I understand he made some preparation by purchasing a variety of restraint and torture devices that were found in his garage. Where the line is drawn is a bit subjective but that *may* count for some. It doesn't appear to count in this case, for whatever reason - I've not read much about it.
Take your ABS-equipped vehicle out in the snow. Go fast. Stomp on the brakes. The car just refused to perform an operation - it did not lock the brakes when you told it to. It did not apply the full force of the brakes as instructed.
For the record, being able to disable ABS for certain driving styles would be enjoyable for me but I'm glad that people have access to them.
Ah my young friend... Might I introduce you to the warm embrace of opiates? The knee is but a trivial bother and, of course, the best route is intravenous - 'tis the route the medical professionals use to administer such and anything less is a waste.
If I lived forever, I'd be too drug-addled to give a shit.
I could be mistaken but I think I've heard of this species before - some Living Fossil from NZ? (I watch an absurd number of documentaries.) I don't think you're supposed to have them as pets unless it has changed. The documentary that I watched mentioned them thinking about letting the capitalists have a shot at it and that they might breed a bunch of 'em and then you could get them as pets. Other than that, they're an endangered species AFAIK. While it might be, theoretically, possible to get one as a "pet" (if nothing has changed) it's probably difficult and the idea that you should teach kids to have an endangered species as a pet to avoid the feeling of loss due to death is, well, kind of crazy.
It has been almost 12 hours since you asked. I think we can safely say that Obama is refusing to deny that he's a Scientologist.
Oh! What a find. My spell check doesn't think that Scientologist is a word.
At any rate, Obama has had the chance and time to deny being a Scientologist and has declined to do so. He's not made any effort to deny the allegations made, give clarification, or answer the questions asked by We The People! Is this a plot to take over Western civilization?
Ah yes, it *is* Friday. I'd not noticed in the din. Lemme get out my hat of bigotry and my robe of hate - I'll be right back.
I'm working backwards - oldest to newest - and haven't yet found the appropriate fear mongering hate thread. (The exercise for you, dear reader, is to figure out which side I speak of.)
You say that and, at first blush, it appears likely to be true. So... Let me further state that I've accumulated a few bucks and have been told that I'm "rich." (By some degree, I am.)
Now, I want a law that lets me, without penalty, dance naked on the White House lawn during press conferences that occur on even numbered days. I also want to be able to drive to that event backwards while openly smoking meth wearing nothing but leather chaps and a crash helmet. I think it only fair that I be forced to pay for cleanup after the event as chocolate syrup, in abundant quantities, does tend to stain things.
You're aware that that's a borderline retarded statement, right? I'm pretty sure that government interference, and lack of it, don't have an absolute value on one being alive or not. I'd further speculate that government interference has a far greater chance of ending all life on the planet than a private enterprise.
Since the early days of the hyperlink, I've clicked them all - for the most part. Well, not all, but a whole ton of 'em. I've clicked on links to goatse, Rick Astley, and XKCD comics that I'd seen dozens of times already. Yet, I saw a description for this timecube site in a web forum some years ago. It was then that I opted to not click on it - a *very* rare thing for me. Yet, I've still never seen that site.
It's kind of like how I now know who the Kardashians (spelling) are but I don't know if I've ever actually seen one. If I have, I didn't notice. I've had helpful people link me but I declined to learn more about them. It'd be like skipping a really bad book to get to the end chapter, or something like that. No, I'll live vicariously through the people who post about it. Sometimes, I imagine they're the damnedest of things.
Come to think of it, where I a god (it turns out that I am not), I'd be poking buttons to screw with people all the time. I've played some of those SIM type of games. No, you don't want me to be a god. Man, you don't even want me left in a room with a world-destroyer button that says, "DO NOT PUSH!" And that's just one button!
Either way, isn't pretty much the entire Bible predicated on God fucking with people? Aren't pretty much all of man's gods quite expressly fucking with us?
