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Every time I hear Michael Bolton I'm always convinced he's four seconds away from blowing his throat out, but boy I sure do like his voice.
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Apr 14, 2015 00:33
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Majorian posted:Fair point, but still, I imagine there are at least tape backup systems on the market that aren't as old and decrepit as the ones the IRS seems to be forced to use. The footage they showed looked like regular tape drives. Some of the carts might be old but that's kinda the point- they can store stuff for decades with minimal degradation and not have to worry about format compatibility 20 years in the future. IRQ posted:Things like this often aren't a lack of money but a lack of will. "It works" is the reason a lot of outdated things are still being used, that goes for the private sector as well. That and more often than not it's cheaper to pay a few people to maintain the older thing rather than try to migrate to a newer system.
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Apr 14, 2015 01:45
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comes along bort posted:The footage they showed looked like regular tape drives. Some of the carts might be old but that's kinda the point- they can store stuff for decades with minimal degradation and not have to worry about format compatibility 20 years in the future. Yeah, at best, migrating to newer tape drives would just consolidate a bunch of tape drives into fewer tape drives. Even then they'd probably still have to hold on to old machines and drives for one awful reason or another, as always happens with migration. The IRS getting their budget slashed so that they may be sacrificed on the altar of dumbass hicks is plenty stupid, I don't know why Oliver had to go after a totally legitimate decision.
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Apr 14, 2015 01:53
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comes along bort posted:The footage they showed looked like regular tape drives. Some of the carts might be old but that's kinda the point- they can store stuff for decades with minimal degradation and not have to worry about format compatibility 20 years in the future. See COBOL.
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Apr 14, 2015 01:59
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Lumberjack Bonanza posted:The IRS getting their budget slashed so that they may be sacrificed on the altar of dumbass hicks is plenty stupid, I don't know why Oliver had to go after a totally legitimate decision. I doubt it was malicious, just someone working on the story saw an angle with hey look at this old stuff they still use. To be fair though if they were to get their budget in line with where it should be they should totally spring for one of those futuristic sci-fi tape vaults Google uses.   Humbug Scoolbus posted:See COBOL. I was thinking Fortran, but yeah.
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Apr 14, 2015 02:09
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comes along bort posted:I doubt it was malicious, just someone working on the story saw an angle with hey look at this old stuff they still use. Oh, totally, I just figured they would have someone on their staff who actually knows about IT with how often they talk about it on the show. Everyone knows magnetic tape isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Those Google pictures are pretty cool, too.
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Apr 14, 2015 02:19
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DoggPickle posted:I feel like the whole "don't blame the poor person on the phone because the company sucks" thing would have gone over much better if he'd targeted say - Verizon. People are absolutely insane about the IRS. Due to the budget cuts, they all but stopped their mailing out of forms and booklets to libraries, post offices, and the like this year. Everything is on the website, but the reaction to it has been loving insane. Apparently the IRS are incompetent masterminds who have teamed up with Obama to destroy this once great nation by stealing all the money that the government has ever collected, and this is all a ridiculous and hypocritical attempt to personally screw over the little guy trying to pay their taxes and forced to learn how to use a computer and everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves. Also they hate the elderly, and I'm a monster who has been bamboozled by their lies with regards to budget cuts. So both I and the IRS will be sorry once they contact their congressman.
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Apr 14, 2015 02:47
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Incidentally, John Oliver makes the point that the IRS isn't cool, but that's not the case in other countries. In the Phillipines, they try to make their equivalent of the IRS seem tough by posing with guns in order to spook people into paying their taxes.
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Apr 14, 2015 19:53
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The IRS has armed agents too, and holy gently caress does it freak out the usual idiots when they find out about it.
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Apr 14, 2015 21:09
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SlothfulCobra posted:Incidentally, John Oliver makes the point that the IRS isn't cool, but that's not the case in other countries. In the Phillipines, they try to make their equivalent of the IRS seem tough by posing with guns in order to spook people into paying their taxes. In Pakistan they employ transvestites to dance around in front of the businesses of people who don't pay their taxes.
