The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

2012-07-10 Reply Admin

s73v3r:
operagost:
myName:
Isn't it great to live in a country where workers don't have rights. USA! USA! USA!
What country are you talking about? It's confusing that they use the same abbreviation as the United States of America. Oh wait, you're trolling. Never mind, no one could be that stupid.

Compared to any other country in the first world, no he's not. Sure, you could say we have more rights than Nagesh's country, but is that really what we want to judge ourselves by? That we're slightly better than a shithole 3rd world country?

Are we talking about "rights" as in inalienable rights, or "rights" as in handouts and political influence? And are "we" the actual workers, or are "we" the members of a union?

2012-07-10 Reply Admin

nOPrelb em aAT lLLLLLLLLL

The Great Lobachevsky · 2012-07-10 Reply Admin

Calli Arcale:
English Man:
Anketam:
I was so glad that my phone was on mute (dialed into a meeting) when I read this, because I nearly killed over laughing at this.
As for the comment about wearing heavier clothes... Gloves + Keyboard does not work. Put on some well insulated gloves and try to post a response on this thread.
Fingerless gloves provide SOME protection, 55 isn't that cold.

I have Renaud's, so my fingers will go numb with very little provocation. (65 F is enough to make 'em blanch. Seriously.) I have USB heated fingerless gloves and they have made a big difference.

If it is a government system, chances are you can't plug in unauthorized USB devices. Seriously.

2012-07-10 Reply Admin

Yazeran:
Katie Cunningham:
Seconded.
We got yelled at for running folding@home, even after we proved that it wasn't a virus, and wasn't causing anyone any harm. I couldn't even get them to agree to SETI@home, and our agency works with them!

He.

Reminds me of the time when I found that one of our core servers had 4 CPU's sitting arround doing almost nothing and started running SETI@home on all of them. I specifically ran all the instances at nice -19 so that any real work would get priority, however after a few months, the sysadmins stopped me saying that it did not look good on their survaliance systems having that server show up with 100% CPU load....
Did give me a good ranking for a while though...

Yazeran

Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer

Nice -19 is the highest priority, not the lowest.

The Great Lobachevsky · 2012-07-10 Reply Admin

Oh dear. you just made me think of Strong Bad and typing with boxing gloves on.

The Great Lobachevsky · 2012-07-10 Reply Admin

operagost:
myName:
Isn't it great to live in a country where workers don't have rights. USA! USA! USA!
What country are you talking about? It's confusing that they use the same abbreviation as the United States of America. Oh wait, you're trolling. Never mind, no one could be that stupid.

Actually, a lot of software workers in the USA are exempt from the wage and hour laws.

213. Exemptions (a) Minimum wage and maximum hour requirements The provisions of sections 206 (except subsection (d) in the case of paragraph (1) of this subsection) and section 207 of this title shall not apply with respect to—
(17) any employee who is a computer systems analyst, computer programmer, software engineer, or other similarly skilled worker, whose primary duty is— (A) the application of systems analysis techniques and procedures, including consulting with users, to determine hardware, software, or system functional specifications; (B) the design, development, documentation, analysis, creation, testing, or modification of computer systems or programs, including prototypes, based on and related to user or system design specifications; (C) the design, documentation, testing, creation, or modification of computer programs related to machine operating systems; or (D) a combination of duties described in subparagraphs (A), (B), and (C) the performance of which requires the same level of skills, and who, in the case of an employee who is compensated on an hourly basis, is compensated at a rate of not less than $27.63 an hour.

MarkJ · 2012-07-10 Reply Admin

Nagesh:
s73v3r:
operagost:
myName:
Isn't it great to live in a country where workers don't have rights. USA! USA! USA!
What country are you talking about? It's confusing that they use the same abbreviation as the United States of America. Oh wait, you're trolling. Never mind, no one could be that stupid.

Compared to any other country in the first world, no he's not. Sure, you could say we have more rights than Nagesh's country, but is that really what we want to judge ourselves by? That we're slightly better than a shithole 3rd world country?

