• (cs) in reply to snuffy
    snuffy:
    So is it like a TDWTF thing where literally everyone posting in the comments is trolling? Because if not then there are a hell of a lot of populist IT guys out there who can't wait to tell everyone how them thar doctors with all them fancy book learnin's ain't so smart after all.
    You must be new here.
  • QJo (unregistered) in reply to CA
    CA:
    Karl:
    You sound like one of those who think everybody should get everything, whether or not they earn it.

    I think that's how we got the housing bubble that destroyed the world's economy, as leftist schemes always will. Banks forced to loan to people who had no down payment. But hey at least some politicians got to brag about how they were helping the homeless, so there's that.

    So it is leftist schemes who destroyed global economies and not the neoliberal capitalist monster, which has achieved global poverty while a handful of people own billions. The housing bubble was caused from the greed of banks, who wish for the global population to owe them and be their slaves and thus gave out loans like crazy.

    It's not even as complicated and conspiracy-related as that. It was caused by the greed of a bunch of people who saw an opportunity to make a quick buck as the system they were part of allowed such a practice. By the time it all fell to pieces, they'd made their pile and were onto the next scheme to enrich themselves at the expense of others.

    The fact that they got away with it was at least partly due to the social / moral / political environment which encouraged the philosophy "greed is good". Now, those people who espouse that philosophy are the ones that really need to be exterminated like vermin.

  • searching (unregistered) in reply to Robert White

    perhaps:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law

    this should help

  • Mike (unregistered) in reply to Paul

    Healthcare can be the same way the doctors are right even when they are stupid. Eg. had one, a good doctor I'm sure but lacking in sense, that had a workstation by his feet at his desk.

    He kept getting his feet tangled in the monitor cable and the screen would go green as the cable got lose (didn't help to tighten it, it eventually loosened over time).

    Move the computer? No.

    Realize this is the same thing that happened the last 3 times and just push the cable back in? No.

    Page IT and complain that the computer is broken again. That is your answer :) He also had a nurse that was responsible for putting his network cable into his laptop whenever he moved it (before wireless was popular/fast enough) because the "internet wasn't working again".

  • urza9814 (unregistered) in reply to Your Name
    Your Name:
    libertarian:
    CA:
    Karl:
    You sound like one of those who think everybody should get everything, whether or not they earn it.

    I think that's how we got the housing bubble that destroyed the world's economy, as leftist schemes always will. Banks forced to loan to people who had no down payment. But hey at least some politicians got to brag about how they were helping the homeless, so there's that.

    So it is leftist schemes who destroyed global economies and not the neoliberal capitalist monster, which has achieved global poverty while a handful of people own billions. The housing bubble was caused from the greed of banks, who wish for the global population to owe them and be their slaves and thus gave out loans like crazy.

    you claim it were greedy bankers in a free, capitalist market that caused it.

    Why would a banker give a loan that is unprofitable to anyone?

    As you see, this does not make sense.

    Because the individual banker is giving a loan out with the bank's money, not his own. The bank gives the banker his commission based on the initial loan. As long as the banker jumps ship before the loan fails, he personally is making a profit even if the organization has a long-term loss.

    You're doing that thing where you assume that an organization acts in its own rational best interest all the time, even though organizations are just groups of fallible human beings.

    Even the organizations came out ahead though! They made terrible bets, lost everything, then got it all repaid by the US taxpayer! Meanwhile, they then go and repossess the houses from the very same taxpayers! So if someone can't pay their loan, the bank gets the loan paid off by us, AND they get what the loan was spent on back from us too!

  • Smouch (unregistered) in reply to Paul
    Paul:
    ... if you're really smart, the university people well welcome you to the inner circle as one of their own, and you will go straight from Mommy and Daddy paying your tuition to begging the Government for handouts (grants). You never have the experience of being required to produce something of value.

