Here's a stupid fucking question. So they had a net profit of only 8% of $11 billion. Exactly $0.00 of that was spent on drilling the undeveloped land they have or funding research to buoy them up when the oil bubble collapses (read: when we collectively wake the fuck up and decide we're not going to waste money on non-renewable energy anymore). If they're not going to prevent the collapse of their own business model... then we sure as fuck have a right to prevent them from taking us with them, and step one is taking that 8%.
I hate to whine-- well all right, in point of fact I love to whine-- but this poll is going to be a little difficult to do without links to the projects. I know, I know, Google and all that, but the whole point of the Web in general, and a blog in particular, is linking. Some of us might not be familiar with one or more of these projects, and/or might want to get at them before they are, in fact, shut down by the government.
They go back to Verizon/other provider, where they can work for the botnet controllers without paying for the bandwidth they're (unwittingly) abusing. If TWC wants to meter bandwidth usage they'd better be prepared with an army of techs to go in and block spyware, both incoming and outgoing, or else they're going to have trouble. We know it's the responsibility of the user to ensure his or her box isn't a zombie, but it's quite likely that the individual whose box is compromised is not technically able enough to clean it; their only other perceived option is moving to an "unlimited" carrier, whether or not that carrier is actually unlimited.
I have no idea why I was modded funny, incidentally.
Time-Warner Sued By A Bazillion Customers Over Bandwidth Charges
$slashdot_user writes: "Time-Warner today was served with a class-action lawsuit from nearly every single subscriber to its metered internet service, launched in June. The suit claims that Time-Warner willingly and complicitly installed spyware onto its subscribers' computers to run up bandwidth charges. The program, which affected primarily Windows-based computers, repeatedly downloaded and uploaded a 1.5 MB file of random, uncompressable data up to a thousand times per hour each way, causing subscribers' caps of 5 GB to be reached within hours. Further GB of bandwidth was charged at $1 each, with some subscribers receiving 'overage' bills stretching upwards of $700. Representatives for Time-Warner were unavailable for comment.".....seriously, I don't think TWC would be stupid enough to deliberately install spyware on its subscribers' computers, but this will fail as soon as hundreds of thousands of clueless Windows users running zombie botnet boxes start cancelling their service en masse "because they jacked up the price". This is not the way to either fix broadband usage policy nor to stop botnets.
I've already let them know what I think. I don't watch any NBC/Universal shows. Hell, as much as I want the Quantum Leap box sets I'm not buying them until they stop this bullshit. Geeks, I know it'll be hard without BSG, but if you keep watching it, you keep supporting this kind of thing.
I think that Separation of Powers as a model for governance has repeatedly proved wrong and easy to be abused, as one of the power always tend to overcome the others in the long run, degenerating in police states, dictatorships or martial states.
Yeah, see, I think you might have that a little backwards there. You seem to be going towards the aphorism "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely", which is anecdotally true for most of human history. But the entire point of Separation of Powers and Checks and Balances is to prevent the accumulation of virtual or actual "absolute" power in any one branch of the American government. When one branch (in this case, the Executive) makes a blatant and bald-faced power grab, it's the responsibility-- and duty-- of the other two to rein in that power. If the power is deemed necessary and proper for the well-being of the Union and the people at large, then the other two branches must find a way to ensure that the Executive cannot and does not overstep the legal and proper boundaries of the Constitution in utilizing that power; if that can't happen, then the power is rescinded and the people's rights are more protected (even if there's a slight drop in security).
A strong, overbearing Executive branch creates a police state. A strong, overbearing Legislative branch creates an ineffectual bureaucracy. A strong, overbearing Judicial branch creates a tyrannical dictatorship. None of those things are even remotely close to happening in the US (though we're currently en route to the police state Bad Ending, it's just very far off).
And a side note. We're talking about how we need revolution and regime change and all that sort of fast-movement stuff. Moving quickly is what got us into this mess. The 'Patriot Act' was rushed into law; we jumped to conclusions on Iraq; and so on and so on. In America, regime change happens every four to eight years like clockwork, and things move a little bit more slowly. Be patient. We have six months until the election and eight months until the inauguration. Once that happens we'll see some faster progress back to normalcy.