I'd go a bit further and suggest, having listened to those wiser in the subject than I, that a multiple account scenario with using both banks and credit unions (preferring the latter) is a prudent thing to do if one wishes to maintain access in varied situations, avoid certain legal issues, or minimize risks. You don't get to choose what the holder does, necessarily, but you can act in your own self-interest.
Yip. It takes work and effort - beyond that of developing a product or coming up with an idea. Those are just the first steps. You'll probably need to show that it's not only useful but that it is profitable. You may need to demonstrate a need. If you can, for instance, reduce traffic congestion by just a few percentage points then that's nice but not remarkable. When you can improve throughput by a double-digit percentage - that's something that matters.
You prove a value and then capitalize and grow your business while continued improvements and research increase viability. Then, you sell that damned thing and retire. You worked your ass off, true, but (if all goes well) you don't have any ethical violations to keep you awake at night and, if you do, I suppose you can just snort enough coke off hooker asses to make you forget.
At any rate... Make a viable product and start selling it. Make it useful and demonstrate the need. Show the benefits and features. Having a viable product means that you can show it works and that people want it. If it can be profitable then someone will notice and you'll get a cryptic phone call asking if you're free for lunch.
Of course not. They were using KY. That means they're coming in the back door!
Anyhow, I sometimes wonder if scientists (of which I'm told I am one though I'd disagree) are hell bent on destroying life as we know it. Now, I have absolutely no idea what will happen if they manage to drill this hole. I admit this. However, do they? Let's just weaken the crust that keeps the warm gooey bits inside. Let's unleash an unholy gob of magma onto the crust 'cause we figure that pressing the unknown red button is a good idea. What can possibly go wrong?
I've mentioned this before but I'll mention it again. I wasn't doing anything more productive this morning.
I've got a few bucks. I find the idea of unnaturally extending my life disgusting. I don't care if you do it but I have no desire to do it myself. I'm aging, I am nearing 60. I'll die. I'm okay with that. I kind of welcome it though I hope it's not too painful. I don't have a place in tomorrow's world even though I suspect I'd like it there. They don't need my gibberish filling up their ears as I yell at clouds or pine of ethics of yesteryear.
No, I won't be taking any drugs to extend my life. I might take some to help me enjoy my time here a bit more but that's a topic for another day. I don't want to live forever. I don't need to. I've had a fine life, a lucky life, and I don't really mind getting out of the way so that someone else has a chance.
I'll have 'em give me a ride. He was a chopper pilot during the Vietnam War so I'll trust him enough to fly with him. He's a bit old now, obviously but still of sound mind and body so it's sure to be scary. I'm sure he will appreciate the chance to make me scared.
I think I've seen the R22 in a documentary, well a Modern Marvels. It was one of their older ones. It's a kit? Looks delicate as all hell but I guess they're both popular and robust. My friend's Bell is used. I don't know which model it is but it's got seating for five in the rear (three and two facing them) and has room for two pilots. He's also the friend who owns an old 1940s firetruck and a crane for no obvious reason.
I've managed to accumulate a bunch of strange characters as I've passed through life. There's a lot of interesting people out there.
I'll have to look into this. Thanks! Quite a bit of the work in QM (referencing your other comment as well) was long since my days in academia. I earned my PHD in the early 1990s and I was fortunate enough to go to MIT. This meant that I got to leech a bunch of knowledge from some very smart people. I still have some contacts and I may ask them if I they have some course work that they can share, if they mind me auditing a few courses, and whatnot.
A funny aside... I learned mathematics by rote but couldn't really think of anything else to major in except maybe electrical engineering. Which, for a short while, I did. At one point, I got a funny, older, professor who said just the right things and explained it conceptually. It took it from mechanics on a paper to something I could visualize in my head and, it turns out, I'm pretty good at it. Prior to that, I was good at retaining things long enough to test and that one little bit, that one little click, and it's like it all snapped into place. I've always been able to do some pretty decent maths in my head but I'd have trouble with proofs, for example. Yet, it clicked. I don't know how to articulate it well.
At any rate. I will be going back by that way in the spring and do have friends in the area as well as in the domain. I may well leech some more and see what I can learn now that I've scads of free time. Conceptually, I get the idea of QE (for example) but I've never taken the time to learn, review, or even try to grok the maths involved. I'd probably enjoy the work.
