It happened once again. After this round of mass downmodding, I haven't been able to post from this account for about 2 weeks. The email complaint that the posting denial page gives is useless. Well, that is unless an editor is behind the mass down modding. That wouldn't surprise me because much seeing how the down mods are coming in at something like 10 and 15 at a time. I know some mod points are awarded at 10 instead of five and editors have unlimited points. I guess it's either a pissed off editor abusing their power because he or she cannot win an argument on the facts or a tightly knitted group of idiots who think quieting anything apposing their viewpoints is somehow winning an argument.

Oh well, it's ok, I can still post from my other accounts and have done so since the down modding. It's sort of interesting that almost identical posts under other accounts are either modded up or untouched by moderation. This and the fact that the downmods all come within a day or so each time locks the entire mass modding just to quiet an apposing viewpoint theory. I remember when slashdot was about conversations not who can yell the loudest or stop someone else from being heard. And my points weren't all that controversial either, things like there is no reason why someone cannot separate science from religion and practice both within their respective natures without being stupid or ignorant, that evolution as in speciation is still just a theory and not an observed fact even though the evidence points to it being likely, and the last one was that just because it's written in the bible doesn't mean it's mandated to certain religions to do. Oh, and I forgot about the conversation with the guy who wasn't aware that Microsoft was a separate incorporated company from Microsoft's licensing division which is incorporated and operated in an entirely different state altogether. Of course with that last one, once the guy discovered that they were two separate companies being run as separate companies, he agreed with my original assertions that it would be difficult if not impossible for Washington to apply a tax on the MS licensing operations.

I find it funny that I'm constantly being group modded by trolls who seem to think that ruining someone's karma is a legitimate way to counter an argument they do not agree with. This is probably the tenth time since late '09 that I have received an attack on messages I have posted. This time, in less then 24 hours, I went from having no comments moderated at all on my comment page to comments posted over a week ago with no mods at all and comments posted a few days ago being modded down for reasons obviously counter to the mod claim.

As for being obviously counter to the modded claim, Here is a post modded redundant when it is explicitly addressing the person I replied to about his misunderstanding of the post I mentioned. Could someone please explain how replying to someone about their inaccurate understanding of a post is redundant? And it isn't like I fifteen other people corrected him either, it was a dialog specifically between me and another person who admitted to mistaking my post for saying something else.

Anyways, this has typically happened only after I comment to someone who is commenting on some sort of religion or evolution post who has it wrong in some way. Is it really that important to people who do not like religion or people who have placed evolution as their religion the they need to take steps like this in order to suppress opposition to their wrongful opinions? I mean it's not like I'm saying Creation is correct or anything, I'm generally pointing out that they are doing the same things they blame the religions of doing when they make absolute statements about Evolution being an undisputed fact instead of composed scientific theory or when they have some sort of incorrect interpretation of the bible or whatever. I find it's typically easy to trip them up when I ask if anything could come along and make evolution different as in for our understanding of speciation or common descendant thoughts. When they say no, then it's obvious they are not following science because science allows for that regardless of how improbable it might be. For instance, the posts I believe that started this round of mass down-modding stems from some idiot who reposted a bunch of nonsense from a few websites about a few bibles verses they found and then took everything out of context in order to create some demonesque image of God. There are plenty of verses in the bible which one can legitimately question the compassion or loving nature of a god, but to take something completely out of context in order to make your point is a little intellectually lazy as well as dishonest.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised about the down-modding. When dealing with idiots who want to cite a few verses and ignore the context before and after it (whether they are for or against the bible) and draw completely one sided conclusions that do not remotely fit the story context, we aren't really dealing with articulate or intelligent people. It really does seem that the less intelligent the person is, the more dirty and underhanded shenanigans you should expect from them and like minded people. Maybe slashdot should have a system for their mods where someone could complain about the mass modding or a script that checks mods made to a single account within a certain time frame and then flag the comments for further review. It wouldn't need to be anyone special reviewing it either, just make sure they come up for metta moderation.

There is a time when everything you prepare for comes true and you find it still lacking. Recently with the ice and Snow storms, A remote site I do IT work with suffered some power outages. The battery backups held, the Generator kicked over and the only problem was that we needed to change to hold time before the generator shuts off after power was restored to around 10 minutes instead of 5 because of failed attempts from the power company lasting only 6 or 7 minutes.

Anyways, things went down hill from there, the phones went out but we still had internet. A T1 line that somehow is routed from another direction then the regular phone lines. Verizon isn't able to set up VoIP or run the phones through the T1 in the area so the 6 lines were completely dead even though we still had the T1 working. I had a backup plan though, we have the 800 number forwarded to the home office of the owner and used VoIP that I connected with a Asterix to forward some calls and a VPN to run programs and all. This worked well the first two days but now the T1 is out and Verizon is telling me that it won't be until Monday (I talked to them last on friday morning) before they can do anything about it. We do have a business contract with them that states something about 24 hour turn around for techs but it appears the problem is something like a Tree fell through the CO and they have some major repairs they need to do before anything between me and them will make a difference.

