lot less stress. I "own" the job I have now. I make my own rules. I have to be prepared to work long hours or weekends if the need arises, but overall I'm a lot more relaxed and happy today than I was way back when. They don't tell you this stuff in school.
"Unless you start your own business and all that, of course most businesses fail in the first year."
I suggest people look at how those numbers are computed. Apperances can be deceiving.
There was also a chance that you could plug a personal computer into the intarwebs and not have it pwned!!1! inside of twelve minutes.
I mean, as long as we're playing "What If" and all.
The simple slacker's solution: StealthSwitch. It's a foot switch that automatically hides the window you're viewing in Windows.
Read the owner's about page to see what he's about. It's a pretty cool idea that jives with the theme of this topic. Of course, this assumes you're at the office and not boating at the lake, but it's a tool for "stressed computer users" *snicker*
No, I'm not affliated in any way, just a happy customer.
Hard work often pays off after time but lazyness always pays off now.
If one steals time (=money) from one's boss, one is an ordinary thief. A criminal, who steals from his/her boss, from his/her co-workers, and from society at large. Stealing is anti-social behaviour.
why is the point of your sig? it seems so random.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
I was working for a startup company, and had been shunted into the role of network administrator. Not something I was fully qualified for, or even wanted.
But at one point in time we ran into cash flow problems, big surprise right.
So after about a month of not getting paid I decided to take some time off until the paycheck arrived in order to do some side jobs. I did not tell anyone else, I basically just locked up my office, and did not show up for a little more than a month. (Hey I needed to get food on the table, and I was pissed as all hell by that point)
I come back just to check on the server, which was still running ok, and I find out that everyone thought I was extremely busy and running errands or doing something around the office. (Since my office door was locked)
So I get my back pay, pay for the full month, a raise, AND a bonus.
For some reason I could not be bothered to correct their mistake....
Reminds me of a application for Series 60 phones that automatically adds background sounds of your choice while your on the phone with your boss. I think it was called call cheater. A very cool app.
What does your Credit Report look like?
don't be ridiculous...
"the chances of anything coming from mars are a miliion to one", he said
Yeah, backdate your computer's clock. Then try to explain why the first Received header on your email, which is appended by the SMTP server through which you sent your message, is always x hours or days or whatever ahead.
Also, what of the possibility that an email server will just replace your date header? If this isn't a server configuration option, it should be. I haven't seen a server that does this, but I've seen NNTP servers do it, and some that also add an additional NNTP-Posting-Date header.
Liberty in your lifetime
I have looked around a bit for thie book and cannot find a "backup copy".
Any help?
On my qwerty keyboard, the crucial point comes after "h", which I press with my right index finger. "n" I am likely to strike with the same finger whereas "a" is under my left pinky, a finger I haven't even used recently.
Thanks for the intellegent detailed reply (no, seriously, that was good). The discussion seems to be revolving around the conservatives role in these problems.
My question is:
What do Americans need to do to be aware of things that concern them? And how can we get more people to get out there and vote on their convictions or beliefs?
It's been a good chat, brsmith! I wish more people were thoughtful about their positions like you are!
it could be that bosses have unrealistic expectations about their employees in the information age *cough* Electronic Arts *cough*
Ok, I might not actually go so far as to change the date of my emails.
But at my most productive times I've been "faking the act of working" many times to get the bosses off my back, because chances are they have NO clue what I do anyway.
I sound like a lazy person now - right?
Wrong!
The times when I did this, I was one of the most productive workers in the company. I was commented and acknowledged many times during that period and was happy as a bunny to go to work. As a matter of fact I could hardly wait for the next day.
Then things shifted.
I got real eager working, and my bosses started to demand more from me. Working harder and harder - they where wondering (even asking) if I used most of my time to surf the net or chat, I said no... (I wasn't either) at that period I was working like insane , got no credit, and the bosses where stressing me plus stressing themselves.
This I've experienced again and again, also with co-workers. The ones that get all the praise and recognition are those who are relaxed, well organized and stress-free. This due to the fact that they manage their time well - also manage to cut themselves some slack.
So put short - Yes! I do, and I'll do it again.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Thank you Mr Ebbers, o'wait, your not Bernnie.
He cited a recent case of nine-year-olds who scanned dollar bills into a computer, printed out the fakes and used them to buy snacks at their school's cafeteria.
Stupid kids didn't know that every dollar they printed out on Daddy's inkjet cost him more in ink. Everyone knows you have to print at least 5's to break even on cost.
That being said, the US and Canadian unemployment rates -- without correction for the difference in methodology -- have been just one point apart since 2002.
Also, in some countries, you can receive benefits if you register as unemployed, even if you're a homemaker or student. The US does not have this system. So some countries have higher numbers of registered unemployed people, simply because of benefits available.
I'm just going on what I learned in undergrad and grad school courses, as well as articles I've read over the years. I'd be interested in hearing a rebuttal to these points, though.
-- SYS 64738 --
If employees can deceive managers by just by forwarding communications and similar measures, perhaps it's management that should be examined.
I don't care if my crew are running naked on a beach on Fiji, as long as they make their production goals and stay in contact. Work from home, work from your cube, from under your mother's dress, I don't care. Make progress on your work. As a manager, it's my job to measure that, and not my job to worry about where your butt is located or whether it's getting sun exposed.
The big problem is that most middle managers have no idea how to work up and maintain plans and schedules, and thus resort to policing cubes and worrying about attendance.
Yeah, I remember that app. And the modern equivalent for windows systems was ghostzilla, which gave you a mozilla browsing window inside any other windows app.
Last I knew the author had suffered some kind of a twinge-of-conscience judgment lapse, as if he was responsible for somebody's loss of productivity. But he said he had been persuaded to let others take over the project.
For the curious, www.ghostzilla.com looks fine now. And ghostzilla happens to be Windows Only, so let that be a reason for your boss to switch everyone to Linux desktops!
I gather that at IBM[1], productivity is unimportant. Most likely, the reason one is employed at IBM is that lower management simply like having timid, subservient people clean shaven and deprived of natural cues to manhood all in order for those people to function as simpering corporate catamites. It makes the bosses feel more potent because they too are mere catamites.
The upper management of IBM are all laughing away, telling ribald jokes while gizzling whisky and Guiness, picking out pork chops that get caught in their whiskers, flirting with the buxom serving wenches and occasionally summoning up a poor member of middle management to some dark and squalid boardroom to give him Special Treatment.
----
[1] IBM stands for "I Be Moved" for the people subjected to the loyalty tests to which they're subjected. IBM doesn't really care which city you live in. They just want to know that you love IBM more than you love your friends,
Blancmange
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Since the US government collects less per capita in taxes than other, more socialist, countries, it stands to reason that it has less per capita to redistribute.
Also, the US government has to spend a tremendous amount of money to maintain and expand its empire in its futile attempt dominate the planet.
As far as personal giving goes, the main problem with that is that many so-called "charities" aren't, and my guess is that Americans, being more cynical than the citizens of other nations, realize this (or believe it to be so, even when it's not), and don't support them for that reason.
That said, the USA has things like the Peace Corps, etc., to which many Americans contribute their time, and that can help far more than a simple infusion of money to corrupt third-world governments.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
It should be "in its futile attempt to dominate the planet".
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Hey, cut 'im some slack... He's working 90-hour weeks, so he just spells them all the same to save time.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
It's not that I'm lazy, bob[x13]. It's that I just don't care.
From a distance, 90% transparent windows are practically invisible!
The onlsy prlnblem sis ometimes you can'tread it that well youslef...