(Cr)Happy New Year, or Prepare to be screwed

Just yesterday got some info from our head office in Moscow: Due to the expected slowing in the sales growth there's a possibility that they'll start cutting salaries. And ai have a hunch that it ain't gonna be the salaries of some overpaid people in Sales or marketing or Logistics and Sourcing.Looks like it well may be our department – after all, running around China enforcing quality requirements and fixing all the confusion and screw-ups they've created is surely easier than sitting on your ass in the office doing nothing (well, them doing nothing ain't the worst case scenario as they tend to screw things up pretty badly).

Actually that seems to be the case all around the world. They don't punish those who created a screw-up, they punish someone else. The banks creste this crisis? Bail them out and let everybody else foot the bill. Them in Purchases screwed up tech requirements and ordered something you can't sell to Somalis for failing all certification? Why, Purchases get a hefty bonus for... well, for being there; Marketing gets a hefty bonus for adding a new product to inventory for such a low price and I'm stuck with an impossible task of getting that crap to conform to some of the requirements and no bonus because it doesn't count as real work.

Oh you should see and hear them – babbling fervently about how they must cut that 1% off the price (and screw that compliance to those pesky standards that we'll lose in the process) and get that packaging just right and screw the tech requirements because packaging is so much more important... and then my QC report comes in.

Well, they start shouting then. It goes like this:

"Why's that cable so crappy? We won't be able to sell it!" Well, Einstein, you remember that price that the factory gave you? The one that got you that bonus? The one that was too good to be true? That price was too goog. It was for that crape we got – all beause of someone was too excited to send in tech requirements, just assuming that 6he stuff will be magically conforming to them. Why, it may delay production for a couple of days! Well, now we have a pile of steaming crap that we can't sell, I have a headache and you have a bonus.

"Why's power factor of that lamp is so low?" Well, maybe because you failed to mention that you needed it to be like 0.9 instead of default 0.5? Oh... it was assumed that just because we have asked whether it's possible to make it reach 0.9 the factory will do that and won't raise the price even though the electronics will be more expensive?

And it goes on and on and on... All in the same vein: Marketing or Purchases assume something, place the order, get their bonuses, we get predictably crappy results and I'm stuck with explainin to the factory that we need a quality product not something even a retard would classify as crap.

Well, if they try to cut my salary I'm outta here. I like the job despite all my complaints about it, but I ain't no charity. If they want to get something for free they can go dumpster diving. I have a flat to remodel and a lot of good places to take my wife for vacation and no use for people who try to screw me.

Jail all the Linux users!..

See here: Prosecutors claim Bradley Manning wanted to remove 'the fog of war'. The man used terrible l33t hacker tools to download top-secret crap! Well... not exactly. His tools were just a program called 'wget' which – surprise! – comes with every installation of Linux. And if he was able to download these cables with wget, it can only mean one thing: the data was not secured adquately. It was just waiting for someone to get it.

What troubles me is the fact that, given current mentality of powers that be, they may seek to ban the software rather than ban the insecure military networks. Because who knows what those evil "hackers" would come up with next! They may even use the copy command to copy the top-secret über-sensitive data to that most evil of all evil implements, the USB flash drive! Or they can use that dark and obscure technology called 'CD burning' to somehow take the data from the top-secret über-secure computer with no USB sockets and removable storage... oh wait... there's that CD-RW drive and no policy forbidding it's unauthorized use.. oh crap...

Well, basically the trial shows that all that technobabble US Army likes to throw around ain't worth crap. They're just as technologically illiterate as those Afghan shepherds they kill. Looks like the whole affair could have been prevented by readin some book in the vein of "System administration for complete retards". World's most technologically advanced military force, my ass...

The nature took it's way!

No comments. See here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/world-us-canada-16153511.

That's the way to do it, or Screw the hypocrites!

A nice article in The Guardian shows the stupidity of the Nobel commttee. As they report, that monkey Obama – he's a monkey not because of his ancestry, but because of all his stupid jumping and chittering – anyway, that monkey is going to sign the bill that would allow for indefinite detention of terrorism suspects arrested by military on the US soil. Land of the free, ihndeed...

At the same time they condemn such practice in other countries. Now if it isn't hypocrisy I don't know what is. Guess he's going to get one more Nobel Peace prize for that...

Prediction of the future is a stupid business sometimes...

