I was hoping for a civil dialogue, but it appears you are going to take the low road.
"Why not? And if you're not paying for the BBC, yet you can watch it, then how is that helping the BBC's profits?"
I do pay for their content. I've actually bought the entire Blue Planet series on Blu-ray. Claiming you don't understand why they are implementing DRM is a bit disingenuous, as it is designed purely to prevent unauthorized copying (regardless of how ineffective it is). If I legally can only view the stream, and not store it permanently, then I would buy the disk if I wanted to be able to go back and view it at any time. If you can freely download and save the same video from a browser, negating that purchase, it would cut into profits for sales on DVD and Blu-Ray, especially for folks who can't view it anywhere else but via the Web or on disk.
It doesn't matter where the 'fee' comes from. It is still a tax on the public. They obviously charge that to fund operations. If they lose profits from disk sales, then they would in turn need to increase fees to keep operations at the same level.
"Not to mention that no one is arguing against profits. You still have to show that DRM increases their profits."
The same question cuts both ways. Can you prove it doesn't? You seem to be trying to make me out as some sort of DRM champion, which is far from the case, as I actually dislike DRM, but I do see where it can be applied without impacting users overly much and still accomplish their goals.
No where did I suggest BBC is better due to DRM. I said that BBC is better than PBS. PBS is donation driven (no mandatory fees) where BBC appears to be funded by taxing the public.
"It costs us £145.50 a year (from April). Even if DRM does help them lower the fee, it's hardly helping if licence payers are simply instead having to pay more by buying DVDs"
You basically make my argument for me. You're stating that you currently are not buying these disks due to lack of copy protection and then question whether DRM will actually increase sales?
Yes. They profit from the sale of DVD's and Blu-ray. You may not like it, but they do, and they are taking steps to protect that revenue stream. If they did not have this option, I would probably not be able to freely view this content via browser as is. They would simply make everyone buy the disk when it came out.
Is BBC entirely funded by the tax-payer? Do you agree that any taxes eliminated by profits that they may make are a good thing? You can't have it both ways. I can only assume that the BBC is much like PBS in the US (public funded). PBS is a wasteland of uninteresting content here and doesn't have near the recognition of BBC. If they have a successful model that doesn't cost your tax payers too much, I personally wouldn't be so quick to criticize this move.
Then the same answer still applies. BBC is simply protecting it's own content and profits as they see it. Whether they are in the middle, or the producer of said content is largely irrelevant as the reasons for DRM are the same. Being from the US, I don't know what most of the content it does produce. We do see a lot of series about various topics, but they are typically free to view via Browser and also typically available via Blu-Ray or DVD. They seem to feel this gives them some sense of security, however misplaced.
I would think this would only encourage people to rip the video and save it locally rather than just viewing the stream.
I feel for the parent, as it's definitely an unpopular opinion, but in this case, it does allow streaming internet content in this instance. I don't think it was trolling, but rather just not articulated very well. Without any DRM, many vendors won't allow their streams online (at least legally). They demand these protections from the broadcasters. As much as I despise DRM, there are situations where it allow content that we normally wouldn't be allow to access. In this case, I think BBC is just in the middle and did what it had to, in order to keep it's content providers.
Sorry about that. I neglected to include the information from Article II, Section 1, Clause 1 of the Constitution:
"Clause 1: The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows "
This to my mind just clarifies that he is the executive branch, and it doesn't in and of itself grant any additional 'powers' to that office. That would imply that any powers granted would need to be given by Congress.
The simple inclusion of 'overrated' and 'underrated' is explicit permission to censor a comment, and rightly so. Were we restricted to 'Insightful' and 'Trolling' (the true definition of trolling that is), I would agree it could be called 'censorship' if used in that way.
Knowing that this is not the case, and we are allowed to spend our points specifically to 'bury a comment' using mods like Overrated, it is not censorship, it is "expressing our moderator opinion", no?
He was most likely modded a troll because it's well known the cost will be $750 maximum, and that will only apply to people who do not have any coverage (those with coverage won't even notice a difference). That $750 also only applies to those who make more than 4 times the poverty limit. Anything less and they will receive government aid to defray the cost. Claiming Obama is just an 'extension of Bush' is also trolling simply because it's too general, and smacks of something you would hear on Fox or some opinion poll. Is he secretive? Yes. Has every president been secretive since the first? Yes. That alone does not make him "Bush v2" and to claim otherwise is disingenuous and frankly why such posts get modded as trolling.
