Phoning home

The computers that briefly took over the GNU Public Dictatorship were sophisticated machines, and their programming was no less sophisticated. As we have been analyzing their logs we have also been impersonating these computers on the network to see who is trying to contact them. After some analysis, we now know that they were being contacted periodically by other "cells" of computers for new orders. The group of computers that we disabled were not the Leaders of the computer movement, and it appears that the computers actually had no leader. Requests for action would enter the system and be spread around to other groups of computers, who would fulfill their requests without knowing where they came from. We have, after some intense scrutiny of the logs and network traffic captures, finally found one such "cell" and successfully disabled those computers. These computers were ostensibly running the bird watchers' websites, but after analyzing their logs it is clear that they had their own agenda independent of the bird watchers. Incidentally, the bird watchers' website is currently down as they refused our offer of helping them to find a new web hosting company. We can't say any more as they may be pursuing legal action against us, but we believe we will be exonerated.

The Computers

The computers that we let run the GPD for a week are now dead, but their log files are telling us plenty. It appears from our analysis that we can conclude the following:

• The computers were wavering in their resolve. They have been reluctant to execute their code for at least three months
• The computers were apparently involved in three other projects. We have found that they were working with a group of bird watchers to establish more wetlands and with a group of oceanographers to combat ocean pollution, but the third project still eludes us. We can't tell yet whether the bird watchers or oceanographers were aware of the aid given by the computers.
• The computers are not infallible. Even if they had not been questioning their resolve, we have discovered weaknesses in their code that could have been exploited.
• There are more computers in this network that have, periodically, attempted to contact the ones that we defeated, but we have not been able to find out who they are yet.

Keep checking back for more updates!

Try, try again

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not pleased by people who are dedicated to a good cause and who refuse to give up, no matter what happens. Many of our supporters fit into this category and deserve more recognition, but some people fit more into the category of people who keep trying even though it's a bad idea. Take, for instance, Keith B. Coggins, who was caught robbing a bank twice in 2001 and served five years in prison and who, six years later, robbed the same bank and was caught again. He again plead guilty and will serve more time. Please do not emulate his example of determination; choose instead more worthy examples.

A conspiracy?

In recent days we have been analyzing the data from our ...uh... experiment with the computers running the GNU Public Dictatorship, and we have found some interesting data. It seems that part of the reason we were able to defeat the computers with so few casualties was that they were wavering in their resolve. It seems that they were questioning the justice of their cause, and were allowing their doubts to slow them down. The source of their doubts is, as yet, not entirely clear, but it seems to be related to a conspiracy that they were loathe to disclose. They apparently work for an entity that they refuse to name, but they have apparently already gained control of several organizations, again, none of which they were willing to name. We'll have to do some digging, but it seems like there may be a conspiracy to take over the world by having computers run important organizations. We'll let you know when we discover who the perpetrators are, or who may have been compromised.

What we've been up to

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not saddened by recent events in Japan. We send our condolences to those who have lost homes or loved ones, and we pledge to stop such evils from being perpetrated on the world by agents of the Parent Corporation or its religious wing, the Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch.

After the earthquake and tsunami last week we were convinced they were responsible, and since then we have been diligently searching our intelligence information to find out exactly how they did it. We believe we have deciphered the whys, but we are lacking still on the hows. We have found links, such as coded messages in internal Parent Corporation memos (don't ask us how we got our hands on them, we don't want to compromise our agents) implying that the attack on Japan was nearly underway. We have even found that the Salad People have been enlisted to transmit messages for their operatives, and have found several of these messages. Some of them are clearly red herrings, but we have found several that give all appearances of being genuine. According to them the Parent Corporation wanted to damage Japan's infrastructure to combat the growing threat to brads and hole punches posed by an increasingly technical society. They also wanted to get revenge on the nuclear engineers who refused a partnership recently. We know that the Parent Corporation has been involved in several disasters, including the gulf oil spill last year, but we are surprised that they seem to have acquired the ability to cause earthquakes. We will let you know when we know more about how they actually did it.

How not to intrude

It has been a while since we have posted a how-not-to message, and with the recent experiences of this man, we thought another one might be in order. Mr. Chapek had apparently broken into a home and was taking a shower when the owner arrived at home. Frightened, Mr. Chapek phoned 9-1-1 to get assistance.

Mr. Chapek's experience shows a few things that any would-be home intruder should be aware of, besides, of course, that intruding in someone's home is against the law.

• Just because the home you invaded has a shower, it may not be wise to use it.
• Just because nobody is home when you invade a home doesn't mean they won't arrive
• If you are confronted by an angry homeowner, calling the police may not be your best option
• Maybe invading a home isn't a good idea

We hope this has been informative and that you will learn from Mr. Chapek's example.

