asciilifeform: 'For the fact is that being inside a whale is a very comfortable, cosy, homelike thought. The historical Jonah, if he can be so called, was glad enough to escape, but in imagination, in day-dream, countless people have envied him. It is, of course, quite obvious why. The whale's belly is simply a womb big enough for an adult. There you are, in the dark, cushioned space that exactly fits you, with yards of blubber between yours
asciilifeform: 'and when we had nothing remaining to eat, they gave us a turnip, they gave us a beet. "here, have some mice, have some fleas! here, have some typhus! die of disease!"' - warsaw ghetto
gribble: Peter Kinder - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kinder>; Home | Missouri Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder Official Web Site: <http://ltgov.mo.gov/>; Peter Kinder (@PeterKinder) | Twitter: <https://twitter.com/peterkinder>
BingoBoingo: Also there is a prominent prolly unrelated missouri politician name...
asciilifeform: 'and then he came home to find his family packed into a gasenwagen, and himself on a train to auschwitz, where he caught typhus in a week.' 'dude i'd so totally blog all that'
BingoBoingo: mircea_popescu: qntra is the news. We maintain credibility by putting that shit in the log now to link later. 5 months old... still toddling
assbot: Logged on 26-02-2015 20:56:41; BingoBoingo: asciilifeform: alternate explanation, he came home to a spread of kiddie porn and toilet tank cocaine tagged with a note stating there was a "kinder" way out.
gribble: The operation succeeded.
assbot: Schweich sent an open letter encouraging gubernatorial run - The Missouri Times ... ( http://bit.ly/1AP4o72 )
BingoBoingo: Back to srs commentary on news... Schweich had primary and general election in the bag >> http://themissouritimes.com/14953/schweich-sent-open-letter-requesting-gubernatorial-run/
BingoBoingo: <asciilifeform> must -understand- code and write sane version << My limit for the forseeable future is maybe spot errors.
assbot: Logged on 26-02-2015 20:54:13; asciilifeform: merely suggesting that an official statement from usg has the same credibility as the testimony of a habitual mugger who's been in and out of jails since he was 8 y.o., given upon apprehension at 4am in an alley
nubbins`: he's sleeping in the restaurant now?
mircea_popescu: nubbins` yeah well if you're about to take down the president but can't resist a little social pressure...
BingoBoingo: asciilifeform: The orphanage burning version, see if stable.
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: what thing. the one that leaks memory? why waste -any- time on it?
BingoBoingo planning to find OBSD rentaboxen in the 1-3 month timeline to play with build and sync of foundation thing.
mircea_popescu: you spend a year's salary on throwing the biggest party ever.
mircea_popescu: dude, that's not what you do. what you do is, you go to the biggest restaurant in town and start buying people drinks and lunches.
mircea_popescu: BingoBoingo: Then last night panicked phone calls and forever silence. << i don't get these people. nismann (argentine da, shot by state because threatening to put president in jail) was the same way : spent his crucial night before the great day ALONE ?!?!?!
nubbins` pictures own mother softly singing "you don't want to fuck with shady, 'cause shady will fucking kill you" while wiping countertops
BingoBoingo: <asciilifeform> with regards to 0.5.3, i was expecting to see some technical discussion re: total rework of the blockchain sync mechanism and its idiocies, but this didn't happen << "Numbers Station"
asciilifeform: (rather -and-)
asciilifeform: evidently, no one has the time or inclination
asciilifeform: with regards to 0.5.3, i was expecting to see some technical discussion re: total rework of the blockchain sync mechanism and its idiocies, but this didn't happen
nubbins`: it's actually a fine way to dig in on this poster project, but i don't have the time or the inclination to dig through years of phoundation phollies
nubbins`: i feel like one of you guys would be in the know
nubbins`: things that shine the light, as it were
nubbins`: BingoBoingo, cazalla much work involved in collating a list -- say 10-20 items -- of the phoundation's biggest boondoggles/fuckups/skeletons/whatever?