(Non-Americans, please give us a couple of months into 2009 before you start saying that we haven't changed. Like I said, this stuff takes time.)
I wish I had mod points right now-- your question is good. I've been thinking about it as well.
Part of the answer lies in an online storage facility. A power-off computer can't erase data, and if there's anything we've learned, it's that drives can be imaged non-destructively. You then have to make sure that said online storage is a) secure and b) can be controlled with a cron job etc. The obvious solution is a dedicated colocation host, but those trend towards the ridiculous end of the expensive spectrum depending on your reliability needs. You'd better be putting stuff like nuclear secrets or the like into a solution like that versus something slightly more mundane like your porn (no matter how kinky).
The cheapest solution I can think of off the top of my head is to encrypt/TrueCrypt anything seriously sensitive, with a unique password only you know, and just swallow the inconvenience while you're alive.
Which is exactly why it's your responsibility and mine to vote for the people who are not evil, and to know fully that they are not evil before you elect them. They do exist, really. Might be harder to find them because they're not (as noted below) rich white and consuming the majority of the media coverage, but they're out there.
Yeah, you're right-- the structure for control is there and has been for a while. Around 1776, matter of fact, in the US. The right person can do great evil with only the slightest control. Which is exactly why it is the purpose of the electorate to choose someone who won't do that.
Don't blame me that you're not willing to find someone who isn't evil, and instead accept the candidates you're fed. In the US there's 350 million people. Someone there must be altruistic enough to run the country. Find that person and elect that person. That is the job of the voter-- that has always been the job of the voter. Not "pick the least offensive of the media-sponsored evildoers". But "pick the guy who will do the most good out of all of your choices-- oh, and did we fail to call attention to the big fucking blank space where you can write in whoever the hell you actually want?".
Even if your current government is not evil, there's nothing stopping the next one so being.
Uh, no. See, there's this thing called a ballot box? Not sure if you've heard of it. That could, hypothetically I mean, stop the next government from being evil...
Even if all we get out of this is.wri compatibility, I'll be tickled. (I have maybe 2MB of.wri files which are nigh on unreadable on my Mac; the reason they're.wri is because I wrote them fifteen years ago on my parents' computer that barely ran Doom, and they weren't about to pay for Word because it was $600 and I was 13 and had already produced some nice stuff in Write.)
You're absolutely right. If there ever was a day I wished I had mod points, this would be it.
Our society is at its best when we are unified in the effort to obtain a common, grand, superfluously spectacular goal. Hell, humans as a species are at their peak when working in concert. There's a reason we're called the "United" Stated, y'know.
The only thing I would add would be to outlaw political parties, which (IMO) only serve to create artificial divisions among the One Nation Under (Whatever). That might be infeasible, so I would say that a political party can only exist for a specific amount of time and specifically for a single candidate-- basically, change their role to throw their entire support behind a single candidate.
(In one of those twists of coincidence, TMBG's "I Should Be Allowed To Think" just came up on shuffle.)
A better question is, how easily will the transition between 3/3.5 to 4 be handled for an average DM? I remember looking at the conversion guide produced when 2nd to 3rd was going on, and it was largely an incomprehensible mess (relative to straight 2nd or 3rd, that is). Will it be a matter of transcribing stats with some fudge factor from one sheet to another, or will it be excessively involved with complicated formulas and lookup tables?
For psychological health, huh? Right. That'll last right up until Mission Control instructs the astronaut to put his Weighted Companion Zucchini into the oven for dinner.
Now, if only they can make it draw sugar from human blood and make the device and all its waste products fully biocompatible, they will revolutionize the parts of the medical industry that deal with electrically powered implants. Think artificial hearts, for example. Of course, lots of hurdles in that direction will remain.
Indeed. Building in the vulnerability to direct sunlight, crucifixes/holy symbols, and being staked through the heart might be the only real technical hurdles before we're all under assault by robotic vampires. I can't wait.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's a stupid fucking question. So they had a net profit of only 8% of $11 billion. Exactly $0.00 of that was spent on drilling the undeveloped land they have or funding research to buoy them up when the oil bubble collapses (read: when we collectively wake the fuck up and decide we're not going to waste money on non-renewable energy anymore). If they're not going to prevent the collapse of their own business model... then we sure as fuck have a right to prevent them from taking us with them, and step one is taking that 8%.
