A thoughtful post, but your iPad (and the iPhone) example is a bit too recent to use as a basis for generalisations. It's possible that Joe Average wants an appliance and not a general purpose computer, but until that comes to pass, it's uneducated users using multi-purpose computers that we're talking about.
Let's be honest here. If certain people just stayed away from using the internet, the internet would be a better place. That's something I think we can all agree on. So how to do deal with these folks? If you don't deal with them directly, you pass the burdens of their actions/inactions to someone else, most likely the ISP. If the ISP doesn't deserve the grief, then you shift the burden to... everyone else. But waaah. But, we don't want it either.
Wishing the problems away ain't a solution. Asserting that "things are fine" is dishonest. And suggesting that any change will be for the worse isn't much better. And hoping for appliances to rule the market, well, I'm as optimistic as the next guy, but that's a fairy tale for the moment, just as is to expect Microsoft to take security seriously.
Hell, I'm stymied trying to figure out why it is there's no meaningful conversation about the subject.
More accurately, there's a mental illness for everyone.
Personally, I distrust the entire psychiatric profession, and lament that these "professionals" have taken on (usurped?) the traditional roles of grandparent, wise uncle, priest, friend, cool dude down the street who smokes too much pot, etc. Anyone know of any other job where you can ensure meaningful and continued employment by making shit up?
No doubt there's an illness for people like me, too. Or would it be a disease? What the hell. Disorder, malady, sickness, syndrome... no wonder everyone's so screwed up. Guess I'll have to start watching those TV commercials more carefully so I know what to ask my doctor to prescribe.
Sigh. I need to go browse some sexually gratifying websites. Anyone have a link?
Just like Battered Wife Syndrome, bullying is something that, ultimately, is the fault of the aggressor. Appeasement is not the solution.
An awfully narrow view wrapped up in the politics of the day, I think. My view is very different. The way I see it, we're social animals. And like all social animals, we attack what's different.
You don't need look any farther than your pet dog. If he approaches a group of other dogs and they interpret his behaviour as non-standard (too nervous, too timid, too weak, too aggressive, too weird looking, etc.), he'll be attacked. The severity of the attack can range from simple growling to nips to bites that draw blood, but the attack always subsides when the dog submits and the problem has been corrected, or the dog has left.
You can pretend the "we attack what's different" isn't true, reject it outright, or waffle in the middle while espousing your favourite philosophy, but at the end of the day, life goes on unapolegetically as it always has. And while as individuals we may intermittently aspire or learn new and better ways of behaving (i.e., evolve), as a group we don't.
Besides, even if we could evolve or modify our behaviour, the problem would still be there. Instead of being beaten with clubs for the colour of your skin or the style of your haircut, for example, you'll get subjected to something more subtle (and acceptable), like a verbal tirade for your choice politics. Hell, light up a cigarette on a public street and see how the enlightened and well-mannered among the crowd behave toward you. Sticks and stones, right?
As a deaf person, I can tell you that the sound of a drill in my tooth is one of the few sounds I can hear exactly as well as you can, so this is probably a pretty decent idea.
No doubt you experience or otherwise sense something that's noticeable to you, but I doubt it's the same. Once upon a time I spent a period of about 2 years getting dental work done. Everything from ordinary fillings and cleanings, to root canals and surgery. Sounds like a bad horror movie? Not at all. My dentist ran a small office in Beverly Hills and offered, provided, or otherwise insisted on the following:
1. As soon as you sit down, you're asked to pick your favourite music (if you haven't brought any with you), and you get handed a full-sized set of head phones.
2. A few minutes later (during which you hope the attractive assistant accidentally rubs herself against your arm more than once), a small rubber attachment is placed on your nose, and the gas is turned on, and left on.
3. Later still (if you're there for anything but a simple cleaning), you get a topical application of novocaine. You don't care, and barely notice when a few minutes pass and a few injections directly to your gums are made.
Now you've been sitting in that chair about 20 minutes. You sensory inputs have been muted one by one and you're enjoying a high. At this point, there's no way anyone in that chair will notice, sense, or care about anything but the groove of the music coming out of the head phones. Am I exaggerating? Let's put it this way -- by the end of the 3rd or 4th appointment, I was looking forward to my visits, and hoped each one would last a long time.