    You, sire, are my hero for the day

  • urza9814 (unregistered) in reply to libertarian
    libertarian:
    urza9814:
    The anarcho-capitalists think it should be an every man for himself free-for-all, while the syndicalists would prefer a cooperative society of strong, democratic communities.

    democratic communities != society based on consent If a 'democratiuc community' decides something, they would actually need a form of state power to make it happen. so syndicalists are actually PRO government, but they may not all be sophisticated enough to realize that.

    Democratic does not require that the threshold for accepting a measure is 50%+1. It could be 100%. Then it's consent-based and democratic.

    But really, you don't need that. We have PLENTY of smaller organizations that already meet these criteria. People propose ideas, they discuss those ideas, then they vote on those ideas. And when people have extreme disagreements with those ideas, they aren't required to participate -- but in general most people will willingly support an idea that they may not consider perfect not because they are being threatened with violent force, but simply because they realize this must be done by the group as a whole and they are better off supporting the compromise. That is, for example, how ALL true grass-roots activism works. No reason society couldn't work the same way.

  • urza9814 (unregistered) in reply to urza9814
    urza9814:
    Your Name:
    libertarian:
    CA:
    Karl:
    You sound like one of those who think everybody should get everything, whether or not they earn it.

    I think that's how we got the housing bubble that destroyed the world's economy, as leftist schemes always will. Banks forced to loan to people who had no down payment. But hey at least some politicians got to brag about how they were helping the homeless, so there's that.

    So it is leftist schemes who destroyed global economies and not the neoliberal capitalist monster, which has achieved global poverty while a handful of people own billions. The housing bubble was caused from the greed of banks, who wish for the global population to owe them and be their slaves and thus gave out loans like crazy.

    you claim it were greedy bankers in a free, capitalist market that caused it.

    Why would a banker give a loan that is unprofitable to anyone?

    As you see, this does not make sense.

    Because the individual banker is giving a loan out with the bank's money, not his own. The bank gives the banker his commission based on the initial loan. As long as the banker jumps ship before the loan fails, he personally is making a profit even if the organization has a long-term loss.

    You're doing that thing where you assume that an organization acts in its own rational best interest all the time, even though organizations are just groups of fallible human beings.

    Even the organizations came out ahead though! They made terrible bets, lost everything, then got it all repaid by the US taxpayer! Meanwhile, they then go and repossess the houses from the very same taxpayers! So if someone can't pay their loan, the bank gets the loan paid off by us, AND they get what the loan was spent on back from us too!

    Also, they're now considering suing the US government, so they can have THREE rounds off profit off of the US citizens. Seems like they came out ahead to me!

  • Harrow (unregistered) in reply to libertarian
    libertarian:
    democratic communities != society based on consent
    Ah, the epitaph of the Soviet Union.

    -Harrow.

  • libertarian (unregistered) in reply to Your Name
    Your Name:
    libertarian:
    CA:
    Karl:
    You sound like one of those who think everybody should get everything, whether or not they earn it.

    I think that's how we got the housing bubble that destroyed the world's economy, as leftist schemes always will. Banks forced to loan to people who had no down payment. But hey at least some politicians got to brag about how they were helping the homeless, so there's that.

    So it is leftist schemes who destroyed global economies and not the neoliberal capitalist monster, which has achieved global poverty while a handful of people own billions. The housing bubble was caused from the greed of banks, who wish for the global population to owe them and be their slaves and thus gave out loans like crazy.

    you claim it were greedy bankers in a free, capitalist market that caused it.

    Why would a banker give a loan that is unprofitable to anyone?

    As you see, this does not make sense.

    Because the individual banker is giving a loan out with the bank's money, not his own. The bank gives the banker his commission based on the initial loan. As long as the banker jumps ship before the loan fails, he personally is making a profit even if the organization has a long-term loss.

    You're doing that thing where you assume that an organization acts in its own rational best interest all the time, even though organizations are just groups of fallible human beings.

    of course they are fallible, and what happens in a free marked is, that those orgs pay the price for their mistakes and be replaced by better ones, no problem there.

    In the corporatist/socialist/fascist/callitwhatyouwant world we live in, we just bail them out. As these banks can't fail, those loans were actually profitable (because any loss gets paid by a third party: you & me), so they actually did act in their own interest.

