America...
America...
America, FUCK YEAH!
Coming again, to save the mother fucking day yeah,
America, FUCK YEAH!
Freedom is the only way yeah,
Terrorist your game is through cause now you have to answer too,
America, FUCK YEAH!
So lick my butt, and suck on my balls,
America, FUCK YEAH!
What you going to do when we come for you now,

If so, there is someone in the IT department who has to swear under penalty of perjury that the entire network, and every device connected to it, is PCI compliant. And he's on the hook for any mistakes he allows. And he cannot possibly know your server is PCI compliant if he has no access to it. You are literally expecting him to break the law, and putting your employer at risk for considerable liability (if they say they're PCI compliant, and there's a breach, and it turns out they're not - and the presence of your server on the network that the IT people can't access at all is, itself, non-compliance). In fact, if they're non-compliant, they are liable without limit for all costs related to the investigation, and all damages resulting from the breach. And the average breach adds up to six figures in costs. This can put a company out of business.

Were you employed at the company I work for (and I run the IT department), you probably wouldn't be any more. If I were feeling generous, you might be given exactly one chance to remove the server until such time as I, personally, could verify that it is compliant (and the requirements are pretty strict if it's visible to the internet, as they should be). If you made much of a stink about it, you'd be at risk of criminal prosecution. If any actual damage resulted, I would certainly push for criminal charges.

It's not your network. It is the property of the company, and they have designates someone else to be in charge of it.

Apple stopped being a software company when the iPhone because the hottest ticket in the geek market.

You can see the same effect in book readers. The Kindle still dominates the market, but the Barnes & Noble nook is coming on fast, quickly capturing a large segment of the market. It's a comparable product (though the color nook is significantly more capable, and $100 more), but you can buy a nook at your local book store and walk out with it - after playing with one to see if you like it - and they have a trained staff for the product line who are helpful, knowledgeable and friendly. And if there's a problem, especially a warranty problem, they'll trade the bad unit out over the counter, instead of waiting several days for UPS to catch up with the manufacturer's marketing hype.

I think it's a lot more than just having their own stores, and the cult-like following Apple has is a big part of it. But that cult-like following comes, in part, from having local stores, too. No amount of marketing hype can fake good customer service.

They plan to make money selling books, not book readers. The more readers they sell, the cheaper each one is to manufacture, and the more readres they sell. People who root aren't very likelyt o buy books, but the cheaper the price, the more people who will buy books will buy readers.

Plus, B&N are a brick & mortar store, and always have been. Unlike Amazon, where having employees dealing one on one with customers is an expense to be minimized, at B&N, it's the whole point.

If I own two paper books, I can loan one to a friend while I read the other. If I have to ebooks on my Kindle, I cannot read one while I loan the Kindle to a friend. They are inherently different.

It helps when you have a reputation among your friends of being highly amused by being able to sarcastically taunt them for doing something stupid, like keeping critical business records on a home PC with no backup plan. It helps even more when they finally realize that $2500 for data recovery on two failed drives is actually a fair price for the clean room work being done.

It also helps if you can set up an easy to use backup system for them.

In the mind of those who would call such a person a troll, it is literally inconceivable (and yes, it means what I think it means) that anyone could disagree with them without being literally insane or profoundly stupid. They're Right (with a capital R), after all, just ask them, and how could anyone possibly disagree with you when you're Right?

In short, YHBT (You Have Been Trolled).

I know you are, but what am I?

"Arguing on the internet is like competing in the Special Olympics. You might win, but you're retarded."

To use his example, here's how a real troll works:

"Perl rocks my socks and Python sucks balls, LOL. Python programmers are incompetent imbecile losers, ROTFL"

"Why do you feel that Python is so bad? What do you find wrong with it?"

"Python sucks because you're stupid and suck donkey dick."

"Yes, Perl is a nice language, and I agree that Python has its downsides and/or trade-offs in comparison to Perl."

