You're certainly on the right track in keeping the already corrupt or irresponsible far away from positions of power.
But you're missing the boat if you think that principled, responsible people don't get corrupted by power. Not everyone will fall to the temptation, of course, but the greater the power the greater the temptation. We have checks and balances not just to prevent the corrupt from becoming too powerful but also to protect the good people from having too large a concentration of power tempting them in the first place.
Technically it's an exaggeration to say "Absolute power corrupts absolutely," but it's definitely not an exaggeration to say that "Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom."
Secrecy, since it prevents that vigilance, is particularly corrupting.
I especially agree with your desire to see corrupt people who are so far gone that they're advertising it, nailed to the courtroom wall. I don't know enought facts about this particular cop/myspace situation to have a useful opinion on it, but I think we *all* know enought about, say Cheney, to have a useful opinion.
The question that remains is whether Obama will prefer to keep the excessive power that's been stolen and passed along to him, or give it back and investigate the theives who stole it. The jury's still out on that question, but so far it's a mixed bag.
I'm rooting for the Constitution. It isn't perfect, but it's way better than what we've got now.
Such moderating! Only the inaccurate information was boosted! Maybe the metamoders will see this, maybe they won't.
Brea means tarpits. (I expect the tarpits predate the ranch.)
Oh, and La means The.
They don't come up much in conversation, but a few people I know always refer to them as "The The Tarpits Tarpits" when they speak. (Fortunately, as I said, they doesn't come up too often in conversation!)
The only thing new here is that the service is being marketed, and the public is finding out about it.
If you call forward your landline to a toll-free number, which itself is programmed to forward the calls it receives to a second number (say your cell), the callerID on the cell phone will display the number that would have been blocked if you had just taken the call at your landline.
I do not know whether ALL toll-free companies do this, or just some of them.
Here's how it all works.
Toll-free numbers have been around for decades longer than callerID. And it makes perfect sense that people who pay for a long distance call (the 800 number owner) should see the caller's number.
The mechanism used for doing this is called ANI, and it's been around since the 1960's at least. There is no provision for blocking the calling party's number with this mechanism. (ANI stands for automatic number identification.)
Fast forward a few decades to the invention of something very new, Signaling System Seven (SS7). It provides a whole new way to provide a caller's number to the called party, and it has various blocking options included. However, anytime a caller's number is supposed to be blocked, it really isn't -- it is always sent. However, a special one-bit flag is ALSO sent that says "Please don't reveal this information even tho I am supplying you with it." Then if the equipment at the receiving end thinks it has a good enough reason, it strips out the "privacy requested" flag.
Now, there is nothing that says that an SS7 switch which is handling incoming 800 calls HAS TO strip the privacy. The old ANI mechanism is still available, and SS7 does not have to treat 800 calls differently, but at least for some long distance companies, it does.
I have a question: does anyone know whether this SS7 privacy stripping on toll free calls is explicitly authorized? Or did companies exploit a loophole and just implement the SS7 software that way on purpose. A technical disadvantage to the old ANI system is that the calling number is not transmitted until AFTER the phone call is answered.
And then they're offering call recording also. When call recording is performed by a carrier, it doesn't necessarily wait for the call to be answered before it starts recording. I don't know about the Trap Call people. But there are services that will allow you to record what your caller is saying about you before you answer the phone, while the caller is still hearing ringing.
Quote:
"Oh Mr. Hoover, you just don't understand. We are not subject to city, state or federal regulation. We are Omnipotent. OMNIPOTENT! That's PO-TENT with an OMNI in front of it."
-- Lily Tomlin portraying power-mad telephone operator "Earnestine" from the album
"This is a Recording". Mr Hoover is J. Edgar ("Jedgar") Hoover,
Director of the FBI.
This is an interesting and tricky problem to solve. The danger comes from people who might google your name, see the bad guy thing and go "yuck" -- and then pass you by. People like this can even fully realize you aren't the bad guy, just someone with the same name, and still the "yuck" causes them to pass your resume by. But if you make a big deal out of the co-incidence, including an affidavit or side-by-side photos of yourself and the bad guy, you'll make the co-incidence be more memorable than the rest of the resume. And of course you have to be upbeat and polite and not condescending too.
Here's how I'd do it:
At the top I'd put an asterisk after my name. This arouses curiosity. If you think the people might be extra stupid, use two asterisks, so they can't miss it. At the very end of the resume, perhaps after "References: Available on request", put your footnote.
