"Mule" is kind of a Kleenexed term these days. It's probably what kids today call a "UTV".

Funny story, a friend's dad had an old M274 out in the barn. We never managed to get it running. I guess that wasn't much of a story.

There are rules. Either you have environmental protection laws or you don't. If you have them, don't start making exceptions to them because anyone who didn't get an exception and lost money as a result can (and should!) sue the everlasting shit out of you. If there's a problem with your laws, repeal them and replace them with more sensible ones.

bittorrent is used for lots of legitimate distribution outside of WoW, too. Just another case of a carrier selling a level of service they had no intention of supporting. "We'll advertise 'unlimited' [chuckle] data and leave the floodgates open for a few months so people think we're serious about service. We'll get a ton of new customers, then bring down the hammer as soon as we hit our subscriber target."

One time, he got the chore of painting his aunt's house. He went to the store, bought the paint, prepped the house, and painted it pink. His aunt was the only one who didn't think it was a hilarious way to find out about being colorblind.

Verizon is just plain psychotic. When they were advertising the upcoming 4G LTE service years ago, their advertising copy said users would be able to stream video and download HD movies. All kinds of wonderful things that weren't possible with the new caps they'd put on 3G. Then they rolled out LTE with the same caps as 3G. So, sure you could download Air Bud in HD but that'd be your data for the month.

Now they're all excited about XLTE doubling (or more) the speed available thru Verizon's network. I've seen those speeds and they're amazing. Absolutely freaking amazing. And totally useless to anyone without an unlimited account. WTF is a new customer supposed to do with 80 Mb/s down and 40 Mb/s up? That's the kind of speed I saw near Atlanta. Holy Hell, that's fast. Faster than any wired service I've had. And totally useless if you can only move 2 gigs a month. Why are they spending all this money speeding up their network when it's wasted on their customers. It's crazy.

And the numbers Verizon is throwing around don't make a lick of sense. (Of course, I can't find the exact numbers now so I'll guestimate.) They say around 20% of their customer base still has unlimited data. They say 95% of those people use less than 5 gigs of data per billing cycle. If those two statements are true, why is Verizon upset? They should be ecstatic. They cut off unlimited data in 2010 so they're claiming an amazing retention rate. And the vast, vast, vast majority of those people are overpaying for what they use. And they're paying full MSRP for unsubsidized equipment. Why on earth would Verizon want to rock that boat?

Yeah, because Apple didn't use an uncommon, DRM-enabled format. Nope.

Oh, wait. I'm being told that's exactly what they did. They sold their music in a format unsupported by any other portable player. And the first ipods only worked with Macs which, at the time, had a tiny percentage of the personal computer market.

So I'm going to go out on a limb and say Sony's choice of format had nothing to do with their inability to corner the new portable audio market.

That's like suing the contractor that built a freeway because the freeway was used to transport drugs. Even if, by some absurd chance, you win, there are a thousand other torrent sites out there and your movie was on them within hours. Knocking out a couple of those sites will have absolutely no effect on piracy. If you want to stop leaks go after the leaker. If you've got any sense at all, each of your DVD screeners has unique watermarks and can be traced to the person to whom it was issued. Fire that person, sue that person, and blacklist them. That at least would have a chance of reducing future leaks.

I remember the first time an employer realized that I had access to everything . She froze for a few seconds while she processed the idea, shrugged, and went on with her request.

You're going to learn things you don't want to know and see things people don't expect you to see. My least favorite experience was someone who had an email stuck in their outbox. "Subject Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: My widdle wuvvy bear From: Not His Wife" And thank you so much, preview line, for confirming the content. So, with a straight face and chipper tone, "Next time a message gets stuck, you can just select it and hit delete." I didn't add, "And you, of all people, should know better than to use company email to conduct that sort of activity because we archive everything. I just did an archive search for you last month."

My most favorite was when I was helping someone with some simple thing and minimized her browser to discover that her desktop wallpaper was a picture of her frolicking in a bikini. Again, just go on like it's nothing out of the ordinary. Heck, if I looked like that, I'd want to look at me all day, too. Oh, and there was an intern who, when she finished her assignment, cleared everything off her desktop except a topless pic of herself.

