You did not mention the the whole "3rd party" thing either.
Yeahhhh........
Okay. Let's spend a fuck ton of money on MS SQL servers, coding departments, internal backups ONLY (remember... anything "offsite" is 3rd party, unless you are so rich in the IT budget you can afford TWO data centers), develop non-web based front ends to applications (because anything browser based is bad and stupid) where you have to version control and a competent IT dept to keep all computers uniform and up to date to run your localized apps. New version of a DLL or OCX file? Better push that out to all the machines so your localized front-end software can run right.
Then let's add some secure VPN tunnels so the executives can take those shiny laptops and use the localized software and have, more or less, direct access to files within the company remotely. You know.... stuff like how a million credit card numbers of medical record files make it out into the wild.
Or....... you can have half a brain.
There is a reason why some 3rd party companies exist.... wait for it..... because it is vastly cheaper and more efficient to have SAAS. Sure, you better have a good relationship and use a reputed company, but I don't think there is any more or less risk from the employees in that 3rd party company than all the employees in your own company from data theft and other such instances of skullduggery.
Not to mention that web based apps, even for a locally developed and administrated application, is far easier to maintain and develop. If you actually move everything to a system like that you just might... just might... get to have Linux thin clients for the majority of the employees to use your internally accessed web based application. The executives and other departments that need other software to do their jobs can have a regular PC with/without Linux.
Control of your own data? First thing I asked a big SAAS company that a client was considering to use instead of the aging and clunky localized application that was killing them was if they would make sure we had a less than 24 hour old copy of all of our data. The client wanted to know that even with SAAS that they were not held "hostage" with their data. Pretty reasonable right?
Guess what? They were more than willing to comply with the reasonable request and set up a nightly rsync with all of our data and a direct database dump of everything we did that day. Not to mention, they are running MySQL Cluster, have two different backups daily of all data, and replicate their backups with several days versions offsite.
The cost difference..... is pretty gosh darn dramatic I must say.
But nahhhhhhhhhhhh........ let's spend 10+ times that amount so that we don't have to touch a web browser or anything outside of the private IP address space.
Hell... fuck it. Let's go get some AS/400 machines and a bunch of coax terminals and break out all those dusty books with the scripting language. Can't get more localized and disconnected than that huh?
I don't like the trend of giving Google (or the cloud) complete control over all of our data and everything we do either. However, lumping all 3rd party companies that provide SAAS that allow you concentrate more of your resources on your core business as inherently flawed and a "cultural" mistake is just a little over board.
The true costs of that localized app are higher than he thinks. It is far far less likely to be updated and have the features you really need over time if you are purchasing it from a 3rd party company too. You're held hostage by their own problems and stupidity as well. Stuff like TWO different localized apps constantly conflicting because they both rely on another 3rd party DLL that needs to be registered and the automatic updates from one of the applications instantly breaks the other one. Routinely. Like clockwork. I have to come up with scripts that can fix that crap all the time so the software can work. I don't get paid peanuts either.
All the MORE reason why domains should not be controlled by the US government through fear, intimidation, stupidity (the FBI agent that shutdown a whole datacenter due to a single occupant impacting hundreds of other businesses costing them millions because his level of computer sophistication is just enough to know that the DVD-ROM is not a cupholder), and laws that they create which are so clearly corrupt and blatant pandering to the scared-shitless copyright cartels.
I know we are screwed in the US. The majority is polarized and paralyzed Americans who want to quibble more about what gets spent where, do the recipients deserve it, how much Jesus Christ should be integrated into the government vis-a-vis educational laws and regulations, and how all the dirty Mexicans (their words) are stealing our jobs and running amok committing crimes all over the place. I could give other examples.
Is there really any representation in government for sanity at this point that is not corrupt, retarded, or insane? Anybody actually talking about real reform, protecting our rights, protecting our citizens, and get us towards the other end of the spectrum where we are not owned by a very small percentage of other Americans and foreign nationals through the maze of corporations? Anybody that cares how we are literally falling apart as a country since only 2.5% of GDP is spent on infrastructure that is fast approaching, or exceeded the average life span of an American and its projected life span? That progressively we don't know and don't care how to actually manufacture anything ourselves anymore? Our educational system is a complete joke and we are losing all of the edge we ever had on the rest of the world for technology? None that I can tell. Let's just get more fat, more stupid, more dependent on the rest of world to effectively take our pollution for us, make our meaningless trinkets and crap we consume, and generally..... keep feeding and sending shiny shit to Rome.
So I know, because I have been told so many times, that there are quite a lot of Slashdotters out there that are not American....
Well wake the FUCK UP. I know we can't do it for obvious reasons but the rest of you need to take control over the IP address space and DNS system as a whole so retarded US lawmakers don't own your asses by default. No due process in your country, no respect for your laws, nothing.
Domain Names are the property of the US GOVERNMENT.
By all means, let that continue.
Ohhh, and in case you need a clue out there we are only ~4-5% of the world population. Yet we get to control 100% of the Internet which is turning out to be the very basis upon which entire economies are based. Even agriculture and manufacturing at some point now administratively requires it. In 10-20 more years you will not find a single occupation or field that does not require the Internet to get something done.
So by all means, the other 95% of you out there roll over like bitches and let the US ram you up the poop chute.
I don't want to do it to you. Most Americans don't support it it. I am a patriotic American that grew up his whole life deeply believing in the ideals and philosophy of what it meant to be an American, and that America led the rest of the world be example. We had the moral high ground and were defenders of the weak. We shepherd the weak through the valley of darkness.
I have learned differently and that my cynicism, it kind of shows, is not unfounded.
So don't be too angry with us anymore. We are just a few decades away from being a Totalitarian State, or worse, a Totalitarian State where we all drink so much of the Koolaid that we convince ourselves we are still free.
Save yourselves from us while you still can. That means really really really getting off your asses in the EU and doing something about this shit. You should be angry as hell that we don't even need to participate in your legal system to steal your domains.
Oh the memories. I remember some of slower kids and kids from the younger grades would pick up the balloons to blow them them up or use them as water balloons and then ask why it tasted funny.
Exactly. Anybody that is actually serious about child porn uses different methods. At minimum they use TOR and FreeNet, then establish webs of trust that are actually pretty hard to get into. There have been several articles in the last few years about huge child porn rings busted in multiple countries that were using pretty sophisticated methods to communicate and nothing was in plain text. It required some actual detective work and identifying the victims to make headway in those cases. I can remember it was a big deal that the law enforcement figured out a way to "unswirl" the photoshop effects that some of those pedos were using to hide their faces while buggering poor little boys in Thailand.
You surf long enough on the Internet for "teen porn" and within about 20 minutes of clicking links to links to links you will see your first questionable picture. Give it another a couple of minutes and you will find your first transient child porn "site" willing to take your money to let you in and the pictures on the signup page are those that leave no doubt it is a little girl under the age of 11-12. We are not talking about some web cam of a 17 high school girl showing her your tits, but prepubescent girls being victimized.
That's the other side of the coin. There is already enough material produced that organized crime in Russia and Eastern Europe just repackages it and attempts to sell it no different than drugs.
Which is easier? To track and bust some people that really are not child molesters at all, but just went to "deep" in their depraved travels in the Internet Underground or actually going after the foreign actors that are hosting this shit?
I'm not posting anonymously here. Seriously, how many guys here have been surfing for porn and clicking away and then have seen some questionable stuff that really look like child porn?
I know I have. It did not get me excited and was just a huge speed bump if you catch my meaning.
This whole thing is based on the premise that mere possession, which can be temporary internet files and some really really transient actions that are more permanent than you think, of child porn should be a crime and that you need to be labeled as a sexual predator for the rest of your life.
