Aside from the obvious BS from these corporate goons of ripping us all off, you have another factor. WiFi theft is going to be BIG now. I wonder how many antenna arrays are spawning clandestinely as we speak? I would think the WiFi industry would want to get some lobbyists over to Congress to reign in this highway robbery and giant step BACKWARDS in the information age.
Factor this, when your neighbor Bob gets a $2,874.56 Internet bill because the neighborhood kids all soaked off his open wifi router, he's going to flip out. And so are a lot of people, they aren't going to pay it and people will start leaving in droves to anything that isn't AT&T. I think the market will correct it's self, but in the mean time, there will be people getting burned with monster bills and AT&T are some down right bastards when you owe them money. I had them all over my ass before and they suck. We overpaid them by mistake a few dollars, and we refused to cash the refund check. lol. we figured it would set on the books like a herpes sore for the rest of time if we just ignored it. They have hounded me down now for about a decade trying to get me to take it...lol, I think it grew some interest. It's a weird way to say "fuck you" to them, but it works for me.
If you have a problem with "theft" I guess you shouldn't take towels. Ironically, it's not the poor I think that steal the most. When I was a kid, some of the finest thieves I knew were from well to do families. But of course when their precious kids got in trouble, it was their poor (economically) friends that got the blame. It's ok, we shouldered that blame, it comes with the territory. I would have liked to been a mouse in the corner years later when they fessed up to their parents the things they did and who really was to blame. I could always tell the difference after they were told, they looked at me a lot different, not like I was a bug under glass.
You are right, it's very situational. If I am in a $2000 dollar a night hotel, I am taking a towel home if I so choose. But I don't, because I find that tacky and low rent. If I want a towel, I will sally forth and shop for one like a civilized person. Now if a towel strikes my fancy, I am off with it, I will probably announce with a wink that "I am stealing one of your magnificent towels for a souvenir, I would even fight you for it if you insist, but I would prefer you just add it to my bill." to me that is the slightly cheeky but civilized way to make off with a towel.
I blame a lot of this bad behavior not on poor upbringing and horrible social skills/responsibilities, but on stress. Modern living is highly stressful and I think it drives us down into what they call the "reptilian" part of the brain. I would call it an engagement of base instincts when stressed. We hail from nomadic hunter/seekers and finding any "treasure" laying about not nailed down, engages our older instincts. We pick it up instinctively, thinking we have a treasure we will need later, if the gaze of the more powerful members of the tribe aren't directly intimidating you from this thing you think you need, you will make off with it. This is how many survived in the wake of the strong. It's really damn funny how things change, but they really are the same. How do I put this gently, a lot of our "crime" isn't really a crime, its a matter of rule breaking. Who makes the rules? The strong do. Who breaks the rules? Hmm... We need to evolve our thinking to catch up with our technological developments. We still mire around with "reptilian brains" more than we think, we haven't conquered modern living enough to de-stress ourselves, modern living conquers us.
Frankly, I would factor in the towels being stolen EVERY time a customer comes through. I would encourage it in fact, why? Because then we wouldn't have to take them and throw them away. We would provide only new towels to customers and these would be washed, and dried first. The same with sheets. I don't imagine budget minded places can afford that standard though. We travel more these days, but I don't think we travel as well. One could also say, that with more of the population traveling, you get more of a baser class traveling as well. Baser class as in scoundrels who cause the rest of the people to pay for their shenanigans.
Word of warning: if you steal towels on a business trip with me, you are fired. The towels will come out of your severance pay. You will be out the door so fast, HR will get wind burns from your passing. In fact Security would have a catapult I would special ordered for launching people with such ilk of improprieties off of the premises. Happy landings and don't bother writing!
Never steal small, you hurt the small people, and we NEVER hurt the small people. You always steal BIG from the big, preferably the biggest. Anything less is petty, crass and definitely less than magnificent. Magnificent should be the standard, not the exception.
A poster below me said it right, you can't make agents into IT, you have to make IT into agents.
Their problem lies in their recruitment practices. They hire people that aren't from whatever world they are wanting to infiltrate or investigate. You can't take some green kid out of college and teach him to fit into an underground culture. The kid isn't going to have the instincts for it that comes with the territory. The problem is according to lofty recruitment standards that they have erected, they have handicapped themselves in the talent department. I blame this on puritanical thinking, which is faulty because we don't live in a puritanical world. Isolationism again comes home to roost.
You have to approach it from a guerrilla warfare type of mindset. First, assume you are clueless about what you are trying to investigate. Whatever information you have currently is probably pathetically wrong, due to the simple fact that all intelligence has a shelf life that makes ripe produce look infinite in contrast. You need to establish a "beachhead" into the situation that is secure in its foundation and facts, and build on that, branching out from there. Understanding the roles of everyone around you is vital to the administration, and frankly "everything" is in the administration of intelligence.
For example; If I was in command of an intelligence operation around IT that had any official capacity, I would be recruiting that "geohat" guy who's stirred up such an uproar. To me it's like he's crying out for that kind of recruitment for if he was really smart, he would have stayed off the radar. The need for recognition often is a flaw in the criminal mindset. This is fine and dandy, after cooling his heals in some shithole jail, he would surely come around to the "right way of thinking". After that, you get to pick his brain for priceless intelligence and get him flipped into a functioning agent. Of course you must martyr him so that the "community" remains intact in his honor. Don't disturb the herd, they are easier pickings that way. Some hate for "the man" will keep them cemented together mostly, a few will slip off, but you can do some serious damage in the mean time while the opportunity is there. It's most effective to use someone that built something to also destroy it, they will know how to do so the best.
It's a sick world out there. And if we want to keep the monsters at bay away from the soccer moms in the 3 bedroom 2 and 1/2 bath homes, then we need to employ our own monsters. Trust me, the deviant mind, the criminal mind, works on a level that isn't known to gentle souls. It isn't punching a clock, working 9 to 5, it's an animal that is always on the prowl. You don't keep the kid gloves on when deal with this. The gentle souls need to stfu and realize the realities of the world and let people do their jobs instead of tying their hands with idiot rules that get laughed at and danced around by criminals.
What is going to bite us on the ass real soon, if we really are lagging behind the rest of the world in IT related intelligence operations, is the fact that other nations sure as shit are conducting active intelligence programs in IT. It's the perfect environment for nations to do this, why? PERFECT PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY. There is no smoking gun to pin a diplomatic incident on. We all know it was probably a "haxor" that did it..right? Probably some curious kid looking around.
Sweet Jesus, did we have a handle on things before the IT component of the equation complicated the hell out of it? No, we didn't and to go all glassy eyed now is a recipe for disaster. Bottom line is this, start thinking of the talented criminals as assets to exploit, not lumps to rot away in jail. (unless they don't dance) High toned esthetically pleasing moral thinking will get you killed pronto in a backstreet knife fight. If you don't think we are always in a dirty fight behind the scenes, trying to keep the American Dream safe, you are retarded.
I have to wonder of all the people here that have such a hate on for Sony have ever owned and run a business? Or have they been involved with the gaming industry at any point of it's development?
When you boil it all down to one thing in gaming, to it's essence in it as a business or entertainment, it's all about the game it's self. If you don't have "game", you don't have a product and you are done. Stolen Information? We can forgive that, crafting bastards are out stealing from everyone and they need burned for it. But cheaters!? Those we will NEVER tolerate as costumers. Face it, Sony knows this and will NOT let their PS3 go down in flames by being shredded by cheaters.
Their head guy also died about a week ago. That might have something to do with this as well, because civilized people will take the proper time to mourn the loss of someone that great in their lives. Personally as nerdraged as I am about this, I keep myself in check, being respectful of those who have lost someone great to them. Not to mention, isn't Sony out of Japan? Could we have a heart? Haven't those people had enough horror for a while? They don't need to worry about their jobs because pissy haxors and angry internet nerds are raging at them.