In my country, ain't person except for untouchable that have labour rights.

Does the nagesh have a country?

2012-07-10 Reply Admin

I can't imagine thinking 55°F is cold enough for gloves. And if the author really does, then very thin, or even fingerless gloves should certainly suffice.

D-Coder · 2012-07-10 Reply Admin

MarkJ:
Nagesh:
s73v3r:
operagost:
myName:
Isn't it great to live in a country where workers don't have rights. USA! USA! USA!
What country are you talking about? It's confusing that they use the same abbreviation as the United States of America. Oh wait, you're trolling. Never mind, no one could be that stupid.

Compared to any other country in the first world, no he's not. Sure, you could say we have more rights than Nagesh's country, but is that really what we want to judge ourselves by? That we're slightly better than a shithole 3rd world country?

In my country, ain't person except for untouchable that have labour rights.
Does the nagesh have a country?

~/dcikhead/bin

Coyne · 2012-07-10 Reply Admin

Meep:
Are we talking about "rights" as in inalienable rights, or "rights" as in handouts and political influence?

Right to free press and to redress are inalienable Rights.

Meep:
And are "we" the actual workers, or are "we" the members of a union?

Well, outside of the nasty implied insult, again, freedom of association is an inalienable Right. That the workers should take what they get, like what they get, and shut up?

It's amazing, the duality of some of the arguments that plutocrats make:

Companies should have the right to spend any amount of money they want publishing anything they want in support of any political position they wish but workers should not.
Companies should have the right to terminate any worker at any time, penalize them in any way, pay them any amount and should have the right to seek legal redress if those are inadequate but workers should not.
Companies should have the right to associate in any way they wish in order to form any kind of trust they choose, in order to set prices for the most profit but workers should not.

Isn't it amazing how plutocrats get all the rights, but hold the opinion that the workers should not? That workers should take what they get, like what they get, and shut up?

2012-07-10 Reply Admin

That's why I keep my Sun Blade 2000 around, I only use it in winter to keep my apartment warm. :-)

2012-07-10 Reply Admin

Coyne:
* Companies should have the right to spend any amount of money they want publishing anything they want in support of any political position they wish but workers should not.

Companies should have the right to terminate any worker at any time, penalize them in any way, pay them any amount and should have the right to seek legal redress if those are inadequate but workers should not.

Companies should have the right to associate in any way they wish in order to form any kind of trust they choose, in order to set prices for the most profit but workers should not.

I'm not saying I disagree with you, but, do you have any specific examples? Who is saying workers can't express political opinions? Can't quit their jobs or seek redress? Can't form groups for price negotiations?

2012-07-10 Reply Admin

I have no problem with employers banning cheap space heaters. There are two ways that they generally get used and neither are good:

Under desks with papers and all sorts of crap. This is a fire hazard and probably invalidates the fire insurance (most things do).
On the floor, a short distance away from the desk, but in a pretty random position defined by the length of the cable. This is a often a trip hazard.

Portable air-con is almost as bad. Idiots love portable air-con units because idiots think they contain magic ice gnomes that make coldness out of butterbeans (or something). Hence idiots will cheerfully plonk a portable air-con unit down in an office, not even bother to connect up the duct, and refuse to believe that it makes more heat than it "makes cold". Oh, and the stupid things tend to leak. (The air-con units, not the idiots, although...)

But before we blame the employees for their insubordination and poor grasp of thermodynamics you have to look at the wider set up. You can't expect employees to respect the wisdom, sanity and fairness of an employer that sets their thermostats slightly more than 3C below the UK legal minimum for an indoor workplace. That implies that the guy in charge is just as dumb as the twits with their own heaters and air-con units, just with even more power to bugger everybody up. If the employer refuses to provide even an approximation to a usable working environment (and 13C is not such an approximation) then the employees are going to do whatever they can to keep warm and keep working.

The specific WTF here is that spending money on ad-hoc electric heating has to be vastly more expensive than using the building wide gas or oil fired heating system that the boss is too mean to switch on. Joule for Joule, oil or gas is probably less than half the price of electricity.

