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Computers Top BBC List of Stress Producers
twitter writes "The BBC is reporting results of a poll by UK charity Developing Patient Partnerships that shows crashing computers to be one of the most common stresses and that it's actually killing people by driving them to drink and smoke. The quoted list has: 1. IT problems - 30%, 2. Change in financial status/personal injury - 24%, 3. Commuting - 20%. I've seen people take a smoke break when their computer pops a window and they lose an hour or two of work and admins taking their break straight from the bottle."
"Ah, my computer's crashed. Time to nip off to the pub..."
Dog is my co-pilot.
... and I put alcohol in my cereal I eat before going to work.
(And yes, I'm quite serious.)
Surgeon General's warning: This product is an unstable, insecure piece of shit and will most likely drive you to suicide in sheer frustration.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
kidding right? because sometimes when I am stressed, porn on my comp is a great stress reliever
And guess that the 27% of men and 23% of women who would "light up in such a situation" roughly coorelates to the percentage of smokers in England.
The BBC is reporting results of a poll by UK charity Developing Patient Partnerships that shows crashing computers to be one of the most common stresses
The study also shows smashing computers to be one of the most common stress-relievers.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
From the article: "1. IT problems - 30% ... 2. Change in financial status/personal injury - 24%" Then later: "Over two thirds thought stress was simply having a 'bad day', 63% said it was dealing with difficult people and 58% saw stress as having too much to do." Okay, so which is it? 30% said IT problems were the top problem, but 63% said dealing with difficult people? Maybe the IT problems are caused by difficult people...?
Elsewhere: Considering that most people - 79% - believe they have been stressed in the last year.... ONLY 79%?! Who are these 21% of people who haven't felt stressed in the last 365 days?
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
to see the obvious.
It was not the GPL or being able to Use the Source that led me to Linux; it was Windows' misbehavior. I learned to love those other things later, after I found Linux to be much better behaved.
I would much, much rather spend time learning and configuring Linux to my liking -- a positive feeling of success and pride -- than put up with Windows' flaws -- a feeling of failure and helplessness.
Frankly, I didn't care whether I used BeOS (which I was considering at the time) BSD or Linux as long as it didn't crash all the time or get viruses (boot sector trojans were popular then.) As chance had it, my local computer store had a 5-linux-distro boxed set for sale for $20 USD, so Linux it was.
I have been an enthusiastic Linux user and contributer ever since.
Leela: Bender? My God, you're a mess! ... what I don't do is none of your business.
Bender: Leave me alone.
Leela: Look at the 5:00 rust. You've been up all night not drinking, haven't you?
Bender: Hey
Leela: Please, Bender, have some malt liquor. If not for yourself, then for the people who love you.
The logic distilled:
When you're stressed, do you smoke or drink? [read: do you smoke or drink? This is an awful question for establishing a link. Possible alternate question: "do you like a massage when you're stressed?"]
What stresses you? Do crashing computers stress you? ["Yeah." Of course they do.]
Therefore, computers drive people to drink.
Nowhere have they established a causal link between the group that is stressed and the group that drinks, aside from what you'd expect from pretty random overlap. This has the smell of a bad study and results blown up to sound outrageous. The article reads like a bunch of observations about overlapping groups concluding with inflammatory statements about two of the groups which are only vaguely linked in the actual data.
Another analogy: IT problems lead to sex. Well, IT problems lead to stress, stressed people are more likely to get massages, and a nontrivial number of massage parlors offer sex services. IT problems lead to prostitution! Please give us more funding.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
Les Barker's spoken word poem seems to fit this story:
I bought a new computer.
It cost a thousand pound,
But every time I switch it on
It keeps on falling down.
I used to think it was my friend,
But now it drives me 'round the bend.
You'd be surprised the time I spend:
REINSTALLING WINDOZE.
I switch it on -
What is this?
Something wrong with CONFIG SYS
This isn't my idea of bliss:
REINSTALLING WINDOZE.
I want to share my printers and
I want to share my files.
I want to share my anger
'Cause it drives me blooming wild.
My songs, they say, are sublime;
I've conquered cadence, mastered rhyme.
But now-a-days I spend my time:
REINSTALLING WINDOZE.
Reinstall - oh what fun!
It says it helps you get things done.
Every day now, everyone's
REINSTALLING WINDOZE.
Look again. It will say
All you do is plug and play.
How do I spend every day?
REINSTALLING WINDOZE.
It can't find my printer and
It can't locate my mouse.
The other day it drove me
Right out of the bloomin' house.
Still unplugged, still unplayed,
I e-mailed God in search of aid.
He's far to busy, I'm afraid...
REINSTALLING WINDOZE.
Up at dawn for one more try
Will it work? - Can pigs fly?
How do I expect to die?
REINSTALLING WINDOZE.
I used to like a drink or three.
No time now - don't call for me.
How will I spend eternity?