WTF? Where is our government in all this? I expected them to be dancing all over this like it's the hat in a Mexican hat dance. These fuckers never miss an opportunity to stick their noses into any Internet situation with their "Holy Cow, PROTECT THE WOMEN AND CHILDREN....for the children" shrill rhetoric. Are we seeing them look the other way while Sony a foreign based based company who competes with our precious Micro$oft, gets hammered?
This is where it goes sideways, so hang the fuck on. This is what our government has had to say about all this shit.... *crickets* NOTHING. Ok, what is it then with them and I don't want to hear the "we are conducting a thorough investigation". If they aren't all over this like a fat kid a chocolate cake by now, either they are: a. Retarded and have no clue wtf is going on, which is NOT comforting all things considered. or b. They know, but aren't doing anything for whatever fucked up reasons.
Now I am sure they (Sony) have a PR department or something following internet forums. This issue has been going on a week and forums will catch it first, then a few blogs or sites will comment on it, starting with a trickle and building to a flood the longer this outage keeps up. I suggest they not hide this, for it makes the customers feel excluded and in fact, they should be more transparent. There might be a lot of old school people running Sony still, and for them business is war and an element of trust is always lacking in those who remember the nukes with bitterness.
People complain about "ownership rights" in here, but yet they ignore the ownership rights of Sony. Look if you don't like their system so much, build your own! With so many people who are obviously so much smarter than them, it shouldn't be such a hard thing, right? You go build a gaming system and keep it secure from hacking cheaters and people who want to take it all apart and then complain that its not working right. When you have done all of that, I really want to hear what you have to say about all of this.
I feel like I am going to the bank to make a withdraw and the bank has been robbed and people are cheering the bank robbers on. Well, the bank has no money now and I need some to pay my bills. WTF? Let me say this, this isn't some happy bandit gets the bad guy thing. That isn't how the real world works, mark my words, nothing good will come out of this for anyone.
Exciting stuff, and a good read, good link in your post. I have to wonder where the fuck is the American Government in all of this? Where is the No Such Agency at?
This kind of stuff is happening too often and needs to be addressed. Either they will activate an agency that can deal with it AND/OR unleash some draconian mandates and laws to curb the whole "that interwebs is a wild place" once and for all. Way to pick and choose your fights assholes.
First Sony lost it's head guy just recently. They are probably in some sort of mourning over it and when they get over it and back to a board meeting, then they will probably shift into overdrive "fuck you hackers" mode.
This electronic extortion is NOT going to fly. There is no turning back now. What we will see is the slow rolling wheels of law come rolling around. Look for a new phrase such as "Cyber-Terrorists" to become dominate as the spin machines kick on. Once Sony buys enough blocks of advertisement with the right networks, I am sure this will be part of their agenda as well. Public opinion is a funny thing, and when it turns on a group, then the snitching begins.
The irony is, they will only compound the problems they thought they were trying to solve. The system will crush them, the only way you beat the system is to become it and change yourself. Good luck on all that. The appeal of these kind of tactics, you get some immediate reaction. But the problem is, the system never sleeps or forgets and it hunts you down, so you never last in the real long term to effect real change.
They have to oversee a game system versus cheaters who hack. If this means that the cheaters were making use of the Other OS feature, then by all means, it had to go and if you can't understand that, then I don't know what to say.
Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the clever people who put linux on everything from supercomputers to my can opener. Holy fuck, are they innovative, but damn it there are some greasy rat fucks who take advantage of this and CHEAT. It's all fun until someone gets CHEATED.
Now if you can prove to me that this Other OS feature was NOT in anyway used by cheaters to exploit their fellow players, then I am with you. Seriously, who cares what you do with the PS3 as long as you don't dick with the sanctity of the games? You can tie one to each of your hands and feet, and walk around with them as shoes, and beat them together like cymbals, nobody would care, including Sony.
Cheaters ruin games. Simple as that. It's not the piracy that will ruin a game, sure that is some money out of pocket that you will never recoup, but it's not as bad as the cheaters. Nobody wants to play a cheater infested game, paid for or pirated. See, I can understand anyone wanting to get more utility out of it, but if it opens the floodgates for Cheater Lake to wash us all down stream, then fuck you and your jailbreak.
Also, fuck you and your PSN hack, you cunts may think it's giggly cute to put the shithammer to Sony, but all you are doing is fucking over people trying to enjoy their system. I have went from "meh, who cares" to "FUCK YOU CUNT HACKERS...HUNT YOU ALL DOWN, KILL YOU, AND YOUR FUCKING FAMILY, YOUR FUCKING DOG, YOUR CAT, YOUR FUCKING GOLD FISH, SALT YOUR LAWN, PISS IN YOUR POOL, PUSH OVER YOUR BIRDBATH, LEAVE MY FUCKING GAME NETWORK ALONE YOU GREASY RATFUCKS!!!!!1111!!", or something like that. (in regards to the Sony Network being FOBAR for days now)
If I feel that way, I am sure others feel strongly. I am sure Sony feels strongly. I am sure the lobbyists that work for them will feel strongly about it, and after they present a big fat check to whatever flesh eating Congresspersons they can summon, our Government will too. Holy Fuck, we are under attack from international cyberterrorists, RELEASE TEH KRAKEN!.
Come on people, lets fuck around and turn this into an all out war on our internet freedoms. We can surely piss them off enough to give us all some damn National ID Card with a chip to access our fucking balls and toilet paper and everything else in life. Between this and the Facebook/Twitter Jehadz in the Middle-east, whoever that is setting in "ye ole seat of power", has to be sweating their nuts off about now, wondering when the fuck is some of this foam at the mouth insanity going to drop the other shoe on us? Sweet Jesus, they are killing the kid's PS3, WTF?
All of this and the Fins are bitch wanting wtf, 100 Euros per customer? I would have to look at these fucking Fins and say; "Look douchebags, if you are going to force me to give up the protections on this system and open it up to whatever, then we are going to sue the fucking shit out of you when the entire game platform goes into the toilet because nobody plays the fucker due to all the cheaters on it. So, please, is your country worth that much even? Do I get to kick you all out if I win the lawsuit if you can't pay it? Granted, you people are fucking RETARDS, and obviously don't understand WTF a gaming system is and keeping one up, running and secure from ratfuck cheaters and whatnot. But I am willing to overlook that, providing you pull your collective heads out of your asses.
Look, here's the deal. Cut the damn deal with them and don't press charges. They stop their DDoS attacks, and I can finally log the hell in and register a couple of games I got, that are still in the plastic, as I wait to see if Sony is going to faceplant or not. Wal-Mart doesn't take back PS3 Games if they are opened, duh! So, here I wait. Pissed, thinking evil shit about hacker fucks jacking into my game time.
Sweet Jesus, they should all be happy as shit that I am not the owner of Sony. Fuck sending the DoJ after them. I could surely afford NINJAS!! Oh yeah, Sony Ninja's extract revenge on hackers! Details on/.! I can see it now. I would have my own RL RTS interface controlling my Ninja Teams, and after I greased them all, I would make a PS3 game out of it. The irony would be epic./forcesuggest My game network, release it now!
Aliens...lol, that is such a xenophobic term. So what if they are from another planet? They couldn't be any worse than some we already have on this planet. We have a species here that can kill the whole planet with a push of a button. After you live with that for decades, aliens aren't too scary, in fact, they are kind of a welcome treat.
Seriously though, BASE 10? Who says they are going to have 10 digits on their primary appendages? They could have 3, or 26, sweet Jesus weeping on a moped, they could not even HAVE appendages and have communicated telepathically for eons and don't even use such chickenshit simpleton mathematics. Ok, lets settle down here.
Base 2, nubcakes, that is where it will be. It's ON or it's fucking OFF, it doesn't get any simpler than that. WHAT??? BASE 2? ???? Binary ffs.