* Google Goofs to avoid. If they're a bit more formal, say * Google Gaffes to avoid. (If this catches on, there will come to be an internet slang expression for this section of a resume. If such an expression develops, use it.)
*Google Gaffe to avoid: Mistaken Identity. The applicant has no connection to the John Q. Public whose posts to the such-and-such forum pop up in a Google search by name.
Don't include the word pedophile, or even "bad guy" if you can help it. Your goal is to instruct the lazy and stupid not to jump to conclusions, without telling them that they are lazy and stupid.
You want to say "don't fall into the trap" without painting a big picture of a trap in their head that will dominate their memory of you. Don't even bring up the subject in your interview. Assume that if they've read your resume they know enough about the story.
Your best win here is not to be someone saddled with a huge hassle that you make a great noise about and then, finally, triumph over. Your best win here is to make the hassle seem miniscule, as measured in how few seconds of conversation in the interviewer's mind are occupied by the hassle and how many minutes are occupied with other aspects of you and the interview.
Henny ("Take my wife, please!) Youngman's _All Time Greatest One Liners_, available in paperback is all the education on delivering a joke you'll ever need.
But seriously, I shouldn't make jokes about my wife. She's permanently connected to a life support machine -- the refrigerator!
That anyone even has to ask this is a perfect example of what is wrong with the country. The answer is, first of all that Democracy requires the people to be educated. And then, this educated electorate is supposed to think about who would be the best person for the office, rather than the person they'd vote for in an actual contest of "popularity".
To make it more obvious, suppose you're a boss in a company who has to pick one of your employees to get a promotion. Who should you pick? The employee that you believe is more qualified to handle the new job? Or the one you'd enjoy "having a beer with"? If you make your judgement based on pretty much anything other than how competently they'd handle the new position, your aren't doing the company much of a favor.
Minus the reference to beer drinking, I was taught in elementary school when voting for the president of the fourth grade, say, to be sure to think who would be best, not necessarily most popular.
Thanks very much for posing the obvious question; it allowed me to make my point.
Their PR person speaking to the press, as opposed to their lobbyists speaking to Finland's legislators, clearly states they have no plans to leave Finland.
I suggest the legislators state, with equal assuredness, that they have no plans to nationalize Nokia.
Apparently an employee emailed confidential engineering documents to a competitor in China, and Nokia is unable to prevent themselves from investigating in an illegal manner. Maybe they'd have an easier time doing their snooping on the Chinese end, where snooping is not only legal, but practially the national pasttime!
I've considered it a lot, and I think MSFT would have been much better off in the long term if they had let themselves be split in two, instead of successfully appealing that court ruling.
So very much of what people dislike about Microsoft -- from marketing practices to fundamentally insecure software -- stemmed from making the preservation of their desktop monolopy their highest priority.
| Canada remains the only industrialized country that outlaws privately financed purchases | of core medical services.
I believe this is true in Sweden also. Swedes not wanting to wait for the system sometimes travel to England, where private care can be paid for. Please correct me my information is out of date for either of these countries.
Or even worse, if some trick were found that would allow a conviction-happy examiner in-the-know to produce a falsely high result. Or a booze-happy serial drunk driver in-the-know to produce a falsely low result.
Or both!
To make an analogy where the stakes are not life and death of the innocent and imprisonment of the innocent, but just a few bucks out of your own pocket, would you want to gamble on a slot machine where the manufacturer was unwilling to let the Nevada Gaming Commission (or similar body) examine the slot machine's source code?
This company's years long battle to keep their code secret is very, very suspicious.
I don't want to seem cold hearted to anyone whose love ones have been murdered by drunks on the road. But insisting on accuracy is not pro-drunk. Accuracy is a good and necessary ally. Inaccuracy is not.
Absolute certainty has tremendous appeal to it, in part because it spares people the bother of actually thinking about tough questions. Here, the tough question is "Well, if free speech isn't an absolute then where do we draw the line?" or "If there are unwritten exceptions, what possible protection does the first ammendment provide in the first place?"
Literal, absolutist interpretation is very seductive, but real freedom will never be achieved by people whose goal is to avoid having to do the hard thinking.
If you're going to call it an absolute, you need to come up with a justification for someone yelling "Fire" in a crowded theatre. People trampled to death; maybe your child or grandma. Now provide the justification why someone who uses mere speech to produce such a horrible outcome cannot be arrested or thrown in jail because he was protected by the 1st Ammendment?
