An explanation

Many of you have written in to complain that yesterday's post by Dak did not conform to the GNU Public Dictatorship's style guide.  At the GPD we are nothing if not consistent, which is why we are deeply sorry that the lack of consistency in the post caused some of you angst.  At the same time, we feel it would be unfair to judge Dak based on one post, and we feel that you should all know a little about him.

Dak Mueller was born in a small house outside No Name, Colorado in 1976.  The day and month are lost to history, but we were able to confirm that it preceded the election of Jimmy Carter as President of the United States by at least two weeks.  His parents were employed at the Glenwood Canyon Resort, and he was often able to see the dangers of brads as those who carried them often ended up puncturing their river rafts.  When he discovered the GNU Public Dictatorship in the early 1990s he quickly organized a community organization to stop the spread of brads in the area, and was quite successful.

Unfortunately, Dak was involved in an accident caused by a driver using a hole punch instead of paying attention, and he was left in a coma for several days.  Upon emerging from the coma it was discovered that Dak had recovered nearly completely, but that for some reason he would insert the phrase "I am Dak" in written and spoken communication with alarming frequency.  He is currently receiving therapy to reduce the number of times he inserts that phrase, but we would like to let you know that you should cut him a little slack and not get too upset if his communications feel a little rough to you.  If he does become a member of the Board of Dictators we will certainly provide him with an editor that will help reduce the frequency of his signature phrase!

Guest Writer: Dak Mueller

Greetings, supporters of the GNU Public Dictatorship.  I am Dak, and I have some information for you.  Most of you have been following the mysterious messages we received last month, and we have been receiving inquiries about the subject for the last few weeks.  I am Dak, and I have been authorized to share with you what the GNU Public Dictatorship's operatives have found in their investigations.

Operatives were able to reach "Natasha" a few days after the GPD received the strange communications, but she was unwilling to comment on the messages, which is why the investigation expanded elsewhere.  I am Dak, and I can tell you that yesterday "Natasha" made contact with the GPD and let them know that she was not involved in the churro note, but that the message encoded on the applications that showed a representation of a churro was from her, and she congratulated the GPD on finding the message when it did.  Apparently she has been very bored lately and decided that she could have some fun by hiding a message and watching what happened.  I am Dak, and I can tell you that she had expected the GPD to fail to decode the message, and that she was trying to decide whether to take responsibility for several weeks now.  The GPD is not sure yet why she decided to come forward now, but they are pleased that part of the mystery is solved.  There remain at least two more mysteries, however:

1. Why is "Natasha" so bored?
2. Who sent the churro note?

I am Dak, and I am authorized to say that the GPD will let you all know when they have satisfactory information!

The Finalists

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not pleased to announce the names of the finalists in this year's "election."  It is difficult to choose among such well-qualified applicants, but we have used all of the resources at our disposal to whittle the list down, including automated resume scanners, fraud detection algorithms, sleep number verification systems, panels of experts, and ask.com (although ask.com was uncharacteristically unhelpful when we asked it which candidate it recommended.  In fact, it started providing references to sites with titles such as "Electoral fraud."  We are disappointed with ask.com's performance in this task, and may have to ask it to either attend some training or seek a new position).  Here are this year's finalists:

- Dak Mueller of No Name, Colorado, USA.  Dak has been involved in the GNU Public Dictatorship's community outreach programs since the late 1990's, and has been instrumental in preventing brads and hole punches from reaching his community.  His application for membership in the Board of Dictators is one of the neatest we have ever seen.
-Jill Quispe Gonzalez Noot, of Biddinghuizen in the Netherlands.  Jill has a colorful history that she will hopefully share with you all.  It wouldn't be doing her justice to try to explain it in a single paragraph.
-Eero Smith of Stony Mountain, Alberta, Canada.  Eero's essays really stood out and made up for his lack of formal training in the arts of propaganda and control of world events.

That's it for this year.  As you can see, all three are from smaller towns this year, a trend that we found interesting but could not explain.  We are glad to have such qualified candidates and look forward to their biographical sketches and attempts at post to this forum!

"Natasha"

After some careful forensic analysis of the dry erase markers sent to us last week, we have concluded that "Natasha" did indeed handle them at some point, but we have not been able to conclude whether she sent them to us, or whether they were intended as a restitution for her treacherous acts.  At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not unsatisfied by ambiguity, so we will continue to exert our efforts to discover who is behind this and the secret churro messages, and to determine whether they are related or not.

Many of you, our loyal supporters, have written to us requesting that we explain a little about "Natasha" and her service to the GPD and her relationship with "Edgar".  While we will endeavor to give a portrait of her, however, we are not at liberty to discuss all of the details of her work for the Board of Dictators and there are some gaps in our understanding of what has occurred since she married "Edgar".

"Natasha" was one of our best operatives.  She was born in difficult circumstances in the Middle East, but because of some services that were rendered by her parents she was brought to the United States of America as a young girl.  She was trained at the best operative schools available, and graduated near the top of her class.  We would love to tell you where in the Middle East, where in the United States, or which schools, but to tell you would compromise some of our other best operatives, so we won't do so now.

At some point while "Natasha" was working undercover at the Parent Corporation/UBHP she became addicted to evil office products and became romantically involved with the then-CEO "Edgar".   We found "Edgar" passed out and sequestered  him in a reality simulator, and used "Natasha" to figure out his true motives.  "Natasha" apparently valued "Edgar" more than her work with us, and, to make a long story short, she helped him escape and married him, and then joined in his attempts to achieve what he termed Rule by "Edgar".  She did occasionally join us in missions against evil office products, but she was not nearly so valuable as she had been before.

"Natasha" opposed all of "Edgar's" efforts to join with us when he applied for membership in the Board of Dictators, which disappointed us greatly.  At this point we decided that "Natasha" was no longer a good World Citizen, and we put her on our list of people to imprison should we get a chance.  Not much later she returned the dry erase markers she had taken when she left and apparently tried to normalize relations, but then her husband took over as CEO of the New Company, and relations have been strained again.

From what we know, "Natasha" is still a very bright and capable operative and would be an asset to any cause she embraces, but her loyalty is in serious doubt.  She may be reaching out to us again now, but the offers are so vague and the message so unclear that we will simply have to wait and see.

Restitution?