Frankly, I think we need to hack our own galactic modem up, and call some galactic version of Dominos and have them deliver us a galactic pizza out here to Bumfucked Egypt Earth, jack the delivery space ship and go fuck off in it then strip it down for the tech. Sound like a plan, who's in? Just promise me one thing; Don't immediately start shooting the shit out of people we don't like on Earth with it. For the simple reason we need to test the weapons first before pointing them at our home planet. Sure, we might want to blast the fuckers in country X to hell, but WTF if it blows a hole out the backside of the planet when we shoot them? Hmm? It's all fun until someone gets hurt.
Barbarous is the only way I can describe the philosophy of greed which has permeated our culture. It's neither intelligent or progressive except in all the wrong ways. Know this, in this society, you are merely a few steps from the bottom and should you fall victim to circumstances, you will find yourself there pronto. It doesn't matter who you are, you are disposable.
This is a shit for brains kind of thinking by a society. We piss away human resources in this country at a constant rate. It's ironic, but you would think that industry would want active social programs for education, medical needs and housing. This would certainly help industry if they didn't have to worry about these so much, that by contributing a fair tax, they are insured a healthy workforce, that is far better than any of the rest of the world's. But no, in this element of greed, we need government to stop them from exploiting people, all the way down to children; wasting their bodies, minds and lives and throw them away if they get sick, tired or too old. But sadly greed has infiltrated our government and it looks the other way, letting the forces of greed have their way unless an outrage threatens their jobs. We have elegant propaganda tools to keep the ravaged population soothed, at home licking their wounds each night so they can be tossed out into the jungle again the next day and perhaps if they are lucky, they get a "weekend". Once upon a time, we had God in our society, and the morals from such kept perhaps the greed from running wild. But today, people don't believe in God, or if they do, they aren't afraid of him or Hell, so they do whatever they want and there is no angel on their shoulders prompting them to do the better thing. You can't have a functioning society of corruption; it will fall down under its own weight as it breaks down inside, part by part, until it lurches to a halt and collapses in a junk pile of a heap. This whole "left" versus "right", blue state versus red state, is just one big elegant red herring. Let's have the lemmings argue, they will blame each other for how we screw them. Face it, you too are a victim of greed. You have bought into "the American Dream" which is a farce. You will do what they want, and like it and think that this is as good as it gets. You are a number, a product and little more than livestock. You will work all your life if you want a roof over your head and food in your gut. You will never build anything that is yours that they can 't take away from you should they chose to. You will build what they say, do what they want and live how they dictate. If you think I am wrong? Think about it really hard and boil it all down. Look at the big picture. When you see it, it defies the imagination. The mind recoils in horror at the prospects of everything in your world being such a big damn lie, fashioned for us all, the consumer, so we will move along like ants in an anthill. Until you free your mind of this, you will just fumble around in the dark like everyone else. You will take a few swings in the air, in the dark, clueless as the rest, bumping into each other in the confusion, contributing infinitely to the problem instead of solving anything. Let me encapsulate this if I can; We have to stop looking at those who are not "succeeding" according to our standards as vermin and realize they are a sign of the sickness that is in the system. If you have parts falling off your car, you don't just blame the parts as being faulty, and drive off leaving them in the road. You scoop them up and take them to the garage and repair the car. Then you don't have parts falling off it. It's also better to have the part fall off the car at a Stop sign instead of tooling down the road at 70mph. Ultimately, it's better that parts NEVER fall off the car, but metaphorically that doesn't work for us because we don't take care of our metaphorical car very well, if at all. Again, trying thinking of people as valuable human resources that need cultivated.
I think calling it "a democracy in the middle east" is funny. Imagine this, what if we set them up as a "democracy" and they all come out and vote in a government that ours HATES! Haha...oh the irony. Frankly I don't have any problem with Imperialism as long as we iron out states rights more. The individual states need to wrestle back whatever power they can from the Feds, but that will be tricky considering the big purse strings that the feds hold.
But over all, we should be adding stars to the flag. Lets go for United States of Earth before the next century? That would make us all U.S.E. and that smacks of an invite for extraterrestrials to have their way with us. "But they call themselves USE...we couldn't resist. It was futile."
Greed; it's a strong motivator in a capitalist system. We seem to be lacking the moral fiber to check ourselves versus greed these days as a collective. There seems to be a strong case for a change to our core systems of how we interact with each other in terms of what should be our basic rights as PEOPLE. (not principalities!!)
We need to think outside the box on this problem. We should surely as a species come to some universal agreement on basic interaction that doesn't exploit each other.
It's just another tool, the question is who will get to use it? I am sure that in societies such as Briton's, where they have wide coverage of CC cameras, and people don't feel their privacy violated enough versus the security gained, these tools will find a place. Just a speculation. Already we have had American law enforcement want the use of Predator drones. There was a case of them wanting it in Florida, but the FAA or something was having problems with it flying around in busy airspace.
On the other hand, as wonderful of a gizmo as this might seem, it's going to fall prey to a technically proficient enemy or criminal at some point. A few things come to mind, one is how do you sneak up on anyone if they are able to detect an RF signal? Falling prey to being jammed at best, cracked at worse, also comes to mind.
Like them or not, drones are here to stay I think, sans the planet becoming saturated in some kind of solar based electromagnetic energy that renders known RF moot. Here is something for the truly paranoid among us to ponder. With the push for even more coverage and faster broadband mobile networking, how long before entire fleets of drones could be made, launched and controlled? I was watching the commercial of the kid with a 4G phone dangling from his RC helicopter and thinking of how this would make a wonderful network to control a drone army from.
I live here and I refuse to fly. Reason why? I know I will flip out and go bat-shit at the "security procedures". To me, they are all bullshit and just a reminder of how the terrorists and the power grabbing opportunists have won and the America that I grew up with is GONE.
I hate to sound like a troll, but please, revolution? It's not going to happen. If you download a song, you will be painted as some evil criminal, vilified and justly hounded down in the public's eye. This bit about piracy is just a farce to implement their own draconian control measures. The Internet is too much freedom for the masses in their eyes. They need more control. You need controlled. It's for your own good. It's for the children.
I think it's our imperative to revolt against intrusion into our digital realms by archaic industries. It's a new age, and the relics of the past need to either evolve or pass away into oblivion. You can't set your valuables on the curb and cry to the police when they are picked up by passers by. The archaic technologies that the movie and music industry use are little more than a modern equivalent of placing their product on the curb for everyone to have at. Then they have the audacity to attempt to hinder the progressive technologies, a move which is the equivalent to complaining about your things being taken when you leave them on the curb, to remove the road, or restrict who travels down it or when. Sadly, our systems of government haven't evolved either. They are still prone to being manipulated and controlled by these archaic behemoths, which make me pause and wonder if we don't need to replace the governments first with something more fitting to our times.
How shall we fight back? How shall we the little people, the drones, the lemmings fight city hall and the powers that be? I say lets us look to old wisdom, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." I think we should all embrace "piracy" as a form of revolt against these industries. Instead of being innovative, they choose to manipulate the courts and the government into intruding into our "digital airspace". Did they all happen to miss the Internet Declaration of Independence? The Internet is the realm of the people of Earth, it belongs to no corporation or government. We are seeing these archaic institutions fight against the Internet even today with so many in the Middle East using it to free their minds and their selves. These evil governments are fighting Internet access, because they fear it. And they should, for freedom of information ultimately will be the undoing of wrong doings. Our founding fathers understood this when the first thing they addressed was freedom of the press.
I advocate that we force change upon them lo as they attempt to force change upon our digital realm. I say it's your moral obligation via civil disobedience to embrace piracy and to boycott the current entertainment industry. Let us take our entertainment underground and leave them without the precious resource they so desire; Money. It is of dire importance that the lesson we teach to the archaic powers of the world is this; "your attempts to control our freedom of information will not only be futile, but costly."
The cost of freedom is vigilance, and there is no exception to this especially here in this delicate environment, our "digital realm". Make no mistake, this is an intrusion, a shot across our bow and if we shrink back from this challenge, then those that are the enemy of this precious freedom for humanity, will smell blood in the water and know that they can gain ground and eventually succeed. It's what we decide to do today that shapes tomorrow; let us not be found by history to be slack or cowards in our moment of time.
