What I don't get, however, is the projection of Best Buy going away. Would that be in favor of Walmarts and the like? Because I can't imagine somebody buying a a big screen TV or even a laptop based solely on online descriptions
They'll stay around a while for the TVs and refrigerators, you're not going to buy a refrigerator online (though the home improvement chains offer serious competition for appliance business). People will get their computers at places like MicroCenter, which gets the big box store stuff right, at least as it applies to computers.
I'm not sure how much of the following is true. Rumor had it that from the mid-90s on back, the NSA and FBI would monitor a random selection of local telco phone calls (analog POT line for the younger readers). The purpose was seek out certain key words by computer and then flag the call for further review by an agent eavesdropping on it. They say if you heard a "click" after speaking one of these key words or phrases, someone just tapped into your line due to the change in voltage caused by this.
I think they've had the technology for a long time, to do it without making "click" noises. If you hear a "click", either they wanted you to hear it, or it's the 14-year-old next door messing with the phone lines, or (most likely of all) you've got a crap phone line.
It wasn't speech. Speech is what comes out of your mouth. He used an electronic device, which means it's no longer speech
Oh, come on. Money is speech in the US. Yet something you type into your phone isn't?
This was in Canada, though. They don't exactly have free speech up there, like we do. Usually, I think that means they do better. Stories like this, though, remind me that their authorities feel they have something to prove to their cousins to the south (or merely don't want to screw up their plan to buy a retirement home in Florida), and if US authorities can be morons, in Canada there are those who feel that means they must be even more moronic.
I'm sure I'll be called chauvanistic, old-fashioned and be modded into oblivion for saying this, but how about... oh, I dunno, being a mom and raising your children?
Parenting is not a part-time job. I'm not going to pretend to know your situation (maybe daddy is out of the picture for whatever reason), but you'll contribute more to society by spending your time raising your kid(s) to be decent human beings.
And society shows how much it values it, by paying stay-at-home moms accordingly, right?
Re:Internet wins...
on
House Kills SOPA
·
· Score: 4, Informative
SOPA Is very much a right-wing bill. What could be more right-wing than attacking a system where anyone can communicate equally, regardless of where they fit into the hierarchy of society? The point of SOPA is to curb the free and open nature of the Internet and to reinvigorate the power of established corporations and government agencies -- sounds very right-wing to me."
For some definition of "right-wing" that is so broad as to be mostly useless. (Unless your point is, "what's considered 'left' in the US would be viewed as center-right anywhere else".) It's a "corporatist" bill, and most American Senators and Representatives are in the pocket of corporations, including many of those who pass for "left-wing". The entertainment industry is the primary proponent of this bill. Among the sponsors of the (PIPA) bill in the Senate you'll find such "liberals" and proponents of 'net neutrality as Al Franken (who last year was keynote speaker at Netroots Nation, but I'll bet he has "schedule conflicts" that prevent going to it this year).
Virtually everybody in Washington ("right" or "left", Obama or Bush) wants to keep extending the power of the government, witness the recent vote to extend the "Patriot" act.
Try having VOIP with 600ms of latency, or just a video chat. It is incredibly annoying.
Back when new carriers were starting in long distance telephony, about 25 years ago, I used "Satellite Business Systems" for a carrier. The latency was a little annoying, mostly because it gave you the feeling that the person you were talking to was a bit stupid, because they were so slow to respond. But I got used to it. It wasn't ideal, but the price was right. Life's all about trade-offs.
A pirate bay style torrent site for ebooks and articles would be funny.
Nice. You could buy the domain and just redirect to Pirate Bay. Maybe with an ICE-style "redirecting..." page that said "This domain has been seized because the copyright trolls who were ripping people off also tried to rip their creditors off." That'd be worth a couple of bucks.
Considering the Taliban manual specifically prohibits any Taliban from being alone in a room with an unbearded man (boy), I bet it is so that nobody can record that evidence as well. Which is incredibly ironic that they are trying to prevent obscenity when they are predominately pedophiles. Before anybody mods this troll..... if it was false why would it have to be in the manual for the Taliban specifically?
Because it's a popular entertainment in Afghanistan that the Taliban want to ban?
What makes you think it's not a problem with non-Taliban? Didn't American contractors with DynCorp pimp young boys for a party for Afghan cops (cite?
prepaid wouldn't be so bad if they didn't force you to keep recharging (if you don't use your calls in the month, you lose them unless you recharge, and if you don't recharge after 3 months, they cut your number off completely)
(In the US) hardly any of the prepay plans make you recharge every month. With T-Mo credits last 3 months (for anything more than a $10 card), and after you've spent a total of $100 the credits last for a year. Since you'll likely use them up before then (and have to get a refill, which will extend you for another year), expiration doesn't really enter into it. Or if you hardly ever use the phone and don't use up the minutes, the first $100 buys you a year, and each following year is another $10.
