The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

2012-10-28 Reply Admin

jay:
Ozz:
As far as I'm concerned, Illinois does not exist. Nor does any other state that does not recognize my 2nd amendment right to carry a firearm for self-protection.
(And no, you do not have the right to police protection. At least, not unless you have been arrested.)

The purpose of law and the police is to protect criminals from the over-reaction of homeowners and shopkeepers. Without the law, many of these people would buy guns, and when the criminals came to attack them or rob them the shopkeepers would kill the criminals, people would learn that crime doesn't pay, and crime would plummet. Even if the criminals managed to kill the shopkeepers nine times out of ten, there are a lot more peaceful shopkeepers than there are criminals, and the criminals are out looking for trouble while the shopkeepers are avoiding it. No criminal would survive long.

But that would mean that a young person who sets out on a life of crime would "not have the chance to realize his full potential as a human being". (To quote from a Supreme Court decision blocking the execution of a 17-year-old who murdered an old woman for kicks.)

We need these laws to protect criminals so that they have a chance to reform and lead productive lives. Or at least, so that the penalty for their crimes is not excessive.

</commentary type="social">

Or a recount vaguely based on the way the Stainless Steel Rat (by Harry Harrison) explained it....

Crime is good for the economy. Without it, we have no need for a police force increasing unemployment. Further, the media needs significantly less employees as there's less to report, and we all get bored because the news is full of articles about ducks swimming circles on the pond.
To take it a step further, there is a LOT of money spent in crime prevention (alarms, personal protection devices, weapons etc) and without crime none of these are needed and entire industries shut up shop. Even software development is affected - think about how much cheaper/quicker software could be delivered if we didn't have to worry about criminals? Passwords, encryption, secure token exchange. anti-virus etc all becomes redundant.

No, criminals are an important part of our society, provided they leave me alone.

2012-10-28 Reply Admin

O T:
Help! My supervisor has just reached that point of understanding that you can't fit 100 gallons of work in a 55 gallon barrel. So to "help" me, I'm getting two brand-new college undergraduates, a project manager, and some additional assistance from operations. Which, of course, means half my day will be spent helping them help me.
Any solid strategies you can suggest? Bring in a temporary BOFH perhaps?

Spend less time on TheDailyWTF.

2012-10-28 Reply Admin

Of course people have inherent rights that don't need a piece of paper to grant them. For example the United States does not have the power to deprive a person of life without due process of law. When a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize sends drones to murder a person (even a person who might be guilty if due process of law existed), that action is taken by murderers not by an institution that doesn't have the power to do it.

Too bad Hitler didn't implement drone control: Hitler only implemented gun control: Exit thread

Watson · 2012-10-29 Reply Admin

Ben:
Watson:
Ozz:
As far as I'm concerned, Illinois does not exist. Nor does any other state that does not recognize my 2nd amendment right to carry a firearm for self-protection.
(And no, you do not have the right to police protection. At least, not unless you have been arrested.)
Assuming you're a U.S. citizen, there is no such thing as your "2nd amendment right to carry a firearm for self-protection". You do however have a 2nd Amendment right to carry a firearm for the purposes of being a member of the National Guard.

Rights don't come from an old document. Rights are something you have, innately. The document merely recognizes some of them, to make it abundantly clear that the newly created federal government is not granted the power to take them away.

Are you telling me that members of Homo sapiens have an innate right to carry firearms? Does the same go for Homo habilis? Or does it only apply in countries that wrote it down on an old piece of paper somewhere (an old piece of paper that some people make a very strident point of referring to)? If the "right to bear arms" hadn't been written down, or if it had explicitly stated that bearing arms is no a right but a privilege, would those same people be insisting that it is a right (inherent or otherwise)? How about the innate right to be taxed (as recognised by the XVIth Amendment)?

Ben:
The founders also thought that when a government gets abusive, you have not only the right but the duty to replace it. And no, not by joining the National Guard of the Nation that is abusing you.

Yes, and trying to exercise that right will earn you a 20-year penalty under Federal law. Interesting how that works out. Maybe they should have written it down, to prevent it from being revoked by legislation.

But I'm not hanging around on this thread. Looking at lists like this one and seeing the gap between cities I frequent and cities in the U.S., I realise I don't appreciate just how insecure the latter are (partly, I suspect, to due to the comparatively gun-happy culture).

2012-10-29 Reply Admin

dbomb123:
Nice a glimpse at the matrix! Unfortunately for us, it uses xml...

And is in Hebrew.

If the machines come to interrogate you, just say "ani lo m'daber ivrit" (using uvular r's). My Hebrew is a bit rusty, but that either means "I don't speak Hebrew" or "I'd like to spank your sister with a slice of bologna."

2012-10-29 Reply Admin

Also Watson: I think the argument he's trying to make is that people have an innate right to self-defense and that firearms are a vital means of self-protection. I'm not sure if firearms are an effective means of self-protection, but assuming they are (and that they don't do more harm than good (which is another thing I'm not certain of)), I think we can agree that it follows that the right to self-protection (which I assume we agree exists) would then apply to the right to possess firearms for self-defense.