REINSTALLING WINDOZE.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
If you've ever had a 150 day uptime on a windows box, you're clearly not patching enough
What is with the fixation on trying to pin everything on MS? The things that stress average people out are not platform specific. Average people can barely SAVE A FILE or install a program. These are the stresses that would apply. No matter what platform you're on people will have a stressfull time doing anything.
There's a second box along the side of that page, showing one how to avoid stress. Cool! Let's take a look:
...Have a nice evening.
H HHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!
1. Live a healthy lifestyle
Well, duh. OK, maybe someone under stress needs the bleeding obvious told to them. Whatever.
2. Don't take too much on
Too much what? Stress?
3. Decide what causes you stress and change it
OS9 causes my stress. The Accounting Dept. says I can't change it either.
4. Avoid unnecessary conflict
So, one should just smile at that luser and say "Yes, you're right - it's a virus I let in through the firewall. Your kids music collection acquired through Kaaza - on our corporate laptop - has _nothing_ to do with all those strange pop-ups. No sir. I'll have it all fixed up in a jiffy."? OK.
5. Manage your time better
Good. Hang on, cell phone ringing again...
6. Practice saying "no" without feeling guilty
Me: Hullo?
Them: Hey - the server's down
Me: *checks with ssh* Odd - it was runnig like a top when I left for home.
Them: Well, with the construction going on in here, the electricians kinda shut the power to the server room off.
Me: Ummmm... The server is on UPS. Why's it dead?
Them: They shut it off a 5. It's now 8. The drill they plugged into the UPS didn't help either. Can you come in and fix it?
Me: NO. Get them to fix it - it's thier fault! And nothing you say will make me feel guilty enough to come in.
Them: Suuuure. Get your ass in here or your fired! The CIO golfs at my country club, you know.
Me: Yeahyeahyeah. Be there ASAP. As soon as I explain to my wife why I'm going to work during her birthday celebration.
Yup, no stress there....
7. Take time out to "recharge your batteries"
Me: Yup, the batteries aren't charging. You guys fried the my UPS batteries with your drill. You've trashed my DB and destroyed a 3000VA UPS. I need to see the foreman now - you guys owe us for all this.
FatAssSparky: Fuck you.
8. Talk about problems so they do not get out of proportion
Me: I'd like to talk to you about your workers killing power to my server room, and...
Foreman: Sorry 'bout that, buddy. Now, we want we should take 4 days to finish up here, or an extra week with similar 'mishaps', if you wanna start sqwaking about our little boo-boo dis evenin'?
Me: *WINCE*
9. Make time to see friends
Friend: Soko, if your just going to bitch about your day, I'm leaving. I hate that geeky stuff. Oh, and you pay the tab.
10. Do not use alcohol, nicotine or caffeine to cope with stress
Are they FUCKING KIDDING?? WHO ARE THESE MORONS?? I'll FUCKING SHOW THEM STRESS. WITH A SNOWSHOVEL CAVING IN THIER FUCKING SKULL!!!
AAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGH
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
That reminds me of the bug windows 95 had where it you left it running for 40 days it would crash. it only took them 6 years to reproduce the bug so they could fix it.
XP at stock is very stable, though, but there is a wider problem in computing than just the 'OS' the electrical grid can have spikes (no problem a good PSU can protect you) and worse, undervoltages. there is Nothing (other than having massive redundent arrays of capacitors) that can be done about under voltaging, and even then it's just a matter of time before the undervolateges cause the capacitors to all blow... then we have people trying to plug everything on one 15 amp breaker that was designed when people had like a living room radio as 'entertainment'
PC power and cooling is selling a PSU that can draw 38 amps from Each 12 volt rail. Dude, my OVEN only operates on 60 amps. but i guess if you want that quad sli setup so you can run battlfield 2 at full resolution on a 40" LCD screen... call an electrician, and have em put in some 60 amp wiring to where your pc plugs in...
er, well there is more than just power issues there are 'reliability' a lot of technology is built on a 'pump and dump' model make it cheap as possible and who cares if it blows up, or sucks etc. they'll just buy more of the junk. still more hardware is designed and engineered broken, but it seems to work fine so they ship it and then find that it seems to work fine but only with one configuration of hardware etc.. it takes a lot of time and energy to really find out who's got a good solid product, and who's selling the flimsy ones.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
The main problem here is that your wife is an idiot. She worked for a couple hours without saving her work... not even once during that time? Then she deserves to lose a couple hours' work. This is like complaining that your precious family heirlooms were stolen when you left them unattended in a busy location for a couple hours. I don't care if you're using Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, or even some high-availability OS that Never Crashes. Unless your apps were written by God Himself, they will fail on you. This is a fact that anyone who has used a computer for more than a few months should understand. And if you can't be bothered to press Ctrl-S or Command-S from time to time, I can't be bothered to feel sorry for you when you lose your work.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Unless your apps were written by God Himself, they will fail on you.
Don't rely on it even then, heck Jesus saves.
The network hasn't been the same since.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."