The wider WTF is that I have yet to come across an office where the climate control has ever worked right. More often than not there are competing heating and cooling systems which end up fighting to the death. I suspect that the vendors secretly quite like this because it offers lots of opportunities for new sales. Even when that crime against the environment and the economy is avoided the radiators, vents and thermostats are nearly always in the wrong places so that the climate control system is either misled into doing something silly or just can't avoid making a mixture of hot and cold spots. On the odd occasion that the system is not intrinsically broken, some bozo will come along and bugger it up manually by fiddling with it randomly, just to make good and sure that nobody is happy. If you are really lucky you might get legionnaires disease too.

2012-07-10 Reply Admin

Coyne:
Meep:
Are we talking about "rights" as in inalienable rights, or "rights" as in handouts and political influence?

Right to free press and to redress are inalienable Rights.

Free press? What's that got to do with the price of eggs?

Redress requires the services of lawyers, police, judges, etc., and they might want compensation for those services. So, please do explain how you can have an "inalienable" right to someone else's services, given that it directly contradicts their inalienable right to not provide those services.

That right for them to enter into a contract or to decline to do so is, of course, the most relevant inalienable right, and the one you completely missed.

Coyne:
Meep:
And are "we" the actual workers, or are "we" the members of a union?

Well, outside of the nasty implied insult, again, freedom of association is an inalienable Right.

It's astounding. You call being forced into a union, and being forced to pay union dues whether you like it or not "freedom of association." Black is white, white is black, complete insanity. The only plutocrats here are union bosses and the politicians that are paid off with union dues.

Coyne:
That the workers should take what they get, like what they get, and shut up?

Ever been harassed by union thugs? You'll do as your told and you'll like it, or they'll harass your family, beat you up, destroy your property, etc. And the union bosses have paid off the city so they're damned near untouchable. And if you want a job and are willing to accept a non-union job, they'll be screaming "scab" at you and threatening to kill you. The only rights the left cares about are their own, the only laws they care about are the ones they force on everyone else. Fucking hypocrites.

2012-07-10 Reply Admin

Daniel:
Portable air-con is almost as bad. Idiots love portable air-con units because idiots think they contain magic ice gnomes that make coldness out of butterbeans (or something). Hence idiots will cheerfully plonk a portable air-con unit down in an office, not even bother to connect up the duct, and refuse to believe that it makes more heat than it "makes cold".

One such idiot explained to me, very patiently, that cold air sinks and hot air rises.

And so I responded, "sure, if the hot air is contained inside a fucking balloon, otherwise it just mixes." Or, at least, I would have if the idiot in question hadn't been my platoon sergeant... Though, he wasn't entirely an idiot; since it was blowing in his face, he was quite comfortable.

2012-07-10 Reply Admin

trtrwtf:
Couldn't they just burn requirements documents to keep warm?

+1

2012-07-10 Reply Admin

Jack:
Where I work, building managers seem to be obsessed with air conditioning. As in, the room temperature is down to 66 but the chiller is still blasting a high speed breeze of cold air on everyone. They generously put a vent right over each desk so you can't avoid it. I tried taping cardboard over mine; safety officer made me take it down. I wear a heavy jacket, ski mask, and gloves -- in the summer. Not exaggerating. Sometimes I even have to step outside for 10 minutes or so to warm up. You can imagine how that helps productivity.
Years of complaints to everyone imaginable have had absolutely no effect. Not even when the governor of the state put up a "suggestion box" web site to help cut costs.

Yeah, that's right, it is a tax funded facility. And we all know taxpayers are a sustainable resource made out of unlimited money so why not waste it as fast as possible?

I can sorta understand a place that is too cold because they want to save money, but too cold and wasting money? WTF?

I don't know why but that seems to be what people do around here (especially big department stores).

The moment the temperature rises above 20C we need to cool to 15C. The moment the temperature drops below 20C, we need to heat to 25C. Obviously they don't realise people actually dress for the conditions.....

