The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

eViLegion · 2013-07-18 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Errr, it may have provoked the wrong reaction, but this one is far more fun and thought-provoking, in particular because all of you fucking Windows slobs are far too careless to appreciate netiquette so any efforts to train you monkeys would go unfulfilled.

Discrimination based on the operating system someone uses is even more retarded than discrimination based on gender/sexuality/race etc.

I mean... gender/sexuality/race DO have quantifiable differences to them, and crucially cannot be changed (barring gender, and that is debatable), whereas an operating system can be completely replaced.

So, sure... I'm a windows slob, but once I've switched to linux, you'll still be a fucking idiot.

Just saying.

2013-07-18 Reply Admin

A questionable accusation of sexism from a feminazi and suddenly this article gets more comments than I've seen in a long time!

2013-07-18 Reply Admin

Torben:
eViLegion:
Corinne:
"Right or wrong, it's just the way the business side has always been in large financial firms."
Not only is this story boring and weird, but the suggestion that treating women as sexual objects in the workplace could ever possibly be "right" is super offensive.

No it isn't.

Or, at least, if you think it is offensive then you're getting angry about the state of history, when the general consensus WAS different. To be offended about a historical cultural difference is a preposterous way to live your life.

Sorry, but you are COMPLETELY missing the point.

no, YOU are.

She was not getting angry about the state of the history. She got angry because the author STILL today suggested that it could have been right back then.

man , i detect a NullPointerException here. applying a moral concept into a an epoch when the concept didn't even exist. i'd love to see how you define the context in your projects...

Let me help you with an example (and don't you dare suggest that I am playing the Hitler card here). Consider the following phrase "Nazis murdered millions of jews. Right or wrong, it was just how it was back then."

murdering jews was as wrong back then as it is today. you see? same concept, so it can be ported to a different context(historical in this case). still applies, still makes sense.

2013-07-18 Reply Admin

I think this comment section has taught me more about how stupid people are than anything else in my life so far... so, thanks, I guess?

2013-07-18 Reply Admin

jay:
eViLegion:
I think it's you who is missing the point.
The holocaust was not widely considered to be acceptable even back then, which is why we had the Nuremburg trials, to deal with it.

However, it WAS widely considered acceptable to be sexist in the work place, it WAS widely considered acceptable for the lord to bonk his subjects missus, and it WAS widely considered to be acceptable for cavemen to rape the shit out of whatever they wanted to rape.

The holocaust was not widely accepted by whom? It was clearly widely accepted among the ruling elite of Germany at the time. If morality is to be decided by a popular vote, who gets to vote? Your standard seems to be, "everyone who was alive in the world at that time". Actually I'm not sure if the holocaust would have failed a popular vote even by that standard. Presumably Germans, Italians, Japanese, and Arabs would have voted for it. Americans, Britons, and French would have voted against. Sure, there were Germans who opposed Hitler, but there were many Americans who supported him. Etc.

Maybe you have some surveys, but I don't think it's at all obvious that more people in the world in 1935 would have voted against killing Jews than would have voted against being rude to women in the workplace.

But why shouldn't it be "everyone alive in the world at the time". Why not "everyone living in that particular country at the time"? Or "everyone who has ever lived for all of history"? Or "everyone who has demonstrated a minimal level of intelligence by passing a literacy test"? You make up an arbitrary rule and don't even try to give an argument why we should accept that as the standard.

And by the way, there is zero evidence that cavemen routinely clubbed women into unconsciousness and raped them. This is a cartoon picture invented in modern times. Show me one contemporary historical document describing such an event, or one cave painting depicting such an act. You can't just make up events that you suppose might have happened based on your theories about human nature and then use your made-up facts as evidence to prove your theories about human nature.

So what you're saying, then, is that it was widely accepted by 0.0000000005% of the population?

2013-07-18 Reply Admin

Harry Ape:
Corinne:
"Right or wrong, it's just the way the business side has always been in large financial firms."
Not only is this story boring and weird, but the suggestion that treating women as sexual objects in the workplace could ever possibly be "right" is super offensive.

Right. I believed that when I was a child. When I got older, I found out that only a minority of women believed it, and none of them married men who believed it.

I still don't treat women as sexual objects in the workplace, but that's because I don't give a damn. If I actually gave a damn what PC misandrysts thought, I'd go back to treating them like women, instead of treating all people as equal.

Careful, they're liable to bring out the Gender Nonspecific Pronoun Calculation Table next. You referred to "women" as a like group, when there may be dozens or even hundreds of genders in there.