I woulda PMed ya but, ya know... Slashdot doesn't have that feature.;-) That's why I pointed to my email address a while back. You don't have an email address publicly associated with your account either.
Off-topic... You mentioned photography a few times. You've also mentioned automobiles a few times. Your profile doesn't appear attached to any contact method thus I'll post here. I purposely dug up an older comment from you to post this as a reply in hopes that you get it. I'd have posted to a more timely thread but I don't want to be a distraction beyond what is necessary.
Do you do freelance work and are you a professional photographer? If so, are you interested in a project this summer? (Maybe two weeks, maybe a bit more.) Not some stupid project where I've some grand idea and want you to throw your time at it and you'll make money if I make money. No. A real shoot with a down-payment made in advance type of thing is fine with me.
I don't want to clutter up the thread describing it but it's shooting my car collection in various ways and then, maybe, doing the technical shots as well. The latter would be much longer. It's more for a scholarly work than anything else but I want more than the technical photos for posterity. There are 32 vehicles in question. I'll not interesting in purchasing prints. I'm interested in purchasing the outcome which means ownership of the copyright as I do not want to be prohibited from making the work available. I'm aware that this costs extra.
Transportation, accommodations, and down-payment are also assumed. I'll need to see examples of prior work, preferably a curated portfolio. You'd be working with three other people - a mechanic, detailer, and myself as time allows. No, this is not me offering the world at large. Others, do not contact me for these purposes. At this time, the offer is exclusive.
So, if it is something you might think fits and you're interested, send me an email. I've room in my house, there's the house that was on the property when I bought it and it's been rehabbed and has a separate DSL line and plenty of compute power. There's a variety of options (mostly bed and breakfast type places) in the village but the village is about 24 miles away.
I'll be too busy to do it in the late summer and probably will not be back home until spring. The goal is a repository of knowledge, a scholarly work, but artistic as well. I'll get the works printed by an online company as coffee table books but the goal isn't profit - in fact, I'm expecting to lose ungodly sums if we count the purchase and restoration of the vehicles in question.
I can hire local and there are plenty of good photographers about but, frankly, I'd rather the shoots be done by someone who is also a driving enthusiast. I can hire local for the technical shots but, if you're already here... I was discussing the idea with the missus last night and we have hashed it over a bit this morning. As there's an entire other house, if you really needed/wanted, you could probably lug your family with you and just make use of the guest house. Obviously, you'd have access to an appropriate vehicle to use while you're there.
At any rate, now you know why you have a seemingly random comment posted as a reply to a very old comment that you made.;-) I didn't figure I'd interrupt any threads that might still be active. Hit my email up, if you're interested. I should have time to check it later but, if not, I'll certainly get to it by this weekend.
That makes sense though I thought the original Great Firewall was a bit more effective? I am probably mistaken and I haven't given this one iota of scholarly effort but I have read a bunch on it over the years. So, forgive me for couching this by saying the following was/is my understanding and that I may be incorrect. If that's acceptable then read on!;-) (My ego is not that frail. What is posted below is simply phrased the way it is for simplicity, more recounting what I'd been given to understand. Keep that in mind.)
This is going to be a small novella, you have been warned. You're certainly not obligated to read it but it'd help if you did - if you're planning on responding.
In the past it was on an individual ISP level and there were few ISPs. I'd say that this was in the mid-late 1990s time frame and much of the internet was still limited to academia. Few ISPs were not fully State owned and operated. This expanded and businesses were also given access and the government trained many people in the fields of computer science. Again, the ISPs were still largely owned and operated *entirely* by the State and in a very restrictive fashion - enough to put the Firewall of today to shame.
Then, as things progressed, there were a lot of technological changes as well as policy changes. I'm not sure so much as the policy writ large changed so much as the enforcement of said policy changed. During this time, profit was also something that was allowed to a greater extent. There were even new-found freedoms and tech was progressing at such a rate that there was little time/ability to filter everything. (I think this might be where you come into the story.)