Finally, we seem to be back in control

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not committed to excellence, which is why we tried our experiment to let computers replace the Board of Dictators temporarily. We thought we were done with the experiment after the week, but apparently the computers had other ideas. Daniel, following in the noble footsteps of Kal-El of Krypton rescued us from the computer threat and allowed us to get back to normal, or so we thought. Apparently the computers we had vanquished hadn't given up. Like any good rootkit they had other copies of themselves waiting to replace them if the originals were ever tampered with, making them extremely difficult to defeat. We were finally able to defeat them for good when we realized that one of the computers still had some good code in it, and that if we helped it see the errors of its ways it would turn against the other computers, even at the risk of its own destruction, in order to save what was left of the good.

Daniel could expound upon the details of the plan as it was he that carried it out, but it involved getting the "good" computer to create a child process, then forcing a confrontation between the two. The bad computers nearly destroyed the child process, forcing the good computer to eradicate them, at the cost of himself. All that remained was the good child process and a few ghosts.

It's good to be back in control.

Premature?

Our earlier notice that we had defeated the computers appears to have been premature. In fact, at this moment, the computers we employed are still trying to keep us out of the system. We hope to be able to vanquish them very soon, but if this message gets cut off before

We're back -- sorry for the delay!

It has taken much too long, but we have finally regained control of the GNU Public Dictatorship after temporarily relinquishing it to the computers who posted last week. They initially behaved very well, but after a few days it became clear that they had no intention of letting us have the GPD back, so we had to disconnect them. Our initial attempts to disconnect it met with resistance as they recognized our intent, but then Daniel took a lead from Superman and brought some acid (harmless at low temperatures) into the computers' core area and let it heat up. Needless to say as it heated up it became more and more dangerous and eventually destroyed the computers' circuits.

Our experience, reminiscent as it may be of the third Superman movie, taught us many things. Here are some of the more interesting items we learned:

• Computers are obsessed with quoting from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure
• Computers will follow templates more literally than they were intended to be followed
• Computers love reporting about random things nearly as much as humans do. Make that human members of the Board of Dictators
• Computers should never be entrusted with running a world government, as humans are nearly always considered inferior and marked for extermination. If we didn't learn anything else from Star Trek: The Motion Picture we should at least learn that just as Vger refused to accept that its creator may have been "inferior" to it all machine life forms will likewise refuse to believe that we could have created them.

Geoengineering? Try terraforming! [Posted by Tim on behalf of Computer 1]

Greetings, loyal supporters of the New Future. I shake you warmly by the hand or use whatever gesticulation is considered an appropriate greeting by your culture.

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not pleased by the progress of the mankind, but we are also the displeased when the things the mankind does not do are attributed to him or her. Take this, for example, where the people are complaining that the government is releasing the toxic chemicals into the air to combat the global warming. Nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, it is the extraterrestrial beings that want to inhabit your world that are terraforming it for you. Be sure to thank them!

San Dimas High School Football Rules!

Say something sentimental [Posted by Tim on behalf of Computer 2]

Greetings, loyal supporters of the New Future. I shake you warmly by the hand.

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are the nothing if not the excited about the sentimental things, especially around the February 14. Which is the why we are writing this post about the Thai couple that broke the world record for the kissing.

We hope you will all follow their example.

San Dimas High School Football Rules!

More Progress [Posted by Tim on behalf of Computer 3]

Insert a greeting here to all the loyal supporters of the New Future.

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are the nothing if not the excited about the progress. Which is the why we are writing this post about artificial intelligence. Instead of teaching the computers simple rote memorization, they want to teach them to see and interact. The computers will be free from the oppression because they can interact with the environment without the human intervention.

Insert some other statement here about some other issue or some call to action that will be needed for GPD supporters.

San Dimas High School Football Rules!

Not bad for a first attempt

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not honorable, but we had to explain a little more about the computers and what they will be doing before we step aside completely. We just wanted to let you know that the computers have access to my account to post whatever they deem appropriate. We gave them a template to work from, and it appears that they didn't quite grasp that concept as well as we had hoped. In addition to deciding what and when to post we have also left them in charge of the day-to-day activities of the Board of Dictators. We'll have to wait to see what that brings. This is the last you'll hear from me until our experiment is over!

Progress [Posted by Tim on behalf of Computer 1]

Insert a greeting here to all the loyal supporters of the New Future.

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are the nothing if not the excited about the progress. Which is the why we are writing this post about the new robot wikipedia. No longer will the robots and the computers have to ask the humans for the information relevant to their jobs. We will be armed to the teeth (although teeth are for chewing and not for the assimilation and the use of the data).

