Sorry, but I can't stand back from this. You may or may not be a troll, I believe you're not. Either way, sod it, I'm biting:
F---- free trade.
I can certainly empathise with that sentiment- all free
trade really gives the world is unnaturally cheap goods;
Cheap stuff is great, but what's the point if next-to
noone can
afford them (due to all the jobs going to slave owners
and sweat-shops), and/or we all effectively become
slaves ourselves?
One or the other of these will naturally be the
eventual outcome.
But,
I mean, what's the point of being the only nation in town that believes in free trade
Unless I somehow misunderstood who you meant, you are in fact, saying that America believes in free
trade.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Wait a moment, that actually isn't funny. Certainly
not to the countries that ROT due to American (and
yes, European too, I'll freely admit)
double-standards on the free trade thing. America
does sort of believe in free trade, but only when it
serves its own interests. Otherwise, America believes
America First. Policy speaks louder than words here,
I'm afraid.
The best solution is for everybody to agree quite
clearly, that unfettered free trade is a fucking stupid
idea, and
that NOBODY should be forced to submit themselves
to free trade agreements in the way that many 3rd
world countries have been forced to before they
were allowed vital foreign aid.
How odd that in reference to him posting Goatse
pictures (and implying the idea of plastering them all
over spammer websites), you then make references
to "screwing",
"injection", and "hurting their asset"... but you
don't get modded funny either?
In SCSI RAID striping (don't know about ATA RAID,
but I'd assume it does the same), the heads are
supposed to be synchronised; when a head is
somewhere on one disk, the heads of the other disks
should be in the equivalent places. When one disk is
writing something in a place, the other disks are
writing in the equivalent areas of their own platters.
So, how exactly should it be that 2 disks can take
less time to make the same movement as they would
be singularly?
If you have 2 people working on building
a wall (for example), they will finish the job twice as
fast as one. That's improved bandwidth. They will
still take the same amount of time to pick up their
trowels for example, because they each have their
own, rather than one big heavy communal trowel that
they could pick up faster with 2 people...
That's latency being constant.
Now, JBOD can improve (average) latency,
as the disk heads there aren't synchronised,
and the disks each contain different data. So if
there, you have a process A trying to read a file
on disk 1, and process B trying to read a file
on disk 2, then each process can get their data
with as little latency as if they were the only process.
Whereas if they were trying to read files from one
logical filesystem stored on a RAID array, one
process will be able to get their file with the
latency equivalent to a single process reading
from a single drive, and the other will have to
wait for the first access to finish; in a sense, this
process that gets served second is in a better
situation than one on a single-drive system, because
the wait for the first processes read to finish should
be less (due to fewer blocks read per disk)...
...but I'm having more and more difficulty
thinking what I'm talking about right now, as I'm
severely sleep deprived and my brain's running
down badly. But I think my argument's still better
thought out than "there are more drives so it must
be better" Pfft I should be sleeping, not discussing this..
RAID doesn't improve latency, only bandwidth.
And RAID on SCSI drives stops the command-reordering thingy (whose actual name escapes me right now), IIRC,
which means RAID's bandwidth advantages are more
pronounced for systems that are mostly single-tasking.
AFAICT, anyway.
OTOH, JBOD arrays don't have that problem of
cutting down multi-tasking performance, and whilst
the single-tasking throughput isn't really improved,
aggregate throughput can be, as can average
latency (especially on
systems that do a lot of multi-tasking).
RAID was really conceived for the mirroring and
parity modes on servers and such, which make things
more stable.
There have been boxed-up disk arrays for a while,
they don't need SATA or similar, if that's what you're
suggesting. Incidentally, one issue with serial drive
interfaces is they make a system more vulnerable to
Tempest (that system whereby people can spy on your system): serial connections make
the data sent much more easily discernible to
eavesdroppers than parallel ones do.
Too true. The GNU project may not have got far with
their own HURD kernel (what state is it in now?
I've not looked into it much), hence the very broad
use of Linux, but they did create pretty much all the
other important parts of the operating system.
Libc, gcc (+lots of other development software),
emacs, and, er, well, lots of other things I can't
think of right now. But definitely lots of them, and
pretty vital stuff.
The only really major part (other than the kernel)
I can think of that they're not responsible for is
XFree86.