    And just to make things clear, free market proponents like me do not think, that market participants are infallible - quite to the contrary, this is just a lame straw man. but who do you think makes regulations if not groups of fallible human beings? what do you think constist governements of? This is exactly the reason we why should be extremely reluctant to them coercive power over us and our fellow human beings.

  • (cs) in reply to libertarian
    libertarian:
    of course they are fallible, and what happens in a free marked is, that those orgs pay the price for their mistakes and be replaced by better ones, no problem there.
    Ah the free-market-illusionists!

    Well, in case you didn't notice: Lehman Brothers was not bailed-out and the rest of the world had to learn a lesson: What happens when banks grow so large that "too big too fail" becomes reality.

    "Lehman Brothers" was not even the biggest of them and free markets always result in big companies becoming bigger companies.

    So much for unregulated markets!

  • Techpaul (unregistered) in reply to Paul
    Paul:
    OK, this one had me totally buying in to the retired university story, because that is exactly how university employees act when they want something.

    You see, if you're dumb, you leave school at some point to work in the Real World where your employer can't back your paycheck unless you all get your act together and provide some product or service people want bad enough to pay for it.

    But if you're really smart, the university people well welcome you to the inner circle as one of their own, and you will go straight from Mommy and Daddy paying your tuition to begging the Government for handouts (grants). You never have the experience of being required to produce something of value.

    Therefore your value is not measured by productivity, but by this nebulous thing called clout. You've published papers that are more important than the other guy. You've been there longer. You know the assistant to the janitor of the guy who wipes the Dean's ass. Whatever you can find, you glom onto it and trumpet it about to prove your standing.

    And woe be to the lowly tech support peon who fails to bow in submission to your greatness. Trivia like unplugged power cords are just excuses for your abject craven maliciousness in failing to acknowledge their clout. Therefore you must be yelled at in louder and more dramatic terms until it penetrates your thick skull that they are fucking important dammit so you better fix their shit right now or face their wrath!!!

    Used to happen to me every day.

    If you were clever you could get two of them at your desk at the same time, each trying to outclout the other, and just sit back and watch the sparks fly. Quite entertaining at first, but it gets old. And of course the job didn't pay nearly enough to compensate for that, so I moved on.

    But the opening paragraphs are 100% realistic.

    Sounds totally right to me having to deal at one time with professors and research people who knew all about their VERY NARROW subject, which obviously meant that they knew everything about everything. Anything goig wrong was somebody elses mistake.

    Even had one senior researcher telli=ng me while I was designiong and supporting video equipment for PCs that all camera have ONE pixel.

  • (cs) in reply to no laughing matter
    no laughing matter:
    libertarian:
    of course they are fallible, and what happens in a free marked is, that those orgs pay the price for their mistakes and be replaced by better ones, no problem there.
    Ah the free-market-illusionists!

    Well, in case you didn't notice: Lehman Brothers was not bailed-out and the rest of the world had to learn a lesson: What happens when banks grow so large that "too big too fail" becomes reality.

    "Lehman Brothers" was not even the biggest of them and free markets always result in big companies becoming bigger companies.

    So much for unregulated markets!

    Not sure if trolling or missing the point...
  • Paul Neumann (unregistered) in reply to HeeHaw
    HeeHaw:
    You weren't accepted to grad school, i see.
    But I was excepted from grad school!
  • Paul Neumann (unregistered) in reply to Mew Ichigo
    Mew Ichigo:
    Americans bickering about their "left" and "right" governments show a striking similarity to people comparing McDonald's to Burger King and claiming one is healthier than the other.

    </troll>

    Burger King grills over an open flame. Clearly more healthy!

  • Tasty (unregistered) in reply to Techpaul
    Techpaul:
    ... Sounds totally right to me having to deal at one time with professors and research people who knew all about their VERY NARROW subject, which obviously meant that they knew everything about everything. Anything going wrong was somebody else's mistake.

    It's logical to conclude that anything going wrong was somebody else's mistake. The person only knows a very narrow subject, and nothing else. So, he can't know why things are wrong.

