Bah, it's all smoke and mirrors. Costs get shuffled around, books get cooked, funds get redistributed, but the bottom line is that somebody always pays. That somebody isn't Santa Claus. Affordable Care my foot.
It is always humorous to watch the political fanbois go at it from the sidelines. Seeing people become so impassioned about which set of crooks are going stuff the shirts this time around is a devil's belly laugh. As has been said so many times, when the boot of government is on your throat, it makes no difference if it is a left boot or a right boot.
They pedal reports because that's their business, in case you didn't know. Altruism doesn't enter into it. Everyone, including yourself, is out to sell something. It's a matter of reputation, accuracy, and reliability. To the best of my knowledge, neither Jeebus nor Mother Teresa run business reporting sites.
That's why I suggest linking direct to the reputable sites on one's own web site, and proactively de-listing the junk like Yelp and Tripadvisor. No listing, no google hit.
1. Register your business withe the Better Business Bureau, the Jaycees, Consumer Reports, and Dun & Bradstreet. Prominently link to your ratings. People will take the aforementioned organization's word before some troll's on a crappy "review" site.
2. Report all such solicitations to your local prosecutor as an extortion attempt.
3. Order the crap sites like White Pages, Yellow Pages, etc. to un-list your business and state why (they suck).
Each new advance in consumer gadgetry affords the hyperactive lemming a new channel for mindless amusement. The creative and the imaginative among us are thereby amused by the playful lemmings, in much the same vein as the Darwin awards. An ironic win/win, isn't it?
In Russia fair elections and free (means controlled by big businesses) media will result in Special Olympics game of shit-throwing, so every candidate will be in deep shit and the one who will promise more free money to old people and throw more quality shit on the opponents will win..
If such is indeed the case, then congratulations for adopting what looks for all the world like American politics today. I guess all of that Cold War-era Voice of America broadcasting paid off after all.
Actually, my take on it, based on conversations with some Russian engineers I work with, is that Russia has been an oligarchy since the time of Peter the Great. Only the faces and names of the oligarchs and their "systems" have changed over the centuries. The nomenklatura will always run things via government, corporatism, and/or organized crime. The long-suffering average Russian knows this and shrugs,
I'd love to see some redneck Monster Truck freak try to beat that sucker in a tractor-pull.
Back as a kid, at least one of the news networks would periodically give progress updates on the movement of Apollo Saturn V-B vehicles out to the launch complex...the actual launches, of course, were breath-taking. The kind of stuff that inspires kids to become engineers.
Anyone who thinks every single government on the planet isn't already collecting, trying to collect, or wishing they could collect, every shred of information about everyone they possibly can is a bleary-eyed dreamer. It is the nature of government to wield every available control mechanism. There are no exceptions, just variations of denial.
To Aussie's credit, at least they have the forthrightness to make no bones about it.
OTOH, neither did/does the KGB/FSB.
Want privacy? Unplug from the internet, pay cash, use pay phones, work under the table, and don't drive.
Only Luddites have a reasonable expectation of real privacy in today's world.
1) government science policy is driven by politics, not science, and 2) both candidates are politicians, i.e. shills for their respective pwners, then 3) the entire exercise was a complete waste of time.
"Innovation" is a favorite term of patent trolls and other technovultures to describe nebulous ideas as patentable products that are nothing more than vaporware.
Of course, the list of engineering carrion-feeders is long and distinguished. You can be a Fortune 100 company and still be a patent troll from the standpoint of registering ethereal brain-farts as IP.
Every platform that I've ever worked with in 20+ years of industrial networking (yeah, I remember TISTAR over coax) has demonstrated it's own unique vulnerabilities that the vendors arrogantly ignore. The diligent engineer/integrator must, regardless of platform or deployment, be aware and take reasonable precautions.
Automation as an industry shares the same classic security handicaps as the internet and telecom industries: Careless users, badly written code, and low-budget management. We get paid to try to plug the holes.
Oh, my! Business and government are colluding to invade our privacy and control our behavior? I'm shocked! Shocked, I say!
Come on, people, do the messy details of who is collecting what and selling it to whom really matter any more?
The general population has amply demonstrated its complacency in matters of collective privacy loss and stellar-scale coercion. Its not a question of enough people knowing, its a matter of not enough people caring or daring to put up any meaningful resistance. The flies can conquer the fly paper if they are so inclined, but they're quite happy with just buzzing around their dung-piles and breeding more flies.