That's stupid. Using it to raid some guys house (which has happened to some people hosting TOR exit nodes) and ruin their lives is just crazy. He did not have hard drives filled with child porn and images and his basement did not look like something out of 8MM with Nicholas Cage.
If the point of keeping DNS queries and connection logs is punish and raid anybody that came into contact with unlawful material, than we have some really unsophisticated and bone headed law makers. Not to mention we know of at least one case in the UK where this kind of hysteria was used to victimize some poor guy and that luckily for him they caught the person attempting to frame him.
I want child porn to be stopped too, but let's actually identify the people producing it and not people that are inadvertently exposed to it.
Of course......... that could just a whole "lions, tigers, and bears OH MY" deal and the real point behind the tracking is not to protect the children at all but use to monitor people and construct useful profiles to governments and corporations so that they can advertise to you and governments can categorize you at various levels of activism unpopular with the current administrations and particular political parties.
Funny you mention dogs, when I am pretty damn sure that on some occasions that your dog farted that the "input intensity" was so high that "representation sparseness" is not as steady as one might think.
Yes, but then you will have to start buying canned air like in Space Balls.
Using that same logic that storage media facilitates crime, I will argue to the Canadian government that breathing itself greatly facilitates crime and must be taxed and monitored.
His point is that out of all possible scenarios that logic and reason would lead one to conclude the US events are truthful over other accounts based on his belief that there is no political or strategic advantage and that other countries by default have less credibility than the US government.
Unless you are blinded by patriotism towards the US you would not quickly dismiss the assertion from Iran, North Korea, Russia or China if they said the evidence did not match the US statements, specifically, that it was not Bin Laden was killed. Especially if it is more than one country and I mentioned those countries sarcastically for literary affect. You would have to a be a moron if several EU nations disagreed with the US findings and you believed the US just "because". There better be some solid logic and reasoning why several EU nations would be wrong.
You mentioned the most interesting part of all, especially in his post too.
Evidence.
So far all the evidence, and I do mean all that I know of, are statements of facts by authority figures.
Ummmmm, that is not evidence. Not at all, not even close, not even in the same galaxy. If I inform you that I have 5 apples, that is a statement that I believe I possess the evidence and proof that I do indeed possess 5 apples. If I show that I have 5 apples, I don't need to say a damned thing. You can see and evaluate the evidence in front of you to conclude I have 5 apples.
That's why proper science is peer reviewed and for anything to be considered seriously it has to be able to be reproduced under the same conditions so that other scientists can obtain the same evidence and verify your conclusions or offer alternatives, etc. Anything is else is taken a hell of lot less seriously.
Granted, if a highly notable and credible figure like Stephen Hawking announced tomorrow that he invented anti-gravity we would probably believe him and give him benefit of the doubt. We would still be waiting for the evidence though, but would not instantly conclude his is an idiot nutjob.
Now if Buford out in hillbilly country wrote a letter to the New York Times saying he wanted a press conference for his anti-gravity device he just invented..... I doubt Buford would get the press conference.
So there are really two questions for me then:
1) Do I respect Obama and the current administration enough, "on the balance of the evidence of their performance so far", to give them the benefit of the doubt? 2) Am I so blinded by my respect and loyalty to the US or Obama in #1 that I allow him to not present me any real evidence at all or additional confirmations from reputed governments and public figures that Obama's statements are truthful and backed by evidence I am not allowed to see?
Tinfoil hatters will still cook up a hoax. Besides, Al Quaeda confirmed bin laden is dead.
Firstly, Al Qaida could have a strategic advantage to agree that he is dead. Dying while being shot by U.S forces helps him become a shahid, or martyr. Bin Laden is granted the highest privileges in heaven and gets to live next to Allah himself.
Aside from the propaganda and emotional impact to Islamic warriors of Bin Laden achieving the state of shahid, which is one of the hopes and goals of all jihadists, they can also benefit by still having Bin Laden alive to lead them, but the U.S unable to use him as an excuse for acts of aggression in the Islamic world. Not that the U.S would not find other reasons, or somebody else that becomes the new Darth Vader to us.
Furthermore, as an oft accused Tinfoil Hatter myself, I have to say that skepticism here about the truth and actual status of Bin Laden here is not unreasonable.
Why is the U.S government, out of all of our allies, the only one with any information or forensic evidence? Why bury Bin Laden at sea so fast with no unbiased 3rd party collecting forensic evidence witnessed by multiple parties belonging to our allies?
Speaking for the Tinfoil Hatters, we literally have only the word of the White House and President Obama to declare him dead.
I agree that releasing the photos might incite incredible unrest in the Middle East. However, that did not even have to be necessary. He could have been flown to a base in Germany where the whole thing was video taped by multiple countries and forensic evidence collected by every country in the EU, Canada, Russia, and China. Basically, the entire UN Security Council members could have video taped each other collecting the evidence.
No video tape footage needed to be released. No photos. A nice respectful burial at sea to show the Islamic world that we respect the death of an enemy, even Bin Laden, and gave him a proper burial.
But...... there would have then been multiple countries on the opposite sides of many issues, ALL saying they used their collected evidence to prove it was Bin Laden.
We don't have that do we?
It does not make me a Tinfoil Hatter to have questions and skepticism at this point, nor does it make me not patriotic for my country to ask these questions and question the credibility of the government itself in this situation.
I refuse to live in fear as well. That's why when so many of my rights get taken away in this whole "lions, tigers, and bears, OH MY" bullshit that "terrorizers" caused I get hugely upset.
My view is really really really simple. Two Options:
1) You take away my Constitutional Rights because we leave in fear and need the Government to protect us. Government needs to bypass or abridge my rights to provide me the peace, prosperity, and protection that my fear makes me agree to quite unfavorable terms under the most liberal interpretation of the word duress.
2) You NUKE THE FUCKING BASTARDS.
I'll take two please.
Of course, we don't have to go nuclear. At the same time we did not need to spend a trillion and create new billionaires in our decade long war against a nebulous enemy either.
My view is always fight, fight, fight, and then fight some more before we give up the rights that our country's founders went through hell to get for us. You can say whatever you want about conspiracy theories, blah, blah, blah. The ideals and philosophy behind what American's considered Freedom for most of our existence as a country are pretty universal human desires. White, slave owning, tax dodgers they might have been, but that did not make some of their statements any less valid or profound.
Good can come of the photos. However, what would have been better is the BODY. I would have had that body in front of the UN for multiple independent parties (including Iran and North Korea) to take samples from to compare them against Bin Laden's known living relatives. I would have even, with compassion and respect, flown the body back to Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia to be buried in Islamic traditions.
Right now I think the whole thing is suspicious and bullshit.
Pakistan is going through some major shit right now because the US barged in and engaged in a firefight, killed a bunch of people, and "took" a body out of Pakistan. They are not entirely wrong to feel that way either, but I still say fuck em, because for nearly a decade we have felt that Bin Laden was basically granted asylum in Pakistan.
So why is that there is so little information, we have only the government to trust (Wikileaks amongst other events has greatly tarnished their credibility), and the body is BURIED AT FUCKING SEA.
How nice and tidy is that? No exhumations possible. No investigations. No more forensic data collection by any parties whatsoever. The body is now in the OCEAN, and as we sit here on Slashdot, being eaten or at some level of decomposition. Good luck finding the body or any evidence now.
If they took his body and handed it over to Saudi Arabia I would have been more impressed with the credibility. Better yet, Jordan. Just to have a country other than the US in possession would be huge. Give it to the Norwegians for fucks sake or the French. Literally any other place than US custody or the oceans. Kim Jong with his hilarious sunglasses would have been a better choice.