Sure, this is the example that people always "trot out", but that's because it's a great example.
Absolutists please, proceed with your justifications! I'd genuinely like to find a way to make free speech absolute, without producing such obviously unacceptable outcomes.
Literal, absolutist interpretation is very seductive, but real freedom will never be achieved by people whose goal is to avoid having to do the hard thinking.
Intellectually lazy people make horribly dangerous government officials.
I find it quite interesting that so many people who claim they are uninterested in the Beatles feel compelled to post about their lack of interest. Obviously, there's something they ARE finding interesting.
And you're not completely stupid (the way these self-contradicting posters are). Your lust to post something clever just overtook your logic. It happens in software programming sometimes too.
Still, to this day I've never heard any musician utter the words "prison reform" since John Lennon.
(Have you? I hope to be corrected by young people or anyone more aware than I am.)
The whole social revolution of the 60's is tremendously tied together with the Beatles. It was actually considered much cooler to be idealistic then, than to be cynical and ironic! Growing up today, I can understand how some might see the Beatles in the same light as, say, Barney the Dinasaur, producing a similar knee-jerk rejection.
One of those multi-decade-long pendulum things. Hope it's started back the other way!
Well, let's put it this way. The Beatles are WAY more important than YOU are.
All these people who find the Beatles so uninteresting gets me wondering why they're compelled to write and tell everybody about it. I mean, when I'm uninterested in a slashdot story, I just don't read it! And I sure don't bother visiting classical music forums in order to announce my disinterest in classical music.
Uh, the question isn't whether to wiretap them or not! Pay attention!
The question is whether to get a warrant from the courts before wiretapping, or whether to just ignore the courts altogether and wiretap with no warrant.
People who fail to understand this difference are...
Well, I thought twice and decided to let you finish that sentence yourself.
Note also, rules like this are not just to protect innocent people: recall that power corrupts! So does secrecy. Requiring court approved warrants protects our leaders from the corrupting influence of excessive power. Once hooked, people make crazier and crazier excuses for why they need even more. See the pattern?
| The amusing part here is that this has come about mostly because of | Cisco's dedication to using as much H1-B/L1 labor as possible.
H1-B/L1 labor? So THAT's the reason that Linksys home routers are such a pathetic joke! I mean, the help screens they contain are missing descriptions of like half of the configuration fields.
Even first graders get F's if they leave out answers to half the questions.
And when you register a specific model and include your email address, can they be bothered to drop you a line when the firware updates? NO!
The article contains a simple explanation that's one sentence long.
Imagine the impact on the quality of discussions if reading the article were somehow enforced. Maybe something like mod points that everyone could use that says "obviously didn't read the article".
For newbies, RTFA means Read the (uh) Fine Article.
Even a little reminder at the top of the comments that said "To read the article, click HERE. Then come back for the discussion.
A "Did you read the article?" box that comment authors could check off with yes or no, and that comment readers could filter on would up the discussion quality substantially, I believe. Sure some would just lie, but not without being noticed as liars.
As for those who begin their comments with "I haven't read the Fine article, but blah blah blah", I would like to see treated like people who stand up at a PETA convention to announce that they're wearing furs.
Quality products are made with quality ingredients. The product here is interesting discussion, and willful ignorance is not a quality ingredient. (Vis. George Bush)
Slashdot Mirror
You're certainly on the right track in keeping the already corrupt or irresponsible far away from positions of power.
But you're missing the boat if you think that principled, responsible people don't get corrupted by power. Not everyone will fall to the temptation, of course, but the greater the power the greater the temptation. We have checks and balances not just to prevent the corrupt from becoming too powerful but also to protect the good people from having too large a concentration of power tempting them in the first place.
Technically it's an exaggeration to say "Absolute power corrupts absolutely," but it's definitely not an exaggeration to say that "Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom."
Secrecy, since it prevents that vigilance, is particularly corrupting.
I especially agree with your desire to see corrupt people who are so far gone that they're advertising it, nailed to the courtroom wall. I don't know enought facts about this particular cop/myspace situation to have a useful opinion on it, but I think we *all* know enought about, say Cheney, to have a useful opinion.
The question that remains is whether Obama will prefer to keep the excessive power that's been stolen and passed along to him, or give it back and investigate the theives who stole it. The jury's still out on that question, but so far it's a mixed bag.
I'm rooting for the Constitution. It isn't perfect, but it's way better than what we've got now.