2013-07-18 Reply Admin

Kuba:

Ah but be careful, it may just independently happen to be that the model airplane fanciers are being oppressed. While the mere existence of NAACP doesn't imply discrimination against whites, it doesn't imply otherwise either.

Um, yeah, I guess. So nothing at all can be drawn from the ominous observation that

[quote user=chubertdev] We live in a world where the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) exists, but not a National Association for the Equality of All People.

meaning that chubertdev's post was utterly pointless. Speaking of points, were you going to make one?

It so happens, IMHO, that a lot of minority organizations have long lost sight of what they were after, and are now chasing some utopian super-inequality, where just because you're not white you get special treatment that would have only made sense 100+ years ago.

Just because you heard that on Sean Hannity's show doesn't mean it's true.

xaade · 2013-07-18 Reply Admin

savar:
Not quite. "Right or wrong" does imply that the morality of the subject isn't relevant to what follows, but it also implies that the author doesn't want to debate the morality of it either, which implies that it might be debatable.

"which implies that it might be debatable."

And that's the ENTIRE argument. It's going to far to say that it implies that it might be debatable.

You were right at "the author doesn't want to debate the morality..."

In this case, it implies that: The author wants you to focus on something other than the morality of the emails. He wants you to focus on the fact that the email chain had that content at all.

You could replace the content with private information of another kind. The email chain contains the disgusting disease that the broker just recovered from, including all the gory details.

The content of the emails isn't important, it's the fact that they ended up in an email that queried the OP about a candidate.

"Right or wrong, I don't want to discuss about the fact that these men are talking about women."

jcsalomon · 2013-07-18 Reply Admin

Herp:
I think that the very fact that there are even people bitching about that one line shows that there is a problem with the wording […].

Your inference is invalid: the complaint is as adequately explained by PEBMAC as by PEBKAC.

2013-07-18 Reply Admin

ThomasX:
Agreed. Let's treat them as (human) resource instead.

* Personal experience shows women are not procedural. * Women claim not to be objects. * Women may be considered as (human) resources. * THEREFORE, women must be dbms, services or aspects.

2013-07-18 Reply Admin

Not offended personally, but "Right or Wrong" does not equate to "was socially acceptable at the time." I understood the intended meaning however.

Regarding "boring and weird", I could not agree more.

2013-07-18 Reply Admin

Its really sad when a common term "Right or Wrong" is the center of a internet argument where one person who apparently don't know anything about turns of phrases complains because they do not understand the statement.

Answer this:

"Right or wrong; the way my boss manages his team is garbage."

Do you honestly read that as, "The boss may be right about managing his team, OR his way of managing the team is garbage"?

Because it's clear that the above quote means, "Regardless of his reasoning, the way my boss manages his team is garbage."

2013-07-18 Reply Admin

savar:
"Right or wrong" does imply that the morality of the subject isn't relevant to what follows, but it also implies that the author doesn't want to debate the morality of it either, which implies that it might be debatable.

It is debatable. Any man that has ever thought freely after interacting with women can see that.

2013-07-18 Reply Admin

How you took that as validation of the behavior rather than explanation that it happened is a logic jump that should have caused your compiler to start vomiting at you.

2013-07-18 Reply Admin

Corinne:
Not only is this story boring and weird, but the suggestion that treating women as sexual objects in the workplace could ever possibly be "right" is super offensive.

If someone cares that you are offended, chances are it's a sociopath cataloging your weaknesses and "hot button" issues. There is nothing like anger to convince someone it was their idea to do what you want them to do.

2013-07-18 Reply Admin

Corinne:
"Right or wrong, it's just the way the business side has always been in large financial firms."
Not only is this story boring and weird, but the suggestion that treating women as sexual objects in the workplace could ever possibly be "right" is super offensive.

This is exactly the problem with the world. "Right or Wrong" does not suggest that there may be any "right", but rather means "irrespective of what we think about it".

Of course, PC people always seem to take comments like that to mean that there's a suggestion that it could be right....

2013-07-18 Reply Admin

DEADBEEF:
Its really sad when a common term "Right or Wrong" is the center of a internet argument where one person who apparently don't know anything about turns of phrases complains because they do not understand the statement.
Answer this:

"Right or wrong; the way my boss manages his team is garbage."

Do you honestly read that as, "The boss may be right about managing his team, OR his way of managing the team is garbage"?

Because it's clear that the above quote means, "Regardless of his reasoning, the way my boss manages his team is garbage."

In fact you put it a lot better than me....