If you hear, smell, see, or otherwise feel anything, I'd suggest a different dentist.
For anyone unfamiliar with SSD drives, they are indeed completely silent, but they're definitely not cool. Perhaps best described as moderately warm to the touch. For many, that could translate as "your notebook will still feel too hot".
Yeah, but there's more. He also said "the experience is COMING" and it's "moving SLOWLY". That suggests to me that the way it's envisioned, 3D will meet the prerequisites for the female of the species (an increasingly large demographic).
The gradient title bars introduced in the Windows 98 line merited a Special Edition ("SE") moniker, so it really should be Win2K SP9 SE.
Considering the Vista debacle, I'd suggest calling it the Really Special and This Time We Mean It Edition, but that's probably too long. Even for Microsoft.
Why is this news? Seriously, old technology lives on if it's useful. Even sometimes if it's not.
I think the newsworthiness of this is that it offers evidence of a technological "plus ca change..." Put another way, instead of looking like Star Trek or a Spielberg movie, the future will more likely resemble what we see in Brazil.
So, if this "old dog can learn new tricks" and my friends have as well...
The question that I'd like answered is whether the new dogs can learn what the old dogs have learned, or whether they're too enamoured of (or distracted by) gadgets and interfaces so as to believe no such effort is necessary.
I might be in the minority here, but this request is probably more in line with gathering a list for the FBI to go contact when they need an independent contractor for something.
You've got to put in terms that Slashdot users understand.
The FBI are looking for IT Security Pros without having to send out a cop to shake down an informant during an actual emergency. Bonus points if the Security Pro has his own Command Center and is familiar with CB technology.
Non-neckbearded non-grognards would just use mrxvt tabs, because frankly, it has gnu screen beat on ease of use hand down.
First, there are multiple ways to get graphical "tabs". Second, tabs work best in limited-use scenarios (you'll quickly run out of real estate, for example). And third, screen has a good number of useful features not available to any implementation of tabs, including the ability to detach/re-attach, logging, monitoring, and split views.
There is the overhead of having to repeatedly type ^C-a (or ^C-SPACE, in my case), but that's hardly a problem if you've got real work to do.
For the record, I shave regularly and have never worn suspenders.;-)
Perhaps another reason engineers predominate is because it is easier to get a visa, or otherwise travel, to Western countries if one is an engineer.
I suspect it's sortakindof like that, but in reverse. Engineering is probably regarded as a respectable profession, so the kids get sent off with a visa to schools abroad.
Fairly common attitude across Eastern Europe, so I'd expect the Arab world would be little different. What's respectable? Studying to become a doctor, lawyer or businessmen or somebody who builds things. Maths and sciences are considered the equivalent of medicine, but performing on stage or in film, for example, is the equivalent of a being a prostitute.
Delivery drivers, pest control people, UPS, the people who go out in the field wear the uniform. They're also the lowest paid of the bunch. McDonalds lets the managers wear a dress shirt and tie. Dealerships have the mechanics wearing uniforms but not the sales people and office staff. Pretty much anyone in uniform is on the lower end of the totem pole. IT is supposed to be a co-equal department, right?
That pretty much sums up the inconsistencies, doesn't it?
Uniforms can be perfectly fine, but their use is typically reserved for workers who don't work in the office (read "you don't belong here").
The only example I can think of where someone would be uniformed and allowed free access in an office environment is the case where internal services have been outsourced to a company that provides on-site employees. This is a fairly common setup in larger companies that have huge volumes of internal mail delivery, or require messengering and/or print/duplication work be done in-house.
If I was the office manager and had a need to uniform certain employees, I'd segregate them to their own area, possibly giving each their own red stapler to ease the transition.
Everyone does it, rich and poor alike and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands.
There's a certain truthiness to that, but the perspective is a bit narrow, doncha think? How, for example, would you explain the following Wiki entry:
One of the world's wealthiest men, Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, and the father of another of the world's wealthiest men (Microsoft founder Bill Gates), William H. Gates, Sr., favor the estate tax.
Rich men trying to give their hard earned money to the government? Blasphemy.
If you really hold that the general principle that "Nobody owes anybody anything" is valid, then I suppose "sharing" is delusional and childish, "sacrifice for others" is delayed gratification, "charity" a clever misdirection or an attempt at ego agggrandisement, and "community service" is an atonement for misplaced guilt.