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform quite substantially the same thing yes
asciilifeform: if only to fix obvious and intolerable flaws like the orphans leak
asciilifeform: the thing is, eventually this 0.5.3 thing is going to have to, like or not, -add- vs merely remove
BingoBoingo: Well, I also read the previous porting efforts
BingoBoingo: asciilifeform> nubbins`: mircea_popescu takes a 'sapper errs once' attitude to bitcoin compatibility, for reasons which should need no explanation << Kinda why my -qt OpenBSD experiment is vaguely described in blog post. If I hit a grendade do not want others suffering same one
asciilifeform: see his article re: how 'no one alive has the authority to create a fork, deliberate or otherwise' (don't have link handy)
PeterL: asciilifeform: sort of making a static fork of the library with only the parts used by bitcoind?
asciilifeform: bitwise-identical doesn't need a mathematician to prove... just a copy of 'diff'
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: this is actually the reason why my first suggestion was to merely rip out the relevant parts of openssl (pick a version) so as the build ends up - 1) self-contained 2) bitwise identical binary
BingoBoingo: <asciilifeform> mircea_popescu: ecdsa << this is gonna go just like the christian scriptural translations thing, isnnit << Yes, and no curves can have identifiers which are too stand out, especially if they are useful at all
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: ecdsa << this is gonna go just like the christian scriptural translations thing, isnnit
mircea_popescu: ww3 and a decentscifi premise right there.
assbot: Logged on 26-02-2015 19:22:44; BingoBoingo: <asciilifeform> put'em on separate continents. << Hard part is not cloning the hardware. It is cloning the history and software.
mircea_popescu: http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=26-02-2015#1034655 << imagine the thing go wrong and alf becoming four alfettes.
mircea_popescu: BingoBoingo nice move linking the local site. should be standing policy : all news is local news, always eschew the aggregators, from reuters to gawker, in favour of the source.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: i meant actual tandem, as in 'every sig ever checked/generated from both interfaces, and all the world's bells will surely ring if the answer ever differs'
nubbins`: and what is the unit you're about to use in real units
BingoBoingo first heard this news on the radio while retreiving 1/5th of vodka from liquor retailor
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: i'd suggest, in characteristic crackpottery, to have the two ecdsa modules operate in tandem.
asciilifeform: if non exploitable, then 'it ain't a bug, it's a feature'
asciilifeform: you need mathematical proof
mircea_popescu: ie, "we imagine ourselves the owners of a distributed project"
mircea_popescu: the problem with the "if it valdiates the previous chain is good enough" approach is its very pure gavinderpitude.
asciilifeform: don't expect it to happen this side of the next millenium
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: somebody would have to cough up a mathematicized model of 'c' and stdlib + rest of the spittoon
mircea_popescu: well, no, but the openssl code as-was.
asciilifeform: one way or other.
BingoBoingo: thestringpuller: Original block 168000 fork no one knew about
thestringpuller: mircea_popescu: are you talking about the berkleydb thing?
mircea_popescu: you're stuck with that. how do you think the original fork happened.
asciilifeform: (if you're waiting for someone to mathematically prove equivalence, you'll be waiting a long time)
asciilifeform: if ends up with bitwise identical blockchain on disk (minus time data) then quite likely correct.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: not 'testnet' but deterministic sync from single node (neither on public net)
BingoBoingo: asciilifeform: Working on the second part
thestringpuller: "Almost all BitGo API interfaces require authentication. This begins with a username/password at the Login Endpoint and requires 2-factor authentication via Authy or your mobile phone (set up via the BitGo website)."
mircea_popescu: how exactly is the api working ? gpg ?
mircea_popescu: it'd have been a lot more helpful if instead of empty boasts and declarative statements they just explained the math.
mircea_popescu: "BitGo is the only company in the industry we trust to secure our hot wallet. The integration was very straightforward, and now I can sleep better at night knowing that my customers' holdings are secured with BitGo."
BingoBoingo: thestringpuller: http://qntra.net/2015/02/bitgo-offers-insurance-the-fdic-way/#comment-11785
asciilifeform: but afaik, none of the extant 'alternatives' is an actual alternative.
asciilifeform: because they don't belong living with people.
asciilifeform: but count me 100% in favour of mircea_popescu's proposal to get these idiots off computers and preferably - eventually - off the electric grid likewise.
asciilifeform: and what's more, because bitmaps aren't much flowing over the wire, it'll be usably fast.
asciilifeform: fact is, i can run a graphical proggy on machine at other side of my house, or other side of the planet, and have the output - regardless of where in my display devices i shove it - look -exactly- the same as if it were local
nubbins`: well. either mapping the phailings of the phoundation (someone with knowledge of recent "vote" should chime in here) or the virtues of the .foundation
asciilifeform: in favour of either nothing or winblows-style whole-display 'remote desktop' bullshit
asciilifeform: PeterL: most 'alternatives for x11' dispense with the everything-can-be-piped-over-tcp
PeterL: asciilifeform: which functionality are they trying to remove?