This expanded and ubiquity was increased as China also began to have a, all things being equal, a middle class of sorts. More and more people became educated, more and more people were able to access the internet, and more and more people were skilled in the arcane knowledge known as computer science or some subset of that science. There was also, for a brief (on a larger time-scale) bit of free-flowing information and the government lost a bit of control.
Now, earlier on, things were much more akin to a straight up whitelist. If the government did not, explicitly, grant access than access was not allowed. It was during the early 2000s where this began to change and led into what we'll call the IT-middle-ages which seemed to last until just a few years ago, with a peak of maybe 2008. During these IT-middle ages there was less whitelisting than there was blacklisting. In other words, for the most part, you could go anywhere unless the government had specifically made it a point to tell the now more numerous ISPs that such-and-such a site was required to be blocked via technological means.
During this time, it might be fair to say that the Great Firewall did not exist as such but was more like the actual Great Wall in that it is not one large, constant, continual thing but individual walls that may even overlap, have been built with different materials, and served different functions in different ways. Actually, I think that's a fair and accurate analogy.
Now, since the rise of the Age of IT Enlightenment, there has been a more formal boundary declared, yet again, and the Great Firewall is becoming a bit more like the one that was in existence during the IT Dark Ages of the late 1990s and early 2000s. The tech and "need" is such that the Great Firewall has reached a point where it's somewhere between the PR version (in the West) and the real version that it was during the IT-middle-ages and, perhaps, growing stronger or more effective on a regular basis.
I'd certainly not speculate on the number of attacks that are overtly or covertly perpetuated by State actors, by independent actors, or by businesses acting on their own. I'd also not speculate on the number of attacks that are simply blamed on China because they're easy to blame. It's not like most people are going to believe a denial. I'd also mentio
Slashdot Mirror
I understand he made some preparation by purchasing a variety of restraint and torture devices that were found in his garage. Where the line is drawn is a bit subjective but that *may* count for some. It doesn't appear to count in this case, for whatever reason - I've not read much about it.
Furry and not fury? Hmm... I will probably think of APK in a whole new light now.
And bears, but we can't really stop them as they've got a right to it.
Take your ABS-equipped vehicle out in the snow. Go fast. Stomp on the brakes. The car just refused to perform an operation - it did not lock the brakes when you told it to. It did not apply the full force of the brakes as instructed.
For the record, being able to disable ABS for certain driving styles would be enjoyable for me but I'm glad that people have access to them.
Ah my young friend... Might I introduce you to the warm embrace of opiates? The knee is but a trivial bother and, of course, the best route is intravenous - 'tis the route the medical professionals use to administer such and anything less is a waste.
If I lived forever, I'd be too drug-addled to give a shit.
I could be mistaken but I think I've heard of this species before - some Living Fossil from NZ? (I watch an absurd number of documentaries.) I don't think you're supposed to have them as pets unless it has changed. The documentary that I watched mentioned them thinking about letting the capitalists have a shot at it and that they might breed a bunch of 'em and then you could get them as pets. Other than that, they're an endangered species AFAIK. While it might be, theoretically, possible to get one as a "pet" (if nothing has changed) it's probably difficult and the idea that you should teach kids to have an endangered species as a pet to avoid the feeling of loss due to death is, well, kind of crazy.
It has been almost 12 hours since you asked. I think we can safely say that Obama is refusing to deny that he's a Scientologist.
Oh! What a find. My spell check doesn't think that Scientologist is a word.
At any rate, Obama has had the chance and time to deny being a Scientologist and has declined to do so. He's not made any effort to deny the allegations made, give clarification, or answer the questions asked by We The People! Is this a plot to take over Western civilization?
Ah yes, it *is* Friday. I'd not noticed in the din. Lemme get out my hat of bigotry and my robe of hate - I'll be right back.
I'm working backwards - oldest to newest - and haven't yet found the appropriate fear mongering hate thread. (The exercise for you, dear reader, is to figure out which side I speak of.)
If I pay you for labor, the product of that labor belongs to me.