The problem is that even animals don't subscribe to that kind of thinking, or behaviour. Your justifications no doubt seem correct to you, but I suspect in the end you'll wind up recognising them as nothing other than sophistry. I'd also suspect visiting a school bake sale or a community food bank and talking to the locals might accelerate the process.
To be fair, the theory behind leaving corporations and the rich alone is that doing so will result in greater investment and more jobs. A trickle down, if you will.
Ok, so it's a goofy concept.
But it did sound like sound policy to a lot of people back when Reagan was president. The famous words that accompanied this new economic approach were "Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem!" Long live unfettered free-market capitalism.
Small wonder that belief in government was supplanted by corporatism. I'd like to say we've finally come full circle, but I'm left wondering how many people, rejecting both, having nothing to believe in at all. Cynicism as a belief system is boring stuff, even for the cynics.
this is why we need to let our children interact with other people and go out and play in the dirt.
Common sense would also suggest we should let them play with animals as well as dirt. It's the adults who didn't have any pets as kids that suffer from pet allergies.
The Russians found the biggest meanest Doberman and Rottweiler dogs in the world and bred them with the biggest meanest Siberian wolves.
Fun Fact:
Why would Russians bother with breeding Doberman and Rottweilers when they already have something much bigger and stronger?
Another Fun Fact:
Google for recent events in Georgia, Grozny or Azerbaijan and you'll discover their owners are no less intimidating than their dogs. Apparently, the locals consider bear hunting with Ovcharkas as "sport".
Me, I think it's better to err on the side of caution, and let a little fresh air in now and then. If those whose deeds need covering-up know that a very public exposure is just a mouse-click away... maybe they'll be less inclined to perform those deeds in the future. Maybe that qualifies as an unintended consequence, but if so, I'm all for it.
Does the "fresh air" resulting from my publishing that you like to wear women's clothing and are having an affair with a male cubicle mate make you less inclined to indulge that behaviour? Organisations, just like people, have dirty laundry. Airing it doesn't necessarily mean that any good will come out of doing so, save for those enjoy dirt and profit from it.
My definition of "erring on the side of caution" involves discretion and reasonableness. Yours takes the form of a zero-tolerance policy that, by definition, precludes any such requirements, or any thinking generally.
Specifically, GNS3 allows you to create test networks in a virtual environment, then import software images for your Cisco routers, switches, PIX firewalls, Juniper hardware, etc, all run on hypervisor technology.
For anyone unfamiliar with GNS3, a link to the website. There are versions available for Windows, Linux, and OS X. FreeBSD already has it in ports.
As a side note, I'd add that maintaining a home lab (to the extent practicable and useful) is one way to side-step limitations of what your employer provides. Consider it a combination of "Ongoing Professional Education" and "Proactive Job Security Measures" (i.e., "I better test this shit to save my ass tomorrow").
Don't forget.nfo files.. Microsoft decided to co-opt the file extension for System Information files. The bastards!
LOL. I haven't gotten over that one myself. At the time, I suspected it was deliberate choice, and a portent of Bad Things to come (WGA, as it turned out).
IIRC, within a year of that change, I stopped using Windows altogether and left the warez scene behind me. Funny how those two go hand in hand.
I've just configured a new laptop and told the anti-virus to ignore *.jpg, *.avi and *.mp3 on my understanding that it's not possible to hide malware in them and that it will make the scan significantly quicker.
If you're running an operating system where the permissions are such that everthing is executable by default, do you really think that pursuing file extension related tweaks will solve your problems?
Sorry, but I'm having trouble not laughing. Not at you personally. You'd think Microsoft would have weaned itself from their perverse reliance of file extensions years ago when people first started clamoring about.386 files. JPEG files have a.jpg or.jpeg extension, but log files have an.evt extension. Unless it's a log file. But what kind of log file is it? And which type should I scan?
Face it, Microsoft makes things up as they go along. Trying to keep up or otherwise make sense of things is a waste of time (unless it's your job, and you're being paid to do it).
Slashdot Mirror
Buy cafes near the louve on ebay
Unlikely. It would spelled correctly.
Sayeth thy worst to this befuddled reader of text.
I think you meant "thine" (that which belongs to thee).
