You aren't very good with reading comprehension, are you?
Two contradictory policies. One, a confiscatory water rate that was justified as "encouraging conservation." The other, a policy that specifically prevents conservation.
Are you really that dense that you can't understand it?
I get the idea of maintaining enough water in the sewer. I really do.
What I find fucking stupid is the contradictory way they go about it.
Step #0: sell the public water utility off to a Republican robber baron.
Step #1: Robber baron institutes a pricing scheme designed to punish people for using more water (if I use less than 1,000 gallons in a month I pay the lowest rate, each "tier" above that is doubled. If I go from 1,000 to 2,000 gallons I pay triple the price, 1,000 to 3,000 I pay 7x the price, and onwards).
Step #2: Robber baron's corrupt stooges in city government block people from instituting meaningful technological solutions that would allow them to cut their water usage.
If they need to put more water through the sewer system, I can think of better ways to do it. They could start by rescheduling the yearly Fire Hydrant Flush (currently done in the middle of the fucking wet season) for during the dry season and kill two birds with one stone, for instance. Right now, all it's proven to me is that Republicans don't give a crap about the environment.
What would be news is if the USA would get their heads out of their asses regarding greywater systems. I tried to see about getting one set up in my house only to be shown a local ordinance (they seem to be just about universal round my state) banning them because it LESSENS usage of the sewer system. The bullshit reason given was that they are worried about the sewer system "drying out" and developing problems if the water levels in the sewer pipes "get too low." Meanwhile, they altered the rates to a tiered system so that if you use an average amount of water (enough even to keep your foundation from cracking and shifting you wind up paying the excessively high "overuse" rate, ostensibly to "encourage people to use less water".
Yes, that's right. I can't install a system to use greywater to water my lawn and garden plants because the local water monopoly (bought and paid for a decade ago when the Republicans took over my county and sold off the public utility to private hands) want to FORCE ME TO USE MORE WATER and bribed the local government to pass an anti-greywater ordinance.
There are phrases like "consumer confidence", which show how subjective it all is.... No.
Consumer confidence is a measure of the level of income spent each month by families across the nation. The lower consumer confidence is in a steady revenue stream, the lower percentage of their income will be spent on goods rather than put aside for exigent circumstances. Consumer buying is a vicious cycle in this regard: if many people are out of work, many more people know those who are unemployed-looking or unemployed-giving-up, and they more than likely know people who have lost their jobs due to a business shutdown or layoff rather than because they quit and are between jobs.
If your friends and neighbors are unemployed and prospects look dim, then your own prospects for your job begin to look bleak, no matter how well situated you may be. And you're likely to spend less, which slows currency circulation.
It would be silly to suggest that S&P would have an objective analysis about the economy and the USA's financial status.
No, it would be silly to suggest that both economic and political issues should not be taken into account when dealing with the financial status and prospects of a predominantly political entity such as a government. You wouldn't assign anything higher than a "junk bond" rating to a government that had a history of being taken over in violent overthrows who happened to have a set of rebels hiding in the forests. The fact that the US has a bunch of children in office throwing temper tantrums and threatening to make the nation default on its debt is serious evidence that yes, the political situation is dire enough to make the US's ability to pay unstable.
I'll also address the idiot PP you responded to:
1) Plan on gaining 100 pounds. 2) Gain 75 pounds. 3) Congratulations. You have a weight loss of 25 pounds.
Given that projections of spending are based on inflation occurring, you're off base. Looking at expenditures as a percentage of GDP, the major growth all occurred under Dubya Bush, when the Republicans were spending like drunken sailors and putting Shrub's wars on the taxpayer's credit card.
there's also a socio-economic problem in that most middle class people in LA (my family included) are unwilling to use mass transit, viewing it as low-class or not allowing for enough personal freedom.
Visited LA. Live in a different major city.
If I'm trying to get to work, there IS NOT a valid bus or train line to get me there. And I live 10 miles from my workplace right down one of the main freeways.
If I'm trying to get to something on the other side of the city, likewise. It'd take me 4 hours.
Plus, I have to run the risk of getting mugged. Sure, I can get mugged on the freeway too, but at least then I'm being mugged by some asshole with a badge who wants to meet his ticket quota and doesn't care how many false tickets he writes to do it, which means he's not interested in shooting or stabbing me.
When Reagan came into office, he asked for tax cuts to stimulate the economy, and got them. Then in 1983, 1984, and 1987 he signed off on tax RAISES in order to balance the budget.
Current tax rates are far lower than after Reagan's initial tax cuts. The marginal rates are the lowest they've been since 1950. We have no import tariffs anymore, so we're being bled dry of manufacturing by unfair competition from shithole countries like China where labor comes at slavery prices. And the ultra-rich get away with paying far, far less than their fair share by hiding money in offshore accounts and funneling money through 13+-month "sheltering" gimmicks that convert income streams into "long term capital gains" that are taxed at a mere 15%, less than half of what the middle class pay.
Meanwhile, the Republican noise machine screams about how "half of the US pays no income tax." No, they don't. That's because half of the US is barely at or below the poverty line, doesn't own a home, and spends any income they may have month-to-month with 30% of their income still being eaten up in the various regressive taxes (like sales tax) and "static fees" that all are designed by Republicans to disproportionately hurt the poor.
If you'd ever had to deal with someone stalking you, you'd understand why having pseudonyms can be so important.
Additionally, I have a friend who insists her kids use a fake name, and she has the password to their account so she can check up on things if she believes anything is wrong. The fake-name is so that nobody can try to trace them in a phone book. And they've already been warned about the punishment for giving their real name out.
The fact that Google and other social networking sites can't seem to grasp this basic concept just surprises me.
Most Wikipedia admin actions aren't even remotely within policy, however.
Look at the "recent changes patrollers" and "vandalism patrol" types, for instance. If you aggregate their logs, you find that most of them aren't filing few-hours, one-day, or even two-day blocks: they are filing week- or month-long blocks (sometimes multiple months!) upon DHCP addresses. Admins can, and do as a matter of policy, lock talkpages to prevent unblock requests. It's supposed to be used in cases of "abuse", but more often than not they just beat the ever-living shit out of a newbie who they've blocked, troll them a few times, and then claim "oh this guy was being abusive or clogging the system with repeat requests so I locked it." Some of them don't even go through the trolling motions, they just lock the pages by default anyways.
