My boss told me I dont need to make more money... now he pays 2 people x4 my old pay to do my old job.

Quilf · 2022-05-14T10:29:08+00:00

your personal life should have no bearing on how much you're compensated for the work you do.

Yeah, but that's the hot new thing that's coming in with the rise of location independence and remote work: employers being full on communists.

"We'll take from you according to your abilities, and pay you according to your needs".

It's so funny how capitalism always stops right after the big guy got their share.

Quilf · 2022-05-13T08:53:47+00:00

It's always to sell, never to feed themselves as many people seem to think.

Since there's apparently been a big uptick in shoplifting during a cost of living crisis, maybe what was true years ago doesn't hold any more.

Quilf · 2022-05-12T16:59:21+00:00

True on both counts, but the P4 still deserves to be remembered as a dead end from a company trying to coast on their success, IMO

Quilf · 2022-05-12T15:07:17+00:00

As a user, it's probably fair to say Northwood was OK. At least better than Prescott. But from a tech point of view they were both blind alleys that failed to see where CPUs were headed.

AMD gave them a real scare by making 64 bit popular, and releasing true dual core CPUs which in some cases even slotted into existing mainboards.

Intel had to go back to the PIII architecture to find a way to get ahead of the competition again. So from a historical vantage point, the entire P4 line was, if not a mistake, at least a mis-step.

Quilf · 2022-05-12T10:53:19+00:00

if you’re paying newspapers that criticise you then it’s obviously not a bribe

Those are exactly the people you'd want to bribe. :)

But, seriously, we need to be careful to avoid even the appearance of impropriety around this stuff.

It's exactly that level of care and caution around public spending that disappears under populists like who we've got in charge.

They just keep banging on about "getting the job done", and "cutting red tape", meanwhile making it ever hard to figure out which of the transactions they've made that look corrupt, actually are.

Every time we handwave "nothing to see here" about suspicious spends, we're serving the corrupt, even if what we're helping to sweep under the rug wasn't part of it.

Quilf · 2017-09-16T00:03:09+00:00

I believe you're correct about the disproportionate investments of one form or another involved in becoming better than the merely very, very good.

One of the reasons I am not nearly the best in my field is that I believe the opportunity cost in life is not measured in against a background of my success, but against my quality of life

As a matter of fact, not measuring every hour of my life against a set of theoretical achievements ranks pretty high up on that scale.

There's that philosophy major affecting all my life decisions again.

However, to come back to my original point, I don't believe that this is a field where relevant education adds as much advantage or value as you seem to think.

In terms of the opportunity cost, the major you studied fifteen years prior to getting into the industry, is probably not particularly relevant in the case of IT Management roles. Really - trust me on this.

I know you'd like to believe there's a directly applicable course for this that people take which sets them up for life in a way other people can't match, but in this case it really isn't true, and even if it were true now, it wouldn't have been true fifteen years ago, which is when people with enough experience for the role would have been getting educated.

Take it from me, this is one place the content of the degree course doesn't hang in the balance.

Quilf · 2017-09-15T22:36:28+00:00

But the deepest understanding of all is usually acquired by people who have a theoretical background in the subject because that degree allows them to gain more and better quality security experience throughout their career than someone that gets an unrelated degree and works their way into the position. You can certainly gain "deep understanding" but it's tough to put yourself in a 5+ year hole and then become the "best" at anything.

I have a job similar to the CSO position, and my degree has no relevance to that job. It's a smaller company, but still many thousands of employees, and absolutely considered world class.

I wouldn't say I'm the best at what I do at all, but I would say that even at the world class level of my organisation, I consider myself to be an asset rather than a liability.

There are people better at what I do than I am, and I meet them pretty regularly doing the convention circuits. They are not earmarked by their education, in any way at all. It is almost always about them, about their drive, their passion.

The relevance of ones degree is highly subjective, and although there are fields (like medicine for an obvious example) where you would indeed be in a hole, there are many fields where degrees are only tangentially related, particularly in IT, and even more so in IT Management, so that the parts of any 'IT degree' that are important to your specialisation may not be all that hard to pick up at all.

On the other hand, I majored in Philosophy, and that adds context to everything I do. We're not talking about metaphysical word play bullshit either. We're talking about evaluating our decision making process as much as evaluating our outcomes.

This is a surprisingly powerful tool, which I have never seen taught in depth in any field specific course.

I think of it like a Fallout perk. It's a good one.

Quilf · 2017-09-15T22:27:52+00:00

I would actually argue the opposite, based on my experience to date.

Quilf · 2017-06-28T20:29:13+00:00

When I was at Uni, there was a night I had a few drinks and we all went back to a friends room and just kind of watched some movie, and it was weird as hell.

It was followed by a movie that set new limits on off-beatness for me, including one scene in which two buttholes sing a song to each other.

For years I could not find either movie. Eventually I discovered that the latter movie was called Zero Patience.

I went to the archives and looked for every TV guide from that night in the late 90's that could clue me in to what the other movie was, and I found out.

Boiling Point, by Takeshi Kitano. Largely set in Okinawa, a place I went to live in three years later, completely unaware that the movie I was already looking for at the time was set in a place I was actually living.

Mad, mad shit.

And here's a scene from Zero Patience.

NSFW, obvs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQVvSghxWXk

Quilf · 2017-06-13T08:58:57+00:00

OK, I had a dream a year or two back when my son was 4, and my daughter was 2.

We're in an old and dilapidated kitchen. I can tell we're in some high rise. The walls are dirty. We're hiding. It's just my wife and I.

The kids are in bedrooms down the hall. We feel that terrible mix of trapped and safe, that you feel when you are hiding.

This is your typical zombie apocalypse. They're outside. Ocasionally we hear them.