2013-07-18 Reply Admin

Nagesh:
It is quite amazing to me as Indian programmer that you have such little things to talk about. Here we are being quite concerned here with outcome of George Zimmerman trial, and it has occasioned much discussion about the watering cooler.

Great wisdom from Nagesh. QFT.

...what the hell???

2013-07-18 Reply Admin

Vadakatapitusbari:
So what's the point here? It is serious oversight no doubt, but you passed on a potentially good candidate just for that?? The CTO forwarded the candidate over to you thinking he / she might be a gr8 fit - which is what I would hope he was expecting you to assess. But instead you decided to read the full chain. Did you enjoy these so called juicy vacation details and pictures by the way? Moron.

Where I work the broker involved in the original chain would have been tossed out the door the moment HR caught a whiff of what was going on -- and they take great pride in how rarely they fire anyone. But I count two fireable offenses here: number one for using company email for such inappropriate communications; number two for using company email for personal correspondence in general. If the new candidate is under the impression that that's just how things are done around there, then it may not have been such a bad idea to skip over him as he could become a serious liability to the company. Most of the fault certainly lies with the broker though.

Of course, I'm a consultant...I guess financial services can get away with far more lax anti-harassment, confidentiality, and security policies.

2013-07-18 Reply Admin

jay:
ObiWayneKenobi:
I don't get it. So he was asked to interview someone, but reading the previous messages the candidate and a broker were talking about NSFW things but unrelated to finances, so he passed on even interviewing the guy because the broker was talking about "seedy" things in a work email?

Yeah, maybe I'm missing something in the story here, but the logic seemed to be that because A and B had an inappropriate conversation in the workplace, that therefore we should not hire candidate C, who did not participate in that conversation in any way. Is the idea that because the broker is an immoral person, and the broker thinks this person is a good candidate, that the broker's judgment is so skewed that we should reject anyone that he approves of? I'm baffled by the logic here.

You've misinterpreted who was involved here. Broker B and candidate C has an inappropriate conversation, which A forwarded to our protaganist.

2013-07-18 Reply Admin

jay:
Nagesh:
It is quite amazing to me as Indian programmer that you have such little things to talk about. Here we are being quite concerned here with outcome of George Zimmerman trial, and it has occasioned much discussion about the watering cooler.

Why does the Zimmerman trial lead you to have discussions about the water cooler? What does a water cooler have to do with Mr Zimmerman?

a·bout
/əˈbout/ Adverb Used to indicate movement in an area: "finding my way about". Synonyms adverb. around - approximately - nearly - some - almost - round

2013-07-18 Reply Admin

urza9814:
You've misinterpreted who was involved here. Broker B and candidate C has an inappropriate conversation, which A forwarded^Wquoted to our protaganist.

After B quoted it to A first...

2013-07-18 Reply Admin

Matt Westwood:
Jeff:
I once put forward as a candidate someone I know from a developers forum and the department manager set up a telephone interview after checking out the guys profile. Unfortunately they had a few moments before the meeting to Google his name. The picture of him swinging a large sword round his head and graphic description of his non-vanilla sexual interests resulted in termination of the interview before it started!

Isn't that tantamount to sexual discrimination? And what if they just happened to get the webpage of a different guy with the same name?

Yeah, and if not that, there are laws on the books in several states that makes this sort of "research" into the personal lives of potential employees illegal. For the OP's sake I hope he's not in one of those states...

2013-07-18 Reply Admin

I doubt the poster thinks it's right. It's in the context of the company that it's "ok". See e.g.

long before political correctness was all the rage

2013-07-18 Reply Admin

The fault, dear Snoofle, is not in our brokers, but in ourselves.

I am amazed at anyone who considers this candidate to be innocent, or treated poorly, when he is entirely at fault:

(a) His failure to start a clean thread speaks volumes about how important this job was to him, how much attention he would pay to details if hired (which must not be that important in finance), and how well he could be trusted with confidential information

(b) His behavior with the broker suggests that it would be a liability for him to establish a rapport with clients or partners

(c) He might later be the target of extortion if one of his adventures goes poorly -- can anyone see a downside this might have in the financial industry?

(d) A broker's job is to present a candidate to potential bosses in the best possible light. This candidate trusts someone who pays even less attention to important details than he does. Why would Chris (or any boss) want to have a skilled employee completely unable to evaluate potential employees or business partners?

Captcha: dolor. Spanish for "spending the entire afternoon in a conference room with multiple VPs, trying to set a dollar value on how much 'the employee you hired' has just cost the firm".

