Dumbasses – Page 19 – third world county

December 2, 2011December 3, 2011

sigh eWeek Can’t Issue a Simple Warning About Malware Without Screwing Up the Lede

FBI Issues Warning about Phishing Attack. That’s a good thing to pass around, but eWeek’s Fahmida Y. Rashid needs to take some remedial English classes. Note the lede:

“FBI warned of a new spear-phishing campaign that tricks users into downloading Zeus malware and then looting their bank accounts.”

While one can infer that the author meant to say that the malware seeks to loot users’ bank accounts, that’s not what the sentence says. The lil “and” indicates the two linked phrases are equivalents referring to the phishing campaign” that “tricks users” into two actions: “downloading” and “looting”. While that’s obviously not what the author intended to say, it’d help promote literacy if the author would say what she means, viz.,

“FBI warned of a new spear-phishing campaign that tricks users into downloading Zeus malware which then attempts to loot their bank accounts.”

But, in terms of the warning, only very (very) stupid people will be fooled by this phishing malware attempt. Would YOU click on a link in a (SPAM!) message that purports to come from “the National Automated Clearing House Assocation (NACHA)” and tells you the link is to reset your banking credentials? If so, I have some great ocean front property in New Mexico I’d like to sell you and a bridge located in Brooklyn I just know would interest you.

Oh, and this absolutely stupid comment from another eWeek article by the same author really takes the cake:

It’s difficult for the savviest Internet user to identify some of the latest scams.

That was in the context of email inbox filtering to filter out dangerous attachments and other email. Really? It’s difficult for anyone with more active brain cells than a 10-year-old cracked crock of spoiled kimchi to identify some of the latest scams? Really? Ocean front property and a bridge in Brooklyn…

And the author follows that statement, in a paragraph “debunking” the idea that training users will enhance network security, with this:

While technology can be patched, the human brain can’t.

OK, I may have to give him that one. In fact, I’ll admit that he’s a good data point in support of the assertion.

November 29, 2011November 30, 2011

Ortega’s Mass Man Strikes Again

Moderately long rant below that cites nothing dispositive but just notes a couple of minor data points that fall along with my observation that our culture is in the crapper and on the point of being–rightfully!–flushed.

Read it or don’t.

Continue reading “Ortega’s Mass Man Strikes Again”

November 8, 2011November 8, 2011

Again With Theft by “Journalistas”

Look, so-called “journalists” who actually, you know, write or edit or publish stuff for a paycheck get paid, in largepart, to be professional wordsmiths. A plumber who can’t solder a pipe joint–or perform similar essential tasks–or en electrician who can’t properly wire and outlet are stealing when they get paid to do those things improperly. Just so “journalists” who don’t even bother to use the language they’re writing in correctly.

Latest example (of many–this is just the one that was this week’s “last straw”–and so early in the week, too *sigh*)? Obscured for obscure reasons, a caption under a photo:

“‘X’ is skeptical about ‘y’ and let’s it be known… ”

WTF?!? “‘X’ is skeptical about ‘y’ and LET US it be known… “?!?

No, “‘X’ is skeptical about ‘y’ and LETS it be known… ”

It wouldn’t have been so bad except that there were more than a few other examples of stupid grammar and word MIS-usage in the same article.

You see similar idiotic misuses of apostrophes all the time, I’m sure. Similar; not same. Prime example (seen too many times to count in the last few days, which is probably what tipped me over the edge when I saw this very different misuse of an apostrophe):

It’s for its. “It’s” is a contraction of “it is” or “it was” etc. Pronoun-verb. “Its” is the possessive form of “it”–just as “hers” is the possessive form of “her” and “his” of “him” and “ours” of “our”. When someone consistently writes “it’s” when intending to indicate a possessive form of “it” you can count on it that they’re not really literate in English. When that person–say a so-called “journalist–is collecting a paycheck for writing something, that person is a thief. Who can trust “reporting” done by someone who collects a paycheck for not doing his job competently–and is willing to prove it by his writing? Not this guy.

Oh, there are worse excrescences, even apostrophe-based offenses (“‘s” to indicate plurals, for example *shudder* the habit of true idiots), but so many people who GET PAID TO WRITE are the next thing to complete illiterates that it just chaps my gizzard.

November 7, 2011November 7, 2011

Death to DST! heh

OK, I’m sure some “old Indian” somewhere has said something similar, since I know both my grandfathers uttered similar observations about DST, but it’s a decent graphic presentation of an old, old truth: government is best at screwing things up, or at least at its normative “best”.

(Just CLICK the pic if it doesn’t display correctly in your browser/display resolution)

Study: Daylight saving time a waste of energy

The result of the study showed that electricity use went up in the counties adopting daylight saving time in 2006, costing $8.6 million more in household electricity bills. The conclusion reached by Kotchen and Grant was that while the lighting costs were reduced in the afternoons by daylight saving, the greater heating costs in the mornings, and more use of air-conditioners on hot afternoons more than offset these savings. Kotchen said the results were more “clear and unambiguous” than results in any other paper he had presented.