[ Wow -- 1658's a lo plate # -- props! ]
Wow -- a real live grownup! Willing to actually bother *thinking* and everything!
What a country we could have if everybody was like that!
Please mod parent up!
I'd blame the illegally appointed Bushies holding career positions rather then mere inertia.
A previous administration's holdover appointees can certainly become vicious sabateurs. (Viz. the wretched Linda Tripp)
Such moderating! Only the inaccurate information was boosted! Maybe the metamoders
will see this, maybe they won't.
Brea means tarpits. (I expect the tarpits predate the ranch.)
Oh, and La means The.
They don't come up much in conversation, but a few people I know always
refer to them as "The The Tarpits Tarpits" when they speak. (Fortunately,
as I said, they doesn't come up too often in conversation!)
The La Brea Tarpits.
Now let me see.
That would be North of the Rio Grande River, and
South of the Sierra Nevada mountains, wouldn't it?
The only thing new here is that the service is being marketed, and the public is finding out about it.
If you call forward your landline to a toll-free number, which itself is programmed to forward the
calls it receives to a second number (say your cell), the callerID on the cell phone will display the number that would have been blocked if you had just taken the call at your landline.
I do not know whether ALL toll-free companies do this, or just some of them.
Here's how it all works.
Toll-free numbers have been around for decades longer than callerID. And it makes perfect sense that people who pay for a long distance call (the 800 number owner) should see the caller's number.
The mechanism used for doing this is called ANI, and it's been around since the 1960's at least.
There is no provision for blocking the calling party's number with this mechanism. (ANI stands for automatic number identification.)
Fast forward a few decades to the invention of something very new, Signaling System Seven (SS7).
It provides a whole new way to provide a caller's number to the called party, and it has various blocking options included. However, anytime a caller's number is supposed to be blocked, it really isn't -- it is always sent. However, a special one-bit flag is ALSO sent that says "Please
don't reveal this information even tho I am supplying you with it." Then if the equipment at the receiving end thinks it has a good enough reason, it strips out the "privacy requested" flag.
Now, there is nothing that says that an SS7 switch which is handling incoming 800 calls HAS TO
strip the privacy. The old ANI mechanism is still available, and SS7 does not have to treat 800 calls differently, but at least for some long distance companies, it does.
I have a question: does anyone know whether this SS7 privacy stripping on toll free calls is explicitly authorized? Or did companies exploit a loophole and just implement the SS7 software that way on purpose. A technical disadvantage to the old ANI system is that the calling number is not transmitted until AFTER the phone call is answered.
And then they're offering call recording also. When call recording is performed by a carrier, it doesn't necessarily wait for the call to be answered before it starts recording. I don't know about the Trap Call people. But there are services that will allow you to record what your caller
is saying about you before you answer the phone, while the caller is still hearing ringing.
Quote:
"Oh Mr. Hoover, you just don't understand. We are not subject to city, state or federal regulation. We are Omnipotent. OMNIPOTENT! That's PO-TENT with an OMNI in front of it."
-- Lily Tomlin portraying power-mad telephone operator "Earnestine" from the album
"This is a Recording". Mr Hoover is J. Edgar ("Jedgar") Hoover,
Director of the FBI.
This is an interesting and tricky problem to solve. The danger comes from people who might google your name, see the bad guy thing and go "yuck" -- and then pass you by. People like this can even
fully realize you aren't the bad guy, just someone with the same name, and still the "yuck" causes
them to pass your resume by. But if you make a big deal out of the co-incidence, including an affidavit or side-by-side photos of yourself and the bad guy, you'll make the co-incidence be more memorable than the rest of the resume. And of course you have to be upbeat and polite and not condescending too.
Here's how I'd do it:
At the top I'd put an asterisk after my name. This arouses curiosity. If you think the people might be extra stupid, use two asterisks, so they can't miss it. At the very end of the resume,
perhaps after "References: Available on request", put your footnote.
* Google Goofs to avoid. If they're a bit more formal, say
* Google Gaffes to avoid. (If this catches on, there will come to be an internet slang expression
for this section of a resume. If such an expression develops, use it.)
*Google Gaffe to avoid: Mistaken Identity. The applicant has no connection to the John Q. Public whose posts to the such-and-such forum pop up in a Google search by name.
Don't include the word pedophile, or even "bad guy" if you can help it. Your goal is to instruct the lazy and stupid not to jump to conclusions, without telling them that they are lazy and stupid.