2012-07-10 Reply Admin

Goplat:
sprezzatura:
I don't see how this would increase the temperature. Isn't the OS is in a perpetual loop anyway waiting for interrupts? Just because it doesn't show up in the Task Manager Performance graph (or whatever OS you use), doesn't mean it isn't looping.

x86, as well as pretty much every other CPU architecture, has a "halt" instruction that will stop execution until the next interrupt. An OS should use it whenever all threads are idle.

What does an interrupt interrupt? Or is the interrupt a physical switch?

2012-07-10 Reply Admin

Counter:
Goplat:
sprezzatura:
I don't see how this would increase the temperature. Isn't the OS is in a perpetual loop anyway waiting for interrupts? Just because it doesn't show up in the Task Manager Performance graph (or whatever OS you use), doesn't mean it isn't looping.

x86, as well as pretty much every other CPU architecture, has a "halt" instruction that will stop execution until the next interrupt. An OS should use it whenever all threads are idle.
What does an interrupt interrupt? Or is the interrupt a physical switch?

Interrupts are physical, yes. They are a signal that tells the CPU/OS that something wants attention.

2012-07-10 Reply Admin

CRT Styled Heat:
Ohhh ohh I know another way. Request a bunch of OLD CRT style monitors. You know, because they're older and obviously cheaper and literal OVENS when used in a concert.

The pic on a good quality CRT blows away the Liquid Crap Display (LCD). No, this is not meant to be sarcastic.

2012-07-10 Reply Admin

Should spent the CPU cycles on finding mersenne prime. By chance you may win a million :p

2012-07-10 Reply Admin

"Brain walked away from that job" - I would have to had I used such an inefficient way of heating a room.

2012-07-10 Reply Admin

Oh come on, hasn't anyone made a fucking FILE_NOT_FOUND joke yet?

Callin · 2012-07-10 Reply Admin

Sometimes the best programs are the shortest.

2012-07-11 Reply Admin

Hoge:

Nice -19 is the highest priority, not the lowest.

Yep, typo on my part... I did set it to the correct nice 19 though (Yes I did test it before I let it loose... I just forgot to remove the '-' form the syntax before I submitted my comment.... :-)

Yazeran

Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer

AndyCanfield · 2012-07-11 Reply Admin

And what exactly is wrong with a personal heater? Conceal one in a desktop case.

Not on the deskTOP. Under the desk. Between your legs. Female. Keeps you warm.

2012-07-11 Reply Admin

Daniel:
The wider WTF is that I have yet to come across an office where the climate control has ever worked right. More often than not there are competing heating and cooling systems which end up fighting to the death. I suspect that the vendors secretly quite like this because it offers lots of opportunities for new sales. Even when that crime against the environment and the economy is avoided the radiators, vents and thermostats are nearly always in the wrong places so that the climate control system is either misled into doing something silly or just can't avoid making a mixture of hot and cold spots. On the odd occasion that the system is not intrinsically broken, some bozo will come along and bugger it up manually by fiddling with it randomly, just to make good and sure that nobody is happy. If you are really lucky you might get legionnaires disease too.

The right way to handle climate control in a large building is to have a central chiller(s) take some combination of outside and recirculated air, cool it to the desired dewpoint, and duct that air to all locations in the building. A central boiler should heat water (both for hot potable water and heating water, separately), and pump the heating water to every vent. Valves at each vent, controlled by the zone thermostat, regulate the flow of hot water to that vent in order to output air at the desired temperature.

Note specifically that in a proper setup, dropping the temperature above/below desired on the thermostat CAN cool the room slightly faster.

If you're only using a pure cooling or heating system, you have no way of regulating humidity independently from temperature

2012-07-11 Reply Admin

Brain walked away from that job...

Yeah, definitely not a job for a brain.

2012-07-11 Reply Admin

Due to new insulation, our office is constantly overheated.

Can you please share the code for Refridgerator.exe?

2012-07-11 Reply Admin

I just don't get why anybody would stay at a job where they are not given a comfortable environment to work in? Not happy? move on. Treated badly? move on. Simple.

