Stop using windows for anything other than gaming? Yeah, what a novel concept!
Wait, I think I know this... its like... oh wait, its like... ummm... ahem... having a brain and using it?
I think, personally, that human stupidity is a gold mine, and I'm slowly losing any inhibition and cashing in on it. The people who created governments realized this. The people who created religions realized this. The people who run fear based vaporware businesses realized this. Surely the only REAL issue at hand is human stupidity, which, as many have said, is possibly the ONLY boundless thing in existence. Why not tap into such a boundless resource to create "free resources" ??
I think, if you pay heed to what is going on, that the most productive people, are usually also the stupidest.
The hardest most productive animals are usually nothing more than what we term "beasts of burden" under the direction of an intelligent being.
Cattle can work hard and produce a lot... yet the farmer is smarter than them (and often eats them when they're no longer productive), farmers are productive, but the workers in the city are 'smarter' than them, because they eat what the farmer produces but work half as much to buy what the farmer works year round to produce. Bosses are even less productive than workers, but they employ workers and milk them dry, making bosses "smarter" than employees. BANKERS are even smarter than all of them, because true bankers do not work at all, and fleece entire countries. In fact, through inflation and debt instruments, bankers produce POVERTY, therefore "negative wealth", and yet they make a killing (literally and figuratively) running entire nations into the ground, with the nationals' own consent.
Therefore, lets not pretend that what makes you smarter also makes you more productive. Harnesses may not make horses and oxen smarter, but they certainly become more productive. Being a "good" beast of burden is NOT a result of tools that make one smarter, but of tools that make one more "productive".
I hate to burst your bubble, but there are actually "bad people" out there. However, those that are deemed "bad guys" are generally not always so. And those doing the "deeming" are not always good guys either.
For example, the countries whose people can afford this kind of hardware are not countries that have fought any defensive wars in any recent history (past 50 years or so). All wars fought by rich countries are fought for offense, conquest, loot, plunder, and unofficially, rape. Yeah, it might not be penis and vagina rape anymore, but as anyone who has had his or her home vandalized by uninvited thugs, the feeling of violation is quite tangible. It is always legitimate to exterminate aggressors, but how many of those clamoring for more hardware to "save lives" are merely saving the lives of those who kill on demand, rather than out of necessity?
Take Vietnam... what changed? What did "we" accomplish there? A slow surrender to the Cong instead of simply letting them do what they were going to? Does anyone truly believe that anything at all OTHER than that would've been accomplished? For a so called "christian" nation, the vast majorities of "god fearing Christians" seem to miss the fact that we cannot go and tamper with other people's homes, until we have set our OWN homes in order. Judging by the vast foreclosures out there, I doubt that the majority even HAVE their own houses anymore, or ever did. Guess those "god fearing Christians" have missed that lovely part about "neither borrower, nor lender be." Even their very money supplies are based on borrowing money into existence. Debt as money. Something that their so called "Christian faith" treats with disdain... debt.. and usury (interest) is seen as a great and wonderful thing.
Oh well, they just believe what the priest caste tells them to, not those pesky bits that contrasted to their actual way of life would make little sense.
Onto the topic of this subject. These defense companies only serve two purposes. To construct tools that will be used by various governments and related agencies to oppress their own populaces, and of course, to help said governments borrow their relative populaces into absolute poverty. See, most of this hardware costs a LOT of money, even when it turns out to be worthless, useless, obsolete, or unjustified, and governments spend money without really looking at ROI. There is little ROI in government operations. All it is, is plain and simple spending. Aimless, pointless and limitless.
Until you look at the greater backdrop, that the money must be spent into existence and that friends of the rulers must be the first to receive its value, before its issuance can devalue the existing stock of debt based currency. It is brilliant, in reality, and it would even be admirable, if it weren't such a sad state of affairs.
Unless they already have when investors reach retirement they should switch their investment strategy to producing income. Young investors should invest in aggressive growth. And as they age they should shift their investment into growth before finally in income. But I guess that's not taught in schools anymore. Oh, what this "by law"? There is no law in the US that mandates how retirees are invested. According to a new law it may be better for retirees to keep their investments in stocks instead of in bonds or other instruments that pay interest instead of dividends. Maybe that's what you're thinking, if so it isn't a law that requires liquidating shares, the law actually makes them more desirable.
This is based on the mistaken assumption that markets always grow and go up, never contract. Though, since the majority of paper markets are based on fear buying and fear selling, it is hard to see a time when they wouldn't contract or expand. Most people don't even know how to work this out when the market is "growing" nevermind when it is contracting.
I'm not a religious believer, but "gods help the poor bastards trying to learn to play the markets in the middle of a depression with kids to feed"... gods help them indeed.
No prob. I was born in a country where 3 generations under one roof wasn't unheard of (it was generally the norm) and we (as a family) still haven't adjusted to the whole "everyone's got their own house" thing. Hell, its upsetting to have gone chasing work across the country and now being unable to drop by for dinner anyday I feel like it, or they feel like it.
Sucks since I'm a damn good cook too.
That also explains why a working "social security" wasn't necessary where I was born, but is desperately necessary here. Here we have government to tell us what to do and "reward us" with other people's money when we're "good kids". Over there we each had each other. Families were like clans. Support could be garnered from those who still had land and livestock, food, materials, etc.
My concept is simple. Happiness comes from within. If you don't have it, having kids or buying "things" as you refer to them, will only fill that emptiness for a time, but it will retard your own growth, by giving you something else to focus in your years when you CAN grow. Then, when you've "booted" them out, you'll be tired, old and rarely are any old people capable of growing... the old dog + new tricks equation holds true as far as I've seen in my own family and those of my friends.
Hmm, interesting. Do you manage your own retirement funds, or do what 99% of the populace does? Leave it up to a fund manager at a prestigious fund management firm? As far as I've watched, several of my friends and a few acquaintances have all lost serious cash on their retirement portfolios, inflation notwithstanding.
If you know how to manage your own funds and pick the proper stocks for short and long term gain in the stock market (beating the last 10 years worth of M2/M3 inflation alone would've taken some serious financial market skills) and you also seem to have a backbone, it would seem someone taught you things that aren't taught in public schools and college. At least not that I've seen. Either that, or you did what I did, and went out and acquired that knowledge, in which case, I must ask. Why are you still working a job, especially in IT? People with financial skill and talent like yours should be out there making a killing predicting the investment markets and making a fortune for themselves and those clients they consider worth taking along for the trip.
So far, the only company I've heard of that has done this, has been Berkshire Hathaway. Name related to that is Warren Buffet. Short of him, I've yet to hear of any other company doing that for their customers.