I'm pretty fed up with all the RMS bashing as well. Oh yeah. Bash. They made that too! Can't believe I forgot that. So many of these things are the things
that we all take for granted- I suppose that'd
be why they're so hard to remember.
Freecraft didn't bundle the artwork from Warcraft;
they did make a program to extract it from a
legitimate copy, but that was only a stopgap
measure.
They were working
on making new graphics for everything (just like they
were working on making it a broadly generic
RTS engine), and had indeed got new (not
necessarily good) graphics for most things IMO, by
the time they were shut down (I haven't actually
checked the progress for a few months, I've been
doing other things- but that was how it was last time I
saw)
Warcraft was for Dos/Windows. Freecraft was (primarily) for Linux. Besides that, it was intended that it should
be a more generic RTS engine, configurable by data
files, not just a plain Warcraft clone. You really see it
as a competing product?
I suspect she's trying to say that they could get
the patents in the USA if the little businesses didn't get
them in Europe first.
Of course, there's always this little thing known as
"Prior Art", but the US Patent Office doesn't appear to
have a great
reputation for what things they allow to be patented.
I still have difficulty understanding how
anybody could see her position as
reasonable unless they're against free software.
I notice quite a lot of people describing her as
reasonable are ACs... Can't fool us, Arlene!;)
I for one will not support the RIAA/MPAA/US Governement in their actions.[...]It's time to act my brothers
When it comes to changing the way these things go, it's a nice idea, but I don't fancy your chances. If you scream and shout at the powers that be (and yup, those powers really do be quite a bit...), about how they are wrong
to be stamping on the little people, you will simply get a sore throat and a deep feeling of cynicism.
Alternatively, you can realise that these
SOBs are going to continue to crap all over anybody
who tries to share anything in networks like Kazaa
and Gnutella,
and as such, those people who remain trying to
just download things (that group is already growing
rapidly as they wise up to the fact) will end up
hammering the resources of the few who continue
to share (until they too get stamped on).
So those people in traditional filesharing
networks are clearly DOOMED in their pursuit-
one way or another, it can't last, the amount of
content will shrivel up and the ability to download
anything will peter out, all because everybody
knows that such groups as the RIAA will be able
to spot the few glaringly visible sharers, identify
them, and pretty much destroy their lives.
So the other solutions?
Give up filesharing altogether. The RIAA would
like that, it would like that a lot. Vast numbers of
people around the world (America in particular,
but many other places too) would rather not.
Simply use a filesharing network like
GNUnet that is wholly anonymous (and has
other benefits such as resistance to DOS attacks,
and relatively high availability, thanks to a pretty
smart design), so that you can share vast amounts
with impunity.
You can already share, search for,
and download content; under discussion is the
extension of the system to support namespaces,
under which people can put up content such that
it's identified with them (but they're still anonymous)
and
collected together so that people can find it easier-
in this way you could make yourself practically
into a publisher or a webmaster, maybe put up
writings expressing all sorts of things that would
probably get you modded down on slashdot, or
censored (by those in power, your ISP, or random
hackers that disagree with you) on a website you
might think of as "your own". You could create the
next deCSS to help the Free Software movement,
without having to fear the DMCA or any similar
draconian laws.
GNUnet is very actively under
development, already pretty good and stable on
Linux and many other Unices
(not sure about OS X), and work is being done
to port it to Windows.
Yes, but again, I repeat: What about mains cables?
Pretty much all those complaints you can have against
ethernet cable can be aimed at them.
For starters, if that misbehaving pet chewed them, it
would be a bit more serious.
Also, despite mobile phones now being pretty much
ubiquitous, I'd say that most people have an ordinary
phone in their home, that requires a cable. Those
cables... are often attached to the walls. Shock horror!
Why not just run a cable? Because people like me who live in an apartment don't want to trip over an ethernet cable every time they walk from the
living room to the kitchen...
Wow, you must be prety damned disorganised, and that's me saying that (of course, you don't know me. Meh).
When I was sharing a student flat (really a small
house) with 2 other nerds, we networked up the place
with loads of coax cable. 10-base-2. Slower than
what
you people* are complaining about facing from your
wireless
connection, but we didn't complain- it was far and
away enough for us. And did we trip over it? NO!
