> This by-design functionality is sometimes used by web applications. However, when combined with known security vulnerabilities in Microsoft Internet Explorer, it could allow an internet web site to execute script from the Local Machine Zone (LMZ).
Ah, once again, "Security Zones" rears its ugly head. Wasn't integrating the browser into the operating system a brilliant move?
Ah, once again, the assumption that users are using Web-based apps in a trusted environment such as the office LAN, rather than the Real World(tm), rears its ugly head. Services listening on 135? 137? 139? 445? 5000? But how will you share files, printers? Doesn't everyone want to share every file with every other user on their network segment? Doesn't everyone want to automatically sniff out and configure their machine to work with every network-attached peripheral?
Open Letter to Windows design team, in monosyllables so you get the fucking point, because you sure as fuck haven't over the past nine years
Code. Code belong on hard drive. Code tell a C.P.U. to do stuff. You get code, you save code, you tell box to run code! O.S. do what code say, so if you get owned, is your fault cuz you tell O.S. to run code! This just fine!
Web Pages. Made of H.T.M.L. You get by click link. to make words and pics on screen. You got H.T.M.L.? I.E. for turn the H.T.M.L. into pics on screen. I.E. good for show text. I.E. good for show click link. I.E. good for show boobs.
Heap Big Clue: I.E. MADE OF CODE. I.E. CODE RUN ON LOCAL MACHINE. THEREFORE ALL ZONE ARE LOCAL. You no grok? Here two by four. Hit self in head until you grok, dumb ass.
This isn't chocolate and peanut butter. Executables and Web Content are not two great tastes that taste great together. Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should.
Security "zones" are one of the dumbest fucking ideas ever to come down the pipe.
>...to be replacd by the even better James Webb Space Telescope. Critics of NASA's decision to let the Hubble fall seem to forget this in their attempts to manufacture public outcry.
Tell you what. When JWST sees first light, I'll be first in line to press the "deorbit" button on Hubble.
Until then, remember that you're not just dealing with an engineering problem (namely, a successful launch and deployment - which isn't rocket sci- oh, wait...), but you're also dealing with a political problem, namely "will JWST get the axe because some guy in Washington doesn't think it gives his constituents enough pork?"
Deorbiting Hubble in hopes of JWST replacing it is a direct violation of the first rule of wing walking: Never let go of what you've got until you've got a hold on something else.
> You're right, but remember that they cannot run anything unless they have a brilliant and ingenious way to transform jpegs and boldface text into an infection.
Microsoft is always looking for ways to provide innovative solutions to our vic^H^H^Hcustomers:
"The exploit involves a specially crafted BMP file that can allow code to run with the privileges of the impacted user. In the case of TROJ_BMPAGENT a.k.a. the Agent trojan, the user receives an email carrying the specially crafted BMP image file. When received on systems with IE 5 or IE 5.5 installed, viewing the BMP drops the file sys.exe to the root of drive C:\ and executes it.
> Now if we could only get Homeland Security to start talking about OUTLOOK EXPRESS, then I would dance a jig.
No argument there, except for s/EXPRESS//g.
In the meantime, HomeSec recommends the use of Mozilla as a first line of defence against terrorists infecting your box with Islamic Militant Bukkake Kitten.
> Basically, again, it _is_ possible to have a theme without turning it into a lame lecture in "my ideology is better than yours." And I wish more people refrained from preaching when they design a game.
> >
No, I don't want games to lecture me in global warming. No, I don't really need a lecture in whether corporations are good or bad, and which kind of party would best defend me from them. Etc
Have you tried NationStates?
Online, browser-based, country-simulator. Power corrupts. Absolute power is kinda fun. Sign legislation based on randomly-generated controversial issues, sit back, and watch your country take shape under your benevolent guidance, iron fist, or both.
> It doesn't tell you stuff like "bleedin' heart liberals are costing the economy a fortune", nor "greedy right-wing powermongers are pushing everyone into poverty."