I came upon this article: "50 technological advances your children will laugh at" on the website of The Daily Telegraph. The guy have tried to put together the list of technologies that will be obsolete soon... showing in the process his own ignorance. I gather from the text of the said article that he lives in the big city (London?) and never has to go anywhere where there's no easy access to the technology and electric power. Also his understanding of some things is, at best, incomplete.

First thing that caught my eye was that stupid idea that keyboards may have to go. The man shows no understanding of touch-typing (I happen to write texts in English, Chinese and Russian on the same keyboard which – surprise! – hase no Cyrillic or Latin characters on it. And I feel quite comfortable doing this. And I never even learned touch-typing. And if you try to write something even a bit longer that "LOLWUT?" on the virtual keyboard (in two or three languages, as is often the case for me) you're going to curse all the way through. You see, you need to:

1. Look at the virtual keyboard
2. Check that you have touched the correct letter
3. Turn down that helpful "predictive input" suggestion
4. Pray to gods that you have not made any mistakes in the previous word as you'll never position the goddamn cursor precisely where you need it
5. Swithch the input language (which takes longer on the virtual keyboard)
6. Take in the new layout
7. Start typing it (using your thumbs indtead of all your fingers, so it's slower)
8. Notice a mistake made at step 2
9. Forget about it and turn on your laptop

I guess unless we all turn into masochists with a specific twist, the keyboard will live for the long time...

Next there's suggestion that the landlines are useless. Well here's the news: roadband is often delivered via it. It's cheaper (the infrastructure is already there), it's more reliable than long-range wireless (and the bandwidth is higher), and the speeds are higher. In fact, I do not use the landline, only the ADSL service. And when there's something big happening (like that earthquake we had back in 2003) there's a risk that the cellular network will be overloaded. If you rely only on the cellphone for your emergency services... well, good luck.

And then there's that stupid notion that GPS can replace maps and road signs and compass and whatnots. No, it can't. You may have no signal (A-GPS will try to find your position, but the circle with 1 km radius saying "You're somewhere here... maybe" is not what you need). The maps used by GPS units may be ureliable as well. There was that guy... well, he was British, actually... who drove right into the lake and kept driving because it was what his GPS was telling him. The guy survived, the car (and GPS) did not.

Oh, and in China you'll find that Google Maps give you your position with a random error, it may be on spot or off, like, 500 m. Nobody knows why.

By the way, if you go to the woods in Russia, you'll need a paper map as well, as software vendors see no point in proucing maps for it – no cities, no roads...

But what strikes me as the stupidest idea is that the author is trying to peddle the cloud storage ang cloud computing as a solution for everything. Was he ver stuck in some place he can't get online? Like airport with a screwed-up Wi-Fi which insists you have to be a subscriber of one particular mobile phone network. Or at the factory where nobody saw it fit to provide Wi-Fi to the assembly line workers. On the train maybe, where the speed of 250 km/h prevents the use of 3G connection? If all your data, music and software is in the cloud, you're screwed. If you bring it along on some storage medium you can still access it. And when you remember some cloud storage screw-ups...

Next, passports. Well, I hate to break the news, but реу author of that article have never visited China. That's the country where scanners at the border checkpoint routinely fail to read machine-readable text in my passport and as routinely fail to read biometric data from those newfangled "biometric passports". Also, the idea of using just your retina and fingerprints as a passport means the creation of the international database to which every government would have access. Identity theft, anyone? Or how about those nice secret police guys tracking down some dissident and bashing his head in? And you know that the password that British civil servants would use will be 12345, right?

I could go on and on, but I do have a life. So, to sum it all up: Anither failed prediction that will be funny to read some years in the future. At least it was mildly amusing.

LOL what!??!

High-level Anti-radiation Mysterious Mouse Evil Spirit Pad. That's a real product, sold in Ningbo at the Tesco supermarket. For only ¥12.90 you can have it – it's "Highly effective 2 gather 1"!

Greenpeace are nuts or, Brain-damaged masochists are so brain-damaged

So I've been reading this article. Greenpeace are protesting the nuclear power and are somewhat enraged that they're not beaten up. It shows clearly that they're masochistic (they always seem to look forward to some beatings). Also they are completely and utterly nuts.

You see, they get 75% of their electricity from nuclear power in France. So what's the alternative they offer? Why, none of course! So let's think for them.

First of all there's renewable sources. Let's take a look...

