I just read an article about how Asia (including China) prefers male children so much that demographically it's "missing" about 136 million women; that is to say there are WAY too many men and nowhere NEAR enough women for the society to grow in a normal fashion.
Couple this with the ghost cities phenomenon and you have to wonder how they're going to populate all this infrastructure they're building.
The thing about buildings is, you have to live in them, and maintain them, or they crumble into dust. Google Pripyat for some great pictures of this process at work.
I'm curious how this is all going to work out. I'm sure it'll be interesting, but I'm willing to bet you that China isn't going to be the world's greatest economy anytime soon.
Who said anything about sending MAC addresses to the internet? Every time you guys respond to me, you put words in my mouth. It's dirty pool to argue with my point by rephrasing it in a way suitable to you.
Anyway, why are you fixating on the MAC address thing? Who cares about it, it's just one part of my suggestion. My point, which I will reiterate, is that dodging from one piece of hardware to another and using public, anonymous access points in nearby towns will make it virtually impossible for anyone to definitively tie you to anything you say on the internet. It's not just the MAC address, it's making sure nothing recovered from the disk can trip you up, making sure they can't tie your hardware and OS to the comment somehow, etc, etc.
It wouldn't be difficult for a corporation to have someone figure out where you're posting from, then try to watch and log the traffic at that access point. Most internet forums don't use SSL. This one doesn't. If they want to log your MAC address while they're at it, it shouldn't be too hard. You're not using your imagination; you rely on your test prep book too much, CCNE-guy. You have to think of worst case scenarios, and see how they'd try to get you if they were annoyed enough to put some effort into it.
It doesn't matter what MOST do. It matters what some MIGHT do.
I like the idea suggested by another poster: rip the hard disk out, use a dongle and a live CD, and use a ramdisk as a temp disk. I can't think of anything wrong with that approach.
Guys like you are a trip. SO confident. SO sure of yourselves.
UPDATE: I tried Debian, and I'm sorry, but I don't know what's going on with that distro. First, the default background was some kind of space scene that looks like it was done by little kids, with whooshing kiddie rocket ships and simplistic drawings of a vaguely saturn-like planet. Horrible, just horrible. I thank GOD I didn't show that to my boss, he'd have laughed out loud and banned me from the server room.
I'm not going to pick on the Debian guys, but I was completely unhappy with Debian. It was terrible. I'm going back to Ubuntu; if the Gnome guys keep acting like idiots I'll switch to Kubuntu or install KDE like the other guy said.
Yeah, but I find myself drawn to Debian. In an age where everyone seems to be trying to dumb things down for the hoi polloi, the folks at Debian specifically keep power users and geeks like me in mind. They pay attention to us, and deliberately make it possible for us to do our thing our way.
I'm definitely switching to Debian and using KDE from here on in. I'm going to spend some money in their store too. I wonder what they've got available... At the least I'll buy a full DVD set.
Incidentally, I remember back in the old days, using Red Hat and Slackware, that I was able to do a lot more tuning of my GUI than I've been able to with Ubuntu. How I have missed that. I'm looking forward to what I can play with under Debian.
I am also i this category. It appears I will be switching back to KDE as well.
Since I've been using Ubuntu for a while, that means I'll be switching distros. I have decided to focus on Debian from now on, since it lets you choose which desktop you want to run. It seems better than Ubuntu anyway.
The people who build Gnome seem intent on forcing everyone to do things their way. I hope their system falls out of favor, and they are all relegated to the scrap-heap of history, like all tyrants.
Of course your disparaging opinion of me is invalidated by the fact that your ONLY complaint about my post is that people can spoof their MAC addresses. I'm afraid you have failed to impress me with this information (most of which you probably cut/pasted from the web, amirite?).
Not all network cards will allow you to spoof MAC addresses. Do you really trust your manufacturer? Better do some test posts locally and see... Many manufacturers build things in to help law enforcement, and these same things help corporate lawyers when they're annoyed at you.
I love the way you just ASSUME nobody keeps their logs... Ha ha ha... That's just precious.
I stand by my comments. They're better -- and more polite -- than yours.
Except that pesky network card in your laptop, which has a MAC address hard-coded into it, which is logged by the access point...
The point is to have a "clean" laptop whose MAC address can't be easily associated with you. If you buy a laptop in a store, someone could theoretically trace the laptop back to the store and see who bought it. MAC address -> Serial number of laptop from manufacturer -> store selling laptop -> YOU.