"Python sucks because you're stupid and suck donkey dick."

"It's OK to prefer Perl, we'll still accept you here."

"Python sucks because you're stupid and suck donkey dick."

A real troll isn't invested in what he (and it almost always is a he) says. His sole goal is to piss you off. To provoke a response. Any response. Any tactic is acceptable, so long as it provokes a response.

I've seen the equivalent to this:

"Perl rocks my socks and Python sucks balls, LOL. Python programmers are incompetent imbecile losers, ROTFL"

"I agree. Python sucks."

"Python rocks my socks and Perl sucks balls, LOL. Python programmers are incompetent imbecile losers, ROTFL"

I've done that, in fact, and not from the victim's end of it. I once started a good sized flamewar by calling myself stupid. I've had people argue with Pee Wee Herman quotes for weeks at a time. My most glorious achievement had a guy arguing with "I know you are, but what am I" and completely blank replies in rec.arts.sf.written for eight months. That particular food product (I do like to play with my food, why do you ask?) reminded me a lot of this clown.

Here's my advice, from years of amusing myself by trolling usenet:

1) You cannot win. Ever. No matter what. The only way to not lose is to not play.

2) You cannot stop a troll. Ever. No matter what. You cannot shame him in to silence. You cannot threaten him in to silence. You cannot keep him from access, because the days of news admins who give a shit are long gone (and even when they did, they were more sympathetic to the trolls than people stupid enough to argue with them). The only way to not lose is to not play.

3) If you care, you have already played, and therefore you have already lost. The only way to not lose is to not play.

4) It doesn't matter. It really doesn't. No troll has ever convinced anybody of anything. No one will ever hate Python because some troll said it sucked. The only possible effect of engaging a troll, at all, ever, is to make yourself look stupid to everyone who doesn't, including people who agree with you. The only way to not lose is to not play.

5) The only response that isn't stupid and insane is, in fact, to not feed the troll. Ignore them. If you don't have the willpower to simply not read their drivel, killfile them, block them, whatever. Do the same with anyone who responds to them. The only way to not lose is to not play.

And in case I haven't mentioned it:

  The only way to not lose is to not play.

So, what's the ratio of criminals to honest ads?

Pretty poor, actually. Don't confuse "ads which are not involved with the crimes mentioned in this article" with "honest ads." In some sections (like the entire personals section), pretty much all ads are in some way criminal. Most of it is ads for fake dating web sites (and if you post a real ad, pretty much all the responses will be the same). The rest are hookers who don't have Adult Services any more. (And the people who run CL must know it. They allow identical posts, dozens a day, by the same spammers, which normal people aren't allowed to do. At least 25% of all the personals ads are identical, word for word copies of other ads.) The housing section isn't that much better any more (though it's still better than pretty much any other web site). I gather the jobs section is still usable, but gigs seems to be populated entirely by people with the IQ of a rotten cabbage.

CL stopped being particularly useful several years ago.

If CL were that valuable a law enforcement tool, one might expect the crime rates to go down, not up, over time.

Fact is, there's literally nothing left but spam and fraud on CL. The hookers and fake dating web sites are so ubiquitious that you can't even find the murderers.

Note that Form 1500 is still applicable, no matter what. (Also note that, while the form refers to offensive sexually oriented advertising, the law says that the definition of what is offensive is at the sole disecretion of the recipient, and the courts have ruled that the law means what it says. IIRC, the ruling said explicitly that if the homeowner found a dry goods catalog offensive, then for purposes of that law, it was offensive, and that was that.)

There used to be a sort of club in alt.peeves that got customer loyalty cards from grocery stores and such, usually in names like Joseph Stalin or Adolph Hitler, used them for a while, then mailed them on to someone else in another state. They'd try to buy the oddest combination of stuff with them they could think of, too, like popcicles and tampons, because one of the major uses for loyalty cards is to track what stuff is bought with what other stuff, in order to plan store layouts.