You want to say "don't fall into the trap" without painting a big picture of a trap in their head that will dominate their memory of you. Don't even bring up the subject in your interview. Assume that if they've read your resume they know enough about the story.
Your best win here is not to be someone saddled with a huge hassle that you make a great noise about and then, finally, triumph over. Your best win here is to make the hassle seem miniscule,
as measured in how few seconds of conversation in the interviewer's mind are occupied by the hassle and how many minutes are occupied with other aspects of you and the interview.
Best of luck to you.
Henny ("Take my wife, please!) Youngman's _All Time Greatest One Liners_, available
in paperback is all the education on delivering a joke you'll ever need.
But seriously, I shouldn't make jokes about my wife. She's permanently connected
to a life support machine -- the refrigerator!
--Henny Youngman--
That anyone even has to ask this is a perfect example of what is wrong with the country. The
answer is, first of all that Democracy requires the people to be educated. And then, this educated
electorate is supposed to think about who would be the best person for the office, rather than the person they'd vote for in an actual contest of "popularity".
To make it more obvious, suppose you're a boss in a company who has to pick one of your employees to get a promotion. Who should you pick? The employee that you believe is more qualified to handle the new job? Or the one you'd enjoy "having a beer with"? If you make your judgement based on pretty much anything other than how competently they'd handle the new position, your aren't doing the company much of a favor.
Minus the reference to beer drinking, I was taught in elementary school when voting for the president of the fourth grade, say, to be sure to think who would be best, not necessarily most popular.
Thanks very much for posing the obvious question; it allowed me to make my point.
Yes.
I too would like the identity of the "squealer" to be exposed.
It's at least as valid a news story as printing the photo was.
It has the feel of a real pipsqueak seeking disproportionate revenge.
Hey, isn't that the same psychology that those Virgina Tech/Columbine etc.
tragedies have in common?
Maybe the school where this photo was taken really DOES need to investigate.
Their PR person speaking to the press, as opposed to their lobbyists speaking to Finland's
legislators, clearly states they have no plans to leave Finland.
I suggest the legislators state, with equal assuredness, that they have no plans to nationalize Nokia.
Apparently an employee emailed confidential engineering documents to a competitor in China, and Nokia is unable to prevent themselves from investigating in an illegal manner. Maybe they'd have an easier time doing their snooping on the Chinese end, where snooping is not only legal, but practially the national pasttime!
I've considered it a lot, and I think MSFT would have been much better off in the long term if
they had let themselves be split in two, instead of successfully appealing that court ruling.
So very much of what people dislike about Microsoft -- from marketing practices to fundamentally insecure
software -- stemmed from making the preservation of their desktop monolopy their highest priority.
| I'm not sure where all that medical insurance money is going in the US, but if your drugs can cost
| more than $100 per month, it's not into pills.
The Bush family has historically been majorly invested in pharmaceuticals.
| Canada remains the only industrialized country that outlaws privately financed purchases
| of core medical services.
I believe this is true in Sweden also. Swedes not wanting to wait for the system sometimes
travel to England, where private care can be paid for. Please correct me my information is
out of date for either of these countries.
Or even worse, if some trick were found that would allow a conviction-happy examiner in-the-know to produce a falsely high result. Or a booze-happy serial drunk driver in-the-know to produce a falsely low result.
Or both!
To make an analogy where the stakes are not life and death of the innocent and imprisonment of the innocent, but just a few bucks out of your own pocket, would you want to gamble on a slot machine where the manufacturer was unwilling to let the Nevada Gaming Commission (or similar body) examine the slot machine's source code?
This company's years long battle to keep their code secret is very, very suspicious.
I don't want to seem cold hearted to anyone whose love ones have been murdered by drunks on the road. But insisting on accuracy is not pro-drunk. Accuracy is a good and necessary ally. Inaccuracy is not.
Absolute certainty has tremendous appeal to it, in part because it spares people the bother of
actually thinking about tough questions. Here, the tough question is "Well, if free speech isn't an
absolute then where do we draw the line?" or "If there are unwritten exceptions, what possible protection
does the first ammendment provide in the first place?"
Literal, absolutist interpretation is very seductive, but real freedom will never be achieved by people
whose goal is to avoid having to do the hard thinking.
If you're going to call it an absolute, you need to come up with a justification for someone yelling
"Fire" in a crowded theatre. People trampled to death; maybe your child or grandma. Now provide
the justification why someone who uses mere speech to produce such a horrible outcome cannot be
arrested or thrown in jail because he was protected by the 1st Ammendment?