You say that and, at first blush, it appears likely to be true. So... Let me further state that I've accumulated a few bucks and have been told that I'm "rich." (By some degree, I am.)
Now, I want a law that lets me, without penalty, dance naked on the White House lawn during press conferences that occur on even numbered days. I also want to be able to drive to that event backwards while openly smoking meth wearing nothing but leather chaps and a crash helmet. I think it only fair that I be forced to pay for cleanup after the event as chocolate syrup, in abundant quantities, does tend to stain things.
To whom do I send the money?
You're aware that that's a borderline retarded statement, right? I'm pretty sure that government interference, and lack of it, don't have an absolute value on one being alive or not. I'd further speculate that government interference has a far greater chance of ending all life on the planet than a private enterprise.
I don't think everything has an opposite. What's the opposite of orange - the color and the fruit? What's the opposite of humans?
Since the early days of the hyperlink, I've clicked them all - for the most part. Well, not all, but a whole ton of 'em. I've clicked on links to goatse, Rick Astley, and XKCD comics that I'd seen dozens of times already. Yet, I saw a description for this timecube site in a web forum some years ago. It was then that I opted to not click on it - a *very* rare thing for me. Yet, I've still never seen that site.
It's kind of like how I now know who the Kardashians (spelling) are but I don't know if I've ever actually seen one. If I have, I didn't notice. I've had helpful people link me but I declined to learn more about them. It'd be like skipping a really bad book to get to the end chapter, or something like that. No, I'll live vicariously through the people who post about it. Sometimes, I imagine they're the damnedest of things.
Come to think of it, where I a god (it turns out that I am not), I'd be poking buttons to screw with people all the time. I've played some of those SIM type of games. No, you don't want me to be a god. Man, you don't even want me left in a room with a world-destroyer button that says, "DO NOT PUSH!" And that's just one button!
Either way, isn't pretty much the entire Bible predicated on God fucking with people? Aren't pretty much all of man's gods quite expressly fucking with us?
It's just clever spam - paid forum posting is a thing.
I'd go a bit further and suggest, having listened to those wiser in the subject than I, that a multiple account scenario with using both banks and credit unions (preferring the latter) is a prudent thing to do if one wishes to maintain access in varied situations, avoid certain legal issues, or minimize risks. You don't get to choose what the holder does, necessarily, but you can act in your own self-interest.
Yip. It takes work and effort - beyond that of developing a product or coming up with an idea. Those are just the first steps. You'll probably need to show that it's not only useful but that it is profitable. You may need to demonstrate a need. If you can, for instance, reduce traffic congestion by just a few percentage points then that's nice but not remarkable. When you can improve throughput by a double-digit percentage - that's something that matters.
You prove a value and then capitalize and grow your business while continued improvements and research increase viability. Then, you sell that damned thing and retire. You worked your ass off, true, but (if all goes well) you don't have any ethical violations to keep you awake at night and, if you do, I suppose you can just snort enough coke off hooker asses to make you forget.
At any rate... Make a viable product and start selling it. Make it useful and demonstrate the need. Show the benefits and features. Having a viable product means that you can show it works and that people want it. If it can be profitable then someone will notice and you'll get a cryptic phone call asking if you're free for lunch.
Of course not. They were using KY. That means they're coming in the back door!
Anyhow, I sometimes wonder if scientists (of which I'm told I am one though I'd disagree) are hell bent on destroying life as we know it. Now, I have absolutely no idea what will happen if they manage to drill this hole. I admit this. However, do they? Let's just weaken the crust that keeps the warm gooey bits inside. Let's unleash an unholy gob of magma onto the crust 'cause we figure that pressing the unknown red button is a good idea. What can possibly go wrong?
I've mentioned this before but I'll mention it again. I wasn't doing anything more productive this morning.
I've got a few bucks. I find the idea of unnaturally extending my life disgusting. I don't care if you do it but I have no desire to do it myself. I'm aging, I am nearing 60. I'll die. I'm okay with that. I kind of welcome it though I hope it's not too painful. I don't have a place in tomorrow's world even though I suspect I'd like it there. They don't need my gibberish filling up their ears as I yell at clouds or pine of ethics of yesteryear.