Government transparency and change under Obama? My ass. Full disclosure here, I am not affiliated with any political party. Obama has been a complete let down for what it important to me, which is our rights, punishing those responsible for the economic collapse, and restoring our Freedoms taken from us.
So now the "transparency and change" king of the US has handed us a nice, neat, FINAL, unarguable declaration of Bin Laden's death with nothing but the word of the US government and the President. No real evidence or participation of our allies.
Hmmmmmmmmm..... No reason to be skeptical at all or ask for photos. Which photos will be the only thing you can get at this point if you were lucky.
Of course.... there is absolutely no political or strategic gain to announce Bin Laden's death at this point at all.
That would be like me constructing a dirty bomb the size of a suitcase, undetectable by everything including the TSA, and then taking out an advertisement in the New York times announcing it exists, but only available to be auctioned to qualified really-super-scary terrorists.
You advertise a bug like this obscuring the results when you want to COOPERATE with the open/closed source programming community to both do the right thing and to gain credentials that your company actually knows something.
You don't advertise shit like this when you are searching for a buyer that is probably part of organized crime in eastern Europe.
Law enforcement trying to obtain tools used to violate our rights is not the most "troubling" (or puzzling) part of this story.
Ok. I can schedule a task from the command line to run the calculator app. Not only that, but custom event filters that trigger it, it would be possible to get a modified Google Chrome itself to cause the calculator to open.
His point is that they seem to be hiding something with the process window being obscured and yours is the simple fact the calculator pops up without actually running the calculator app (which could be bound to a hot-key you did not see pressed to btw) and therefore provides some credibility or a defense against skepticism.
The whole thing may be allegedly true or not. If they really have that capability I find it curious that they are even advertising it as a press release? Why? You could sell that to any Intelligence Agency for millions. I doubt they would need to publicly acknowledge the auction.
They openly said they will NOT disclose this to Google. VUPEN basically just advertised a fancy new weapon to their "exclusively" government customers.
The whole thing smells fishy because of VUPEN really is making their bucks off specially designed and coded cyber-weapons the last farking thing they want to do is alert Google to the mere possibility they can do what they can do.
None of makes any sense. Sure I see what you see too, but damned, if I am still not skeptical for so many many reasons.
Man. That is so sad. You never watched enough movies as a kid, or as an adult.
What would actually happen is that 10 of the Navy Seals would stay behind allowing the most wounded and mission critical buddies on to the remaining chopper while receiving half the ammo out of the remaining Navy Seals. After a fierce battle most the Navy Seals are captured and taking to a hidden Al Qaida base where they are busy being tortured and interrogated.
Then somebody like Bruce Willis or Samuel L Jackson would be in a situation room with pictures of Osama Bin Laden's body or him having his testicles electrocuted in an interrogation on all the scrrens. There would be a bunch of arguments and then a crack team of super special top secret forces would escort to the hidden base a highly classified experimental solider-android-cyber-alien-hybrid-something-or-other with some really cool special effects that makes Neo look like a little cripple.
Somebody on the team or on the bad side will also be *super* hot. Live Eva Mendes super hot. This may, or may not, affect the super soldier. Depends on a PG-13 or R rating target.
Some really cool shit, a bunch of explosions, some twists and turns........ and there you go, 24 Navy Seals make it home.
Another poster already mentioned it, but it truly bears repeating. Having that car blasting out their music completely silenced but still able to hear a police siren.
From the article, this is not limited to glass at all. In fact, the article does not even indicate that the material is translucent at any point either.
Something else to consider. Take two of these and slap them together in a sandwich and you know have sound proofing to a fairly extraordinary level in something that is likely to be only a percentage of the thickness of the material that would be needed now.
What does the NSA or CIA think about this too? Law enforcement? If this material can be made translucent, my biggest question from how it makes it sound in the article is with lasers could you still measure vibration on the surface on the outside to reconstruct audio waves on the inside? A.K.A, laser microphones?
There is nothing wrong with a standard sound proof wall. However, this kind of technology sounds as good as what the NSA/CIA use on their buildings to prevent them from being spied on. In other words, military/national security level technology being applied to normal civilian applications.
he explained that the rising cost of fuel was effecting the price of delivering the bits to my home
That is, in a very removed sense, actually true. It takes energy obviously to deliver the bits whether or not it is photons or electricity at different points along the way.
On the fact of it though, it sounds like he his just full of crap.
Considering the margins already on bandwidth I seriously doubt ISPs and backbone providers are in the same situation as the airlines. Do they have to purchase electricity in 6 months contacts? Hedge their electricity bills in such a fashion? Uh huh. Riiiiiggggggght.
It does remind of me a true story though. You may have had the same reaction on the phone.
Several years ago I was on a plane flight across country and my legs start to hurt being a big and tall man and I was loitering around the bathroom just trying to stretch out my legs.
Stewardess comes to me and says that I need to sit down. I nicely explained to her that I am in a little pain and that stretching my legs helps with the discomfort and to please be reasonable or give me a pretty good reason why it is dangerous for me to be standing with the seat belt light off.
She then said the most awesome thing I have ever heard, "Well Sir, the reason why you need to sit down is that the oxygen level is different back here than it is at your seat".
I looked at her. I looked at my seat no more than 15 feet away. I looked at her again. I remembered from high school chemistry that Oxygen atoms move pretty damn fast. Pretty sure they move faster than the plane I was flying in and some vague memories about gas laws and equilibrium and other scientific "shit".
I took a hard look at her for about another second or two and she was dead serious or an Oscar winning actress. I smiled and said, "Thank You", and then went to sit down.
I mean seriously... how do you come back at something like that? What could you possibly say? It's like trying to explain particle physics and the Higgs Boson to a 4 year old.
Your story reminded me of that and I just suspect you may have had a similar reaction. We probably both felt like spectators at the Special Olympics.
Interesting you bring that up since I doubt I am the first person to take a small wash towel, soak it in water, and microwave it in the hotel to place on my face before a shave. Of course you need to use the right power setting or wait till it cools to just the right temperature.
Shaving really does work better after soaking your face in hot water and the hot towel is nicer to do this, and more relaxing then trying to use all of the hot water in the shower on your face. Not to mention more effective.
Yet at the same time I am kind of surprised that so many people take hotel towels. Is it souvenirs or what? I just don't get it. I have never taken anything from a hotel in my life. 99% of the time it will not be as nice as the stuff you have at home... and the whole thing about it not being your property of course.
I take it back. I might have nabbed a pen once or twice (not on purpose) and one hotel actually gave me a coffee mug for staying with them. Still use it years later. St. Regis in Houston.
I read that bash article too about the Playbook which I have been waiting to get and have wondered if it is really as bad as the article says it is. I have a hard time figuring out how they are going into a death spiral too.
Having played with iPhones and some Driods, I will stick with my BB. It does exactly what I want it to do:
1) Makes phone calls pretty damn well and keeps track of them 2) Does a very good job with email 3) Has an extremely good instant message system capable of grouping and file transfers as good or better than Skype.
I don't need all the rest of the bells and whistles and my Storm is still chugging along just fine with a new battery.
My preference would be a *very* stripped down phone system that is about 90% battery, and 10% phone. Cylindrical with a very simple LCD interface showing Caller ID and some buttons to dial. That is *it*. I don't want to hold it up to my face or anything either. That's what bluetooth, or some equivalent, is very good at anyways.
It could last days, or weeks, on a single charge like my old Nokia since it is not running some super processor to play Angry Birds and do stuff that is non-phone activity.
Then, the coolest thing, would be able to plug it into a receptacle in a laptop, iPad, PlayBook, Nook, whatever and then provide network connectivity to that device once you paired it, or authorized it one time from a simple "connect" button on the top of your phone.
