The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

DaveK · 2013-06-03 Reply Admin

Paul Neumann:
TFA:
...Steve noticed that flag_order_6612.pdf had somehow been written twice...
...“And then I rename the file, move it to a folder named FLAG_ORDERS..."
So, what file system running on "an old, yellowed Pentium desktop" allows one to save two different files to the same place, with the same name and DOES NOT simply overwrite the first?

I call shenanigans!

How do you know it didn't just overwrite the first one?

xaade · 2013-06-03 Reply Admin

Anonymous Paranoiac:
ObiWayneKenobi:
Why exactly IS the government so clueless with everything? Just a result of being so huge and unwieldy? Every single gov IT story I've seen has the same kind of stuff in it which usually results in some drone being given a menial job that they can work until they die.
THIS is why we need smaller government, folks.

Because, as eViLegion pointed out, they have zero motivation to be efficient or effective. When you have a self-granted monopoly on anything you might feel like doing that's imposed with guns and prisons, your purpose stops being to solve problems but to aggregate as much power and influence as possible. On a departmental level, this partly comes from gathering as many resources as you can. If you somehow have a piece of your budget left over, you better find some way of spending it (or, better yet, exceeding it) so you can prove you need an even larger budget. It also shows up in the various internal power plays which invariably end up creating new levels of bureaucracy and even more waste.

The wise always ask for smaller government; the fools stop asking for larger government when it gets so large it can't move without stomping on them too.

Steve The Cynic · 2013-06-03 Reply Admin

Anonymous Paranoiac:
Anon:
Since 99.9% of the WTFs here are NGOs, who, exactly, is filled with more waste?

There are two key differences:

NGOs (who don't have a monopoly and aren't subsidized by the government) must eventually perform a service or get squashed by a competitor.

If I think the NGO is a huge waste (and they don't have a monopoly and aren't subsidized by the government) I can safely ignore them and keep my money far away from them without having property seized or going to jail.

Let me give you a counter example. The UK's "TV Licensing" is responsible for enforcing the UK's TV license laws(*). It is an NGO, sure, but your line of reasoning will land you (1) without a TV or (2) with a substantial fine, possibly both.

xaade · 2013-06-03 Reply Admin

Loyal reader:
ObiWayneKenobi:

THIS is why we need smaller government, folks.

This is not why you need smaller government - that would just make the problem worse.

You need to respect your government, so that it can be self-respecting.

You need to allow your government to invest in good people and proper IT infrastructure (notice that word: "invest") to avoid this sort of thing.

You need to invest in retraining to lift people from this kind of manual work.

Smaller government implies government is no longer in charge of doing this. Which means it can't become this bad if it isn't handling this demand.
When is the first time someone started acting right because you gave them undeserved respect. Only gangsters ask for unmerited respect.
And besides, government doesn't have a problem respecting itself. It thinks too highly of itself already. Stop trying to reform things. Break them up and sell them off.
The good people and infrastructure are already happily employed. They won't move to a government job unless we double taxes, and then they have less money because we doubled taxes. Catch 22, they'll never work for government.
The vast majority of jobs created by the government during the last census period were counted as new jobs even if they re-employed the same person every week... as long as they went through retraining. Not interested in paying for retraining. A person working a non-skilled job can't be retrained into caring more about their job. Menial work is menial and the pay should stay menial. We can't overvalue their work, or the value system follows and we end up with more inflation, poorer middle class, and a slightly higher $amount for the poverty level.

pscs · 2013-06-03 Reply Admin

Steve The Cynic:
Let me give you a counter example. The UK's "TV Licensing" is responsible for enforcing the UK's TV license laws(*). It is an NGO, sure, but your line of reasoning will land you (1) without a TV or (2) with a substantial fine, probably both.

FTFY

"TV Licensing" works on the principle that if you say you don't have a TV, you are lying, and therefore must either (a) buy a TV licence anyway, or (b) get endless menacing/threatening/intimidating letters/visits/etc from their enforcers until you opt for (a).

silverpie · 2013-06-03 Reply Admin

¯\(°_o)/¯ I DUNNO LOL:
TRWTF is ordering state flags through the state government, and not through, say, an actual company that makes flags? The state probably orders them in bulk from a flag manufacturer anyhow, so that they can waste taxpayer money on storage space until someone buys them.

Perhaps this is for flags that have actually flown over the capitol. I know the federal government does something like that.

2013-06-03 Reply Admin

TGV:
ObiWayneKenobi:
Why exactly IS the government so clueless with everything? Just a result of being so huge and unwieldy? Every single gov IT story I've seen has the same kind of stuff in it which usually results in some drone being given a menial job that they can work until they die.
THIS is why we need smaller government, folks.
You've just written: we need smaller government in order to prevent some drone being given a menial job that they can work until they die. Are you a) a salon socialist, who considers that everyone should get a worthy job? b) a tech utopist, who thinks every menial job can be automated and what could possibly go wrong? c) a closet libertarian, who thinks that such tasks should just not be performed, resulting in anarchy? d) a proud tea partier, who terminates every discussion with the phrase "THIS is why we need smaller government, folks."?

(e) an engineer, who thinks that we should: (1) first determine which tasks need to be performed (including things like providing state flags for state agencies to fly), then (2) determine the most-efficient way of effectively and reliably performing those tasks (which in some cases is to employ a grunt, and in some cases to write a shell script), then (3) implement that method (which means, if you need to replace a grunt with a shell script, you fire the grunt and give them some cash to go train themselves for another job; if you need to replace a shell script with a grunt, you hire the grunt and pay them a reasonable wage with reasonable benefits).