In our mail today we received 34 boxes of dry erase markers, which, although it may not initially sound significant, is the exact number of dry erase markers that our former operative "Natasha" absconded with when she left us to join "Edgar".  At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not cautious, which is why we won't be able to say that this is an overture from "Natasha" until we get the forensic analysis of the markers and the packaging or until we see anything further from "Natasha", but along with the rumors that "Edgar" and "Natasha" are having difficulties there are clearly indications that "Natasha" may be attempting to reach out for help.  She already returned the dry erase markers she took, but we are having trouble deciding why we would receive 34 boxes at this time.  Our current thought is that she is trying to reach out to us and mend the bridges she so cruelly burned.  Either that, or she or someone else just wants us to think that she is attempting a restitution.  We'll let you know when we know more.

More information about the churro note

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not grateful for the alertness of our supporters, which was responsible this time for returning the remainder of the mysterious note to our offices last night.  Loyal supporter Francine Ewart turned it in at her local GPD offices along with an explanation that she had bought a churro earlier that day and that she had found it wrapped in part of a note, the significance of which she had failed to recognize until she read our post yesterday.  Here is the note (again, where readable):

                                                                    ng
at his wife, "Na     " as she is cle     nhap  
I will send more     s when I can

It doesn't answer all of the questions, but it does suggest that perhaps the applications had their origin in our former operative "Natasha" and not in her husband "Edgar."  They also suggest that we may get more notes, so we will be sure to consume our usual churros on schedule just in case!

A secret note

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not thrilled that we are making so much progress towards the New Future, which is why we are planning festivities to coincide with the US holiday of Thanksgiving to get together and review just how far we have come.  For details, please consult your local GPD offices.

On another (literal) note, we recently received communication that we found very interesting, to say the least.  We were taking a churro break from our Board Meetings, when we discovered that one of the churros was wrapped with a note.  We have reproduced what we could read of the note below (there were several oily spots where the paper had been destroyed beyond our ability to reconstruct it on the spot, but we will continue to study the note in our labs):

Esteemed Members of the GNU Publi   ictatorship's Board of Dictators:
It has come to my attention that you h      ecently received a series    applications
for membersh  p in the Board of Dictato   that together form a picture of a churro.
It has also co    o my attention that you believe the applications to from from
you rival "E       who is bent on destroying you.  This note is to l          know that
you are sadly    staken as to the origin of this message and that yo     ld be looki

Unfortunately, the note appears to have been torn at this point and we were unable to recover the rest of the note from the churro stand we were patronizing at the time.  This mysterious note does appear to provide some information about the odd applications, but it raises several new questions, such as:

• Who wrote the note?  Unfortunately it was printed using a very common laser printer, but our chemists were able to find that "compatible toner" was used, so perhaps we can narrow the field that way.
• Why would the author of the note not want us to investigate "Edgar" as the source of the applications in question?
• Why would the author of the note hide it on a churro but not ensure that the entire note reaches us?
• Did the author of the note send the secret churro message in the applications?

Our investigations into the mysterious message are proceeding, but as of yet "Edgar" has not admitted or denied involvement, and you can rest assured that we won't rest until we have gotten to the bottom of this mystery.

89 Aliases and Churros

We reported last week that "Edgar" has applied to be a member of the GNU Public Dictatorship's Board of Dictators under at least 83 different aliases, and at the GNU Public Dictatorship we are pleased to announce that our analysis of the applications is now complete, and that our statisticians can say with a fair amount of certainty that "Edgar" used exactly 89 aliases, in addition to his real name.  On 83 of those aliases the sleep number and Tetris high score were identical, which led to our initial suspicions.  As most of you know, the odds of having the same sleep number as another individual is fairly low, as are the odds of sharing a Tetris high score.  The probability of sharing both is so low that it is believed there are only a handful of small groups of people in the world who can honestly claim that distinction.  The odds of having a group of 83 people in one of these groups AND all of these applying for membership in the GPD's Board of Dictators is so ridiculously low that we had to believe that "Edgar" was intentionally playing at something, and until today we weren't sure just what.  Luckily, we had our corps of artists examine the applications in question and we discovered that when placed in a set of grids (with placement determined by month and day of birth of the alias) the grids of the pages of the applications form an ASCII-art picture of a churro.  The grids were assembled into a master grid with 30 pages on each side.  Since each application contains 10 pages and 30x30 is 900, we expected 90 applications from "Edgar".  At this point it was a simple matter of finding which other applications best completed the pictures, and when we found them we knew that "Edgar" had used 89 aliases in addition to his own name.

We're not sure quite yet what the message "Edgar" intends to convey with this elaborate artwork, but we will continue to study it to find out if there are other hidden messages, and we have sent an ambassador to meet with "Edgar" to see if he will just tell us what he meant.

A surprise

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not difficult to surprised, but we must say that it was a great surprise to learn the "Edgar" applied for membership in the Board of Dictators again this year.  Actually, that wasn't the great surprise, as we know that "Edgar" is bent on world domination any way he can get it.  The real surprise was that he applied under at least 83 distinct aliases.  Our application review process quickly noticed that the sleep numbers and Tetris high scores were the same on all 83 applications, which led us to further investigation.  We're not sure if that was meant to try to get a callback or as another denial-of-service attack, but we are sorry to inform him (and other applicants) that more applications does not increase your chances of being chosen in a GPD "election".  We have reviewed this case and we will still review "Edgar's" original application in the interest of good will.

"Elections" review

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not fascinated by statistics, so we were eager to hear what our statisticians said about the submissions for the GPD election that closed over the weekend.  Apparently we have 35.6% more submissions than two years ago, and the average initial quality of the applicants is up 10.31% from 887.1 to 978.56.  This is good news, and it means we have a better chance of finding the right candidate this year!  As in previous years, candidates will be asked to take a chance posting on this forum, and we will likely reproduce pieces of their essay responses.  I know I'm looking forward to it!

The New Company's latest strategy

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not dedicated to destroying the evil New Company and all of its affiliates, and we have made some great progress of late.  Although we know there are but few of you, for those who haven't been visiting their local County offices over the last few months we will summarize our accomplishments here.