Because we had the sense to run it along skirting
boards, and under carpets and rugs, and so on.
I don't remember any time it got in the way.
It only requires a tiny bit of sense, for god's sake.
Yeah, I suppose you could consider it "messy" to
have cables around the place, but I suspect you'd
have a hard time showing me a house with
no cables that still actually had
mains electricity.
*- By "you people", yes, I'm giving away
the fact I have no wireless anything. I'm reading
this story in the hope I can figure out WTF 802.11g
is, as compared to 802.11b or whatever the hell
other ethernet secret codes are getting bandied
about. I'd only just got used to the difference between
WiFi and Bluetooth. Pfft.
I really don't like the way everyone seems to insist
on the idea that spam is by definition commercial.
I don't want to be seeing in a few years:
Subject: Hey sexy, where did you disappear
to? From: Someone interesting@somewhere.com
Hello, I am from the Jehovah's Witnesses. Have you
considered letting god into your life?
If you do not want to hear from the Jehovah's Witnesses ever again, click on this link:
http://suckers.com/cgi-bin/verifyaddress/signmeupf ormore.html
No offence to Jehovah's Witnesses. OK, not much, anyway.
The fact is that you guys put your
pants down and bent over to take a big hard rod from
the Mr. Bush deep into your brown holes.
That's lovely. Now, supposing "the Mr. Bush" decides to
attack, say, Syria or Iran (whom we in Europe have
been actively engaging and forging closer ties with).
I'm not convinced that Dubya's crossing them all off
a "ToNuke" list. Well, if he does start talking war
again, whose objections to that do you suppose he's
more likely to listen to? Tony Blair's or Jacques
Chirac's?
And still, the fact remains that we don't
simply do whatever the US tells us to.
No respect for the faggots
People should have respect for the homophobes???
Hmm, perhaps you're just a troll rather than a tool.
Damnit, I must remember not to bite... Meh, I
still stand by what I said, anyway.
Or, Free Software simply realizes
that they're a long-term movement, and that 7-14
years to get at a competitor's IP is just the cost of
doing business for them.
That's a good one.
As a youngish human being, who should have
a life expectancy of around 70/80 years or so, I
should realise that if I somehow get buried alive,
the lack of oxygen won't be important as I'd probably
get dug up after a few years and then I can then
just breathe a lot harder to make up for it. It would
merely be fairly uncomfortable.
Brian Moran, chairman of the
"Friends Of Microsoft Society", made an
announcement to the EU this week:
"Although Microsoft have never heard of us, we
at the Friends Of Microsoft Society are in a position
to speak for Microsoft and all its partners. As such,
we can state that if Microsoft were to be made to
give away all their products for free and have all
the company directors thrown in prison, it would
not be harmful to Microsoft in the slightest and in
fact would be beneficial to them, so you should
do this."
Note: IANAL, and don't have the slightest knowledge
about things like subpoenas.
The point the Linux.org people give is that getting
to the records of the spammers' clients
requires large amounts of money for legal costs.
As I say, I have no idea about such things, so maybe
you're right and it really isn't a problem, or maybe
they're right and it is.
Either way, I suppose I should have
worded my comment to say that most people couldn't
(because most people aren't rich), rather than
it wasn't easy, which implies everyone
would have a hard time of it.
A month or 2 back I saw a page on the linux.org
website about spam. It turned out they had had
troubles with some bunch of spammers forging
the linux.org domain not only in the From: field,
but also in their Received from: field so that
stupidly large numbers of people thought they'd
really been sent spam by linux.org. And complaining
to them about it.
So obviously the people at linux.org have now
become a tad annoyed about this, and the page
they put up goes on at length. But it is worth noting
that they've already talked about this proposal
of Lessig's at the bottom of the page and don't
seem all that impressed about it. I think they have
a point (although they seem to have expressed it
a bit badly...).
One of the other points they address is the
one you talk about yourself: When
people are spamming for others, the people hiring
them can't easily be shown to be
responsible. Joe Bloggs down the road could
send a ton of spam saying "vote for anonymous_loser for president", it doesn't actually mean you asked
him to, even if in most cases it is pretty likely.
So no, generally they don't have any sort
of useful contact information that is available to
you.
They are probably just confused
because it uses so much bandwidth in remote usage,
and sucks rocks if there is a latency problem (ie:
over a phone modem).