As for companies such as TRW and the various retirement funds, I've yet to see any that didn't lose money for their "clients" in the last few years. Add inflation to that, and you realize that such companies are a net loss for the "investor". Blame legislators who forced people who knew NOTHING about investing to become investors. Sure, it inflated the investment markets, but it will and has in the past, wiped out savings that were invested unwittingly. I call it yet another example of the cattle being milked dry via their own bovine gullibility. They thought the government legislators were helping, when all they were doing was to help themselves to their savings.
Wait until those people start retiring en masse, and they do what they must, by law. Liquidating shares to pay their retirement. THAT will be funny and sad at the same time. A, funny because it is predictable, and B, sad, because so many will find their hundreds of thousands of retirement dollars to be devalued month by month as they and other retirees devalue their own savings by mass selling those mutual fund held stocks. If everyone's selling, either someone's buying just to keep the markets up, or the markets are collapsing.
I bet they'll collapse, and the government will find some legislative genius to fix it in such a way as to pass the problem onward, yet again, shafting the retirees of that generation AND screwing over their children by passing a bad problem onward with interest (bad + interest = worse).
That's an interesting take. Thanks for putting it that way. I was actually looking at the fact that "going to college" barely produces the equivalent literacy of a high school graduate from the earlier 50's. Sure, it can produce a good employee with some specialized skills, but the same education can be acquired with some good tutoring or perhaps through personal research. College is not a necessity and often, it just produced a specialized beaker tuner. Most research positions have their research topics dictated from on high. This is hardly the "self starting intellectual curiosity and brilliant insight" that we were taught to believe was inherent in the "scientific field." Most of the scientists I've met in the biotech facility where a love interest of mine interned long ago, had spent 30 plus years researching the same damn thing. They built remarkable DNA databases, that would surely aid any military organization seeking to find a vulnerability in the organisms being studied to possibly reduce the food supply of their enemies (which explained why almost all the organisms were food related and the research was funded by the DoD) but it also explains why they never actually made ANY breakthroughs. They weren't paid to, and they weren't trained to. They were trained to DO AS THEY WERE TOLD.
I learned more about business and money by playing in the field than by taking economics classes. In fact, any fellow who goes to business school, will end up someone else's employee. While that is fine if that is what you desire, look around. The most successful people (business wise and research wise) aren't necessarily the ones who graduated college. The greatest minds in history were almost all, without fail, autodidacts (self taught).
Take a look at the most modern and well known of them. Albert Einstein, whose glory comes more at the fact that he did most of his research outside of his schooling, and the fact that he has remarkably effective social connections to help promote his work. These aspects are rarely covered in the glorifications of "Saint Einstein," but are things that should be looked at for what they show. The same pattern is found in almost all great thinkers, and even great and convincing frauds of history. Personal talent and research were more useful to them than all the collegiate studies they undertook.
College serves only one purpose, IMNSHO. To pad one's address book with potential contacts to further one's interests in the world. Yes, as Gates and a few others have proven. Freshman year is all you really need.
There is a second purpose, I think. That is, to train one to think WITHIN a box. To research topics as dictated from outside, and to, above all, OBEY AUTHORITY FIGURES. Even those who are rebellious, often do not rebel far enough and merely rebel to feel good, but still allow their rebelliousness to be channeled into the controls of the same masters as those who conform. Prime example. Pacifists and Geeks who rebel against warmaking for governing forces, and yet end up doing the bidding of those governing forces. Which tells you, they were properly trained to obey authority figures, and to consider such obedience as the highest form of freedom. And many actually BELIEVE that Freedom is Slavery. Eric Blair would be proud as would the Fabian Socialists whom he had been invited to join and whom he had tried to expose through his writing of "1984."
My parents had me when they were PAST 30. I am the eldest of my siblings. They were well off for the country they lived in, and they became well off after coming to the USA with all of us as children. It wasn't college that worked out for them, since despite significant engineering backgrounds, their education was disregarded in this country, so they started their own business.
Frankly, being treated like shit actually worked to their advantage. Being the unreasonable kind of individuals, instead of getting "good jobs" and being servile cattle their whole lives, they built their own business(es) and did what they wanted. Sure they didn't drive Ferraris but that was mostly because they had better things to spend money on. In their opinion (and mine, since I was one of those "other things" their money was spent on.
Rule #1... college and a "job" doesn't make you successful, or happy.
Rule #2... having a family is something to do when you are ready, not when you're horny.
Rule #3... most people only get married because their lives are empty and they have nothing else to fill them with. Either that or they are afraid they'll die lonely.
Rule #4... I have friends who are in their 70's, multiple strokes. Still walking around, without missing a beat. Reason? I call it "will to live". I've seen the same thing with deer, and have heard it from others also. There are animals and people that can be winged by a bullet, and drop dead. Other animals are struck and survive what is considered to be a killing wound. The only explanation for such a survival capacity is simple. Willpower. As for your question. I'm not worried about who'll change my diapers when I'm 90. I'm more concerned about what loose woman I'll be blowing my retirement on:)
Being self reliant has nothing to do with lack of technology, or with a lack of hardships. The problem is more to the fact that before the technology became available, somebodies, somewhere decided to enslave the minds of those who might use the technology to benefit themselves more than those specific somebodies.
Rules were the implemented, falsehoods were perpetuated and baits were dangled in front of the masses. Most bit.
Some struggled away and made off with the bait. Some did not bite. The vast majority took a big bite and got snagged. And they are unable, and mentally incapable of actually struggling to steal the bait from the captors OR to avoid the bait and move on. Technology itself has NOTHING to do with being servile little weaklings. However, our society as with every society before, has a scant few self reliant individuals. True, the hardships of today are less visible to us, and more visible to our ancestors, just as their hardships then were less troublesome to them and more visible to us.
I don't know if it actually has a name, but I call it "the transparency of one's environs". That, to which you are accustomed, is nearly transparent to you.
Re:You've been working for 12 years, right?
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Disillusioned With IT?
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· Score: 1, Interesting
Therein lies the fundamental flaw of the disjointed family structure. Most modern westerners do not have a family relationship to fall back upon if disaster strikes. Most hurry and raise families, much like in "olden times" but without the support network that was once available. Raising a family while very young is the trap that lords and masters have laid into the path of the peasant since lords and masters have been around. See, once you have children, they have something they can use to keep you honest (read, subservient, read also, shackled). See, a man who accepts that all is transient, and family comes and goes as does youth and riches and poverty, will be hard to shackle down, or to enslave. Such a man is best hired, killed or left alone, since enslaving him against his will is hard to do.