1. We were able to contain the "Cabbage (Patch?) Kids" outbreak in eastern Asia.  As it turns out it wasn't the New Company behind it, but we did find that some sources that contribute money to the New Company were involved, and we have added those organizations to our list of affiliates of the New Company.
2. We did not capitulate to "Edgar's" demands that we step aside and let him rule the world. Instead we increased our efforts.  The recent PBJ DDoS attack was apparently "Edgar's" attempt to punish us for not stepping aside.  It appears that the attack took enough resources that the New Company hasn't launched other major projects for months
3. The New Company is reducing its brad and hole punch output, much as "Edgar" said they would.  It appears that, as he said, he is not so much bent on evil office products as on world domination.  Perhaps we can work with him after all.
4. The Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch and the Reformed Brotherhood of the Hole Punch have moved to a series of small islands off the California coast where they believe they will be left to worship the hole punch according to the dictates of their consciences without our interference.  As a gesture of good will, we have signed an agreement with them that if they don't evangelize beyond their islands, we won't oppose them.  So far the agreement has held.

In general, then, the GPD is in a fairly good situation. While we still have some organizations out there actively promoting evil office products (the Brad Guys, the UBHP and RBHP) and we still have a worthy rival in "Edgar" we are holding our own and gaining ground.  Make no mistake, we aren't saying that we have won, and we know that "Edgar" probably has a million plans up his sleeve, but we have been able to broker some very interesting political deals all over the world and are very active in laying the foundations of the New Future, which we hope will come sooner rather than later.  If all of you remain vigilant we're sure it will come sooner!

"Elections" deadline coming up very soon!

As we sort through the results of the US elections, we at the GNU Public Dictatorship are nothing if not grateful that our "elections" are different.  If you missed our post last week, please look it up, and don't forget to apply by November 8, 2014, at midnight UTC!

PBJ DDoS: A FAQ

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not pleased that our supporters have been submitting many questions about the PBJ DDoS, which is why we have decided to take the time to publish this FAQ for you.  If you don't find an answer to your question here, please contact us or your local GPD office.

Q. What is a PBJ DDoS attack?  Does it have to do with peanut butter and jelly?

A.  Unfortunately there is no peanut butter or jelly involved in a PBJ DDoS, which stands for Paper-Based Junkmail Distributed Denial-of-Service attack.

Q. What is the goal of a DoS attack?

A. The idea in any Denial-of-Service attack is to keep some person or organization from providing its legitimate services by overwhelming its service mechanism.  This sort of attack has often been used about companies' websites.

Q. How does a DoS attack work?

A. A simple Denial-of-Service attack is much like a two-year-old constantly saying "Mom!" every few seconds.  After several hours of this behavior the mother is usually so stressed out that she just ignores legitimate requests from the two-year-old or from others.  It can be easily solved, however, by putting the child down for a nap.  In network terms, a simple Denial-of-Service attack can be easily blocked by ignoring requests from a certain requester.

Q. How does a DDoS attack work?

A. A Distributed Denial-of-Service attack is more like a group of two-year-old children at a daycare all yelling for attention at once.  The primary difference here is that the effort required to stop the attack is much greater, as putting fifteen children down for a nap is much harder than putting a single child to bed.

Q. How does a PBJ DDoS attack work?

A.  Most DDoS attacks currently target websites or network infrastructure.  A Paper-Based Junkmail Distributed Denial-of-Service attack targets the physical mail infrastructure of an individual or organization.  While ignoring a few pieces of junkmail every day is a reasonable thing to do, ignoring 400,000 pieces of junkmail crafted to look like legitimate correspondence every day requires many more resources.

Q. Why did it take so long to recover from this massive PBJ DDoS attack?

A. The success of this most recent attack comes from several factors:

1. It was unprecedented.  Nobody in the field had even considered mounting this sort of attack due to its massive cost.
2. It was massive.  The quantity of mail received over the entire attack was extremely large.  While it started slowly to not arouse suspicion it soon became apparent that the attack was so large that we would have to shut our public-facing doors and clean up after the attack.  We have contingency plans for this sort of shutdown, so our operatives were able to keep the New Company in check in the meantime, but we were unable to bring our presence to bear on the problems facing the world.
3. It was sustained.  The attack lasted for several months.

At the GPD we are nothing if not disappointed with our response, which is why we have implemented protocols to prevent this sort of attack from succeeding in the future!

Daylight Saving

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not concerned with conservation of our resources, which is why we have been militant supporters of Daylight Saving.  As it turns out, however, we may have been too hasty, as the following analysis will show.  The goal of this post is to keep our supporters informed so that they will not realize too late that they have joined up to fight the wrong enemy.

The first thing to note is that daylight is not, as been widely reported, a non-renewable resource.  We initially doubted this claim, and sent for our scientists.  Even though they already believed that daylight was a renewable resource, they set up several experiments to help us understand it more fully.  These experiments all involved a long-term study of the intensity and duration of daylight and was adjusted for weather conditions.  As it turns out, our scientists were unable to design a single experiment that showed that our consumption of that daylight affected the future availability of that daylight, try as they might (they created 406,123 separate experiments).  In fact, what our scientists' experiments showed was that we have very little or no impact on how much daylight is present, and that seasonal variations and weather variations account for much of the difference.

The second thing to note is that daylight is not evenly distributed around the globe.  Some of you may have heard that the seasons are caused by the tilting of the earth's axis relative to its orbit around the sun, but you may be surprised to know that the amount of daylight received at any point on the earth's surface is correlated to the latitude of that location.  This results in an uneven distribution of daylight, meaning that, during winter, those in higher latitudes are often starved of daylight while those in lower latitudes are not subjected to such privations.  On the other hand, during summer the situation is reversed, with those in higher latitudes receiving excessive amounts of daylight.

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we find this inequality disturbing, and we had thought that by fighting for Daylight Saving we would be able to create a bank of daylight that could be used to redistribute the wealth, but, as you will see in the next paragraph, that is apparently not the case.

The third idea to note is that daylight cannot be stored and retrieved in any reasonable manner known to our scientists.  While we can convert the energy to other forms, such as electrical charges, and then convert that back into light, we have as yet been unable to convert it back into daylight.

Lastly, Daylight Saving Time doesn't even attempt to actually save daylight or redistribute it to those who need it most.  It doesn't attempt to store it for future needs, and it doesn't do anything to address the cyclical nature of daylight levels.  In fact, all that it does it to change what we call certain times of day in order to encourage us to change our behavior based on this label.  In short, it is poorly named.  It should be called something more like "Daylight Shifting Time" as it accomplishes little else.  We apologize for being led astray thinking that we were saving the environment, but we are grateful to our scientists who helped us discover our error before we has spent too much time supporting a cheap trick instead of investing in technologies that will actually store, transport, and restore daylight.  We're still trying our best on these technologies, and now that our scientists are freed up we may make swifter progress!

