Even if you're a customer service droid, you need to be able to divide by 100 and keep your units straight. If you don't, in this glorious internet age, someone may record the conversation to shame you and your company. In the case of Verizon, not just one, but several customer service representatives and managers were caught being unable to distinguish between 0.002 cents per kilobyte and 0.002 dollars per kilobyte, even when it was explained to them repeatedly:

Background

For those completely unfamiliar, YouTube is an advertiser-supported service that allows users to upload and download videos for free. In a world where personal upload bandwidth is not yet remotely sufficient for most individuals to self-publish even text and images, this serves a fairly valuable purpose. Although to start it seemed to be publishing primarily unauthorized copies of already published material, it seems to have matured to the point where it consists primarily of home clips of people recording their pets, their vacations, their silliness (or outright stupidity), and their personal accomplishments.

Pixel picked a good moment to sit up in the windowsill. This is probably my best cat photo to date.

Although I am not a lawyer, I have been spending quite some time reading about sexual crimes in my new home state of Maryland, prompted by a recent news story (first brought to my attention at Feministing and analyzed further at The Happy Feminist) about a state appeals court decision in which it was concluded that sexual consent cannot be withdrawn by a woman after vaginal penetration has occurred. The news article is both technically correct and rather misleading — the decision was somewhat complex, and a rape conviction was not "thrown out" specifically due to that conclusion, but the conclusion was made, and after some investigation, it's not the only problem that Maryland law has with sex crimes and consent.

Introduction

Moving is always a pain, and usually an expensive pain. The cheapest and most inconvenient way to move is to do everything yourself: rent a huge truck, load everything into it yourself, drive it to the new location yourself (potentially asking someone to drive your own car up), and unload it yourself once you're there. If you've never packed furniture on your own before, you risk the loss of goods, and if you've never driven a large truck before, you may be risking more than that on the road. Special features like "air-ride" suspension or environmental controls may or may not be available. On the far opposite side of the spectrum, you can pay a reputable company to pack, load, drive, and unload everything for you (paying a company you know nothing about to take everything you own is not recommended). The better companies will advertise air-ride trucks with mildew protection at the very least, and will have their own collection of furniture pads, tie-downs, and bubble-wrap necessary to keep everything protected. The downside is that you will have to schedule your move with the mover between two weeks and a month in advance, and it's very expensive. On my last move, from California to Louisiana, I went this route with Mayflower, moving a 1-bedroom apartment for about $3,500, and everything arrived in perfect condition.

The machines are in their new location with better connectivity, though the main server is still in dire need of an upgrade. Writing will resume soon, though likely more personal entries than news and analysis for a while.

I'm just now wrapping up posting the second day of pictures from the June Washington trip, and included in them were some cat pictures, just in time for the Friday Cat Blogging tradition. I'm tired at this point, so it's only fair to show a tired cat:

SecurityFocus has noted that the Sony BMG rootkit is being used to bypass World of Warcraft anti-cheat measures. The stealth backdoor functions of the rootkit are so good, that even the spyware that World of Warcraft puts on your system to check for anything that might possibly be used to reverse engineer or interact with the World of Warcraft game client can't get past them.

I'm inordinately amused by this particular side effect, because truly there are no good guys in this scenario. World of Warcraft is pushing spyware, Sony is pushing a rootkit, and cheaters are using one to attack the other.

In the end, I suspect that makes them all losers, in all senses of the word.

The Guardian reported last Friday on a potential new hydrogen fuel process, discovered by medical doctor Randell Mills, that would allow us to tap water for heat with roughly the same efficiency as coal. Supposedly, prototype heaters making use of this process have already been demonstrated and the process replicated independently. The only problem is that it appears to be physically impossible.