PiisAWheeL · 2012-07-11 Reply Admin

Slicerwizard:
PiisAWheeL:
You are a genius... Constant Background Defragging would generate the most heat, from the cpu, the hard drives, and the psu. If it was running windows, you would also generate extra heat from the ram.
Hard drive gets organized as part of the "heating" system. Its genius.

+1
You're an idiot. Defragging is an I/O intensive operation - you'd barely warm up a single core.

So, Just solve some math while you're idle. Warm up io bus, make stuff warmer. :p

2012-07-11 Reply Admin

David Emery:
Good thing you weren't using a highly optimizing compiler that optimized that loop away :-)

Are compilers allowed to change the flow of a program these days? I need to get up to date.

2012-07-11 Reply Admin

Daniel:
Portable air-con is almost as bad. Idiots love portable air-con units because idiots think they contain magic ice gnomes that make coldness out of butterbeans (or something). Hence idiots will cheerfully plonk a portable air-con unit down in an office, not even bother to connect up the duct, and refuse to believe that it makes more heat than it "makes cold".

That depends on which side of the apparatus you're sitting. If you're sat in front of the main outlet then you'll definitely be cooler than all those idiot whiners who keep saying it doesn't work.

Gurth · 2012-07-11 Reply Admin

C-Derb:
the world's least efficient glass windows

They were not transparent?

2012-07-11 Reply Admin

phi:
Brain walked away from that job...

Yeah, definitely not a job for a brain.

My brain walked away from my job a long time ago.

2012-07-11 Reply Admin

sprezzatura:
I don't see how this would increase the temperature. Isn't the OS is in a perpetual loop anyway waiting for interrupts? Just because it doesn't show up in the Task Manager Performance graph (or whatever OS you use), doesn't mean it isn't looping.

Modern CPUs/OSs clock down, clock-gate and power-gate very aggressively. While you type on your keyboard at desktop, large portions of your cpu is likely shut down when it's waiting for interrupts between keystrokes.

That's why your computer uses much less power when it's not being fully loaded.

2012-07-11 Reply Admin

Gloves.

ekolis · 2012-07-11 Reply Admin

Government offices running dueling AC and heat? Someone call the EPA, for God's sake!

dkf · 2012-07-11 Reply Admin

Daniel:
Portable air-con is almost as bad. Idiots love portable air-con units because idiots think they contain magic ice gnomes that make coldness out of butterbeans (or something). Hence idiots will cheerfully plonk a portable air-con unit down in an office, not even bother to connect up the duct, and refuse to believe that it makes more heat than it "makes cold". Oh, and the stupid things tend to leak. (The air-con units, not the idiots, although...)

There is one way in which they do demonstrably work, and that is that they dehumidify the room. When the humidity is low, you can tolerate far higher temperatures than when it is high. (The net extra heat from pumping power into the room for the AC unit will also reduce the humidity a bit.)

(Now I just need to find a way to work “magic ice gnomes” into my next report…)

2012-07-11 Reply Admin

Yazeran:
Katie Cunningham:
Seconded.
We got yelled at for running folding@home, even after we proved that it wasn't a virus, and wasn't causing anyone any harm. I couldn't even get them to agree to SETI@home, and our agency works with them!

He.

Reminds me of the time when I found that one of our core servers had 4 CPU's sitting arround doing almost nothing and started running SETI@home on all of them. I specifically ran all the instances at nice -19 so that any real work would get priority, however after a few months, the sysadmins stopped me saying that it did not look good on their survaliance systems having that server show up with 100% CPU load....
Did give me a good ranking for a while though...

Yazeran

Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer

If you did that with any of my servers, you wouldn't get a telling off, you'd get the sack. Company servers are for company work, not for internet-rank-wankery looking for aliens or drugs.

2012-07-11 Reply Admin

The PET could have done it in fout characters of BASIC code:

1RUN

2012-07-11 Reply Admin

Matthias:
The PET could have done it in fout characters of BASIC code:
1RUN

Look I get awful tired of you PET fanbois... that's portable code and would run on any decent technology of that era.