That said: I think the intention of the framers of the constitution was clearly to allow people to bear arms to protect themselves from an oppressive government. They've said so many times, and it makes sense as the revolutionary war was essentially fought by citizens with firearms. The idea that citizens with guns can defeat the US government is, of course, entirely obsolete now (what with F-22s and nukes), so a more modern reading of the constitution allows people to bear arms regardless of use in a militia.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing (assuming that guns are an effective means of self defense etc.) but it could be. Nevertheless, the courts have repeatedly upheld (including in Illinois, BTW), that the constitution allows the possession and use of firearms outside of a militia.

2012-10-29 Reply Admin

Norman Diamond:
Too bad Hitler didn't implement drone control: Hitler only implemented gun control: Exit thread

One thing I have to give Hitler credit for, thouhg:

jay:
We need these laws to protect criminals so that they have a chance to reform and lead productive lives. Or at least, so that the penalty for their crimes is not excessive.
</commentary type="social">

Even Hitler never put attributes on a closing tag. What kind of sick son of a bitch does something like that?

2012-10-29 Reply Admin

jay:
</derailment type="political">

FTFY

2012-10-29 Reply Admin

¯\(°_o)/¯ I DUNNO LOL:
TRWTF is that the Hebrew characters are left-to-right instead of right-to-left, amirite?

Partly right. The Hebrew text is a mixture of real Hebrew (most of the tag contents) and latin-rendered-as-hebrew (the tags themselves). The latin-turned Hebrew is left-to-right (e.g. "ללוד" is "cell"; see the two ל's turn to l's?), but the Hebrew appears normal, i.e. right-to-left; which means the order of characters in memory, for the Hebrew text, is reversed. This is a practice known as "visual Hebrew" (opposed to "logical Hebrew", where the characters are stored in their natural order and rendering engines present them in right-to-left order) -- or rather, this practice used to be known as "visual Hebrew"; it is no longer well known, because nobody in their right mind does it anymore.

2012-10-29 Reply Admin

pjt33:
Do Dor K's XML tags make any sense under the assumption that they're really ASCII which has been interpreted under some one-byte Hebrew code page?

As others have noted, there is a straightforward transformation from the Hebrew letters in the XML tags to Latin. However, by familiarity with computer systems in Israel, this kind of mixup is much more likely on EBCDIC encodings.

2012-10-29 Reply Admin

Watson:
Ozz:
As far as I'm concerned, Illinois does not exist. Nor does any other state that does not recognize my 2nd amendment right to carry a firearm for self-protection.
(And no, you do not have the right to police protection. At least, not unless you have been arrested.)
Assuming you're a U.S. citizen, there is no such thing as your "2nd amendment right to carry a firearm for self-protection". You do however have a 2nd Amendment right to carry a firearm for the purposes of being a member of the National Guard.

Assuming troll ... For those not in the know:

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_transcript.html Amendment II
A well regulated Militia(1), being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people(2) to keep and bear Arms(3), shall not be infringed.

(1)

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/militia mi·li·tia [mi-lish-uh] noun

a body of citizens enrolled for military service, and called out periodically for drill but serving full time only in emergencies. 2. a body of citizen soldiers as distinguished from professional soldiers.

all able-bodied males considered by law eligible for military service.

a body of citizens organized in a paramilitary group and typically regarding themselves as defenders of individual rights against the presumed interference of the federal government.

(2) Use the same connotation of every other use of the phrase in the same document. See also http://www.wnd.com/2008/03/60160/ (3)

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/arms arm 2 [ahrm] noun
Usually, arms. weapons, especially firearms.

Unless of course, someone wishes to view dictionary.com and contextual reasoning as being partisan.

2012-10-29 Reply Admin

BlueKnot:
60625 is not in Illinois; that's the state of Chicago.

I thought the state of Chicago was either true, false, or file not found.

2012-10-29 Reply Admin

Watson:
Ozz:
As far as I'm concerned, Illinois does not exist. Nor does any other state that does not recognize my 2nd amendment right to carry a firearm for self-protection.
(And no, you do not have the right to police protection. At least, not unless you have been arrested.)
Assuming you're a U.S. citizen, there is no such thing as your "2nd amendment right to carry a firearm for self-protection". You do however have a 2nd Amendment right to carry a firearm for the purposes of being a member of the National Guard.

(a) The Constitution says, "the right OF THE PEOPLE to keep and bear arms" etc., not "the right of the government to arm its soldiers ..." It is not at all clear why we would have needed an amendment to guarantee the right of the government to give guns to its soldiers. Article 1 Section 8 already says that Congress may appropriate money to support the army and navy, and indeed specifically says "for organizing, ARMING, and disciplining the Militia". So why would we have an amendment to repeat what was already in the main text? And why would such an amendment be part of the "Bill of Rights", which is otherwise about the rights of the people? In what sense is it a right of the people that the government can give guns to its soldiers?