The result? They never get any fucking scrutiny. Who's going to scrutinize them, the other admins who are doing the same thing all the time?
Once they've locked it, there is no email address one can realistically email to get an unblock situation resolved anymore. Try to do it, and you're likely to wind up one of the modern equivalents of the Durova List.
They were warned about this years ago. Former wikipedia administrator Kelly Martin wrote whole treatises on it. in her blog. A former admin under the pseudonym of "Parker Peters" wrote up apt descriptions of why it happened - power-mad individuals abusing their "buttons", individuals who gamed the system, gangs who formed to "control" articles - on his blog too.
I've found this discussion to be particularly apt, a discussion of precisely how Wikipedia fails to retain newcomers because most newcomers who actually make an edit are quickly shooed out the door by either the POV pushing gangs or the edit-count-aholic "recent changes patrol"; adding in to this is the fact that the trigger-happy admins remaining no longer stay remotely within policy, as the average "visitor vandalism" punishment is not a block of one day, but one month or sometimes more directed at DHCP addresses, and generally these power-mad fools compound the problem by instantly locking down the talkpage so that if someone else were to get that address, they can't even ask for an unblock... not that the unblock process ever actually works any more, since the same trigger-happy gestapo types patrol the Unblock Requests page.
The underlying problem, the thing that drives people away from Wikipedia, is that it's impossible to get started in. The admins are, just about uniformly, complete dickholes. The "regulars" who remain are either edit-count-itis freaks who will play revert-war with automated tools just to get their edit count up, or are shameless sycophants who play hanger-on to those admins deemed "in power" - the goal of both groups being to boost their chances of someday getting the "extra buttons."
To paraphrase Douglas Adams, the first problem of Wikipedia admins is that nobody should be allowed to do it who ever actually WANTS the job.
The secondary problem is that those sections that really need fixing, are the domain of power-mad admins or control-freak groups who maintain them and drive people away as quickly as they come in order to WP:OWN the content.
The third part is that you can't even talk about Wikipedia without having to reference byzantine, contradictory, fucked-up rules. You can't participate in Wikipedia without memorizing most of them, and the moment you cross one of the power-mad fools they call admins or some of the POV groups, you're going to get hammered over the head with those same "rules", and before you know it you're going to be on the end of a longstanding block with a talkpage lock if you dare try to file an unblock request that says, in essence, "please unzip so I can suck your cock o powerful sir."
If you think I'm joking, try reading their own guide. Explaining why you believe the block was out of policy? ZZZTTT! WRONG! Pointing out that you're being targeted by people with WP:OWN issues or that you're responding to a major problem involving some other Wikipedia policy violation? ZZZTTT! WRONG! The only way you get an unblock requested is to (a) know a corrupt admin who happens to be your friend or (b) play the "mea culpa mea culpa" game.
Oh, and as for using CheckUser to show that you are NOT a sockpuppet after the favorite tactic of dickhole admins and POV warrior alike, the false sockpuppetry accusation? Sorry. CheckUser is Sooper Sekrit Kangaroo Court Data that can ONLY get you sent to the gulag.
Where did I say I was "saying no to everything" anyways? You love putting words into people's mouths. A friend of mine works at a company where the CEO and lawyer crowd ordered him to block access to outside web-based email (gmail, yahoo, hotmail, etc) following someone letting a worm loose inside the network (initial infection because the moron clicked on a phishing link). You sound a lot like their complainers who didn't want to admit that accessing certain things from the outside caused security holes on the inside, much like Denethor and the Palantir.
Did he want to do it? No. Did he have to do it? Of course. Was there a significant portion of the userbase who decided to blame "draconian evil IT who never wants us to have anything" for it, rather than the CEO and lawyers who came up with the order, or the user who touched it off in the first place? Of course. I bet you're a lot like them, not thinking about how things look from the other end.
But I digress...
I was saying that there are certain things an insecure device shouldn't touch. There are certain bits of data that should NEVER be allowed out unencrypted. Where I work, we're going through a major overhaul trying to get certain people to synchronize paper and electronic-data retention and secure deletion (aka "shredding") requirements. We're spending a lot of time trying to train them. We're spending a lot of time going over the proper tools to do the job. We're ensuring that every station built or rebuilt from now on has these tools present, and we're rolling the tools out to existing stations as fast as possible.
Some days it makes me want to pull my hair out. The CEO's mandated that everyone follow these policies as drafted by Legal. These users are certainly capable of learning, but they spend more time stonewalling and talking about how they "shouldn't have to be the ones doing this" and "don't get this stuff", and "don't want to deal with it" even though they are the Data Owners according to policy, and it's their responsibility.
Does this mean that the corporate business plan, confidential draft contracts, and sensitive intellectual property should be allowed to be on a smartphone or iPad? If you think so, you're nuts. These devices are insecure by their very nature. There is not, without jailbreaking it (which is a mess in itself), a method of encryption that works well similar to Truecrypt or other encrypted-volume solutions that are available on Linux, Mac, or PC laptops. Maybe that will change in the future, but for right now, that is a major concern. Yes, we've explored possible products as a solution, but so far they turned out to be far too easily broken.
Sometimes, the correct answer is "We need you to look at this alternative instead." Sometimes, the answer is "Sure, no problem." And sometimes, the answer is and has to be, No or at least "we can't certify it at this time, talk to Legal for the why."
Take that last answer out of the realm of possibility, and you're asking for trouble. We don't set out to stymie the users. If anything, we are caught between the dictates of Legal, Upper Management, and the users and we're trying to do the best we can to strike the balance.
If you're prepared for that, you'll be prepared for doctors trying to use poorly-secured IOS devices.
Sigh.
The proper response to the poorly-secured devices is to not let them onto the network. The entire argument going on here is that people who don't understand what they are doing want to simultaneously have a "secure network" while letting any random device that someone may bring from home onto it.
Now, can you set up a "walled garden" for guest-level devices to play in? Sure. But I can guarantee you, a "walled garden" won't touch the stuff that Mr. Gotta Have New Shiny Toy wants it to touch.
"but she wouldn't admit the possibility or even call AT&T until we made her try it when she was visiting her brother in another state and her laptop worked fine in his house (with his open wireless connection). Instead, we were treated to 3 weeks of "why can't you fucking people make my laptop work at home" from her."
It sure as hell looks to me like they knew for a hell of a long time that her DSL was down, but she was refusing to call them. In other words... the user was being a bitch.