The phrase "we need smaller government" is often spoken when what the speaker really desires is more-efficient government.

The problem with the Tea Party argument is that greater efficiency does not unilaterally mean less cost, nor does it unilaterally mean fewer employees, so just reducing cost or headcount is not an effective method for achieving efficiency.

The problem with the Salon Socialist argument is that a maximally-efficient system does not necessarily translate into maximum job satisfaction or "worthiness" for every employee, nor is that a design requirement. (Though it is a noble aspiration.)

The problem with the Tech Utopist argument is that neither technology nor human understanding is perfect, and therefore, any approach to maximizing the efficiency of the system will need to include both human and technological elements.

The problem with the Closet Libertarian argument is that history shows us that people cannot be trusted to do the right thing if there aren't systemic incentives and disincentives to push them in that direction (aka 'human nature').

The problem with TGV's argument is that sane and rational people fall into none of his four categories.

(And the problem with my argument is that sane and rational people fall into none of the available government positions.)

eViLegion · 2013-06-03 Reply Admin

I think we can all agree, the answer to the titular question is:

"I dunno... Coast Guard?"

chubertdev · 2013-06-03 Reply Admin

In Birmingham they love the governor's sick daughter.

pjt33 · 2013-06-03 Reply Admin

synp:
Citizens would fly US flags, not the state flag.

Texas?

2013-06-03 Reply Admin

xaade:
1. Smaller government implies government is no longer in charge of doing this. Which means it can't become this bad if it isn't handling this demand.

When is the first time someone started acting right because you gave them undeserved respect. Only gangsters ask for unmerited respect.

And besides, government doesn't have a problem respecting itself. It thinks too highly of itself already. Stop trying to reform things. Break them up and sell them off.

The good people and infrastructure are already happily employed. They won't move to a government job unless we double taxes, and then they have less money because we doubled taxes. Catch 22, they'll never work for government.

The vast majority of jobs created by the government during the last census period were counted as new jobs even if they re-employed the same person every week... as long as they went through retraining. Not interested in paying for retraining. A person working a non-skilled job can't be retrained into caring more about their job. Menial work is menial and the pay should stay menial. We can't overvalue their work, or the value system follows and we end up with more inflation, poorer middle class, and a slightly higher $amount for the poverty level.

I agree that the flags thing isn't necessarily a good example of what government must do, but it is tough to generalize.

All people deserve respect until they fail repeatedly. People make mistakes. If they fail, you change the situation and give them a new chance. That is the only way to make progress. Firing everyone and selling off is a very binary and terrible way of dealing with things in general. There are of course situations where it is the right thing to do, but if it is all you can do, then everything you attempt is doomed to failure, unless selling off is your core business, of course.

Gangsters don't expect respect, they expect fear, although they may refer to it as respect. People expect respect... children expect respect... wives/husbands expect respect... colleagues expect respect... you expect respect. Everyone expects more respect than they deserve. If, on the other hand, you/everyone keeps telling someone they are worthless, guess what happens?

Self-respect is a prerequisite for being ambitious. If government has low ambitions, it will have low achievements. Expect more from government at every level in politics, and things will improve. Stopping reform is just plain stupid - reform is another word for change - it can be for the better or for the worse. Only when you have a perfect system should you stop reforming - and that aint gonna happen in your lifetime.
Just shift spending from the military, avoid angering half the rest of the world and you should have plenty left to improve government.
So now learning things is a bad thing? Was this something you somehow picked up from TDWTF?

So as far as I can see, you just basically hate people. Except for people who are really rich - they should be allowed to earn lots of money... makes sense, right? Poor people should stay poor so they can stay in their little box.

2013-06-03 Reply Admin

Zylon:
Well, someone whose job literally could be replaced by a very small shell script.

It can't, though. Someone needs to open the envelopes with the orders and then scan them. Yes, they could switch to a fully online ordering system, but some people still prefer to mail or fax things. That's not really a WTF, or if it is it's a WTF with people who like mailing in orders, not with the order processing.

The only actual WTF is just that the date function isn't better written.

2013-06-03 Reply Admin

This kind of makes me feel like the only government worker on TDWTF but...flag orders are not about purchasing flags, they are about how to fly them and for how long. For example, when an officer of the law is shot anywhere in the state we receive an order to fly all city, county, and state flags at half staff on a specified day from sunup to sundown. This requires special accommodations in the summer especially, scheduling a standby worker to handle the lowering and raising at any institutions without staff during that time period.

chubertdev · 2013-06-03 Reply Admin

Loyal reader:
4. Just shift spending from the military, avoid angering half the rest of the world and you should have plenty left to improve government.

So now soldiers, defense contractors, and other related workers are out of business. They flood the job market with a large number of people ranging from skilled to burger flippers, and wages plummet, unemployment balloons, and the economy is ruined.

Reality sucks.

da Doctah · 2013-06-03 Reply Admin

trololo:
Burgers... I see burgers everywhere ç_ç

The difference is that nobody gets upset when two burgers have the same order number.

2013-06-03 Reply Admin

Anonymous Paranoiac:
TGV:
c) a closet libertarian, who thinks that such tasks should just not be performed, resulting in anarchy?

How does "government not selling flags" (or alternately, "government selling flags efficiently") directly lead to anarchy?

