HOLY COW, now THERE'S a gig: building collapsing buildings.

Demand: There's ALWAYS another construction job to do next week.

Quality? The damn thing needs to stay standing for just a few days.

Obsolesce? No one's surprised when it falls apart.

Insurance? If it collapses and kills someone, that's just job training -- NOT my problem.

Offensive rubble color? Just wait a week and this time ask for Baby Blue.

Contractor termination scenario:
Builder: Bob, I'm afraid we're going to have to let you go.
Bob, crying, in shock: But why?? I do the absolute best job that I can do! My work is built to withstand anything!
Builder: Well Bob, you see: that's the problem.

The neighbors that come by and always complain about the smoke and noise? That's easily outsourced to friends:

Ob Dilbert.

Of course! They're already got access to the home and computer cameras. I pay taxes; why can't I share in the fun as well?

Also, kinda reminds me of that zooming mirror scene in Blade Runner.

OK, so fantasy magic wand time: all of the .gov is now 100% trustworthy again from top to bottom. (I said this was a fantasy.) What would it take to make everyone happy? Is there ANYthing that they could do?

Personally, *I* don't think so in the short and mid-term. It'll take a lot of time and effort on their part to regain any of their lost brownie points -- they're hard to earn to start with but then again extremely easy to lose. And that's just with the trust-technology bit, not any of the actual politics.

Of course they're literally the biggest "Too Big to Fail" elephant in the US so it's not like you're going to walk away from them.

I didn't think the Comcast/TWC merger had been completed. Wouldn't it be able to detect those 45 billions of dollar bills all sloshing around?

Or was L.A. the detection device a few days ago?

Because it's just like Elbereth except of scaring monsters away, it attracts nerds instead.

The only problem here is finding a tablet that you can stand on without destroying it in the process. Maybe one per foot? (Or do I just need to lose weight?)

Didn't realize it was their job to be a nanny to their users. And here I thought they had to be over 18 and of legal age to "sign" the EULA.

A lot of sites have the same userID and a password like "xyz123". OMG you hacked into my free pandora / whatever site that I don't care about? Yawn, I guess I'll just create another account.

Now ones with my CCs and other more more important info? They all have much harder credentials and unique passwords.

(Yes, I can read. "These are Top Sites we're working with. Which ones? Top. Sites.") Still not my problem. Maybe the users actually want their account attacked so they can get free CC account monitoring? Or can plead bankruptcy easier somehow? Hell, maybe it's a detection canary sponsored by your regional government or police officials. Just because it's weak doesn't mean it's bad, maybe the users have memory loss and can only remember a single letter.

That's RIGHT, you're now actively arguing for discriminating against intelligence-impaired people, people who can't touch-type, and people (executives) that are much too important and busy to bother typing a complex password. Government standards will soon mandate a minimum password of 0 characters with a maximum of 9 in order to preserve the impending world-wide bit crisis. The more characters you use now, the less that remain for everyone one. Larger font letters that require more digital ink to store will soon increase in price -- soon only the 1% will be able to afford them, so BUY NOW!

She might be smarter than you think!

You'd up and just tell her the price, or ask her to figure it out. And you'd be WRONG either way.

The correct way is to ask the authoritative cashier what the price is. No surprise if it's what you expected. You'll complain if it's higher. But if its lower....would you? (Ethics.)

And besides: maybe she didn't realize the sale, maybe she forgot or thought that not everything was covered, or maybe she really was just being stupid. Haven't you ever done something absolutely asinine when you absolutely know better a few seconds/minutes later?


Of course the game is rigged. But you can't win if you don't play.
--- Lazarus Long

(Why did you get zapped back to 0? I thought about EXACTLY that issue but then neglected to bring it up. Oh, AC post; gotcha.)

The real doctors have always been perfectly fine for years. Indeed, EVERYONE has always been fine, this is the first WTF?! moment I've had there. Since all she was doing was moving numbers from devices (scale, BP, me), transferring them to a sticky note and then to a computer, all she "needed" to do is be able to slightly read and match the funny symbols to the keypad. (Just like at McDonalds. Or hell, even an OCR program.)

Also, I've heard thru the grapevine that this doc might soon be retiring. Don't know if that's true or relates anyhow to staff support. I wouldn't think so; she did seem to be an adequate gofer and seemingly could follow simple directions. (I'm NOT trying to be denigrating here -- hell, she could have been a receptionist trainee for all I know. And I DO know the support staff in the outpatient OR with the doc a month ago seemed much more competent.)

And I will give also her this: she fully admitted she DIDN'T do math. So I'd think she would refuse to do any computations except basic ones which could easily be corrected. She COULD have just written down 67 inches and be done with it. (That's literally wrong, but it's not THAT far off and doesn't trip the insanity alarm like a height of 511 inches would.) I'd much rather have someone saying "I don't know" and asking for help versus plowing thru and generating bad but reasonable looking noise.