I have zero interest in Chrome, mostly because I simply don't trust it. Google has WAY too much access to stuff already.
I use Comodo Dragon, which is a hardened version of (open source) Chromium that doesn't phone home to Google. Look & feel are much like Chrome, and it uses the same extensions.
Of course, this product is from Comodo, the same company whose certificate authority was hacked earlier this year.
On the list of exceptions: people who deal in used good or "junk" less frequently than once per month
I'd argue most craigslisters and garage sales are likely people who are like that.
In Louisiana, people who sell things on Craigslist or at a garage sale only sell a single item per month? Are you sayin' that garage sales there don't last two or three days, like they do in other parts of the country? That nobody in Louisiana owns two possessions that other people might want to buy?
You're ignoring the fact that after identity theft the original owner no longer has access to the things that a good credit score can obtain. If it was just a matter of making a copy that had no impact on the original you'd have a point. However, the individual whose identity is stolen ends up with decreased ability to borrow and possibly out of a job as some jobs do require one to have a good credit score and limited outstanding debt.
But if you get a bad credit score, who was it that issued the score? It is the credit company that is issuing a false representation of your value, a score that does not reflect your true situation. How they could have known is irrelevant, it should be their problem, and they are are negligent in failing to learn the true situation before reporting it. If you make statements about others negligently and with disregard to facts, you will likely be liable, so why should the credit company not be liable?
Of course, we know it doesn't work that way. Them what has the money makes the rules. That's how they get to be in the 1% instead of the 99%.
I hire people to exercise fiduciary responsibility over large sums of money. I want to make very certain they don't have substance abuse, gambling, or other problems that could lead to temptations. Since I already do DOJ background and credit checks, there's nothing creepy about a Google/social media check. I also check the references you list and call the previous employers from whom you do not list a reference. Anything less is just sloppy hiring practice.
And since anyone coming to work for you is placing their trust in your company's financial stability and your own record of paying employees for time worked, it is only reasonable for them to do the same searches on you and the company principals and top executives. Right?
It's absolutely disgusting how expensive these things are. I think it may be worth it to note that the site in question is in the business of selling their own hearing aids, though...
Indeed. I suspect there may be differences (beyond price) between their products and the expensive ones. Whether those differences are worth it, I don't know. And if you can't afford the difference, it's irrelevant anyhow.
Another data point is that the local building-supply chain is selling devices that the packaging is careful not to call "hearing aids", little shirt-pocket amplifiers with earbuds, for around $30. My own hearing is starting to get worse (it's never been good) and there's no way I can afford the expensive gear. So I've got one (that I bought for $5 at a garage sale). And it works. (Earbuds don't stay in my ears, so I wear regular headphones. I think it would complete the effect if I acquired a microphone that I could stick in people's faces when they were talking to me.)
I do have some reservations... if we posit my hearing got worse from exposure to loud sounds, artificially making the sounds I hear louder might not be the best course. But what the hell, you only live once.
Fax orginated as battlefield deployment solution to get maps and text into the right hands.
Well, sort of. It originated around 1900, and the first commercial (or military) use seems to have been distributing "wanted" posters. A bit later, "AP wirephoto" referenced fax technology. It was popularized for the masses in Japan in the 1970s, because it made communication easier in a country where the written language is extremely complex (and not accessible via keyboards). By Xerox also (see Hunter S. Thompson's references to the "mojo wire", with which he could submit articles scant hours before deadline).
That is a huge management mistake by the LMS programmers, its simply not the browsers problem.
Insert standard/. car analogy: Imagine if my local gas station pumps were so stupid as to only support certain named car brands, going to great effort to ensure I can't buy gas unless my vehicle is on the approved list, instead of just supporting some mostly common sense federal and state EPA standards for all machines.
Imagine if your local gas station pumps were so stupid that they couldn't provide fuel for any car that pulled in, from leaded high-test for a 1969 Dodge Charger to a Mercedes Diesel to a Nissan Leaf. Or worse, didn't have a sign to tell you what fuel they dispensed.
Now if only I could vote with my dollars and switch to a different ISP that hasn't done this (Charter is my other option and they "claim" to have stopped).