So let us heed a call to arms and pass the word, lest we wake up someday soon with our digital world just as in shackles as our real one.
Well if they start releasing secret weapons plans, attack plans, and troop positions, then they need a cruise missile up their collective asses post haste.
But if there are some screwy things that should come to light, I say let them. Frankly I don't trust any of our media sources in this country to give us objective information or even some information at all.
I sure as shit don't think wikileaks is our savior, but perhaps it might be a step in the right direction if we can get past this last bit of crap they dumped out. Time will tell if they are a bunch of fucktards or if they will do some good journalism on the cutting edge for the world to see it without it being bought up.
All in all to me it shows that we need better security around some things. What if this wasn't a bunch of nerds, what if this was a serious enemy with some resources to burn to hurt us? If nerds can get their hands on shit, hows the seedy underworld of espionage doing?
Here is a thought, what if these leaks are on purpose? Who is to profit from this? We could consider wikileaks to be another kind of honey pot, one of disinformation or an outlet to dump nasty information in some kind of a plot.
Never underestimate an opponent, but sure don't overestimate one either. Are any of these guys as smart as we hope/fear them to be? The sad truth might be they are all a bunch of dipshits fumbling through it all, wikileaks and our government both.
Implying it's a honey pot would be the most effective way to discredit it as well.
My question is, why put out documents unless they are damning? To just put out documents that are dangerous to troops seems to be shooting off your own foot. One could just dismiss them as pathetic idiots trying to draw attention to themselves in a sick way at the cost of others. This would serve to file them away as "meh" in the public frame of mind.
But to brace them is to lend credibility to them, hence I think it's one of two things then. First, they are worried about something really damning getting leaked, or we have a bunch of retards in power. (Or both..lol..the most frightening of concepts)
If it is a honey pot for OUR people, that is fucking sad. First, if there is something damning out there, I hope like hell it does come to light. I am of the mind if you don't operate with bullshit, you don't have to worry about bullshit.
The leaked footage of us shooting the hell out of those people on the ground, the journalists included, made me sick. I feel as if we in America are housed in a fortress of naivety. It's our responsibility as American citizens to keep ourselves informed. We are ultimately responsible for what our representative government does and if we are ignorant and they are off the reservation, its our fault.
If someone out there is trying to break through some walls of ignorance and give us information we as citizens need to know, then its going to come to us at a price I am sure, but we need to fucking LISTEN.
The world looked at the German people as if they were a bunch of retards for letting the Nazis get away with what they did. I just don't want the future to look back on us that way.
I would be worried to if I were these politicians and generals. I can't imagine how much bullshit our troops have seen, and it would be hard to keep the propaganda machine running smoothly with pesky things like this popping up on wikileaks. Frankly I imagine they just want to keep a lid on it until they can get them home and disarmed. The problem will be not what content is on now, but the fact that wikileaks has proven to the world that they will run things that they get that are dangerous to them. They have proven they have enough balls to stand up and put things out that would serious piss off the mighty US government.
This can only encourage those who have access to fucked up shit, with a burning conscience, to send it in to wikileaks, because they KNOW they will put it up for the world to see. I don't suspect they are so much worry about "the enemy" seeing this, as they are our own troops and our own people. I predict we haven't seen the last of it, in fact it's just warming up. I think we will see some major crap come out now that the heat is turned up and the focus is now on them. Before they were just some geeky nutjobs with an obscure website, but now they have credibility via their intense US Government opposition.
For the US Government to become heavy handed in this would be a vast mistake I feel. The reactions I have seen so far are amateurish at best, arrogant at worse. To simply ignore them gives miles of deniability because you don't lend them any credibility. Now that we have shot our mouths off, we have to do something or we will look even more stupid. To do anything about this is going to seriously step over boundaries in a rude and arrogant way that violates the neutrality of the Internet in ways that may not be able to be repaired once broken. Sure, China can get away with it in their own country because the entire world knows they are assholes. But at least they are assholes in just their own country.
I see they want to create a whole new branch of the military for "cyberwarfare". Something about that makes me afraid, and I am a citizen. I can't imagine WTF the rest of the nervous world is thinking about it. It can't be optimistic, FFS.
At the end of day, it is the players who have decided the fates of games. If a gamer does not play the game, it is gone; a puff of smoke in a breeze. So why not the major cities to place this homage? It is because the pure heart of the players beat not in the hustle and bustle of the city, but in the quiet rural areas. Ottumwa is a mecca of rural areas; the rural areas where the bored farm boy who spent so many countless hours feeding the industry. Think of gamers from the period of infancy of gaming, who were not distracted by the hustle and bustle of the urban sprawls, who could focus on their new found entertainment with a singularity of purpose.
It was those bored rubes feeding rolls of quarters into early video game machines; those uncool masses scattered about the landscape who could be allowed to push the envelope and demand yet more. They were unhampered by the fads of the metropolis, and thus gave what was need the most in the infancy of the gaming industry; they brought their money and they PLAYED.
Behold Ottumwa, Iowa; the City of Bridges. It is a twinkle of a city, but a microcosm of modern civilization in an ocean of wilderness. There it serves as an oasis of sorts for the denizens of the moderately tamed wilds. There, a gamer shall find refuge, supplies and comrades. So there shall be the heart of computer games, and there they shall gather on that river bank. As native Americans gathered there for their games, so shall pioneers of the information and digital age gather with theirs.
A Warner Brothers cartoon smacked of adult influences I don't think out of malice or neglect, but from the fact that most households were of one television at the time. There, entire families would hunker about their television akin to a primal family about the campfire.
Hence one would find the humor skewed up a notch or two above what might suffice for a child, not necessarily trying to appeal to a larger audience, but to appease them. Suffering through a child's program as an adult shouldn't be a painful experience if one wants to keep the entire family focused on the program.
As with modern times there is far less parental supervision concerning children's programing. Appeasing the parents is not the concern as in the example of a Barney show. One could also point out the virtues then of a simpler, less violent, child oriented show.
When I was a child we used to play "Cowboys and Indians". The kids would break into two groups, one the cowboys, the other Indians. It was by definition roll playing with simulated violence. There were rules; for example, the cowboys had guns and the Indians had stealth. Rules and parameters were establish and followed, if not, "NO FAIR...or YOU CHEATED" were declared.
Modern computer gaming, such as the First Person Shooter, (FPS), is an extension of this. In fact, if you can recall being a child and the various imaginary games that children play, I.E. Pirates, Fortress, Capture the Flag, Tag and so on, modern gaming is an extension of these into a modern format with the use of computer technology. You can think of your computer as both a playground and a referee. Of course it's highly evolved and segued into genres, but if one distills it down to a non "gamer" essence, I think one could find a frame of reference based in the beginning of "play" its self.
Removing the cloak of anonymity from users, (no gaming pun intended) opens up a can of worms like S. Korea has with violence spilling over from inside the games to the streets. Posting people's information only sets up circumstances for some very bad scenarios to play out. The PvP server forums are often full of haters hating full tilt on each other. When is someone unstable going to get pushed too far and end up on someone's doorstep? When some horrible situation plays out on the evening news, BlizTard will end up sued down to foodstamps in a trailer park for liabilities. Not to mention once a politician with an ax to grind will take a look at the clime of these kinds of game and start preaching on a tall soap box how they are so very evil for our kids and basically anyone to be wasting their lives in. About the time someone in the media checks out any trade channel in the game on a Saturday night, they will flip out, and so will their religious buddies. Stuff like this sells.
This is a formula for some crazy people to do something crazy, then the government to step in and take a big bite out of the game industry cash.
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Aside from the obvious BS from these corporate goons of ripping us all off, you have another factor. WiFi theft is going to be BIG now. I wonder how many antenna arrays are spawning clandestinely as we speak? I would think the WiFi industry would want to get some lobbyists over to Congress to reign in this highway robbery and giant step BACKWARDS in the information age.
