At least when I been into colocation facilities they had fairly rigorous check-in procedures.
Sure, I could have brought in a stick and poked at lots of other customer's gear, thru the chainlink cubicles, but I mean, I was signed in and on camera.
Check the log - when did the affected net go down and who was there at the time?
It has got to be a short list of visitors and guards or somebody is really stoopid.
I know everyone loves to hate Bill, but consider that about 75% of his wealth is MSFT paper.
Just out of curiosity, what if he did want to cash in? What would happen?
I don't know, but I imagine he'd have to file all sorts of paper work to let everyone know he was selling all his MSFT shares. That would probably freak out the market and the price would drop.
So now his $30 Billion in MSFT is now something less... say $20 Billion for the sake of argument.
There is no way to shelter that, so now he has $20 in cash - What are the taxes on that? Is that a 15% capital gain? Pay the Feds $3Billion. Man, I'd be crying to write that check, no matter how much I had. Next, cue up the State of Washington...
Just idle mind games. I am sure that wealth will get distributed into various trusts, etc. Before Bill passes away, and never be taxed much. [BTW I see this as a good thing, even if you don't like this particular guy. It is hard to accumulate that much wealth, and it is far more interesting to see what will be done with it, rather than governments pissing it away, IMHO]
[] I never purchased anything I could get a bootleg of.
[] I never used illegal copies of something I could buy.
[] I would never buy something I already have an illegal copy of.
[] I have subsequently purchased items I "tried" bootlegs of.
[] I have bootleg software I have no intention of using.
[] I have no copies of bootleg software whatsoever.
[] I regularly push little old ladies down outside of my local Best Buy and take the software they have purchased so that I can crack it and post it in a warez group.
Initial Conditions:) Earth is really cold, because it is really cold in outer space, which is where the Earth is when the Aliens find it. Aliens sprinkle Life(tm) around. The Sun warms up. Earth gets all warm and cozy-like with lots of stuff growing and life is easy for uncivilized animals that don't have to think too hard about nuthin whilst foraging for food.
1) Since all these lazy animals don't know how to do anything, Aliens have to visit again and use alien probes on some to get their brains going. The aliens leave monoliths on the moon and golden plates with the text of this history buried in likely farmland areas, then split.
2) The Sun cools down. Ice covers everything and presses all the dead plants and animals into oil reserves. Critters evolve smarter to survive. They figure out how to burn stuff, including all the fossil oil created by the living stuff in step 1.
3) All the burning of stuff causes the planet to get really hot, ice caps melt. It gets all steamy like in Soylent Green and even the desserts become jungles. Lots of stuff grows like mad. Civilizations collapse because everyone has really bad BO in the heat.
Return to step 1. Repeat until the Sun doesn't work right anymore. Humans have been thru this cycle many times. Some religions think of it as reincarnation. Karma comes into play, somewhere. Sometimes there is racial memory of past cycles, like Atlantis.
I have a book that explains it all. As soon as I can get it published I will get on the Art Bell show, then you'll see!
But Greenland was a bit warmer before - In fact they called it the Medieval Warm Period [something like 800-1200 AD]
This was the period of time when Vikings settled in Greenland for a while, before it became too cold again (more or less)
So, as it's been pointed out before - climate does cycle. What kid doesn't have a dinosaur book showing steamy swamps all over? And cave men running around with Glaciers in the background?
When I visit his site, all I get is HTTP Error 403 You are not authorized to view this page
He must really hate me since I appear to be blocked from viewing it -- but everyone else on this thread seem to be laughing till the spit milk out of their noses, based on all the funny moderation going on.
Almost everyone has heard reference to this poem, but few have probably never read it. Especially the moral. Actually, it
would be only slightly off topic, but appropriate for 90% of slashdot threads:-)
The Blind Men and the Elephant by John Godfrey Saxe (American 1816-1887)
It was six men of Indostan /
To learning much inclined, /
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind), /
That each by observation /
Might satisfy his mind
The First approached the Elephant, /
And happening to fall /
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl: /
"God bless me! but the Elephant /
Is very like a wall!"