Now, as for "The incorrect response is to run around doing your own name calling. If you act professionally, people will treat you that way."... may I suggest that maybe, just perhaps, letting off steam in an anonymous forum while not using the user's name or company details, is probably far different from acting unprofessionally to the user? Even when the user was demonstrably, herself, acting completely unprofessional?
have you so little faith in your network that you cant defend yourself from the users?
No, but often defending the network from the users means that certain things have to be handled in a way that you wouldn't do in someone's home network environment.
Believe it or not, IT security concerns for a University, Hospital, or large-scale (or even smaller-scale) business, from a law firm to department store chain, make it so that they are a completely different environment from the knocked-together, wide open "home network" involving someone bringing a $25 router home from Best Buy, plugging it into a DSL modem, plugging their home PC in and setting their laptop to talk to a wide-open wireless network that has named itself "Netgear", and never bothering to configure the security setup or even make sure that their laptop's administrator password isn't blank.
There are a whole mess of things you have to do. And you have to do them because there are severe legal consequences if something is exposed, on a federal-law level. It doesn't matter if anyone actually accesses something or not, the mere fact that it was exposed is enough to trigger potential legal hell.
No one is saying let any old cheap chinese crap android tablet on your network,
Actually, that seems to be exactly what they are saying.
but my question would be, where is your alternative you can point to when users demand more functionality?
It may be that the device does not exist yet. Remember, there was an amazing amount of furor involved in allowing Barack Obama to use a Blackberry while in the Office of the Presidency, including getting a custom model that didn't have a GPS chip. And he's got a hell of a lot of pull to get something like that done. You think that Blackberries are allowed for certain other people with high, high security clearances? Think again.
On a lower level, there's a large amount of things that an iPad (for instance) doesn't handle well. Security on it is basically a joke; a lost iPad's security code (you know, those nifty little 4-digit PINs or finger-swipe patterns?) can be broken trivially in a day or so. Once you're in, you are in User Mode and Jailbreak is only a website visit away. A Jailbroken iPad may be "more functional", but it's been rooted in such a way that the security on it is now compromised. The fact that the holder of the iPad is, at any time, able to assume SuperUser status fairly simply with the Jailbreak hacks makes it very difficult to clear the devices for use in a network where security is deemed to be of high concern.
Where is your answer to their cries?
Being a bit hyperbolic, are we? As I just said, sometimes the answer is, "there doesn't currently exist a device that can meet the legal and policy requirements of the network and still give the functionality you are looking for."
Or are you thinking that every IT department has a budget of millions of dollars to design and build one from scratch? Chances are they are operating on a shoestring, trying to keep everything running nominally well while waiting for the "other shoe" from a clueless PHB in management to drop on their upcoming budget.
You have a large business where lawyers and MBA's have made the rules, and IT is expected to implement the rules they wrote.
In a hospital in the US, you have to implement policies in line with medical privacy and records security policies that have a basis in federal law.
In a university in the US, you have to implement policies in line with student record privacy and records security policies that have a basis in federal law.
In most other places, you are bound by some level of law and PHB-level policy.
And yet, there are those out there who believe that it's the job of IT to "support" every personal device they might bring round to the office, whether it can meet the security and legal requirements of the business or not, and whether or not IT have had a similar device and any chance to research what might be needed to support it...
This is precisely the problem. In an ideal world, users would stick within usage policies and requirements. When there was a policy for equipment requests, for support of personal devices, they'd follow it.
That's fantasyland. In the real world, IT is stuck between a rock and a hard place. Between "supporting the users" and defending the network from the users. Damned if they do, damned if they don't, and taken through the wringer the moment some bad-apple employee makes off with company property or leaks trade secrets that have been copied to a USB memory stick. Or lets loose something on the network because they just can't resist clicking on "OMG FREE PUPPY SCREENSAVER."
The problem is that IT has to deal with five categories of user. They're easy to categorize.
1. Knows nothing. KNOWS they know nothing. Ask questions often, but ask questions before they cause trouble. Not a major source of trouble, just use up a certain amount of time. 2. Technically savvy, follows procedures. When these guys call, it's going to be a doozy, but they've got a ton of troubleshooting steps ready and a list of things they have done for you to look at. When they come in with a new gadget, they're willing to give IT the time to research how best to support it. These two categories are not the problem, because they approach IT as coworkers to work with. 3. Knows just enough to cause trouble. Believes themselves technically savvy. Will lie out their asses rather than admit to flailing around and making the problem worse. 4. Knows nothing, but wants the Latest Shiny Thing and wants it to Just Work Like It Does In The Commercials. These are the problem. These types of users are the ones who get into large amounts of trouble and take up the majority of troubleshooting time, mostly because they are not treating IT as co-workers to be collaborated with, but someone to be bossed around. These are the sort of user who treats passwords as a hindrance, rather than keys to important locks. They wouldn't leave the combination to the company safe in the open, but they think nothing of leaving their username and password on a sticky-note under the keyboard.
The final type of user, the one every IT person dreads and prays never to encounter but has to protect against anyways, is the user who is actively trying to sabotage the network or do something outright illegal on it. And yes, sometimes protecting against these users inconveniences the other users.
Name a profession where "customers" hold a dual position of know-nothing and know-it-all, and you'll name a profession where the true masters have derisive stories to tell behind "customers'" backs.
One of the arguments is about a person who is berating her IT department for the fact that her laptop won't work at home. Apparently, they told her repeatedly to call her ISP, and she refused to do so. The very picture of the uncooperative user who refuses to work with IT to solve the problem.
And yet, Mr. DeathSquid accuses the GPP of being incompetent, saying "a competent network engineer could diagnose that in minutes". Well, I reread GPP's post, and it appears that they did in fact have it correctly diagnosed, but that the problem was an intractable, uncooperative user who simply shouted "you fix it" at the IT department rather than holding up her end of the bargain to call her home ISP.
I'm willing to bet that this is the kind of stuff Mr. DeathSquid does to people in IT all the time. When you're dealing with coworkers, you have to be willing to look at things from their perspective. When IT says the problem appears to be with your home connection, and that you're the one who will need to call your ISP to have it checked, the proper response is to call your ISP, not shout at IT and yell at them for "not fixing it."
Firstly, note the unnecessary and repetitive use of derogatory terms for customers and general profanity. Hardly professional.
If you think auto mechanics don't tell stories about the twit stepford wife who drives a $100,000 sports car for a year and a half without having the oil changed?