The fun part of NationStates is that it the consequences of your decisions are always portrayed positively relative to your biases. So instead of the two examples you chose, you'd see something like "Bleeding-heart liberals that formerly cost your economy a fortune are being rounded up and sent to Wharton Business Camp's mandatory MBA re-education programme", and "With tax rates of 100%, greedy right-wing powermongers' kids have been reduced to selling lemonade on street corners, but the government has begun cracking down on that."
> > > [politics is about] the conflict between those who contribute to society and those who consume from society > > > [... ] > > > you could also put into becoming a creator of value for society > > > >
But would you really want to create value for society which only consumes and gives you nothing in return? > >Some people have already done something like that. They call their contribution Open Source Software
Not the same thing. People who write F/OSS do so of their own free will. Politics isn't about free will; it's about obtaining the power to force others to do your will.
Open Source: We create software and can therefore freely declare that "We're going to give things to you for the common good".
I'll give Hilary this much: Hers are probably the first honest words spoken by any politician in my lifetime.
In answer to both questions: Apart from software that I write for my employer, I'm happy to give it away. I get something out of that, namely the joy of seeing my code being used.
As far as having my things taken away from me "for the common good" goes, I deeply resent it. Should I ever accumulate sufficient wealth to provide for my own needs (which is pretty fucking hard to do when much of what you earn is "taken away from you for the common good"), I'll stop producing value for my employer, for the sole reason that I'm sick and tired of feeding people who not only see me as nothing more than a milch cow, but who hate me for being a more productive milch cow than they are.
This isn't a right/left thing.
I happen to lean to the right and resent my money being taken from me by force and sent to millions of unproductive food tubes in both the bureaucracy and the underclass.
If you lean to the left, ought you not to be just as resentful that your money is being taken from you by force and sent to defense contractors, pharmaceutical manufacturers, and soldiers?
"I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these financial terrorists. Thank you.
Now watch me rope this calf!"
- M'kell M'oorubo, Fahrenheit 4/19
> I read the article. I was glad that 500 people were "detained" for fraud. I wasn't thrilled when I read the sentence "although the identities of those in EFCC custody are not formally revealed, observers noted that they included legislators, lawyers, politicians, bankers and public functionaries." > >I hope this wasn't 419 rich people were detained while their government took $500 million of their money and other assets.Reading the article, it sounded all above board that the Nigerian government was doing this for the public good. I just felt terrified that I might be reading proganda. Is there any one that knows anything about the government of Nigera and their policies?
1. Issue press release claiming detention of 500 419 scammers and $500M of defrauded funds.
2. Make Slashdot posting to speculate that instead of it being 500 419 scammers, it's 500 innocent people been shaken down for $1M apiece.
We know that 4. must == "Profit!!!", and therefore we solve for 3. to obtain:
3. 500,000,419 emails, all reading:
"GOD BLESS! I am Crown Prince N'Krumba Fubar! The Nigerian government has issued a false press release claiming a crackdown on the 419 scammers that bedevil our great and proud nation. The truth is that 500 innocent legislators, lawyers, politicans, bankers, and public functionaries have had the sum of FIVE HUNDRED MILLION U.S. DOLLARS ($500,000,000) unawlfully seized from them! I am but an innocent victim of this horrible atrocity, and wish to enlist your assistance in recouping only MY FAIR SHARE of what was taken from me - the sum of ONE MILLION U.S. DOLLARS ($1,000,000)! If you can help, please send details of your account to..."
> In other news this evening, internet discussion forum Slashdot.org personality CowboyNeal presented a petition in Washington, D.C. in which 10,000 database professionals demanded polygraph tests for Attorney General John Ashcroft."
Dude. Read between the liens. Ashcroft knows that making data on foreign lobbyists would result in a YRO Slashdot article on the front page, with predictable results for the poor server on the other end of the line.
We just pwn3d the entire USDOJ today, without firing a single HTTP GET. And Ashcroft just humbled himself - in public - before our mighty geekness.
Now you want polygraph tests? Dude, it's over. We won.