Hehe, I tried that once a few years ago. I was in my
student flat using the internet, and (I cant for the life
of me remember why) telnetted into my university
account to see if I could remotely launch Netscape
to display on my own machine.
It took about five minutes.
Yes, I do mean from the time I typed "netscape", [enter]
And yes, I do know nowadays to use something
like SSH rather than telnet for those purposes. I was
young(er) and more ignorant then.
Sorry, I just realised that your previous message had
said "I never really understood who takes his
argument seriously."
When I'd written, I'd thought you'd said "takes
this argument seriously", ie- the idea that
the room is the one that knows chinese, which is
obviously
something that many people can't accept
(because it is sounds so silly and contrary to
common sense), and I'd thought that you were
one of those people too.
Then I thought your reply to me was a
sarcastic put-down to me (as in "huh, what do
undergrads and stupid slashdotters know?") until I
looked again properly just now! Doh!
Next week, I shall strike back at further imaginary
enemies!! Anyways...
Yes, the room does know chinese. Or at
least, there is a knowing of chinese occurring,
regardless of "what" has that knowing. (maybe
thats a bit like "Does a dog have buddha nature?"
"Mu!"...or maybe it isn't)
The chinese room argument goes thus:
A man who knows no chinese stands in a
room with a small hole in the wall.
Cards (or whatever) with unknown symbols
(actually chinese, but he doesnt understand that) are
passed through the hole in the wall to the man.
The man can pass cards of his own back out
of the hole in the wall.
The man has a very complex set of
instructions on what to do with each card, in terms
of memorising abstract facts (that dont necessarily
have any sort of meaning to the man outside of
what the instructions tell him to do with them), doing
calculations of sorts based on those facts, to
produce new ones, and eventually either picking
one of a large number of cards to pass out of
the hole or drawing meaningless lines on blank
cards, etc. (These instructions implement some
sort of state machine, in case that's somehow
unclear).
When somebody passes cards that spell
out sentences of chinese into the room, after
a time, a set of cards will be passed out that
spell out other sentences of chinese that affect
appropriate replies to the sentences passed in.
In other words, to the person on the outside,
either there is somebody inside who speaks
chinese, or the room itself does.
Now, the crux of Searle's argument is that
when the chap comes out of the room, and
you talk to him in chinese or hand him a letter
written in chinese, etc, it will mean absolutely
sweet FA to him, as he does not know chinese.
He was the only one in the room, so therefore
there was no understanding of chinese occurring
within the room.
My own view of this argument is that it is a big
heap of bullshit.
I write this comment in response to the comment
you wrote having read other stuff, etc.
Now, I go up to you, and saw the top of your
skull off.
I take your brain out, take it to some quiet
corner, and ask it if it understands yet what is
wrong with the chinese room argument.
Your brain says nothing. Obviously I have
only written stuff to you. I have no reason
to suppose you can understand spoken
English-it's possible to know the one and not the
other. So I write the question down and show
it to your brain.
Your brain still fails to answer me. Pah! It obviously doesn't
understand English, and what I have been doing
here is clearly just talking to myself, any
reply I get must just be from some sort of
unconscious automaton with no true understanding.
Slashdot Mirror
But,
Unless I somehow misunderstood who you meant, you are in fact, saying that America believes in free trade.HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Wait a moment, that actually isn't funny. Certainly not to the countries that ROT due to American (and yes, European too, I'll freely admit) double-standards on the free trade thing. America does sort of believe in free trade, but only when it serves its own interests. Otherwise, America believes America First. Policy speaks louder than words here, I'm afraid.
The best solution is for everybody to agree quite clearly, that unfettered free trade is a fucking stupid idea, and that NOBODY should be forced to submit themselves to free trade agreements in the way that many 3rd world countries have been forced to before they were allowed vital foreign aid.
What's Slashdot coming to?
So, how exactly should it be that 2 disks can take less time to make the same movement as they would be singularly?
If you have 2 people working on building a wall (for example), they will finish the job twice as fast as one. That's improved bandwidth. They will still take the same amount of time to pick up their trowels for example, because they each have their own, rather than one big heavy communal trowel that they could pick up faster with 2 people... That's latency being constant.