I will tell you this. All of the smart phones are complete utter crap, mine included. I am flabbergasted by the geek interest in these devices when pragmatically you can never get anything done on them. You spend more time futzing around with them, rooting them, fixing them, jail breaking them, than actually accomplishing communication with them, or god forbid, any real work. The exception being email as in landscape mode on my Storm I can type fairly well and still communicate effectively via email, BB, or Skype. Web browsing or anything else is a joke. Even the games are pitiful on such a small screen when you are expected to use touch to accomplish it. If you want a small gaming device get a GBA.
The dimensions alone of most smartphones preclude any real ability to have a useful UI. Something the size of the iPad makes far more sense from everything from web browsing to SSH'ing into boxes to do work. Need to remote desktop into a server? iPad. Trying to use a Storm? Masochism.
Of course I can only dream. The only reason why I have the Storm is the email capabilities. Otherwise I would have a clamshell phone and be happy with it.
There are enough quasi-Luddites out there like me that want the minimum that still gravitate towards BB's offerings for precisely the reasons I outlined.
Hmmmmm.... well if I recall the math I learned in my formative years that is only 3 out of the 11 spices....... If you really know the secret post it here.
Seriously.
I think actually leaking the 11 secret herbs and spices is like the WikiLeaks and Playstation key leak combined.
Let's not also forget the complete inane bullshit of the story.
It allowed accessory makers to make protective cases.
The police are involved because some guy said, "Shsssshshshshshhshshshhshhsh! come over here.... give me 10$ and I will tell you the new iPad2 is x.y.z dimensions and here is where you cut the holes."
Seriously? The physical dimensions and possibly the locations of the some fucking buttons and inputs is the lowest stupidest level of corporate espionage I have ever heard and stretches the definition thinner than a penny stretched from here to the Moon.
It's like involving the police because little Sally told everyone else on the playground that it was Bobby that farted.
It would be a different story if he gave away information that was actually trade secret, but we aren't talking about the Colonel's secret fucking spices are we?
Yeah... well your two cents is worth a lot more then what you think:
Conservative MPs were worried about the electoral implications of copyright reform
That means they did not give a FUCK about the ethical implications. They did not care about copyright either. What does it mean? What is its true purpose in society? How can we create copyright law that encourages innovation and creativity by protecting the artists while also nurturing and protecting a strong public domain that is critical to the very success of an advanced society? How do we do all that and balance out the motivation to protect artists (really the distribution channels) *temporary* rights we granted them to control distribution and protect profits against the rights of our citizens that we ostensibly here to protect as well?
No.
From that line the only fucking thing they cared about was if it pissed off enough Canadians to cause their fat corrupt lazy asses to be kicked out of government.
Your two cents is a bargain basement price for a +5 insightful.
Isn't it ironic that the the Imperial unit system is primarily last used by a rebel colony that gained it's independence over 200 years ago:)
Even the UK has switched over to metric with very few exceptions. The only one I think of off the top of my head is that beer is sold in pints. Which does make some sense.
I am seriously, which sounds cooler?
"Give me a fucking pint right now!" or "Give me fucking.47 liters!"
I would say just round it off to a half liter, but even that does not sound as good as pint. That and I don't think we need those soccer hooligans over there even 6% more drunk:)
Your same logic is the reason why Facebook is overvalued by, like, a billion times.
Anytime somebody tells me they have a user base of a half-billion and I personally know people with 35 accounts just to game Mafia Wars, I start thinking the truth is a little different.
The number of times I have given even 5% relevant information to a website or forum to gain access to service? ZERO
I have a couple hundred email aliases since I run my own email server. I keep all the welcome messages in one box and a naming convention that allows me to keep track of them.
For EXACTLY this reason. Sony finally got their asses handed to them and the only people I feel sorry for are the customers.
You presented an ostensibly very well informed assessment of chicken fat being used instead of regular fuel. I did not know that Google performed miracles, but that makes your post all the more impressive due to the presence of Divine Intervention.
At first I though you were an engineer, than I thought maybe some BBQ savant, and maybe an economist.
In any case, your article was fascinating.
Of course the whole thing makes me feel stupid because my first thought was not nearly as intelligent. I just kept wondering if I was a spectator at one of the shuttle launches if the blast would engulf the viewing public in a heavenly fog of KFC-Goodness. My 2nd thought was could I be stoned with a bucket of chicken and then my 3rd was could I be stoned and make a million dollars of selling chicken to these people after the launch.
I'm slightly proud of the 3rd thought.
I'm going to get some KFC now. Been nice talking to you.
I can certainly see how his comment could come off as sarcastic and acerbic.
However, he does have a point. There is nothing new about the approach. They even claim new, but from reading the article, this is not new.
I see no reason to make a comparison between new and old stenographic methods. At most splitting the chunks against multiple files is a different implementation of the exact same idea. Nothing Earth shattering, and I can see a couple of issues already.
If it is split across multiple files and not encrypted, then technically the safety of your data is only as safe as how limited the ability of an attacker is to perform analysis and reconstruction. There are companies out there that make tens of thousands of dollars doing just that.
If my file is split across 349 files what happens when file# 235 is modified or deleted? Do they have a system wide monitoring process? Redundant processes similar to RAID to accept small degradations like that? Just how inefficient is the process then? Like RAID 5 do you need to lose an additional 20% of total storage space on a 4 drive implementation?
I can kind of see the "Congratulations" statement here. It is stenographic, just not radically different than other methods, and ostensibly with some serious caveats.
I think I will stick with TrueCrypt for now which actually encrypts my data is reliant upon a simple and hard to defeat denial mechanism. That being, "But I gave you the password. You can see the files".
To my knowledge that is not how it works. Or, very rarely is an outside company contracted to "communicate" with the customer and get them to pay debt, while the original company is still owed.
The vast majority of time, and this is where you hear terms like 6 month old debt, is that ABC company will sell 100,000$ worth of that debt for a percentage. A good reason to do so is that it cleans up their books. They also get to write off the difference as a loss. I am sure you heard about the "massive write-downs" in the news the last couple of years. That's what it means.
Once the debt has not been collected on for a year or so, or less, collection company A sells the debt again to collection company B for the same reasons as the original company.
Rinse and Repeat.
Eventually, company F has a $45,000 original payment owed with like 5 years of interest, but probably purchased it for $100 at most. So the entire time the amount owed stays the same and suffers interest allowable by law (it varies).
When the statute of limitations has been reached, and the consumer has not communicated with *anybody* owed the debt during the whole period. Communicate one time and the clock resets.
It's hard for me to argue that companies should not have the right to sell debt in this fashion.
What I see the need for is enforcement and enhancement of the regulations and laws that govern the actions of the collection agencies themselves. That's where reform is needed.
I don't know the whole situation with Comcast either. There are some collection agencies out there so messed up in their actions towards consumers that they may have crossed the line. Stuff like:
1) We know where you live 2) You can go to jail for not paying us 3) We can take your property from you tomorrow to sell your debt 4) Social services can take your children since only bad parents have collection agencies after them
All kinds of nasty stuff they have pulled (a lot of which is covered under current law). Who knows why Comcast decided to not do business with them anymore and not pay.
I wish Sprint would do something. There is a collection agency that collects for Sprint that is one degree removed from Satan. Combine that with Sprint have the highest number of fraudulent accounts created and you have a really messed up situation.
I was sued for thousands of dollars for a Sprint bill opened in my name, while I had AT&T service. Scam artists. Always offer to settle and they make it seem easier than going to court. So basically, extortion.
When you have somebody owe you $45,000 dollars with interest racked up what do you have to lose being an asshole collecting it when you bought it for $100?
Slashdot Mirror
You did not mention the the whole "3rd party" thing either.
Yeahhhh........