Wha... what?! Why, if the government doesn't sell flags, then, why, you could find just ANYBODY selling flags. The rich and powerful would get all the flags they want while the poor might have no flags at all. And who would protect the citizens from incompetent or dishonest, fly-by-night flag sellers? They might claim to be selling you an Indiana flag and really give you an Iraqi flag. And how would people know what flags they want if they didn't have expert government officials to tell them? Would you really want to live in a society where people could just buy any flag they want and fly it whenever they want? That would be anarchy!

flabdablet · 2013-06-03 Reply Admin

And I said, I don't care if they lay me off either, because I told, I told Bill that if they move my desk one more time, then, then I'm, I'm quitting, I'm going to quit. And, and I told Don too, because they've moved my desk four times already this year, and I used to be over by the window, and I could see the squirrels, and they were married, but then, they switched from the Swingline to the Boston stapler, but I kept my Swingline stapler because it didn't bind up as much, and I kept the staples for the Swingline stapler and it's not okay because if they take my stapler then I'll set the building on fire.

2013-06-03 Reply Admin

Loyal reader:
4. Just shift spending from the military, avoid angering half the rest of the world and you should have plenty left to improve government.

US defense spending is now $900 billion out of a total of $3.7 trillion, or about 23% of the budget. The deficit is now $970 billion. So if you reduced defense spending to zero, we would still have a deficit.

Of course, the premise of your statement is that if only the non-military parts of the government had more money, they would be more efficient. It is not at all clear why this would logically happen. Usually when someone finds they have more money, they are LESS careful about how they spend it, not more.

2013-06-03 Reply Admin

Kotoku :
This kind of makes me feel like the only government worker on TDWTF but...flag orders are not about purchasing flags, they are about how to fly them and for how long. For example, when an officer of the law is shot anywhere in the state we receive an order to fly all city, county, and state flags at half staff on a specified day from sunup to sundown. This requires special accommodations in the summer especially, scheduling a standby worker to handle the lowering and raising at any institutions without staff during that time period.

This makes boodles of sense, much more than the ranting from the efficiency experts. (low bar, I know) Only one quibble, though: what was it that Ramon was scanning?

2013-06-03 Reply Admin

So as far as I can see, you just basically hate people. Except for people who are really rich - they should be allowed to earn lots of money... makes sense, right? Poor people should stay poor so they can stay in their little box.

Wow, how did you get from, "I think the government is doing a lot of things that would be done more efficiently by private organizations" to "You just basically hate people"? What did the original poster say that in any way indicated that he "hated people"?

You actually started by making some statements that at least sounded like they were an attempt at serious discussion. But I guess you just couldn't help yourself. Whenever someone states a conservative or libertarian position, liberals routinely find it necessary to reply by hurling third-grader insults. "Your a racist! Your a Nazi! Your mother wears army boots!"

2013-06-03 Reply Admin

The phrase "we need smaller government" is often spoken when what the speaker really desires is more-efficient government.

The problem with the Tea Party argument is that greater efficiency does not unilaterally mean less cost, nor does it unilaterally mean fewer employees, so just reducing cost or headcount is not an effective method for achieving efficiency.

Umm, I think "doing the same amount of work while reducing cost" is pretty much the definition of efficiency.

I suppose you could point to cases where there are efficiencies of scale and say that sometimes greater total cost could result in greater efficiency. Like if we spend $10,000 to produce 10,000 widgets, while by spending $20,000 we could produce 30,000 widgets, then the number of widgets per dollar could go up even though the total cost goes up.

But most people who call for smaller government -- at least, most of the people that I've heard -- are not saying that they think that the problem is that the government doesn't do enough. Like, right now the federal government issues about 20,000 pages of new government regulations each year. Small government advocates are definitely not saying that they think we need 30,000 pages of new regulations per year and that they think the present budget should be enough to produce that, and that they'd gladly pay twice the taxes if it would result in three times as many new regulations. Yes, if we doubled the budget and produced three times as many laws, that would be "more efficient" in some sense. But the primary complaint is that the government is doing all sorts of things that they don't believe are proper functions of government. Yes, part of the complaint is that there are things the government does and that they think are proper functions of government, but which the government does poorly. But that's not the core of the Libertarian or Tea Party argument.

For example, L/TP people made a big deal when New York City passed a law banning the sale of soft drinks in cups holding more than 16 ounces. Their complaint was NOT that the government was ineffective at catching all the dangerous criminals who bought or sold large soft drink cups, or that they would approve of this law if it could be enforced for $1 million but not if enforcement cost $2 million. Rather, their complaint was that they did not believe the government had the moral right to tell citizens how much soda they were allowed to drink, and that such laws are inherently squandering the taxpayers' money, no matter how "efficiently" they are carried out.

If an expenditure is useless, spending $1 million to accomplish nothing of value is less wasteful than spending $2 million to accomplish nothing of value. But spending zero would be less wasteful still. And if an expenditure is actively counter-productive, if the program is actually harming people -- whether by taking away their freedom, or interfering with their ability to run a successful business, or whatever -- then "more efficient" government is not the goal at all. That would just mean the government could do more harm.

2013-06-03 Reply Admin

Where I live, you may pay your parking infractions online, but for a $3 "convenience fee". The system leaves a voice synthesized message with your payment details, so that it is later manually processed.

herby · 2013-06-03 Reply Admin

GettinSadda:
Should have done this story next Friday!

Geeze, two pages of comments, and nobody gets this remark?

Of course it is pretty subtle.

2013-06-03 Reply Admin

foo:
Anonymous Paranoiac:
Anon:
Since 99.9% of the WTFs here are NGOs, who, exactly, is filled with more waste?

There are two key differences:

NGOs (who don't have a monopoly and aren't subsidized by the government) must eventually perform a service or get squashed by a competitor.