The Second, feeling of the tusk, /
Cried, "Ho! what have we here /
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me 'tis mighty clear /
This wonder of an Elephant /
Is very like a spear!"
The Third approached the animal, /
And happening to take /
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake: /
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant /
Is very like a snake!"
The Fourth reached out an eager hand, /
And felt about the knee. /
"What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain," quoth he; /
" 'Tis clear enough the Elephant /
Is very like a tree!"
The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear, /
Said: "E'en the blindest man /
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can /
This marvel of an Elephant /
Is very like a fan!"
The Sixth no sooner had begun /
About the beast to grope, /
Than, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope, /
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant /
Is very like a rope!"
And so these men of Indostan /
Disputed loud and long, /
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong, /
Though each was partly in the right, /
And all were in the wrong!
Moral:
So oft in theologic wars, /
The disputants, I ween, /
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean, /
And prate about an Elephant /
Not one of them has seen!
Sorry about the formatting... the "Your comment has too few characters per line" filter is really bad for poetry.
Maybe not this time, but it seemt to be just a matter of time before someone comes up with Linux "scum-ware", a la Gator (or whatever it is called now) and its ilk.
1) get your cool geek game advertised on slashdot.
2) lots of people download it and run it.
3) bury some obfuscated language in a 30 page EULA [well, 30 pages that only show up 5 lines at a time in a tiny un-resizeable window]. The gist of the "I agree" button is that your machine will bootstrap into a nuke-and-pave Linux installation!
Ok, this is tongue in cheek, but seriously, do the slashdot editors evaluate things like this for viruses or other mal-ware? Where's the checksum of the one they checked?
Who downloads mysterious 100K executables and runs them on a live machine? [heh, especially from Germany, I mention this only because the last two unprotected Windows machines put on the net by some hapless aquaintences of mine were running German FTP sites so fast you'd think they were configured that way out of the box.]
Like a dropped camcorder, dead laptop, etc. eBay pays off almost every time, because somebody out there will find your cast-offs more valuable than you, and you know what? Money is fungible. You can use it to buy a much better what-ever-it-was you thought you'd make.
If you use the money to buy known parts, you can still have a DIY project and know that it will work.
Maybe I just make up fictional chat conversations, for creative writing practice.
What if I take a real chat session and change the names? Heck, real chat sessions don't even have real names; Can Munkygurl69 show me some legal ID with that name on it?
What if some hacker put those logs there! Seems like some California judge got off on some sort of child porn charges by claiming it was put there [actually he got off because the search of his computer was illegal - but the claim was hey, if this guy could break into my computer and "search" it, why couldn't he have put the stuff there!]
If you leave an open wireless connection can you then plausibly deny anything coming from your IP address was necessarily "you"? Isn't it like those red-light cameras - if the driver doesn't come out in the picture, they only know that it was your car, but can't prove you went thru the light.
Buy a new Toyota [or other quality car], built by a robot. Drive it for 7-8 years, change the oil, change the tires once.
Sell at a reasonable resale value.
Repeat.
I have done this for the last 20 years with cars for my Wife and myself. We've owned Toyotas and Hondas and never spend a dime on repairs. We leased a Ford van once (cash flow issues) and at the end of the two-year lease were were ready to be rid of the odd-squeaking, noisy turning, rattle trap.
Damn, my C++ Code needs a little tweaking... there we go, now it's Java!
Hey my Java code doesn't compile... That's got it, I just "re-wrote it" in C#!
As a bonus; No two files ever diff - especially that pesky copyright comment block at the top! (although, the ones that say copyright ME, are fair-use;-)
[I had to abandon my FORTRAN, various assembler and Lisp code snippets. Of course, my Perl was Write-Only, from the start...]
Friday was soooo long ago, but I think that was my point. I too don't discount the fact that being nuked is a bitch, and I hope I am not near the next one that goes off*
But... I think my point was meant to be why would a newspaper report various cancers in 70 year old people as nuke related... Maybe there is still statistically higher rates, maybe it is anti-nuke-in-general bias.