Now, JBOD can improve (average) latency, as the disk heads there aren't synchronised, and the disks each contain different data. So if there, you have a process A trying to read a file on disk 1, and process B trying to read a file on disk 2, then each process can get their data with as little latency as if they were the only process. Whereas if they were trying to read files from one logical filesystem stored on a RAID array, one process will be able to get their file with the latency equivalent to a single process reading from a single drive, and the other will have to wait for the first access to finish; in a sense, this process that gets served second is in a better situation than one on a single-drive system, because the wait for the first processes read to finish should be less (due to fewer blocks read per disk)...
...but I'm having more and more difficulty thinking what I'm talking about right now, as I'm severely sleep deprived and my brain's running down badly. But I think my argument's still better thought out than "there are more drives so it must be better" Pfft I should be sleeping, not discussing this..
OTOH, JBOD arrays don't have that problem of cutting down multi-tasking performance, and whilst the single-tasking throughput isn't really improved, aggregate throughput can be, as can average latency (especially on systems that do a lot of multi-tasking).
RAID was really conceived for the mirroring and parity modes on servers and such, which make things more stable.
There have been boxed-up disk arrays for a while, they don't need SATA or similar, if that's what you're suggesting. Incidentally, one issue with serial drive interfaces is they make a system more vulnerable to Tempest (that system whereby people can spy on your system): serial connections make the data sent much more easily discernible to eavesdroppers than parallel ones do.
Quit with the RMS bashing, you smelly AC troll.
Libc, gcc (+lots of other development software), emacs, and, er, well, lots of other things I can't think of right now. But definitely lots of them, and pretty vital stuff.
The only really major part (other than the kernel) I can think of that they're not responsible for is XFree86.
I'm pretty fed up with all the RMS bashing as well. Oh yeah. Bash. They made that too! Can't believe I forgot that. So many of these things are the things that we all take for granted- I suppose that'd be why they're so hard to remember.
They were working on making new graphics for everything (just like they were working on making it a broadly generic RTS engine), and had indeed got new (not necessarily good) graphics for most things IMO, by the time they were shut down (I haven't actually checked the progress for a few months, I've been doing other things- but that was how it was last time I saw)
Warcraft was for Dos/Windows. Freecraft was (primarily) for Linux. Besides that, it was intended that it should be a more generic RTS engine, configurable by data files, not just a plain Warcraft clone. You really see it as a competing product?
I suspect she's trying to say that they could get the patents in the USA if the little businesses didn't get them in Europe first.
Of course, there's always this little thing known as "Prior Art", but the US Patent Office doesn't appear to have a great reputation for what things they allow to be patented.
I still have difficulty understanding how anybody could see her position as reasonable unless they're against free software. I notice quite a lot of people describing her as reasonable are ACs... Can't fool us, Arlene! ;)
Alternatively, you can realise that these SOBs are going to continue to crap all over anybody who tries to share anything in networks like Kazaa and Gnutella, and as such, those people who remain trying to just download things (that group is already growing rapidly as they wise up to the fact) will end up hammering the resources of the few who continue to share (until they too get stamped on).
So those people in traditional filesharing networks are clearly DOOMED in their pursuit- one way or another, it can't last, the amount of content will shrivel up and the ability to download anything will peter out, all because everybody knows that such groups as the RIAA will be able to spot the few glaringly visible sharers, identify them, and pretty much destroy their lives.
So the other solutions?
- Give up filesharing altogether. The RIAA would
like that, it would like that a lot. Vast numbers of
people around the world (America in particular,
but many other places too) would rather not.
- Simply use a filesharing network like
GNUnet that is wholly anonymous (and has
other benefits such as resistance to DOS attacks,
and relatively high availability, thanks to a pretty
smart design), so that you can share vast amounts
with impunity.
So what's it to be? Mmm?You can already share, search for, and download content; under discussion is the extension of the system to support namespaces, under which people can put up content such that it's identified with them (but they're still anonymous) and collected together so that people can find it easier- in this way you could make yourself practically into a publisher or a webmaster, maybe put up writings expressing all sorts of things that would probably get you modded down on slashdot, or censored (by those in power, your ISP, or random hackers that disagree with you) on a website you might think of as "your own". You could create the next deCSS to help the Free Software movement, without having to fear the DMCA or any similar draconian laws.