But ALSO, if you're worried that a corporation is likely to try to identify you because you've criticized a product (for example), in addition to using TOR you will want to make sure you're not posting your opinions from your home.
Buy a cheap, hundred dollar laptop from someone on Craigslist. Wipe the disk and install Linux. Create an account called "privacy". Encrypt the home directory.
THEN, drive to one of your city's many publicly available WiFi hot spots, in a coffee shop or library perhaps, and submit your post from there, with Firefox in a private browsing session.
To be REALLY safe, periodically sell the laptop and get a new one off Craigslist.
It's not the house. Owning a house is good. The thing to do as a single guy in my opinion is to buy a small, non-family-friendly house, like a weird, spooky little two bedroom cottage with lots of spiders and house centipedes and a full basement you can turn into a mechanical lab. The nice thing about these houses is that they're usually cheap, like in the 50K range. Taxes are low too, and heat and electric is REALLY cheap.
Best of all, this type of house makes women who are husband hunting reject you outright. "Only two bedrooms???" It's yet another useful feature.
I suspect that the kind of women a man like me actually WANTS (i.e. mid-forties horny single women without kids) would really be into that sort of thing. It's "cozy", perfect for an older couple.
So it basically drives away the women I don't want and attracts the ones I do. Theoretically. Cottages for the win. Capes maybe. Or -- damn! A prefab Cabin! A cabin would be great, with an overhead sleeping loft...
That's what I mean... The way I see it, if you don't get married and things later go badly, you can part ways with a handshake instead of getting lawyers involved.
I heard something funny today, elsewhere in this thread:
"50 percent of marriages end in divorce. The other 50 percent end in death! Rotten deal either way... "
I said this aloud at work, just kidding around, next to a married coworker. He was really quiet for a few minutes, and I felt quite guilty.
Me and my big mouth... Spoke too soon; it can be "contracted" in eleven states (like a disease! ha ha):
"Common-law marriage can still be contracted in eleven states (Alabama, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, New Hampshire (posthumously), Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah) and in the District of Columbia."
Yeesh! Well, out of those, the only ones I kind of like are New Hampshire and Colorado, and in New Hampshire you have to die first so I figure that's not that bad.
Actually, I append "TheHermit" to my name across the board, because I'm basically a crazy techo-hermit. In my apartment, it's just me and my gear! And where other hermits used to focus their energies on religious study, all I care about is programming and art.
It kinda works for me though, I think. Plus, it's in my email, so women know INSTANTLY I'm basically antisocial and dislike groups. It's like product labeling.
Heh... I promised myself I would never get married to anybody, ever. Thus, I would never have to worry about being divorced and having to hand half of my income and assets to a person who used to love me but now hated me.
Women never seem to understand this basic concept: if you don't get married, you won't get divorced.
Other side effects include: being able to do whatever you want with your life, without interference; never having to stay in a bitter relationship for fear of legal trouble; not having to buy a house and minivan.
Not so fast. As usual for guys like you, you don't know as much about the U.S. as you think you do.
The Federal government only makes and enforces FEDERAL laws, and those mostly apply to interstate commerce.
The laws that are applied to individuals, in their neighborhoods, are state and local laws. These vary incredibly widely from state to state, as do political attitudes, and the general demeanor of the people you'll meet if you walk around and talk to them.
HERE IS A VERY SIMPLE EXAMPLE.
Everyone has heard about the "war on drugs" correct? Well, the Federal Government strongly encourages states to make Marijuana illegal. It's listed on some schedule under which the Feds have declared it a terrible thing. If YOU were right, all states would have terrible laws against marijuana use and possession, and they would all be about the same.
BUT! In Arizona, you get caught smoking pot and you're going to jail for 1/2 to 1 1/2 years, and can be forced to pay a $750 - $150,000 fine.
In Texas, and this surprised me, if you have no prior convictions the judge can just let you go. If he doesn't, he MUST sentence you to probation and a treatment program. That is amazingly progressive for Texas, which I usually like to make fun of.
Here in New York, getting caught with a joint will get you nothing more than a $100 ticket ($200 for the second offense, if you keep doing it eventually they'll put you in the county jail for a couple of days for being a pain in the ass).
In Michigan, getting caught with pot will get you up to 90 days and a $100 fine. If you don't annoy the judge, it might be only a day or two, or probation. I've heard of people getting a $5 fine and a moderately stern lecture.