If you think that electricians don't tell stories about the moron who tries to splice cable themselves and gets a good jolt or goes to the hospital for their trouble?
I could go on, but every profession has a word (or several) for the kind of idiot who goes around, say, Practicing IT Without A License.
Second, complaints that the users are undermining IT perfect systems by buying devices or installing software. Basic economics tells us that users are investing money and time in these thing because they deliver value. Value that It is not delivering to a demand from their user base.
No, complaints that users are bringing outside devices into the network that don't meet security requirements, that were not purchased by the company, that have not been approved to be brought in by the company.
If there is value in the devices, the appropriate thing to do is to work WITH the IT department prior to purchase to see what can be done for integrating them - so that IT can do the research and be prepared to support it, not buy them first and then demand that IT "just make it work" as a surprise.
Thirdly, complaints about having to troubleshoot problems. Isn't that what the business pays you for?
Business pays you to troubleshoot the business systems and keep them secure.
In the case of a downed DSL service, a competent network engineer could diagnose that in minutes. I'm sorry it took you three weeks, but transferring your aggression to others is not productive.
When IT is testing the device onsite and it works, and the user's home connection is the problem but the user won't do their part and contact the provider?
Fourthly, assuming that when users ask for something new that they must be dumb. Why should my phone and PC use the same email password?
I'm willing to bet GP is set up on an Active Directory system, where the computers and the Exchange environment both authenticate to the same domain.
Fifth, the wireless access point anecdote highlights appalling sysadmin practices. One point of access into the network and the bad guy was able to destroy critical infrastructure. Way to put all your eggs in one basket. The sysadmin of that network was incompetent, negligent, or both. Yes, the user did something stupid. But the real fool was the the person who did not design for defense in depth.
I'm not sure what you claim you'd do here. The "Clueless User" was someone high up in the business ecosystem. They were given a point of access for their machine to connect to. They, not following the business's own procedures, plugged a contraband item into the jack intended for their machine.
Short of locking down the network to a list of MAC addresses - which would require getting the MAC address of every single device in the company's possession - what would you do?
It seems that many IT departments see themselves as a law unto themselves, dictating to users what they can and can't do. We've seen this cycle before. It was last at its peak during the mainframe/mini era, and those IT cathedrals were obsoleted by the PC. My advice? Pay attention to your customers and give them what they want. That way, you'll always have great job prospects.
No, it seems that IT is once again caught between the contradictory, schizophrenic "Number One Priorities List" that people like you come up with where IT should be doing everything for you, should make the entire network completely open with every user able to install whatever piece of crap they picked up from Best Buy this weekend or any little widget from the internet and all the accompanying crapware that tagged along with it, but at the same time maintain a "secure" network that runs well.
Watch all the companies run for the hills the first time Anonymous or Wikileaks gets a ton of data some fool stored on an insecure, wide-open "Cloud Service" like Dropbox...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I do believe that sit-ins and pickets cannot legally prevent or impede normal operations of the business - you cannot block customers or employees.
Depends on your location. Any such laws are local, not federal, in nature and probably won't stand up to constitutional scrutiny, especially since such laws were uniformly used to harass civil rights protesters in the 1950s and 1960s.
Picket lines and sit-ins are meant to educate people about an issue; make them think twice about it, make them realize there may be more to something that hadn't considered before. Attempt to dissuade people from working or doing business with the company or institution you don't like.
No, the purpose of any such protest is to disrupt the business conditions of the business/person you are protesting. As you said yourself: "Attempt to dissuade people from working or doing business with." If they physically can't get to the store because there are too many people present already, that's that.
Lunch counter sit-ins, for example, filled the restaurant with people that the racist restaurant owners refused to serve, leaving no seats for the "desired customers."
DDoS is nothing like that. It directly impedes business, it directly impedes customers.... DDoS isn't a sit-in, isn't a protest. It's sabotage. It's revenge.
Given that your entire premise has just been proven false, the rest of your rant is meaningless. There were a lot of angry Southerner KKK members who were angry about the fact that a group of protesters were "directly impeding customers" at the lunch counter sit-ins, too. A lot of people who were "frustrated" and not "let handle their affairs" in other sit-ins throughout the years, including recently when the Republicans were raping the public sector and protesters staged sit-ins at several state capitals.
No permanent physical damage done, but disrupts business...
That's the exact purpose of a peaceful protest. To not do permanent physical damage, but cause enough disruption that your demands are acceded to.
By that logic, citizens who protested against Gitmo were "providing material support" to the supposed terrorists held there.
This is where the law has become completely goddamn stupid. A protest is a protest. If it becomes violent, and that means PHYSICALLY VIOLENT, then it's a problem. Shy of that, it's just a protest and protected under the Constitutional right to peaceably assemble.
Temporarily taking a website offline sucks for the affected company. So does a protest that blocks the street in front of a store being protested, or even the neighboring stores in the strip mall. But unless there is permanent damage done (the equivalent of someone not just peacefully protesting, but actively spray-painting graffiti as one conceptual example) then it's just a protest and shouldn't be considered criminal.
You've just named the precise reasons that the original Game Boy beat its competitors:
- Better battery life (as in a USABLE battery life) - Better games
3DS has nothing in the way of a "killer app", the screen issues are still problematic, and I know of nobody willing to pay that much for a portable device for gaming. Then again, I also remember the fiasco that was the original GBA, which didn't even have a backlight and couldn't be played without arranging a ton of lamps like some professional fucking photography studio. It was downright hilarious when I saw someone take apart their GBA SP and they discovered that Nintendo had literally ripped off the Afterburner design for their own GBA lighting system.
And the people talking about "tax cuts for billionaires" routinely forget to include the fact that the Bush tax cuts cut taxes for _everyone_. In fact, the bulk of the expense of those tax cuts is coming from the lower brackets, not the highest.
Sigh. Another misinformed, deliberately moronic Tea Partier on the loose.
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You aren't very good with reading comprehension, are you?
Two contradictory policies. One, a confiscatory water rate that was justified as "encouraging conservation." The other, a policy that specifically prevents conservation.
Are you really that dense that you can't understand it?
I get the idea of maintaining enough water in the sewer. I really do.
What I find fucking stupid is the contradictory way they go about it.
Step #0: sell the public water utility off to a Republican robber baron.