A couple thousand "WE PWN3D J00!" and "ALL YOUR DOJ ARE BELONG TO SLASHDOT" would have sufficed. No need to rub it in. Let's be sporting about this and gracious in our victory.
> Anytime I hear of BHO's its always malware/spyware/adware...so when is it used for good?
About as often as Javascript and ActiveX.
Which is to say, outside of a corporate intranet environment, "never".
The OS is the delivery mechanism for Office and the Office revenue stream. The "trust everything, run a million services, listen on every port, and if it's teh new shiny, hire consultants to implement it to ensure continued vendor lock in" security architecture is part of the package.
The "pretend to look surprised when Yet Another Stupid Idea Gets Exploited on an Untrusted Network" isn't part of the business plan, but it's tolerated because it doesn't get in the way of the business plan.
> > remember back in the 80's, the only way you'd see beaver shots is if you knew someone who had a stash of Hustler or Playboy mags hidden somewhere
> > I paid the full price of a magazine for just
one photo series from a magazine. It has that hard to get. The photo spread was of this blond chick playing the drums naked. I'll never forget it.
And you have the gall to tell us this story without the corresponding URL? You bastard!
> It's interesting that they're asking people to pay to be not able to dial given numbers. You'd think a hardware device on the user's side could provide the same functionality for less...
Problem with (commercially) building something designed to plug into the phone jack is that there's a lot of paperwork involved.
Such a device would be a very cool homebrew project, though. Just intercept the DTMF for "1" and a user-configurable series of digits (you could program the device either with a keypad on the device, or you could program the device with DTMF tones). Hold the dialed digits in a buffer. When the user finishes dialing the digits on the phone, the user presses the "dialout" button on the phoneblocker, and the buffered digits are dialed out. (Sorta like a cell phone - punch in digits, then click "OK" to dial)
Because a trojan dialer isn't going to have you around to press "dialout", no call ever gets made. Added bonus, you have a gadget that can log the numbers (and for real style points, add a clock chip and store time and date:) all outbound calls made from your number.
Of course, anyone smart enough to design it - or even just build it from a set of schematics and a bucket of spare parts - is unlikely to get pwn3d by a trojan pr0n dialer in the first place. But it'd be a fun weekend project or group exercise for a first year engineering course.
> You can take my porn... from my tired, cramped hands!
Welcome to Slashdot, Justice Thomas! Good to have you here. Thanks for the tie-breaking fifth vote.
Got any good pics of Anita Hill you wanna share with us? If not, it's all good, we understand. We'll settle for a.torrent for "Long Dong Silver" instead.
> Trying to get your office to adapt to a new browser is hard enough when they are afraid to use software that doesn't "come in a box" much less when it keeps changing it's name.
"Come in a box"? Eew. Bad, bad, name for it. For Chrissakes, don't let the devs hear that.
And I like the fox just the way it is. I don't even want to think about the new throbber would have to look like.
> Someone once said it best - Give me liberty or give me death!
"Greetings, Citizen! I am Troubleshooter PET-R-GUN. The Computer wishes to address the needs of all Citizens!"
(pause)
*BLAM* *BLAM* *BLAM*
(pause to admire smoking boot)
"Any other Citizens wishing to request either liberty or death are directed to contact the nearest Troubleshooter, who will be happy to assist the Computer in seeing to it that their needs are met! Trust the Computer! The Computer is your Friend!"
> '... there is no quantity of juice sufficient to get a male monkey to look away from the hindquarters of a female in estrus.' > >
We don't need that the female be in estrus.
And from the article:
"there's no 'buy button' out there to be found. We're not going to subvert free will. This isn't about screwing the consumer."
Suuuuuuuure. Then what are you showin' all that monkey pr0n?
> I think one of the major problems in this discussion is that the Stock Options for the CEO types (equivalent of about 1000 employees options, if you count them) can cause wrong and fraudulent reporting in order to sell off the stock. > >
Individual Employee's options are a great way to retain employees, keeping them motivated and having them think big picture, but they just can't fake the bottom line. > >
And guess who's options would definitely go away?