I saw many of my former classmates from high school, have kids, get married, etc. All of them before they were old enough to think for themselves.
High school mostly retarded our growth and turned us into semi literate graduates. As a result we had another 4 to 8 years worth of growth required to match what our grandparents were by the age of 16. We're still breeding at young ages, but we are not emotionally or mentally mature enough to understand the ramifications of what we are doing as an age group. Thirty years of age is the earliest I've heard recommended by some of my currently breeding peers, as the age when they should've started breeding. Most breed before they even hit 20. They then become enslaved to the threat that their children will lose their home.
Hmmm... I got clean shaven and got out of IT... grew a beard for awhile more and got out of sales... I dislike both, but it is a bit interesting... very interesting.
Judging by that, dwarves make the best programmers.
Half of the doctorate students are pretty much black hats who have gone back to the light side.
You mean they're blackhats who want to be paid for violating the sanctity of other people's private spaces?
Of course they want to work for the government... They're less likely to be shot or tortured by their lords in the above ground mafia (government) in this situation than they would if their masters were the underground mafia. And government employees can steal from the government with great ease and low punishment, while those working for the mafia tend to get hurt badly for stealing. Government also, only rarely kills its own, and then usually as some form of false flag attack (common throughout history, regardless the pretenses of justice of most governments). As a result, given that such blackhats would be "information specialists" they might receive a tipoff. Seriously, how can they lose by joining the most successful mafia in history? (aka government)
Now, onto this "light" side bullshit... AHEM: "subject".
Light side is always made to seem like such a good thing, yet we should not forget that the original tyrants always were "of the light side", whether the samurai ruling caste that tyrannized the peasants in Japan, or the Mafia ruling caste that tyrannized the peasants in Italy, Corsica, Sicily, or the Holy Church ruling caste that tyrannized the peasantry in Europe or the Pharisee ruling caste that tyrannized the Hebrew commoners, or, as a final example, the Puritan peasants, who for lack of a master to tyrannize them, decided to tyrannize themselves (see Salem, Massachusetts, witch trials.)
The so called light side has proclaimed itself as 'good' without giving a definition of good, except saying "its what you should want" or "it's whatever we say it is." They've declared some vacuous evil dark side as the ever present enemy. A faceless evil to always be feared and never known or understood. Again, 'evil' is not defined in their context, except saying "it is to be afraid of". And the masses have followed, always fearful, taking the bait, hook line and sinker.
And in order to be part of the "light side" you have to join their hierarchy, worship their rulers, kiss the arses of the task masters, and be a good little serf. Then, if the rulers feel your lips have moistened their arse cheeks enough, you may get promoted to a 'position of higher responsibility' which basically means you'll be given your own little fiefdom of serfs to tyrannize. And then you'll be "somebody" in the hierarchy. You'll be more special than the poor bastards you get to order around.
Indeed. I've been a big fan of "they get what they deserve, and they deserve to get it good and hard" rule.
So far, it has proven true throughout history and throughout my entire experience in this life. Choose whatever you please, the price is the same. For the OSS people, you really DO learn how your computers work, it costs you TIME... and some effort, you even make a few friends and enemies along the way.
For the Closed Source people, you pay out the ass, and it costs you time, mostly, and a fat handout to whomever you pay to make you feel like a twit for clicking on CallGirl.exe, or to make you feel like it isn't your fault by blaming those "evil haxors".
Both solutions are equally likely to crash and wipe out your data. Double so if you use encryption or RAID on relatively unreliable hardware.
Thus, we call this what it is. Just deserts. Nothing more, nothing less. Those who desire one form of servitude or another, deserve ALL that they get, and I feel no pity for them, be they my relatives, my friends or my enemies. Pity is reserved for those who did NOT have a choice. The cattle of today... AHEM... "people" of today, have all their choices quite visible. They still pursue the same old course. Its hard for me to feel pity for their self inflicted torment:)
Again... I am all for free choice. Watching the cattle jump into the meat grinder next to the big sign "deadly meat grinder, don't jump in" provides endless entertainment for me. This coming election will, likewise, entertain me yet again as the mindless cattle huddle to one tyrant or another. Their right to choose, and my endless entertainment to watch them jump into the grinder again. (And when they are predictably betrayed by said "saviors" I will once more laugh my ass off, because otherwise, I'd have to cry at how stupid my fellow humans are. Hell, some of my DOGS are smarter than the average consumer and ALL of my dogs are smarter than the average voter. The dogs sniff at something and taste it before eating the whole thing, and stop if it tastes bad... unlike many consumers, and they don't repeat something that causes them pain and suffering, unlike all the voters I've met to this day.)
You won't see a problem until YOU realize that YOU pay taxes, the business pays taxes, your sales are charged taxes, and after all that theft from you in the guise of protecting you, they kindly remind you that the nations burgeoning police force needs YOU to check on criminals for them.
Lovely isn't it?
Someday people will see the absurdity of forcing others to pay for the stupidity of some group or other.
Actually THEY were not the problem... it was all the other spammers that keep the deluge going. You'd think after 10 years, they'd figure out that I don't want another 12 inches of penis OR 3 sizes bigger breasts. And I'm sure they must have noticed that I'm NOT interested in "fake rolex timepieces" and I'm not nice enough to help some poor deposed nigerian heiress recover her fortune.
I have a question. How many people, faced with dishonest unfriendlies, yet decide to take "gifts" from them?
I seem to recall that there were some guys who didn't look a certain gift horse in the mouth... and the only thing left of their city today, is that someone decided to name a brand of condoms after them. And told a tale of what NOT to do when you are given an impregnable city to defend... i.e. trust gifts from strangers.
I'm surprised you think that people deserve to survive when they make every tactical and stupid mistake in the book. When someone eats tainted food without cooking it, or drinks tainted water without boiling or distilling it first (or even filtering it) do you not think they have it coming? Why did the natives trust the whiteman? Look at the difference. The arabs did not. And they're still around, they even have their own countries. Neither did the Asians. The Africans did not, and they're still around (being massacred even today, but they have no delusions that the great lords of the world are their friends)... yet the native Americans were somehow to be spared when they did business with the very devils of Europe, and they were even stupid enough to try to cheat those who mastered the art of double dealing? The fiercest, most vicious and profiteering types came over here. And the natives TRUSTED them? Now I call that just plain stupid.
That's like having a batch of strangers show up at your door with "food and clothes" for free, and you're the title holder to some remarkable hunting and farming land. They eye you with contempt, and your wife with desire, yet you accept their gifts? I would think you might think it over.