(b) But okay, let's say we buy the argument that the Second Amendment was intended, not to guarantee the rights of individual citizens to own guns, but rather, as some claim, the right of the states to maintain a "well-regulated militia". In that case, our nation is in gross violation of this clause of the Constitution, as the Federal government took over the state militias when it created the National Guard in 1947. We no longer have state militias in any real sense. We have a Federal militia.

2012-10-29 Reply Admin

Watson:
Ben:
Rights don't come from an old document. Rights are something you have, innately. The document merely recognizes some of them, to make it abundantly clear that the newly created federal government is not granted the power to take them away.
Are you telling me that members of Homo sapiens have an innate right to carry firearms? Does the same go for Homo habilis? Or does it only apply in countries that wrote it down on an old piece of paper somewhere (an old piece of paper that some people make a very strident point of referring to)? If the "right to bear arms" hadn't been written down, or if it had explicitly stated that bearing arms is no a right but a privilege, would those same people be insisting that it is a right (inherent or otherwise)?

Not to put words in Ben's mouth, but I'm pretty sure that that's exactly what he's saying. Human beings have natural rights. A government may or may not recognize these rights. If it refuses to recognize people's natural rights, then the government is in the wrong. Just like 2+2=4 is a natural truth. If someone says that 2+2=5, then he is wrong. (Yes yes, there's a difference between mathematical truth, scientific truth, and moral truth. But there's an analogy.)

Whether a particular person would think that people have the right to carry weapons for self defense if they had not read this idea in the U.S. Constitution is irrelevant to whether it is true. If I had never read in my high school calculus book how to calculate a derivative I might well never have thought of it myself. That has nothing to do with whether or not it is true.

What do you suggest as the alternative? That government has the moral right to decide what your rights are? By that reasoning, there is no such thing as a "bad law", because if the government says it, then it is, by definition, right. If the government says that you have no legal right to criticize government policy, then you have no moral right to do so either. If the government says that all black people should be slaves or all Jews should be killed, well that's just fine, because if the government said so, it is right by definition.

2012-10-30 Reply Admin

Ben:
Rights are something you have, innately.

Of course not! Nature has no 'rights', it only *is*. 'rights' are a human idea/convention, not an absolute.

2012-10-30 Reply Admin

And it really wants you to succeed, look at all the available cheat tags!

2012-10-30 Reply Admin

O T:
Help! My supervisor has just reached that point of understanding that you can't fit 100 gallons of work in a 55 gallon barrel. So to "help" me, I'm getting two brand-new college undergraduates, a project manager, and some additional assistance from operations. Which, of course, means half my day will be spent helping them help me.
Any solid strategies you can suggest? Bring in a temporary BOFH perhaps?

Explain, in no uncertain terms, that a learning curve will apply with the new undergraduates (and that you are the one teaching them, so your actual working hours will be severely lessened for several months) and the project manager will add a permanent workload overhead.

2012-10-30 Reply Admin

Seeing as the controls to the bank machine have Hebrew on them it isn't surprising that it was coded in Hebrew after all Israel is known for having great tech and the software GUI needed to be in Hebrew presumably anyways, so ... wtf?

2012-11-01 Reply Admin

jay:
The purpose of law and the police is to protect criminals from the over-reaction of homeowners and shopkeepers. Without the law, many of these people would buy guns, and when the criminals came to attack them or rob them the shopkeepers would kill the criminals, people would learn that crime doesn't pay, and crime would plummet. Even if the criminals managed to kill the shopkeepers nine times out of ten, there are a lot more peaceful shopkeepers than there are criminals, and the criminals are out looking for trouble while the shopkeepers are avoiding it. No criminal would survive long.

For certain values of criminal. Maybe some of the amateurs. The mob? You might ask some of the business men who refused to pay protection money, except I'm not sure any of them are alive. (Or out of Witness Protection, at least, but that's the law you disdain.) And even if you value your life lightly, any family you have may be fair game to them.

On a different level, if your accountant is skimming some money off the top, you just going to shoot him? If you die in the confrontation, what's supposed to happen (especially as you're likely the only person who can prove fraud)? If he's really scared of you, you may encourage him to hunt you down and kill you in secret.

In a third direction, you're driving through some small town, and some locals kill you and take your stuff. (Maybe you were the wrong skin color, wrong religion, looked at somebody's girlfriend wrong). As an outsider, they don't care about your death. Instead of the FBI showing up, the only solution is open warfare.

2013-01-29 Reply Admin

Dum B:
Who TF would pay $28.95 or $19.95 or even $0.05 for a "batch image converter" when ImageMagick is free and runs on everything?
http://imagemagick.com/script/index.php

Oh and it probably does a lot more than your "converter" anyway. It is the image processing package... assuming you like the full expressive power of a language instead of spending all day doing pointy clicky stuff to fiddle with just one image.

You expect one to alter IMAGE with WORDS? Commands and numbers? This is plain nonsense.

2018-01-08 Reply Admin

When I look at that ATM, I just see blonde, brunette, redhead...

Illinois Has Left the Universe

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