No, I won't be taking any drugs to extend my life. I might take some to help me enjoy my time here a bit more but that's a topic for another day. I don't want to live forever. I don't need to. I've had a fine life, a lucky life, and I don't really mind getting out of the way so that someone else has a chance.
http://slashdot.org/firehose.p...
I'll have 'em give me a ride. He was a chopper pilot during the Vietnam War so I'll trust him enough to fly with him. He's a bit old now, obviously but still of sound mind and body so it's sure to be scary. I'm sure he will appreciate the chance to make me scared.
I think I've seen the R22 in a documentary, well a Modern Marvels. It was one of their older ones. It's a kit? Looks delicate as all hell but I guess they're both popular and robust. My friend's Bell is used. I don't know which model it is but it's got seating for five in the rear (three and two facing them) and has room for two pilots. He's also the friend who owns an old 1940s firetruck and a crane for no obvious reason.
I've managed to accumulate a bunch of strange characters as I've passed through life. There's a lot of interesting people out there.
I'll have to look into this. Thanks! Quite a bit of the work in QM (referencing your other comment as well) was long since my days in academia. I earned my PHD in the early 1990s and I was fortunate enough to go to MIT. This meant that I got to leech a bunch of knowledge from some very smart people. I still have some contacts and I may ask them if I they have some course work that they can share, if they mind me auditing a few courses, and whatnot.
A funny aside... I learned mathematics by rote but couldn't really think of anything else to major in except maybe electrical engineering. Which, for a short while, I did. At one point, I got a funny, older, professor who said just the right things and explained it conceptually. It took it from mechanics on a paper to something I could visualize in my head and, it turns out, I'm pretty good at it. Prior to that, I was good at retaining things long enough to test and that one little bit, that one little click, and it's like it all snapped into place. I've always been able to do some pretty decent maths in my head but I'd have trouble with proofs, for example. Yet, it clicked. I don't know how to articulate it well.
At any rate. I will be going back by that way in the spring and do have friends in the area as well as in the domain. I may well leech some more and see what I can learn now that I've scads of free time. Conceptually, I get the idea of QE (for example) but I've never taken the time to learn, review, or even try to grok the maths involved. I'd probably enjoy the work.
I'll give it some serious consideration, thanks.
I woulda PMed ya but, ya know... Slashdot doesn't have that feature. ;-) That's why I pointed to my email address a while back. You don't have an email address publicly associated with your account either.
Off-topic... You mentioned photography a few times. You've also mentioned automobiles a few times. Your profile doesn't appear attached to any contact method thus I'll post here. I purposely dug up an older comment from you to post this as a reply in hopes that you get it. I'd have posted to a more timely thread but I don't want to be a distraction beyond what is necessary.
Do you do freelance work and are you a professional photographer? If so, are you interested in a project this summer? (Maybe two weeks, maybe a bit more.) Not some stupid project where I've some grand idea and want you to throw your time at it and you'll make money if I make money. No. A real shoot with a down-payment made in advance type of thing is fine with me.
I don't want to clutter up the thread describing it but it's shooting my car collection in various ways and then, maybe, doing the technical shots as well. The latter would be much longer. It's more for a scholarly work than anything else but I want more than the technical photos for posterity. There are 32 vehicles in question. I'll not interesting in purchasing prints. I'm interested in purchasing the outcome which means ownership of the copyright as I do not want to be prohibited from making the work available. I'm aware that this costs extra.
Transportation, accommodations, and down-payment are also assumed. I'll need to see examples of prior work, preferably a curated portfolio. You'd be working with three other people - a mechanic, detailer, and myself as time allows. No, this is not me offering the world at large. Others, do not contact me for these purposes. At this time, the offer is exclusive.
So, if it is something you might think fits and you're interested, send me an email. I've room in my house, there's the house that was on the property when I bought it and it's been rehabbed and has a separate DSL line and plenty of compute power. There's a variety of options (mostly bed and breakfast type places) in the village but the village is about 24 miles away.