Okay. Let's spend a fuck ton of money on MS SQL servers, coding departments, internal backups ONLY (remember... anything "offsite" is 3rd party, unless you are so rich in the IT budget you can afford TWO data centers), develop non-web based front ends to applications (because anything browser based is bad and stupid) where you have to version control and a competent IT dept to keep all computers uniform and up to date to run your localized apps. New version of a DLL or OCX file? Better push that out to all the machines so your localized front-end software can run right.
Then let's add some secure VPN tunnels so the executives can take those shiny laptops and use the localized software and have, more or less, direct access to files within the company remotely. You know.... stuff like how a million credit card numbers of medical record files make it out into the wild.
Or....... you can have half a brain.
There is a reason why some 3rd party companies exist.... wait for it..... because it is vastly cheaper and more efficient to have SAAS. Sure, you better have a good relationship and use a reputed company, but I don't think there is any more or less risk from the employees in that 3rd party company than all the employees in your own company from data theft and other such instances of skullduggery.
Not to mention that web based apps, even for a locally developed and administrated application, is far easier to maintain and develop. If you actually move everything to a system like that you just might... just might... get to have Linux thin clients for the majority of the employees to use your internally accessed web based application. The executives and other departments that need other software to do their jobs can have a regular PC with/without Linux.
Control of your own data? First thing I asked a big SAAS company that a client was considering to use instead of the aging and clunky localized application that was killing them was if they would make sure we had a less than 24 hour old copy of all of our data. The client wanted to know that even with SAAS that they were not held "hostage" with their data. Pretty reasonable right?
Guess what? They were more than willing to comply with the reasonable request and set up a nightly rsync with all of our data and a direct database dump of everything we did that day. Not to mention, they are running MySQL Cluster, have two different backups daily of all data, and replicate their backups with several days versions offsite.
The cost difference..... is pretty gosh darn dramatic I must say.
But nahhhhhhhhhhhh........ let's spend 10+ times that amount so that we don't have to touch a web browser or anything outside of the private IP address space.
Hell... fuck it. Let's go get some AS/400 machines and a bunch of coax terminals and break out all those dusty books with the scripting language. Can't get more localized and disconnected than that huh?
I don't like the trend of giving Google (or the cloud) complete control over all of our data and everything we do either. However, lumping all 3rd party companies that provide SAAS that allow you concentrate more of your resources on your core business as inherently flawed and a "cultural" mistake is just a little over board.
The true costs of that localized app are higher than he thinks. It is far far less likely to be updated and have the features you really need over time if you are purchasing it from a 3rd party company too. You're held hostage by their own problems and stupidity as well. Stuff like TWO different localized apps constantly conflicting because they both rely on another 3rd party DLL that needs to be registered and the automatic updates from one of the applications instantly breaks the other one. Routinely. Like clockwork. I have to come up with scripts that can fix that crap all the time so the software can work. I don't get paid peanuts either.
All the MORE reason why domains should not be controlled by the US government through fear, intimidation, stupidity (the FBI agent that shutdown a whole datacenter due to a single occupant impacting hundreds of other businesses costing them millions because his level of computer sophistication is just enough to know that the DVD-ROM is not a cupholder), and laws that they create which are so clearly corrupt and blatant pandering to the scared-shitless copyright cartels.
I know we are screwed in the US. The majority is polarized and paralyzed Americans who want to quibble more about what gets spent where, do the recipients deserve it, how much Jesus Christ should be integrated into the government vis-a-vis educational laws and regulations, and how all the dirty Mexicans (their words) are stealing our jobs and running amok committing crimes all over the place. I could give other examples.
Is there really any representation in government for sanity at this point that is not corrupt, retarded, or insane? Anybody actually talking about real reform, protecting our rights, protecting our citizens, and get us towards the other end of the spectrum where we are not owned by a very small percentage of other Americans and foreign nationals through the maze of corporations? Anybody that cares how we are literally falling apart as a country since only 2.5% of GDP is spent on infrastructure that is fast approaching, or exceeded the average life span of an American and its projected life span? That progressively we don't know and don't care how to actually manufacture anything ourselves anymore? Our educational system is a complete joke and we are losing all of the edge we ever had on the rest of the world for technology? None that I can tell. Let's just get more fat, more stupid, more dependent on the rest of world to effectively take our pollution for us, make our meaningless trinkets and crap we consume, and generally..... keep feeding and sending shiny shit to Rome.
So I know, because I have been told so many times, that there are quite a lot of Slashdotters out there that are not American....
Well wake the FUCK UP. I know we can't do it for obvious reasons but the rest of you need to take control over the IP address space and DNS system as a whole so retarded US lawmakers don't own your asses by default. No due process in your country, no respect for your laws, nothing.
Domain Names are the property of the US GOVERNMENT.
By all means, let that continue.
Ohhh, and in case you need a clue out there we are only ~4-5% of the world population. Yet we get to control 100% of the Internet which is turning out to be the very basis upon which entire economies are based. Even agriculture and manufacturing at some point now administratively requires it. In 10-20 more years you will not find a single occupation or field that does not require the Internet to get something done.
So by all means, the other 95% of you out there roll over like bitches and let the US ram you up the poop chute.
I don't want to do it to you. Most Americans don't support it it. I am a patriotic American that grew up his whole life deeply believing in the ideals and philosophy of what it meant to be an American, and that America led the rest of the world be example. We had the moral high ground and were defenders of the weak. We shepherd the weak through the valley of darkness.
I have learned differently and that my cynicism, it kind of shows, is not unfounded.
So don't be too angry with us anymore. We are just a few decades away from being a Totalitarian State, or worse, a Totalitarian State where we all drink so much of the Koolaid that we convince ourselves we are still free.
Save yourselves from us while you still can. That means really really really getting off your asses in the EU and doing something about this shit. You should be angry as hell that we don't even need to participate in your legal system to steal your domains.
I promise
Oh the memories. I remember some of slower kids and kids from the younger grades would pick up the balloons to blow them them up or use them as water balloons and then ask why it tasted funny.
Poor little bastards.
Exactly. Anybody that is actually serious about child porn uses different methods. At minimum they use TOR and FreeNet, then establish webs of trust that are actually pretty hard to get into. There have been several articles in the last few years about huge child porn rings busted in multiple countries that were using pretty sophisticated methods to communicate and nothing was in plain text. It required some actual detective work and identifying the victims to make headway in those cases. I can remember it was a big deal that the law enforcement figured out a way to "unswirl" the photoshop effects that some of those pedos were using to hide their faces while buggering poor little boys in Thailand.
You surf long enough on the Internet for "teen porn" and within about 20 minutes of clicking links to links to links you will see your first questionable picture. Give it another a couple of minutes and you will find your first transient child porn "site" willing to take your money to let you in and the pictures on the signup page are those that leave no doubt it is a little girl under the age of 11-12. We are not talking about some web cam of a 17 high school girl showing her your tits, but prepubescent girls being victimized.
That's the other side of the coin. There is already enough material produced that organized crime in Russia and Eastern Europe just repackages it and attempts to sell it no different than drugs.
Which is easier? To track and bust some people that really are not child molesters at all, but just went to "deep" in their depraved travels in the Internet Underground or actually going after the foreign actors that are hosting this shit?
I'm not posting anonymously here. Seriously, how many guys here have been surfing for porn and clicking away and then have seen some questionable stuff that really look like child porn?
I know I have. It did not get me excited and was just a huge speed bump if you catch my meaning.
This whole thing is based on the premise that mere possession, which can be temporary internet files and some really really transient actions that are more permanent than you think, of child porn should be a crime and that you need to be labeled as a sexual predator for the rest of your life.