As Obama hasn't signed anything like the Patriot act and hasn't had any real significant affects on civil rights in the same vein as Bush did, the argument is just a straw man.
That said, on the topic of Executive Orders, the office of the president only has the power to issue an executive order using authority specifically granted to him by congress. It is not some general 'wildcard' power that the executive branch can just use at a whim to bypass congress:
"U.S. Presidents have issued Executive Orders since 1789. Although there is no Constitutional provision or statute that explicitly permits Executive Orders, there is a vague grant of "executive power" given in Article II, Section 1, Clause 1 of the Constitution, and furthered by the declaration "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed" made in Article II, Section 3, Clause 4. " There is a reason his is called the Executive Branch, and not the Legislative Branch.
Unless congress specifically gave him the right (and I hope some constitutional lawyers will chime in here) to enact such a wide ranging and binding executive order, it would most definitely be challenged.
"H.264 is not, despite all claims of "people can use it" and "well, it's better". That means nothing. Ogg Theora is open and free, H.264 is not."
I don't recall an H.264 fee when I bought my computer. Neither will end users. The simple truth is that H.264 IS better in quality than Ogg, which is closer in compression ratios to MPEG-2. It takes less bitrate with H.264 to get the same result. That is a huge boon to streaming media sites, AND important to end users. Just because something is free doesn't mean it's better "end of discussion". If the value gained is worth the price, your argument becomes meaningless. I can't speak for others, but H.264 is definitely worth the 'hidden price' given what it allows me to do on my mobile devices and the limited storage available on them. If the cost to me is a few dollars tacked on to the device or OS I purchased, then it's an excellent value.
That is a taught response. These people listen to media that more accurately reflects their views. Most had probably never been exposed to such entrenched hatred of 'socialist' programs until the recent health care debates. The older crowd was exposed in the 90's, and even older in the 60's. The same applies to the Chinese, Americans, Europeans, etc. There is a definite risk of 'the grass is always greener' in this case. Most 'free' countries allow unfiltered access to the internet (within reason), and as such, it is dangerous for China to allow that common knowledge to it's citizens. It would create anger towards their own government if they learned what they lack as compared to more open societies.
I found it interesting that many of the quotes in the translated blogs and tweets expressed anger at Google for leaving the country. Odd that they feel that Google should remain and risk itself, while they fear to do so themselves for obvious reasons. There seems to be a disconnect. Either they assume that Google as an entity would be given special privilege that a common Chinese citizen would receive if it went against the government (i.e. less severe punishment), or they unrealistically expect Google to 'stick it's neck out' where they refuse to.
If the Chinese are not willing to fight for those rights, then Google was correct to simply leave as it is not Google's place to fight for something that they themselves refuse to do.
Forgot to mention. On a mac, the remote software is built in and enabled on the HTPC in the preferences under Sharing. For windows, you can use MSTSC.EXE which used to be built in, but if I recall the 'server' functionality was stripped out of some home versions starting with Vista.
For keyboards and mice, be sure to go Bluetooth or RF. Make sure the range is acceptable for the room size. Most are VERY short range, where bluetooth and RF tend to be in the 20-50 foot range. Far more suitable for an HTPC.
The best route for maximum flexiability is a Media PC. Any PC will work, and any flavor of OS. I've used Windows and Mac PC's extensively. I haven't tried a Linux box yet, but I see no reason why those wouldn't serve just as well.
For Windows, nVidia drivers will give you overscan options out of the box. ATI isn't quite as user friendly (or it wasn't the last time I used their drivers, but that may have changed. The ones that do are excellent for clipping off the overscan so you get a nice edge to edge picture. If you want to do the tweaking at the driver/monitor level, PowerStrip is an excellent first place to start for PC for tweaking video frequencies and overscan/underscan.
For Mac, you'll want to look at SwitchResX which doe the same thing on the Mac side.
I'm sure folks can chime in on the Linux side of the equation.
For software, on the PC, I didn't do a lot of streaming, but I'd suggest starting with Plex, Hulu Desktop, and Boxbee for your web needs. Any browser will of course also work for the web content, but the one's with the 'full screen' option work best. For PC hardware, try to find a sound solution with either HDMI out (with Audio Support), or 5.1 optical out.