Thank you.
I hate to whine-- well all right, in point of fact I love to whine-- but this poll is going to be a little difficult to do without links to the projects. I know, I know, Google and all that, but the whole point of the Web in general, and a blog in particular, is linking. Some of us might not be familiar with one or more of these projects, and/or might want to get at them before they are, in fact, shut down by the government.
So, uh, please?
And the downside to that is?
They go back to Verizon/other provider, where they can work for the botnet controllers without paying for the bandwidth they're (unwittingly) abusing. If TWC wants to meter bandwidth usage they'd better be prepared with an army of techs to go in and block spyware, both incoming and outgoing, or else they're going to have trouble. We know it's the responsibility of the user to ensure his or her box isn't a zombie, but it's quite likely that the individual whose box is compromised is not technically able enough to clean it; their only other perceived option is moving to an "unlimited" carrier, whether or not that carrier is actually unlimited.
I have no idea why I was modded funny, incidentally.
Time-Warner Sued By A Bazillion Customers Over Bandwidth Charges
.....seriously, I don't think TWC would be stupid enough to deliberately install spyware on its subscribers' computers, but this will fail as soon as hundreds of thousands of clueless Windows users running zombie botnet boxes start cancelling their service en masse "because they jacked up the price". This is not the way to either fix broadband usage policy nor to stop botnets.
$slashdot_user writes: "Time-Warner today was served with a class-action lawsuit from nearly every single subscriber to its metered internet service, launched in June. The suit claims that Time-Warner willingly and complicitly installed spyware onto its subscribers' computers to run up bandwidth charges. The program, which affected primarily Windows-based computers, repeatedly downloaded and uploaded a 1.5 MB file of random, uncompressable data up to a thousand times per hour each way, causing subscribers' caps of 5 GB to be reached within hours. Further GB of bandwidth was charged at $1 each, with some subscribers receiving 'overage' bills stretching upwards of $700. Representatives for Time-Warner were unavailable for comment."
I've already let them know what I think. I don't watch any NBC/Universal shows. Hell, as much as I want the Quantum Leap box sets I'm not buying them until they stop this bullshit. Geeks, I know it'll be hard without BSG, but if you keep watching it, you keep supporting this kind of thing.
It's just under 5 mph. Dude, I've run head-first into wasll fastre than that no purpoes, adn it didn't hutr me oen bit.
Yeah, see, I think you might have that a little backwards there. You seem to be going towards the aphorism "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely", which is anecdotally true for most of human history. But the entire point of Separation of Powers and Checks and Balances is to prevent the accumulation of virtual or actual "absolute" power in any one branch of the American government. When one branch (in this case, the Executive) makes a blatant and bald-faced power grab, it's the responsibility-- and duty-- of the other two to rein in that power. If the power is deemed necessary and proper for the well-being of the Union and the people at large, then the other two branches must find a way to ensure that the Executive cannot and does not overstep the legal and proper boundaries of the Constitution in utilizing that power; if that can't happen, then the power is rescinded and the people's rights are more protected (even if there's a slight drop in security).
A strong, overbearing Executive branch creates a police state. A strong, overbearing Legislative branch creates an ineffectual bureaucracy. A strong, overbearing Judicial branch creates a tyrannical dictatorship. None of those things are even remotely close to happening in the US (though we're currently en route to the police state Bad Ending, it's just very far off).
And a side note. We're talking about how we need revolution and regime change and all that sort of fast-movement stuff. Moving quickly is what got us into this mess. The 'Patriot Act' was rushed into law; we jumped to conclusions on Iraq; and so on and so on. In America, regime change happens every four to eight years like clockwork, and things move a little bit more slowly. Be patient. We have six months until the election and eight months until the inauguration. Once that happens we'll see some faster progress back to normalcy.
(Non-Americans, please give us a couple of months into 2009 before you start saying that we haven't changed. Like I said, this stuff takes time.)