That's stupid. Using it to raid some guys house (which has happened to some people hosting TOR exit nodes) and ruin their lives is just crazy. He did not have hard drives filled with child porn and images and his basement did not look like something out of 8MM with Nicholas Cage.
If the point of keeping DNS queries and connection logs is punish and raid anybody that came into contact with unlawful material, than we have some really unsophisticated and bone headed law makers. Not to mention we know of at least one case in the UK where this kind of hysteria was used to victimize some poor guy and that luckily for him they caught the person attempting to frame him.
I want child porn to be stopped too, but let's actually identify the people producing it and not people that are inadvertently exposed to it.
Of course......... that could just a whole "lions, tigers, and bears OH MY" deal and the real point behind the tracking is not to protect the children at all but use to monitor people and construct useful profiles to governments and corporations so that they can advertise to you and governments can categorize you at various levels of activism unpopular with the current administrations and particular political parties.
Funny you mention dogs, when I am pretty damn sure that on some occasions that your dog farted that the "input intensity" was so high that "representation sparseness" is not as steady as one might think.
Yes, but then you will have to start buying canned air like in Space Balls.
Using that same logic that storage media facilitates crime, I will argue to the Canadian government that breathing itself greatly facilitates crime and must be taxed and monitored.
His point is that out of all possible scenarios that logic and reason would lead one to conclude the US events are truthful over other accounts based on his belief that there is no political or strategic advantage and that other countries by default have less credibility than the US government.
Unless you are blinded by patriotism towards the US you would not quickly dismiss the assertion from Iran, North Korea, Russia or China if they said the evidence did not match the US statements, specifically, that it was not Bin Laden was killed. Especially if it is more than one country and I mentioned those countries sarcastically for literary affect. You would have to a be a moron if several EU nations disagreed with the US findings and you believed the US just "because". There better be some solid logic and reasoning why several EU nations would be wrong.
You mentioned the most interesting part of all, especially in his post too.
Evidence.
So far all the evidence, and I do mean all that I know of, are statements of facts by authority figures.
Ummmmm, that is not evidence. Not at all, not even close, not even in the same galaxy. If I inform you that I have 5 apples, that is a statement that I believe I possess the evidence and proof that I do indeed possess 5 apples. If I show that I have 5 apples, I don't need to say a damned thing. You can see and evaluate the evidence in front of you to conclude I have 5 apples.
That's why proper science is peer reviewed and for anything to be considered seriously it has to be able to be reproduced under the same conditions so that other scientists can obtain the same evidence and verify your conclusions or offer alternatives, etc. Anything is else is taken a hell of lot less seriously.
Granted, if a highly notable and credible figure like Stephen Hawking announced tomorrow that he invented anti-gravity we would probably believe him and give him benefit of the doubt. We would still be waiting for the evidence though, but would not instantly conclude his is an idiot nutjob.
Now if Buford out in hillbilly country wrote a letter to the New York Times saying he wanted a press conference for his anti-gravity device he just invented..... I doubt Buford would get the press conference.
So there are really two questions for me then:
1) Do I respect Obama and the current administration enough, "on the balance of the evidence of their performance so far", to give them the benefit of the doubt?
2) Am I so blinded by my respect and loyalty to the US or Obama in #1 that I allow him to not present me any real evidence at all or additional confirmations from reputed governments and public figures that Obama's statements are truthful and backed by evidence I am not allowed to see?
Tinfoil hatters will still cook up a hoax. Besides, Al Quaeda confirmed bin laden is dead.
Firstly, Al Qaida could have a strategic advantage to agree that he is dead. Dying while being shot by U.S forces helps him become a shahid, or martyr. Bin Laden is granted the highest privileges in heaven and gets to live next to Allah himself.
Aside from the propaganda and emotional impact to Islamic warriors of Bin Laden achieving the state of shahid, which is one of the hopes and goals of all jihadists, they can also benefit by still having Bin Laden alive to lead them, but the U.S unable to use him as an excuse for acts of aggression in the Islamic world. Not that the U.S would not find other reasons, or somebody else that becomes the new Darth Vader to us.
Furthermore, as an oft accused Tinfoil Hatter myself, I have to say that skepticism here about the truth and actual status of Bin Laden here is not unreasonable.
Why is the U.S government, out of all of our allies, the only one with any information or forensic evidence? Why bury Bin Laden at sea so fast with no unbiased 3rd party collecting forensic evidence witnessed by multiple parties belonging to our allies?
Speaking for the Tinfoil Hatters, we literally have only the word of the White House and President Obama to declare him dead.
I agree that releasing the photos might incite incredible unrest in the Middle East. However, that did not even have to be necessary. He could have been flown to a base in Germany where the whole thing was video taped by multiple countries and forensic evidence collected by every country in the EU, Canada, Russia, and China. Basically, the entire UN Security Council members could have video taped each other collecting the evidence.
No video tape footage needed to be released. No photos. A nice respectful burial at sea to show the Islamic world that we respect the death of an enemy, even Bin Laden, and gave him a proper burial.
But...... there would have then been multiple countries on the opposite sides of many issues, ALL saying they used their collected evidence to prove it was Bin Laden.
We don't have that do we?
It does not make me a Tinfoil Hatter to have questions and skepticism at this point, nor does it make me not patriotic for my country to ask these questions and question the credibility of the government itself in this situation.
I refuse to live in fear as well. That's why when so many of my rights get taken away in this whole "lions, tigers, and bears, OH MY" bullshit that "terrorizers" caused I get hugely upset.
My view is really really really simple. Two Options:
1) You take away my Constitutional Rights because we leave in fear and need the Government to protect us. Government needs to bypass or abridge my rights to provide me the peace, prosperity, and protection that my fear makes me agree to quite unfavorable terms under the most liberal interpretation of the word duress.
2) You NUKE THE FUCKING BASTARDS.
I'll take two please.
Of course, we don't have to go nuclear. At the same time we did not need to spend a trillion and create new billionaires in our decade long war against a nebulous enemy either.
My view is always fight, fight, fight, and then fight some more before we give up the rights that our country's founders went through hell to get for us. You can say whatever you want about conspiracy theories, blah, blah, blah. The ideals and philosophy behind what American's considered Freedom for most of our existence as a country are pretty universal human desires. White, slave owning, tax dodgers they might have been, but that did not make some of their statements any less valid or profound.
Good can come of the photos. However, what would have been better is the BODY. I would have had that body in front of the UN for multiple independent parties (including Iran and North Korea) to take samples from to compare them against Bin Laden's known living relatives. I would have even, with compassion and respect, flown the body back to Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia to be buried in Islamic traditions.
Right now I think the whole thing is suspicious and bullshit.
Pakistan is going through some major shit right now because the US barged in and engaged in a firefight, killed a bunch of people, and "took" a body out of Pakistan. They are not entirely wrong to feel that way either, but I still say fuck em, because for nearly a decade we have felt that Bin Laden was basically granted asylum in Pakistan.
So why is that there is so little information, we have only the government to trust (Wikileaks amongst other events has greatly tarnished their credibility), and the body is BURIED AT FUCKING SEA.
How nice and tidy is that? No exhumations possible. No investigations. No more forensic data collection by any parties whatsoever. The body is now in the OCEAN, and as we sit here on Slashdot, being eaten or at some level of decomposition. Good luck finding the body or any evidence now.
If they took his body and handed it over to Saudi Arabia I would have been more impressed with the credibility. Better yet, Jordan. Just to have a country other than the US in possession would be huge. Give it to the Norwegians for fucks sake or the French. Literally any other place than US custody or the oceans. Kim Jong with his hilarious sunglasses would have been a better choice.