Why not simply plug in a different DNS instead of using their crappy one? Google 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4 OpenDNS 208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220 Verizon 4.2.2.1, 4.2.2.2, 4.2.2.3, 4.2.2.4, 4.2.2.5, 4.2.2.6 (since these are all same subnet, don't use for both primary and secondary)
With paper ballots you can rotate who's at the top of the list, but with punch cards, or pretty much any other machine readable system, all the ballots have to be laid out identically.
Here we have printed paper ballots that are machine readable (scanned), and the names rotate. Not in any given ward (or area in which the races are all identical), so the machines just need to be set up differently for different wards (which will have different orders). That's not perfectly random, but it's probably close enough to negate the advantage that being first on the ballot gives in all but the most local election. And you'd have to print the ballots differently for the next ward (which has a different city council race) anyhow.
It should be simple enough to randomize (or just rotate) the order of presentation on any on-screen system to the point that successive voters get different candidate orders. Punch cards I dunno, I've never seen those as ballots. But ISTM you could have them printed in (more or less) random order, and one prepunched column that identifies the layout of the ballot (e.g. a "1" punch in Col. 1 means for Col. 2: 1=Elmer Fudd 2=Spiderman 3=Peter Pan, whereas a "2" punch in Col. 1 means for Col. 2: 1=Spiderman, 2=Peter Pan, 3=Elmer Fudd). After the butterfly ballot fiasco, is anyone actually using punch card ballots any more?
We have a different type of electronic voting. Oregon uses vote by mail, and each person fills out a scan-tron form (something a 2nd grader can do). Not only is there a paper trail, but it is proven technology.
Voting intimidation is eliminated when you vote in your own home and you don't have to deal with crowded poll places.
I've never understood why this eliminates voter intimidation. How do you ensure that the ballot is filled out in the home, and that only the voter (and not friends, acquaintances, family members, etc.) is present when voting? It seems to me that intimidation by family members must be far more likely than by goons who venture into the polling place to try to watch how a person votes.
Slashdot Mirror
$25 USB cables
Wow. Was that a typo? My local independent computer retailer sells most USB cables for $5-$10.
And monoprice sells them for a dollar or two.
They'll stay around a while for the TVs and refrigerators, you're not going to buy a refrigerator online (though the home improvement chains offer serious competition for appliance business). People will get their computers at places like MicroCenter, which gets the big box store stuff right, at least as it applies to computers.
I've see that site a number of times, and maybe I'm just being a dumbshit, but where the hell is the link to download the iso?
http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/
Or bittorrent it via TPB (just check the version number to make sure you're getting the most recent version).
I'm not sure how much of the following is true. Rumor had it that from the mid-90s on back, the NSA and FBI would monitor a random selection of local telco phone calls (analog POT line for the younger readers). The purpose was seek out certain key words by computer and then flag the call for further review by an agent eavesdropping on it. They say if you heard a "click" after speaking one of these key words or phrases, someone just tapped into your line due to the change in voltage caused by this.
I think they've had the technology for a long time, to do it without making "click" noises. If you hear a "click", either they wanted you to hear it, or it's the 14-year-old next door messing with the phone lines, or (most likely of all) you've got a crap phone line.
It wasn't speech. Speech is what comes out of your mouth. He used an electronic device, which means it's no longer speech
Oh, come on. Money is speech in the US. Yet something you type into your phone isn't?
This was in Canada, though. They don't exactly have free speech up there, like we do. Usually, I think that means they do better. Stories like this, though, remind me that their authorities feel they have something to prove to their cousins to the south (or merely don't want to screw up their plan to buy a retirement home in Florida), and if US authorities can be morons, in Canada there are those who feel that means they must be even more moronic.
...is Canada intercepting every single text message sent in their country? TFA doesn't say, but frankly I'm pretty curious..
Canada doesn't need to, the US will do it for them.
I'm sure I'll be called chauvanistic, old-fashioned and be modded into oblivion for saying this, but how about ... oh, I dunno, being a mom and raising your children?
Parenting is not a part-time job. I'm not going to pretend to know your situation (maybe daddy is out of the picture for whatever reason), but you'll contribute more to society by spending your time raising your kid(s) to be decent human beings.
And society shows how much it values it, by paying stay-at-home moms accordingly, right?
SOPA Is very much a right-wing bill. What could be more right-wing than attacking a system where anyone can communicate equally, regardless of where they fit into the hierarchy of society? The point of SOPA is to curb the free and open nature of the Internet and to reinvigorate the power of established corporations and government agencies -- sounds very right-wing to me."