Step #1: Robber baron institutes a pricing scheme designed to punish people for using more water (if I use less than 1,000 gallons in a month I pay the lowest rate, each "tier" above that is doubled. If I go from 1,000 to 2,000 gallons I pay triple the price, 1,000 to 3,000 I pay 7x the price, and onwards).
Step #2: Robber baron's corrupt stooges in city government block people from instituting meaningful technological solutions that would allow them to cut their water usage.
If they need to put more water through the sewer system, I can think of better ways to do it. They could start by rescheduling the yearly Fire Hydrant Flush (currently done in the middle of the fucking wet season) for during the dry season and kill two birds with one stone, for instance. Right now, all it's proven to me is that Republicans don't give a crap about the environment.
What would be news is if the USA would get their heads out of their asses regarding greywater systems. I tried to see about getting one set up in my house only to be shown a local ordinance (they seem to be just about universal round my state) banning them because it LESSENS usage of the sewer system. The bullshit reason given was that they are worried about the sewer system "drying out" and developing problems if the water levels in the sewer pipes "get too low." Meanwhile, they altered the rates to a tiered system so that if you use an average amount of water (enough even to keep your foundation from cracking and shifting you wind up paying the excessively high "overuse" rate, ostensibly to "encourage people to use less water".
Yes, that's right. I can't install a system to use greywater to water my lawn and garden plants because the local water monopoly (bought and paid for a decade ago when the Republicans took over my county and sold off the public utility to private hands) want to FORCE ME TO USE MORE WATER and bribed the local government to pass an anti-greywater ordinance.
There are phrases like "consumer confidence", which show how subjective it all is. ... No.
Consumer confidence is a measure of the level of income spent each month by families across the nation. The lower consumer confidence is in a steady revenue stream, the lower percentage of their income will be spent on goods rather than put aside for exigent circumstances. Consumer buying is a vicious cycle in this regard: if many people are out of work, many more people know those who are unemployed-looking or unemployed-giving-up, and they more than likely know people who have lost their jobs due to a business shutdown or layoff rather than because they quit and are between jobs.
If your friends and neighbors are unemployed and prospects look dim, then your own prospects for your job begin to look bleak, no matter how well situated you may be. And you're likely to spend less, which slows currency circulation.
It would be silly to suggest that S&P would have an objective analysis about the economy and the USA's financial status.
No, it would be silly to suggest that both economic and political issues should not be taken into account when dealing with the financial status and prospects of a predominantly political entity such as a government. You wouldn't assign anything higher than a "junk bond" rating to a government that had a history of being taken over in violent overthrows who happened to have a set of rebels hiding in the forests. The fact that the US has a bunch of children in office throwing temper tantrums and threatening to make the nation default on its debt is serious evidence that yes, the political situation is dire enough to make the US's ability to pay unstable.
I'll also address the idiot PP you responded to:
1) Plan on gaining 100 pounds.
2) Gain 75 pounds.
3) Congratulations. You have a weight loss of 25 pounds.
Given that projections of spending are based on inflation occurring, you're off base. Looking at expenditures as a percentage of GDP, the major growth all occurred under Dubya Bush, when the Republicans were spending like drunken sailors and putting Shrub's wars on the taxpayer's credit card.
there's also a socio-economic problem in that most middle class people in LA (my family included) are unwilling to use mass transit, viewing it as low-class or not allowing for enough personal freedom.
Visited LA. Live in a different major city.
If I'm trying to get to work, there IS NOT a valid bus or train line to get me there. And I live 10 miles from my workplace right down one of the main freeways.
If I'm trying to get to something on the other side of the city, likewise. It'd take me 4 hours.
Plus, I have to run the risk of getting mugged. Sure, I can get mugged on the freeway too, but at least then I'm being mugged by some asshole with a badge who wants to meet his ticket quota and doesn't care how many false tickets he writes to do it, which means he's not interested in shooting or stabbing me.
No, the US has a tax problem.
When Reagan came into office, he asked for tax cuts to stimulate the economy, and got them.
Then in 1983, 1984, and 1987 he signed off on tax RAISES in order to balance the budget.
Current tax rates are far lower than after Reagan's initial tax cuts. The marginal rates are the lowest they've been since 1950. We have no import tariffs anymore, so we're being bled dry of manufacturing by unfair competition from shithole countries like China where labor comes at slavery prices. And the ultra-rich get away with paying far, far less than their fair share by hiding money in offshore accounts and funneling money through 13+-month "sheltering" gimmicks that convert income streams into "long term capital gains" that are taxed at a mere 15%, less than half of what the middle class pay.
Meanwhile, the Republican noise machine screams about how "half of the US pays no income tax." No, they don't. That's because half of the US is barely at or below the poverty line, doesn't own a home, and spends any income they may have month-to-month with 30% of their income still being eaten up in the various regressive taxes (like sales tax) and "static fees" that all are designed by Republicans to disproportionately hurt the poor.
You'd think with both Betty and Veronica trying to get after him, he'd have no need for porn.
Ever tried to just fix a spelling error? Good fucking luck.
If you'd ever had to deal with someone stalking you, you'd understand why having pseudonyms can be so important.
Additionally, I have a friend who insists her kids use a fake name, and she has the password to their account so she can check up on things if she believes anything is wrong. The fake-name is so that nobody can try to trace them in a phone book. And they've already been warned about the punishment for giving their real name out.
The fact that Google and other social networking sites can't seem to grasp this basic concept just surprises me.
Most Wikipedia admin actions aren't even remotely within policy, however.
Look at the "recent changes patrollers" and "vandalism patrol" types, for instance. If you aggregate their logs, you find that most of them aren't filing few-hours, one-day, or even two-day blocks: they are filing week- or month-long blocks (sometimes multiple months!) upon DHCP addresses. Admins can, and do as a matter of policy, lock talkpages to prevent unblock requests. It's supposed to be used in cases of "abuse", but more often than not they just beat the ever-living shit out of a newbie who they've blocked, troll them a few times, and then claim "oh this guy was being abusive or clogging the system with repeat requests so I locked it." Some of them don't even go through the trolling motions, they just lock the pages by default anyways.
The result? They never get any fucking scrutiny. Who's going to scrutinize them, the other admins who are doing the same thing all the time?
Once they've locked it, there is no email address one can realistically email to get an unblock situation resolved anymore. Try to do it, and you're likely to wind up one of the modern equivalents of the Durova List.