If I think the NGO is a huge waste (and they don't have a monopoly and aren't subsidized by the government) I can safely ignore them and keep my money far away from them without having property seized or going to jail.
To finish your fine argument, name me one large organization that doesn't have a monopoly (e.g. patents) and isn't subsidized (grants, or orders from the government which are a license to charge at least twice as much as was originally agreed).

You missed the entire point. If a NGO wastes money they go bankrupt. If a NGO does stupid stuff and people don't want to buy their product(s) they go bankrupt.

If the government does either of the two then they just raise taxes or borrow more money.

2013-06-03 Reply Admin

jay:
if the program is actually harming people -- whether by taking away their freedom, or interfering with their ability to run a successful business, or whatever -- then "more efficient" government is not the goal at all. That would just mean the government could do more harm.

Your "freedom to run a successful business" is not absolute, and in many cases it's the duty of a government to interfere with it. A few examples obvious might include a "hedge fund" run by B. Madoff, a factory that dumps toxic waste into the river out back, a heroin dealer. Less obvious examples require more difficult judgement and finer hair-splitting, but many actions that government regulates are taken to make a business more "successful"* are in fact things that we would agree should be watched carefully. Interfering with someone's business might be taken by them as "harm", but many of us are happy to know that there are people who make it their job to "interfere" with meatpackers and restaurants and pharmaceutical manufacturers and so forth.

Rather, their complaint was that they did not believe the government had the moral right to tell citizens how much soda they were allowed to drink, and that such laws are inherently squandering the taxpayers' money, no matter how "efficiently" they are carried out.

Okay, I'll bite. Bearing in mind that I actually think a soft drink ban is an idiotic policy, I still think it's inane to talk about a government's "moral rights" to take such an action. What's the moral basis for saying that the state can regulate the sale of, say, viagra, but not sugar? On a practical basis, there are lots of reasonable objections, including the same one that people raise to tobacco taxes - it amounts to a regressive tax on the poor - but when did the government ever justify its regulation of markets in terms of moral rights? The moral claim here is a high-level one: the government has a responsibility to regulate markets to ensure that unsafe products are not marketed (so certain products are deemed inherently unsafe and banned, and others are monitored for their safety) but this isn't a moral claim about coca-cola, it's an administrative decision implementing a moral claim which nobody is arguing with. You might think the decision implements the moral claim incorrectly, but you don't actually disagree with the moral claim.

*this word has recently started meaning "lucrative", which is incorrect. Not sure which sense you mean: is a restaurant that makes better food for less profit more or less successful than the competition down the street which makes worse food for more profit?

2013-06-03 Reply Admin

foo:
To finish your fine argument, name me one large organization that doesn't have a monopoly (e.g. patents) and isn't subsidized (grants, or orders from the government which are a license to charge at least twice as much as was originally agreed).

Thank you for thinking my argument fine, I really appreciate it. First, at least in the US, patents don't equate to monopoly (yes, that's the idea, but it usually doesn't work out in practice) - someone else will just make the same thing with some small change or a larger company will violate the patent and threaten to bury the smaller company in legal fees if they challenge. For a quick example of patents not providing a monopoly, look at Intel and AMD. I'm sure they both have giant piles of patents, but they're still competing with each other, so neither has a monopoly.

Second, if a company receives government subsidies, they aren't truly an NGO.

Steve The Cynic:
Let me give you a counter example. The UK's "TV Licensing" is responsible for enforcing the UK's TV license laws(*). It is an NGO, sure, but your line of reasoning will land you (1) without a TV or (2) with a substantial fine, possibly both.

I'll admit ignorance of the UK television market, but how exactly is an entity that A) Has the power to enforce laws and B) To levy taxes (fines) an NGO?

n_slash_a:
You missed the entire point. If a NGO wastes money they go bankrupt. If a NGO does stupid stuff and people don't want to buy their product(s) they go bankrupt.
If the government does either of the two then they just raise taxes or borrow more money.

This.

xaade · 2013-06-03 Reply Admin

Loyal reader:
xaade:
1. Smaller government implies government is no longer in charge of doing this. Which means it can't become this bad if it isn't handling this demand.

When is the first time someone started acting right because you gave them undeserved respect. Only gangsters ask for unmerited respect.

And besides, government doesn't have a problem respecting itself. It thinks too highly of itself already. Stop trying to reform things. Break them up and sell them off.

The good people and infrastructure are already happily employed. They won't move to a government job unless we double taxes, and then they have less money because we doubled taxes. Catch 22, they'll never work for government.

The vast majority of jobs created by the government during the last census period were counted as new jobs even if they re-employed the same person every week... as long as they went through retraining. Not interested in paying for retraining. A person working a non-skilled job can't be retrained into caring more about their job. Menial work is menial and the pay should stay menial. We can't overvalue their work, or the value system follows and we end up with more inflation, poorer middle class, and a slightly higher $amount for the poverty level.

I agree that the flags thing isn't necessarily a good example of what government must do, but it is tough to generalize.

All people deserve respect until they fail repeatedly. People make mistakes. If they fail, you change the situation and give them a new chance. That is the only way to make progress. Firing everyone and selling off is a very binary and terrible way of dealing with things in general. There are of course situations where it is the right thing to do, but if it is all you can do, then everything you attempt is doomed to failure, unless selling off is your core business, of course.

Gangsters don't expect respect, they expect fear, although they may refer to it as respect. People expect respect... children expect respect... wives/husbands expect respect... colleagues expect respect... you expect respect. Everyone expects more respect than they deserve. If, on the other hand, you/everyone keeps telling someone they are worthless, guess what happens?