Also, it's "wurst", not "worst". Speakers of Ye Olde English were big on sausages. And ale. Lots of ale. And wenches, of course.
A thoughtful post, but your iPad (and the iPhone) example is a bit too recent to use as a basis for generalisations. It's possible that Joe Average wants an appliance and not a general purpose computer, but until that comes to pass, it's uneducated users using multi-purpose computers that we're talking about.
Let's be honest here. If certain people just stayed away from using the internet, the internet would be a better place. That's something I think we can all agree on. So how to do deal with these folks? If you don't deal with them directly, you pass the burdens of their actions/inactions to someone else, most likely the ISP. If the ISP doesn't deserve the grief, then you shift the burden to ... everyone else. But waaah. But, we don't want it either.
Wishing the problems away ain't a solution. Asserting that "things are fine" is dishonest. And suggesting that any change will be for the worse isn't much better. And hoping for appliances to rule the market, well, I'm as optimistic as the next guy, but that's a fairy tale for the moment, just as is to expect Microsoft to take security seriously.
Hell, I'm stymied trying to figure out why it is there's no meaningful conversation about the subject.
Everyone has a mental illness these days.
More accurately, there's a mental illness for everyone.
Personally, I distrust the entire psychiatric profession, and lament that these "professionals" have taken on (usurped?) the traditional roles of grandparent, wise uncle, priest, friend, cool dude down the street who smokes too much pot, etc. Anyone know of any other job where you can ensure meaningful and continued employment by making shit up?
No doubt there's an illness for people like me, too. Or would it be a disease? What the hell. Disorder, malady, sickness, syndrome ... no wonder everyone's so screwed up. Guess I'll have to start watching those TV commercials more carefully so I know what to ask my doctor to prescribe.
Sigh. I need to go browse some sexually gratifying websites. Anyone have a link?
Just like Battered Wife Syndrome, bullying is something that, ultimately, is the fault of the aggressor. Appeasement is not the solution.
An awfully narrow view wrapped up in the politics of the day, I think. My view is very different. The way I see it, we're social animals. And like all social animals, we attack what's different.
You don't need look any farther than your pet dog. If he approaches a group of other dogs and they interpret his behaviour as non-standard (too nervous, too timid, too weak, too aggressive, too weird looking, etc.), he'll be attacked. The severity of the attack can range from simple growling to nips to bites that draw blood, but the attack always subsides when the dog submits and the problem has been corrected, or the dog has left.
You can pretend the "we attack what's different" isn't true, reject it outright, or waffle in the middle while espousing your favourite philosophy, but at the end of the day, life goes on unapolegetically as it always has. And while as individuals we may intermittently aspire or learn new and better ways of behaving (i.e., evolve), as a group we don't.
Besides, even if we could evolve or modify our behaviour, the problem would still be there. Instead of being beaten with clubs for the colour of your skin or the style of your haircut, for example, you'll get subjected to something more subtle (and acceptable), like a verbal tirade for your choice politics. Hell, light up a cigarette on a public street and see how the enlightened and well-mannered among the crowd behave toward you. Sticks and stones, right?
As a deaf person, I can tell you that the sound of a drill in my tooth is one of the few sounds I can hear exactly as well as you can, so this is probably a pretty decent idea.
No doubt you experience or otherwise sense something that's noticeable to you, but I doubt it's the same. Once upon a time I spent a period of about 2 years getting dental work done. Everything from ordinary fillings and cleanings, to root canals and surgery. Sounds like a bad horror movie? Not at all. My dentist ran a small office in Beverly Hills and offered, provided, or otherwise insisted on the following:
1. As soon as you sit down, you're asked to pick your favourite music (if you haven't brought any with you), and you get handed a full-sized set of head phones.
2. A few minutes later (during which you hope the attractive assistant accidentally rubs herself against your arm more than once), a small rubber attachment is placed on your nose, and the gas is turned on, and left on.
3. Later still (if you're there for anything but a simple cleaning), you get a topical application of novocaine. You don't care, and barely notice when a few minutes pass and a few injections directly to your gums are made.
Now you've been sitting in that chair about 20 minutes. You sensory inputs have been muted one by one and you're enjoying a high. At this point, there's no way anyone in that chair will notice, sense, or care about anything but the groove of the music coming out of the head phones. Am I exaggerating? Let's put it this way -- by the end of the 3rd or 4th appointment, I was looking forward to my visits, and hoped each one would last a long time.