*ding ding ding ding ding*
Someone gets it!
Both types of options are the Same Damn Thing, as far as the balance sheet is concerned.
But as the poster points out - if I've gotta take a $10M hit on issuing options, I'm gonna budget $10M to spend on option grants, and you can be damn sure that $9M is going to fellow board members and C[A-Z]O positions, $900K to senior management, and $100K, in the form of 20-30 shares apiece, to the grunts.
If I don't have to expense options, I have the current situation: no cash comes out when I issue 'em. And if my stock's at $100 and the options have a strike price of $10, it doesn't cost me $90 to let my employees cash out -- indeed, my company makes $10:-)
So like the previous poster said, in a world where stock options are expensed, I'm gonna make damn sure my pockets are lined (because I'm worth it!), and fuck the middle class grunts workin' for me.
Which is why I oppose stock option expensing. So let's look at the present situation by contrast.
Yes, there's shareholder dilution. Big. Fucking. Deal. It's the shareholders' money, stupid! They're allowed to dilute! That is, the board (that makes the decisions) is hired by the shareholders, not the other way around. Read a proxy statement; that's how it works. The board fucks up? Then the shareholders can fire the board!
And speaking of fuckups, what kind of a fuckup of a financial analyst do you have to be to not be able to looking for a line that says "Outstanding options grants", or checking the footnotes behind "Fully diluted"? That's your job!.
So if you're a widely-held public company, that's a lot of shareholders (many of whom are pension fund managers and who don't give a fuck about your employees) that you've gotta convince when it comes to the notion that the dilution that comes from giving the average joe some options is worth it in terms of having more productive employees. Cool. Capitalism in action.
By that same logic, if you're 5 guys in a cheap business park, those five guys are the shareholders, and by God, if they're willing to risk diluting their shares in the company in order to take a company from 5 people and $250K in revenue into 50 people and $25M in revenue (and for the 45 new hires -- to take the risk that it'll be $0 in revenue!), then by all means, let them. Equally cool. Capitalism in action here, too.
The only way we're going to move from a sharecropper society (work for the boss, financial security for senior management only) into a shareholder society (work for yourself, financial security is a function of what you make your employer-du-jour become) is to broaden the number of shareholders.
The present option system does that. The proposed FASB rules don't. And if Warren "Tax me more" Buffett and FASB "Options for Those With Country Club Memberships Only" don't like it, they can eat a bowl of dick.
20 years is pretty damn good. Then again, when you paid $17.95 for a "Peanut Pak" (box of 3 disks instead of 10, 'cuz I couldn't afford a full box), you expect 'em to last. Hey, there were the good disks, paid an extra $0.50 per disk to get the ones with the hub rings!
Now where's my copy of the little book Leading Edge/Elephant used to give out? The one that ended with the immortal quote:
""Why, the couldn't hit an elephant at this dist..."
- Last words of Major General John Sedgwick
> The other type of call that is bothersome is from companies with which I already have a "business relationship." I find that most companies define this pretty broadly. This is especially true for large corporations. So, I buy some tires at a department store and they call me for siding.
"Hi! Every week, one of our representatives calls you, and every week, you tell him to fuck off, and then you hang up on him. We would like to show you how much we enjoy our continuing business relationship by offering you a great deal on some vinyl siding!"
> +10. That is the #1 problem in this country. Parents are not bringing up their children. They let public school and television do all the work. Instead of doing it themselves they just complain when pop culture and schools do a poor job.
And while we're at it, on the subject of hip-hop...
Listening to hip-hop today (versus the hip-hop of the late 80s), I see a basic set of self-reinforcing memes. In no particular order: Education is acting "white" and is therefore a form of race treason. Race treason is an unpardonable sin; the purity of the race must be preserved. In the absence of education, crime is the only viable career choice. Respect is achieved through violence and intimidation. The purpose of life is to acquire money through force, fraud, or intimidation, and to spend the money purchasing whores. When whores are fucked, it's OK to shoot them. Kill all white people, because they're devils.
