Overlord Academy

Every prospective Overlord needs an alarm system. This system is not just about keeping the would be hordes from entering your abode, but also to help keep in the minions, prisoners, and guests of state. Never pay a monitoring service! They charge insane monthly amounts for doing absolutely nothing. All you need is the right equipment, some simple software, and you can monitor the system yourself! The Overlord Academy is currently in the process of revamping it’s alarm system. Soon I will be able to arm, disarm, panic button whatever, from the ease of any arm chair in the world. This is in thanks to the state of the art network and VPN system as well as custom in house alarm management software.

Conventions are great. You gather thousands of people who are normally competing for the same business opportunity, give a few speeches, provide some training, throw in a bit of a store, and soon they will all be working for you. A few of them may become offended and join the other guy, but still, conventions are great!
Currently, the company I am working for, as my day job, is holding a convention for all of our associates. Every year they try to outdo the previous year. Because of the economic times, and the desire to be profitable, the allowed budget was cut a bit. So obviously, some things had to be cut. Unfortunately, one of the things cut seems to be good sense.

When we hold the Overlord Convention, there are a few things which I promise will be followed. Some of this list includes the following:

1 Do not inform IT of your plans for network, computers, security, etc. an hour before it needs to be setup.
2 Name badges are great, it allows interaction to be personalized. Make sure it is easy to identify staff from the masses at a simple glance. Helps security out a lot!
3 Have the store layout and all displays pre-planned out. This greatly facilitates setting up the store, and also keeps murderous thoughts out of the employees’ minds.
4 Properly identify and lock down the employee break area. Non employees are not welcome and hurt the morale of those you depend upon.
5 Make sure all staff members know the company planned events, as well as other events which may be happening in the area. We want our staff to appear intelligent, not like a gathering of country bumpkins.
6 Make sure all areas are properly identified. If you want attendees to visit an area, it helps to be able to find said area.
7 Provide adequate training for staff members. If they are expected to demonstrate something they should know how to use it. Hands on experience is probably a good thing.
8 The biggest mistake I have seen is one person being in charge of too many things and not sharing that information with those who could help. If people are aware of something needing to be setup beforehand, then all components, tools, and man power can be pre-arranged.
9 Small things will always creep up that need to be addressed. This is to be expected. Do not shun help. You will accomplish more if you would spend a few minutes to explain the issue then if you were to just do it yourself, ignoring other problems which may be occurring.

All this being said, let me just point out one small fact. Although conventions are great and important, I sure do hate working at them.

Bureaucracy is a beautiful thing in any government. It is the greatest asset any governing body has in keeping the peasants at bay. Without all the red tape, the peasants would be constantly hounding you and your subordinates for anything and everything under the sun.

Paperwork is the backbone of a great system of red tape.  Long and cryptic forms force the weaker minded human subspecies out of scope, leaving only the truly determined, and potentially dangerous, peasants for the government to truly have to worry about. These few can then be micromanaged and bounced from department to department long enough for the real decision makers to decide how to handle the particular threat.

Although the proverbial paper trail is slowly vanishing, internet forms can be just as complicated, and even more troublesome than their paper counterpart. The forms can be hidden in such a way, that it is next to impossible to find and fill out. The only thing that you want to be easy, is payment of the fees. Anything that can pad the treasury is a good thing.

Change all forms on a random schedule, but always in the middle of a major sporting event. This will confuse the fools even further as they tend to browse the internet a lot right before a game, make a decision during the game, and then act after the game. By the time they act, the game has changed, and they are caught completely unaware.

This red tape can even be used within the government to keep the different groups from banding together and potentially staging a coup. Coups of course, tend to be bad for the health of the Evil Overlord.

An added bonus for the Evil Overlord, is that a special document can be set up that is easy to fill out, trumps all other orders and forms, and only available to the Evil Overlord that speeds up all processes, and gains him instant gratification of any want and/or desire. Thus making life hard for others, and easier for yourself.

Start now in writing up the red tape plans, they take time to create, and when finished, can be a true work of art.

Either during the implementation of your bid for World Domination, or during your reign as Supreme Dictator for Life, the standard lines of communication will be severed. Communication is critical to your rule. You have to be able to have two way flows of information between you and your subordinates, and then out to the peasants. You need to make sure that back up forms exist.