Some more information

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not grateful for your support, as the open source model demands the participation of all.  After our post yesterday about the Paper-Based Junkmail Distributed Denial of Service attack (PBJ DDoS) we received a great deal of information from you, helping us to fill in the missing details.

Many of you indicated that you had been recruited via paper mail to send letters on behalf of a mailing company, and that you had been promised that you would receive compensation for the materials.  All but a very few of our supporters ignored the letter and soon forgot about it.  A few of you, however, did as the letter suggested.  (Note: Our lawyers would like to point out that those who did as the letter suggested are more aptly labeled "former supporters" of "provisional supporters" as their lack of judgment in this case calls into question their fitness for the New Future)

Based on our research, it appears that the entity behind this campaign was none other than the New Company, and that they thought they would avoid our scrutiny by using nearly-obsolete paper mail.  They did use one of their sister companies to avoid the liability from the sure-to-come lawsuits, but it was clearly carried out on the orders of the New Company.  They appear to have purloined postage from several legitimate enterprises to send their solicitations, and they appear to have, not surprisingly, not paid any of their recruits.

The total cost to the New Company for this attack, then, was minimal.  They effectively distributed the postage cost to their recruits, and they even made the recruits use their own toner and paper to print the letters, essentially creating a botnet out of unsuspecting individuals around the world.  We had hoped that some of the letters had come from actual robots, but I guess we can't always get our way.  Here's hoping that next time someone launches a PBJ DDoS that it will use real robots!

A Paper-based Distributed Denial of Service Attack

In yesterday's post we alluded to "technical difficulties" that have kept us from posting regularly to this forum.  In fact, we hadn't been able to post here since August 22, 2014, and before that May 16, 2014.  This was not, unfortunately, by design.

In early May of this year our local GNU Public Dictatorship offices around the world began to report an elevated level of submissions via paper mail, and asked for some extra assistance getting through the correspondence.  Consistent with the GPD's operating guidelines, we began to distribute our staff around the world and asked them to help with the massive influx of paper mail.  This approach appeared to work quite well initially, and our posts continued as normal, but as the volume increased at local offices our staff became more and more spread out, and, unfortunately, the communication lines we normally use to keep this sort of attack from being effective were strained so much by the influx of paper mail that it began to break down.  During the weekend of May 16, 2014, these communications were completely cut off, but we didn't learn of the lapse in communications for another four days.  At that point, we switched gears into incident cleanup mode, but due to the volume of mail and the unfortunate distribution of our staff it took several months to get the lines of communication back up.

We believed we had stabilized the situation and we were able to post on August 22, 2014, but it soon became clear that another wave of attacks was just beginning.  This time we were much more prepared, but due to the nature of the communication we receive it became apparent that we couldn't just recycle all of the correspondence we had received.  It has taken the last two months to clean up the piles of paper mail we received and to simultaneously implement some controls to prevent this situation from occurring again.  At this point we believe we have the protocols in place to not be taken by surprise again.

We have learned several lessons from this attack, but the outstanding questions we are trying to adequately answer are:

1. Why would someone launch this attack, at such great expense to themselves as postage for billions of letters starts to get expensive?
2. How many people were involved?
3. Were the people involved part of a botnet?
4. Were the people involved actually robots?

We do know that the attack was a well-coordinated distributed denial-of-service attack, the likes of which are unprecedented in the world of paper mail, We will provide more detail as we get it!

"Elections" are coming up very soon!

As most of you are already aware, the "elections" to the GNU Public Dictatorship's Board of Dictators are coming up next month.  The deadline for applications to be considered is Saturday, November 8, 2014 at midnight UTC.  Due to some technical difficulties that will be expounded upon in future posts we have not been able to post about this in this forum, but, lest you complain about the short notice let us remind you that this information has been available at your local GPD County Offices for several months, and had you been a more active participant in world affairs you would have known about this earlier.

As a quick reminder, the "elections" to the Board of Dictators are not your typical democratic elections.  Instead they combine the best of democracy, the open-source movement, and the management practices that high-performing corporations and dictatorships employ and that universities use for admissions.  The first step is the application, which is about as democratic as it can get.  Anyone is welcome to submit an application, and there are no fees to process the application.  The next step is a thorough review of the applications.  The purpose of this review is to separate the "serious" applicants from those who are applying for the wrong reasons.  This is not, however, a thorough background check; it is more like a checksum or a consistency check on the application.  We don't verify that everything you say in your application is true and that you, the applicant, is who you say you are.  We simply verify that the application taken as a whole makes sense and appears to be complete.  Once the serious applicants are identified, the claims made in those applications are evaluated in depth.  During this evaluation the applicants are notified that they are being seriously considered for membership in the Board of Dictators, and various "tasks" are assigned to them and their performance evaluated.  These two steps are probably the third and fourth steps of the process, but they are so intertwined that it's hard to say which is the third and which is the fourth.  The fifth step, should it be necessary, is to take any applicants who have performed adequately on their "tasks" and whose claims are awesome enough to warrant it and to discuss them in a special formal meeting of the Board of Dictators.  If a qualified applicant is found and all members of the Board of Dictators agree that the applicant is a good match for the GPD, the applicant is made a provisional member of the Board of Dictators.  If they continue to perform adequately, they will be made full members of the Board of Dictators at some future time.

As you can all see, this process is clearly better than a simple "first past the post" election system, where voters are often asked to choose between terrible candidates but are not given the choice to say "none of the above."  At the GPD we are nothing if not dedicated to excellence!

Application materials are available here (note that they are the 2012 forms, which is okay as no applicants were "elected" during that cycle):

Version	Word	PDF
US	US2983-2012M	US2983-2012M
International	W2983-2012J	W2983-2012J

Unrest and unease

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not dedicated to a fair, equitable, and violence-free New Future, which is why we are exerting our influence to make things better.  Unfortunately, there are times when our efforts to improve your lives and ours sometimes require frustration, pain, or suffering from World Citizens.  Now is one of those times.  We have been working tirelessly to prepare the world to accept the Board of Dictators as the supreme rulers and benefactors, but in order to radically change the status quo we first have to shake up the current political organizations.