2013-07-19 Reply Admin

Oh noes, it's super offensive, color on your toenails will fall off because of so much offensiveness in the air. Weakling.

2013-07-19 Reply Admin

Chris S. sounds like world class nerd who wouldn't know a good time if it pulled on his pocket protector.

Sounds like the candidate not getting hired got the better end of that deal.

2013-07-20 Reply Admin

I don't think he was saying it was right, just that it happened, and he is right, it did happen.

And you are right it is wrong or maybe left. WAT!

2013-07-20 Reply Admin

"Right or wrong"

I think I've found the WTF. Holy shit.

Gunslnger · 2013-07-20 Reply Admin

G:
TRWTF is Chris here

I completely agree.

2013-07-21 Reply Admin

I'm with ya Corinne, but I don't believe the contributor ever suggested it was "right", just mentioned that the bad behavior continues. I've known some stockbrokers and I can vouch for them being pretty insensitive.

As a side note, my boss once was one click from sending an email to the CEO and a half dozen admins and others, apologizing for the CEO's 'incontinence' several times. Well, he meant 'inconvenience', but his inadvertent word choice sailed right through spell check...

2013-07-22 Reply Admin

Corinne:
but the suggestion that treating women as sexual objects in the workplace could ever possibly be "right" is super offensive.

Of course it's right. Why would it be wrong get off you goddess pedestal and smell the horse manure. People should be making sexual jokes at work, in fact it should be made mandatory.

2013-07-22 Reply Admin

Un-bunch your panties, sugar tits

2013-07-22 Reply Admin

Paul Neumann:
ThomasX:
Agreed. Let's treat them as (human) resource instead.
* Personal experience shows women are not procedural. * Women claim not to be objects. * Women may be considered as (human) resources. * THEREFORE, women must be dbms, services or aspects.

For this logic to work you must also point out that women's programming is not functional.

Also "women must be dbms" is too broad, given their interest and expertise in celebrity affairs they in fact are relational databases.

CAPTCHA: delenit - CAPTCHA suggestion about this comment before i had written it?

2013-07-22 Reply Admin

Corinne:
"Right or wrong, it's just the way the business side has always been in large financial firms."
Not only is this story boring and weird, but the suggestion that treating women as sexual objects in the workplace could ever possibly be "right" is super offensive.

TRWTF: This comment not being made by lucidfox!

CAPTCHA: conventio - Does nobody respect the conventios of this forum any more?

2013-07-23 Reply Admin

Paul Neumann:
ThomasX:
Agreed. Let's treat them as (human) resource instead.
* Personal experience shows women are not procedural. * Women claim not to be objects. * Women may be considered as (human) resources. * THEREFORE, women must be dbms, services or aspects.

Since they can remember all of your mistakes, I'll go for dbms. (Although I've heard claims that they provide laptop services.)

2013-07-23 Reply Admin

It's better to treat them as primitive types.

2013-07-23 Reply Admin

Right or Wrong is not a suggestion that it was right. It's indicative that it is irrelevant to the topic at hand. Stop looking for a soapbox.

2013-07-25 Reply Admin

Agreed, I was really hard pressed to find any funny in this article.

2013-07-29 Reply Admin

So he passed on hire because the guy forwarding the resume fucked up?

Cool, I guess? Seems really petty and pointless to me.

2013-07-29 Reply Admin

The saddest part of this whole thing is that Women's Studies majors are basically unemployable, and so have too much free time to harass and bully others online.

2013-08-11 Reply Admin

The real WTF of this story is that in 21th century, people still use orwelian accusations such as 'sexism' or 'objectifying <somebody>'. It makes charges of heresy or witchcraft look positively reasonable. Right or wrong.

2013-08-17 Reply Admin

I don't think the wording wants to imply that it is in any way right.

2013-08-17 Reply Admin

CCCCC:
I've known some stockbrokers and I can vouch for them being pretty insensitive.

"Right or wrong", I'm the guy with all the money"

According to CAPTCHA, your post was pretty "aptent". I have no idea what that is, but it sounds offensive.

2013-11-20 Reply Admin

Corinne:
"Right or wrong, it's just the way the business side has always been in large financial firms."
Not only is this story boring and weird, but the suggestion that treating women as sexual objects in the workplace could ever possibly be "right" is super offensive.

It is certainly your right to be offended. And it is also your opinion. But to suggest that the OP isn't entitled to think that this was ever "right behavior" suggests that you are intolerant of OP's opinion (assuming OP was really stating an opinion).

Personally, I think OP was just trying to say that [s]he wasn't going to open that can of worms...

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