When I was a kid, we had a word for people who wanted to keep blacks and whites segregated, and to prevent blacks from succeeding in public school in order to keep them out of college, and to condemn them to lives of poverty, and on a dead-end track to murder or prison.
That word was "Klansman".
Today, that word is "Hip-Hop Recording Artist".
For double irony points, guess the race of the CEOs of the entertainment conglomerates that make the most money out of selling this memeset to blacks.
Big Pun in the public schools? If it weren't for the fact that Klan's too stupid to come up with anything this subtle, I'd call shenanigans.
> And thats even BEFORE you realise a judge would have to do it individually for each passenger when an application is made highlighting why it isn't unreasonable.
Yeronner, we request a warrant that demands that "Foobar Airlines Inc", supply us with a copy of its database. We require this data is reasonably required as part of an ongoing investigation relating to terrorism.
Even if we assume a warrant is required (which it probably isn't, assuming the DoJ lawyer uses the right catchphrases to take advantage of the new powers granted to him under the new laws), once a Judge signs such a warrant, it's legal even under the strictest and most literal possible reading of the Fourth.
We probably disagree on how hard it ought to be to get a judge to sign off on a warrant (I think warrants should be required so there's a paper trail, but that getting them signed should be little more than a formality), but leaving that disagreement aside -- why do you think it's hard to find a judge who'll sign a warrant?
> Sources report the "sensitive customer data" included:
> > -Passenger's favorite brand of peanuts > -Success passenger had flirting stewardess > -Whether or not passenger washes hands after using washroom.
I'm authorized to disclose that for all subjects where data element #2 is nonzezo, graphic #2 as a function of time shows either an uptrend or a downtrend, and that data element #3 is strongly and positively correlated with the direction of this trend.
What do the peanuts have to do with it? Or am I not cleared for that?
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, once again, "Security Zones" rears its ugly head. Wasn't integrating the browser into the operating system a brilliant move?
Ah, once again, the assumption that users are using Web-based apps in a trusted environment such as the office LAN, rather than the Real World(tm), rears its ugly head. Services listening on 135? 137? 139? 445? 5000? But how will you share files, printers? Doesn't everyone want to share every file with every other user on their network segment? Doesn't everyone want to automatically sniff out and configure their machine to work with every network-attached peripheral?
This isn't chocolate and peanut butter. Executables and Web Content are not two great tastes that taste great together. Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should.
Security "zones" are one of the dumbest fucking ideas ever to come down the pipe.
"GODDAMNIT! Wallh4x0r1ng c4mp1ng p1gz!"
- Last words of your neighborhood crack/meth dealer after stakeout and resulting pwn4ge.
(Liberals: Feel free to substitute "militia/gun nut" for "crack/meth dealer".)
Tell you what. When JWST sees first light, I'll be first in line to press the "deorbit" button on Hubble.
Until then, remember that you're not just dealing with an engineering problem (namely, a successful launch and deployment - which isn't rocket sci- oh, wait...), but you're also dealing with a political problem, namely "will JWST get the axe because some guy in Washington doesn't think it gives his constituents enough pork?"
Deorbiting Hubble in hopes of JWST replacing it is a direct violation of the first rule of wing walking: Never let go of what you've got until you've got a hold on something else.
Microsoft is always looking for ways to provide innovative solutions to our vic^H^H^Hcustomers:
Perrin: Proof of concept to infect JPG files.
TROJ_BMPAGENT: Infected BMP files:
> Now if we could only get Homeland Security to start talking about OUTLOOK EXPRESS, then I would dance a jig.
No argument there, except for s/EXPRESS//g.
In the meantime, HomeSec recommends the use of Mozilla as a first line of defence against terrorists infecting your box with Islamic Militant Bukkake Kitten.
There's a firebombing joke in there somewhere.
Why not? :)
>
> No, I don't want games to lecture me in global warming. No, I don't really need a lecture in whether corporations are good or bad, and which kind of party would best defend me from them. Etc
Have you tried NationStates? Online, browser-based, country-simulator. Power corrupts. Absolute power is kinda fun. Sign legislation based on randomly-generated controversial issues, sit back, and watch your country take shape under your benevolent guidance, iron fist, or both.