Nah, I was trying to find two individuals, cruel enough to fit "evil" within the socialist mindsets common to slashdot. Those two definitely fit the bill. They didn't pay much, treated their workers worse than slaves. Figured they'd fit the bill and be recognizable names.
I figured with such highly schooled guys like you around, I wouldn't have to specify where every piece of info came from. Thought perhaps your far superior scholarship would be able to take everything I've said and piece them properly together and draw the existent connections.
Didn't he say he was looking to check email and some company data? If he was looking to surf flash based porn sites, I would sooner use the public terminals for that, or maybe wait until I got home.
PDA should do the trick admirably if he wants to blow 200 bucks or more. And yes, WEP is utter crap, and WPA-PSK is somewhat better but not all that. The problem with it is that it is vulnerable to traffic analysis. Therein lie the problems. I'm not sure if the traffic is salted, or even if data size is altered between packets randomly before encryption (thus making it hard to predict what part of the encrypted packet is data and what is just fuzz)
Something like that would slow things down considerably, but filling the encrypted space with some amounts of random noise would go a long way to making traffic analysis a bitch to perform.
Then I must ask. If you kick a dog, the second time he sees you approach he keeps clear.
If you kick a human, poison his food, beat him senseless and teach him that he must wait for his day in court, and he does... and you outmaneuver him (stay with me, pretend you're plain evil here, think Andrew Carnegie or John D. Rockefeller type evil.)
What would you call that human? Exactly. That exact human makes up 99% of socialists (the other 1% is the ones who run the show and are only socialists because that's what gets the 99% of suckers to keep them living for free) and 90% of humanity at large.
People are STUPID... INCREDIBLY STUPID. And what is worse, they see the error of their ways and they REFUSE, they CONSCIOUSLY make excuses and refuse to learn!
What the hell can you say to them, other than "Just deserts!" ??
Flame throwers and napalm are a new take on Greek Fire. Remember, greek fire even came with those lovely projection devices that the greeks used to good effect in naval battles... hell this was before the roman empire...
Other than nuclear weapons and explosives, fire weapons, kinetic / projectile weapons, ballistic weapons, all this stuff has been around for centuries, if not millenia. The propulsion methods for most of this is rehashed, but hell, compressed gas was used to propel projectiles millenia ago. Take the blowgun, for example. Rear loaded, piercing projectile, propelled by pressurized gas (in this case lung power of the tribal guy in question).
Explosives are about the only "new" things, though I'm sure I just haven't looked hard enough yet.
Considering how "advanced" our society proclaims itself, we haven't even advanced in the fields of barbarism, we're still playing out the same old agenda... enslave the populace, strengthen the rulers... steal from Peter to pay Paul. This crap in different embodiments has been around since before the vaunted Biblical times.
Seriously, am I the only one who notices that basically "nothing changes" in the grand scheme? Tyranny by the few, replaced by the tyranny of the many. If not, its this group or that group manipulating the many. Same old same old. Again, there's a reason why I'll talk about it, but I sure as hell won't lift a finger to oppose it. It isn't my problem. Look around. Everything is as it is because the idiot next door keeps voting to "not throw away his vote". They want tyrants to enforce some minor point. They got it.
And as L.Neil Smith put it, "every election, the results are predictable with a solid victory to the Boot On Your Neck Party." I did digress, but its all patterns, and they're all predictable.
Exactly what I was thinking actually is that like the proposed "futuristic" weapon, the DU penetrators have a fun tendency to liquefy the poor government worshippers inside the armored vehicle.
Now that I think about it, military wars, where militaries are fighting on both sides, rather than just one military butchering civilians, is a good thing, in a way. Its a whole bunch of government worshippers reducing their own numbers. Its like the antidote to collectivism. Reducing the breeding numbers of collectivists.
You know, each day, the more I research this, the more I realize there really is little reason to argue against war. Hobbes' Leviathan has one fantastic trait in favor of those who would preserve their freedom.
The Leviathan State is self destructive. Those who value freedom have to merely side step it and let it run off the cliff.
Besides, I seem to be under the impression from my reading of the available literature on tanks, that most modern military tanks (with the exception of Israeli tanks which are remarkably reliable) tend to use several parts per mile. Without massive manufacturing support, most military units of non Israeli nationality would quickly be forced to cannibalize units. Thus, insurgents with RPGs are probably aiming at the easily destroyed, hard to armor parts. You know... treads, etc? Those are probably still the weakest part of a tank. But then again I'm not a tanker, so I can't say.
Anyone here with experience in armored combat against EFFECTIVE enemies care to comment? (No, insurgents with AK's don't count. Insurgents with RPG's do.)
I'm curious, has the US Army actually FOUGHT anything that actually was capable of putting up a fight with all that hardware they have? Fleeing Iraqis and unarmed Katrina victims don't count. Ever since the M1A1 has been around, has it actually seen action against REAL tangible, equally equipped tanks and well trained tank crews? I can think of Merkava 4, Leopards, that screwy green french tank and those lovely legions of commie tanks parked out in Russia. Have the militaries of the world actually collided or have they been woggling their dicks at each other while stomping small tribal people flat to prove their "might" ? (And as we saw from the economic folly of fucking with the tribals, the Soviet Empire bought the financial farm doing that, and our beloved American Empire is in the process of buying the financial farm fucking with the tribals. You'd think people learn from history, but then again, history isn't really taught in school history classes. Just a bit of sloganeering and some bullshit dates, without any actual background history or data other than the feel good crap.)
Yes, they ARE a fairly honest scam, they want your money and provide VERY little in exchange. Hell, a Pentium II with less than a gig of ram and 20 gigs of hard disk storage would run a forum and database well enough to collect ALL of someone's graduating classmates and even to provide them with fairly decent IM and Email capacities.
However, given that they SELL most of this info (I'm fairly sure they do, judging some rumors that I've seen propagate to other databases.) By the same token, they're a lovely way to spread misinformation about yourself and find out who sells what to whom by watching how the lies propagate:) Its easily worth the one time payment of 30 bucks for a month or so.:)
Actually, at the time I was using an ISP email addy instead of my own domain server, and I realized that the ISP must've sold the address to them. The few people who HAD that address knew it wasn't for horseplay. It was research and business and nothing else. It wasn't my "sign up for porn" email addy or my "send me your lucky chain letter of the week" address. Needless to say I have a dozen of those spam traps (that I willingly acknowledge:)
Actually there was this one girl... oh wait...too much info, you all don't need to know this:)
Seriously though, I was curious back when they were spamming everyone (how they found out i existed and to get me at my private email is still a matter of some curiosity on my behalf.)
Slashdot Mirror
Stop using windows for anything other than gaming? Yeah, what a novel concept!