They were warned about this years ago. Former wikipedia administrator Kelly Martin wrote whole treatises on it. in her blog. A former admin under the pseudonym of "Parker Peters" wrote up apt descriptions of why it happened - power-mad individuals abusing their "buttons", individuals who gamed the system, gangs who formed to "control" articles - on his blog too.
I've found this discussion to be particularly apt, a discussion of precisely how Wikipedia fails to retain newcomers because most newcomers who actually make an edit are quickly shooed out the door by either the POV pushing gangs or the edit-count-aholic "recent changes patrol"; adding in to this is the fact that the trigger-happy admins remaining no longer stay remotely within policy, as the average "visitor vandalism" punishment is not a block of one day, but one month or sometimes more directed at DHCP addresses, and generally these power-mad fools compound the problem by instantly locking down the talkpage so that if someone else were to get that address, they can't even ask for an unblock... not that the unblock process ever actually works any more, since the same trigger-happy gestapo types patrol the Unblock Requests page.
The underlying problem, the thing that drives people away from Wikipedia, is that it's impossible to get started in. The admins are, just about uniformly, complete dickholes. The "regulars" who remain are either edit-count-itis freaks who will play revert-war with automated tools just to get their edit count up, or are shameless sycophants who play hanger-on to those admins deemed "in power" - the goal of both groups being to boost their chances of someday getting the "extra buttons."
To paraphrase Douglas Adams, the first problem of Wikipedia admins is that nobody should be allowed to do it who ever actually WANTS the job.
The secondary problem is that those sections that really need fixing, are the domain of power-mad admins or control-freak groups who maintain them and drive people away as quickly as they come in order to WP:OWN the content.
The third part is that you can't even talk about Wikipedia without having to reference byzantine, contradictory, fucked-up rules. You can't participate in Wikipedia without memorizing most of them, and the moment you cross one of the power-mad fools they call admins or some of the POV groups, you're going to get hammered over the head with those same "rules", and before you know it you're going to be on the end of a longstanding block with a talkpage lock if you dare try to file an unblock request that says, in essence, "please unzip so I can suck your cock o powerful sir."
If you think I'm joking, try reading their own guide. Explaining why you believe the block was out of policy? ZZZTTT! WRONG! Pointing out that you're being targeted by people with WP:OWN issues or that you're responding to a major problem involving some other Wikipedia policy violation? ZZZTTT! WRONG! The only way you get an unblock requested is to (a) know a corrupt admin who happens to be your friend or (b) play the "mea culpa mea culpa" game.
Oh, and as for using CheckUser to show that you are NOT a sockpuppet after the favorite tactic of dickhole admins and POV warrior alike, the false sockpuppetry accusation? Sorry. CheckUser is Sooper Sekrit Kangaroo Court Data that can ONLY get you sent to the gulag.
Where did I say I was "saying no to everything" anyways? You love putting words into people's mouths. A friend of mine works at a company where the CEO and lawyer crowd ordered him to block access to outside web-based email (gmail, yahoo, hotmail, etc) following someone letting a worm loose inside the network (initial infection because the moron clicked on a phishing link). You sound a lot like their complainers who didn't want to admit that accessing certain things from the outside caused security holes on the inside, much like Denethor and the Palantir.
Did he want to do it? No. Did he have to do it? Of course. Was there a significant portion of the userbase who decided to blame "draconian evil IT who never wants us to have anything" for it, rather than the CEO and lawyers who came up with the order, or the user who touched it off in the first place? Of course. I bet you're a lot like them, not thinking about how things look from the other end.
But I digress...
I was saying that there are certain things an insecure device shouldn't touch. There are certain bits of data that should NEVER be allowed out unencrypted. Where I work, we're going through a major overhaul trying to get certain people to synchronize paper and electronic-data retention and secure deletion (aka "shredding") requirements. We're spending a lot of time trying to train them. We're spending a lot of time going over the proper tools to do the job. We're ensuring that every station built or rebuilt from now on has these tools present, and we're rolling the tools out to existing stations as fast as possible.
Some days it makes me want to pull my hair out. The CEO's mandated that everyone follow these policies as drafted by Legal. These users are certainly capable of learning, but they spend more time stonewalling and talking about how they "shouldn't have to be the ones doing this" and "don't get this stuff", and "don't want to deal with it" even though they are the Data Owners according to policy, and it's their responsibility.
Does this mean that the corporate business plan, confidential draft contracts, and sensitive intellectual property should be allowed to be on a smartphone or iPad? If you think so, you're nuts. These devices are insecure by their very nature. There is not, without jailbreaking it (which is a mess in itself), a method of encryption that works well similar to Truecrypt or other encrypted-volume solutions that are available on Linux, Mac, or PC laptops. Maybe that will change in the future, but for right now, that is a major concern. Yes, we've explored possible products as a solution, but so far they turned out to be far too easily broken.
Sometimes, the correct answer is "We need you to look at this alternative instead." Sometimes, the answer is "Sure, no problem." And sometimes, the answer is and has to be, No or at least "we can't certify it at this time, talk to Legal for the why."
Take that last answer out of the realm of possibility, and you're asking for trouble. We don't set out to stymie the users. If anything, we are caught between the dictates of Legal, Upper Management, and the users and we're trying to do the best we can to strike the balance.
Oh please.
You are the exact sort of fuckwit Denethor was. He ruined his country by insisting on using an illicit Palantir behind the firewall.
Maybe you were forgetting that little part in your haste to misquote Tolkien?
If you're prepared for that, you'll be prepared for doctors trying to use poorly-secured IOS devices.
Sigh.
The proper response to the poorly-secured devices is to not let them onto the network. The entire argument going on here is that people who don't understand what they are doing want to simultaneously have a "secure network" while letting any random device that someone may bring from home onto it.
Now, can you set up a "walled garden" for guest-level devices to play in? Sure. But I can guarantee you, a "walled garden" won't touch the stuff that Mr. Gotta Have New Shiny Toy wants it to touch.
I will quote from the GPPPPP:
"but she wouldn't admit the possibility or even call AT&T until we made her try it when she was visiting her brother in another state and her laptop worked fine in his house (with his open wireless connection). Instead, we were treated to 3 weeks of "why can't you fucking people make my laptop work at home" from her."
It sure as hell looks to me like they knew for a hell of a long time that her DSL was down, but she was refusing to call them. In other words... the user was being a bitch.