If I'd seen evidence of blatant criminal activity or harassment, I would have reported it to the person's manager and my boss and let them deal with it. But politics and gossip and salaciousness were ignored. I was employed to keep the equipment running, not be the morality police.

I'd like to be able to skip the whole "check in" thing. If I'm on some long-haul road trip, the last thing I want to do at 11pm is be depressed by interacting with someone who's life has led them to working the swing shift at the Super8 at some crossroads in BFE. It'd be great if I could get a Moons Over My Hammy at Dennys while I figure out which room is most isolated and book it. Drive across the street to the hotel, go straight to my room, crash for 8-9 hours, shower, $5 tip for the maid, back in the car, on my way having never had to interact with anyone at the motel.

In fact, to heck with Dennys. Bring back the automat. With self-service gas stations, hotels, and food, I could cross the country without ever interacting with a single person. Bliss. For me and everyone else.

I just looked up my receipts out of curiosity. Bought the parts in July of 2012. I built pretty close to the edge so it still kicks ass today. Plays current games on triple 2560x1440 monitors. It's not going to get a bump until I can do three 4k displays reasonably.

If you can't boot it, you can't delete the data stored on it. How difficult is that concept?

The only way you can clear it now is with a shotgun.

Same procedure if it does work. People say "encrypt then wipe" but how do you know what's going on behind the scenes when you do that? You don't. You assume it's doing what you want but you can't know that unless you go over the code. If you really care about security, destroy the device when you're done with it. Bash it good and grind the pieces to powder.

I could have sworn that part of the deal Verizon negotiated when buying the 700Mhz spectrum was that they would not be allowed to interfere with LTE data transfers of unlimited customers when connected via 700Mhz LTE. What happened to that?

I can't wait to be done with Verizon. If a corporation could be diagnosed as insane, Verizon would be locked up. They're flaunting their new XLTE service, bragging about how fast you can move data then smacking down the small percentage of customers who are in a position to make use of that speed. I recently was in an area where I got 80/44 Mb/s but what good does that do anyone who has a data cap? That's psychotic to keep ramping up the speed and lowering caps.

I'm doing a bit of international travel this month and, when I tried to turn on global data, I couldn't do it thru he website unless I picked a "valid" domestic data plan and a "valid" domestic text plan. I had to contact customer service to get global data turned on and I'm sure I'll have to contact them again to turn it off. When I get back, I'm going to be resuming a long stretch of domestic travel and hotel/resort WiFi universally sucks sweaty donkey balls. I've been travelling around the US for nearly a year and I've stayed in less than half a dozen places that had usable internet. Most places have been less than half a meg down and even slower the other way. Barely able to load a frickin' web page. I've had several months during this trip where I've moved well over a hundred gigs thru my phone via tethering and I don't feel a bit bad about it. I've been paying them around $125/month for nearly 5 years and, for the first two years, I moved less than 10 gigs a month. For the second two years, I hung onto my unlimited plan in anticipation of needing it for this trip and moved less than a hundred megs during many of those billing cycles. Put up with the shittiest service in the area to keep that plan. Had to go outside to make and answer calls.

It was worth every penny of those 2 years to have the plan when I needed it but Verizon's sure not keeping my loyalty with this kind of crap. I was considering keeping it as a backup, continuing to pay $125/month as "internet insurance" once I stop travelling and settle down but I guess there's no point. I guess I'll just switch to whoever has decent local coverage at the lowest price.

"I can't get my computer to turn on."
"Can you make sure it's plugged in?"
"I'll try but it's really dark."
"Do you have a flashlight?"
"No. I've been trying to find one ever since the power went out."

The talk of needing to find a loaded A2000 to make it worth buying reminds me of the old Iris 3130 I picked up for a couple hundred way way back in the day. When I popped the cover, it was absolutely loaded. Every slot filled. Ribbon cables strung everywhere,blinkenlites flashing. If there was an expensive card for the 3130, it was in there. What a beast. It was named bigiron.sgi.com. :)

"Go for it!" Followed seconds later by the destruction of my friend's car. Poor thing didn't deserve to go out like that.