For Mac, I'd suggest the same software. Plex is especially handy since it will convert AAC to AC3 on the fly, meaning you get multi-channel AC3 output to your tuner without any special tools or tweaks needed. For hardware, all macs come with a TOSLINK Fiber/Analog dual combo port, so you can just pipe out optical digital audio on just about any Mac.
How long before this technology can be tuned to other types of infected cells like HIV?
From TFA: "The 70-nanometer attack bots—made with two polymers and a protein that attaches to the cancerous cell's surface—carry a piece of RNA called small-interfering RNA (siRNA), which deactivates the production of a protein, starving the malign cell to death."
Seems like once they know how to write the write 'key' for it to attach to a cell wall, the rest should be fairly do-able?
OS's like Linux typically don't use a whole lot of swap given the typical amount of ram in use these days. Also, video editing tends to hit a bottleneck on the CPU, not the disk subsystem. I would think situations that need to read large amounts of data, or a large number of smaller files would benefit most. Things like loading game levels with large 3-D textures, opening large files in Adobe, database maintenance, system boots, etc.
The cutoff level would be an income of four times the federal poverty level. For one person, that’s about $44,000 a year. For a family of four, the comparable figure is about $88,000.
A better question is how many 60 year olds do you see in perfect health? The human body is auto-repairing within limits, a car is not. Generally, diseases requiring long term health care are not of the type that the human body can repair. There are very few circumstances that a car can't be repaired for general breakdowns.
They know what's in the bill. The points have been debated endlessly for over a year with many congressmen and women putting their job on the line for it. To claim they don't know what's in it due to the number of pages is ridiculous. I can read a 2000 page novel in a weekend and give you a very detailed outline of what's in it. It also wasn't a very good 'closed door' meeting if every deal made in the meeting is published in the bill now is it? Considering we all knew what was discussed the same day also makes that argument a little silly. The political buzzards were circling within minutes, and folks in the room were actively tweeting about the discussions going on like the various deals being discussed. Any detail discussed behind closed doors is in black and white, and you can bet that any opponents of the bill will go over every letter of the bill with a fine tooth comb. There is no hiding what's in it.
I find these claims about the number of pages rather stupid not to put too fine a point on it. One of the primary reasons lawyers thrive is due to ambiguity in law. "Thou shall not kill". Kill what? Only people? What about animals? What if there are religious rights in involved? Have we thought about the children? Have we though about the chickens? Law is messy, and needs very complex verbiage to define what's what.
I would rather have very specific terminology in a bill this complex, rather than some ambiguous concept that will be abused as was not intended in the original bill.
The human body is not a 'car'. It is infinitely more complex, and far more prone to failure, especially as it ages. Any number of debilitating conditions, caught early enough, will cost exponentially less than left alone. I'm not talking about big ones like Cancer, or Leukemia either. A simple cavity, or gum disease is a more accurate example. Catch them soon enough, and the trip will cost you $60-80 bucks. Wait too long, but want to save your tooth? About $600-$1000 for a crown. Too late to save it? Thousands of dollars for an implant or dentures, all just so that you will be able to eat properly.
You haven't done much homework if you think you'll be paying that much living paycheck to paycheck. The bill would fine someone who can afford coverage but refuses to. Folks who can't afford it will get subsidies to defray the costs. Typically people who can't afford insurance just create catastrophic care costs because they wait too long and then show up at their local emergency room, so even the managed care option for those where the government fronts the bill should be a little more manageable.
This will also prevent folks from gaming the health care system and making those of us that do pay for insurance cover their costs like folks used to with welfare. I'm also pleased about the pre-existing condition clauses which, being in IT, always makes me nervous considering how easy it is to lose your job to India these days. At least there will now be options to get insurance when you are unemployed.
Shameful that any company would fail at these basic tasks. It would take any competent admin very little time to compose policies that would effectively handle most of these. the others would require procedural changes but why would they continue to let the issue go if they know it's an audit exposure? (no pun intended)
From TFA:
For example, the GAO stated that the IRS continues to:
* use passwords that are not complex,
* ineffectively remove application accounts in a timely manner for separated employees,
* allow personnel excessive file and directory permissions,
* allow the unencrypted transmission of user and administrator login information,
* install security patches in an untimely manner
It appears that theyflyonthewall.com can appeal after one year. Apparently the judge saw the fact that the bar was basically making up for lack of security on the financial institutions part.
