Fek'Lar
(The Last Honest Geek)
The Crapolla According to Fek'Lar
You Know You're DOOMED When...
The internet backs up and you don't have a cyber mop.
You've stumbled onto another issue of The Crapolla, a journal written for software professionals. No not the managers; I mean the people who do the work.
This Crapolla is sponsored by...
In This Issue...
A Ton of Stuff
We're in the news a lot these days. The eyes of the country are looking our way, rolling in their sockets and muttering, "Freaks!" The rest of the country has no idea how screwed up California is.
It's not that we just elected a Governor and a year later, we are trying to decide if that was a good idea. Or that the new Gubernator who might get elected is completely un-qualified and looks like he'll be a puppet. That's just normal background political crap.
What is so insanely wrong with California is the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). The DMV has been hurt over the years by budget cut-backs. They rarely require any driver to prove they can still drive a car when their license comes up for renewal. They just don't have the budget.
So in this extremely advanced, high-tech, economy the DMV has applied technology to solve the problem of doing its business at a lower cost. The rest of us did this in the 90's, but governments can be a little behind the curve.
The DMV has created a web site. Here, you can renew your car registration. No putting down your Diet Coke to lick a stamp. No sending in checks that have to be handled by people. People who later go in disability with paper cuts. The web site lets you plunk in your credit card and the entire renewal process is handled by automation, sans the bit were they send you the new sticker. It's a system as advanced and efficient as any online bookseller.
Governments are not supposed to be efficient. In fact we don't want them to be. Efficient governments have included the Third Reich, and The Mongol Empire. Efficient government is oppressive government.
The DMV has taken this marvel of technology, which saves them money, and tacked on a four dollar fee for using it. The four dollars is simply a convenience fee. This sounds a lot like courtesy fees many businesses now change for being courteous.
So only complete idiots will use this website. People who waited for the last second to renew their tags. The rest of us will realize that thirty seven cents for a stamp is a lot less than four dollars, and will use the old method not reducing DMV costs.
Meanwhile, DMV Secretary Maria Contreras-Sweet will be gallivanting up and down the halls of Sacramento about how enormously high-tech her agency is.
I'd just like to say to those in 'bama, that if you hold the Ten Commandments so dear, why don't you just go home and read your Bible? Why do you insist on shoving your religion upon the rest of us? Why is when someone removes a piece of rock from a public building you scream, "You can't take my faith away!" Was your faith in the Ten Commandments or in the rock?
I just loved the judge's statement that this wasn't religion, it was God's law. Dude, God = Religion. Hope you reach enlightenment one day.
Not Even at Costco
The trouble is you can not buy a ton of dog shit. I've looked. No one is in the bulk dog shit business.
Through the grapevine, I heard the Product Management group was having a party. I wanted to send a little gift in recognition of a few turds they've shipped. There was an alternate bio-mass which most people would say was the obvious choice. And yes, you can buy steer manure by the ton. But I though something in a St. Bernard would have been classier.
Email black lists are a stupid idea. Server admins allow complete strangers to decide who can send mail to their users and who can't. The idea is that spammers get put into the black lists and then SMTP servers block all mail from IPs on the list.
The trouble is any yo-yo can put an IP on the list. In fact UUNet, a tier 1 internet backbone provider has huge blocks of IPs on the black lists. But then it gets even better. Osirusoft a company which distributes black lists was hit by a denial of service attack and all the SMTP servers who subscribe to Osirusoft started refusing ALL mail.
You want to fight SPAM? Then all SMTP servers need a feature that enforces SMTP authentication. This is not a standard feature on these programs. It needs to be.
It strikes me that as I have paid my $7.50 to $9 to attend the latest Jackie Chan movie, playing a commercial telling me about how film piracy harms the little guy in Hollywood, is like telling fat kids to eat everything on their plate or the grocer will go out of business. Interesting message, WRONG audience.
This Issue's Headline submission to the National Daily World Enquiring Globe.
Turmoil in Tinseltown!
Comic Book Shortage Threatens 2004 Summer B.O.
Let's play, "Who said this?"
Heard in the halls of various software companies.
"Poor Arnold. He's too stupid to know he's a Democrat."
"You miss-spelled something on our Chinese web site."
"Hey, your camera's ringing."
Excuse Me
There's a big dump truck pulling into my drive way.
Fek'Lar
(The Last Honest Geek)
Remember: The Crapolla contains my personal opinions. That's right they're mine, so get your own! And you kids get off my lawn! This whole mess is copyright © 2003 by LowComDom Performances, all rights reserved. Wanna send this to your friends? Go ahead and pass out the URL.
Hey, you can subscribe to this rag by sending a message to majordomo@lowcomdom.com. On the first line of your letter type subscribe crapolla. Unsubscribing is the same, just change the command to unsubscribe crapolla
feed available from http://www.lowcomdom.com/crapolla/index.rss
EOJ
<-- Read the previous Crapolla or Read the next Crapolla -->