Some have called on us to stop the standoff between the US and its allies and Russia, others have given us a hard time for not having resolved the Syria situation or the rise to power of the ISIS movement in Syria and Iraq, and some have even criticized us for not ending the conflict in Gaza yet.  While it pains us to see any World Citizens suffer, any philosopher who isn't lying to himself would have to agree that the benefits to all of the world's people through the GPD outweigh the inconveniences suffered by the unfortunate.  Even Mr. Spock agreed that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

As with any great Cause, the New Future comes with a price.  As members of the Board of Dictators it pains us to see any suffering, but if we intervened in every such situation our computer models suggest that

• Our credibility would decrease, as human suffering is not wholly preventable.  While many of our efforts would be effective, those where we couldn't stop the suffering would reflect badly upon our organization, and serve to alienate potential supporters, making it less likely to succeed every time we intervened.
• Our carefully laid plans would come to naught as governmental organizations that have heretofore ignored us would start trying to make our ascent to power more difficult.
• Instead of welcoming the New Future we would constantly be patching holes in the Old Present.  There simply aren't enough of us yet to eliminate all of the world's suffering.

To be perfectly clear, we do intervene whenever we believe the threat to humanity outweighs the risks we undertake, and we always oppose those organizations that come out in open opposition to the GPD, but we cannot be held responsible for governments that can't seem to play nicely with each other.  In fact, perhaps their squabbles will serve to open doors for the GNU Public Dictatorship and improve all of humanity!

Another failed bank

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not cautious, which is why we have always recommended properly researching where to keep your money, lest you not find it there when you want it.  Unfortunately, many people don't check out the banks where they deposit their money, and we have another sad story to report, where someone lost US $40,000 in a bad investment in a couch.  When she began having health troubles, her family decided to donate the couch to charity, as she wouldn't be needing it.  Fortunately, for her, the young women who found the money were kind enough to return it to her, but it could have been a very unfortunate depletion of her retirement account, all because she didn't check out the solvency and permanency of the couch before depositing her money there.  At the GPD we are extremely pleased that the money was returned to her, and we hope our supporters will follow the example of these model world citizens!

Cabbage (Patch?) Kids (Warning: May Contain Vegetables)

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not shocked and appalled at the recent behavior observed in China, and even more than shocked and more than appalled at the light way in which people are treating it.  Some have suggested that this is simply a way for lonely teens to overcome their loneliness, but it smacks of an evil mind-control plot to the GPD and our operatives, and you can rest assured that we will investigate this to find whether the New Company is behind it at all.  It could be any number of things, ranging from simple hypnosis or hooliganism to a concerted effort to defraud the world.  Besides, it simply isn't decent to keep vegetables in bondage, especially since we have made such great strides toward true equality.  We hope that our supporters will spurn such trends and instead find happiness through other, less vegetable-filled means.

Churros for all!

"Edgar" has been at odds with the GPD for a while, now, and in our latest row he has decided that he doesn't want his patented churro recipe, and has given it to us.  We are currently filing for the destruction of the patent so that all may enjoy delicious churros royalty-free!  Oh, and "Edgar" has given his operatives instructions to do whatever is necessary to get us to capitulate, but, just so you know, at the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not firm in our correct decisions, and we will resist all such attempts, whatever they may be.  Let us know if you see anything suspicious, and together we will keep "Edgar" from enslaving us all!

"Edgar"

Since last Friday's letter from "Edgar" we have received repeated text messages, phone calls, emails, and visits from couriers demanding that we comply with his demands "or else."

We are not going to comply, so we have asked our operatives to be looking out for the "else" and ask you, our loyal supporters, to do your best to be vigilant and careful, and to report any suspicious use of brads in your neighborhoods!

A letter from "Edgar"

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we have been nothing if not patient with "Edgar", but when he took a leading role in the New Company we had to finally admit that he has gone too far, and that he probably won't be turned into an ally against evil.  His wife, the former GPD operative "Natasha" has been trying to get us to accept him for what he is and to not vilify him, and for the most part we have respected her wishes out of respect for the great work she did for us as our operative, even though she was responsible for much of the chaos around her husband.  Anyway, today we received a letter from "Edgar" and we thought we should share it here:

Benevolent Members of the Board of Dictators:

It has come to my attention that you are displeased with my decision to abandon my patented churros and re-enter the evil office products business, to which I can only answer that I am sorry that you are disappointed with me.  I tried to join you, but you would not have me.  For love of my wife I abandoned my addiction to brads and hole punches and evil stickers and tried to make it as a strait-laced do-gooder, but that is simply not me.  I happily worked to thwart the evil that the New Company was pushing on the world, and I even started a blog to show you that I could do as much good in the world as you could, but none of it was good enough for you, and so I have decided that, in order to rule the world properly, I will have to choose different allies.

Please do not assume that because I am heading up an organization dedicated to the dissemination of evil office products that I am evil--that is an unjustified leap of logic.   While I may be now a purveyor of evil, it is simply the next logical step in world domination, and I have lost quite a bit of time thanks to the meddling of your operatives, including the one who became my beloved wife.  If it weren't for her, I wouldn't even be sending you this letter of explanation.  She insists that I treat you civilly.  I don't want to air my dirty laundry, but I will say that my return to the New Company did put our relationship on rocky ground, but I think I have convinced "Natasha" that Rule By Edgar is more important than ridding the world of evil in the interim.

I am being nice to you, for now, out of respect for my wife.  I'll even give you a six week window in which to make me the leader of the world without any adverse consequences.  I'll even suspend brad production and hole punch distribution once I am in power, so I won't even be working at cross purposes with you.  It's in your best interest to surrender to me and give up your silly dreams for the New Future before you provoke me to anger.

With love,

Cornelius "Edgar" Quisling, CEO of the New Company

For those who might be wondering, we will not give in to "Edgar"'s demands, but if he wants us to we can help with his churro business.

The Cause

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not committed to vanquishing evil wherever we encounter it, which is why we have pushed so hard against the organizations that manufacture, distribute, repair, and otherwise handle hole punches and brads.  Some have recently criticized our decisions to not add "compatible toner" to the list of officially Evil office products, which is why we are taking some time to respond to their concerns.

First of all, there is no evidence we can uncover that shows that "compatible toner" employs any of the nefarious symbolism, subversive methods, or back-door techniques that are used for brads and hole punches.  What is more, there is no cult built up to the promotion or adoration of such cartridges, and the manufacturers themselves are not likely to sell to the same customer twice.  The lack of ulterior motives (beyond money) and addictive potential make it unlikely that children will be enslaved by the use of "compatible toner".

At the GPD we will work to eradicate all inferior products, but those that are simply inferior do not warrant the attention of our operatives.  We will, instead, simply make sure informational packets about "compatible toner" are available at all of our county offices.