I'll be too busy to do it in the late summer and probably will not be back home until spring. The goal is a repository of knowledge, a scholarly work, but artistic as well. I'll get the works printed by an online company as coffee table books but the goal isn't profit - in fact, I'm expecting to lose ungodly sums if we count the purchase and restoration of the vehicles in question.
I can hire local and there are plenty of good photographers about but, frankly, I'd rather the shoots be done by someone who is also a driving enthusiast. I can hire local for the technical shots but, if you're already here... I was discussing the idea with the missus last night and we have hashed it over a bit this morning. As there's an entire other house, if you really needed/wanted, you could probably lug your family with you and just make use of the guest house. Obviously, you'd have access to an appropriate vehicle to use while you're there.
At any rate, now you know why you have a seemingly random comment posted as a reply to a very old comment that you made. ;-) I didn't figure I'd interrupt any threads that might still be active. Hit my email up, if you're interested. I should have time to check it later but, if not, I'll certainly get to it by this weekend.
That makes sense though I thought the original Great Firewall was a bit more effective? I am probably mistaken and I haven't given this one iota of scholarly effort but I have read a bunch on it over the years. So, forgive me for couching this by saying the following was/is my understanding and that I may be incorrect. If that's acceptable then read on! ;-) (My ego is not that frail. What is posted below is simply phrased the way it is for simplicity, more recounting what I'd been given to understand. Keep that in mind.)
This is going to be a small novella, you have been warned. You're certainly not obligated to read it but it'd help if you did - if you're planning on responding.
In the past it was on an individual ISP level and there were few ISPs. I'd say that this was in the mid-late 1990s time frame and much of the internet was still limited to academia. Few ISPs were not fully State owned and operated. This expanded and businesses were also given access and the government trained many people in the fields of computer science. Again, the ISPs were still largely owned and operated *entirely* by the State and in a very restrictive fashion - enough to put the Firewall of today to shame.
Then, as things progressed, there were a lot of technological changes as well as policy changes. I'm not sure so much as the policy writ large changed so much as the enforcement of said policy changed. During this time, profit was also something that was allowed to a greater extent. There were even new-found freedoms and tech was progressing at such a rate that there was little time/ability to filter everything. (I think this might be where you come into the story.)
This expanded and ubiquity was increased as China also began to have a, all things being equal, a middle class of sorts. More and more people became educated, more and more people were able to access the internet, and more and more people were skilled in the arcane knowledge known as computer science or some subset of that science. There was also, for a brief (on a larger time-scale) bit of free-flowing information and the government lost a bit of control.
Now, earlier on, things were much more akin to a straight up whitelist. If the government did not, explicitly, grant access than access was not allowed. It was during the early 2000s where this began to change and led into what we'll call the IT-middle-ages which seemed to last until just a few years ago, with a peak of maybe 2008. During these IT-middle ages there was less whitelisting than there was blacklisting. In other words, for the most part, you could go anywhere unless the government had specifically made it a point to tell the now more numerous ISPs that such-and-such a site was required to be blocked via technological means.
During this time, it might be fair to say that the Great Firewall did not exist as such but was more like the actual Great Wall in that it is not one large, constant, continual thing but individual walls that may even overlap, have been built with different materials, and served different functions in different ways. Actually, I think that's a fair and accurate analogy.
Now, since the rise of the Age of IT Enlightenment, there has been a more formal boundary declared, yet again, and the Great Firewall is becoming a bit more like the one that was in existence during the IT Dark Ages of the late 1990s and early 2000s. The tech and "need" is such that the Great Firewall has reached a point where it's somewhere between the PR version (in the West) and the real version that it was during the IT-middle-ages and, perhaps, growing stronger or more effective on a regular basis.
I'd certainly not speculate on the number of attacks that are overtly or covertly perpetuated by State actors, by independent actors, or by businesses acting on their own. I'd also not speculate on the number of attacks that are simply blamed on China because they're easy to blame. It's not like most people are going to believe a denial. I'd also mentio