* and it will probably be some nice first world country, set off by someone who thinks God told him to do it.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, I could have brought in a stick and poked at lots of other customer's gear, thru the chainlink cubicles, but I mean, I was signed in and on camera.
Check the log - when did the affected net go down and who was there at the time?
It has got to be a short list of visitors and guards or somebody is really stoopid.
Just out of curiosity, what if he did want to cash in? What would happen?
I don't know, but I imagine he'd have to file all sorts of paper work to let everyone know he was selling all his MSFT shares. That would probably freak out the market and the price would drop.
So now his $30 Billion in MSFT is now something less... say $20 Billion for the sake of argument.
There is no way to shelter that, so now he has $20 in cash - What are the taxes on that? Is that a 15% capital gain? Pay the Feds $3Billion. Man, I'd be crying to write that check, no matter how much I had. Next, cue up the State of Washington...
Just idle mind games. I am sure that wealth will get distributed into various trusts, etc. Before Bill passes away, and never be taxed much. [BTW I see this as a good thing, even if you don't like this particular guy. It is hard to accumulate that much wealth, and it is far more interesting to see what will be done with it, rather than governments pissing it away, IMHO]
Results 1 - 10 of about 5,660,000,000 for the
When I search google for "the".
So, 90 million pages just vanished?
Results 1 - 10 of about 5,750,000,000 for the [definition]. (0.11 seconds)
Doesn't that imply more than 4.285 billion?
[] I never purchased anything I could get a bootleg of.
[] I never used illegal copies of something I could buy.
[] I would never buy something I already have an illegal copy of.
[] I have subsequently purchased items I "tried" bootlegs of.
[] I have bootleg software I have no intention of using.
[] I have no copies of bootleg software whatsoever.
[] I regularly push little old ladies down outside of my local Best Buy and take the software they have purchased so that I can crack it and post it in a warez group.
Obviously whoever wrote the caption didn't see it, so it would only be courteous not to mention it.
1) Since all these lazy animals don't know how to do anything, Aliens have to visit again and use alien probes on some to get their brains going. The aliens leave monoliths on the moon and golden plates with the text of this history buried in likely farmland areas, then split.
2) The Sun cools down. Ice covers everything and presses all the dead plants and animals into oil reserves. Critters evolve smarter to survive. They figure out how to burn stuff, including all the fossil oil created by the living stuff in step 1.
3) All the burning of stuff causes the planet to get really hot, ice caps melt. It gets all steamy like in Soylent Green and even the desserts become jungles. Lots of stuff grows like mad. Civilizations collapse because everyone has really bad BO in the heat.
Return to step 1. Repeat until the Sun doesn't work right anymore. Humans have been thru this cycle many times. Some religions think of it as reincarnation. Karma comes into play, somewhere. Sometimes there is racial memory of past cycles, like Atlantis.
I have a book that explains it all. As soon as I can get it published I will get on the Art Bell show, then you'll see!
This was the period of time when Vikings settled in Greenland for a while, before it became too cold again (more or less)
So, as it's been pointed out before - climate does cycle. What kid doesn't have a dinosaur book showing steamy swamps all over? And cave men running around with Glaciers in the background?
He must really hate me since I appear to be blocked from viewing it -- but everyone else on this thread seem to be laughing till the spit milk out of their noses, based on all the funny moderation going on.
I feel left out!
The Blind Men and the Elephant by John Godfrey Saxe (American 1816-1887)
It was six men of Indostan / To learning much inclined, / Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind), / That each by observation / Might satisfy his mind
The First approached the Elephant, / And happening to fall / Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl: / "God bless me! but the Elephant / Is very like a wall!"
The Second, feeling of the tusk, / Cried, "Ho! what have we here / So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me 'tis mighty clear / This wonder of an Elephant / Is very like a spear!"
The Third approached the animal, / And happening to take / The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake: / "I see," quoth he, "the Elephant / Is very like a snake!"
