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stupidity

Zero Degrees 1, Zero Tolerance 0

March 6, 2014 0:11:34.632

When you run a system - any system - based solely on policy, with no allowance for common sense - you end up with things like this:

On Wednesday morning, the temperature was 5 below, and the wind chill was 25 below. “So the alarm went off, and I thought it was like just a drill, like: Do I have to go outside?” Hagen-Tietz said. “And then he was like no, we usually don’t have fake ones in the winter.” Hagen-Tietz says she and the another student were rushed out by the teacher. Her classmate had clothes by the pool, hers were in her locker. So she grabber her towel and went outside.

Where did the policy enter into it, where a kid in a wet bathing suit and without shoes is left to stand outside for 10 minutes?

But due to school policy, she wasn’t allowed to sit in a faculty-member’s car

So rather than make the obvious judgement call, and let the kid into a car with the heater running, they let her get frostbite. For her own safety, of course. The response after the fact?

In a statement, St. Paul Public School officials said they continue to work with the St. Paul Fire Marshal to regularly review these procedures, including cold weather modifications, and they will make any changes based on their recommendations.

Here's what the response should have been: "We promise not to be such utterly stupid morons next time, and will ignore written policy when it obviously makes no sense".

Idiots

posted by James Robertson

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Bad Ideas From the Power Company

January 2, 2014 19:44:34.887

My local power company sent me some helpful tips on lowering my power bill:

Yeah, let me replace the bulbs I can see by with useless CFL's that don't last any longer, and provide crappy light. Meanwhile, that last suggestion looks like a real winner right about now:

posted by James Robertson

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Unsafe in the UK

December 22, 2013 18:11:16.515

I guess writing about Smalltalk, gaming, and copyright issues is unsafe for kids in the UK. WItness the glorious results of the new censorship regime on this website:

And people wonder why I periodically say "if the answer was government, the question was stupid"

posted by James Robertson

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Not Getting It

August 19, 2011 15:42:23.881

Thilo Weichart may not be the dumbest man on the planet, but he'd be up there in any competition. He's scared by the - wait for it - Facebook "like" button:

Weichert argues that data from any user who clicks the ‘like’ button including those who are not Facebook users (which seems to be the crux of the problem for Weichert) is immediately transmitted to a server in the United States. Weichert told German newspaper FAZ that his concern is that “Facebook can track every click on a site, how long I’m there, what I’m interested in.”

Here's a hot tip for this clown: try not clicking on the button. There, I fixed it.

posted by James Robertson

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Lets Break the Internet

May 27, 2011 10:07:17.937

In the annals of stupid, this is pretty high up - a Senate committee wants to break the internet:

The legislation will allow the DOJ to target the "worst of the worst" foreign websites dedicated to digital piracy or selling counterfeit goods, said Senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat and lead sponsor of the bill. Intellectual property theft is "unacceptable," Leahy, chairman of the committee, said in a statement.

This is great - the practical impact would be to have a set of alternate DNS servers pop up. Instead of the mostly unitary net we have now, we'll have chaos. That seems to be what Congress does best though...

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posted by James Robertson

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Oh Noes, the Web is Broken

March 22, 2011 15:20:11.628

In the overblown worries department:

Even bigger change came with the rise of social networks and various web apps. Every day more content is hidden in the walled gardens of the web, like Facebook or Twitter, behind the fence of login and password. Just think about it: how much interesting content have you discovered in your friend’s updates, notes and tweets? This content is invisible to Google and other search engines, it’s not backed up by wayback machine or proxy servers. The number of people seeing only the things recommended by their social circle is growing.

Well gosh, a decade ago, Google wasn't indexing my conversations with friends after a golf game, either. How private conversations on Facebook and Twitter differ from that sort of thing is an exercise left to the sane....

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posted by James Robertson

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Those Bright Folks at the RIAA

January 21, 2011 19:04:19.552

Just when you think the RIAA can't get dumber, they show that there are depths past the seemingly possible. They think that the mere existence of a .music TLD will facilitate piracy.

Apparently, certain arrangements of letters are just evil

posted by James Robertson

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Dumbest Idea Ever

December 11, 2010 19:32:27.157

Yes, doing a stunt like this for charity is interesting, but seriously - taking a trans-pacific flight with no bags?

One thing I really, really like about the No Baggage Challenge Life is simple. I have two shirts, two pairs of pants, one pair of shoes, socks, and underwear. I’m going out at night? A shirt and pair of pants. I’m going to a meeting? A shirt and a pair of pants.

If your goals are to:

  • Get no exercise during your trip
  • Either smell bad, or do laundry every single night

then this might work out for you. Otherwise? Not so much. I travel light - one bag for clothes, one for the electronics. Unless I'm bringing golf clubs, I don't check anything, and trust me - it's way, way simpler than the method this guy is using.

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posted by James Robertson

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Lawyers with Too Much Free Time

October 22, 2010 23:11:32.257

Can anyone explain where the actual harm is here?

Mr. Stauffer, who calls himself a "sharp-dressed man," also happens to be a patent lawyer. He sued Brooks Brothers Inc. in federal court, claiming it broke the law by marking its adjustable bow ties with patents that expired in the 1950s.

The court should have fined Stauffer for wasting its time, and told him to find better ways to fill his free time.

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posted by James Robertson

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Stupidity Goes to Ontario

August 16, 2010 8:21:08.391

It looks like WiFi is the next great gathering place of the "afraid of technology" crowd, and they've got a foothold in Ontario:

A group of central Ontario parents is demanding their children's schools turn off wireless internet before they head back to school next month, fearing the technology is making the kids sick.

Right..... and none of the WiFi signals these kids run into elsewhere (malls, coffee shops, various homes in their neighborhoods) affect them at all. It's just the magic one at school. Heck, as I sit here at my desk, my Mac is picking up two WiFi signals from two of the neighboring houses, never mind the hotspots I'm running. If I lived in a city, I might be picking up dozens - when I travel, it's not uncommon to have to pick out the hotel WiFi from a huge crowd. Then there are the mobile phone towers everywhere, and the TV and radio signals... and so on.

This kind of thing needs to be laughed at so that it doesn't gain traction - because there will be no end of difficulty if it does.

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posted by James Robertson

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