An occasional gang of berserk teenaged vandals inspired by a few indignant bloggers does not democracy, much less a revolution, make.
It was voted down, largely due to business objections to more regulations, but I'm sure the usual petty bickering was involved as well.
The actual bill had no teeth anyway. The proposed standards were voluntary. It will take a technological 9/11 - like event to goad the government into concrete action, and given our legislative track record, the response to an IT Pearl Harbor will probably be both over-reaching and misdirected.
It is pretty pathetic when we can trust neither the government nor business to do something reasonable and effective. One is incompetent, the other is greedy. We're hopelessly screwed.
Where I live, the same company (Shentel) monopolizes cable and phone service. Can I get cable internet? No, I'm stuck their crappy ADSL service because they refuse to offer broadband cable to DSL-capable customers at any price. I'd happily pay for improved service, but no dice. Stupid.
Doesn't anyone else see the double meaning in the name Pirate Pay? Given the long and glorious history of Russian/Ukrainian internet criminality, don't you think the RAHRCTEPOB would love to have a "trusted security" partner doing their packet sniffing for them?
Clearly this is is an Israeli attempt to keep the media from uncovering the North Korean's plot to supply Columbian rebels with Czech-brewed Canadian beer as a cover for Indian nuclear intervention in Antarctica!
Class struggle has in recent years gained a new moniker for use by the talking heads: The Economic Divide. However, class struggle does not need to be validated by an intelligentsia. Capitalism, having reached it's final source of plunder by embracing globalism, finally has nowhere to go but down. The interesting, and to an extent frightening, question is what form the resulting new society will take.
Slashdot Mirror
Bah, it's all smoke and mirrors. Costs get shuffled around, books get cooked, funds get redistributed, but the bottom line is that somebody always pays. That somebody isn't Santa Claus. Affordable Care my foot.
It is always humorous to watch the political fanbois go at it from the sidelines. Seeing people become so impassioned about which set of crooks are going stuff the shirts this time around is a devil's belly laugh. As has been said so many times, when the boot of government is on your throat, it makes no difference if it is a left boot or a right boot.
Probably because the Georgia Institute doesn't have an Officer's Club or a golf course.
They pedal reports because that's their business, in case you didn't know. Altruism doesn't enter into it. Everyone, including yourself, is out to sell something. It's a matter of reputation, accuracy, and reliability. To the best of my knowledge, neither Jeebus nor Mother Teresa run business reporting sites.
That's why I suggest linking direct to the reputable sites on one's own web site, and proactively de-listing the junk like Yelp and Tripadvisor. No listing, no google hit.
1. Register your business withe the Better Business Bureau, the Jaycees, Consumer Reports, and Dun & Bradstreet. Prominently link to your ratings. People will take the aforementioned organization's word before some troll's on a crappy "review" site.
2. Report all such solicitations to your local prosecutor as an extortion attempt.
3. Order the crap sites like White Pages, Yellow Pages, etc. to un-list your business and state why (they suck).
4. Have a cold beer and relax.
Never mind bailing out Greece, Spain, and Italy for the umpteenth time.
Just fine the living hell out of Microsoft and apply it to to their debts. Truly an inspired way to recapitalize the ECB before the Euro crashes.
What the heck, find some pretext to grab a slice of the Apple pie too.
Positively wizard!
Each new advance in consumer gadgetry affords the hyperactive lemming a new channel for mindless amusement. The creative and the imaginative among us are thereby amused by the playful lemmings, in much the same vein as the Darwin awards. An ironic win/win, isn't it?
In Russia fair elections and free (means controlled by big businesses) media will result in Special Olympics game of shit-throwing, so every candidate will be in deep shit and the one who will promise more free money to old people and throw more quality shit on the opponents will win. .
If such is indeed the case, then congratulations for adopting what looks for all the world like American politics today. I guess all of that Cold War-era Voice of America broadcasting paid off after all.
Actually, my take on it, based on conversations with some Russian engineers I work with, is that Russia has been an oligarchy since the time of Peter the Great. Only the faces and names of the oligarchs and their "systems" have changed over the centuries. The nomenklatura will always run things via government, corporatism, and/or organized crime. The long-suffering average Russian knows this and shrugs,
I'd love to see some redneck Monster Truck freak try to beat that sucker in a tractor-pull.