Self-respect is a prerequisite for being ambitious. If government has low ambitions, it will have low achievements. Expect more from government at every level in politics, and things will improve. Stopping reform is just plain stupid - reform is another word for change - it can be for the better or for the worse. Only when you have a perfect system should you stop reforming - and that aint gonna happen in your lifetime.

Just shift spending from the military, avoid angering half the rest of the world and you should have plenty left to improve government.

So now learning things is a bad thing? Was this something you somehow picked up from TDWTF?

So as far as I can see, you just basically hate people. Except for people who are really rich - they should be allowed to earn lots of money... makes sense, right? Poor people should stay poor so they can stay in their little box.

Ok, we agree.
No. They deserve equal treatment, but not respect. It isn't respect to treat a person decently. re·spect
/riˈspekt/ Noun A feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities, or achievements. I'm not going to deeply admire someone until they perform their duties right. Respecting someone who is underperforming is removing accountability from the equation. It's the same liberal junk that expects to be able to reform felons. If we treat them nice, they'll start being nice. Didn't work in WWII. Doesn't work today. Appeasement is a failed experiment. How many times does it have to fail before we grow up and stop acting like hippies.
Self-respect is a horrible concept. Respect is earned from someone else. I believe the fabricated concept of self-esteem has ruined our ambition. Ambition is a desire from within yourself to improve your own standing in the hopes to be viewed in a better light or be rewarded. If you reward someone before they achieve, they'll never have the ambition to achieve. Again, failed philosophy, teen suicide higher than ever. The real support system is a loving family, not self-esteem. Self-esteem doesn't stop a bully from beating you up. When kids realize that self-esteem didn't help when they really needed it, they commit suicide. Another failed experiment, moving on.
Oh really. I don't think that you understand history. Certain groups in the world have chosen to hate us just to hate us. If we say anything kind to Israel, we're a target. If we say we don't want to be a Theocracy, we're a target. There is such a thing as evil, hijacked religion or not. Which goes back to the appeasement and reform experiment. Failed three times, please move on.
I'm not saying we stop learning. I'm saying, how many times does a cashier need retraining? How many times does a Post Office clerk need retraining. Unless the system changes, there's nothing to train. And trust me, they retrain, over and over and over. Besides, my point was that retraining is an excuse to look like a new job on paper, so you can report that you're creating jobs. Appeasing the poor are we. Hmm... they've really taken that far.
So, if I disagree with continually throwing money at problems. If I disagree with the concept of appeasement/self-esteem/unearned-respect, then I hate people. Because I'm not patting people on the back waiting for them to perform, I hate people. I'm all for creating real opportunity. Creating a school that trains poor people in skilled work, I'll back you. But I won't buy a poor guy a cell phone and wait for him to use it to send an email to a recruiter.

No, it looks like you dislike people. People that don't blindly believe that the failed appeasement system is working.

2013-06-03 Reply Admin

It's those awesome G-jobs that give us contractors our bread and butter. Easy money ha ha ha

2013-06-03 Reply Admin

xaade:

Oh really. I don't think that you understand history. Certain groups in the world have chosen to hate us just to hate us. If we say anything kind to Israel, we're a target. If we say we don't want to be a Theocracy, we're a target. There is such a thing as evil, hijacked religion or not. Which goes back to the appeasement and reform experiment. Failed three times, please move on.

So... that war in Afghanistan going well, is it? Oh, sorry, that war in Afghanistan and Pakistan? Protecting us from attacks by fanatics at home by fighting them over there, right?

Or how long does it take for that to qualify as a "failed experiment"?

2013-06-03 Reply Admin

Paul Neumann:
TFA:
...Steve noticed that flag_order_6612.pdf had somehow been written twice...
...“And then I rename the file, move it to a folder named FLAG_ORDERS..."
So, what file system running on "an old, yellowed Pentium desktop" allows one to save two different files to the same place, with the same name and DOES NOT simply overwrite the first?

I call shenanigans!

Ramon created file flag_order_6612.pdf for the first time. It was processed and deleted. Ramon created file flag_order_6612.pdf for a second time. The system barfed. What's so hard to understand about that?

Kivi · 2013-06-03 Reply Admin

herby:
GettinSadda:
Should have done this story next Friday!
Geeze, two pages of comments, and nobody gets this remark?
Of course it is pretty subtle.

Yeah, I noticed that too but didn't understand it. Is there something special about June 14 or is "next Friday" just a generic future date, possibly with some hidden innuendo?

2013-06-03 Reply Admin

Kivi:
herby:
GettinSadda:
Should have done this story next Friday!
Geeze, two pages of comments, and nobody gets this remark?
Of course it is pretty subtle.
Yeah, I noticed that too but didn't understand it. Is there something special about June 14 or is "next Friday" just a generic future date, possibly with some hidden innuendo?

June 14th is Flag Day in the US.

2013-06-03 Reply Admin

Someone:
June 14th is Flag Day in the US.

BTW, I wouldn't have had any idea without prompting, but it occurred to me that's what the poster was referring to so looked it up. (I did get it by thinking up "flag day" and not looking up "what's on June 14th?")

2013-06-03 Reply Admin

trtrwtf:

Rather, their complaint was that they did not believe the government had the moral right to tell citizens how much soda they were allowed to drink, and that such laws are inherently squandering the taxpayers' money, no matter how "efficiently" they are carried out.

Okay, I'll bite. Bearing in mind that I actually think a soft drink ban is an idiotic policy, I still think it's inane to talk about a government's "moral rights" to take such an action. What's the moral basis for saying that the state can regulate the sale of, say, viagra, but not sugar?