nubbins`: offer it as "mystery poster" for the cost of s&h
asciilifeform: and so do other thinking folks.
asciilifeform: and fuck the 'desktop unix!!111!!!111' people with red hot dildo.
asciilifeform: i don't care what the fuck else it does.
gabriel_laddel: BingoBoingo: I was looking for an article with photos from MP touring the US where he comments something to effect of "the US is fucked, it is a collection of people who have nothing in common". In any case, the hotel article should suffice.
assbot: Logged on 21-08-2014 03:24:30; asciilifeform: most russians in chechnya, pre-collapse, weren't instinctively afraid of their neighbours either.
BingoBoingo: gabriel_laddel: You want the hotel article
assbot: 0 results for 'ethnic war is just like regular war except that the uniforms are glued on' : http://s.b-a.link/?q=ethnic+war+is+just+like+regular+war+except+that+the+uniforms+are+glued+on
gabriel_laddel: !s ethnic war is just like regular war except that the uniforms are glued on
thestringpuller: gabriel_laddel: this is a good country. in a world where a country betrays their soldiers, what do those soldiers do?
PeterL: asciilifeform: the ones trying to assasinate Hitler?
gabriel_laddel: eh, not what I wanted, and I don't care to find the article. In any case, what is 'your country' anyway?
gribble: The crime of being American pe Trilema - Un blog de Mircea Popescu.: <http://trilema.com/the-crime-of-being-american>; #bitcoin-assets +m pe Trilema - Un blog de Mircea Popescu.: <http://trilema.com/2014/bitcoin-assets-m/>; The future of Bitcoin regulation pe Trilema - Un blog de Mircea ...: <http://trilema.com/2013/the-future-of-bitcoin-regulation/>
thestringpuller: PeterL: this is why there are no patriots anymore.
BingoBoingo: thestringpuller: Why not just use pf
PeterL: BingoBoingo: article mentions he was on the phone just before shot was heard, perhaps agent was explaining how he would find those things tomorrow unless
BingoBoingo: asciilifeform: alternate explanation, he came home to a spread of kiddie porn and toilet tank cocaine tagged with a note stating there was a "kinder" way out.
gabriel_laddel: The very same. Lovely music, this.
asciilifeform: ^ aha the 'inner emigration' folks
asciilifeform: merely suggesting that an official statement from usg has the same credibility as the testimony of a habitual mugger who's been in and out of jails since he was 8 y.o., given upon apprehension at 4am in an alley
asciilifeform: or rather, not necessarily
thestringpuller: asciilifeform: oh you're saying they staged his death and now he's prisoner until actual death?
asciilifeform: thestringpuller: nope
asciilifeform: for all we know, he's sitting on an anthill right now somewhere at 'the farm' (look it up), writhing on camera for showing to future 'candidates'
asciilifeform: unless you know that schmuck personally, don't blithely assume that he died in his house (conveniently pictured in article) or that his wife is still alive, etc
BingoBoingo: Pretense of credibility was likely established with "negative campaign ad" run beginning yesterday by local kook who presented no credible chance at winning the office
asciilifeform: punkman: the distinction is meaningless
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: the most 'instructive' deaths are usually reserved for 'former assets'
asciilifeform: because, possibly, found to have been planning some action to which there is no convenient, clean usg response.
asciilifeform: (or, alternatively, needed to be taken off the gameboard in an unusual hurry)
asciilifeform: mike_c: 'nailgun' in this context is the proverbial 'convenient suicide' of someone who 'needed to have problems'
mike_c: well, sort of unimportant. it is stylish when they actually use a nailgun
asciilifeform: mike_c: the actual type of small arm used is unimportant
BingoBoingo: Schweich was notorious for breaking up all kinds of small bezzels in his first terms as State Auditor, announced candidacy for governor a few weeks ago, would have probably won. Then last night panicked phone calls and forever silence.
chetty: <asciilifeform> what, i wonder, goes through their heads when the nailgun fires and their gut is stapled to their chair ?// they still dont believe
asciilifeform: what, i wonder, goes through their heads when the nailgun fires and their gut is stapled to their chair ?
assbot: Logged on 18-11-2014 01:12:37; asciilifeform: it will be a 'temporary relocation center' to them, even when the shower heads start hissing out the zyklon.
assbot: Logged on 18-11-2014 01:12:16; asciilifeform: at this point, quite a few people will not believe, e.g., the camps, even when they end up inside.