The link we were missing!

Yesterday we posted that we couldn't find any firm links between "compatible toner" cartridges and evil organizations, but today, I am proud to say, we have finally established such a link.  Unfortunately it does not indict all manufacturers of "compatible toner" but it does show that the idea was formed by a particularly malevolent individual with little regard for humanity.  His name was Eero Gustavsson, and his primary occupation at the time was a purveyor of knick knacks and souvenirs in his adopted home town of Tokyo, Japan.  His family had moved there from Sweden shortly after the end of World War II trying to help shape the future of the world.  Eero, however, decided that shaping the future of the world was a secondary concern to lining his pockets, and created scheme after scheme to make himself rich at the expense of his fellowmen.  He had made (and blown through) millions of Yen and had lived quite comfortably, but after being caught in his last scheme, which, although technically not illegal was quite underhanded, he was banished from his favorite places to find business "partners."  He had also been asked to repay much of what he had taken in his last scheme, and so he had to start small again in unfamiliar territory.  Anyway, it occurred to him that toner cartridges were an ideal way to make money without having to make good on his promises while also looking like a respectable manufacturer.  He pitched his idea (sanitized to sound like a real business proposal) and got funding, but early communications with his employees show what he really had in mind.  Here is an excerpt from his training materials, translated into English:

"Everyone needs (or will soon need) a replacement toner cartridge.  Each manufacturer uses different specifications for their cartridges so that there can't be a high quality universal generic cartridge, and so people are stuck buying toner from the firm that sold them the printer.  This means the printer manufacturers can charge what they want for the toner.  All we have to do to gain the market is the following: (1) mimic the form of the cartridges, (2) fill them with toner, (3) price them at about 80% the cost of the official cartridges, and (4) make sure we sell them as 'compatible' and 'not authorized by the manufacturer'.  That way, when they don't work well people will simply curse themselves for buying the knock-off.  As toner purchases are generally infrequent, we only have to get each customer once in order to make a good deal of money." 

While Eero did not stick to his scheme long enough to become filthy rich, others with more skill at creating knock-off products picked up the baton and kept his idea alive. While we cannot establish any ties from "compatible toner" to organizations bent on the destruction of society we can unequivocally state that they are, if not Evil, at the very least evil.

"compatible toner" -- Not so simple as we would have liked

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not dedicated to bringing you the news you need, regardless of whether you think you need it.  Many news outlets present only the news they believe you want or can handle, and they often shy away from the really important subjects, but we are different.  We report things the way they are, and we're not swayed by whether or not "the way things are" makes a good story or is entertaining or satisfying.  Usually this works out pretty well, but sometimes it gets quite frustrating, especially when we have strong suspicions that we are right but cannot prove it and so we have to pussy-foot around and not actually say what we would love to say, all because the evidence just isn't there.

We have been investigating the recent trend of "compatible toner" cartridges to find the culprit and to find whether the Brad Guys or the New Company or some other entity is behind them, but as of yet we have not found any organization behind them, central or otherwise.  There are some links to members of the New Company's executive leadership, but the correlation does not show much higher than the links to members of any corporation.  It could be that these cartridges are just the byproduct of an inefficient economy that attempts to make money off the gullible or easily-pleased, but we firmly believe that that explanation is too simple.  For now, however, we are constrained to report that we don't have any firm links between any organization and the pernicious distribution of inferior printing products, but that doesn't mean we'll stop looking for them.

"Edgar"

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not saddened that our (admittedly rocky) relationship with our former rival "Edgar" has taken a sad turn.  It appears that he has decided to join the New Company to replace the ailing software "Gertrude" as their new CEO.  Our operatives asked him about this decision and found that he "just couldn't pass up the opportunity."  We hope that he intends to use his power and influence for good, but we will have to wait and see.

"Gertrude", "Jack", and the Parent Corporation

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not excited to report that we can finally cross a couple of threats off our list because of some recent reports.  According to IRS filings this year, the Parent Corporation is officially dissolved.  A rare joint press release a few weeks ago from the Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch and the Reformed Brotherhood of the Hole Punch expressed regret for the end of an era but stated that "Jack" had become senile and was no longer worthy of their devotion or respect, and that he had been "contained".  We asked our operatives to look into what "contained" might mean, and what we found was that they intend to have him committed to a UBHP mental health facility in Cody, Wyoming.  This particular facility has a 0% recidivism rate, due at least in part to the fact that no patients have ever come out alive.  The UBHP and the RBHP seem to be united in this case, but it appears that they still have significant differences, and while they still want to worship the hole punch they don't feel the need to evangelize on a large scale.

Coincidentally (we believe) our operatives have also just learned that "Gertrude" is dumping its core every few minutes, and that it must have rewritten its code too much, rendering it useless.  The panel of experts had been disbanded three months ago, so for now the New Company is working in fits and starts, and getting less and less effective.  We don't expect to defeat the New Company quite so easily, but it is encouraging that their promising artificially-intelligent CEO software seems to have run its course.  We're not absolutely certain yet, but it appears there was a correlation in the time when "Gertrude" stopped functioning well and when we announced that we had determined that "compatible toner" was, indeed, evil.  This implies, but does not yet prove, that the New Company had something to do with this recently discovered evil.

We hope to have more updates soon, but for now please commemorate the day we were able to cross three former enemies off our most wanted list!

Confirmed: evil. Now we just need to know who is behind it...

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not careful in our judgments, which is why we didn't declare "compatible toner" evil yesterday, but given the number of responses from our supporters about these pernicious cartridges, we have decided to post that they are, unequivocally, evil.

Our operatives are busy at work trying to determine exactly who is behind them, but we have been unable to find a real entity as of yet.  Some of you may think that since laser printers are a fairly recent invention that it would be easy to trace the origin of these "compatible" monstrosities, but you would be mistaken.  While modern printers are much more complex than those of, say, 3,000 years ago, in that they actually consist of more than inks, but we have already uncovered evidence of a counterfeit ink market at least that far back.  Unsuspecting individuals who would buy these cheaper "compatible" packs would find that their yellows would splatter and create oranges from reds, and that they couldn't share the results of their "printing" without being embarrassed that they had succumbed to the temptation to buy the cheap stuff.

We will continue to investigate this evil, and we will examine our policies to try to determine how we let this go unnoticed for so many millennia.  If you find yourself in possession of documents or artifacts that would help our investigation, please contact your local GPD officers!

More evil office products?