  • justme (unregistered) in reply to foxyshadis
    foxyshadis:
    LoremIpsumDolorSitAmet:
    So TRWTF is that Jim didn't properly authenticate the caller? Maybe there really was a MARYB and she got lucky, but a little more digging would have ratted her out.

    Also, his very FRIST question should have been whether she could get a dial tone.

    At this point it's been... 10 years maybe? since I've had to interact with dial-up in any way. Wait, no, there was that one-weekend outage when I used my DSL ISP's dial-up numbers to get on 6 years ago. I doubt I'd have a mental checklist to run down since I never had to actually support it and have no idea how modern OSes do it. Hell, I barely even remember how you do it in 98 or XP, or what any error codes mean.

    True, but I bet you still recognize the sounds and what they mean once it gets going. beep bop squeal ahh..there's the handshake

  • justme (unregistered) in reply to someone
    someone:
    libertarian:
    you claim it were greedy bankers in a free, capitalist market that caused it.

    Why would a banker give a loan that is unprofitable to anyone?

    Because the bankers thought, if the loaner cannot pay it back, they get the house and partial back payment, and make a profit in the end.

    Serious question here and not trying to troll ( though definitely off article topic ) : When I bought my house in 2006, I had a stated income loan. Why ? Because I had been working abroad fro years and all my paystubs were in Dutch. I offered them to the bank to translate and to even have them translated myself, but they said no need. Even to me , this felt wrong. They also approved us for $150,000. When we informed them we found a house for $120,000, they offered to add more to help us "remodel". We said "no thanks". Even so, we had to get PMI. It was mandatory because of the ratio of down payment to loan.

    Joe get's a loan, pays for 3 years. Most of it goes to interest and not principle ( bank gets fee upfront ). So PMI is in still in place. Joe defaults. Bank takes house.

    So here is the question: for all those people who "got loans with almost no money down and defaulted", weren't the banks covered by PMI ? Even if they cannot sell the house for what the loan was ( prices droppped ), they are covered from loss by the insurance.

  • foo (unregistered) in reply to libertarian
    libertarian:
    Your Name:
    libertarian:
    Why would a banker give a loan that is unprofitable to anyone?

    As you see, this does not make sense.

    Because the individual banker is giving a loan out with the bank's money, not his own. The bank gives the banker his commission based on the initial loan. As long as the banker jumps ship before the loan fails, he personally is making a profit even if the organization has a long-term loss.

    You're doing that thing where you assume that an organization acts in its own rational best interest all the time, even though organizations are just groups of fallible human beings.

    of course they are fallible

    Seems like you answered your own (rhetorical) question.

  • gstein (unregistered) in reply to swschrad
    swschrad:
    the real WTF was letting her daughter con her into a cell phone without an RJ-12 jack on the side for the modem.
    TRWTF is an RJ12 - is that supposed to be 1 better than an RJ11?
  • Bill C. (unregistered) in reply to someone
    someone:
    There is another reason that you need to beg for money: You gave all your hoes aways for free!

    Publishing a exact description on how to make hoes, so every one can have a hoe, not just some privileged people who can afford to buy one.

    Privileged people can afford to buy hoes but don't because we can get them for free.

    It's peasants who can't get hoes for free who can't afford to buy hoes. Poor, poor peasants.

  • John Hensley (unregistered)

    What the hell? Another comment section destroyed by free-market circle jerking? Just shut it all down already.

  • AN AMAZING CODER (unregistered) in reply to Paul
    Paul:
    CA:
    The housing bubble was caused from the greed of banks, who wish for the global population to owe them and be their slaves and thus gave out loans like crazy.

    Alternatively, the housing bubble was caused from the greed of people, who wanted things they couldn't afford and were too stupid to realise that it was a bad idea to take out a loan that would take 3,000 years to pay back at 5 times your current salary.