Back as a kid, at least one of the news networks would periodically give progress updates on the movement of Apollo Saturn V-B vehicles out to the launch complex...the actual launches, of course, were breath-taking. The kind of stuff that inspires kids to become engineers.
Anyone who thinks every single government on the planet isn't already collecting, trying to collect, or wishing they could collect, every shred of information about everyone they possibly can is a bleary-eyed dreamer. It is the nature of government to wield every available control mechanism. There are no exceptions, just variations of denial.
To Aussie's credit, at least they have the forthrightness to make no bones about it.
OTOH, neither did/does the KGB/FSB.
Want privacy? Unplug from the internet, pay cash, use pay phones, work under the table, and don't drive.
Only Luddites have a reasonable expectation of real privacy in today's world.
1) government science policy is driven by politics, not science, and
2) both candidates are politicians, i.e. shills for their respective pwners, then
3) the entire exercise was a complete waste of time.
"Innovation" is a favorite term of patent trolls and other technovultures to describe nebulous ideas as patentable products that are nothing more than vaporware.
Of course, the list of engineering carrion-feeders is long and distinguished. You can be a Fortune 100 company and still be a patent troll from the standpoint of registering ethereal brain-farts as IP.
Sure, let's all chip in a buck.
Maybe thirty cents goes into "administrative costs" (the inevitable bureaocracy)
Twenty cents, at least, will be sequestered for other failing programs.
Another forty will no doubt be pocketed by recipient telco shareholders and executives.
Perhaps five cents will go for surveys and studies.
Maybe, if we're lucky, a nickel will go toward the intended purpose.
And so it goes.
I'm hard at work polluting the gene pool with my dangerous mutant offspring. Bwa ha ha ha!
Wunderbar! Let's study a hanged criminal's brain and attach all sorts of conjectural conclusions to the analysis!
Mod Superflex up = Informative.
Every platform that I've ever worked with in 20+ years of industrial networking (yeah, I remember TISTAR over coax) has demonstrated it's own unique vulnerabilities that the vendors arrogantly ignore. The diligent engineer/integrator must, regardless of platform or deployment, be aware and take reasonable precautions.
Automation as an industry shares the same classic security handicaps as the internet and telecom industries: Careless users, badly written code, and low-budget management. We get paid to try to plug the holes.
Oh, my! Business and government are colluding to invade our privacy and control our behavior? I'm shocked! Shocked, I say!
Come on, people, do the messy details of who is collecting what and selling it to whom really matter any more?
The general population has amply demonstrated its complacency in matters of collective privacy loss and stellar-scale coercion. Its not a question of enough people knowing, its a matter of not enough people caring or daring to put up any meaningful resistance. The flies can conquer the fly paper if they are so inclined, but they're quite happy with just buzzing around their dung-piles and breeding more flies.
An occasional gang of berserk teenaged vandals inspired by a few indignant bloggers does not democracy, much less a revolution, make.
And so it goes.
It was voted down, largely due to business objections to more regulations, but I'm sure the usual petty bickering was involved as well.
The actual bill had no teeth anyway. The proposed standards were voluntary. It will take a technological 9/11 - like event to goad the government into concrete action, and given our legislative track record, the response to an IT Pearl Harbor will probably be both over-reaching and misdirected.
It is pretty pathetic when we can trust neither the government nor business to do something reasonable and effective. One is incompetent, the other is greedy. We're hopelessly screwed.
Where I live, the same company (Shentel) monopolizes cable and phone service. Can I get cable internet? No, I'm stuck their crappy ADSL service because they refuse to offer broadband cable to DSL-capable customers at any price. I'd happily pay for improved service, but no dice. Stupid.
Logic 101...fail! You cannot prove a negative.
Doesn't anyone else see the double meaning in the name Pirate Pay? Given the long and glorious history of Russian/Ukrainian internet criminality, don't you think the RAHRCTEPOB would love to have a "trusted security" partner doing their packet sniffing for them?
Clearly this is is an Israeli attempt to keep the media from uncovering the North Korean's plot to supply Columbian rebels with Czech-brewed Canadian beer as a cover for Indian nuclear intervention in Antarctica!
Class struggle has in recent years gained a new moniker for use by the talking heads: The Economic Divide. However, class struggle does not need to be validated by an intelligentsia. Capitalism, having reached it's final source of plunder by embracing globalism, finally has nowhere to go but down. The interesting, and to an extent frightening, question is what form the resulting new society will take.