Factor this, when your neighbor Bob gets a $2,874.56 Internet bill because the neighborhood kids all soaked off his open wifi router, he's going to flip out. And so are a lot of people, they aren't going to pay it and people will start leaving in droves to anything that isn't AT&T. I think the market will correct it's self, but in the mean time, there will be people getting burned with monster bills and AT&T are some down right bastards when you owe them money. I had them all over my ass before and they suck. We overpaid them by mistake a few dollars, and we refused to cash the refund check. lol. we figured it would set on the books like a herpes sore for the rest of time if we just ignored it. They have hounded me down now for about a decade trying to get me to take it...lol, I think it grew some interest. It's a weird way to say "fuck you" to them, but it works for me.
If you have a problem with "theft" I guess you shouldn't take towels. Ironically, it's not the poor I think that steal the most. When I was a kid, some of the finest thieves I knew were from well to do families. But of course when their precious kids got in trouble, it was their poor (economically) friends that got the blame. It's ok, we shouldered that blame, it comes with the territory. I would have liked to been a mouse in the corner years later when they fessed up to their parents the things they did and who really was to blame. I could always tell the difference after they were told, they looked at me a lot different, not like I was a bug under glass.
You are right, it's very situational. If I am in a $2000 dollar a night hotel, I am taking a towel home if I so choose. But I don't, because I find that tacky and low rent. If I want a towel, I will sally forth and shop for one like a civilized person. Now if a towel strikes my fancy, I am off with it, I will probably announce with a wink that "I am stealing one of your magnificent towels for a souvenir, I would even fight you for it if you insist, but I would prefer you just add it to my bill." to me that is the slightly cheeky but civilized way to make off with a towel.
I blame a lot of this bad behavior not on poor upbringing and horrible social skills/responsibilities, but on stress. Modern living is highly stressful and I think it drives us down into what they call the "reptilian" part of the brain. I would call it an engagement of base instincts when stressed. We hail from nomadic hunter/seekers and finding any "treasure" laying about not nailed down, engages our older instincts. We pick it up instinctively, thinking we have a treasure we will need later, if the gaze of the more powerful members of the tribe aren't directly intimidating you from this thing you think you need, you will make off with it. This is how many survived in the wake of the strong. It's really damn funny how things change, but they really are the same. How do I put this gently, a lot of our "crime" isn't really a crime, its a matter of rule breaking. Who makes the rules? The strong do. Who breaks the rules? Hmm... We need to evolve our thinking to catch up with our technological developments. We still mire around with "reptilian brains" more than we think, we haven't conquered modern living enough to de-stress ourselves, modern living conquers us.
Frankly, I would factor in the towels being stolen EVERY time a customer comes through. I would encourage it in fact, why? Because then we wouldn't have to take them and throw them away. We would provide only new towels to customers and these would be washed, and dried first. The same with sheets. I don't imagine budget minded places can afford that standard though. We travel more these days, but I don't think we travel as well. One could also say, that with more of the population traveling, you get more of a baser class traveling as well. Baser class as in scoundrels who cause the rest of the people to pay for their shenanigans.
Word of warning: if you steal towels on a business trip with me, you are fired. The towels will come out of your severance pay. You will be out the door so fast, HR will get wind burns from your passing. In fact Security would have a catapult I would special ordered for launching people with such ilk of improprieties off of the premises. Happy landings and don't bother writing!
Never steal small, you hurt the small people, and we NEVER hurt the small people. You always steal BIG from the big, preferably the biggest. Anything less is petty, crass and definitely less than magnificent. Magnificent should be the standard, not the exception.
A poster below me said it right, you can't make agents into IT, you have to make IT into agents.
Their problem lies in their recruitment practices. They hire people that aren't from whatever world they are wanting to infiltrate or investigate. You can't take some green kid out of college and teach him to fit into an underground culture. The kid isn't going to have the instincts for it that comes with the territory. The problem is according to lofty recruitment standards that they have erected, they have handicapped themselves in the talent department. I blame this on puritanical thinking, which is faulty because we don't live in a puritanical world. Isolationism again comes home to roost.
You have to approach it from a guerrilla warfare type of mindset. First, assume you are clueless about what you are trying to investigate. Whatever information you have currently is probably pathetically wrong, due to the simple fact that all intelligence has a shelf life that makes ripe produce look infinite in contrast. You need to establish a "beachhead" into the situation that is secure in its foundation and facts, and build on that, branching out from there. Understanding the roles of everyone around you is vital to the administration, and frankly "everything" is in the administration of intelligence.
For example; If I was in command of an intelligence operation around IT that had any official capacity, I would be recruiting that "geohat" guy who's stirred up such an uproar. To me it's like he's crying out for that kind of recruitment for if he was really smart, he would have stayed off the radar. The need for recognition often is a flaw in the criminal mindset. This is fine and dandy, after cooling his heals in some shithole jail, he would surely come around to the "right way of thinking". After that, you get to pick his brain for priceless intelligence and get him flipped into a functioning agent. Of course you must martyr him so that the "community" remains intact in his honor. Don't disturb the herd, they are easier pickings that way. Some hate for "the man" will keep them cemented together mostly, a few will slip off, but you can do some serious damage in the mean time while the opportunity is there. It's most effective to use someone that built something to also destroy it, they will know how to do so the best.
It's a sick world out there. And if we want to keep the monsters at bay away from the soccer moms in the 3 bedroom 2 and 1/2 bath homes, then we need to employ our own monsters. Trust me, the deviant mind, the criminal mind, works on a level that isn't known to gentle souls. It isn't punching a clock, working 9 to 5, it's an animal that is always on the prowl. You don't keep the kid gloves on when deal with this. The gentle souls need to stfu and realize the realities of the world and let people do their jobs instead of tying their hands with idiot rules that get laughed at and danced around by criminals.
What is going to bite us on the ass real soon, if we really are lagging behind the rest of the world in IT related intelligence operations, is the fact that other nations sure as shit are conducting active intelligence programs in IT. It's the perfect environment for nations to do this, why? PERFECT PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY. There is no smoking gun to pin a diplomatic incident on. We all know it was probably a "haxor" that did it..right? Probably some curious kid looking around.
Sweet Jesus, did we have a handle on things before the IT component of the equation complicated the hell out of it? No, we didn't and to go all glassy eyed now is a recipe for disaster. Bottom line is this, start thinking of the talented criminals as assets to exploit, not lumps to rot away in jail. (unless they don't dance) High toned esthetically pleasing moral thinking will get you killed pronto in a backstreet knife fight. If you don't think we are always in a dirty fight behind the scenes, trying to keep the American Dream safe, you are retarded.
I have to wonder of all the people here that have such a hate on for Sony have ever owned and run a business? Or have they been involved with the gaming industry at any point of it's development?
When you boil it all down to one thing in gaming, to it's essence in it as a business or entertainment, it's all about the game it's self. If you don't have "game", you don't have a product and you are done. Stolen Information? We can forgive that, crafting bastards are out stealing from everyone and they need burned for it. But cheaters!? Those we will NEVER tolerate as costumers. Face it, Sony knows this and will NOT let their PS3 go down in flames by being shredded by cheaters.
Their head guy also died about a week ago. That might have something to do with this as well, because civilized people will take the proper time to mourn the loss of someone that great in their lives. Personally as nerdraged as I am about this, I keep myself in check, being respectful of those who have lost someone great to them. Not to mention, isn't Sony out of Japan? Could we have a heart? Haven't those people had enough horror for a while? They don't need to worry about their jobs because pissy haxors and angry internet nerds are raging at them.
WTF? Where is our government in all this? I expected them to be dancing all over this like it's the hat in a Mexican hat dance. These fuckers never miss an opportunity to stick their noses into any Internet situation with their "Holy Cow, PROTECT THE WOMEN AND CHILDREN....for the children" shrill rhetoric. Are we seeing them look the other way while Sony a foreign based based company who competes with our precious Micro$oft, gets hammered?