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Apr 14, 2015 22:47
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JT Jag posted:Hah, modernizing to computers in the late 90s. Not the best timing for that. If only they had waited like 5 years, it would have been much less expensive and there'd have been a lot more assistance on the matter. Ehhhh, there have been and continue to be failed big IT projects post-2000. SlothfulCobra posted:The IRS being left to decay is one of those little sad problems with the government that nobody is ever really eager to fix. It's easy to cast them as some sort of "bad guy" since nobody likes paying money to the government, but then when there isn't proper tax revenue available, things like ludicrous punitive fines have to step up to fill the gap. It was several years ago when I read this, but Congress knows that if they gave the IRS another ~$200 million, there'd be close to a fifty-fold return on collected revenue. In other words, in the eyes of a lot of people in Congress, the IRS not having the money to go after tax evasion is considered working as intended. SlothfulCobra posted:Incidentally, John Oliver makes the point that the IRS isn't cool, but that's not the case in other countries. In the Phillipines, they try to make their equivalent of the IRS seem tough by posing with guns in order to spook people into paying their taxes. The IRS already has a reputation for being cartoonishly malicious and merciless to good honest folk who just made a few mistakes, which from the anecdotal experiences of my friends and acquaintances is totally unwarranted. I have a friend who was behind on taxes, she called to arrange a payment plan, and the agent she spoke to was courteous and downright friendly about it. And that's how it should be, because people who are scared shitless of Getting In Trouble are going to avoid the problem and hope it goes away, rather than dealing with it.
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Apr 14, 2015 23:13
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:It was several years ago when I read this, but Congress knows that if they gave the IRS another ~$200 million, there'd be close to a fifty-fold return on collected revenue. I would imagine that these two statements are probably related. The kinds of people who actually SHOULD be concerned about what the IRS might find are the ones that have invested quite a lot in creating the perception of the "evil tax man going after the little guy".
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Apr 14, 2015 23:17
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The Cheshire Cat posted:I would imagine that these two statements are probably related. The kinds of people who actually SHOULD be concerned about what the IRS might find are the ones that have invested quite a lot in creating the perception of the "evil tax man going after the little guy". They like the evil tax man going after the little guy. It means less manpower can be levied against their donors' coffers.
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Apr 15, 2015 02:37
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:The IRS already has a reputation for being cartoonishly malicious and merciless to good honest folk who just made a few mistakes, which from the anecdotal experiences of my friends and acquaintances is totally unwarranted. I have a friend who was behind on taxes, she called to arrange a payment plan, and the agent she spoke to was courteous and downright friendly about it. And that's how it should be, because people who are scared shitless of Getting In Trouble are going to avoid the problem and hope it goes away, rather than dealing with it. Every dealing I've ever had with the IRS has been just fine. They're professionals who know that they're often dealing with people under stress. I've had more problems with my state's tax collection agency who did behave like the cartoonishly evil and bureaucratic taxmen. They got a hold my tax records for years that I didn't live or work in the state and used the income on those records to demand that I pay state income tax for those years ignoring the fact that the second line on all of those records proved that I didn't owe them jack poo poo. And I had to go to court to prove this.
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Apr 15, 2015 04:20
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:Ehhhh, there have been and continue to be failed big IT projects post-2000. Never understood why people see the IRS as some great evil.* Yeah, no one wants to pay up, but only a loving idiot doesn't realize its importance. Of course, rich people have done a fantastic job of convincing poor people that one day they'll be rich and that's why you have to make sure to not tax the rich. *I know why. People are idiots.
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Apr 15, 2015 06:47
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I have a family member who works for the IRS and they loving loved the whole bit. Apparently they've been talking about it non stop at work. comes along bort posted:The IRS has armed agents too, and holy gently caress does it freak out the usual idiots when they find out about it. In some states they're all armed because everyone in the state seems to shoot at them when they pull up. Looking at you Texas. They also have special agents for when someone is assigned to audit people suspected of organized crime. My family member actually had their tires slashed during one of those so they assigned this 6'6 jacked behemoth to go with for the next audit to the same location. Those guys are all enormous former Marine types.
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Apr 16, 2015 17:45
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Relentlessboredomm posted:I have a family member who works for the IRS and they loving loved the whole bit. Apparently they've been talking about it non stop at work. For some reason, I can't get the accounting firm from Parks and Rec out of my head.
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Apr 17, 2015 01:27
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Well played, Lions
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Apr 20, 2015 04:30
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Washington Journal is probably the best show on tv. The best callers see how long they can lead the host on with an inane story until they finally ask the guest if they believe WTC 7 was brought down by a controlled demolition.
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Apr 20, 2015 05:24
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Martin Sheen introducing the Cat Saloon was the best thing on TV this weekend.
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Apr 20, 2015 08:44
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The Most Patient Man segment killed.
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Apr 20, 2015 08:48
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The most patient man segment felt like a window into a man's personal hell. I don't know what he's done to deserve it, but it must have been terrible.
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Apr 20, 2015 13:17
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Steve Scully doesn't even get the worst of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=li4NzXkdMeQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dod-v8RLiWc
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Apr 20, 2015 13:22
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I'd so watch a longer Humanity Blooper Reel that cuts back and forth between war atrocities and people getting injured on YouTube. Edit: Here's a gif. I wanted a gif. 
Echo Chamber fucked around with this message at 01:18 on Apr 21, 2015 |
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Apr 20, 2015 14:46
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I mean I've seen it before, but that flipping into a basketball shot clip is always pretty cool. I wonder if Adam Carolla saw the patent troll segment....
