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Microsoft Security Makes "Worst Jobs" List

Posted by kdawson on from the whale-meat-and-blubber dept.

Stony Stevenson asks, rhetorically, "What do whale-feces researchers, hazmat divers, and employees of Microsoft's Security Response Center have in common? They all made Popular Science magazine's 2007 list of the absolute worst jobs in science." Quoting: "The MSRC ranked near the middle as the sixth-worst job in this year's list.. 'We did rate the Microsoft security researcher as less-bad than the people who prepare the carcasses for dissection in biology laboratories,' Moyer said. Moyer didn't have to think long when asked whether he'd rather have the number 10-ranked whale research job. 'Whale feces or working at Microsoft? I would probably be the whale feces researcher,' he said. 'Salt air and whale flatulence; what could go wrong?'" Here's the Popular Mechanics list all on one page.

12 of 177 comments (clear)

  1. Odd... by ForumTroll · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Microsoft actually has security researchers? What do they actually do?

    --
    "A Lisp programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing." - Alan Perlis
    1. Re:Odd... by ozmanjusri · · Score: 5, Funny
      What do they actually do?

      Dissect a bloated carcass.

      No, sorry. That was the whale guys, wasn't it?

      --
      "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
    2. Re:Odd... by revengebomber · · Score: 5, Funny

      But the health plan is terrible. It doesn't even cover flying chairs.

      --
      09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
      45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
  2. I call whaleshit by jomama717 · · Score: 5, Informative
    Support sucks no matter what you're working with - I've been there - this is a Microsoft slam piece from an unlikely source.

    For giggles, here's the list:
    • Number 10: Whale-Feces Researcher
    • Number 9: Forensic Entomologist
    • Number 8: Olympic Drug Tester?
    • Number 7: Gravity Research Subject
    • Number 6: Microsoft Security Grunt
    • Number 5: Coursework Carcass Preparer
    • Number 4: Garbologist
    • Number 3: Elephant Vasectomist
    • Number 2: Oceanographer
    • Number 1: Hazmat Diver
    --
    while [ 1 ]; do echo -n -e "\xe2\x95\xb$((($RANDOM&1)+1))"; done
    1. Re:I call whaleshit by BlueTrin · · Score: 5, Interesting

      From http://abcnews.go.com/WN/Technology/Story?id=32909 63&page=4

      2. Oceanographer: Oceanographers' jobs are "getting harder and harder every year," said Ward. Faced with the predictions that by 2048 seafood will no longer exist, coral reefs will vanish in the next decade and that an ever expanding mass of garbage the size of Texas in the North Pacific has caused irreparable damage to the world's water supply, these scientists are charged not only with protecting the health of the ocean, but also with turning the prognosis around.

      "Oceanographers are really tasked with just analyzing sad facts on deoxygenating oceans, increased pollution, whole masses of garbage swirling in the middle of the ocean. What it really is, is a testament to how devoted and loyal a bunch of people they are.

      "They're working extremely hard on a very difficult problem, but they also are very optimistic people. They believe that we can turn it around and the ocean is a very dynamic living environment and they feel that with the proper care, we can turn it around, but so far that has not been the case," said Ward.

      --
      Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
  3. Forensic Entomologist I can relate to, sorta by iHasaFlavour · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Many years ago in my former career I had to treat a guy who had been in a ditch comotose for so long he had maggots well established in every available cavity. Took a while that did.

    Not, it has to be said, my fondest memory of that time. It ranks right up there with the odd fact that all tramps poo contains giant lentils.

    --
    Reality is that which, when we cease to believe in it, still exists. - Philip K Dick
    1. Re:Forensic Entomologist I can relate to, sorta by misanthrope101 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I work in a hospital, and ER docs like to swap stories. The worst I've heard is of a woman who was kidnapped, beaten, repeatedly raped, and thrown into a ditch to die. She didn't die, but she did land on a fire ant mound, where she stayed until someone found her, which was not enough time for her to die. Tragedy happens, crime happens, but sometimes you just have to think "that's not fair." I always think of that story when I hear someone say "well, everything happens for a reason."

    2. Re:Forensic Entomologist I can relate to, sorta by misanthrope101 · · Score: 5, Interesting
      About 70% of the people who are released from death row after being exonerated by DNA evidence were convicted on eyewitness testimony. The death penalty is bad because witnesses lie or are mistaken, cops lie or are mistaken, cops torture/beat confessions out of people, jailhouse snitches are allowed to testify to reduce their own sentence, evidence is planted (or hidden, if exculpatory), and so on.

      We think we have a god's-eye view and we just know that someone is guilty, but the case is stacked to look that way, and we don't really know, not definitively. Very seldom is there videotape of a crime like this--usually we have to rely on people whose careers are built on getting an arrest and a conviction. People will send you to death row just to help their own careers, even if they have to intimidate witnesses, supress contradictory testimony, or reduce someone else's sentence for their "testimony" about the night you confessed to them.

  4. Re:Uh.... by ozmanjusri · · Score: 5, Funny
    So why on earth would anyone be sterilizing an endangered species?

    I just wanted them to get some practice before they did mine.

    --
    "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
  5. Re:Time to rethink OS's by jimicus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So your solution to any random problem is "run it under a debugger"?

    Would it really be so hard for the software writers to, oh, I don't know, USE THE LOGGING FACILITIES THAT ARE BUILT INTO THE OPERATING SYSTEM??. Windows has a perfectly good Event Viewer and APIs for writing to it, so how come hardly any software ever logs what it's doing?

  6. Misnomer by DynaSoar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I know science. I do science. Microsoft security response is not science. It's the intelligent design contingent of the IT world. It can call itself science all it wants but it can't act like science. Sooner or later they'll tell you that you just have to believe them, while they're busily cooking up the next, more complicated batch of the same old same old and collecting more people with impressive credentials to preach it at you.

    --
    "I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
  7. Re:Time to rethink OS's by davebert · · Score: 5, Informative
    Get SysInternal's Process Explorer. It's got a Find action that will tell you which process has a file open.

    It also has an option to replace TaskManager, which is very handy...