This is one of the few issues where I agree with "Libertarians", so I'll see if I can explain it to you.

It's immoral for the government to regulate sugar. It's ALSO immoral for the government to regulate Viagra. Your rights end where my rights begin. Essentially, you can't commit a crime if there is no victim, and the victim and perpetrator cannot be the same person. Since it doesn't hurt you at all if I'm sitting at home drinking two liters of soda or popping Viagra or snorting cocaine, none of those should be illegal.

snoofle · 2013-06-03 Reply Admin

Kivi:
herby:
GettinSadda:
Should have done this story next Friday!
Geeze, two pages of comments, and nobody gets this remark?
Of course it is pretty subtle.
Yeah, I noticed that too but didn't understand it. Is there something special about June 14 or is "next Friday" just a generic future date, possibly with some hidden innuendo?

Flag Day

2013-06-03 Reply Admin

Jazz:
The problem with the Salon Socialist argument is that a maximally-efficient system does not necessarily translate into maximum job satisfaction or "worthiness" for every employee, nor is that a design requirement. (Though it is a noble aspiration.)

Why is that a problem? Efficiency is not some all-powerful god we must worship. It's a means to an end -- that end being maximum human happiness. Efficiency lets you get more done with less resources, so you can use those same resources to satisfy other needs and wants.

Engineering is about solving human problems, and if efficiency is somehow the source of that problem, then we should build something less efficient. I mean, 99.9999% of cases I'd expect that building a more efficient process and then paying people to do nothing would maximize happiness better than paying people to do something very inefficiently...but hey, theoretically if we have the spare resources and this guy actually WANTED to do this by hand, why not let him?

2013-06-03 Reply Admin

urza9814:
This is one of the few issues where I agree with "Libertarians", so I'll see if I can explain it to you.
It's immoral for the government to regulate sugar. It's ALSO immoral for the government to regulate Viagra. Your rights end where my rights begin. Essentially, you can't commit a crime if there is no victim, and the victim and perpetrator cannot be the same person. Since it doesn't hurt you at all if I'm sitting at home drinking two liters of soda or popping Viagra or snorting cocaine, none of those should be illegal.

Okay, so you agree that as long as the government can regulate viagra and cocaine, it can regulate sugar? That is, your objection is to regulation of any of these products?

It looks to me like you're agreeing with me on the point I'm making, which is that these sorts of regulation are basically similar, and there's nothing very different between regulating one and regulating the other.

The difference is that you think no such regulation should be allowed, and I'm afraid that you have failed to make a convincing case for that position. You might be able to make a convincing case that the soda ban is a bad regulation, which would be a different case, but you're not going to convince people that the FDA should stop regulating the purity of or access to viagra. Furthermore, considering the state of things in the absence of such regulation, you know that you really don't want to win that argument, so let's stop talking silliness.

2013-06-03 Reply Admin

chubertdev:
Loyal reader:
4. Just shift spending from the military, avoid angering half the rest of the world and you should have plenty left to improve government.

So now soldiers, defense contractors, and other related workers are out of business. They flood the job market with a large number of people ranging from skilled to burger flippers, and wages plummet, unemployment balloons, and the economy is ruined.

Reality sucks.

Unemployment is GOOD! Well, in a way. Once upon a time, people worked 16 hours a day, 7 days a week and still sometimes couldn't satisfy their basic needs of food, shelter, clothing, water, etc. Now, most people satisfy all of those and far more with 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Compared to our natural state, humanity is currently around 64% unemployment. More if you count childhood and retirement. But, somewhere along the line we realized that letting 2/3 of the population starve to death isn't really good for business, so we decided we'd just give people enough resources to live while allowing them to work less. And the 8-hour day, weekend, paid leave, etc were born!

If you look at what wages have been in the past compared to how average worker productivity has increased, minimum wage should be over $20/hr today. So, we have enough productivity to raise minimum wage to $20/hr...if we did that while cutting the work week to 20 hours we'd have minimum wage workers earning more money than they do right now while simultaneously doubling the number of available jobs. Of course, all that money that used to be going to the workers had to go somewhere -- it went to the high-level executives. So they'd have to take a pay cut. But shit, I earn $60k/yr and I literally have more money than I know what to do with -- and while being young and single does tend to keep my expenses down, I don't see how anyone could possibly spend millions in any reasonable way. It ends up just stagnating in a bank account somewhere dragging the economy down -- because it's not dollar amounts that drive the economy, it's the velocity of that money. Two guys with $1 each who buy from each other every day have a healthier economy between them than two millionaires who never spend a dime.

2013-06-03 Reply Admin

trtrwtf:
urza9814:
This is one of the few issues where I agree with "Libertarians", so I'll see if I can explain it to you.
It's immoral for the government to regulate sugar. It's ALSO immoral for the government to regulate Viagra. Your rights end where my rights begin. Essentially, you can't commit a crime if there is no victim, and the victim and perpetrator cannot be the same person. Since it doesn't hurt you at all if I'm sitting at home drinking two liters of soda or popping Viagra or snorting cocaine, none of those should be illegal.

Okay, so you agree that as long as the government can regulate viagra and cocaine, it can regulate sugar? That is, your objection is to regulation of any of these products?

It looks to me like you're agreeing with me on the point I'm making, which is that these sorts of regulation are basically similar, and there's nothing very different between regulating one and regulating the other.

The difference is that you think no such regulation should be allowed, and I'm afraid that you have failed to make a convincing case for that position. You might be able to make a convincing case that the soda ban is a bad regulation, which would be a different case, but you're not going to convince people that the FDA should stop regulating the purity of or access to viagra. Furthermore, considering the state of things in the absence of such regulation, you know that you really don't want to win that argument, so let's stop talking silliness.