So off to plan C, we hacked together a cell phone amplifier using a combination of a mobile amp I use in my truck and a internal building amplifier kit that was used at another site I administrate until they relocated and I scavenged the equipment and got cell phone service in pretty good shape at the facility. It normally has spotty reception but between the two kits, we got all the major services covered and started using employee phones as "extensions" by answering the 800 number being forwarded to the owners cell phone and then doing a call back from an employees phone at our expense. This went swimmingly for about 3 hours until the cell towers took a total dump in the area. Apparently, it has been going on and off and with our spotty reception, we didn't notice it.

For now, we have "voice mail" at Verizon's facility giving a message describing the problems and people two towns away checking the voice mail and doing call backs but they are severely limited because the computers and data can't be transferred without disrupting what little in house work that can be done and without internet access, we can't even sync the data. Last I heard, someone was going to run price sheets and availability requests ever couple of hours until something comes back on line.

I've done everything I can think of outside of using the CB radio which would limit what we could do anyways because I couldn't legally put enough power across them to connect the sites as well as transmitting personal information. I need to know, is there something like that in which I can use a radio or something for relatively cheap when all else fails like this? We can't even get emergency services in the area without driving 6-8 miles away on a still snow covered and icy road that twists and turns quite a bit so I hope no one has a heart attack and nothing catches on fire.

I'm thinking there has to be something that could be done using radios of some sort. Another Client uses parts of the 800mhz spectum for county services and they have the ability to send data as well as patch calls from the office to the radio in the vehicles. But, they are a government office and their equipment costs quite a bit. What I would need is something that I can either send data over in a protected way to give network access like a VPN or to carry "phone lines" from about 20 miles away where the phones actually work to the office. They will probably lose about 250-300 grand in sales if the phones or something close to it goes back up by Monday morning. Cost is an issue but there is no need not to expect to spend money- especially when public safety is involved. However, we can't be doing a million dollar investment or anything like that for a worsts case scenario situations. This is the first time I have had it get this bad. I have a truck that I can mount an antenna mast on for the remote location, fixing an antenna at the site won't be a problem, I can be hidden in the trees on the back side of a hill.

Any thoughts on what else could be done? It doesn't have to be something to cover this situation but I feel lost when I can't pull a rabbit out of my hat and make everyone smile. I'm not against looking into different radio tech myself but I think for what we need, I would have to get licensed at both places which makes a mobile state sort of hard to accomplish, I'm pretty sure I would have to purchase a channel or channels to operate on, and I'm not even close to knowing what would be needed as far as equipment goes or what the terminology to use when asking. I'm not even sure if I can get the speeds needed to accomplish what I want from radio either.

Another thought I had was using dry wire or the lines used to remote alarm system monitoring and patching voice over it with an Asterix box or something. It doesn't depend on power from the CO and is supplied by the customer much like an ISDN line. I think it can be connected point to point similarly to a T1 but without the need for the equiptment on the telco side of life. I'm still not positive on that though. However, I'm afraid it might have been effected by the same issues that the CO has with the tree and all knocking everything out. I'm not sure there is equipment was damages or if it was just power issues though.

I was looking over my firewall logs and I have noticed that Slashdot is doing port scan on my ip adress. Or at least that's what my firewall thinks. I'm thinking what the fuck is this. It is coming from 66.35.250.150 .

I wonder if they let the site get infected with something or I pissed one of the ops off. It would be severely foolish if it was something intentional. Who or whatever it is, it seems to happen shortly after I cease activity on the site.

Wow, I have been making some observations that the stories on slashdot have been comming in politicly slanted leading into the fall elections. I made some of these observations known in several posts.

Now recently, I have been locked out of commenting on several threads. Not by being modded down, Not by being labeled as a troll and getting those too many comments from you subnet ordeal. But by something on the systems stoping me from seeing a reply button in those threads. I have as few pages in a tab that let me post to the stories by when going into the user's post section of the profile or checking email notifications I cannot reply.

Now I though maybe the the story has been locked or something even though it has only be one day. So i checked it from another computer not logged in. It let me post anonymously. So I called a friend and asked him to post something to one of my posts, Sure enough it posted. So I went to his house, Logged in as my user name and poof- no reply button.

I'm sure my comments that the democrats have been already making statments that they won't be able to do much of what they claimed when running for office. Things like the war in Iraq, different survailence programs and such. My position is they are doing this now because they are either going to wait until 2008 and claim we need the presidency to maek a difference or they actualy cannot do much of what they campaigned on. Of course in the later, It means they told the voters "i will do this" when they knew they couldn't and are probably afraid pointing it out now won't look too good in 2008. The previous means they aren't going to try anything major so they can keep it as an issue in 2008. Either way, My comments of things won't be too different because they won't change to much is true.

So, I am writing this because some one in a position of power at slashdot has back doored my comments that are critical of the democrats expected performance after winning the elections. I am wondering how long this will last. My karma is rated as "excellent". Non of the usual too many complain messages have appeared- nothing except not being able to find a reply button on any of the messages associated with the threads I posted in concerning the democrats. And they apear if i'm not logged on or logged on as a different use.