BingoBoingo: "His death was confirmed by his office early Thursday afternoon, just hours after Schweich had requested an interview with reporters for the Post-Dispatch and the Associated Press at his Clayton home later in the day."
asciilifeform: but posted it in case somebody takes an interest in the concept
asciilifeform: http://therealbitcoin.org/ml/btc-dev/2015-February/000052.html << ben_vulpes, mod6, jurov, mircea_popescu, et al
thestringpuller: asciilifeform: because of a corpse << reminds me of this tv show Venture Bros. First episode this henchman named Speedy was brutally killed by super body guard (Brock Samson). So in subsequent episodes the veteran henchman are like "So, lemme tell you about a story about a henchman named Speedy."
asciilifeform: while the original 1983 standard had warts that were fixed in 95
asciilifeform: none of the post-95 features are likely to be usable on a bare-metal build
asciilifeform: punkman: get the 'rationale' book. every piece of 'gnarl' is justified, and the justification reads like your local fire code - every line is likely there because of a corpse
punkman: I'd be interested in learning Ada (or other language), but damn that's some gnarly syntax
asciilifeform: punkman: that is clearly part of the puzzle
assbot: The FCC approves strong net neutrality rules - The Washington Post ... ( http://bit.ly/1AwUyrt )
mats: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2015/02/26/the-fcc-set-to-approve-strong-net-neutrality-rules/
punkman: asciilifeform: I wonder how much extra code we'll need to make microecc (or whatever else) parse/verify all the different crap already in blockchain
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: we're talking about the classical fictional clones, naturally, rather than the boring younger twin brother kind
BingoBoingo: <asciilifeform> put'em on separate continents. << Hard part is not cloning the hardware. It is cloning the history and software.
asciilifeform: do any of you feel up to the task of ada-izing this ?
asciilifeform: https://github.com/kmackay/micro-ecc/blob/master/uECC.c << ends up ~half again as long if you snip out the ifdefs for unreasonably small (8, 16-bit) machines
thestringpuller: asciilifeform: the process of removing openssl from bitcoind seems like that operation Tony Stark underwent.
asciilifeform: thestringpuller: 1) it does the basic maths 2) brief enough to be humanly readable with some effort
BingoBoingo: as far as user interface and "armored text block" goes, looks about right reop looks about right. Just needs to dump the part where done in go and depends on external google library
BingoBoingo: asciilifeform: Well, I offered the caveat of redone entirely.
gribble: The operation succeeded.
asciilifeform: recall mircea_popescu's article re: the petadollars' worth of precious paper that got 'thermonuked' in the new york flood ?
asciilifeform: other observation, of course, is that $maxint in stolen cash doesn't really deprive the bank of anything - more is printed, delivered next day
asciilifeform: for some reason hardly any ever bother to defuse the mine, even though its design is published quite openly in the patent (yes)
asciilifeform: 'If the police doesn't show up, off you go to your business. If the police does show up, butcher the civillians.' << already sop, palestine, etc. - just minus the bank part
asciilifeform: continues to stimulate the easily-stimulated, etc
assbot: Strategy for the antisocial struggle. pe Trilema - Un blog de Mircea Popescu. ... ( http://bit.ly/17BsasQ )
asciilifeform: jurov: can't recommend a large, recurring btc expense for s.nsa until revenue >0, and can't picture mircea_popescu liking the idea much either
asciilifeform: jurov: neato. hopefully this will still exist by the time it is needed
jurov: asciilifeform: so either that i7-3770 or Xeon E3-1245V2 with ECC RAM for 7 euros more
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: another butthurt 'clojure' user
BingoBoingo: asciilifeform: I'm guessing that fan didn't see your extant writings on the topic? Or perhaps wasn't a spamateur and had?
jurov: these other offers have considerable slower cpu than can be auctioned in hetzner at same price
asciilifeform: kakobrekla: i want the whole thing on one box because i haven't the time or inclination to play sysadmin
kakobrekla: anyway, i gave you the links, your call entirely
asciilifeform: thing is, the requirements are somewhat peculiar (minimal bandwidth, max cpu/ram, minimal disk)
kakobrekla: here is another cheap dedi http://bsnservers.com/dedicated-servers/dedicated-servers-in-europe
jurov: even cheaper than their auction?
kakobrekla: if you are converting there are cheaper options than hetzner
asciilifeform: 'you need to go fuck yourself in the arsehole with a nice red hot iron dildo. I think that ought to improve your minuscule intellect.' -- from today's fan mail
asciilifeform: jurov: cpu, then ram, then disk (not necessarily ssd, but at least mirrored mechanical)
jurov: i need to know what is the priority, CPU or RAM or SSD is a must?