2012-07-11 Reply Admin

The Great Lobachevsky:
Calli Arcale:
English Man:
Anketam:
I was so glad that my phone was on mute (dialed into a meeting) when I read this, because I nearly killed over laughing at this.
As for the comment about wearing heavier clothes... Gloves + Keyboard does not work. Put on some well insulated gloves and try to post a response on this thread.
Fingerless gloves provide SOME protection, 55 isn't that cold.

I have Renaud's, so my fingers will go numb with very little provocation. (65 F is enough to make 'em blanch. Seriously.) I have USB heated fingerless gloves and they have made a big difference.

If it is a government system, chances are you can't plug in unauthorized USB devices. Seriously.

I work for an unknown medium-sized software/internet company and our handbook specifically bans unauthorised portable media, so it's no surprise to me that a gov org would have rules like that and actually enforce them.

2012-07-11 Reply Admin

MarkJ:
Nagesh:
s73v3r:
operagost:
myName:
Isn't it great to live in a country where workers don't have rights. USA! USA! USA!
What country are you talking about? It's confusing that they use the same abbreviation as the United States of America. Oh wait, you're trolling. Never mind, no one could be that stupid.

Compared to any other country in the first world, no he's not. Sure, you could say we have more rights than Nagesh's country, but is that really what we want to judge ourselves by? That we're slightly better than a shithole 3rd world country?

In my country, ain't person except for untouchable that have labour rights.
Does the nagesh have a country?

I am Indian only.

2012-07-11 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Gloves.

I didn't even click on the link and knew it was some fag linking thedailywtf. It's not clever. It's not funny. Just the word "gloves" with a link under it and the short, useless, one sentence post shows the kind of unoriginal, uninspired, idiot is making the post.

It was funny to read when it came out. It's even funny when clicking on the Random Article button on the site and seeing it. It's NOT funny when someone links to it from a one-sentence post and thinks they're so fucking clever to have discovered thedailywtf.

You probably still use lmgtfy and think you're so damn clever.

It means in real life, you're an unoriginal hipster doofus.

Got anything to do with sanitizing inputs to a SQL database, etc.? Link to Bobby Tables. Got a nerd-project slow-ass turing machine? Like a minecraft logic circuit from redstone? Link to the one where it's some guy in Alaska making a heater out of a bunch of servers. Got a story about password security or encryption? Link to the one where the BOFH beat the password out of the guy with a wrench.

Fuck off. You're not clever.

PedanticCurmudgeon · 2012-07-11 Reply Admin

Meep:
Are we talking about "rights" as in inalienable rights, or "rights" as in handouts and political influence? And are "we" the actual workers, or are "we" the members of a union?

The latter, of course. If you even mention the former these days you get either "but...but...terrorists!" or "don't you want people to have health care?", depending on which side of the two-party coin whoever you're talking to happens to be a member of.

2012-07-11 Reply Admin

Rights are things you have the ability to do for yourself. The right to speak. The right to associate with like minded people. The right to defend yourself from violence.

You do not have the right to make anybody else do something for you without their consent.

Oh and by the way all those rights are yours whether or not (some document / the armed thugs currently controlling your neighborhood) agree. Freedom is not something anybody can give you. Freedom is something you take.

2012-07-11 Reply Admin

sdfahjkd :OKpik\f;xnv\dc x

2012-07-11 Reply Admin

oh yes, it is! Try this... (55°F is 13°C). I've experienced this temperature twice as a student, it was really freezing (for a sedentary work).

2012-07-11 Reply Admin

Anketam:
I was so glad that my phone was on mute (dialed into a meeting) when I read this, because I nearly killed over laughing at this.
As for the comment about wearing heavier clothes... Gloves + Keyboard does not work. Put on some well insulated gloves and try to post a response on this thread.

sdfahjkd :OKpik\f;xnv\dc x

Just a Warm-Up

Leave a comment on “Just a Warm-Up”