This is where it goes sideways, so hang the fuck on. This is what our government has had to say about all this shit. ... *crickets* NOTHING. Ok, what is it then with them and I don't want to hear the "we are conducting a thorough investigation". If they aren't all over this like a fat kid a chocolate cake by now, either they are: a. Retarded and have no clue wtf is going on, which is NOT comforting all things considered. or b. They know, but aren't doing anything for whatever fucked up reasons.
Now I am sure they (Sony) have a PR department or something following internet forums. This issue has been going on a week and forums will catch it first, then a few blogs or sites will comment on it, starting with a trickle and building to a flood the longer this outage keeps up. I suggest they not hide this, for it makes the customers feel excluded and in fact, they should be more transparent. There might be a lot of old school people running Sony still, and for them business is war and an element of trust is always lacking in those who remember the nukes with bitterness.
People complain about "ownership rights" in here, but yet they ignore the ownership rights of Sony. Look if you don't like their system so much, build your own! With so many people who are obviously so much smarter than them, it shouldn't be such a hard thing, right? You go build a gaming system and keep it secure from hacking cheaters and people who want to take it all apart and then complain that its not working right. When you have done all of that, I really want to hear what you have to say about all of this.
I feel like I am going to the bank to make a withdraw and the bank has been robbed and people are cheering the bank robbers on. Well, the bank has no money now and I need some to pay my bills. WTF? Let me say this, this isn't some happy bandit gets the bad guy thing. That isn't how the real world works, mark my words, nothing good will come out of this for anyone.
Exciting stuff, and a good read, good link in your post. I have to wonder where the fuck is the American Government in all of this? Where is the No Such Agency at?
This kind of stuff is happening too often and needs to be addressed. Either they will activate an agency that can deal with it AND/OR unleash some draconian mandates and laws to curb the whole "that interwebs is a wild place" once and for all. Way to pick and choose your fights assholes.
First Sony lost it's head guy just recently. They are probably in some sort of mourning over it and when they get over it and back to a board meeting, then they will probably shift into overdrive "fuck you hackers" mode.
This electronic extortion is NOT going to fly. There is no turning back now. What we will see is the slow rolling wheels of law come rolling around. Look for a new phrase such as "Cyber-Terrorists" to become dominate as the spin machines kick on. Once Sony buys enough blocks of advertisement with the right networks, I am sure this will be part of their agenda as well. Public opinion is a funny thing, and when it turns on a group, then the snitching begins.
The irony is, they will only compound the problems they thought they were trying to solve. The system will crush them, the only way you beat the system is to become it and change yourself. Good luck on all that. The appeal of these kind of tactics, you get some immediate reaction. But the problem is, the system never sleeps or forgets and it hunts you down, so you never last in the real long term to effect real change.
They have to oversee a game system versus cheaters who hack. If this means that the cheaters were making use of the Other OS feature, then by all means, it had to go and if you can't understand that, then I don't know what to say.
Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the clever people who put linux on everything from supercomputers to my can opener. Holy fuck, are they innovative, but damn it there are some greasy rat fucks who take advantage of this and CHEAT. It's all fun until someone gets CHEATED.
Now if you can prove to me that this Other OS feature was NOT in anyway used by cheaters to exploit their fellow players, then I am with you. Seriously, who cares what you do with the PS3 as long as you don't dick with the sanctity of the games? You can tie one to each of your hands and feet, and walk around with them as shoes, and beat them together like cymbals, nobody would care, including Sony.
STOMP STOMP CRASH CRASH CRASH STOMP CRASH..STOMP.....STOMP......CRASH.. *crickets* See, nobody cares.
Cheaters ruin games. Simple as that. It's not the piracy that will ruin a game, sure that is some money out of pocket that you will never recoup, but it's not as bad as the cheaters. Nobody wants to play a cheater infested game, paid for or pirated. See, I can understand anyone wanting to get more utility out of it, but if it opens the floodgates for Cheater Lake to wash us all down stream, then fuck you and your jailbreak.
Also, fuck you and your PSN hack, you cunts may think it's giggly cute to put the shithammer to Sony, but all you are doing is fucking over people trying to enjoy their system. I have went from "meh, who cares" to "FUCK YOU CUNT HACKERS...HUNT YOU ALL DOWN, KILL YOU, AND YOUR FUCKING FAMILY, YOUR FUCKING DOG, YOUR CAT, YOUR FUCKING GOLD FISH, SALT YOUR LAWN, PISS IN YOUR POOL, PUSH OVER YOUR BIRDBATH, LEAVE MY FUCKING GAME NETWORK ALONE YOU GREASY RATFUCKS!!!!!1111!!", or something like that. (in regards to the Sony Network being FOBAR for days now)
If I feel that way, I am sure others feel strongly. I am sure Sony feels strongly. I am sure the lobbyists that work for them will feel strongly about it, and after they present a big fat check to whatever flesh eating Congresspersons they can summon, our Government will too. Holy Fuck, we are under attack from international cyberterrorists, RELEASE TEH KRAKEN!.
Come on people, lets fuck around and turn this into an all out war on our internet freedoms. We can surely piss them off enough to give us all some damn National ID Card with a chip to access our fucking balls and toilet paper and everything else in life. Between this and the Facebook/Twitter Jehadz in the Middle-east, whoever that is setting in "ye ole seat of power", has to be sweating their nuts off about now, wondering when the fuck is some of this foam at the mouth insanity going to drop the other shoe on us? Sweet Jesus, they are killing the kid's PS3, WTF?
All of this and the Fins are bitch wanting wtf, 100 Euros per customer? I would have to look at these fucking Fins and say; "Look douchebags, if you are going to force me to give up the protections on this system and open it up to whatever, then we are going to sue the fucking shit out of you when the entire game platform goes into the toilet because nobody plays the fucker due to all the cheaters on it. So, please, is your country worth that much even? Do I get to kick you all out if I win the lawsuit if you can't pay it? Granted, you people are fucking RETARDS, and obviously don't understand WTF a gaming system is and keeping one up, running and secure from ratfuck cheaters and whatnot. But I am willing to overlook that, providing you pull your collective heads out of your asses.
Look, here's the deal. Cut the damn deal with them and don't press charges. They stop their DDoS attacks, and I can finally log the hell in and register a couple of games I got, that are still in the plastic, as I wait to see if Sony is going to faceplant or not. Wal-Mart doesn't take back PS3 Games if they are opened, duh! So, here I wait. Pissed, thinking evil shit about hacker fucks jacking into my game time.
Sweet Jesus, they should all be happy as shit that I am not the owner of Sony. Fuck sending the DoJ after them. I could surely afford NINJAS!! Oh yeah, Sony Ninja's extract revenge on hackers! Details on /.! I can see it now. I would have my own RL RTS interface controlling my Ninja Teams, and after I greased them all, I would make a PS3 game out of it. The irony would be epic. /forcesuggest My game network, release it now!
Aliens...lol, that is such a xenophobic term. So what if they are from another planet? They couldn't be any worse than some we already have on this planet. We have a species here that can kill the whole planet with a push of a button. After you live with that for decades, aliens aren't too scary, in fact, they are kind of a welcome treat.
Seriously though, BASE 10? Who says they are going to have 10 digits on their primary appendages? They could have 3, or 26, sweet Jesus weeping on a moped, they could not even HAVE appendages and have communicated telepathically for eons and don't even use such chickenshit simpleton mathematics. Ok, lets settle down here.
Base 2, nubcakes, that is where it will be. It's ON or it's fucking OFF, it doesn't get any simpler than that. WHAT??? BASE 2? ???? Binary ffs.
Frankly, I think we need to hack our own galactic modem up, and call some galactic version of Dominos and have them deliver us a galactic pizza out here to Bumfucked Egypt Earth, jack the delivery space ship and go fuck off in it then strip it down for the tech. Sound like a plan, who's in? Just promise me one thing; Don't immediately start shooting the shit out of people we don't like on Earth with it. For the simple reason we need to test the weapons first before pointing them at our home planet. Sure, we might want to blast the fuckers in country X to hell, but WTF if it blows a hole out the backside of the planet when we shoot them? Hmm? It's all fun until someone gets hurt.