Wait, I think I know this... its like... oh wait, its like... ummm... ahem... having a brain and using it?
I think, personally, that human stupidity is a gold mine, and I'm slowly losing any inhibition and cashing in on it. The people who created governments realized this. The people who created religions realized this. The people who run fear based vaporware businesses realized this. Surely the only REAL issue at hand is human stupidity, which, as many have said, is possibly the ONLY boundless thing in existence. Why not tap into such a boundless resource to create "free resources" ??
I think, if you pay heed to what is going on, that the most productive people, are usually also the stupidest.
The hardest most productive animals are usually nothing more than what we term "beasts of burden" under the direction of an intelligent being.
Cattle can work hard and produce a lot... yet the farmer is smarter than them (and often eats them when they're no longer productive), farmers are productive, but the workers in the city are 'smarter' than them, because they eat what the farmer produces but work half as much to buy what the farmer works year round to produce. Bosses are even less productive than workers, but they employ workers and milk them dry, making bosses "smarter" than employees. BANKERS are even smarter than all of them, because true bankers do not work at all, and fleece entire countries. In fact, through inflation and debt instruments, bankers produce POVERTY, therefore "negative wealth", and yet they make a killing (literally and figuratively) running entire nations into the ground, with the nationals' own consent.
Therefore, lets not pretend that what makes you smarter also makes you more productive. Harnesses may not make horses and oxen smarter, but they certainly become more productive. Being a "good" beast of burden is NOT a result of tools that make one smarter, but of tools that make one more "productive".
I hate to burst your bubble, but there are actually "bad people" out there. However, those that are deemed "bad guys" are generally not always so. And those doing the "deeming" are not always good guys either.
For example, the countries whose people can afford this kind of hardware are not countries that have fought any defensive wars in any recent history (past 50 years or so). All wars fought by rich countries are fought for offense, conquest, loot, plunder, and unofficially, rape. Yeah, it might not be penis and vagina rape anymore, but as anyone who has had his or her home vandalized by uninvited thugs, the feeling of violation is quite tangible. It is always legitimate to exterminate aggressors, but how many of those clamoring for more hardware to "save lives" are merely saving the lives of those who kill on demand, rather than out of necessity?
Take Vietnam... what changed? What did "we" accomplish there? A slow surrender to the Cong instead of simply letting them do what they were going to? Does anyone truly believe that anything at all OTHER than that would've been accomplished? For a so called "christian" nation, the vast majorities of "god fearing Christians" seem to miss the fact that we cannot go and tamper with other people's homes, until we have set our OWN homes in order. Judging by the vast foreclosures out there, I doubt that the majority even HAVE their own houses anymore, or ever did. Guess those "god fearing Christians" have missed that lovely part about "neither borrower, nor lender be." Even their very money supplies are based on borrowing money into existence. Debt as money. Something that their so called "Christian faith" treats with disdain... debt.. and usury (interest) is seen as a great and wonderful thing.
Oh well, they just believe what the priest caste tells them to, not those pesky bits that contrasted to their actual way of life would make little sense.
Onto the topic of this subject. These defense companies only serve two purposes. To construct tools that will be used by various governments and related agencies to oppress their own populaces, and of course, to help said governments borrow their relative populaces into absolute poverty. See, most of this hardware costs a LOT of money, even when it turns out to be worthless, useless, obsolete, or unjustified, and governments spend money without really looking at ROI. There is little ROI in government operations. All it is, is plain and simple spending. Aimless, pointless and limitless.
Until you look at the greater backdrop, that the money must be spent into existence and that friends of the rulers must be the first to receive its value, before its issuance can devalue the existing stock of debt based currency. It is brilliant, in reality, and it would even be admirable, if it weren't such a sad state of affairs.
Unless they already have when investors reach retirement they should switch their investment strategy to producing income. Young investors should invest in aggressive growth. And as they age they should shift their investment into growth before finally in income. But I guess that's not taught in schools anymore. Oh, what this "by law"? There is no law in the US that mandates how retirees are invested. According to a new law it may be better for retirees to keep their investments in stocks instead of in bonds or other instruments that pay interest instead of dividends. Maybe that's what you're thinking, if so it isn't a law that requires liquidating shares, the law actually makes them more desirable.
This is based on the mistaken assumption that markets always grow and go up, never contract. Though, since the majority of paper markets are based on fear buying and fear selling, it is hard to see a time when they wouldn't contract or expand. Most people don't even know how to work this out when the market is "growing" nevermind when it is contracting.
I'm not a religious believer, but "gods help the poor bastards trying to learn to play the markets in the middle of a depression with kids to feed"... gods help them indeed.
No prob. I was born in a country where 3 generations under one roof wasn't unheard of (it was generally the norm) and we (as a family) still haven't adjusted to the whole "everyone's got their own house" thing. Hell, its upsetting to have gone chasing work across the country and now being unable to drop by for dinner anyday I feel like it, or they feel like it.
Sucks since I'm a damn good cook too.
That also explains why a working "social security" wasn't necessary where I was born, but is desperately necessary here. Here we have government to tell us what to do and "reward us" with other people's money when we're "good kids".
Over there we each had each other. Families were like clans. Support could be garnered from those who still had land and livestock, food, materials, etc.
My concept is simple. Happiness comes from within. If you don't have it, having kids or buying "things" as you refer to them, will only fill that emptiness for a time, but it will retard your own growth, by giving you something else to focus in your years when you CAN grow. Then, when you've "booted" them out, you'll be tired, old and rarely are any old people capable of growing... the old dog + new tricks equation holds true as far as I've seen in my own family and those of my friends.
Just an idea.
Hmm, interesting. Do you manage your own retirement funds, or do what 99% of the populace does? Leave it up to a fund manager at a prestigious fund management firm? As far as I've watched, several of my friends and a few acquaintances have all lost serious cash on their retirement portfolios, inflation notwithstanding.
If you know how to manage your own funds and pick the proper stocks for short and long term gain in the stock market (beating the last 10 years worth of M2/M3 inflation alone would've taken some serious financial market skills) and you also seem to have a backbone, it would seem someone taught you things that aren't taught in public schools and college. At least not that I've seen. Either that, or you did what I did, and went out and acquired that knowledge, in which case, I must ask. Why are you still working a job, especially in IT? People with financial skill and talent like yours should be out there making a killing predicting the investment markets and making a fortune for themselves and those clients they consider worth taking along for the trip.
So far, the only company I've heard of that has done this, has been Berkshire Hathaway. Name related to that is Warren Buffet. Short of him, I've yet to hear of any other company doing that for their customers.