From TFA: "The judge said Theflyonthewall.com may apply in one year to lift the injunction if the banks do not take reasonable steps to halt the unauthorized distribution of research."
I'm not stock monkey either, but I think this has to do with freedom of information. Specifically that once Morgan Stanley publishes their stock upgrades and downgrades, it's pretty much public information. That fact that this information has been barred is the item of interest.
From the Morgan/Stanley side, it might be appropriate to call it a trade secret. From the end user side, it becomes common knowledge so unless there are agreements with each user not to leak the knowledge, it seems like this law is invalid to my eyes. It seems to me that they are legislating a solution for Morgan/Stanley's lack of security.
Registration is easier, but too many false positives ended up scaring me away from Avast, as well as the fact that the free license expires yearly. This prompts a slew of calls from friends and family complaining that either their 'free' Antivirus software is saying they have to pay (it's confusing to the PC challenged and they click the wrong option), or they simply ignore it and hope nothing bad happens. Both ends are undesirable.
I also found the CPU requirements seemed to be creeping up, especially with the last major update. It's starting to be a real issue on older XP era hardware., especially taxing on startup for some reason.
I ended up switching to AntiVir and disabling the launch of the ad that pops up once a day using a policy. Although they only pop up once a day, I still found it irritating. Other than that, it seems lighter weight than Avast, and I haven't heard as many horror stories about false positives trashing my mothers iTunes library and whatnot.
You joke on this, but what is the difference between an agent questioning you in real life and online? They are required to identify themselves in person, are they not? Why should online be any different?
Slashdot Mirror
I was hoping for a civil dialogue, but it appears you are going to take the low road.
"Why not? And if you're not paying for the BBC, yet you can watch it, then how is that helping the BBC's profits?"
I do pay for their content. I've actually bought the entire Blue Planet series on Blu-ray. Claiming you don't understand why they are implementing DRM is a bit disingenuous, as it is designed purely to prevent unauthorized copying (regardless of how ineffective it is). If I legally can only view the stream, and not store it permanently, then I would buy the disk if I wanted to be able to go back and view it at any time. If you can freely download and save the same video from a browser, negating that purchase, it would cut into profits for sales on DVD and Blu-Ray, especially for folks who can't view it anywhere else but via the Web or on disk.
It doesn't matter where the 'fee' comes from. It is still a tax on the public. They obviously charge that to fund operations. If they lose profits from disk sales, then they would in turn need to increase fees to keep operations at the same level.
"Not to mention that no one is arguing against profits. You still have to show that DRM increases their profits."
The same question cuts both ways. Can you prove it doesn't? You seem to be trying to make me out as some sort of DRM champion, which is far from the case, as I actually dislike DRM, but I do see where it can be applied without impacting users overly much and still accomplish their goals.
No where did I suggest BBC is better due to DRM. I said that BBC is better than PBS. PBS is donation driven (no mandatory fees) where BBC appears to be funded by taxing the public.
"It costs us £145.50 a year (from April). Even if DRM does help them lower the fee, it's hardly helping if licence payers are simply instead having to pay more by buying DVDs"
You basically make my argument for me. You're stating that you currently are not buying these disks due to lack of copy protection and then question whether DRM will actually increase sales?
Yes. They profit from the sale of DVD's and Blu-ray. You may not like it, but they do, and they are taking steps to protect that revenue stream. If they did not have this option, I would probably not be able to freely view this content via browser as is. They would simply make everyone buy the disk when it came out.
Is BBC entirely funded by the tax-payer? Do you agree that any taxes eliminated by profits that they may make are a good thing? You can't have it both ways. I can only assume that the BBC is much like PBS in the US (public funded). PBS is a wasteland of uninteresting content here and doesn't have near the recognition of BBC. If they have a successful model that doesn't cost your tax payers too much, I personally wouldn't be so quick to criticize this move.
Then the same answer still applies. BBC is simply protecting it's own content and profits as they see it. Whether they are in the middle, or the producer of said content is largely irrelevant as the reasons for DRM are the same. Being from the US, I don't know what most of the content it does produce. We do see a lot of series about various topics, but they are typically free to view via Browser and also typically available via Blu-Ray or DVD. They seem to feel this gives them some sense of security, however misplaced.