For some definition of "right-wing" that is so broad as to be mostly useless. (Unless your point is, "what's considered 'left' in the US would be viewed as center-right anywhere else".) It's a "corporatist" bill, and most American Senators and Representatives are in the pocket of corporations, including many of those who pass for "left-wing". The entertainment industry is the primary proponent of this bill. Among the sponsors of the (PIPA) bill in the Senate you'll find such "liberals" and proponents of 'net neutrality as Al Franken (who last year was keynote speaker at Netroots Nation, but I'll bet he has "schedule conflicts" that prevent going to it this year).
Virtually everybody in Washington ("right" or "left", Obama or Bush) wants to keep extending the power of the government, witness the recent vote to extend the "Patriot" act.
Try having VOIP with 600ms of latency, or just a video chat. It is incredibly annoying.
Back when new carriers were starting in long distance telephony, about 25 years ago, I used "Satellite Business Systems" for a carrier. The latency was a little annoying, mostly because it gave you the feeling that the person you were talking to was a bit stupid, because they were so slow to respond. But I got used to it. It wasn't ideal, but the price was right. Life's all about trade-offs.
A pirate bay style torrent site for ebooks and articles would be funny.
Nice. You could buy the domain and just redirect to Pirate Bay. Maybe with an ICE-style "redirecting..." page that said "This domain has been seized because the copyright trolls who were ripping people off also tried to rip their creditors off." That'd be worth a couple of bucks.
Considering the Taliban manual specifically prohibits any Taliban from being alone in a room with an unbearded man (boy), I bet it is so that nobody can record that evidence as well. Which is incredibly ironic that they are trying to prevent obscenity when they are predominately pedophiles. Before anybody mods this troll..... if it was false why would it have to be in the manual for the Taliban specifically?
Because it's a popular entertainment in Afghanistan that the Taliban want to ban?
What makes you think it's not a problem with non-Taliban? Didn't American contractors with DynCorp pimp young boys for a party for Afghan cops (cite?
prepaid wouldn't be so bad if they didn't force you to keep recharging (if you don't use your calls in the month, you lose them unless you recharge, and if you don't recharge after 3 months, they cut your number off completely)
(In the US) hardly any of the prepay plans make you recharge every month. With T-Mo credits last 3 months (for anything more than a $10 card), and after you've spent a total of $100 the credits last for a year. Since you'll likely use them up before then (and have to get a refill, which will extend you for another year), expiration doesn't really enter into it. Or if you hardly ever use the phone and don't use up the minutes, the first $100 buys you a year, and each following year is another $10.
I have zero interest in Chrome, mostly because I simply don't trust it. Google has WAY too much access to stuff already.
I use Comodo Dragon, which is a hardened version of (open source) Chromium that doesn't phone home to Google. Look & feel are much like Chrome, and it uses the same extensions.
Of course, this product is from Comodo, the same company whose certificate authority was hacked earlier this year.
Also, are you people fucking blind? In the OP:
On the list of exceptions: people who deal in used good or "junk" less frequently than once per month
I'd argue most craigslisters and garage sales are likely people who are like that.
In Louisiana, people who sell things on Craigslist or at a garage sale only sell a single item per month? Are you sayin' that garage sales there don't last two or three days, like they do in other parts of the country? That nobody in Louisiana owns two possessions that other people might want to buy?
You're ignoring the fact that after identity theft the original owner no longer has access to the things that a good credit score can obtain. If it was just a matter of making a copy that had no impact on the original you'd have a point. However, the individual whose identity is stolen ends up with decreased ability to borrow and possibly out of a job as some jobs do require one to have a good credit score and limited outstanding debt.
But if you get a bad credit score, who was it that issued the score? It is the credit company that is issuing a false representation of your value, a score that does not reflect your true situation. How they could have known is irrelevant, it should be their problem, and they are are negligent in failing to learn the true situation before reporting it. If you make statements about others negligently and with disregard to facts, you will likely be liable, so why should the credit company not be liable?
Of course, we know it doesn't work that way. Them what has the money makes the rules. That's how they get to be in the 1% instead of the 99%.
I hire people to exercise fiduciary responsibility over large sums of money. I want to make very certain they don't have substance abuse, gambling, or other problems that could lead to temptations. Since I already do DOJ background and credit checks, there's nothing creepy about a Google/social media check. I also check the references you list and call the previous employers from whom you do not list a reference. Anything less is just sloppy hiring practice.
And since anyone coming to work for you is placing their trust in your company's financial stability and your own record of paying employees for time worked, it is only reasonable for them to do the same searches on you and the company principals and top executives. Right?
It's absolutely disgusting how expensive these things are. I think it may be worth it to note that the site in question is in the business of selling their own hearing aids, though...