Anything else we want to leave in the feds’ hands? Charity? The cost of so-called “welfare” as exercised by the feds–excluding the societal costs of having the feds thumb their noses at the Constitution–are well known, both the upfront excesses and the backend societal costs of breeding more irresponsibility and a leisure, entitlement-minded “welfare class”. Meddling in the marketplace? The “compassion industry” in the “feddle gummint bureaucrappy” as specifically empowered by serial Congresses and presidents gave us the housing bubble and mortgage collapse that led directly to our current economic woes. Want more of that? Border security? An oxymoron.

Oh, and one acronym: TSA. Thugs Standing Around has to stand as the most blatant “feddle gummint” exercise of Security Kabuki, Theater of the Absurd that puts Beckett, Camus and Albee in the shade. It’s nothing but a full-employment program for low-brow dumbasses and thugs designed to train those who were once citizens into becoming “good subjects” (that is, docile sheep).

I think DST stands as a good example of the simple fact that the more the feds–congresscritters, executive branch, ALL “feddle gummint bureaucraps” (and even many–few though their raw numbers may be–decent bureaucrats caught up in the monstrous federal bureaucracy) and the federal injudiciary–intrude into citizens’ lives, the worse off we as individuals and the country as a whole become.

Death to DST! *heh*

November 4, 2011

I Just Hate This Kind of Stuff

Got an email from a politician. OK, I don’t mind that so much, since I solicit comments from politicians. What I disliked so intensely was the subject line:

Can I send you my book?

*feh* This is a politician who will not get my support. Of course someone on this pol’s staff actually wrote the email and that stupid subject line, but the pol’s responsible for the stupidity of “its” (my fav “gender neutral” pronoun *heh*) staff.

My answer, should the pol or its stupid staff care to read my reply email is, “Of course you CAN send me your book. You already have my contact information. You don’t NEED to ask if you CAN send it, dumbass. But since you ask such a stupid question, I’ll answer the question you ought to have asked instead. You MAY NOT send me your book, and if you do I’ll burn the thing rather than read something written by (or for) such a dumbass.”

November 1, 2011November 4, 2011

About That “99%” Thingy

I was slumming on the NPR (National Propaganda Radio) site and saw a bunch of “99%” photo-posts. One was humorous, but the rest were pathetic, and not in a sympathetic way. This guy was typical:

Anyone with a family making 80K/year who just can’t make ends meet and has to get help paying his bills deserves to go under for being so stupid as to live beyond his means.

Dumbass. Ooo, poor baby. A “modest home,” used cars and less than “expensive” vacations (by what standard?). Where is his savings? Where in the world did that $80K/year go? Why didn’t he at least buy that frickin’ ugly tie at Goodwill or something?

If this guy were to put that lame crap out in front of me, I’d be tempted to plaster his whiny mug. His parents ought to–at most–have told him, “Leave your children with us, sell that house you can’t afford to pay for–or even just hand it back to the folks who really own it–and go live under a rock. We disown you, you stupid bag of vomit,” instead of enabling his profligate lifestyle.

No, $80K/year isn’t enough to finance a lifestyle that would get Robin Leach interested in profiling you, dumbass. Learn to live within your means.

Further commentary on the so-called “99%” from Matt Welch @Reason:

Adult human beings have agency, the ability (even responsibility!) to run their own cost/benefit analyses and choose accordingly. You could go to a state school (or community college) instead of an over-inflated prestige mill. You could pay for a 10-year-old car in cash, instead of a new one on installments. You could try to make it in Minneapolis before living the dream in Williamsburg. You could stare into the face of a no-money-down, adjustable rate 30-year mortgage at the tail end of a housing-price run-up and conclude “Maybe that one’s not for me.” You could even choose to turn down a bad if high-paying job when you’re living below the poverty line. If we indeed live in a “candid world,” let us state bluntly that offloading 100% of the blame for your own mountain of debt on a group of Greedy McBanksters who “forced” you to “play by the rules” is more than a little pathetic.

October 21, 2011

OWS: It Fisks Itself

Shooting fish in a barrel, tasking candy from babies: both several orders of magnitude harder than ridiculing OWS, since the OWS crowd does that to itself without even being aware of it. Exhibit #3,476:

She (that is female, isn’t it?) can’t figure this one out on her own? Of course not. Such self-made idiots need to go live in an assisted thinking facility. “Here, dearie, don’t bother with trying to think things through. Let me make all your decisions for you.” After all, it’d just be the next reasonable step from letting the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind and Academic Nut Fruitcakes do their all their so-called “thinking” for them.

And, even given the expenses, I think such a move could be a net gain for society as a whole.

October 18, 2011October 18, 2011

Occupy…Whatever

Po’ babies got it rough

I’ll try to locate the source of the graphic. For now, all I know is that I “stole” it off someone’s FB post. I do know this, though: whoever wrote it doesn’t know the difference between “take” and “bring”. *heh*

October 16, 2011October 17, 2011