Solar power: expensive, low effectiveness, need for some type of energy storage as there's that phenomenon called 'night' that Greenpeace is blissfully unaware of and some thing they call 'fog'. Now explain to that guy in intensive care why he won't have all that equipment keeping him alive working at night... But when you need to power some small device that is a good solution sometimes. When you need to power your high-speed train in the evening... well, you're out of luck. If you live somewhere in the Arctic... you're screwed royallly as there's that 'Arctic night' stuff. Oh, and it takes up lots of land.

Wind power: same storage problems when you have no wind: when the wind is too strond your wind farm may just disintegrate. Also there's a nice bonus: looks like there's a certain disruption of weather patterns by the wind farms, as well as plenty of dead birds (bird+propeller=SPLAT!!!) and low-frequency noise that is really bad for marine life. Also, you need lots of space for it as well (so they build them offshore).

Biofuels: all thar stuff with ethanol seems to be a dead-end for now. If we have some break-through with the methods of production (like GM algae or something) it may turn out OK. If we at the same time perfect the fuel cell technology we may have a winner here. Also producing methane from all that kitchen garbage looks like a good idea (and you get some organic fertilizer out of it as well!).

Hydrogen: low density and storage problems. Good probability of explosions when mixed with the air. Oh, and you need electricity to produce it. Overall, ain't viable now.

Hydro power: well... if you are willing to turn that farmland into the bottom of reservoir... oh, you're from some country where there are draught after draught after drauht after.. sorry, pal, you're screwed. To put it simply, ain't always viable.

Geothermal: too immature. Also far as I know, you can't just stick it anywhere you want.

To summarize it: nothing that can be immediately used as a solution, but some niche solutions are good already and some techs are really worth exploring furthe (like using methanol or ethanol with fuel cells to power electric vehicles).

Second, we have prowen old tech like oil-, gas- or coal-burnin power stations. Now can you say 'global warming'?.. You can try to use renewable wood in these but again it's too ineffective.

And the third way is... right, going nuclear. And not peeing our pants at the word. We do know the reactors designed in 1970s may be not so safe, but what if we try using our heads for designing a safer reactor? If our ancestors were that easily scared, we won't even be using fire or tools.

So to sum it up: We as a species need to be a bit more brave. Now when we think sometig can burn us (or just make us a bit uncomfortable) we tend to ban it (like those parents who called for helium to be banned affter their oh-so-clever 13 yr old daughter was not bright enough to know that you need oxygen to breathe and suffocated). Maybe we should just use those brains in our heads to think before doing something instead of looking for someone to blame after we screw up?..

Blame the switch operator, or Now we know who's to blame!

I heard yesterday that they've finished the investigation of Wenzhou high-speed train crash. Preliminary reports mentioned the failure of signaling system which lead to the collision. Now they only blame poor management.

But I've asked around – I have to ride these trains all the time so it would be nice to know just how much risk I'm taking – and they tell me that the company that supplied the signalling system has roughly 80% of Chinese market (both high-speed rail and subways) so no official would blame them as it may lead to the confirmation that high-ranking government officials took bribes to allow faulty systems to be installed on 80% of China's rail transport networks. So they'll just blame some railroad switch operator and sweep everything under the rug.

And you know the funny thing? The same system's installed in the Shanghai subway and they've had lots of problems with it. No fatalities as of yet, but hundreds of injuries in the accident in September which was disturbingly similar to the one in Wenzhou...

Silence is not an option or, Prepare to be irritated

Here's a riddle for you: What's making annoying sounds for two hours and does not get killed? Answer: Chinese man with iPad playing stupid games. And believe me, after first forty minutes you would wish to strangle him or, at least, stuff the iPad to the place where the sun does not shine.

You can try to write it of as a cultural difference, but after hearing "Niao? Niao! Niao? Niao! Niao! Heee-heeee-heee!!!" for the hundredth time you won't give a crap about culture. You still believe in Oriental politeness? Why, you should come here and expereince it – "polite" shoving, "polite" queue jumping, being "politely" obnoxious and just being a "polite" nuisance. The truth is, Chinese are rude and don't give a crap about politeness until they decide that you must be polite to them. Shouting and name-calling ensues.

And what puzzles me is the fact that you can get a pair of earbuds for maybe 15 yuan (that's USD 2.33) – or 58 yuan if you go for the really good handsfree ones with mike and remote (look and feel is exactly the same as the genuine Apple article). So why these people insist onbeing obnoxious is jyst beyond my understanding. Must be something to do with the need to show off their "prosperity", saying "Hey, I've an iPad, I'm rich!" Goddamn show-offs...