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!