> It doesn't tell you stuff like "bleedin' heart liberals are costing the economy a fortune", nor "greedy right-wing powermongers are pushing everyone into poverty."
The fun part of NationStates is that it the consequences of your decisions are always portrayed positively relative to your biases. So instead of the two examples you chose, you'd see something like "Bleeding-heart liberals that formerly cost your economy a fortune are being rounded up and sent to Wharton Business Camp's mandatory MBA re-education programme", and "With tax rates of 100%, greedy right-wing powermongers' kids have been reduced to selling lemonade on street corners, but the government has begun cracking down on that."
> > > [
> > > you could also put into becoming a creator of value for society
> >
> > But would you really want to create value for society which only consumes and gives you nothing in return?
>
>Some people have already done something like that. They call their contribution Open Source Software
Not the same thing. People who write F/OSS do so of their own free will. Politics isn't about free will; it's about obtaining the power to force others to do your will.
Open Source: We create software and can therefore freely declare that "We're going to give things to you for the common good".
Politics: We create nothing and therefore have nothing to give. So "We're going to take things away from you for the common good."
- Hilary Clinton, 06/29/2004
I'll give Hilary this much: Hers are probably the first honest words spoken by any politician in my lifetime.
In answer to both questions: Apart from software that I write for my employer, I'm happy to give it away. I get something out of that, namely the joy of seeing my code being used.
As far as having my things taken away from me "for the common good" goes, I deeply resent it. Should I ever accumulate sufficient wealth to provide for my own needs (which is pretty fucking hard to do when much of what you earn is "taken away from you for the common good"), I'll stop producing value for my employer, for the sole reason that I'm sick and tired of feeding people who not only see me as nothing more than a milch cow, but who hate me for being a more productive milch cow than they are.
This isn't a right/left thing.
I happen to lean to the right and resent my money being taken from me by force and sent to millions of unproductive food tubes in both the bureaucracy and the underclass.
If you lean to the left, ought you not to be just as resentful that your money is being taken from you by force and sent to defense contractors, pharmaceutical manufacturers, and soldiers?
"I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these financial terrorists. Thank you. Now watch me rope this calf!"
- M'kell M'oorubo, Fahrenheit 4/19
>
>I hope this wasn't 419 rich people were detained while their government took $500 million of their money and other assets.Reading the article, it sounded all above board that the Nigerian government was doing this for the public good. I just felt terrified that I might be reading proganda. Is there any one that knows anything about the government of Nigera and their policies?
1. Issue press release claiming detention of 500 419 scammers and $500M of defrauded funds.
2. Make Slashdot posting to speculate that instead of it being 500 419 scammers, it's 500 innocent people been shaken down for $1M apiece.
We know that 4. must == "Profit!!!", and therefore we solve for 3. to obtain:
3. 500,000,419 emails, all reading:
Dude. Read between the liens. Ashcroft knows that making data on foreign lobbyists would result in a YRO Slashdot article on the front page, with predictable results for the poor server on the other end of the line.
We just pwn3d the entire USDOJ today, without firing a single HTTP GET. And Ashcroft just humbled himself - in public - before our mighty geekness.
Now you want polygraph tests? Dude, it's over. We won.
A couple thousand "WE PWN3D J00!" and "ALL YOUR DOJ ARE BELONG TO SLASHDOT" would have sufficed. No need to rub it in. Let's be sporting about this and gracious in our victory.
About as often as Javascript and ActiveX.
Which is to say, outside of a corporate intranet environment, "never".
The OS is the delivery mechanism for Office and the Office revenue stream. The "trust everything, run a million services, listen on every port, and if it's teh new shiny, hire consultants to implement it to ensure continued vendor lock in" security architecture is part of the package.
The "pretend to look surprised when Yet Another Stupid Idea Gets Exploited on an Untrusted Network" isn't part of the business plan, but it's tolerated because it doesn't get in the way of the business plan.