And if I'm not driving/piloting, then SHOTGUN!!!
Barbarous is the only way I can describe the philosophy of greed which has permeated our culture. It's neither intelligent or progressive except in all the wrong ways. Know this, in this society, you are merely a few steps from the bottom and should you fall victim to circumstances, you will find yourself there pronto. It doesn't matter who you are, you are disposable.
This is a shit for brains kind of thinking by a society. We piss away human resources in this country at a constant rate. It's ironic, but you would think that industry would want active social programs for education, medical needs and housing. This would certainly help industry if they didn't have to worry about these so much, that by contributing a fair tax, they are insured a healthy workforce, that is far better than any of the rest of the world's.
But no, in this element of greed, we need government to stop them from exploiting people, all the way down to children; wasting their bodies, minds and lives and throw them away if they get sick, tired or too old. But sadly greed has infiltrated our government and it looks the other way, letting the forces of greed have their way unless an outrage threatens their jobs.
We have elegant propaganda tools to keep the ravaged population soothed, at home licking their wounds each night so they can be tossed out into the jungle again the next day and perhaps if they are lucky, they get a "weekend".
Once upon a time, we had God in our society, and the morals from such kept perhaps the greed from running wild. But today, people don't believe in God, or if they do, they aren't afraid of him or Hell, so they do whatever they want and there is no angel on their shoulders prompting them to do the better thing. You can't have a functioning society of corruption; it will fall down under its own weight as it breaks down inside, part by part, until it lurches to a halt and collapses in a junk pile of a heap.
This whole "left" versus "right", blue state versus red state, is just one big elegant red herring. Let's have the lemmings argue, they will blame each other for how we screw them. Face it, you too are a victim of greed. You have bought into "the American Dream" which is a farce. You will do what they want, and like it and think that this is as good as it gets. You are a number, a product and little more than livestock. You will work all your life if you want a roof over your head and food in your gut. You will never build anything that is yours that they can 't take away from you should they chose to. You will build what they say, do what they want and live how they dictate.
If you think I am wrong? Think about it really hard and boil it all down. Look at the big picture. When you see it, it defies the imagination. The mind recoils in horror at the prospects of everything in your world being such a big damn lie, fashioned for us all, the consumer, so we will move along like ants in an anthill. Until you free your mind of this, you will just fumble around in the dark like everyone else. You will take a few swings in the air, in the dark, clueless as the rest, bumping into each other in the confusion, contributing infinitely to the problem instead of solving anything.
Let me encapsulate this if I can; We have to stop looking at those who are not "succeeding" according to our standards as vermin and realize they are a sign of the sickness that is in the system. If you have parts falling off your car, you don't just blame the parts as being faulty, and drive off leaving them in the road. You scoop them up and take them to the garage and repair the car. Then you don't have parts falling off it. It's also better to have the part fall off the car at a Stop sign instead of tooling down the road at 70mph. Ultimately, it's better that parts NEVER fall off the car, but metaphorically that doesn't work for us because we don't take care of our metaphorical car very well, if at all.
Again, trying thinking of people as valuable human resources that need cultivated.
I think calling it "a democracy in the middle east" is funny. Imagine this, what if we set them up as a "democracy" and they all come out and vote in a government that ours HATES! Haha...oh the irony. Frankly I don't have any problem with Imperialism as long as we iron out states rights more. The individual states need to wrestle back whatever power they can from the Feds, but that will be tricky considering the big purse strings that the feds hold.
But over all, we should be adding stars to the flag. Lets go for United States of Earth before the next century? That would make us all U.S.E. and that smacks of an invite for extraterrestrials to have their way with us. "But they call themselves USE...we couldn't resist. It was futile."
Greed; it's a strong motivator in a capitalist system. We seem to be lacking the moral fiber to check ourselves versus greed these days as a collective. There seems to be a strong case for a change to our core systems of how we interact with each other in terms of what should be our basic rights as PEOPLE. (not principalities!!)
We need to think outside the box on this problem. We should surely as a species come to some universal agreement on basic interaction that doesn't exploit each other.
My iGoogle RSS feed had an AdSense of Obama WANTS YOUR GUNS! to this article.
Hobbits, Obama, guns; these smack of being the ingredients for a joke.
It's just another tool, the question is who will get to use it? I am sure that in societies such as Briton's, where they have wide coverage of CC cameras, and people don't feel their privacy violated enough versus the security gained, these tools will find a place. Just a speculation. Already we have had American law enforcement want the use of Predator drones. There was a case of them wanting it in Florida, but the FAA or something was having problems with it flying around in busy airspace.
On the other hand, as wonderful of a gizmo as this might seem, it's going to fall prey to a technically proficient enemy or criminal at some point. A few things come to mind, one is how do you sneak up on anyone if they are able to detect an RF signal? Falling prey to being jammed at best, cracked at worse, also comes to mind.
Like them or not, drones are here to stay I think, sans the planet becoming saturated in some kind of solar based electromagnetic energy that renders known RF moot. Here is something for the truly paranoid among us to ponder. With the push for even more coverage and faster broadband mobile networking, how long before entire fleets of drones could be made, launched and controlled? I was watching the commercial of the kid with a 4G phone dangling from his RC helicopter and thinking of how this would make a wonderful network to control a drone army from.
I live here and I refuse to fly. Reason why? I know I will flip out and go bat-shit at the "security procedures". To me, they are all bullshit and just a reminder of how the terrorists and the power grabbing opportunists have won and the America that I grew up with is GONE.
I hate to sound like a troll, but please, revolution? It's not going to happen. If you download a song, you will be painted as some evil criminal, vilified and justly hounded down in the public's eye. This bit about piracy is just a farce to implement their own draconian control measures. The Internet is too much freedom for the masses in their eyes. They need more control. You need controlled. It's for your own good. It's for the children.
I think it's our imperative to revolt against intrusion into our digital realms by archaic industries. It's a new age, and the relics of the past need to either evolve or pass away into oblivion.
You can't set your valuables on the curb and cry to the police when they are picked up by passers by. The archaic technologies that the movie and music industry use are little more than a modern equivalent of placing their product on the curb for everyone to have at. Then they have the audacity to attempt to hinder the progressive technologies, a move which is the equivalent to complaining about your things being taken when you leave them on the curb, to remove the road, or restrict who travels down it or when.
Sadly, our systems of government haven't evolved either. They are still prone to being manipulated and controlled by these archaic behemoths, which make me pause and wonder if we don't need to replace the governments first with something more fitting to our times.
How shall we fight back? How shall we the little people, the drones, the lemmings fight city hall and the powers that be? I say lets us look to old wisdom, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." I think we should all embrace "piracy" as a form of revolt against these industries. Instead of being innovative, they choose to manipulate the courts and the government into intruding into our "digital airspace". Did they all happen to miss the Internet Declaration of Independence? The Internet is the realm of the people of Earth, it belongs to no corporation or government. We are seeing these archaic institutions fight against the Internet even today with so many in the Middle East using it to free their minds and their selves. These evil governments are fighting Internet access, because they fear it. And they should, for freedom of information ultimately will be the undoing of wrong doings. Our founding fathers understood this when the first thing they addressed was freedom of the press.
I advocate that we force change upon them lo as they attempt to force change upon our digital realm. I say it's your moral obligation via civil disobedience to embrace piracy and to boycott the current entertainment industry. Let us take our entertainment underground and leave them without the precious resource they so desire; Money. It is of dire importance that the lesson we teach to the archaic powers of the world is this; "your attempts to control our freedom of information will not only be futile, but costly."
The cost of freedom is vigilance, and there is no exception to this especially here in this delicate environment, our "digital realm". Make no mistake, this is an intrusion, a shot across our bow and if we shrink back from this challenge, then those that are the enemy of this precious freedom for humanity, will smell blood in the water and know that they can gain ground and eventually succeed. It's what we decide to do today that shapes tomorrow; let us not be found by history to be slack or cowards in our moment of time.