So, YOUR point is invalid in regards to freedom. Our freedom is primarily regulated by STATE LAWS (and local judges), not Federal ones.
Sort of like Europe! You'd rather be governed by France's laws than Turkey's, right?
Thanks! You ever notice, the U.S. is about the size of Europe, and the individual states are about the size of European countries (except Alaska, which is the size of the continent of Australia), but nobody over there ever realizes the similarity?
They think of Europe as a constellation of totally different places, and the U.S. as a single completely uniform place. This makes me think Europeans are completely illogical, like Glenn Beck listeners who think calling French Fries "Freedom Fries" is a good idea.
The funniest thing of all is that they say "Ahhh, all you Americans think you split the atom, but who did this? Europeans who moved to America." But this description -- "Europeans who moved to America" -- covers virtually EVERYONE IN AMERICA except Native Americans!
Realistically, America is nothing but Europe, Mark 2. You know, the improved model.
Europeans' belief that they are superior is actually RECURSIVE!
They start out by pretending all of Europe is like France.
Then they pretend all of France is like Paris.
Then they pretend all of Paris is like a fancy neighborhood IN Paris.
Then they pretend that whole neighborhood is like that street they shot that movie on that time. In black and white with background music, no less.
They don't seem to have an exit condition though. They just keep calling "allOfEuropeIsLike(String trendierPlace)". I suppose eventually they'll run out of CPU and get stuck with their mouth open, latte halfway to their lips, galoise hanging jauntily off their tongue, turtleneck catching fire from the ashes...
The US is no more homogeneous than Europe is. Just as you have fairly varied laws between, say, France and Turkey (which is part of Europe if not the EU), we have fairly varied laws as well.
It is unfair of you to cherry-pick the things that happen in our "crazy" states and pretend that they're representative of the United States.
Think of it this way.
The United States is like a family with fifty members.
You've got the bookish preppies (New England, New York, some states in the Northern Midwest, and the Pacific Northwest), their country cousins, (much of the Midwest and the SouthEast), and Uncle Hippy (California)... They're generally OK, you can have a normal conversation with them, and nothing weird will happen.
Then you've got the weird cousins everyone else tries to avoid (the dumber of the "Red" states, of which Texas is probably the worst). They pick on strangers, they get drunk and punch out environmentalists, and in general, embarrass the whole family.
You Europeans are like people living across the street, gossiping about us because we threw a barbecue and the whole weird family showed up. Forgotten are all the good things the family does, our literary works, our scientific discoveries, the two or three times we've called the police and stopped your house from getting burgled, and the fact that we're generally good neighbors. All you want to harp on is that Cousin Joe from Texas got drunk, stripped naked, climbed a telephone pole, and peed on a police officer. You think we're all terrible because of Cousin Joe. It lets you feel all SUPERIOR.
Boss: Ok, guys, we need someone to head over to the gadget morgue and take a bunch of pictures of old stuff we used to use back in the fifties. Some muckety-muck thinks it'll make us look all family-friendly or something. Oh, and you've got to do some puzzles for kids with that nerd in IT.
Spy 1: Oh, HELL no. I'm booked up for the whole rest of the week, I've got to kill that guy in Turkey, then I've got that thing in Italy...
Spy 2: I'm working with Spy 1 on that, I'm booked up too.
Spy 3: Don't look at me, I've got to head to Beijing tomorrow, we're hiring a hacker.
Boss: "Hiring"?
Spy 3: Heh, well, "involuntarily" (all laugh)
Spy 4: Sorry boss, heading to low Earth orbit to test the ion cannon on some missle site somewhere... Haven't been briefed yet. Also it's my anniversary on Friday.
Boss: Well? Milton? That leaves you.
Milton: But... But..
Boss: Mmm... Yeah, I'm going to need you to come in on Saturday too. Sunday maybe.
Milton: But... But... I have to...
Boss: Ah, what's that? I've been looking for that! Thanks! (takes stapler).
Slashdot Mirror
I just read an article about how Asia (including China) prefers male children so much that demographically it's "missing" about 136 million women; that is to say there are WAY too many men and nowhere NEAR enough women for the society to grow in a normal fashion.
Couple this with the ghost cities phenomenon and you have to wonder how they're going to populate all this infrastructure they're building.
The thing about buildings is, you have to live in them, and maintain them, or they crumble into dust. Google Pripyat for some great pictures of this process at work.