As for companies such as TRW and the various retirement funds, I've yet to see any that didn't lose money for their "clients" in the last few years. Add inflation to that, and you realize that such companies are a net loss for the "investor". Blame legislators who forced people who knew NOTHING about investing to become investors. Sure, it inflated the investment markets, but it will and has in the past, wiped out savings that were invested unwittingly. I call it yet another example of the cattle being milked dry via their own bovine gullibility. They thought the government legislators were helping, when all they were doing was to help themselves to their savings.
Wait until those people start retiring en masse, and they do what they must, by law. Liquidating shares to pay their retirement. THAT will be funny and sad at the same time. A, funny because it is predictable, and B, sad, because so many will find their hundreds of thousands of retirement dollars to be devalued month by month as they and other retirees devalue their own savings by mass selling those mutual fund held stocks. If everyone's selling, either someone's buying just to keep the markets up, or the markets are collapsing.
I bet they'll collapse, and the government will find some legislative genius to fix it in such a way as to pass the problem onward, yet again, shafting the retirees of that generation AND screwing over their children by passing a bad problem onward with interest (bad + interest = worse).
That's an interesting take. Thanks for putting it that way. I was actually looking at the fact that "going to college" barely produces the equivalent literacy of a high school graduate from the earlier 50's. Sure, it can produce a good employee with some specialized skills, but the same education can be acquired with some good tutoring or perhaps through personal research. College is not a necessity and often, it just produced a specialized beaker tuner. Most research positions have their research topics dictated from on high. This is hardly the "self starting intellectual curiosity and brilliant insight" that we were taught to believe was inherent in the "scientific field." Most of the scientists I've met in the biotech facility where a love interest of mine interned long ago, had spent 30 plus years researching the same damn thing. They built remarkable DNA databases, that would surely aid any military organization seeking to find a vulnerability in the organisms being studied to possibly reduce the food supply of their enemies (which explained why almost all the organisms were food related and the research was funded by the DoD) but it also explains why they never actually made ANY breakthroughs. They weren't paid to, and they weren't trained to. They were trained to DO AS THEY WERE TOLD.
I learned more about business and money by playing in the field than by taking economics classes. In fact, any fellow who goes to business school, will end up someone else's employee. While that is fine if that is what you desire, look around. The most successful people (business wise and research wise) aren't necessarily the ones who graduated college. The greatest minds in history were almost all, without fail, autodidacts (self taught).
Take a look at the most modern and well known of them. Albert Einstein, whose glory comes more at the fact that he did most of his research outside of his schooling, and the fact that he has remarkably effective social connections to help promote his work. These aspects are rarely covered in the glorifications of "Saint Einstein," but are things that should be looked at for what they show. The same pattern is found in almost all great thinkers, and even great and convincing frauds of history. Personal talent and research were more useful to them than all the collegiate studies they undertook.
College serves only one purpose, IMNSHO. To pad one's address book with potential contacts to further one's interests in the world. Yes, as Gates and a few others have proven. Freshman year is all you really need.
There is a second purpose, I think. That is, to train one to think WITHIN a box. To research topics as dictated from outside, and to, above all, OBEY AUTHORITY FIGURES. Even those who are rebellious, often do not rebel far enough and merely rebel to feel good, but still allow their rebelliousness to be channeled into the controls of the same masters as those who conform. Prime example. Pacifists and Geeks who rebel against warmaking for governing forces, and yet end up doing the bidding of those governing forces. Which tells you, they were properly trained to obey authority figures, and to consider such obedience as the highest form of freedom. And many actually BELIEVE that Freedom is Slavery. Eric Blair would be proud as would the Fabian Socialists whom he had been invited to join and whom he had tried to expose through his writing of "1984."
Heh heh heh. I threw that in there to see how many who read my regular posts would notice. I salute you.
My parents had me when they were PAST 30. I am the eldest of my siblings. They were well off for the country they lived in, and they became well off after coming to the USA with all of us as children. It wasn't college that worked out for them, since despite significant engineering backgrounds, their education was disregarded in this country, so they started their own business.
:)
Frankly, being treated like shit actually worked to their advantage. Being the unreasonable kind of individuals, instead of getting "good jobs" and being servile cattle their whole lives, they built their own business(es) and did what they wanted. Sure they didn't drive Ferraris but that was mostly because they had better things to spend money on. In their opinion (and mine, since I was one of those "other things" their money was spent on.
Rule #1... college and a "job" doesn't make you successful, or happy.
Rule #2... having a family is something to do when you are ready, not when you're horny.
Rule #3... most people only get married because their lives are empty and they have nothing else to fill them with. Either that or they are afraid they'll die lonely.
Rule #4... I have friends who are in their 70's, multiple strokes. Still walking around, without missing a beat. Reason? I call it "will to live". I've seen the same thing with deer, and have heard it from others also. There are animals and people that can be winged by a bullet, and drop dead. Other animals are struck and survive what is considered to be a killing wound. The only explanation for such a survival capacity is simple. Willpower. As for your question. I'm not worried about who'll change my diapers when I'm 90. I'm more concerned about what loose woman I'll be blowing my retirement on
Being self reliant has nothing to do with lack of technology, or with a lack of hardships. The problem is more to the fact that before the technology became available, somebodies, somewhere decided to enslave the minds of those who might use the technology to benefit themselves more than those specific somebodies.
Rules were the implemented, falsehoods were perpetuated and baits were dangled in front of the masses. Most bit.
Some struggled away and made off with the bait. Some did not bite. The vast majority took a big bite and got snagged. And they are unable, and mentally incapable of actually struggling to steal the bait from the captors OR to avoid the bait and move on. Technology itself has NOTHING to do with being servile little weaklings. However, our society as with every society before, has a scant few self reliant individuals. True, the hardships of today are less visible to us, and more visible to our ancestors, just as their hardships then were less troublesome to them and more visible to us.
I don't know if it actually has a name, but I call it "the transparency of one's environs". That, to which you are accustomed, is nearly transparent to you.
Therein lies the fundamental flaw of the disjointed family structure. Most modern westerners do not have a family relationship to fall back upon if disaster strikes. Most hurry and raise families, much like in "olden times" but without the support network that was once available. Raising a family while very young is the trap that lords and masters have laid into the path of the peasant since lords and masters have been around. See, once you have children, they have something they can use to keep you honest (read, subservient, read also, shackled). See, a man who accepts that all is transient, and family comes and goes as does youth and riches and poverty, will be hard to shackle down, or to enslave. Such a man is best hired, killed or left alone, since enslaving him against his will is hard to do.
I saw many of my former classmates from high school, have kids, get married, etc. All of them before they were old enough to think for themselves.