So let us heed a call to arms and pass the word, lest we wake up someday soon with our digital world just as in shackles as our real one.
Well if they start releasing secret weapons plans, attack plans, and troop positions, then they need a cruise missile up their collective asses post haste.
But if there are some screwy things that should come to light, I say let them. Frankly I don't trust any of our media sources in this country to give us objective information or even some information at all.
I sure as shit don't think wikileaks is our savior, but perhaps it might be a step in the right direction if we can get past this last bit of crap they dumped out. Time will tell if they are a bunch of fucktards or if they will do some good journalism on the cutting edge for the world to see it without it being bought up.
All in all to me it shows that we need better security around some things. What if this wasn't a bunch of nerds, what if this was a serious enemy with some resources to burn to hurt us? If nerds can get their hands on shit, hows the seedy underworld of espionage doing?
Here is a thought, what if these leaks are on purpose? Who is to profit from this? We could consider wikileaks to be another kind of honey pot, one of disinformation or an outlet to dump nasty information in some kind of a plot.
Never underestimate an opponent, but sure don't overestimate one either. Are any of these guys as smart as we hope/fear them to be? The sad truth might be they are all a bunch of dipshits fumbling through it all, wikileaks and our government both.
Implying it's a honey pot would be the most effective way to discredit it as well.
My question is, why put out documents unless they are damning? To just put out documents that are dangerous to troops seems to be shooting off your own foot. One could just dismiss them as pathetic idiots trying to draw attention to themselves in a sick way at the cost of others. This would serve to file them away as "meh" in the public frame of mind.
But to brace them is to lend credibility to them, hence I think it's one of two things then. First, they are worried about something really damning getting leaked, or we have a bunch of retards in power. (Or both..lol..the most frightening of concepts)
If it is a honey pot for OUR people, that is fucking sad. First, if there is something damning out there, I hope like hell it does come to light. I am of the mind if you don't operate with bullshit, you don't have to worry about bullshit.
The leaked footage of us shooting the hell out of those people on the ground, the journalists included, made me sick. I feel as if we in America are housed in a fortress of naivety. It's our responsibility as American citizens to keep ourselves informed. We are ultimately responsible for what our representative government does and if we are ignorant and they are off the reservation, its our fault.
If someone out there is trying to break through some walls of ignorance and give us information we as citizens need to know, then its going to come to us at a price I am sure, but we need to fucking LISTEN.
The world looked at the German people as if they were a bunch of retards for letting the Nazis get away with what they did. I just don't want the future to look back on us that way.
I would be worried to if I were these politicians and generals. I can't imagine how much bullshit our troops have seen, and it would be hard to keep the propaganda machine running smoothly with pesky things like this popping up on wikileaks. Frankly I imagine they just want to keep a lid on it until they can get them home and disarmed. The problem will be not what content is on now, but the fact that wikileaks has proven to the world that they will run things that they get that are dangerous to them. They have proven they have enough balls to stand up and put things out that would serious piss off the mighty US government.
This can only encourage those who have access to fucked up shit, with a burning conscience, to send it in to wikileaks, because they KNOW they will put it up for the world to see. I don't suspect they are so much worry about "the enemy" seeing this, as they are our own troops and our own people. I predict we haven't seen the last of it, in fact it's just warming up. I think we will see some major crap come out now that the heat is turned up and the focus is now on them. Before they were just some geeky nutjobs with an obscure website, but now they have credibility via their intense US Government opposition.
For the US Government to become heavy handed in this would be a vast mistake I feel. The reactions I have seen so far are amateurish at best, arrogant at worse. To simply ignore them gives miles of deniability because you don't lend them any credibility. Now that we have shot our mouths off, we have to do something or we will look even more stupid. To do anything about this is going to seriously step over boundaries in a rude and arrogant way that violates the neutrality of the Internet in ways that may not be able to be repaired once broken. Sure, China can get away with it in their own country because the entire world knows they are assholes. But at least they are assholes in just their own country.
I see they want to create a whole new branch of the military for "cyberwarfare". Something about that makes me afraid, and I am a citizen. I can't imagine WTF the rest of the nervous world is thinking about it. It can't be optimistic, FFS.
If they outlaw the /spit emote and t-bagging, then we will know the chairman got powned and camped for sure.
Build it and they shall come.
A part of a destination is the journey taken, and what honor is there to a hall of fame without a pilgrimage?
At the end of day, it is the players who have decided the fates of games. If a gamer does not play the game, it is gone; a puff of smoke in a breeze. So why not the major cities to place this homage? It is because the pure heart of the players beat not in the hustle and bustle of the city, but in the quiet rural areas. Ottumwa is a mecca of rural areas; the rural areas where the bored farm boy who spent so many countless hours feeding the industry. Think of gamers from the period of infancy of gaming, who were not distracted by the hustle and bustle of the urban sprawls, who could focus on their new found entertainment with a singularity of purpose.
It was those bored rubes feeding rolls of quarters into early video game machines; those uncool masses scattered about the landscape who could be allowed to push the envelope and demand yet more. They were unhampered by the fads of the metropolis, and thus gave what was need the most in the infancy of the gaming industry; they brought their money and they PLAYED.
Behold Ottumwa, Iowa; the City of Bridges. It is a twinkle of a city, but a microcosm of modern civilization in an ocean of wilderness. There it serves as an oasis of sorts for the denizens of the moderately tamed wilds. There, a gamer shall find refuge, supplies and comrades. So there shall be the heart of computer games, and there they shall gather on that river bank. As native Americans gathered there for their games, so shall pioneers of the information and digital age gather with theirs.
That young one, is why.
A Warner Brothers cartoon smacked of adult influences I don't think out of malice or neglect, but from the fact that most households were of one television at the time. There, entire families would hunker about their television akin to a primal family about the campfire.
Hence one would find the humor skewed up a notch or two above what might suffice for a child, not necessarily trying to appeal to a larger audience, but to appease them. Suffering through a child's program as an adult shouldn't be a painful experience if one wants to keep the entire family focused on the program.
As with modern times there is far less parental supervision concerning children's programing. Appeasing the parents is not the concern as in the example of a Barney show. One could also point out the virtues then of a simpler, less violent, child oriented show.
A progression or regression? Who knows?
When I was a child we used to play "Cowboys and Indians". The kids would break into two groups, one the cowboys, the other Indians. It was by definition roll playing with simulated violence. There were rules; for example, the cowboys had guns and the Indians had stealth. Rules and parameters were establish and followed, if not, "NO FAIR...or YOU CHEATED" were declared.
Modern computer gaming, such as the First Person Shooter, (FPS), is an extension of this. In fact, if you can recall being a child and the various imaginary games that children play, I.E. Pirates, Fortress, Capture the Flag, Tag and so on, modern gaming is an extension of these into a modern format with the use of computer technology. You can think of your computer as both a playground and a referee. Of course it's highly evolved and segued into genres, but if one distills it down to a non "gamer" essence, I think one could find a frame of reference based in the beginning of "play" its self.
Removing the cloak of anonymity from users, (no gaming pun intended) opens up a can of worms like S. Korea has with violence spilling over from inside the games to the streets. Posting people's information only sets up circumstances for some very bad scenarios to play out. The PvP server forums are often full of haters hating full tilt on each other. When is someone unstable going to get pushed too far and end up on someone's doorstep? When some horrible situation plays out on the evening news, BlizTard will end up sued down to foodstamps in a trailer park for liabilities. Not to mention once a politician with an ax to grind will take a look at the clime of these kinds of game and start preaching on a tall soap box how they are so very evil for our kids and basically anyone to be wasting their lives in. About the time someone in the media checks out any trade channel in the game on a Saturday night, they will flip out, and so will their religious buddies. Stuff like this sells.
This is a formula for some crazy people to do something crazy, then the government to step in and take a big bite out of the game industry cash.