During World War I and II, homing pigeons were used to send messages. It is true that pigeons often made a tasty meal for large birds of prey, and many messages did not make the final destination, but it is a form of communication that should not be ignored completely. In a pinch it will do. There has even been an implementation of IP over Pigeon. (Computers talking to computers.)

Do not use messengers. Men are too easily swayed. A good messenger is too hard to come by, and too easily dispatched by the enemy. Since man is always thinking of himself, your secret documents are more than likely sold to the highest bidder less than five minutes after they leave your hand.

Since transmission lines are easily severed, and because of the known difficulties of the above methods, you will be forced to rely on radio and microwave technologies. Although it is easy to block these signals, they cannot be blocked indefinitely. You can too easily bounce the signal around and get your message out.

Since radio communication will be pretty much required, you need to learn how to operate and repair radio equipment. There are many radio clubs with members more than happy to teach you this knowledge. Use them! Learn everything you can. These clubs are also a good source of future communication specialists for your future armies, or your massive propaganda machine.

Although many governments no longer require you to learn morse code in order to obtain a license to use radio, you are strongly encouraged to learn it. Since no one else is learning morse code, you would be able to tap out orders in the clear and no one would be able to interpret your orders.

Morse code could also be used in sending smoke signals. Granted, another faulty form of communication, but when in a pinch, you will use whatever you have available.

If you really need to get a message out fast and widespread, make use of the female gossip channels. People twelve hours away will hear you message less than ten minutes after you have finished giving the message. This is still a mysterious phenomenon, but it exists, and as Evil Overlord, you are not above using whatever is at your disposal.

The point is, always maintain lines of communication. If one line goes down, follow a set method of transferring to another form. Always have a back up. As soon as you can, get the previous method back up in working order. A successful Overlord is a well informed Overlord.

There have been several inquiries concerning population control. Some have wanted to limit who may partner with whom. Still, others want to dictate further who may obtain education. The point of all this, is to maintain a firm grip on potential troublemakers. The thinking is this, if intelligent people partner with dumb people, their offspring will be dumb, and follow your instructions blindly. If intelligent people partner with intelligent people, their offspring will be able to think for themselves, and will quickly recognize that they do not want you as their ruler, and will plot to over throw your empire. This is just bunk.

Completely daft parents are fully capable of having absolutely brilliant children. Highly intelligent parents can have utterly brain dead children. Let the people partner with whom they will. There is no point in wasted your efforts with such a fickle endeavor. Besides, secret engagements will always happen.

So how can we control the populace? Simple, we watch them. We listen to them. We monitor them in every way conceivable. Television sets will have embedded cameras and microphones which continually feed data. Telephones are automatically bugged. All electronic equipment will have similar bugging. We will offer free upgrades to new equipment, and when enough have been put into circulation, we begin to act. Make a few dramatic arrests. Have some of them end in a fire fight. Fear will control the populace.

Because of fear, conspirators will not meet together. Messages will not be sent. No one will know when it is safe to talk about forbidden things, and so they will not speak of them. If would be conspirators cannot communicate, they will have a hard time organizing any sort of rebellion against you. The simplest and most effective form of control. Fear!

This is just a start. Use your imagination. What other forms of control can we have in our arsenal? Remember, we want the populace to THINK they have freedoms. We do not want them to think that they are being controlled, at least, not directly.

We have an added luxury in our time of world domination. Computers have made our job infinitely easier. Thousands upon thousands of tasks can be automated, and the human error factor can be eliminated entirely. However, computers do have one major drawback, they can be manipulated. Insert a little bit of code here. Enter a stolen password now. The system is compromised, who did it? When did it happen? If you were well enough prepared, you could simply go to your logs and very easily figure what happened and when it happened. Sometimes you can even tell who did it. 

Log everything. Every application needs to have its own log, and every log needs to log great detail. If someone even thinks about looking at a computer system, you want to log it.

Of course, having the logs only work if you are willing to look at them. Meaning, they need to be searchable and easy to read, and you need to spend time reading them so that you are familiar with them and so you know how to spot any anomalies.

The logs will aid greatly in covering your butt. If you can prove who caused the computer meltdown, the people will not be so in your face over a public execution. Nor will you have to feel bad about throwing one of your ministers into the dungeon to suffer agony, torture, and eventually death. There will be meaning to your madness.