>
> I paid the full price of a magazine for just one photo series from a magazine. It has that hard to get. The photo spread was of this blond chick playing the drums naked. I'll never forget it.
And you have the gall to tell us this story without the corresponding URL? You bastard!
Problem with (commercially) building something designed to plug into the phone jack is that there's a lot of paperwork involved.
Such a device would be a very cool homebrew project, though. Just intercept the DTMF for "1" and a user-configurable series of digits (you could program the device either with a keypad on the device, or you could program the device with DTMF tones). Hold the dialed digits in a buffer. When the user finishes dialing the digits on the phone, the user presses the "dialout" button on the phoneblocker, and the buffered digits are dialed out. (Sorta like a cell phone - punch in digits, then click "OK" to dial)
Because a trojan dialer isn't going to have you around to press "dialout", no call ever gets made. Added bonus, you have a gadget that can log the numbers (and for real style points, add a clock chip and store time and date :) all outbound calls made from your number.
Of course, anyone smart enough to design it - or even just build it from a set of schematics and a bucket of spare parts - is unlikely to get pwn3d by a trojan pr0n dialer in the first place. But it'd be a fun weekend project or group exercise for a first year engineering course.
Welcome to Slashdot, Justice Thomas! Good to have you here. Thanks for the tie-breaking fifth vote.
Got any good pics of Anita Hill you wanna share with us? If not, it's all good, we understand. We'll settle for a .torrent for "Long Dong Silver" instead.
"Come in a box"? Eew. Bad, bad, name for it. For Chrissakes, don't let the devs hear that. And I like the fox just the way it is. I don't even want to think about the new throbber would have to look like.
"Greetings, Citizen! I am Troubleshooter PET-R-GUN. The Computer wishes to address the needs of all Citizens!"
(pause)
*BLAM* *BLAM* *BLAM*
(pause to admire smoking boot)
"Any other Citizens wishing to request either liberty or death are directed to contact the nearest Troubleshooter, who will be happy to assist the Computer in seeing to it that their needs are met! Trust the Computer! The Computer is your Friend!"
>
> We don't need that the female be in estrus.
And from the article:
Suuuuuuuure. Then what are you showin' all that monkey pr0n?
>
> Individual Employee's options are a great way to retain employees, keeping them motivated and having them think big picture, but they just can't fake the bottom line.
>
> And guess who's options would definitely go away?
*ding ding ding ding ding*
Someone gets it!
Both types of options are the Same Damn Thing, as far as the balance sheet is concerned.
But as the poster points out - if I've gotta take a $10M hit on issuing options, I'm gonna budget $10M to spend on option grants, and you can be damn sure that $9M is going to fellow board members and C[A-Z]O positions, $900K to senior management, and $100K, in the form of 20-30 shares apiece, to the grunts.
If I don't have to expense options, I have the current situation: no cash comes out when I issue 'em. And if my stock's at $100 and the options have a strike price of $10, it doesn't cost me $90 to let my employees cash out -- indeed, my company makes $10 :-)
So like the previous poster said, in a world where stock options are expensed, I'm gonna make damn sure my pockets are lined (because I'm worth it!), and fuck the middle class grunts workin' for me.
Which is why I oppose stock option expensing. So let's look at the present situation by contrast.
Yes, there's shareholder dilution. Big. Fucking. Deal. It's the shareholders' money, stupid! They're allowed to dilute! That is, the board (that makes the decisions) is hired by the shareholders, not the other way around. Read a proxy statement; that's how it works. The board fucks up? Then the shareholders can fire the board!
And speaking of fuckups, what kind of a fuckup of a financial analyst do you have to be to not be able to looking for a line that says "Outstanding options grants", or checking the footnotes behind "Fully diluted"? That's your job!.
So if you're a widely-held public company, that's a lot of shareholders (many of whom are pension fund managers and who don't give a fuck about your employees) that you've gotta convince when it comes to the notion that the dilution that comes from giving the average joe some options is worth it in terms of having more productive employees. Cool. Capitalism in action.