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: but there is almost certainly a sound physical reason, because same was true on ru side
BingoBoingo: Maybe Garand might have had something to do with the mouth shitting trend though.
BingoBoingo: asciilifeform: Not the M-16 Based on "AR-10" M1 Garand inspired M-14 (still in limited recycled use)
BingoBoingo: Eugene Stoner was probably a stoner, if not occasional enthusiast of more interesting chemicals back then
BingoBoingo: asciilifeform: Well, guy who came up with USG's currrent rifle prototype did so during time when USia discovered the wonders of hallucinogenics
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: as far as i understand, usg's refusal to adopt the correct solution, the gas piston, was pure nationalistic lunacy and little else
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: gas fouling << don't build rifles that 'shit where they eat' - problem solved
mircea_popescu: "you don't refine your query, numbnuts. you BECOME the genie."
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: for some odd reason, the plumping shop 'guns' popular since '50s - didn't
mircea_popescu: all these kids hoping that some sort of magical "tech" is going to get them into the girl's panties were very poorly parented. apparently nobody told them any of the numerous genie stories.
mircea_popescu: the "3d printed" guns were obviously going to push towards regulation of bullets.
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: it is possible, with current tech, to recycle shells in jungle conditions, but not to produce them, or primers, or bullet adequate for modern rifle
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: it was clear to anyone who gives a fuck that usg would target ammunition, rather than small arms per se, when it 'gets serious'
assbot: Logged on 17-02-2015 18:26:21; asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: destroying the "industrial" paradigm << expand on this. recall also the thread where we discussed how pashtun blacksmiths can make kalash, yes they can, not not one of them can make a single 7.62x39 round from brass scrap
BingoBoingo: "But M855 has well-documented shortcomings against soft targets (see Somalia, Iraq, etc.) The other common loading, M193, is more effective against soft targets. So the side effect of this ruling would be that more AR-15 owners would buy rounds that are more effective in the typical domestic shooting. The only people this rule change protects is the government, whose varmints wear Kevlar."
asciilifeform: t with herbicides to get their money. Unlike soil erosion, compaction and pollution, breaches of this rule are easy to detect and enforce: if the inspectors see trees returning to the land, the subsidy can be cut off altogether.'
asciilifeform: 'There is just one set of rules that are effective and widely deployed: those that enforce the destruction of the natural world. Buried in the cross-compliance regulations is a measure called GAEC 12. This insists that, to receive their money, farmers must prevent "unwanted vegetation" from growing on their land. (The rest of us call it wildlife habitat.) Even if their land is producing nothing, they must cut, graze or spray i
thestringpuller: mircea_popescu: can't find the article which talks about kids in US being analagous to growing corn
chetty: As promised, President Obama is using executive actions to impose gun control on the nation, targeting the top-selling rifle in the country, the AR-15 style semi-automatic, with a ban on one of the most-used AR bullets by sportsmen and target shooters.
assbot: The Maschhoffs buys 2 Indiana pig farms - St. Louis Business Journal ... ( http://bit.ly/1DWPBt3 )
BingoBoingo: http://www.themaschhoffs.com/about/who_we_are/ << Headquarts is large steel and glass building many miles from any place charitably labeled a "town" One farmer many sharecroppers http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/news/2014/07/28/the-maschhoffs-buys-2-indiana-pig-farms.html
mircea_popescu: if the chem lobby seriously wants to strangle the pretty farm girl, that's one thing. but framing that discussion in terms of "rich" is about as helpful as proposing beer is better than wine because it bubbles.
mircea_popescu: keeping the same *proportions* that farm's easily running deficits of millions today, for the reasons explained in http://trilema.com/2013/the-corn-thing/
mircea_popescu: james smith's farm fed five hundred people in 1615. these aren't "500 out of the total pop of 5mn" for the same reason discussed in the thread about "average life expectancy"
BingoBoingo: Or they've surrendered in some cases to being a form of sharecropper. Depends on what and where they farm as well as how daddy ran the business
mircea_popescu: here's the thing : just because inflation has made every pauper think he holds money doesn't change the fact that a farmer today is worth a hundred million just by simply maintaining equality with a farmer of relatively the same social importance back in 1615.