High school mostly retarded our growth and turned us into semi literate graduates. As a result we had another 4 to 8 years worth of growth required to match what our grandparents were by the age of 16. We're still breeding at young ages, but we are not emotionally or mentally mature enough to understand the ramifications of what we are doing as an age group. Thirty years of age is the earliest I've heard recommended by some of my currently breeding peers, as the age when they should've started breeding. Most breed before they even hit 20. They then become enslaved to the threat that their children will lose their home.
Hmmm... I got clean shaven and got out of IT... grew a beard for awhile more and got out of sales... I dislike both, but it is a bit interesting... very interesting.
Judging by that, dwarves make the best programmers.
Half of the doctorate students are pretty much black hats who have gone back to the light side.
You mean they're blackhats who want to be paid for violating the sanctity of other people's private spaces?
Of course they want to work for the government... They're less likely to be shot or tortured by their lords in the above ground mafia (government) in this situation than they would if their masters were the underground mafia. And government employees can steal from the government with great ease and low punishment, while those working for the mafia tend to get hurt badly for stealing. Government also, only rarely kills its own, and then usually as some form of false flag attack (common throughout history, regardless the pretenses of justice of most governments). As a result, given that such blackhats would be "information specialists" they might receive a tipoff. Seriously, how can they lose by joining the most successful mafia in history? (aka government)
Now, onto this "light" side bullshit... AHEM: "subject".
Light side is always made to seem like such a good thing, yet we should not forget that the original tyrants always were "of the light side", whether the samurai ruling caste that tyrannized the peasants in Japan, or the Mafia ruling caste that tyrannized the peasants in Italy, Corsica, Sicily, or the Holy Church ruling caste that tyrannized the peasantry in Europe or the Pharisee ruling caste that tyrannized the Hebrew commoners, or, as a final example, the Puritan peasants, who for lack of a master to tyrannize them, decided to tyrannize themselves (see Salem, Massachusetts, witch trials.)
The so called light side has proclaimed itself as 'good' without giving a definition of good, except saying "its what you should want" or "it's whatever we say it is." They've declared some vacuous evil dark side as the ever present enemy. A faceless evil to always be feared and never known or understood. Again, 'evil' is not defined in their context, except saying "it is to be afraid of". And the masses have followed, always fearful, taking the bait, hook line and sinker.
And in order to be part of the "light side" you have to join their hierarchy, worship their rulers, kiss the arses of the task masters, and be a good little serf. Then, if the rulers feel your lips have moistened their arse cheeks enough, you may get promoted to a 'position of higher responsibility' which basically means you'll be given your own little fiefdom of serfs to tyrannize. And then you'll be "somebody" in the hierarchy. You'll be more special than the poor bastards you get to order around.
Yep, "light side" sure is "good".
Indeed. I've been a big fan of "they get what they deserve, and they deserve to get it good and hard" rule.
:)
So far, it has proven true throughout history and throughout my entire experience in this life. Choose whatever you please, the price is the same. For the OSS people, you really DO learn how your computers work, it costs you TIME... and some effort, you even make a few friends and enemies along the way.
For the Closed Source people, you pay out the ass, and it costs you time, mostly, and a fat handout to whomever you pay to make you feel like a twit for clicking on CallGirl.exe, or to make you feel like it isn't your fault by blaming those "evil haxors".
Both solutions are equally likely to crash and wipe out your data. Double so if you use encryption or RAID on relatively unreliable hardware.
Thus, we call this what it is. Just deserts. Nothing more, nothing less. Those who desire one form of servitude or another, deserve ALL that they get, and I feel no pity for them, be they my relatives, my friends or my enemies. Pity is reserved for those who did NOT have a choice. The cattle of today... AHEM... "people" of today, have all their choices quite visible. They still pursue the same old course. Its hard for me to feel pity for their self inflicted torment
Again... I am all for free choice. Watching the cattle jump into the meat grinder next to the big sign "deadly meat grinder, don't jump in" provides endless entertainment for me. This coming election will, likewise, entertain me yet again as the mindless cattle huddle to one tyrant or another. Their right to choose, and my endless entertainment to watch them jump into the grinder again. (And when they are predictably betrayed by said "saviors" I will once more laugh my ass off, because otherwise, I'd have to cry at how stupid my fellow humans are. Hell, some of my DOGS are smarter than the average consumer and ALL of my dogs are smarter than the average voter. The dogs sniff at something and taste it before eating the whole thing, and stop if it tastes bad... unlike many consumers, and they don't repeat something that causes them pain and suffering, unlike all the voters I've met to this day.)
You won't see a problem until YOU realize that YOU pay taxes, the business pays taxes, your sales are charged taxes, and after all that theft from you in the guise of protecting you, they kindly remind you that the nations burgeoning police force needs YOU to check on criminals for them.
Lovely isn't it?
Someday people will see the absurdity of forcing others to pay for the stupidity of some group or other.
Actually THEY were not the problem... it was all the other spammers that keep the deluge going. You'd think after 10 years, they'd figure out that I don't want another 12 inches of penis OR 3 sizes bigger breasts. And I'm sure they must have noticed that I'm NOT interested in "fake rolex timepieces" and I'm not nice enough to help some poor deposed nigerian heiress recover her fortune.
Gotta wonder.
I have a question. How many people, faced with dishonest unfriendlies, yet decide to take "gifts" from them?
I seem to recall that there were some guys who didn't look a certain gift horse in the mouth... and the only thing left of their city today, is that someone decided to name a brand of condoms after them. And told a tale of what NOT to do when you are given an impregnable city to defend... i.e. trust gifts from strangers.
I'm surprised you think that people deserve to survive when they make every tactical and stupid mistake in the book. When someone eats tainted food without cooking it, or drinks tainted water without boiling or distilling it first (or even filtering it) do you not think they have it coming? Why did the natives trust the whiteman? Look at the difference. The arabs did not. And they're still around, they even have their own countries. Neither did the Asians. The Africans did not, and they're still around (being massacred even today, but they have no delusions that the great lords of the world are their friends)... yet the native Americans were somehow to be spared when they did business with the very devils of Europe, and they were even stupid enough to try to cheat those who mastered the art of double dealing? The fiercest, most vicious and profiteering types came over here. And the natives TRUSTED them? Now I call that just plain stupid.
That's like having a batch of strangers show up at your door with "food and clothes" for free, and you're the title holder to some remarkable hunting and farming land. They eye you with contempt, and your wife with desire, yet you accept their gifts? I would think you might think it over.