Sure, this is the example that people always "trot out", but that's because it's a great example.
Absolutists please, proceed with your justifications! I'd genuinely like to find a way to make free
speech absolute, without producing such obviously unacceptable outcomes.
Literal, absolutist interpretation is very seductive, but real freedom will never be achieved by people
whose goal is to avoid having to do the hard thinking.
Intellectually lazy people make horribly dangerous government officials.
To be clearer, I said the very opposite.
I find it quite interesting that so many people who claim they are uninterested in the Beatles feel compelled
to post about their lack of interest. Obviously, there's something they ARE finding interesting.
And you're not completely stupid (the way these self-contradicting posters are). Your lust to post something
clever just overtook your logic. It happens in software programming sometimes too.
You'll outgrow it.
And it was dripping, not drinking.
Still, to this day I've never heard any musician utter the words "prison reform" since John Lennon.
(Have you? I hope to be corrected by young people or anyone more aware than I am.)
The whole social revolution of the 60's is tremendously tied together with the Beatles. It was actually
considered much cooler to be idealistic then, than to be cynical and ironic! Growing up today, I can understand
how some might see the Beatles in the same light as, say, Barney the Dinasaur, producing a similar knee-jerk
rejection.
One of those multi-decade-long pendulum things. Hope it's started back the other way!
Most of the time, real timelessness correlates inversely with awareness "amongst the modern youth".
Sounds a little insulting at first, but it's only logical if you bother to think about it.
Young people are better with fads. Again sounds insulting at first, but is only logical.
Yes, I do.
You are completely stupid.
Well, let's put it this way. The Beatles are WAY more important than YOU are.
All these people who find the Beatles so uninteresting gets me wondering why they're compelled to write and
tell everybody about it. I mean, when I'm uninterested in a slashdot story, I just don't read it! And I
sure don't bother visiting classical music forums in order to announce my disinterest in classical music.
Why, that would be completely stupid!
Uh, the question isn't whether to wiretap them or not! Pay attention!
The question is whether to get a warrant from the courts before wiretapping, or whether to just
ignore the courts altogether and wiretap with no warrant.
People who fail to understand this difference are ...
Well, I thought twice and decided to let you finish that sentence yourself.
Note also, rules like this are not just to protect innocent people: recall that power corrupts! So does secrecy.
Requiring court approved warrants protects our leaders from the corrupting influence of excessive power. Once
hooked, people make crazier and crazier excuses for why they need even more. See the pattern?
Thank Heaven above that you're here, with your "in all probability"
special knowledge, to save the rest of us from bothering with actual
experiments!
It's: "made of cream cheese",
"imbecilic", and
"attempts at".
And does anybody here have any idea what "higher than V1" means?
Smells like a sour grapes post from a competing researcher, who
is an instinctive "Slap-'em-down-aholic".
And I didn't even call you loony or an imbecile.
I encourage others to read the article. It's short, very clearly
written, and shows some objective ability to do exactly what they
claim.
(And nobody was claiming they could read the porn in your brain.)
Although for some inexplicable reason, the whole story forces me to
think of Sarah Palin! I don't know why!
| The amusing part here is that this has come about mostly because of
| Cisco's dedication to using as much H1-B/L1 labor as possible.
H1-B/L1 labor? So THAT's the reason that Linksys home routers are
such a pathetic joke! I mean, the help screens they contain are missing
descriptions of like half of the configuration fields.
Even first graders get F's if they leave out answers to half the
questions.
And when you register a specific model and include your email address,
can they be bothered to drop you a line when the firware updates? NO!
Linksys/Cisco you are pathetic!
The article contains a simple explanation that's one sentence long.
Imagine the impact on the quality of discussions if reading the
article were somehow enforced. Maybe something like mod points that
everyone could use that says "obviously didn't read the article".
For newbies, RTFA means Read the (uh) Fine Article.
Even a little reminder at the top of the comments that said
"To read the article, click HERE. Then come back for the discussion.
A "Did you read the article?" box that comment authors could check
off with yes or no, and that comment readers could filter on would
up the discussion quality substantially, I believe. Sure some would
just lie, but not without being noticed as liars.
As for those who begin their comments with "I haven't read the Fine
article, but blah blah blah", I would like to see treated like people
who stand up at a PETA convention to announce that they're wearing
furs.
Quality products are made with quality ingredients. The product here is interesting discussion, and willful ignorance is not a quality ingredient. (Vis. George Bush)