New AOTW category

Starting a new Arsehole Of The Week category for really, really stupid and annoying people.  It should be a popular category.

The inaugural AOTW award winner goes to Mellisa Blakemore, who, apart from having an annoyingly trendily spelt name, is yet another one of the Flat Earth Society anti-vaccination idiots.

Mellisa[sic] is outraged, OUTRAGED I tell you, that her little snowflake's high school helped prevent him from dying horribly from assorted easily prevented contagious diseases by giving him a Gardasil innoculation.

Mellisa[sic] is particularly outraged that her express wishes were not followed, despite said snowflake giving legal consent themselves to do so.  Presumably this will continue for some time, probably around the heat death of the sun or similar, because like all similar wackos with a simplistic mindset based on paranoia and lack of logical thought, I can't see her changing her excuse for a "mind" any time soon.

“My son doesn’t comprehend that sort of stuff, they don’t actually get the other side of the story so he’s not well informed enough to make those decisions when put on the spot,” she whined.

“From a parent’s point of view, giving us consent forms then going over our heads is just abominable and terrible.”

Sorry, Mellisa[sic], but the only thing abominable here is that despite all the evidence to the contrary, you're the one indoctrinating a child with your cultist beliefs, and endangering their health by risking their lives in the name of  your personal dogma.

In a splendid display of timeliness, a study was released earlier this week showing that analysis of 1.25 million vaccine recipients revealed zero correlation between vaccination and the oft-touted boogeyman diseases of autism.

Of course, Mellisa[sic] will be the first one to be lined up at the Doctor's to get her ball of joy diagnosed with ADHD and medicated into a stupor with Ritalin when she can't cope with a few tantrums, right?

Even the Queen Flatearther herself of anti-vax Jenny McCarthy has recently begun (futile) efforts to distance herself from her illogical statements.  She's naturally hired a PR firm to spin her point of view into something she hopes will confuse most people enough to forget she's another looney wacko, but while you can sometimes head it off a bit, fundamentally you can't cure stupid - and this is a prime example.

Of course, what people like Mellisa[sic] conveniently ignore is that they're not the only people on earth, and they'll fully expect to let their little germbag virus factory interact fully with the rest of society, and then further expect society to provide taxpayer funding for the medical care when their snowflake contracts every childhood disease easily prevented.

Congratulations, Mellisa[sic].  Here's your award.

Legend

Asian quality

This is the new Samsung phone charger.  Charges both the phone and the owner simultaneously!

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=2d1_1398229223

That's what I do

I really need to work on a version of this for my boss.

Wassup??

Actual conversation with my management yesterday.

Manager 1: Can you make an alarm display to monitor the potential impact of [event].  We need it by close of business.

Me: Sure, but can we first discuss exactly what you want the display to do, so I understand the requirements?  I have to write and test code, plus design and build a GUI page, which takes quite a bit of time, so I'd like to get it right first time.

M1: Can't you just do it the same as last time?

Me: That's why I'd like to discuss what you want in detail.  I didn't build the monitoring last time, and I don't think the way it was done was of much value - I'd like to understand exactly what you want it to show you.

Manager 2: We want to see any power issues.

Me: OK, network or service power issues?  The former won't be a problem as the sites area hosted environment with multiple backups, the latter are dependent on customer sites.  Those are not network issues, and nor can we do anything about them.  And the customer doesn't have power to any of their equipment then I doubt they will care less if one isolated piece of equipment we just happen to supply still has a few LEDs lit, yeah?

M1: How did we do it last time?

Me: We did the customer site monitoring I just described, which is why I ask, because it's a total waste of time and doesn't tell you anything useful.

M1: Let's just do that again then.

Me: OK, I'll just put the display from last time up and change the labels on it.

M1: But will that monitor the right sites?

Me: No, but if all we're generating is useless numbers that mean nothing then I might as well spend as little time doing it as possible.

M2: But we have to report on this to senior management.