I'm curious how this is all going to work out. I'm sure it'll be interesting, but I'm willing to bet you that China isn't going to be the world's greatest economy anytime soon.
Firefox is dropping the status bar in 4.0??? What???
But... But... WHY?
I see a status bar plugin in my future.
Thank you! I'll try that. Good suggestion...
Who said anything about sending MAC addresses to the internet? Every time you guys respond to me, you put words in my mouth. It's dirty pool to argue with my point by rephrasing it in a way suitable to you.
Anyway, why are you fixating on the MAC address thing? Who cares about it, it's just one part of my suggestion. My point, which I will reiterate, is that dodging from one piece of hardware to another and using public, anonymous access points in nearby towns will make it virtually impossible for anyone to definitively tie you to anything you say on the internet. It's not just the MAC address, it's making sure nothing recovered from the disk can trip you up, making sure they can't tie your hardware and OS to the comment somehow, etc, etc.
It wouldn't be difficult for a corporation to have someone figure out where you're posting from, then try to watch and log the traffic at that access point. Most internet forums don't use SSL. This one doesn't. If they want to log your MAC address while they're at it, it shouldn't be too hard. You're not using your imagination; you rely on your test prep book too much, CCNE-guy. You have to think of worst case scenarios, and see how they'd try to get you if they were annoyed enough to put some effort into it.
It doesn't matter what MOST do. It matters what some MIGHT do.
I like the idea suggested by another poster: rip the hard disk out, use a dongle and a live CD, and use a ramdisk as a temp disk. I can't think of anything wrong with that approach.
Guys like you are a trip. SO confident. SO sure of yourselves.
UPDATE: I tried Debian, and I'm sorry, but I don't know what's going on with that distro. First, the default background was some kind of space scene that looks like it was done by little kids, with whooshing kiddie rocket ships and simplistic drawings of a vaguely saturn-like planet. Horrible, just horrible. I thank GOD I didn't show that to my boss, he'd have laughed out loud and banned me from the server room.
I'm not going to pick on the Debian guys, but I was completely unhappy with Debian. It was terrible. I'm going back to Ubuntu; if the Gnome guys keep acting like idiots I'll switch to Kubuntu or install KDE like the other guy said.
Yeah, but I find myself drawn to Debian. In an age where everyone seems to be trying to dumb things down for the hoi polloi, the folks at Debian specifically keep power users and geeks like me in mind. They pay attention to us, and deliberately make it possible for us to do our thing our way.
I'm definitely switching to Debian and using KDE from here on in. I'm going to spend some money in their store too. I wonder what they've got available... At the least I'll buy a full DVD set.
Incidentally, I remember back in the old days, using Red Hat and Slackware, that I was able to do a lot more tuning of my GUI than I've been able to with Ubuntu. How I have missed that. I'm looking forward to what I can play with under Debian.
I am also i this category. It appears I will be switching back to KDE as well.
Since I've been using Ubuntu for a while, that means I'll be switching distros. I have decided to focus on Debian from now on, since it lets you choose which desktop you want to run. It seems better than Ubuntu anyway.
The people who build Gnome seem intent on forcing everyone to do things their way. I hope their system falls out of favor, and they are all relegated to the scrap-heap of history, like all tyrants.
Unkind.
Of course your disparaging opinion of me is invalidated by the fact that your ONLY complaint about my post is that people can spoof their MAC addresses. I'm afraid you have failed to impress me with this information (most of which you probably cut/pasted from the web, amirite?).
Not all network cards will allow you to spoof MAC addresses. Do you really trust your manufacturer? Better do some test posts locally and see... Many manufacturers build things in to help law enforcement, and these same things help corporate lawyers when they're annoyed at you.
I love the way you just ASSUME nobody keeps their logs... Ha ha ha... That's just precious.
I stand by my comments. They're better -- and more polite -- than yours.
That is an excellent idea... You wouldn't have to cycle the laptops then. Thanks!
Except that pesky network card in your laptop, which has a MAC address hard-coded into it, which is logged by the access point...
The point is to have a "clean" laptop whose MAC address can't be easily associated with you. If you buy a laptop in a store, someone could theoretically trace the laptop back to the store and see who bought it. MAC address -> Serial number of laptop from manufacturer -> store selling laptop -> YOU.
TOR, yes. Definitely.