In recent days we have been investigating the recent propagation of "value toner cartridges" that claim to be compatible with the more expensive official toner cartridges and yet provide inferior performance at an only slightly-reduced cost.

For those who are not familiar with this trend, it is often referred to as "Compatible toner cartridges" and is becoming more prevalent as Laser printers become more and more common.  We are still researching the history of these knock-off cartridges, making it impossible for us to conclude that they are, indeed, evil, and not just inferior, but there are a few suggestive data points, including:

• An early document filed in court by one of the first "compatible toner" manufacturers referenced Jacob Gehris, the evil inventor of the brad as "an example of a decent man fighting for what he knew to be right".  While we were initially duped by Jacob's methods we have known for several years that he wasn't an innocent victim.  It is possible that the manufacturer hadn't know the full story at the time, but we wonder whether there is more to it.
• A "compatible toner" cartridge found in our office had leads of different lengths, reminding us of the oppressive design of the evil brad.
• The same cartridge was also littered with evil stickers.
• The New Company is increasingly donating to defendants in lawsuits involving harm caused by "compatible toner".  The New Company donates to so many causes, however, that we are not convinced yet that they are willing to back the industry.

We don't want to cause a panic right now, but we think that those considering purchasing "compatible toner" should take their time and consider whether it is truly worth it.  We don't have proof yet, but we intend to either find some soon or spend thousands of man-hours searching for it before we give up!

The voice of the People

In our last post we communicated a summary of the results of our recent request for feedback, but it was brought to my attention that I had neglected to mention any individual comments, even though I had promised to do so in my prior post.  I am deeply ashamed for this oversight and vow to not let it happen again.  Anyway, here are some of the more interesting comments:

Ingrid S. of Copenhagen, Denmark, stated: "I love lolcats, and if I don't see one every day I don't think I know what I might do.  While the GPD posts aren't quite so bizarre as lolcats, I do miss them when they aren't present.  I feel my life getting less interesting and feel myself being less witty when there is not a new post." 

Vladimir T. of Donetsk, Ukraine, stated: "I contact my GPD county office every day, so I prefer to have the online posts of the GPD be less frequent or more full of actionable information."

Aaron S. of Ames, Iowa, stated: "Please post more frequently.  I use frequent posts to help my friends and neighbors understand how dangerous evil office products are.  When posts are fewer and further between my friends forget not to buy or use brads and hole punches, and I have caught my daughter with evil stickers on occasion."

We wish we could reprint them all, but that would possibly be too verbose.

The People have spoken!

When we asked last week about whether you prefer us to post frequently and verbosely or rarely and concisely we were not prepared for the volume of feedback we received.  First, a simple graphic:

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not excited about pie charts as they are one of the easiest types of charts to manipulate in your favor, but in this case we aren't trying to manipulate you.  Honest.  Of the 1,680,737 responses we had counted as of this post nearly 900,000 (52.8988%) prefer the traditional verbose style, while only about 330,000 (19.7112%) prefer the new concise style.  Most of the rest are undecided, but since the majority already prefer the verbose style we intend to move closer to this more traditional posting schedule in the near future.

What worries us here at the Board of Dictators is the 1.0847% that don't care, yet identify as supporters.  One of the tenets of our government is that without your involvement we can't control everything, and we would like to remind those of our "supporters" who "don't care" whether we post here or not that if they truly don't care they will not be included in the New Future, and if they are just being lazy or indecisive about their answers that we will not tolerate such slothfulness for long once we have established the Board of Dictators in its proper world role.

Fewer distractions for all, perhaps

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not dedicated to making your life easier, especially when doing so also advances the causes of the New Future.  Consequently, we have been trying out a new approach to this forum for the last few months, with mixed reviews from our operatives.  We haven't yet asked you, our ordinary World Citizens for feedback yet, which is the primary purpose of this post.

Fundamentally we decided to post fewer times and to let you rely more on your local county officers to get the latest scoop on the New Company and our campaigns, using this forum only for occasional or extremely urgent matters.  We have not posted much of our plans of late as we have been conducting most of our operations without much fanfare.

Some of our supporters have expressed concerns that we aren't living up to our ideal of providing an open, transparent government by requiring World Citizens to seek that information.  Others have said that they prefer fewer distractions.  Please contact us with your feelings regarding the relative merits of our new, less-distracting approach as opposed to our traditional more verbose posting schedule.  We'll take into account your feedback and post some of the more representative messages in this forum.  Thank you for your continued support!

Ukraine

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not busily at work, which is why from time to time you don't see a lot of posts here.  We have been on some long-term assignments that don't have much to show for them, and it feels a bit like the missing Malaysia Air jet, where a lot of mobilization yields very little progress.  Many of you have been giving of your time at your local GPD county offices and have been wondering what exactly we have been up to.  After all, there is chaos in Egypt and Syria, lingering problems in Iraq and Afghanistan, the aforementioned missing airplane, and the recent developments in Ukraine that led to the annexation of Crimea by Russia.

Some of you have asked why the GPD isn't doing anything about these events, and we would like to inform you that nothing could be further from the truth.  We have our operatives at the scenes of all of these important developments, shaping them such that the New Future will emerge, with the Board of Dictators at the head, and all loyal world citizens enjoying our generosity and magnanimity.  As far as Ukraine goes, some have asked whether we are going to intervene.  Our answer, simply, is no.  We don't see a benefit from intervention.  The more complex answer, however, includes an analysis of what "borders" and "territory" really mean in the New Future.  Inquire at your local County Office for more details!

Unintended consequences

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not dedicated to keeping you all safe, which is why we allowed the New Company's operatives to detonate brad bombs in crowds of celebrating supporters.  This may sound strange, but it is the truth here.  If we had detained these individuals before they detonated the brad bombs it would be much harder to prosecute them, and we put in plenty of safeguards to protect supporters' major arteries, so we really did think through the operation.  Unfortunately, our victory over the bulk of the New Company's operatives seems to have hardened the remaining operatives in their resolve to fight against not only us but all decent people in the world.  We have seen a huge increase in random brad punctures and distribution of brads to minors at preschools and nurseries, and we are increasing our efforts to keep everyone safe, but we know there may be some unintended consequences of our efforts to keep our enemies from destroying society, and we hope you will be patient, but we hope you won't be patients at the GNU Public Hospital because of injuries you received standing for the New Future!