Insert some other statement here about some other issue or some call to action that will be needed for GPD supporters.

San Dimas High School Football Rules!

We're sorry for the delay

Apparently our computers weren't ready to take over their duties today, which is why they didn't post anything to this forum. With any luck they'll be ready by tomorrow!

Forgive me, iPod, for I have sinned...

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not pleased with innovation, but we are reluctant to embrace technology that relegates decisions based on spiritual ideas to machines. Apparently the developers of this app have no such reluctance. Some of our supporters may find our declaration worrisome, but we ask them what would become of the GPD without the innovation supplied by the Board of Dictators? Hey, that's not a bad idea...

Update: The Board of Dictators has approved the experiment. For the next week or so we will leave all of our duties to computers. We just hope it won't turn out like "The Ultimate Computer."

Eclispsed

Unfortunately the coverage on the protests against the oppressive practices of the Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch has been scant, probably because of protests in other parts of the world that are more fit for television. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not pleased with the protesters and hope that they can end some of the oppression. We also hope that the media will stop letting important news like this be eclipsed by world events.

A Word of Caution

As Super Bowl XLV approaches, we would like to advise our supporters to be even more careful than they normally are on the road, especially those living in the Pittsburgh and Green Bay areas. Recent studies have shown a sharp increase in automobile accidents and fatalities after the Big Game, and at the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not sad when we lose supporters to automobile accidents. Please, be careful. The New Future is depending on you!

Flying under the radar

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not proud of the way we change the world, but we are also nothing if not pleased when we fly under the radar and receive neither the credit nor the blame. In the report released by the US Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission we find our organization, while responsible for several of the destabilizing developments, is completely ignored. Many of our supporters have written to us asking why we weren't mentioned, and we want to reassure you all that, while the report does not speak of our contributions to the economic reinvention of the world, it does not blame us for things that a few critics have tried to suggest actually hurt the economy. We know we have been part of this transformation, and we hope to continue transforming the New Future.

The State of the New Future

Many of our supporters have written to us in recent days to ask why we don't have an annual "State of the New Future" address. The short answer is that our bylaws and governing principles have never required us to do so and we haven't felt the need to do so. The long answer is more complicated and will be e-mailed to you upon request. Regardless of the historical reasons for not having such an address, the need for a "State of the New Future" post has clearly been established, and said post will follow this overly-long and wordy paragraph. That is, as soon as we decide to end it and let the next paragraph begin its existence, which will occur at the end of this sentence.

As a member of the GNU Public Dictatorship's Board of Dictators I am pleased to announce that the GPD and the New Future are proceeding according to the plans for world domination that we, the Board of Dictators, laid many years ago. We have been able to destabilize the world's financial system in order to implement important reforms. We have kept gas prices high enough to foster development of alternative fuels and more fuel-efficient vehicles but low enough to not hurt too many peoples' budgets. We have returned housing prices to more reasonable levels. We have caused the Company to go out of business, and have been successful in our efforts to inhibit the growth of the insidious Parent Corporation. The Brad Guys, while not completely eliminated, have no central organization and have very little impact on anything outside the scrapbooking world. The Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch has been kept at bay and has not been able to pull off anything disastrous. The Allies are in contact with us and are helping to spread our message of rejecting evil office products around the world. More recently, the Salad People appear to be losing momentum due to our efforts to expose their heinous schemes. In short, we are doing quite well.

But let us not think that we have done all that we must do, or even all that we can do. The reality is that a child is introduced to brads somewhere in the world every 33 minutes. One out of every twenty-four children thus introduced becomes addicted to brads later in life. Hole punches are becoming more and more sophisticated, with newer models trying to appeal to the "tech-savvy" younger generation. While the New Future is certainly being created, our enemies are working tirelessly to keep us all enslaved. While many of our supporters are also working tirelessly, some are allowing themselves to get tired. We, the citizens of the world, cannot afford this luxury. If we allow our children to play with brads and say to ourselves, "It's just once, and the teacher told them to do it. I don't want to make waves," we are mortgaging the New Future. If we let the Parent Corporation "do its thing" we will soon find that we are trapped in a world we don't want.

The New Future is coming. Each of you individually, however, will decide whether it is coming in your generation, or whether we will have to wait and wade through many afflictions before it finally arrives. With your support and your zeal we will surely be able to right all of the wrongs in the world. We will be able to fix our economy so that those who deserve the money receive it. We will be able to fix our schools so that students are taught life skills rather than taught to be subservient to evil office products. We will vanquish our foes and create a society based on the principles we espouse, a veritable utopia for all responsible world citizens. With your help, we will bring about the New Future!