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Apr 20, 2015 15:18
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I was disappointed that the patent segment didn't get into the fact that almost every since one of these patents are invalid. Setting aside just the basic hurdle of "new, original, and non-obvious" which they rarely clear anyway, because of the way that software patents are written and filed the same concepts are patented dozens of times. A review of software patents inevitably turns up piles of duplicate patents. The patent office is terrible at doing even their basic functions...
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Apr 20, 2015 15:41
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Random Stranger posted:The patent office is terrible at doing even their basic functions... Much like the IRS segment, they are also a victim of funding cuts. I have a friend that works in the patent office and it's insane. They've basically been under a hiring freeze and the average person there works like 60 hour weeks while still taking home work on the weekend. There isn't enough manpower anymore to fully research these patents before they are approved.
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Apr 20, 2015 16:34
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bull3964 posted:Much like the IRS segment, they are also a victim of funding cuts. But this problem started over twenty years ago. You can't blame budget cuts on it.
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Apr 20, 2015 18:28
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Random Stranger posted:But this problem started over twenty years ago. You can't blame budget cuts on it. Pretty sure the small and weak goverment thing goes back longer than that
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Apr 20, 2015 19:03
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I was hoping he'd say something about how you can accurately gauge the length of patent protection by taking a look at the age of Mickey Mouse
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Apr 20, 2015 19:23
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Not a Children posted:I was hoping he'd say something about how you can accurately gauge the length of patent protection by taking a look at the age of Mickey Mouse That's trademark and copyright protection, not patents.
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Apr 20, 2015 19:58
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Isn't "new and unique" kind of a permanently unsolvable problem for the patent office? You need to have someone in there who is already smarter than the people applying for patents. It's like trying to make an IQ test that works for geniuses. You need an even better genius to write the thing in the first place. A better budget would make it better, but it can never be perfect.
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Apr 20, 2015 20:03
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Patent law just seems like an endlessly arcane purgatory pit that we will never be able to properly crawl out of.
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Apr 20, 2015 20:07
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Funding wouldn't be a problem if the USPTO was allowed to keep all of the money it makes off of the myriad of required filing fees. Unfortunately they're pretty much the only U.S. governmental office that makes a profit, so their savings are always being re-allocated to cover all of the other funding holes in the rest of the government. They're only allowed to keep a small portion of what they bring in, which leads to lovely understaffing and terrible pay. And just to add to the problem, most of the examination rules are very badly out of date when it comes to current technological development. Changing the rules requires congressional approval and oversight by judges, neither of whom are remotely in touch with the issues raised by today's technology (most of them barely even understand that email exists much less how it works, for example).
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Apr 20, 2015 21:23
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Fans posted:The most patient man segment felt like a window into a man's personal hell. I don't know what he's done to deserve it, but it must have been terrible. It almost makes me want to watch CSPAN, and I'm sure I've never thought that before. Does this guy have a regular time slot or do they just take questions after Congress is done voting on whatever?
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Apr 20, 2015 23:26
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I think it's weird that they seemed to have separate phone numbers for Republican, Democrat and Independent callers. Any practical reason for this?
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Apr 20, 2015 23:30
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Timett posted:I think it's weird that they seemed to have separate phone numbers for Republican, Democrat and Independent callers. Any practical reason for this? Pretty sure it's so they say they're being fair. Put on one republican, one democrat, one independent, rinse, repeat. Or something like that.
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Apr 21, 2015 00:32
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Timett posted:I think it's weird that they seemed to have separate phone numbers for Republican, Democrat and Independent callers. Any practical reason for this? Probably to aid some statistics gathering.
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Apr 21, 2015 00:45
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synftw posted:It almost makes me want to watch CSPAN, and I'm sure I've never thought that before. The show is Washington Journal, and it airs every morning at 7AM, and they go to open phones regularly throughout. I actually have a C-SPAN radio station where I live that intercuts between audio feeds from the actual TV stations and pre-recorded or "earlier today" stuff, and call-in segments on Washington Journal get run for those too. Basically the short answer is "Every morning, that man has to listen to exactly that poo poo every day."
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Apr 21, 2015 00:50
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That was better than the last few weeks episodes. I wish that the Patent story had been given a little more time though, the week-in-review stories were all too scant to be worth the time and the new mascot every week is stretching that gag past the point of sustainability. A little warm-up and one good rant a week is all the show needs. They also missed an opportunity with the 'genetically modified dinosaur' line; either use the right clip or just have Sheen say 'those damned dirty apes'. That's just nitpicking though. Are there any good patent documentaries out there, besides Shark Tank? I would like to know more.
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Apr 21, 2015 00:50
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