If you hear, smell, see, or otherwise feel anything, I'd suggest a different dentist.
I want a cool, quiet 300G for 200 dollars.
For anyone unfamiliar with SSD drives, they are indeed completely silent, but they're definitely not cool. Perhaps best described as moderately warm to the touch. For many, that could translate as "your notebook will still feel too hot".
And an English teacher to straighten out that sentence.
I think it's Korean.
Yeah, but there's more. He also said "the experience is COMING" and it's "moving SLOWLY". That suggests to me that the way it's envisioned, 3D will meet the prerequisites for the female of the species (an increasingly large demographic).
Win2K SP9
That's a little unfair.
The gradient title bars introduced in the Windows 98 line merited a Special Edition ("SE") moniker, so it really should be Win2K SP9 SE.
Considering the Vista debacle, I'd suggest calling it the Really Special and This Time We Mean It Edition, but that's probably too long. Even for Microsoft.
The Kindle does display an image, usually of a famous author, when it's turned off
Hopefully they'd avoid using an image of George Orwell.
Why is this news? Seriously, old technology lives on if it's useful. Even sometimes if it's not.
I think the newsworthiness of this is that it offers evidence of a technological "plus ca change ..." Put another way, instead of looking like Star Trek or a Spielberg movie, the future will more likely resemble what we see in Brazil.
So, if this "old dog can learn new tricks" and my friends have as well...
The question that I'd like answered is whether the new dogs can learn what the old dogs have learned, or whether they're too enamoured of (or distracted by) gadgets and interfaces so as to believe no such effort is necessary.
I might be in the minority here, but this request is probably more in line with gathering a list for the FBI to go contact when they need an independent contractor for something.
You've got to put in terms that Slashdot users understand.
The FBI are looking for IT Security Pros without having to send out a cop to shake down an informant during an actual emergency. Bonus points if the Security Pro has his own Command Center and is familiar with CB technology.
Non-neckbearded non-grognards would just use mrxvt tabs, because frankly, it has gnu screen beat on ease of use hand down.
First, there are multiple ways to get graphical "tabs". Second, tabs work best in limited-use scenarios (you'll quickly run out of real estate, for example). And third, screen has a good number of useful features not available to any implementation of tabs, including the ability to detach/re-attach, logging, monitoring, and split views.
There is the overhead of having to repeatedly type ^C-a (or ^C-SPACE, in my case), but that's hardly a problem if you've got real work to do.
For the record, I shave regularly and have never worn suspenders. ;-)
Perhaps another reason engineers predominate is because it is easier to get a visa, or otherwise travel, to Western countries if one is an engineer.
I suspect it's sortakindof like that, but in reverse. Engineering is probably regarded as a respectable profession, so the kids get sent off with a visa to schools abroad.
Fairly common attitude across Eastern Europe, so I'd expect the Arab world would be little different. What's respectable? Studying to become a doctor, lawyer or businessmen or somebody who builds things. Maths and sciences are considered the equivalent of medicine, but performing on stage or in film, for example, is the equivalent of a being a prostitute.
Delivery drivers, pest control people, UPS, the people who go out in the field wear the uniform. They're also the lowest paid of the bunch. McDonalds lets the managers wear a dress shirt and tie. Dealerships have the mechanics wearing uniforms but not the sales people and office staff. Pretty much anyone in uniform is on the lower end of the totem pole. IT is supposed to be a co-equal department, right?
That pretty much sums up the inconsistencies, doesn't it?
Uniforms can be perfectly fine, but their use is typically reserved for workers who don't work in the office (read "you don't belong here").
The only example I can think of where someone would be uniformed and allowed free access in an office environment is the case where internal services have been outsourced to a company that provides on-site employees. This is a fairly common setup in larger companies that have huge volumes of internal mail delivery, or require messengering and/or print/duplication work be done in-house.
If I was the office manager and had a need to uniform certain employees, I'd segregate them to their own area, possibly giving each their own red stapler to ease the transition.
Everyone does it, rich and poor alike and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands.
There's a certain truthiness to that, but the perspective is a bit narrow, doncha think? How, for example, would you explain the following Wiki entry:
Rich men trying to give their hard earned money to the government? Blasphemy.