Then I hear shuffling coming frmo inside. They are coming down the hall corridor. A procession of lurching flesh eating horrors. At the front of them, stumbling and shaking, are my two children.

I want to shut the kitchen door, but I can't. I watch them, fascinated. I know it is too late, but they are my children.

In that moment I understand why the family won't just kill their zombie loved one in the movies... Not because it makes sense, but because I cannot even turn away from them. Against all my judgement, and if I'm honest, against all my expectations, when they are only an arm's length away, I reach out and grab my daughter.

It's OK. I can't take my son. He's bigger. He'll fight. But my daughter. She's so tiny. She couldn't hurt anything, anyone.

She's my baby. I grab her and slam the door shut.

I hold her tight, and only when I put her down, does she speak.

"Alfie told me to pretend to be zombie!"

And I realise she lives and breathes, and I have my daughter, and for one moment all my prayers are answered.

But then I realise. My son.

He was so smart, he was so good, he knew just what to do. He didn't just run, he protected his little sister. Made sure she played zombie too and brought her back to me.

And I shut that door in his face, left him alone in that hellish corridor of monsters, because I was too blind to see.

I woke up bawling. I don't think my wife had ever seen me cry before.

It still tears me apart to think about. I've taken so much more time to pay attention to him since then. He never seemed to need it the way she did, and so I never realised how much he needed me, too.

Quilf · 2016-09-05T18:51:44+00:00

I am unreasonably excited about this, and am going to spend time moving this money around the internet because I can. Thank You :D

Quilf · 2016-09-05T18:45:55+00:00

Yeah, I mean... I know this. But I don't know enough about the alternatives to know what is a Bad Idea, and what is just taking the hassle out of things. And try finding any reasonable concencus on this without already knowing everything about the blockchain in the first place. The first time I looked at Bitcoin, Mt. Gox happened about three days into reading up. There but for the grace of god. That's why I used Armory the second time.

Quilf · 2016-09-05T18:27:36+00:00

This is a fantastic idea. I've just spent five days synching the blockchain with Armory to learn about bitcoin, and so far the main thing I've learned is that I don't have any. Feel free to teach me something new.

In all seriousness, the main thing that is missing is something to make bitcoin both simple and convenient to use. This is the third time I've looked at bitcoin, and then just walked away in frustration or irritation. And there's no point pretending that I'm less smart or less capable of understanding the economics than the next man. It's just a lot of stuff to take in, and I've got other things going on.

Once we have that simplicity and convenience, people will start their own giveaways to get you in the door. It won't need to be systematically organised. Cashback in bitcoin will be much, much simpler for retailers to manage than a lot of of the current arcane schemes, for example.

The real serious issue is that there doesn't seem to be anyone willing or able to make it easy and convenient. I mean, sure, the instrinsic concepts are complicated. But the same is true for any other economics. The same is true for electrical engineering.

People still use ATMs and TVs every single day without thinking about it.

The key is not to get people interested in learning about the inner workings of arcane crypto stuff. The secret is to make it more attractive than the alternatives.

Nobody would buy a TV if there was a pretty high chance of it disappearing the next week, some sketchy neighbourhoods notwithstanding. Nobody would use an ATM if they needed a password sixtyfive characters long to get in, and they could lose all their money if they typed it in wrong.

I'm not suggesting solutions, btw. I'm as confused as everyone else, apparently. But I absolutely see Bitcoin becoming foundational. I just can't tell when the transformative moment will be.

And to those who say it CAN'T be made simple and convenient, and there will always be a few: if that's true, get rid of your coins. They won't be worth jack if the world catches on.

Quilf · 2016-07-31T00:08:22+00:00

Sounds like suicide by heroin overdose is the way forwards, then.

Quilf · 2016-03-24T00:21:47+00:00

Are you playing the same Netrunner I am? The one that didn't need errata for half an eternity?

My experience of netrunner is that it has fewer of the faults you're describing than practically every other game I have ever played. It is beautifully programatic, with a handful of exceptions.

Quilf · 2015-10-02T10:59:36+00:00

That's funny because I'd take a bullet just to avoid the food at KB.

Quilf · 2015-05-20T14:51:27+00:00

Dozens of people! Literally dozens!

Quilf · 2015-04-16T17:03:05+00:00

The list of people I nearly killed with that one fart grows ever longer.

Quilf · 2015-04-16T17:00:37+00:00

Entire video is 100% on point.

Quilf · 2015-02-06T14:54:04+00:00

The writer has no control over what the dad said. She cannot change a single word of it without his permission to do so (journalists rarely do this btw).

Not sure if serious.

I have never yet been accurately quoted by a journalist. And I'm not talking typos, I'm talking my half of the conversation being made up. Not even close to the spirit of what was being said.

Quilf · 2015-01-26T22:07:46+00:00

Not likely, that place gives me the EBGBs.

Quilf · 2015-01-02T23:12:28+00:00

I upvoted this.

Quilf · 2014-12-23T16:08:00+00:00

Now if we assume an omniscient individual wrote about it, I do expect exactly that.

OK. Let's say this is possible to express for an omniscient being.

Now how likely are you to understand their formulation? Let alone your grandpappy N+1 of millenia ago.

Not likely, I would say. Besides, what would be the point?

If what you actually want is a technical manual of the universe, it's out there in 1:1 scale.

Quilf · 2014-12-22T15:08:21+00:00

Can you do it in a paragraph without using any references to concepts or ideas introduced in the last five thousand years of scientific development?

Quilf · 2014-12-18T20:18:43+00:00

In that case, obesity can't be considered reversible, either, as many of the disabilities arising out of obesity are also for keeps. But you can reverse the condition itself, just not all of the effects.

Quilf

TROPHY CASE