mircea_popescu: "rich" does not mean what the poor imagine it means. the notion of running a farm on 26k subsidies a year... heh.
thestringpuller: if I was plaiyng the "take a shot when buzzword is used" drinking game
thestringpuller: so i'm on an All Hands call for the marketing department
assbot: The welfare dependants the government loves? Rich landowners | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian ... ( http://bit.ly/1DWNF41 )
mats: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/03/rich-landowners-farmers-welfare-nfu-defra another good one
assbot: With this attack on community energy the 'big six' win out over big society | George Monbiot | Environment | The Guardian ... ( http://bit.ly/1DWNrK9 )
mats: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2015/jan/23/community-energy-companies-big-six-big-society
mats: do you read the guardian often?
mike_c: "you should buy a stock whenver the chart looks like a squirrel sitting on a clown's shoulder"
mike_c: pete_dushenski: kudos for posting the follow up on that :)
pete_dushenski: danielpbarron nice work on the adult pogo guide!
trinque: +mircea_popescu | <trinque> http://deedbot.org/ << there be deeds << cool. why are some repeated ? << test values; I published bundles with the same messages a few times while working
assbot: The slaughtering of a bull. | Contravex: A blog by Pete Dushenski ... ( http://bit.ly/1DWKwB4 )
asciilifeform: 'I've never sailed the Amazon, / And I've never reached Brazil; / But the Don and Magdelana, / They can go there when they will!'
asciilifeform: danielpbarron: fortunately, should you wish to see emacs, there is no need to cross the equator and make your way through the jaguars to the ocelots
mircea_popescu: When I say, "Read the source," I mean, read Satoshi.
asciilifeform: and yes, it seems to show now, http://therealbitcoin.org/ml/btc-dev/2015-February/000051.html
asciilifeform: jurov: any idea why turdatron hiccupped the way it did? curious thing
mircea_popescu: the usdwolla thing is not news in any sense anyway.
mike_c: they were briefly the best way to get usd to mt gox, i don't think they've done anything since.
pete_dushenski: were they just a mt gox thing ?
lobbes: pete_dushenski: yeah, I received an email from Dwolla the other day about them partnering with usg.. made me happy I never did any transactions with them.
lobbes: re: meetings << Even when they are on-topic, they are rarely organized. I've actually overheard someone in a phone meeting: "we're having a lack of communication about x, I think we should have a meeting on it"
nubbins`: mp ok i'm gonna pull out, then
mircea_popescu: you can also expect to find the last time someone made fart jokes publicly @ the expense of people present buried under at least a decade of history.
nubbins`: when a large, once-profitable company suddenly goes belly-up or massively scales back, you can expect to find a high percentage of alexes on the payroll
mircea_popescu: the problem essentially is that specialist groups do need a variety talk, however "politeness" combined with that results into a lot of nooks and crannies where alex can hide.
nubbins`: "who, alex? he's been here longer than i have! knows the place inside out!"
nubbins`: eventually they learn their way around enough that latecomers can easily be fooled into thinking that the variety speak is representative of skill, not imitation
nubbins`: which, if it didn't accompany a pay raise, would engender the same line of questioning as a dismissal
nubbins`: so rather than facing "yep, we've let this dead weight collect a cheque for 15 years"
nubbins`: once an incompetent worker reaches a certain longevity, their dismissal is tacit admittance that they've been fooling everyone all along
pete_dushenski: "The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service (Fiscal Service) today announced that Pay.gov, the government’s secure web based collection portal for payments to federal agencies, now offers both PayPal and Dwolla as payment options." << from a few days ago.
nubbins`: chetty plenty of amoebas floating around in the upper levels
nubbins`: it was at this job that i realized just because you work as a computer programmer, doesn't mean you know even the basics of what computers are and how they work
nubbins`: mind you, this was the head of IT
mircea_popescu: thestringpuller lack of focus lack of schmokus. it's because they're impotent. they know they're impotent.
thestringpuller: mircea_popescu: people just hang around << i find this is because people lack focus during the meeting. You stay on topic until someone mentions something off topic. "Blah blah blha pink floyd" "Oh you like pink floyd?" 30 minutes later you realize you're still talking about a 70's rock band and not about that thing you're supposed to be meeting about.
mircea_popescu: so why wouldn't you answer the phone. it's more like a boring highschool class than a meeting.
nubbins`: guy stole 120 hours on the company. a month's work. when an email woulda done