asciilifeform: and wonders like fidonet will return from the grave.
asciilifeform: paradoxically, a return of the era when you must beg/borrow/steal genuine net access from employers, universities - could actually end 'eternal september.'
asciilifeform: so long as arsebook, skype, etc. work
asciilifeform: arsenet is coming, because the average luser doesn't really insist on being able to open an arbitrary tcp connection from wherever to wherever
asciilifeform: living in usa, i admit i'm rather surprised that it is 2014 and i'm not yet forced to pay $500/mo to get something other than ArsebookNet
asciilifeform: because these are the only kind where the shit might fly
asciilifeform: their existence in at least one is a proven fact
asciilifeform: MarieLynn: no time to study << at american unis, there are special fake classes for athletes. with no attendance checks, homework, or exams...
asciilifeform: (cheated. kicked usenet habit, a few yrs. before he died)
asciilifeform: mike_c: well, eventually he got down to 0 words.
asciilifeform: ey got paid. They did eventually reappear, so there may be some merit to this theory. With the gaping manholes positioned throughout the city like so many anteater traps for cars, you had the choice of driving either very slowly and carefully, or very fast, and betting your life on the proper functioning of the shock absorbers. '
asciilifeform: 'Having bits of the landscape disappear can be a rude surprise. One summer I arrived in St. Petersburg and found that a new scourge had descended on the land while I was gone: a lot of manhole covers were mysteriously missing. Nobody knew where they went or who profited from their removal. One guess was that the municipal workers, who hadn't been paid in months, took them home with them, to be returned once th
asciilifeform: accumulating equity for fully employed commuters who shop at the now defunct nearby mall. After the mortgages are foreclosed and the properties repossessed, what more is there to do, except board it all up and let it rot? Well, what has been developed can be just as easily undeveloped.'
asciilifeform: 'Russia's post-collapse economy was for a time dominated by one type of wholesale business: asset stripping. To put it in an American setting: suppose you have title, or otherwise unhindered access, to an entire suburban subdivision, which is no longer accessible by transportation, either public or private, too far to reach by bicycle, and is generally no longer suitable for its intended purpose of housing and
asciilifeform: accumulating equity for fully employed commuters who shop at the now defunct nearby mall. After the mortgages are foreclosed and the properties repossessed, what more is there to do, except board it all up and let it rot? Well, what has been developed can be just as easily undeveloped.'
asciilifeform: 'Russia's post-collapse economy was for a time dominated by one type of wholesale business: asset stripping. To put it in an American setting: suppose you have title, or otherwise unhindered access, to an entire suburban subdivision, which is no longer accessible by transportation, either public or private, too far to reach by bicycle, and is generally no longer suitable for its intended purpose of housing and
asciilifeform: basic course on russian privatization. 'your formerly state-issued flat is now yours. you are a millionaire!' - 'neato. but my salary hasn't been paid in a year. gotta buy something to eat. what does dinner cost?' - 'half a million.'☟︎
asciilifeform: decimation: the asset-stripping thing is only a secret from u.s. schoolchildren
asciilifeform: when the choice becomes 'pay tax and starve' vs. 'live, off the books'
asciilifeform: decimation: end of the line. the train gets there eventually.
asciilifeform: if everybody in a given field is on the dole, what does that suggest about the field?
asciilifeform: TestingUnoDosTre: quite a few folks in russia are pining for the (distant) possibility of proper sanctions. where usa takes its pernicious cultural, economic exports and goes home.
asciilifeform: decimation: the system is capped by the intelligence of the dumbest contributor. which would be, typically... 10,000 people? there's bound to be a turdmeister.
asciilifeform: 'remove xxx to build new ver. xxx' won't build. spend a week to get a working box again.'
asciilifeform: for users of 'source' linux flavours, e.g. gentoo, the comical picture above is daily reality.
asciilifeform: known, i think, even to u.s. schoolboys
asciilifeform: he was a legitimate EE prof at MIT << profs. bolt, beranek, and newman quit to do... neat stuff. today, they leave to become spammers. 'that's where the money is.'
asciilifeform: they'd be carefully marked with a crib sheet for the 'correct' measurement.
asciilifeform: decimation: for some reason, this reminds me of a tale my consulting partner (physicist, grew up in india, 1970s) told me. students would qualify on instruments that barely worked, but belonged, to, e.g. the great Bose.☟︎
asciilifeform: plastic in the sense of a trash bag i once had the misfortune to keep some machines in - that fell into ten thousand pieces
asciilifeform: other nitpick - welfare cheques give us - plastic forks; vc money pissing bacchanalia gives us plastic programming systems, plastic internet, etc.
asciilifeform: decimation: there is more than one way to fight
asciilifeform fondly remembers measuring little tubes of bovine albumin to mix in cell culture medium.