Nah, I was trying to find two individuals, cruel enough to fit "evil" within the socialist mindsets common to slashdot. Those two definitely fit the bill. They didn't pay much, treated their workers worse than slaves. Figured they'd fit the bill and be recognizable names.
I figured with such highly schooled guys like you around, I wouldn't have to specify where every piece of info came from. Thought perhaps your far superior scholarship would be able to take everything I've said and piece them properly together and draw the existent connections.
Guess, maybe, I expected too much.
Didn't he say he was looking to check email and some company data? If he was looking to surf flash based porn sites, I would sooner use the public terminals for that, or maybe wait until I got home.
PDA should do the trick admirably if he wants to blow 200 bucks or more. And yes, WEP is utter crap, and WPA-PSK is somewhat better but not all that. The problem with it is that it is vulnerable to traffic analysis. Therein lie the problems. I'm not sure if the traffic is salted, or even if data size is altered between packets randomly before encryption (thus making it hard to predict what part of the encrypted packet is data and what is just fuzz)
Something like that would slow things down considerably, but filling the encrypted space with some amounts of random noise would go a long way to making traffic analysis a bitch to perform.
So lets see... we all believe in evolution, yes?
Then I must ask. If you kick a dog, the second time he sees you approach he keeps clear.
If you kick a human, poison his food, beat him senseless and teach him that he must wait for his day in court, and he does... and you outmaneuver him (stay with me, pretend you're plain evil here, think Andrew Carnegie or John D. Rockefeller type evil.)
What would you call that human? Exactly. That exact human makes up 99% of socialists (the other 1% is the ones who run the show and are only socialists because that's what gets the 99% of suckers to keep them living for free) and 90% of humanity at large.
People are STUPID... INCREDIBLY STUPID. And what is worse, they see the error of their ways and they REFUSE, they CONSCIOUSLY make excuses and refuse to learn!
What the hell can you say to them, other than "Just deserts!" ??
Flame throwers and napalm are a new take on Greek Fire. Remember, greek fire even came with those lovely projection devices that the greeks used to good effect in naval battles... hell this was before the roman empire...
Other than nuclear weapons and explosives, fire weapons, kinetic / projectile weapons, ballistic weapons, all this stuff has been around for centuries, if not millenia. The propulsion methods for most of this is rehashed, but hell, compressed gas was used to propel projectiles millenia ago. Take the blowgun, for example. Rear loaded, piercing projectile, propelled by pressurized gas (in this case lung power of the tribal guy in question).
Explosives are about the only "new" things, though I'm sure I just haven't looked hard enough yet.
Considering how "advanced" our society proclaims itself, we haven't even advanced in the fields of barbarism, we're still playing out the same old agenda... enslave the populace, strengthen the rulers... steal from Peter to pay Paul. This crap in different embodiments has been around since before the vaunted Biblical times.
Seriously, am I the only one who notices that basically "nothing changes" in the grand scheme? Tyranny by the few, replaced by the tyranny of the many. If not, its this group or that group manipulating the many. Same old same old. Again, there's a reason why I'll talk about it, but I sure as hell won't lift a finger to oppose it. It isn't my problem. Look around. Everything is as it is because the idiot next door keeps voting to "not throw away his vote". They want tyrants to enforce some minor point. They got it.
And as L.Neil Smith put it, "every election, the results are predictable with a solid victory to the Boot On Your Neck Party." I did digress, but its all patterns, and they're all predictable.
Exactly what I was thinking actually is that like the proposed "futuristic" weapon, the DU penetrators have a fun tendency to liquefy the poor government worshippers inside the armored vehicle.
Now that I think about it, military wars, where militaries are fighting on both sides, rather than just one military butchering civilians, is a good thing, in a way. Its a whole bunch of government worshippers reducing their own numbers. Its like the antidote to collectivism. Reducing the breeding numbers of collectivists.
You know, each day, the more I research this, the more I realize there really is little reason to argue against war. Hobbes' Leviathan has one fantastic trait in favor of those who would preserve their freedom.
The Leviathan State is self destructive. Those who value freedom have to merely side step it and let it run off the cliff.
Besides, I seem to be under the impression from my reading of the available literature on tanks, that most modern military tanks (with the exception of Israeli tanks which are remarkably reliable) tend to use several parts per mile. Without massive manufacturing support, most military units of non Israeli nationality would quickly be forced to cannibalize units. Thus, insurgents with RPGs are probably aiming at the easily destroyed, hard to armor parts. You know... treads, etc? Those are probably still the weakest part of a tank. But then again I'm not a tanker, so I can't say.
Anyone here with experience in armored combat against EFFECTIVE enemies care to comment? (No, insurgents with AK's don't count. Insurgents with RPG's do.)
I'm curious, has the US Army actually FOUGHT anything that actually was capable of putting up a fight with all that hardware they have? Fleeing Iraqis and unarmed Katrina victims don't count. Ever since the M1A1 has been around, has it actually seen action against REAL tangible, equally equipped tanks and well trained tank crews? I can think of Merkava 4, Leopards, that screwy green french tank and those lovely legions of commie tanks parked out in Russia. Have the militaries of the world actually collided or have they been woggling their dicks at each other while stomping small tribal people flat to prove their "might" ? (And as we saw from the economic folly of fucking with the tribals, the Soviet Empire bought the financial farm doing that, and our beloved American Empire is in the process of buying the financial farm fucking with the tribals. You'd think people learn from history, but then again, history isn't really taught in school history classes. Just a bit of sloganeering and some bullshit dates, without any actual background history or data other than the feel good crap.)
Yes, they ARE a fairly honest scam, they want your money and provide VERY little in exchange. Hell, a Pentium II with less than a gig of ram and 20 gigs of hard disk storage would run a forum and database well enough to collect ALL of someone's graduating classmates and even to provide them with fairly decent IM and Email capacities.
:) Its easily worth the one time payment of 30 bucks for a month or so. :)
However, given that they SELL most of this info (I'm fairly sure they do, judging some rumors that I've seen propagate to other databases.) By the same token, they're a lovely way to spread misinformation about yourself and find out who sells what to whom by watching how the lies propagate
Actually, at the time I was using an ISP email addy instead of my own domain server, and I realized that the ISP must've sold the address to them. The few people who HAD that address knew it wasn't for horseplay. It was research and business and nothing else. It wasn't my "sign up for porn" email addy or my "send me your lucky chain letter of the week" address. Needless to say I have a dozen of those spam traps (that I willingly acknowledge :)
Actually there was this one girl... oh wait.. .too much info, you all don't need to know this :)
Seriously though, I was curious back when they were spamming everyone (how they found out i existed and to get me at my private email is still a matter of some curiosity on my behalf.)