The Fourth reached out an eager hand, / And felt about the knee. / "What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain," quoth he; / " 'Tis clear enough the Elephant / Is very like a tree!"
The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear, / Said: "E'en the blindest man / Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can / This marvel of an Elephant / Is very like a fan!"
The Sixth no sooner had begun / About the beast to grope, / Than, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope, / "I see," quoth he, "the Elephant / Is very like a rope!"
And so these men of Indostan / Disputed loud and long, / Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong, / Though each was partly in the right, / And all were in the wrong!
Moral:
So oft in theologic wars, / The disputants, I ween, / Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean, / And prate about an Elephant / Not one of them has seen!
Sorry about the formatting... the "Your comment has too few characters per line" filter is really bad for poetry.
Besides, I am sure [well pretty sure] that communications would be construed as being person-to-person, outside of the house.
Otherwise they could tax your for yelling down the stairs rather than phoning your wife two rooms down!
1) get your cool geek game advertised on slashdot.
2) lots of people download it and run it.
3) bury some obfuscated language in a 30 page EULA [well, 30 pages that only show up 5 lines at a time in a tiny un-resizeable window]. The gist of the "I agree" button is that your machine will bootstrap into a nuke-and-pave Linux installation!
Ok, this is tongue in cheek, but seriously, do the slashdot editors evaluate things like this for viruses or other mal-ware? Where's the checksum of the one they checked?
Who downloads mysterious 100K executables and runs them on a live machine? [heh, especially from Germany, I mention this only because the last two unprotected Windows machines put on the net by some hapless aquaintences of mine were running German FTP sites so fast you'd think they were configured that way out of the box.]
If you use the money to buy known parts, you can still have a DIY project and know that it will work.
What? Now I can't talk on the phone?
Sheesh.
I can't see any reason why there shouldn't be a law to protect the right of any individual to record anything they have personal knowledge of.
God help me when the RIAA comes after my hearing aid.
I think, maybe, three. But I can't name them, can you?
What if I take a real chat session and change the names? Heck, real chat sessions don't even have real names; Can Munkygurl69 show me some legal ID with that name on it?
What if some hacker put those logs there! Seems like some California judge got off on some sort of child porn charges by claiming it was put there [actually he got off because the search of his computer was illegal - but the claim was hey, if this guy could break into my computer and "search" it, why couldn't he have put the stuff there!]
If you leave an open wireless connection can you then plausibly deny anything coming from your IP address was necessarily "you"? Isn't it like those red-light cameras - if the driver doesn't come out in the picture, they only know that it was your car, but can't prove you went thru the light.
Aren't all MSFT patches about that big?
Meanwhile, I have free news, email, etc. [above and beyond what I pay my ISP for].
Yes, everyone who works with computers for a living is an idiot. I should know, I have been doing it for over 20 years.
Sell at a reasonable resale value.
Repeat.
I have done this for the last 20 years with cars for my Wife and myself. We've owned Toyotas and Hondas and never spend a dime on repairs. We leased a Ford van once (cash flow issues) and at the end of the two-year lease were were ready to be rid of the odd-squeaking, noisy turning, rattle trap.
Cool, my C code works in C++ too!
Damn, my C++ Code needs a little tweaking... there we go, now it's Java!
Hey my Java code doesn't compile... That's got it, I just "re-wrote it" in C#!
As a bonus; No two files ever diff - especially that pesky copyright comment block at the top! (although, the ones that say copyright ME, are fair-use ;-)
[I had to abandon my FORTRAN, various assembler and Lisp code snippets. Of course, my Perl was Write-Only, from the start...]
Seriously, look at the chart toppers for 1974.
Too bad I already dumped my SUNW, it was up 20% on the MSFT settlement. Go figure.
Seems like MSFT goes UP 1% for every $500M in fines/settlements... heh.
To see that, I'd pay... um, never mind.
But... I think my point was meant to be why would a newspaper report various cancers in 70 year old people as nuke related... Maybe there is still statistically higher rates, maybe it is anti-nuke-in-general bias.
* and it will probably be some nice first world country, set off by someone who thinks God told him to do it.