Indeed. I suspect there may be differences (beyond price) between their products and the expensive ones. Whether those differences are worth it, I don't know. And if you can't afford the difference, it's irrelevant anyhow.
Another data point is that the local building-supply chain is selling devices that the packaging is careful not to call "hearing aids", little shirt-pocket amplifiers with earbuds, for around $30. My own hearing is starting to get worse (it's never been good) and there's no way I can afford the expensive gear. So I've got one (that I bought for $5 at a garage sale). And it works. (Earbuds don't stay in my ears, so I wear regular headphones. I think it would complete the effect if I acquired a microphone that I could stick in people's faces when they were talking to me.)
I do have some reservations... if we posit my hearing got worse from exposure to loud sounds, artificially making the sounds I hear louder might not be the best course. But what the hell, you only live once.
Fax orginated as battlefield deployment solution to get maps and text into the right hands.
Well, sort of. It originated around 1900, and the first commercial (or military) use seems to have been distributing "wanted" posters. A bit later, "AP wirephoto" referenced fax technology. It was popularized for the masses in Japan in the 1970s, because it made communication easier in a country where the written language is extremely complex (and not accessible via keyboards). By Xerox also (see Hunter S. Thompson's references to the "mojo wire", with which he could submit articles scant hours before deadline).
All that is needed is the US government to guarantee purchase at some set price and dozens of new mines would open overnight in the US.
New mines do not open "overnight". It takes years of development to open a new mine.
If there are old mines that have simply been mothballed, those could probably be restored to production pretty fast.
That is a huge management mistake by the LMS programmers, its simply not the browsers problem.
Insert standard /. car analogy: Imagine if my local gas station pumps were so stupid as to only support certain named car brands, going to great effort to ensure I can't buy gas unless my vehicle is on the approved list, instead of just supporting some mostly common sense federal and state EPA standards for all machines.
Imagine if your local gas station pumps were so stupid that they couldn't provide fuel for any car that pulled in, from leaded high-test for a 1969 Dodge Charger to a Mercedes Diesel to a Nissan Leaf. Or worse, didn't have a sign to tell you what fuel they dispensed.
Further, the only thing shut off was BART's own equipment. .
I'd missed that. So absolutely no equipment that they pulled power from, belonged to anybody else?
Now if only I could vote with my dollars and switch to a different ISP that hasn't done this (Charter is my other option and they "claim" to have stopped).
Why not simply plug in a different DNS instead of using their crappy one?
Google 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4
OpenDNS 208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220
Verizon 4.2.2.1, 4.2.2.2, 4.2.2.3, 4.2.2.4, 4.2.2.5, 4.2.2.6 (since these are all same subnet, don't use for both primary and secondary)
You can use Google Namebench to compare DNS speeds.
As long as the circumstances are "when we have a warrant", then I don't see an issue.
So long as there is personal recourse against the judge that issued the warrant, if it turns out to be unwarranted.
With paper ballots you can rotate who's at the top of the list, but with punch cards, or pretty much any other machine readable system, all the ballots have to be laid out identically.
Here we have printed paper ballots that are machine readable (scanned), and the names rotate. Not in any given ward (or area in which the races are all identical), so the machines just need to be set up differently for different wards (which will have different orders). That's not perfectly random, but it's probably close enough to negate the advantage that being first on the ballot gives in all but the most local election. And you'd have to print the ballots differently for the next ward (which has a different city council race) anyhow.
It should be simple enough to randomize (or just rotate) the order of presentation on any on-screen system to the point that successive voters get different candidate orders. Punch cards I dunno, I've never seen those as ballots. But ISTM you could have them printed in (more or less) random order, and one prepunched column that identifies the layout of the ballot (e.g. a "1" punch in Col. 1 means for Col. 2: 1=Elmer Fudd 2=Spiderman 3=Peter Pan, whereas a "2" punch in Col. 1 means for Col. 2: 1=Spiderman, 2=Peter Pan, 3=Elmer Fudd). After the butterfly ballot fiasco, is anyone actually using punch card ballots any more?
We have a different type of electronic voting. Oregon uses vote by mail, and each person fills out a scan-tron form (something a 2nd grader can do). Not only is there a paper trail, but it is proven technology.
Voting intimidation is eliminated when you vote in your own home and you don't have to deal with crowded poll places.
I've never understood why this eliminates voter intimidation. How do you ensure that the ballot is filled out in the home, and that only the voter (and not friends, acquaintances, family members, etc.) is present when voting? It seems to me that intimidation by family members must be far more likely than by goons who venture into the polling place to try to watch how a person votes.