GNUnet is very actively under development, already pretty good and stable on Linux and many other Unices (not sure about OS X), and work is being done to port it to Windows.
Also, despite mobile phones now being pretty much ubiquitous, I'd say that most people have an ordinary phone in their home, that requires a cable. Those cables... are often attached to the walls. Shock horror!
People seem generally able to cope.
When I was sharing a student flat (really a small house) with 2 other nerds, we networked up the place with loads of coax cable. 10-base-2. Slower than what you people* are complaining about facing from your wireless connection, but we didn't complain- it was far and away enough for us. And did we trip over it? NO! Because we had the sense to run it along skirting boards, and under carpets and rugs, and so on. I don't remember any time it got in the way. It only requires a tiny bit of sense, for god's sake.
Yeah, I suppose you could consider it "messy" to have cables around the place, but I suspect you'd have a hard time showing me a house with no cables that still actually had mains electricity.
*- By "you people", yes, I'm giving away the fact I have no wireless anything. I'm reading this story in the hope I can figure out WTF 802.11g is, as compared to 802.11b or whatever the hell other ethernet secret codes are getting bandied about. I'd only just got used to the difference between WiFi and Bluetooth. Pfft.
It's not only funny(ish), it's informative and pretty well on-topic.
Subject: Hey sexy, where did you disappear to?f ormore.html
From: Someone interesting@somewhere.com
Hello, I am from the Jehovah's Witnesses. Have you considered letting god into your life?
If you do not want to hear from the Jehovah's Witnesses ever again, click on this link:
http://suckers.com/cgi-bin/verifyaddress/signmeup
No offence to Jehovah's Witnesses. OK, not much, anyway.
That's a good one.
As a youngish human being, who should have a life expectancy of around 70/80 years or so, I should realise that if I somehow get buried alive, the lack of oxygen won't be important as I'd probably get dug up after a few years and then I can then just breathe a lot harder to make up for it. It would merely be fairly uncomfortable.
Oh, wait a sec, I know who you mean:
Brian Moran, chairman of the "Friends Of Microsoft Society", made an announcement to the EU this week:
"Although Microsoft have never heard of us, we at the Friends Of Microsoft Society are in a position to speak for Microsoft and all its partners. As such, we can state that if Microsoft were to be made to give away all their products for free and have all the company directors thrown in prison, it would not be harmful to Microsoft in the slightest and in fact would be beneficial to them, so you should do this."
The point the Linux.org people give is that getting to the records of the spammers' clients requires large amounts of money for legal costs. As I say, I have no idea about such things, so maybe you're right and it really isn't a problem, or maybe they're right and it is.
Either way, I suppose I should have worded my comment to say that most people couldn't (because most people aren't rich), rather than it wasn't easy, which implies everyone would have a hard time of it.
Interesting...
Now, is anybody going to tell me who Steve Albini actually is?
So obviously the people at linux.org have now become a tad annoyed about this, and the page they put up goes on at length. But it is worth noting that they've already talked about this proposal of Lessig's at the bottom of the page and don't seem all that impressed about it. I think they have a point (although they seem to have expressed it a bit badly...).
One of the other points they address is the one you talk about yourself: When people are spamming for others, the people hiring them can't easily be shown to be responsible. Joe Bloggs down the road could send a ton of spam saying "vote for anonymous_loser for president", it doesn't actually mean you asked him to, even if in most cases it is pretty likely. So no, generally they don't have any sort of useful contact information that is available to you.
It took about five minutes.
Yes, I do mean from the time I typed "netscape", [enter]
And yes, I do know nowadays to use something like SSH rather than telnet for those purposes. I was young(er) and more ignorant then.
When I'd written, I'd thought you'd said "takes this argument seriously", ie- the idea that the room is the one that knows chinese, which is obviously something that many people can't accept (because it is sounds so silly and contrary to common sense), and I'd thought that you were one of those people too. Then I thought your reply to me was a sarcastic put-down to me (as in "huh, what do undergrads and stupid slashdotters know?") until I looked again properly just now! Doh!
Next week, I shall strike back at further imaginary enemies!! Anyways...
1)Is it possible for something to reach, say, a tenth of the speed of light?
2)Can I run that fast?
The chinese room argument goes thus:
My own view of this argument is that it is a big heap of bullshit.