Government transparency and change under Obama? My ass. Full disclosure here, I am not affiliated with any political party. Obama has been a complete let down for what it important to me, which is our rights, punishing those responsible for the economic collapse, and restoring our Freedoms taken from us.
So now the "transparency and change" king of the US has handed us a nice, neat, FINAL, unarguable declaration of Bin Laden's death with nothing but the word of the US government and the President. No real evidence or participation of our allies.
Hmmmmmmmmm..... No reason to be skeptical at all or ask for photos. Which photos will be the only thing you can get at this point if you were lucky.
Of course.... there is absolutely no political or strategic gain to announce Bin Laden's death at this point at all.
Then why advertise it in a press release?
That would be like me constructing a dirty bomb the size of a suitcase, undetectable by everything including the TSA, and then taking out an advertisement in the New York times announcing it exists, but only available to be auctioned to qualified really-super-scary terrorists.
You advertise a bug like this obscuring the results when you want to COOPERATE with the open/closed source programming community to both do the right thing and to gain credentials that your company actually knows something.
You don't advertise shit like this when you are searching for a buyer that is probably part of organized crime in eastern Europe.
Law enforcement trying to obtain tools used to violate our rights is not the most "troubling" (or puzzling) part of this story.
Ok. I can schedule a task from the command line to run the calculator app. Not only that, but custom event filters that trigger it, it would be possible to get a modified Google Chrome itself to cause the calculator to open.
His point is that they seem to be hiding something with the process window being obscured and yours is the simple fact the calculator pops up without actually running the calculator app (which could be bound to a hot-key you did not see pressed to btw) and therefore provides some credibility or a defense against skepticism.
The whole thing may be allegedly true or not. If they really have that capability I find it curious that they are even advertising it as a press release? Why? You could sell that to any Intelligence Agency for millions. I doubt they would need to publicly acknowledge the auction.
They openly said they will NOT disclose this to Google. VUPEN basically just advertised a fancy new weapon to their "exclusively" government customers.
The whole thing smells fishy because of VUPEN really is making their bucks off specially designed and coded cyber-weapons the last farking thing they want to do is alert Google to the mere possibility they can do what they can do.
None of makes any sense. Sure I see what you see too, but damned, if I am still not skeptical for so many many reasons.
Man. That is so sad. You never watched enough movies as a kid, or as an adult.
What would actually happen is that 10 of the Navy Seals would stay behind allowing the most wounded and mission critical buddies on to the remaining chopper while receiving half the ammo out of the remaining Navy Seals. After a fierce battle most the Navy Seals are captured and taking to a hidden Al Qaida base where they are busy being tortured and interrogated.
Then somebody like Bruce Willis or Samuel L Jackson would be in a situation room with pictures of Osama Bin Laden's body or him having his testicles electrocuted in an interrogation on all the scrrens. There would be a bunch of arguments and then a crack team of super special top secret forces would escort to the hidden base a highly classified experimental solider-android-cyber-alien-hybrid-something-or-other with some really cool special effects that makes Neo look like a little cripple.
Somebody on the team or on the bad side will also be *super* hot. Live Eva Mendes super hot. This may, or may not, affect the super soldier. Depends on a PG-13 or R rating target.
Some really cool shit, a bunch of explosions, some twists and turns........ and there you go, 24 Navy Seals make it home.
Another poster already mentioned it, but it truly bears repeating. Having that car blasting out their music completely silenced but still able to hear a police siren.
From the article, this is not limited to glass at all. In fact, the article does not even indicate that the material is translucent at any point either.
Something else to consider. Take two of these and slap them together in a sandwich and you know have sound proofing to a fairly extraordinary level in something that is likely to be only a percentage of the thickness of the material that would be needed now.
What does the NSA or CIA think about this too? Law enforcement? If this material can be made translucent, my biggest question from how it makes it sound in the article is with lasers could you still measure vibration on the surface on the outside to reconstruct audio waves on the inside? A.K.A, laser microphones?
There is nothing wrong with a standard sound proof wall. However, this kind of technology sounds as good as what the NSA/CIA use on their buildings to prevent them from being spied on. In other words, military/national security level technology being applied to normal civilian applications.
he explained that the rising cost of fuel was effecting the price of delivering the bits to my home
That is, in a very removed sense, actually true. It takes energy obviously to deliver the bits whether or not it is photons or electricity at different points along the way.
On the fact of it though, it sounds like he his just full of crap.
Considering the margins already on bandwidth I seriously doubt ISPs and backbone providers are in the same situation as the airlines. Do they have to purchase electricity in 6 months contacts? Hedge their electricity bills in such a fashion? Uh huh. Riiiiiggggggght.
It does remind of me a true story though. You may have had the same reaction on the phone.
Several years ago I was on a plane flight across country and my legs start to hurt being a big and tall man and I was loitering around the bathroom just trying to stretch out my legs.
Stewardess comes to me and says that I need to sit down. I nicely explained to her that I am in a little pain and that stretching my legs helps with the discomfort and to please be reasonable or give me a pretty good reason why it is dangerous for me to be standing with the seat belt light off.
She then said the most awesome thing I have ever heard, "Well Sir, the reason why you need to sit down is that the oxygen level is different back here than it is at your seat".
I looked at her. I looked at my seat no more than 15 feet away. I looked at her again. I remembered from high school chemistry that Oxygen atoms move pretty damn fast. Pretty sure they move faster than the plane I was flying in and some vague memories about gas laws and equilibrium and other scientific "shit".
I took a hard look at her for about another second or two and she was dead serious or an Oscar winning actress. I smiled and said, "Thank You", and then went to sit down.
I mean seriously... how do you come back at something like that? What could you possibly say? It's like trying to explain particle physics and the Higgs Boson to a 4 year old.
Your story reminded me of that and I just suspect you may have had a similar reaction. We probably both felt like spectators at the Special Olympics.
Interesting you bring that up since I doubt I am the first person to take a small wash towel, soak it in water, and microwave it in the hotel to place on my face before a shave. Of course you need to use the right power setting or wait till it cools to just the right temperature.
Shaving really does work better after soaking your face in hot water and the hot towel is nicer to do this, and more relaxing then trying to use all of the hot water in the shower on your face. Not to mention more effective.
Yet at the same time I am kind of surprised that so many people take hotel towels. Is it souvenirs or what? I just don't get it. I have never taken anything from a hotel in my life. 99% of the time it will not be as nice as the stuff you have at home... and the whole thing about it not being your property of course.
I take it back. I might have nabbed a pen once or twice (not on purpose) and one hotel actually gave me a coffee mug for staying with them. Still use it years later. St. Regis in Houston.
I read that bash article too about the Playbook which I have been waiting to get and have wondered if it is really as bad as the article says it is. I have a hard time figuring out how they are going into a death spiral too.
Having played with iPhones and some Driods, I will stick with my BB. It does exactly what I want it to do:
1) Makes phone calls pretty damn well and keeps track of them
2) Does a very good job with email
3) Has an extremely good instant message system capable of grouping and file transfers as good or better than Skype.
I don't need all the rest of the bells and whistles and my Storm is still chugging along just fine with a new battery.
My preference would be a *very* stripped down phone system that is about 90% battery, and 10% phone. Cylindrical with a very simple LCD interface showing Caller ID and some buttons to dial. That is *it*. I don't want to hold it up to my face or anything either. That's what bluetooth, or some equivalent, is very good at anyways.
It could last days, or weeks, on a single charge like my old Nokia since it is not running some super processor to play Angry Birds and do stuff that is non-phone activity.
Then, the coolest thing, would be able to plug it into a receptacle in a laptop, iPad, PlayBook, Nook, whatever and then provide network connectivity to that device once you paired it, or authorized it one time from a simple "connect" button on the top of your phone.