    Yes, blame the banks who lend money, rather than those who borrow it. Blame the big corporates rather than the people who make them into big corporates by continuing to buy stuff from them while complaining about it. Blame companies who outsource abroad, while lapping up all the products that you can buy more cheaply now BECAUSE they have outsourced abroad. Etc

    The real answer is that pretty much everyone was culpable, but people like to blame OTHER people rather than accept blame themselves.

    Actually the problem wasn't either the mortgage lenders or the loan takers. It was the sub prime lenders who KNEW they were taking bad or risky mortgages in bulk, sprinkling them with a few good investments and selling them as if they were great (lying) and then betting against the investments they just sold.

    So neither of you are correct.

  • Arancaytar (unregistered)
    wait a minute. John? As in university president John Smith?

    As in The Doctor? Oh dear, better get to work on that right away. :P

  • Arancaytar (unregistered) in reply to letatio
    letatio:
    Andrew:
    Maybe I'm missing something... Did I read this right? Instead of calling AOL, she phoned random numbers at the varsity and lied and get help from their IT instead?

    Should have told her to cat /dev/zero > /dev/hda

    Yeah, that's a Unix computer. Sure.

  • graybeard (unregistered) in reply to Tod
    Tod:
    BeerJane:
    WhiskeyJack:
    My best modem story was a solution that combined old tech with new tech.

    Back in 2004 or so, I was at a retreat and conference center in California that was designed for spiritual solitude and yada-yada-yada. Bottom line, no phone lines in the bedrooms, and obviously no wifi or internet access.

    But I did have a cell phone and laptop, both Bluetooth enabled. (Oh, and cell phones didn't have EDGE or 3G at that time yet. They did have GPRS, which was next to useless.)

    And, back home in Canada, I still had a working dialup ISP account.

    So the solution: pair the cell phone with the laptop as a Bluetooth wireless modem. Call international long-distance to my home ISP and establish a dialup connection over the cell line. I was able to successfully connect at 9600 baud, not really very useful for web browsing but sufficient to check my email every day.

    When I look back at how not-that-long-ago that was, and how much more connected we are today, it blows my mind.

    What blows my mind more: sure, it cost me a couple bucks in long distance roaming fees to make those calls. But to roam on 3G networks internationally today would cost MORE. Yikes!

    This troll shows some promise. How many people will bite?

    Huh?

    My guess: meta-troll. The OP was one of the more insightful posts in this thread.

  • Cheong (unregistered) in reply to LoremIpsumDolorSitAmet
    LoremIpsumDolorSitAmet:
    So TRWTF is that Jim didn't properly authenticate the caller? Maybe there really was a MARYB and she got lucky, but a little more digging would have ratted her out.

    Also, his very FRIST question should have been whether she could get a dial tone.

    Yup. This is the very first time he should check.

    I've had supporting modem pool for some time. And the No.1 source of "unable to connect" is "the user is using the phone line to talk to you/other people".

    He should probably ask if she is using the same line to dial modem to phone him first...

  • BushIdo (unregistered) in reply to TGV
    TGV:
    HeeHaw:
    Paul:
    ... exactly ...
    You weren't accepted to grad school, i see.
    I also found it a bit resentful, but it is true that universities have quite a large number of people who've their head stuck up their own arse. Plus, it makes a good story.
    Exactly. And ever other story here shows, that exactly the same is true for business. After all CS is an exact science, isn't ist?
  • (cs) in reply to graybeard
    graybeard:
    My guess: meta-troll. The OP was one of the more insightful posts in this thread.

    Thank you. Yeah, I don't know why he called me a troll. I'm a registered account with a verified posting history (feel free to check). And the story was absolutely true.

    Back in those days my provider (Fido) was all about competitive and fair cell phone rates, so my long-distance fees even from the States to Canada were along the lines of 20 cents per minute. That means that a dialup connection long enough to download a pile of POP3 email -- say 5-10 minutes -- only cost a buck or two.

    Compare this with today's 3G international roaming rates. It's ridiculous. And Fido was bought up by its major competitor, Rogers, and slowly started raising all its rates until they are now just as non-competitive as everyone else.

    Two steps forward, one step back.

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