Now, as for "The incorrect response is to run around doing your own name calling. If you act professionally, people will treat you that way."... may I suggest that maybe, just perhaps, letting off steam in an anonymous forum while not using the user's name or company details, is probably far different from acting unprofessionally to the user? Even when the user was demonstrably, herself, acting completely unprofessional?
have you so little faith in your network that you cant defend yourself from the users?
No, but often defending the network from the users means that certain things have to be handled in a way that you wouldn't do in someone's home network environment.
Believe it or not, IT security concerns for a University, Hospital, or large-scale (or even smaller-scale) business, from a law firm to department store chain, make it so that they are a completely different environment from the knocked-together, wide open "home network" involving someone bringing a $25 router home from Best Buy, plugging it into a DSL modem, plugging their home PC in and setting their laptop to talk to a wide-open wireless network that has named itself "Netgear", and never bothering to configure the security setup or even make sure that their laptop's administrator password isn't blank.
There are a whole mess of things you have to do. And you have to do them because there are severe legal consequences if something is exposed, on a federal-law level. It doesn't matter if anyone actually accesses something or not, the mere fact that it was exposed is enough to trigger potential legal hell.
No one is saying let any old cheap chinese crap android tablet on your network,
Actually, that seems to be exactly what they are saying.
but my question would be, where is your alternative you can point to when users demand more functionality?
It may be that the device does not exist yet. Remember, there was an amazing amount of furor involved in allowing Barack Obama to use a Blackberry while in the Office of the Presidency, including getting a custom model that didn't have a GPS chip. And he's got a hell of a lot of pull to get something like that done. You think that Blackberries are allowed for certain other people with high, high security clearances? Think again.
On a lower level, there's a large amount of things that an iPad (for instance) doesn't handle well. Security on it is basically a joke; a lost iPad's security code (you know, those nifty little 4-digit PINs or finger-swipe patterns?) can be broken trivially in a day or so. Once you're in, you are in User Mode and Jailbreak is only a website visit away. A Jailbroken iPad may be "more functional", but it's been rooted in such a way that the security on it is now compromised. The fact that the holder of the iPad is, at any time, able to assume SuperUser status fairly simply with the Jailbreak hacks makes it very difficult to clear the devices for use in a network where security is deemed to be of high concern.
Where is your answer to their cries?
Being a bit hyperbolic, are we? As I just said, sometimes the answer is, "there doesn't currently exist a device that can meet the legal and policy requirements of the network and still give the functionality you are looking for."
Or are you thinking that every IT department has a budget of millions of dollars to design and build one from scratch? Chances are they are operating on a shoestring, trying to keep everything running nominally well while waiting for the "other shoe" from a clueless PHB in management to drop on their upcoming budget.
Excellent point.
You have a large business where lawyers and MBA's have made the rules, and IT is expected to implement the rules they wrote.
In a hospital in the US, you have to implement policies in line with medical privacy and records security policies that have a basis in federal law.
In a university in the US, you have to implement policies in line with student record privacy and records security policies that have a basis in federal law.
In most other places, you are bound by some level of law and PHB-level policy.
Think about it: crap like this happens. Or this. Or even companies like Apple can 'misplace' a secret prototype.
And yet, there are those out there who believe that it's the job of IT to "support" every personal device they might bring round to the office, whether it can meet the security and legal requirements of the business or not, and whether or not IT have had a similar device and any chance to research what might be needed to support it ...
Wish I had modpoints to mod this up.
This is precisely the problem. In an ideal world, users would stick within usage policies and requirements. When there was a policy for equipment requests, for support of personal devices, they'd follow it.
That's fantasyland. In the real world, IT is stuck between a rock and a hard place. Between "supporting the users" and defending the network from the users. Damned if they do, damned if they don't, and taken through the wringer the moment some bad-apple employee makes off with company property or leaks trade secrets that have been copied to a USB memory stick. Or lets loose something on the network because they just can't resist clicking on "OMG FREE PUPPY SCREENSAVER."
The problem is that IT has to deal with five categories of user. They're easy to categorize.
1. Knows nothing. KNOWS they know nothing. Ask questions often, but ask questions before they cause trouble. Not a major source of trouble, just use up a certain amount of time.
2. Technically savvy, follows procedures. When these guys call, it's going to be a doozy, but they've got a ton of troubleshooting steps ready and a list of things they have done for you to look at. When they come in with a new gadget, they're willing to give IT the time to research how best to support it.
These two categories are not the problem, because they approach IT as coworkers to work with.
3. Knows just enough to cause trouble. Believes themselves technically savvy. Will lie out their asses rather than admit to flailing around and making the problem worse.
4. Knows nothing, but wants the Latest Shiny Thing and wants it to Just Work Like It Does In The Commercials.
These are the problem. These types of users are the ones who get into large amounts of trouble and take up the majority of troubleshooting time, mostly because they are not treating IT as co-workers to be collaborated with, but someone to be bossed around. These are the sort of user who treats passwords as a hindrance, rather than keys to important locks. They wouldn't leave the combination to the company safe in the open, but they think nothing of leaving their username and password on a sticky-note under the keyboard.
The final type of user, the one every IT person dreads and prays never to encounter but has to protect against anyways, is the user who is actively trying to sabotage the network or do something outright illegal on it. And yes, sometimes protecting against these users inconveniences the other users.
Name a profession where "customers" hold a dual position of know-nothing and know-it-all, and you'll name a profession where the true masters have derisive stories to tell behind "customers'" backs.
One of the arguments is about a person who is berating her IT department for the fact that her laptop won't work at home. Apparently, they told her repeatedly to call her ISP, and she refused to do so. The very picture of the uncooperative user who refuses to work with IT to solve the problem.
And yet, Mr. DeathSquid accuses the GPP of being incompetent, saying "a competent network engineer could diagnose that in minutes". Well, I reread GPP's post, and it appears that they did in fact have it correctly diagnosed, but that the problem was an intractable, uncooperative user who simply shouted "you fix it" at the IT department rather than holding up her end of the bargain to call her home ISP.
I'm willing to bet that this is the kind of stuff Mr. DeathSquid does to people in IT all the time. When you're dealing with coworkers, you have to be willing to look at things from their perspective. When IT says the problem appears to be with your home connection, and that you're the one who will need to call your ISP to have it checked, the proper response is to call your ISP, not shout at IT and yell at them for "not fixing it."
... No.
Firstly, note the unnecessary and repetitive use of derogatory terms for customers and general profanity. Hardly professional.