I will tell you this. All of the smart phones are complete utter crap, mine included. I am flabbergasted by the geek interest in these devices when pragmatically you can never get anything done on them. You spend more time futzing around with them, rooting them, fixing them, jail breaking them, than actually accomplishing communication with them, or god forbid, any real work. The exception being email as in landscape mode on my Storm I can type fairly well and still communicate effectively via email, BB, or Skype. Web browsing or anything else is a joke. Even the games are pitiful on such a small screen when you are expected to use touch to accomplish it. If you want a small gaming device get a GBA.
The dimensions alone of most smartphones preclude any real ability to have a useful UI. Something the size of the iPad makes far more sense from everything from web browsing to SSH'ing into boxes to do work. Need to remote desktop into a server? iPad. Trying to use a Storm? Masochism.
Of course I can only dream. The only reason why I have the Storm is the email capabilities. Otherwise I would have a clamshell phone and be happy with it.
There are enough quasi-Luddites out there like me that want the minimum that still gravitate towards BB's offerings for precisely the reasons I outlined.
Hmmmmm.... well if I recall the math I learned in my formative years that is only 3 out of the 11 spices....... If you really know the secret post it here.
Seriously.
I think actually leaking the 11 secret herbs and spices is like the WikiLeaks and Playstation key leak combined.
Let's not also forget the complete inane bullshit of the story.
It allowed accessory makers to make protective cases.
The police are involved because some guy said, "Shsssshshshshshhshshshhshhsh! come over here.... give me 10$ and I will tell you the new iPad2 is x.y.z dimensions and here is where you cut the holes."
Seriously? The physical dimensions and possibly the locations of the some fucking buttons and inputs is the lowest stupidest level of corporate espionage I have ever heard and stretches the definition thinner than a penny stretched from here to the Moon.
It's like involving the police because little Sally told everyone else on the playground that it was Bobby that farted.
It would be a different story if he gave away information that was actually trade secret, but we aren't talking about the Colonel's secret fucking spices are we?
Yeah... well your two cents is worth a lot more then what you think:
Conservative MPs were worried about the electoral implications of copyright reform
That means they did not give a FUCK about the ethical implications. They did not care about copyright either. What does it mean? What is its true purpose in society? How can we create copyright law that encourages innovation and creativity by protecting the artists while also nurturing and protecting a strong public domain that is critical to the very success of an advanced society? How do we do all that and balance out the motivation to protect artists (really the distribution channels) *temporary* rights we granted them to control distribution and protect profits against the rights of our citizens that we ostensibly here to protect as well?
No.
From that line the only fucking thing they cared about was if it pissed off enough Canadians to cause their fat corrupt lazy asses to be kicked out of government.
Your two cents is a bargain basement price for a +5 insightful.
Remember those are units of measurement for weight, but not really for volume.
If you need a volume comparison, use Fizzle Sticks.
Isn't it ironic that the the Imperial unit system is primarily last used by a rebel colony that gained it's independence over 200 years ago :)
Even the UK has switched over to metric with very few exceptions. The only one I think of off the top of my head is that beer is sold in pints. Which does make some sense.
I am seriously, which sounds cooler?
"Give me a fucking pint right now!" or "Give me fucking .47 liters!"
I would say just round it off to a half liter, but even that does not sound as good as pint. That and I don't think we need those soccer hooligans over there even 6% more drunk :)
Your same logic is the reason why Facebook is overvalued by, like, a billion times.
Anytime somebody tells me they have a user base of a half-billion and I personally know people with 35 accounts just to game Mafia Wars, I start thinking the truth is a little different.
The number of times I have given even 5% relevant information to a website or forum to gain access to service? ZERO
I have a couple hundred email aliases since I run my own email server. I keep all the welcome messages in one box and a naming convention that allows me to keep track of them.
For EXACTLY this reason. Sony finally got their asses handed to them and the only people I feel sorry for are the customers.
You presented an ostensibly very well informed assessment of chicken fat being used instead of regular fuel. I did not know that Google performed miracles, but that makes your post all the more impressive due to the presence of Divine Intervention.
At first I though you were an engineer, than I thought maybe some BBQ savant, and maybe an economist.
In any case, your article was fascinating.
Of course the whole thing makes me feel stupid because my first thought was not nearly as intelligent. I just kept wondering if I was a spectator at one of the shuttle launches if the blast would engulf the viewing public in a heavenly fog of KFC-Goodness. My 2nd thought was could I be stoned with a bucket of chicken and then my 3rd was could I be stoned and make a million dollars of selling chicken to these people after the launch.
I'm slightly proud of the 3rd thought.
I'm going to get some KFC now. Been nice talking to you.
I can certainly see how his comment could come off as sarcastic and acerbic.
However, he does have a point. There is nothing new about the approach. They even claim new, but from reading the article, this is not new.
I see no reason to make a comparison between new and old stenographic methods. At most splitting the chunks against multiple files is a different implementation of the exact same idea. Nothing Earth shattering, and I can see a couple of issues already.
If it is split across multiple files and not encrypted, then technically the safety of your data is only as safe as how limited the ability of an attacker is to perform analysis and reconstruction. There are companies out there that make tens of thousands of dollars doing just that.
If my file is split across 349 files what happens when file# 235 is modified or deleted? Do they have a system wide monitoring process? Redundant processes similar to RAID to accept small degradations like that? Just how inefficient is the process then? Like RAID 5 do you need to lose an additional 20% of total storage space on a 4 drive implementation?
I can kind of see the "Congratulations" statement here. It is stenographic, just not radically different than other methods, and ostensibly with some serious caveats.
I think I will stick with TrueCrypt for now which actually encrypts my data is reliant upon a simple and hard to defeat denial mechanism. That being, "But I gave you the password. You can see the files".
To my knowledge that is not how it works. Or, very rarely is an outside company contracted to "communicate" with the customer and get them to pay debt, while the original company is still owed.
The vast majority of time, and this is where you hear terms like 6 month old debt, is that ABC company will sell 100,000$ worth of that debt for a percentage. A good reason to do so is that it cleans up their books. They also get to write off the difference as a loss. I am sure you heard about the "massive write-downs" in the news the last couple of years. That's what it means.
Once the debt has not been collected on for a year or so, or less, collection company A sells the debt again to collection company B for the same reasons as the original company.
Rinse and Repeat.
Eventually, company F has a $45,000 original payment owed with like 5 years of interest, but probably purchased it for $100 at most. So the entire time the amount owed stays the same and suffers interest allowable by law (it varies).
When the statute of limitations has been reached, and the consumer has not communicated with *anybody* owed the debt during the whole period. Communicate one time and the clock resets.
It's hard for me to argue that companies should not have the right to sell debt in this fashion.
What I see the need for is enforcement and enhancement of the regulations and laws that govern the actions of the collection agencies themselves. That's where reform is needed.
I don't know the whole situation with Comcast either. There are some collection agencies out there so messed up in their actions towards consumers that they may have crossed the line. Stuff like:
1) We know where you live
2) You can go to jail for not paying us
3) We can take your property from you tomorrow to sell your debt
4) Social services can take your children since only bad parents have collection agencies after them
All kinds of nasty stuff they have pulled (a lot of which is covered under current law). Who knows why Comcast decided to not do business with them anymore and not pay.
I wish Sprint would do something. There is a collection agency that collects for Sprint that is one degree removed from Satan. Combine that with Sprint have the highest number of fraudulent accounts created and you have a really messed up situation.
I was sued for thousands of dollars for a Sprint bill opened in my name, while I had AT&T service. Scam artists. Always offer to settle and they make it seem easier than going to court. So basically, extortion.
When you have somebody owe you $45,000 dollars with interest racked up what do you have to lose being an asshole collecting it when you bought it for $100?