If you really hold that the general principle that "Nobody owes anybody anything" is valid, then I suppose "sharing" is delusional and childish, "sacrifice for others" is delayed gratification, "charity" a clever misdirection or an attempt at ego agggrandisement, and "community service" is an atonement for misplaced guilt.
The problem is that even animals don't subscribe to that kind of thinking, or behaviour. Your justifications no doubt seem correct to you, but I suspect in the end you'll wind up recognising them as nothing other than sophistry. I'd also suspect visiting a school bake sale or a community food bank and talking to the locals might accelerate the process.
To be fair, the theory behind leaving corporations and the rich alone is that doing so will result in greater investment and more jobs. A trickle down, if you will.
Ok, so it's a goofy concept.
But it did sound like sound policy to a lot of people back when Reagan was president. The famous words that accompanied this new economic approach were "Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem!" Long live unfettered free-market capitalism.
Small wonder that belief in government was supplanted by corporatism. I'd like to say we've finally come full circle, but I'm left wondering how many people, rejecting both, having nothing to believe in at all. Cynicism as a belief system is boring stuff, even for the cynics.
this is why we need to let our children interact with other people and go out and play in the dirt.
Common sense would also suggest we should let them play with animals as well as dirt. It's the adults who didn't have any pets as kids that suffer from pet allergies.
The Russians found the biggest meanest Doberman and Rottweiler dogs in the world and bred them with the biggest meanest Siberian wolves.
Fun Fact:
Why would Russians bother with breeding Doberman and Rottweilers when they already have something much bigger and stronger?
Another Fun Fact:
Google for recent events in Georgia, Grozny or Azerbaijan and you'll discover their owners are no less intimidating than their dogs. Apparently, the locals consider bear hunting with Ovcharkas as "sport".
Me, I think it's better to err on the side of caution, and let a little fresh air in now and then. If those whose deeds need covering-up know that a very public exposure is just a mouse-click away ... maybe they'll be less inclined to perform those deeds in the future. Maybe that qualifies as an unintended consequence, but if so, I'm all for it.
Does the "fresh air" resulting from my publishing that you like to wear women's clothing and are having an affair with a male cubicle mate make you less inclined to indulge that behaviour? Organisations, just like people, have dirty laundry. Airing it doesn't necessarily mean that any good will come out of doing so, save for those enjoy dirt and profit from it.
My definition of "erring on the side of caution" involves discretion and reasonableness. Yours takes the form of a zero-tolerance policy that, by definition, precludes any such requirements, or any thinking generally.
Specifically, GNS3 allows you to create test networks in a virtual environment, then import software images for your Cisco routers, switches, PIX firewalls, Juniper hardware, etc, all run on hypervisor technology.
For anyone unfamiliar with GNS3, a link to the website. There are versions available for Windows, Linux, and OS X. FreeBSD already has it in ports.
As a side note, I'd add that maintaining a home lab (to the extent practicable and useful) is one way to side-step limitations of what your employer provides. Consider it a combination of "Ongoing Professional Education" and "Proactive Job Security Measures" (i.e., "I better test this shit to save my ass tomorrow").
Don't forget .nfo files .. Microsoft decided to co-opt the file extension for System Information files. The bastards!
LOL. I haven't gotten over that one myself. At the time, I suspected it was deliberate choice, and a portent of Bad Things to come (WGA, as it turned out).
IIRC, within a year of that change, I stopped using Windows altogether and left the warez scene behind me. Funny how those two go hand in hand.
I've just configured a new laptop and told the anti-virus to ignore *.jpg, *.avi and *.mp3 on my understanding that it's not possible to hide malware in them and that it will make the scan significantly quicker.
If you're running an operating system where the permissions are such that everthing is executable by default, do you really think that pursuing file extension related tweaks will solve your problems?
Sorry, but I'm having trouble not laughing. Not at you personally. You'd think Microsoft would have weaned itself from their perverse reliance of file extensions years ago when people first started clamoring about .386 files. JPEG files have a .jpg or .jpeg extension, but log files have an .evt extension. Unless it's a log file. But what kind of log file is it? And which type should I scan?
Face it, Microsoft makes things up as they go along. Trying to keep up or otherwise make sense of things is a waste of time (unless it's your job, and you're being paid to do it).