If you think auto mechanics don't tell stories about the twit stepford wife who drives a $100,000 sports car for a year and a half without having the oil changed?
If you think that electricians don't tell stories about the moron who tries to splice cable themselves and gets a good jolt or goes to the hospital for their trouble?
I could go on, but every profession has a word (or several) for the kind of idiot who goes around, say, Practicing IT Without A License.
Second, complaints that the users are undermining IT perfect systems by buying devices or installing software. Basic economics tells us that users are investing money and time in these thing because they deliver value. Value that It is not delivering to a demand from their user base.
No, complaints that users are bringing outside devices into the network that don't meet security requirements, that were not purchased by the company, that have not been approved to be brought in by the company.
If there is value in the devices, the appropriate thing to do is to work WITH the IT department prior to purchase to see what can be done for integrating them - so that IT can do the research and be prepared to support it, not buy them first and then demand that IT "just make it work" as a surprise.
Thirdly, complaints about having to troubleshoot problems. Isn't that what the business pays you for?
Business pays you to troubleshoot the business systems and keep them secure.
In the case of a downed DSL service, a competent network engineer could diagnose that in minutes. I'm sorry it took you three weeks, but transferring your aggression to others is not productive.
When IT is testing the device onsite and it works, and the user's home connection is the problem but the user won't do their part and contact the provider?
Fourthly, assuming that when users ask for something new that they must be dumb. Why should my phone and PC use the same email password?
I'm willing to bet GP is set up on an Active Directory system, where the computers and the Exchange environment both authenticate to the same domain.
Fifth, the wireless access point anecdote highlights appalling sysadmin practices. One point of access into the network and the bad guy was able to destroy critical infrastructure. Way to put all your eggs in one basket. The sysadmin of that network was incompetent, negligent, or both. Yes, the user did something stupid. But the real fool was the the person who did not design for defense in depth.
I'm not sure what you claim you'd do here. The "Clueless User" was someone high up in the business ecosystem. They were given a point of access for their machine to connect to. They, not following the business's own procedures, plugged a contraband item into the jack intended for their machine.
Short of locking down the network to a list of MAC addresses - which would require getting the MAC address of every single device in the company's possession - what would you do?
It seems that many IT departments see themselves as a law unto themselves, dictating to users what they can and can't do. We've seen this cycle before. It was last at its peak during the mainframe/mini era, and those IT cathedrals were obsoleted by the PC. My advice? Pay attention to your customers and give them what they want. That way, you'll always have great job prospects.
No, it seems that IT is once again caught between the contradictory, schizophrenic "Number One Priorities List" that people like you come up with where IT should be doing everything for you, should make the entire network completely open with every user able to install whatever piece of crap they picked up from Best Buy this weekend or any little widget from the internet and all the accompanying crapware that tagged along with it, but at the same time maintain a "secure" network that runs well.
Well?
Watch all the companies run for the hills the first time Anonymous or Wikileaks gets a ton of data some fool stored on an insecure, wide-open "Cloud Service" like Dropbox...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I do believe that sit-ins and pickets cannot legally prevent or impede normal operations of the business - you cannot block customers or employees.
Depends on your location. Any such laws are local, not federal, in nature and probably won't stand up to constitutional scrutiny, especially since such laws were uniformly used to harass civil rights protesters in the 1950s and 1960s.
Picket lines and sit-ins are meant to educate people about an issue; make them think twice about it, make them realize there may be more to something that hadn't considered before. Attempt to dissuade people from working or doing business with the company or institution you don't like.
No, the purpose of any such protest is to disrupt the business conditions of the business/person you are protesting. As you said yourself: "Attempt to dissuade people from working or doing business with." If they physically can't get to the store because there are too many people present already, that's that.
Lunch counter sit-ins, for example, filled the restaurant with people that the racist restaurant owners refused to serve, leaving no seats for the "desired customers."
DDoS is nothing like that. It directly impedes business, it directly impedes customers. ... DDoS isn't a sit-in, isn't a protest. It's sabotage. It's revenge.
Given that your entire premise has just been proven false, the rest of your rant is meaningless. There were a lot of angry Southerner KKK members who were angry about the fact that a group of protesters were "directly impeding customers" at the lunch counter sit-ins, too. A lot of people who were "frustrated" and not "let handle their affairs" in other sit-ins throughout the years, including recently when the Republicans were raping the public sector and protesters staged sit-ins at several state capitals.
No permanent physical damage done, but disrupts business...
That's the exact purpose of a peaceful protest. To not do permanent physical damage, but cause enough disruption that your demands are acceded to.
By that logic, citizens who protested against Gitmo were "providing material support" to the supposed terrorists held there.
This is where the law has become completely goddamn stupid. A protest is a protest. If it becomes violent, and that means PHYSICALLY VIOLENT, then it's a problem. Shy of that, it's just a protest and protected under the Constitutional right to peaceably assemble.
Temporarily taking a website offline sucks for the affected company. So does a protest that blocks the street in front of a store being protested, or even the neighboring stores in the strip mall. But unless there is permanent damage done (the equivalent of someone not just peacefully protesting, but actively spray-painting graffiti as one conceptual example) then it's just a protest and shouldn't be considered criminal.
You've just named the precise reasons that the original Game Boy beat its competitors:
- Better battery life (as in a USABLE battery life)
- Better games
3DS has nothing in the way of a "killer app", the screen issues are still problematic, and I know of nobody willing to pay that much for a portable device for gaming. Then again, I also remember the fiasco that was the original GBA, which didn't even have a backlight and couldn't be played without arranging a ton of lamps like some professional fucking photography studio. It was downright hilarious when I saw someone take apart their GBA SP and they discovered that Nintendo had literally ripped off the Afterburner design for their own GBA lighting system.
And the people talking about "tax cuts for billionaires" routinely forget to include the fact that the Bush tax cuts cut taxes for _everyone_. In fact, the bulk of the expense of those tax cuts is coming from the lower brackets, not the highest.
Sigh. Another misinformed, deliberately moronic Tea Partier on the loose.
The Bush tax cuts disproportionately benefited the wealthy, plain and simple.
This is confirmed years later. The top 1% of earners laughed all the way to the bank taking a WHOPPING 38% of the benefit from the Bush tax cuts.
So no, the "bulk" of the expense is not coming from those lower brackets. Feel free to go fuck yourself.
You're making the erroneous assumption that the site mods give a crap, though.