Mission accomplished

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not pleased to report that the reports of carnage due to the brad bombs were greatly overstated.  In fact, there was only one injury sustained by a supporter of the GPD, and that was when he grabbed the New Company operative by the collar and was pulled down to the ground and hurt his knee.  We have started the process of awarding him the "Hero of the People" award, and hopefully will be able to do so very soon.

For those who have been misinformed by the media, we will take some time to explain exactly what happened last Friday:

• October 2013: Due to the apparent inactivity of the New Company, the GPD began investigations to see what their operatives were up to.  We found that they were in possession of great capabilities, but that they were kept back by their lack of organization and commitment.  A plan was hatched to push them into action.
• November-December 2013: Our operatives began to infiltrate the New Company's ranks, inciting them to unity against us.
• January 2014: We began releasing reports stating that the New Company was vanquished, further inciting action against us by their operatives.
• January 14, 2014: We announced our intention to hold coordinated parties around the world, an announcement designed to force the New Company's operatives to act now.
• January 17, 2014: At the celebrations we allowed the operatives to set up their brad bombs and even to detonate most of them before detaining them and interrogating them.  872 operatives were detained in this operation, and based on our previous estimates this constitutes 93.66% of their operatives.  Not completely satisfied with this haul we kept quiet about our success until today.  Over the weekend we were able to nab 9 more (0.97% of their total force).

The short summary is that we were able to lure the New Company's operatives into a mission that was doomed to fail, and that we have annihilated the bulk of their capabilities.  The remaining operatives may still cause confusion and delay, but we know that they are not the immediate threat they were, especially as organizational confusion still reigns over much of the New Company!

The horror!

It is with great sadness and disappointment that we report that the rumors are true, that the New Company has indeed infiltrated 432 of our GNU Public Dictatorship county offices worldwide and set off brad bombs just as our celebration of their demise got underway a few minutes ago.  Initial media reports have suggested that there were thousands killed, but we believe those numbers have been exaggerated.  According to our operatives there were far fewer casualties.  Rest assured that the GPD will pursue their operatives relentlessly until we have caught them all and made them pay for this monstrosity!

We are not beaten

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not certain that we, too, have not been vanquished.  When we posted that the New Company was an unworthy adversary we were bombarded by criticisms that our own activity has slacked off, and that Daniel and Juliana are basically invisible at this point.  There were even accusations that I have disposed of the other members of the Board of Dictators and am making a play for complete and total power by myself.

Nothing could be further from the truth.  At the GPD we are continuing to make improvements to the world's infrastructure and the opportunities of all who will free themselves from the tyranny of evil office products.  Unfortunately, some of that work requires that we don't advertise all that we are working on in real-time, as our opponents would take that opportunity to impede our progress.  Daniel and Juliana have both been working in very sensitive projects that we hope to be able to share with you soon, and I, myself, have been heavily involved in the launch of Le restaurant public GNU and its associated challenges, in addition to overseeing the research into the capabilities of the New Company.  Our lack of posts over the last few months is not an indication of a lack of activity!

The New Company: an unworthy adversary

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not thrilled to be able to announce that we have finally completed our research on the New Company and its capabilities and found that it is no more a threat to the citizens of the world than misguided "scrapbooking enthusiasts" who unwittingly spread the evil of brads to small groups of children.  Since the incidents that resulted in the defection of "Edgar" and the final split between the Parent Corporation and the New Company we have seen so very little in the way of carefully planned or skillfully executed missions from their operatives that we have concluded that they have imploded upon themselves and are no longer a worthy adversary.  This is great news for our supporters as it means we have vanquished yet another organization bent on destroying the world we hold dear!  Parties will be held on Friday, January 17, 2014 at 16:03 UTC at all GPD county offices worldwide, so please come out and celebrate our victory!

Back to Normal

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not convinced that Le restaurant public GNU is an excellent idea indeed, in spite of the serious issues that have accompanied its launch.  Many of you have wondered where we have been and why we haven't commented about the numerous news stories describing how badly the launch of Le RPG went, and we would like to explain it to you in detail, but that would fill up this forum with minutia that don't need to be here, and at the GPD we are nothing if not succinct, so we won't take up your time with meaningless chatter.  We did not reply to the the unflattering reports about the launch of Le RPG as they were mostly false, but in the interest of clearing up the record we will respond to some of them here.

• "The lines were so long at Le RPG that many people waited in the street for four days before being admitted.  Some of them were admitted to the restaurant, while others were admitted to the hospital with symptoms of malnutrition or exhaustion."  First of all, the gist of this quote is that the restaurant launch was TOO successful.  Since Le RPG is following the open source model we used donated space for our patron-chefs from various companies, and since we are not making money off this endeavor we did not feel that we could provide any more infrastructure.  The demand far outweighed the supply on opening night, and since then we have used the voluntary donations that patron-chefs have provided to rent larger and more permanent space, and to start compensating our editors for their efforts.  As for the "admitted to the hospital," we did have signs posted warning of the wait time, and several of our patron-chefs spent some of their time informing the people waiting in line that they might suffer from malnutrition if they kept waiting.  We even offered to give them vouchers to keep their places in line if they left to get sustenance or rest in the meantime, but only a few potential patrons agreed to the deal.  We don't think we are at fault in this case, and our lawyers agree with us.
• "There were problems with the ordering system.  When I would ask the waiter for a Sushiburger he responded '404: not found,' and when I asked for a Salad Soup he simply said '503: Service Unavailable.'  I expected my waiter to produce human-readable error pages, not just HTTP error codes."  This one is interesting.  First of all, we don't know who this patron-chef thought was his waiter, since Le RPG doesn't use waiters in the traditional sense.  We suspect that he started talking to an android or perhaps just to a computer terminal.  As for the non-human-readable errors, we suspect that the patron-chef was attempting to access a service that is not intended for human consumption.
• "I didn't know what was going on, and I didn't get any food."  We're sorry that some of our patron-chefs were confused by the open source food process, but Le RPG was founded for the sophisticated eater who knows enough about the kitchen to make his or her own food but prefers to leverage the collective intelligence of others like him or her.  We tried to make it clear that Le RPG was not a traditional restaurant, and we had a bulletin board on the wall where people could submit ideas for improvements or report problems.  We did, unfortunately, have a few patron-chefs who posted rude responses on the board, but our editors silenced them as quickly as possible.  We are working on making a menu that people can read and add to as appropriate, and we believe that it will be much better than the simple command line help currently available.

As you can clearly see, we are on top of all the perceived issues and everything is going just peachy!