But ALSO, if you're worried that a corporation is likely to try to identify you because you've criticized a product (for example), in addition to using TOR you will want to make sure you're not posting your opinions from your home.
Buy a cheap, hundred dollar laptop from someone on Craigslist. Wipe the disk and install Linux. Create an account called "privacy". Encrypt the home directory.
THEN, drive to one of your city's many publicly available WiFi hot spots, in a coffee shop or library perhaps, and submit your post from there, with Firefox in a private browsing session.
To be REALLY safe, periodically sell the laptop and get a new one off Craigslist.
You can never be too paranoid, thin, or rich.
Is she a motivational speaker?
It's not the house. Owning a house is good. The thing to do as a single guy in my opinion is to buy a small, non-family-friendly house, like a weird, spooky little two bedroom cottage with lots of spiders and house centipedes and a full basement you can turn into a mechanical lab. The nice thing about these houses is that they're usually cheap, like in the 50K range. Taxes are low too, and heat and electric is REALLY cheap.
Best of all, this type of house makes women who are husband hunting reject you outright. "Only two bedrooms???" It's yet another useful feature.
I suspect that the kind of women a man like me actually WANTS (i.e. mid-forties horny single women without kids) would really be into that sort of thing. It's "cozy", perfect for an older couple.
So it basically drives away the women I don't want and attracts the ones I do. Theoretically. Cottages for the win. Capes maybe. Or -- damn! A prefab Cabin! A cabin would be great, with an overhead sleeping loft...
Yeah, but then you'll end up divorced, living in a van, down by the river!
That's what I mean... The way I see it, if you don't get married and things later go badly, you can part ways with a handshake instead of getting lawyers involved.
I heard something funny today, elsewhere in this thread:
"50 percent of marriages end in divorce. The other 50 percent end in death! Rotten deal either way... "
I said this aloud at work, just kidding around, next to a married coworker. He was really quiet for a few minutes, and I felt quite guilty.
Me and my big mouth... Spoke too soon; it can be "contracted" in eleven states (like a disease! ha ha):
"Common-law marriage can still be contracted in eleven states (Alabama, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, New Hampshire (posthumously), Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah) and in the District of Columbia."
Yeesh! Well, out of those, the only ones I kind of like are New Hampshire and Colorado, and in New Hampshire you have to die first so I figure that's not that bad.
Anyway, I'm safe! I'm a New Yorker!
Actually, I append "TheHermit" to my name across the board, because I'm basically a crazy techo-hermit. In my apartment, it's just me and my gear! And where other hermits used to focus their energies on religious study, all I care about is programming and art.
It kinda works for me though, I think. Plus, it's in my email, so women know INSTANTLY I'm basically antisocial and dislike groups. It's like product labeling.
Common law marriage is NO LONGER LEGAL in the U.S. It hasn't been for decades.
FYI.
Well, so far the feds haven't really gotten anywhere. I'm optimistic. :)
Heh... I promised myself I would never get married to anybody, ever. Thus, I would never have to worry about being divorced and having to hand half of my income and assets to a person who used to love me but now hated me.
Women never seem to understand this basic concept: if you don't get married, you won't get divorced.
Other side effects include: being able to do whatever you want with your life, without interference; never having to stay in a bitter relationship for fear of legal trouble; not having to buy a house and minivan.
Have fun, stay single!
Not so fast. As usual for guys like you, you don't know as much about the U.S. as you think you do.
The Federal government only makes and enforces FEDERAL laws, and those mostly apply to interstate commerce.
The laws that are applied to individuals, in their neighborhoods, are state and local laws. These vary incredibly widely from state to state, as do political attitudes, and the general demeanor of the people you'll meet if you walk around and talk to them.
HERE IS A VERY SIMPLE EXAMPLE.
Everyone has heard about the "war on drugs" correct? Well, the Federal Government strongly encourages states to make Marijuana illegal. It's listed on some schedule under which the Feds have declared it a terrible thing. If YOU were right, all states would have terrible laws against marijuana use and possession, and they would all be about the same.
BUT! In Arizona, you get caught smoking pot and you're going to jail for 1/2 to 1 1/2 years, and can be forced to pay a $750 - $150,000 fine.
In Texas, and this surprised me, if you have no prior convictions the judge can just let you go. If he doesn't, he MUST sentence you to probation and a treatment program. That is amazingly progressive for Texas, which I usually like to make fun of.