I just never thought I'd meet a "Math is Hard" Barbie in real life. I mean hell: *I* had subjects in school I didn't like either and am still weak in. But if you need inches out of feet, it seems that you'd make a cheat sheet if not just memorize 2x thru 6x. After all, I was the 24th patient that day because that was the count on the signup sheet. It's not like it was a surprise event.

Oh, and she did tell me that she really liked history because all of the facts were static. I told her the same thing -- "So who's buried in Grant's tomb? He's dead; who cares, unless he's coming back as a zombie."


Human history as static factual unchanging knowledge -- start the objections here and stay in line, please.

True story. I was at the doctors office yesterday. The female nurse assistant was getting blood pressure, weight, and height. 6" 7'.

"Hey Julie, can you do math?" she called to the receptionist.

I looked up at her. She repeated her question. I interjected "Huh?"

"Oh, well I need your height in inches." "Well it's 12 times 6 and add 7." "I know, but I don't do math."

"OK then, 12, 24, 36, 48, 60, that's 5 feet, and one more makes 72, and then add 7."

She looked at me like I had two heads. Well I do, but you know what I mean.

"So that'd be seventy-nine, right?" She looked at me, I THINK she then looked at her friend for confirmation, and then wrote it down and said, "I never liked math in school. I even managed somehow to skip some of the mandatory classes." "I can tell", I thought.

I just shook my head, wondering if she was a nurse or an assistant. Or maybe an assistant's assistant.

Maybe she was new, maybe she was a temp, maybe it was just really a bad day. But I've never had someone who was so seemingly ?dumb? as she was. But she wasn't dumb, she just "didn't do math".

I'm not a PhD at all or theoretical physicist or anything, but I just can't imagine. "I don't do math" is just like "I don't do words" to me. I couldn't imagine life without either of them.

True, but they always seem to want to bring other people along for the ride.

Don't worry about it; they'll be more than glad to worry about it for you.

And just guessing here -- if you can appreciably extend life, then you're also putting off "meeting your maker". I could see a fatwa brewing over this, since "if man was meant to live longer God would have done it already."

Or hell, maybe I'm getting too cynical in my old age.

I'm just going to leave these here:

• This,
• That, and
• The other.

TL;DR: then write better laws that account for that in the first place.

This sounds like you're somehow upset. Why? No, seriously? Ignoring the fact that I'm an atheist and think spirits only exist inside bottles [but none of mine, they're all empty], why is this a problem?

SAY what you mean, but don't have an unwritten agreement about what it's supposed to mean. Now you can argue all day long over what the meaning of words like "IS" is (at least if your name is Bill), but damnit write the law in an unambiguous way.

If you write it incorrectly then don't be surprised if people interpret it differently. Yes, I know -- companies are evil and always trying to just barely stay on the legal side of the law. Well: GOOD. FOR. THEM. Not everyone was present when it was written and perhaps missed the wink wink nudge nudge dance about it's actual meaning.

If you wanted something else to happen, then it should have been written that way in the first place. If a law is outdated, "wrong", or if you don't like it then get it changed -- but then don't go make and make it retroactive, either. Laws are supposed to enforce certain actions and discourage others, but it's impossible to change PAST actions.

Also, if you have unintended consequences for a law, maybe you should have read/thought about it more before you enacted it. I swear, I think the only ones that actually read a law before it's passed are the flunkies who actually type it in; everyone else goes off what it's SUPPOSED to say.

And (I think) we have too damn many of them -- everyone's a criminal now-a-days. Let's enforce the ones on the books, ditch the ones that are wrong (...from who's standards? But still enforcing them while they're on the books), and reword the ones with problems.

The NSA? Oh, I think they're mostly the good guys. It's the senior level managers that are supposed to keep them in check. But the NSA Chief lied to Congress and they don't hold him accountable, so why should be be surprised when that trickles on down? Hell, you can even see how the lawyers bend things into shape if you read "Privacy" as "No human knows". (If a message is read by a computer and NEVER by a human, is it still private?)

For that matter, why don't "We, the People" hold our own representatives accountable for their (IN-)actions? We're just as bad as them -- even MORE so since we're the ones ultimately responsible for the things being done in our name.

I agree with that.

So judges are effectively a CPU, simply executing what's written. (GOTO but not DWIW.)

But then ... that makes the legislature which write the laws .... OMG, PROGRAMERS! They're one of us!!

That IS a very non-obvious way to say it. "Math is Hard" Barbie says why not just come out and admit it without the shaming and cryptic symbols:

I Eat PI which gives a result of -1 -- since I ate it, it's gone, and so magically disappeared! (...and perhaps magically delicious too if it's made from Lucky Charms.)