Me: Report what??  As I said at the start, you need to tell me what you need to report on, so I know what to build.  You need to tell me precisely what devices you want to look at, and precisely what conditions you want to observe.  [Monitoring system] reports specific events, it's not fuzzy logic.

M2: Just do the same thing as last time.  And I also need to know [bizarre requirement].

Me: Sorry, [monitoring system] can't do that.

M2: I don't care, I need it for reporting.

Me: I heard you, but that doesn't change what [monitoring system] is capable of.  It can't do that function, not possible.

M2: Look, I've got to go to another meeting, but this needs to happen [leaves].

Me: (to M1) You do understand that what M2 is asking for is impossible, don't you?  Look, what I'm hearing here is that you just want something that looks flash and gives the impression that we're being proactive just in case senior management ask then fine, yeah?  I'll chuck something together.  It won't do anything particularly useful but it will look cool, and you'll be able to point to it if you are asked.  Will that do you?

M1: Got it in one, let's do it.



I code frantically for 2 hours and finally knock the damn thing out about an hour after knock-off time.  E-mail to all concerned explaining how to get to it, what it does, how to read it etc.

Fast forward to this morning:


M1: Is it possible for you to make some changes...

Me: THIS IS WHY I FUCKING ASKED YOU TO DEFINE WHAT IT NEEDED TO DO YESTERDAY, NUMB NUTS!

See ya, Mt Gox

One of the highlights of the entire week has been the geek reactions to the collapse of the Mt Gox bitcoin exchange.

Bitcoin is, by its very nature, an unregulated, unmanaged currency, with no centralised authority of management, no guarantees of security and no means of assuring stability.  It exists specifically as a way to provide a transaction channel untraceable and untaxable by governments.

So, of course, what's the first thing the aggrieved users did when Mt Gox collapsed after a hostile hack?  They went crying to mummy the feds that the nasty men had taken their lunch money.

What a bunch of morons.  What did you expect would happen?

That's right up there with calling the cops to complain that you've just been ripped off on a drug deal, or that your weed has been stolen.  Which is in of itself a somewhat ironic analogy when you consider that probably the biggest use for the Bitcoin currency was the Silk Road illegal drugs market which got busted last year.

Quite apart from anything else, if the cops were to investigate the issue, they're only going to do so with the aim being a prosecution of the perpetrator.  That means understanding the Bitcoin systems, having access to the inner workings (if the NSA hasn't arranged that already), and generally gathering evidence to do something about it.  Um, hello people... do you want to maybe think about that first?

Mt Gox, of course, blame a weakness in the Bitcoin systems for allowing the hack.  Bitcoin says that Mt Gox's kung-fu is not so good.  Who knows?

Of course, the final irony is that each Bitcoin actually has a marker, which means that (unless the ledger logs have been erased), the transaction trail of where the Mt Gox Bitcoins are is theoretically traceable - thereby - which means that the whole point of anonymity of Bitcoin is a nonexistent farce in the first place.  All the cops would need to do is seize the Bitcoin account of an arms dealer, drug dealer, garden variety scumbag etc and look at the ledger transactions to see where their cash came from.  Even better than marked money, because it works in reverse!

And here I was wondering why the governments of the world had allowed Bitcoin to exist.   :rolleyes:

In the meantime, people are further illustrating their lack of understanding of exactly how screwed they are by suing Mt Gox, although exactly how they plan to do sue a Japanese company from the USA is unclear.  Not that that would stop your average litigation-happy American, I suppose.  I wish them luck - they're going to need it - the money is gone, the company is filing for bankruptcy, and any purported success will at best see them one step above your classic unsecured creditor in line for a few fractions of a cent in the dollar of capital that no longer exists.

The bottom line is that Bitcoin isn't real money, as some of the more well grounded commentators of the financial sector have commented (over the howls of disaffected true believers).  That may well relegate any claim against Mt Gox to even less than complaining to the filth your stash has been ripped off - it's right down there with trying to report your Sword of Smiting has been stolen in WOW.

Good luck with complaining effectively about both.  You're gonna need it.