I wish I had mod points right now-- your question is good. I've been thinking about it as well.
Part of the answer lies in an online storage facility. A power-off computer can't erase data, and if there's anything we've learned, it's that drives can be imaged non-destructively. You then have to make sure that said online storage is a) secure and b) can be controlled with a cron job etc. The obvious solution is a dedicated colocation host, but those trend towards the ridiculous end of the expensive spectrum depending on your reliability needs. You'd better be putting stuff like nuclear secrets or the like into a solution like that versus something slightly more mundane like your porn (no matter how kinky).
The cheapest solution I can think of off the top of my head is to encrypt/TrueCrypt anything seriously sensitive, with a unique password only you know, and just swallow the inconvenience while you're alive.
I find it absurd that the clerk asked that and the gender question.
If you can see the person, odds are good you do not need to ask those questions.
Which is exactly why it's your responsibility and mine to vote for the people who are not evil, and to know fully that they are not evil before you elect them. They do exist, really. Might be harder to find them because they're not (as noted below) rich white and consuming the majority of the media coverage, but they're out there.
Yeah, you're right-- the structure for control is there and has been for a while. Around 1776, matter of fact, in the US. The right person can do great evil with only the slightest control. Which is exactly why it is the purpose of the electorate to choose someone who won't do that.
Don't blame me that you're not willing to find someone who isn't evil, and instead accept the candidates you're fed. In the US there's 350 million people. Someone there must be altruistic enough to run the country. Find that person and elect that person. That is the job of the voter-- that has always been the job of the voter. Not "pick the least offensive of the media-sponsored evildoers". But "pick the guy who will do the most good out of all of your choices-- oh, and did we fail to call attention to the big fucking blank space where you can write in whoever the hell you actually want?".
Uh, no. See, there's this thing called a ballot box? Not sure if you've heard of it. That could, hypothetically I mean, stop the next government from being evil...
SCUBAckhoes!
I have no idea if you're trying to be funny-haha or funny-cuckoo. That scares me.
And yes, it will blend.
But only once every twenty years to a lifetime.
Probably the Sci-Fi Channel? Cable box + $130 video capture box = all the legally obtained content you want.
Even if all we get out of this is .wri compatibility, I'll be tickled. (I have maybe 2MB of .wri files which are nigh on unreadable on my Mac; the reason they're .wri is because I wrote them fifteen years ago on my parents' computer that barely ran Doom, and they weren't about to pay for Word because it was $600 and I was 13 and had already produced some nice stuff in Write.)
You're absolutely right. If there ever was a day I wished I had mod points, this would be it.
Our society is at its best when we are unified in the effort to obtain a common, grand, superfluously spectacular goal. Hell, humans as a species are at their peak when working in concert. There's a reason we're called the "United" Stated, y'know.
The only thing I would add would be to outlaw political parties, which (IMO) only serve to create artificial divisions among the One Nation Under (Whatever). That might be infeasible, so I would say that a political party can only exist for a specific amount of time and specifically for a single candidate-- basically, change their role to throw their entire support behind a single candidate.
(In one of those twists of coincidence, TMBG's "I Should Be Allowed To Think" just came up on shuffle.)
A better question is, how easily will the transition between 3/3.5 to 4 be handled for an average DM? I remember looking at the conversion guide produced when 2nd to 3rd was going on, and it was largely an incomprehensible mess (relative to straight 2nd or 3rd, that is). Will it be a matter of transcribing stats with some fudge factor from one sheet to another, or will it be excessively involved with complicated formulas and lookup tables?
Clever.
With enough power, the weapon can create its own vaporware.
Amen, brother. Amen. And I mean that in the most non-ironic sense possible.
For psychological health, huh? Right. That'll last right up until Mission Control instructs the astronaut to put his Weighted Companion Zucchini into the oven for dinner.
Indeed. Building in the vulnerability to direct sunlight, crucifixes/holy symbols, and being staked through the heart might be the only real technical hurdles before we're all under assault by robotic vampires. I can't wait.
Actually, you've about nailed it. No fucking is apparently a big deal.