Here in New York, getting caught with a joint will get you nothing more than a $100 ticket ($200 for the second offense, if you keep doing it eventually they'll put you in the county jail for a couple of days for being a pain in the ass).
In Michigan, getting caught with pot will get you up to 90 days and a $100 fine. If you don't annoy the judge, it might be only a day or two, or probation. I've heard of people getting a $5 fine and a moderately stern lecture.
So, YOUR point is invalid in regards to freedom. Our freedom is primarily regulated by STATE LAWS (and local judges), not Federal ones.
Sort of like Europe! You'd rather be governed by France's laws than Turkey's, right?
Same thing.
Thanks! You ever notice, the U.S. is about the size of Europe, and the individual states are about the size of European countries (except Alaska, which is the size of the continent of Australia), but nobody over there ever realizes the similarity?
They think of Europe as a constellation of totally different places, and the U.S. as a single completely uniform place. This makes me think Europeans are completely illogical, like Glenn Beck listeners who think calling French Fries "Freedom Fries" is a good idea.
The funniest thing of all is that they say "Ahhh, all you Americans think you split the atom, but who did this? Europeans who moved to America." But this description -- "Europeans who moved to America" -- covers virtually EVERYONE IN AMERICA except Native Americans!
Realistically, America is nothing but Europe, Mark 2. You know, the improved model.
EXACTLY what I was trying to say!
I just thought of something else as well.
Europeans' belief that they are superior is actually RECURSIVE!
They start out by pretending all of Europe is like France.
Then they pretend all of France is like Paris.
Then they pretend all of Paris is like a fancy neighborhood IN Paris.
Then they pretend that whole neighborhood is like that street they shot that movie on that time. In black and white with background music, no less.
They don't seem to have an exit condition though. They just keep calling "allOfEuropeIsLike(String trendierPlace)". I suppose eventually they'll run out of CPU and get stuck with their mouth open, latte halfway to their lips, galoise hanging jauntily off their tongue, turtleneck catching fire from the ashes...
The US is no more homogeneous than Europe is. Just as you have fairly varied laws between, say, France and Turkey (which is part of Europe if not the EU), we have fairly varied laws as well.
It is unfair of you to cherry-pick the things that happen in our "crazy" states and pretend that they're representative of the United States.
Think of it this way.
The United States is like a family with fifty members.
You've got the bookish preppies (New England, New York, some states in the Northern Midwest, and the Pacific Northwest), their country cousins, (much of the Midwest and the SouthEast), and Uncle Hippy (California)... They're generally OK, you can have a normal conversation with them, and nothing weird will happen.
Then you've got the weird cousins everyone else tries to avoid (the dumber of the "Red" states, of which Texas is probably the worst). They pick on strangers, they get drunk and punch out environmentalists, and in general, embarrass the whole family.
You Europeans are like people living across the street, gossiping about us because we threw a barbecue and the whole weird family showed up. Forgotten are all the good things the family does, our literary works, our scientific discoveries, the two or three times we've called the police and stopped your house from getting burgled, and the fact that we're generally good neighbors. All you want to harp on is that Cousin Joe from Texas got drunk, stripped naked, climbed a telephone pole, and peed on a police officer. You think we're all terrible because of Cousin Joe. It lets you feel all SUPERIOR.
I think maybe it went like this:
(CIA Spy Meeting)
Boss: Ok, guys, we need someone to head over to the gadget morgue and take a bunch of pictures of old stuff we used to use back in the fifties. Some muckety-muck thinks it'll make us look all family-friendly or something. Oh, and you've got to do some puzzles for kids with that nerd in IT.
Spy 1: Oh, HELL no. I'm booked up for the whole rest of the week, I've got to kill that guy in Turkey, then I've got that thing in Italy...
Spy 2: I'm working with Spy 1 on that, I'm booked up too.
Spy 3: Don't look at me, I've got to head to Beijing tomorrow, we're hiring a hacker.
Boss: "Hiring"?
Spy 3: Heh, well, "involuntarily" (all laugh)
Spy 4: Sorry boss, heading to low Earth orbit to test the ion cannon on some missle site somewhere... Haven't been briefed yet. Also it's my anniversary on Friday.
Boss: Well? Milton? That leaves you.
Milton: But... But..
Boss: Mmm... Yeah, I'm going to need you to come in on Saturday too. Sunday maybe.
Milton: But... But... I have to...
Boss: Ah, what's that? I've been looking for that! Thanks! (takes stapler).