Well, first, let's be clear that there are different kinds of regulation. I'm only opposing regulation limiting the purchase and consumption for consenting adults. I'm NOT saying they should give Viagra to three year olds, NOR am I saying they should stopping making sure it's the proper purity and safe to consume. I have no problem with regulation of beef, for example. I WOULD have a problem if they decided you have to show ID to purchase a steak and can only buy two pounds per month of meat.

In addition to those, there's one other type of regulation that's a bit of a thin line -- "common good". Things like making sure people aren't popping antibiotics every day because it'll breed drug-resistant diseases. I'm honestly not sure where I stand on this one -- because on the one hand, it is a serious problem that harms all of society, and I already know people who get some seriously strong antibiotics ("Z-Pack") prescribed every time they have a freakin cold...so while I personally hate going to doctors when I already know exactly what's wrong and just need someone who can write a prescription, I also don't want idiots popping antibiotics every day like they're freakin vitamins.

But as far as I know, there are no such issues with Viagra. You can kill yourself with it, certainly, but you're not really going to harm anyone else. So yes, it's immoral for that to be regulated, it's immoral for pot to be regulated, it's immoral for sugar to be regulated. Yes, they're all the same class of regulation, and that entire class is immoral. First, the government is not your mommy and daddy, if you're a grown adult you have a right to make your own decisions about your life, even if they're poor decisions. Secondly, why the hell should we be paying to house and feed prisoners who haven't harmed anyone? Why should our government pay ~$50,000 to house some guy who otherwise would be sitting in his basement smoking pot or popping pills and not hurting anyone?

Stan Rogers · 2013-06-03 Reply Admin

radarbob:
I.T. is often seen as overhead not a profit center. New tools, better qualified staff, etc. is simply not a priority.

It can sometimes be surprising how far this attitude reaches. One of my early programming jobs was in MIS at a finance software/services shop, mostly providing project management, collaboration, scheduling, issue tracking, and the like for the people who wrote and maintained the product software. There were two of us in MIS, and something on the order of 400 programmers working on the products.

I remember getting an angry email from one of the product development managers about delays (of a few days on a six month projected schedule) in releasing a new integrated system to tie all of the various back ends together. Rather than get defensive, I sent him a code dump — of roughly four times the amount of code his team of 12 had been working on for the past three years in creating v2.0 of their software, in five different languages (C, Java, a dialect of Basic, JavaScript and a proprietary macro language, not counting any of the web or rich client UI code), all neatly packaged into non-redundant APIs &c. — along with unit tests, the ginormous spec doc and a list of outstanding bugward-compatibility issues that still needed to be addressed. (Remaining compatible with undocumented behaviours in legacy systems is always the fun part, isn't it?)

The reaction was, predictably, "I... didn't know..." Sure, to the rest of the corp, we were still the oft-maligned "cost centre", but there was a whole different tone to communications with his group for the rest of my time there. And while that company and product no longer exist, I'd like to think that wherever that manager is now, the "drones" there are leading somewhat more pleasant lives than most.

2013-06-03 Reply Admin

TGV:
ObiWayneKenobi:
Why exactly IS the government so clueless with everything? Just a result of being so huge and unwieldy? Every single gov IT story I've seen has the same kind of stuff in it which usually results in some drone being given a menial job that they can work until they die.
THIS is why we need smaller government, folks.
You've just written: we need smaller government in order to prevent some drone being given a menial job that they can work until they die. Are you a) a salon socialist, who considers that everyone should get a worthy job? b) a tech utopist, who thinks every menial job can be automated and what could possibly go wrong? c) a closet libertarian, who thinks that such tasks should just not be performed, resulting in anarchy? d) a proud tea partier, who terminates every discussion with the phrase "THIS is why we need smaller government, folks."?

I'm b, c, and d, although I'm not a closet libertarian, I'm quite open about it. I would guess from your question that you're just a common idiot though.

2013-06-03 Reply Admin

urza9814:
Jazz:
The problem with the Salon Socialist argument is that a maximally-efficient system does not necessarily translate into maximum job satisfaction or "worthiness" for every employee, nor is that a design requirement. (Though it is a noble aspiration.)

Why is that a problem? Efficiency is not some all-powerful god we must worship. It's a means to an end -- that end being maximum human happiness. Efficiency lets you get more done with less resources, so you can use those same resources to satisfy other needs and wants.

Engineering is about solving human problems, and if efficiency is somehow the source of that problem, then we should build something less efficient. I mean, 99.9999% of cases I'd expect that building a more efficient process and then paying people to do nothing would maximize happiness better than paying people to do something very inefficiently...but hey, theoretically if we have the spare resources and this guy actually WANTED to do this by hand, why not let him?

Because using my money to pay somebody to do nothing minimizes my happiness.

2013-06-03 Reply Admin

Loyal reader:
ObiWayneKenobi:

THIS is why we need smaller government, folks.

This is not why you need smaller government - that would just make the problem worse.

You need to respect your government, so that it can be self-respecting.

You need to allow your government to invest in good people and proper IT infrastructure (notice that word: "invest") to avoid this sort of thing.

You need to invest in retraining to lift people from this kind of manual work.

It was and is allowed to do all that, and yet it doesn't happen. That's because there's an inherent flaw in the system, not just because we're missing "the right people".

chubertdev · 2013-06-03 Reply Admin

urza9814:
chubertdev:
Loyal reader:
4. Just shift spending from the military, avoid angering half the rest of the world and you should have plenty left to improve government.