By that same logic, if you're 5 guys in a cheap business park, those five guys are the shareholders, and by God, if they're willing to risk diluting their shares in the company in order to take a company from 5 people and $250K in revenue into 50 people and $25M in revenue (and for the 45 new hires -- to take the risk that it'll be $0 in revenue!), then by all means, let them. Equally cool. Capitalism in action here, too.
The only way we're going to move from a sharecropper society (work for the boss, financial security for senior management only) into a shareholder society (work for yourself, financial security is a function of what you make your employer-du-jour become) is to broaden the number of shareholders.
The present option system does that. The proposed FASB rules don't. And if Warren "Tax me more" Buffett and FASB "Options for Those With Country Club Memberships Only" don't like it, they can eat a bowl of dick.
I just pulled out an Elephant Memory Systems 5.25" floppy and booted my //e with it.
20 years is pretty damn good. Then again, when you paid $17.95 for a "Peanut Pak" (box of 3 disks instead of 10, 'cuz I couldn't afford a full box), you expect 'em to last. Hey, there were the good disks, paid an extra $0.50 per disk to get the ones with the hub rings!
Now where's my copy of the little book Leading Edge/Elephant used to give out? The one that ended with the immortal quote:
""Why, the couldn't hit an elephant at this dist..."
- Last words of Major General John Sedgwick
>
>It perfectly describes my attitude to being on hold.
I was thinking of Pantera's Fucking Hostile or Front Line Assembly's Vigilante.
Gotta have something to remind both CSR and customer of their places in life: Target practice for each other.
"Hi! Every week, one of our representatives calls you, and every week, you tell him to fuck off, and then you hang up on him. We would like to show you how much we enjoy our continuing business relationship by offering you a great deal on some vinyl siding!"
And while we're at it, on the subject of hip-hop...
Listening to hip-hop today (versus the hip-hop of the late 80s), I see a basic set of self-reinforcing memes. In no particular order: Education is acting "white" and is therefore a form of race treason. Race treason is an unpardonable sin; the purity of the race must be preserved. In the absence of education, crime is the only viable career choice. Respect is achieved through violence and intimidation. The purpose of life is to acquire money through force, fraud, or intimidation, and to spend the money purchasing whores. When whores are fucked, it's OK to shoot them. Kill all white people, because they're devils.
When I was a kid, we had a word for people who wanted to keep blacks and whites segregated, and to prevent blacks from succeeding in public school in order to keep them out of college, and to condemn them to lives of poverty, and on a dead-end track to murder or prison.
That word was "Klansman".
Today, that word is "Hip-Hop Recording Artist".
For double irony points, guess the race of the CEOs of the entertainment conglomerates that make the most money out of selling this memeset to blacks.
Big Pun in the public schools? If it weren't for the fact that Klan's too stupid to come up with anything this subtle, I'd call shenanigans.
Yeronner, we request a warrant that demands that "Foobar Airlines Inc", supply us with a copy of its database. We require this data is reasonably required as part of an ongoing investigation relating to terrorism.
Even if we assume a warrant is required (which it probably isn't, assuming the DoJ lawyer uses the right catchphrases to take advantage of the new powers granted to him under the new laws), once a Judge signs such a warrant, it's legal even under the strictest and most literal possible reading of the Fourth.
We probably disagree on how hard it ought to be to get a judge to sign off on a warrant (I think warrants should be required so there's a paper trail, but that getting them signed should be little more than a formality), but leaving that disagreement aside -- why do you think it's hard to find a judge who'll sign a warrant?
>
> -Passenger's favorite brand of peanuts
> -Success passenger had flirting stewardess
> -Whether or not passenger washes hands after using washroom.
I'm authorized to disclose that for all subjects where data element #2 is nonzezo, graphic #2 as a function of time shows either an uptrend or a downtrend, and that data element #3 is strongly and positively correlated with the direction of this trend.
What do the peanuts have to do with it? Or am I not cleared for that?