So now soldiers, defense contractors, and other related workers are out of business. They flood the job market with a large number of people ranging from skilled to burger flippers, and wages plummet, unemployment balloons, and the economy is ruined.

Reality sucks.

Unemployment is GOOD! Well, in a way. Once upon a time, people worked 16 hours a day, 7 days a week and still sometimes couldn't satisfy their basic needs of food, shelter, clothing, water, etc. Now, most people satisfy all of those and far more with 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Compared to our natural state, humanity is currently around 64% unemployment. More if you count childhood and retirement. But, somewhere along the line we realized that letting 2/3 of the population starve to death isn't really good for business, so we decided we'd just give people enough resources to live while allowing them to work less. And the 8-hour day, weekend, paid leave, etc were born!

If you look at what wages have been in the past compared to how average worker productivity has increased, minimum wage should be over $20/hr today. So, we have enough productivity to raise minimum wage to $20/hr...if we did that while cutting the work week to 20 hours we'd have minimum wage workers earning more money than they do right now while simultaneously doubling the number of available jobs. Of course, all that money that used to be going to the workers had to go somewhere -- it went to the high-level executives. So they'd have to take a pay cut. But shit, I earn $60k/yr and I literally have more money than I know what to do with -- and while being young and single does tend to keep my expenses down, I don't see how anyone could possibly spend millions in any reasonable way. It ends up just stagnating in a bank account somewhere dragging the economy down -- because it's not dollar amounts that drive the economy, it's the velocity of that money. Two guys with $1 each who buy from each other every day have a healthier economy between them than two millionaires who never spend a dime.

Wow, you must have a lot of unemployment on your hands.

2013-06-03 Reply Admin

Jazz:
The problem with the Closet Libertarian argument is that history shows us that people cannot be trusted to do the right thing if there aren't systemic incentives and disincentives to push them in that direction (aka 'human nature').

That's not a problem, that's a feature. The problem is people in charge thinking that their way is the right way. That's what more than 50% of the WTF's on here are all about. Why does it matter if that person is a CEO of a company or a President of a country? If you're complaining on here about management always doing it wrong, then you should also be complaining in the same way about politicians. It's the identical setup, except politicians can kill you or imprison you or take your stuff, which makes them worse. Thus we need to make extra sure they have as little influence as possible.

2013-06-03 Reply Admin

chubertdev:
Loyal reader:
4. Just shift spending from the military, avoid angering half the rest of the world and you should have plenty left to improve government.

So now soldiers, defense contractors, and other related workers are out of business. They flood the job market with a large number of people ranging from skilled to burger flippers, and wages plummet, unemployment balloons, and the economy is ruined.

Reality sucks.

No, the economy adjusts. Slower than you would like, sure, but tough cookies.

dkf · 2013-06-03 Reply Admin

Anonymous Paranoiac:
Because using my money to pay somebody to do nothing minimizes my happiness.

No, enslaving you and working you to death carrying round rotting carcasses with your bare hands while beating you with whips would minimize your happiness.

THIS is why we need smaller government, folks.

2013-06-03 Reply Admin

herby:
GettinSadda:
Should have done this story next Friday!
Geeze, two pages of comments, and nobody gets this remark?
Of course it is pretty subtle.

Not many people in the US know about Flag Day.

dkf · 2013-06-03 Reply Admin

R:
Ramon said. “What can I do you for?”
"I'm not that kind of guy..."

THIS is why we need smaller government, folks.

2013-06-03 Reply Admin

Anonymous Paranoiac:
urza9814:
Jazz:
The problem with the Salon Socialist argument is that a maximally-efficient system does not necessarily translate into maximum job satisfaction or "worthiness" for every employee, nor is that a design requirement. (Though it is a noble aspiration.)

Why is that a problem? Efficiency is not some all-powerful god we must worship. It's a means to an end -- that end being maximum human happiness. Efficiency lets you get more done with less resources, so you can use those same resources to satisfy other needs and wants.

Engineering is about solving human problems, and if efficiency is somehow the source of that problem, then we should build something less efficient. I mean, 99.9999% of cases I'd expect that building a more efficient process and then paying people to do nothing would maximize happiness better than paying people to do something very inefficiently...but hey, theoretically if we have the spare resources and this guy actually WANTED to do this by hand, why not let him?

Because using my money to pay somebody to do nothing minimizes my happiness.

So...either:

You're just a heartless bastard who takes pleasure in the pain of others -- in which case, there is no role for you in society.
You misunderstood my argument. For all of human history, resources have been the driving factor behind human happiness, and therefore efficiency has been a quite noble goal. But it's not guaranteed that this will hold forever. It might, but if someday it doesn't then efforts to improve efficiency should be scaled back. And it's not as absurd a scenario as it sounds -- growth is far smaller in industrialized nations than unindustrialized ones...yet production is much higher. It's hardly inconceivable to think that one day we will produce more goods than we can consume -- in fact, you could argue we already passed that point which is why we had to start limiting the work week to 40 hours. At that point you have a couple options -- you either start firing people, you pay people to not work, or you pay people to throw crap they've juts produced into the ocean or something. But if you're producing more than you consume, firing people doesn't work. They either get government money (paid to do nothing); get supported by friends and family (paid to do nothing); or they starve to death in which case the number of consumers decreases meaning you need to fire even more people. So you're left with pay people for nothing or pay them to make crap that they just immediately throw away. Given those two options, paying people to do nothing (or, more accurately, paying them to do whatever the heck they want) is the only logical action.

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