I would think this would only encourage people to rip the video and save it locally rather than just viewing the stream.
I feel for the parent, as it's definitely an unpopular opinion, but in this case, it does allow streaming internet content in this instance. I don't think it was trolling, but rather just not articulated very well. Without any DRM, many vendors won't allow their streams online (at least legally). They demand these protections from the broadcasters. As much as I despise DRM, there are situations where it allow content that we normally wouldn't be allow to access. In this case, I think BBC is just in the middle and did what it had to, in order to keep it's content providers.
Sorry about that. I neglected to include the information from Article II, Section 1, Clause 1 of the Constitution:
"Clause 1: The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows "
This to my mind just clarifies that he is the executive branch, and it doesn't in and of itself grant any additional 'powers' to that office. That would imply that any powers granted would need to be given by Congress.
The simple inclusion of 'overrated' and 'underrated' is explicit permission to censor a comment, and rightly so. Were we restricted to 'Insightful' and 'Trolling' (the true definition of trolling that is), I would agree it could be called 'censorship' if used in that way.
Knowing that this is not the case, and we are allowed to spend our points specifically to 'bury a comment' using mods like Overrated, it is not censorship, it is "expressing our moderator opinion", no?
He was most likely modded a troll because it's well known the cost will be $750 maximum, and that will only apply to people who do not have any coverage (those with coverage won't even notice a difference). That $750 also only applies to those who make more than 4 times the poverty limit. Anything less and they will receive government aid to defray the cost. Claiming Obama is just an 'extension of Bush' is also trolling simply because it's too general, and smacks of something you would hear on Fox or some opinion poll. Is he secretive? Yes. Has every president been secretive since the first? Yes. That alone does not make him "Bush v2" and to claim otherwise is disingenuous and frankly why such posts get modded as trolling.
As Obama hasn't signed anything like the Patriot act and hasn't had any real significant affects on civil rights in the same vein as Bush did, the argument is just a straw man.
That said, on the topic of Executive Orders, the office of the president only has the power to issue an executive order using authority specifically granted to him by congress. It is not some general 'wildcard' power that the executive branch can just use at a whim to bypass congress:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_order_(United_States)
"U.S. Presidents have issued Executive Orders since 1789. Although there is no Constitutional provision or statute that explicitly permits Executive Orders, there is a vague grant of "executive power" given in Article II, Section 1, Clause 1 of the Constitution, and furthered by the declaration "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed" made in Article II, Section 3, Clause 4. " There is a reason his is called the Executive Branch, and not the Legislative Branch.
Unless congress specifically gave him the right (and I hope some constitutional lawyers will chime in here) to enact such a wide ranging and binding executive order, it would most definitely be challenged.
You do realize how silly your argument sounds?
"H.264 is not, despite all claims of "people can use it" and "well, it's better". That means nothing. Ogg Theora is open and free, H.264 is not."
I don't recall an H.264 fee when I bought my computer. Neither will end users. The simple truth is that H.264 IS better in quality than Ogg, which is closer in compression ratios to MPEG-2. It takes less bitrate with H.264 to get the same result. That is a huge boon to streaming media sites, AND important to end users. Just because something is free doesn't mean it's better "end of discussion". If the value gained is worth the price, your argument becomes meaningless. I can't speak for others, but H.264 is definitely worth the 'hidden price' given what it allows me to do on my mobile devices and the limited storage available on them. If the cost to me is a few dollars tacked on to the device or OS I purchased, then it's an excellent value.
That is a taught response. These people listen to media that more accurately reflects their views. Most had probably never been exposed to such entrenched hatred of 'socialist' programs until the recent health care debates. The older crowd was exposed in the 90's, and even older in the 60's. The same applies to the Chinese, Americans, Europeans, etc. There is a definite risk of 'the grass is always greener' in this case. Most 'free' countries allow unfiltered access to the internet (within reason), and as such, it is dangerous for China to allow that common knowledge to it's citizens. It would create anger towards their own government if they learned what they lack as compared to more open societies.
I found it interesting that many of the quotes in the translated blogs and tweets expressed anger at Google for leaving the country. Odd that they feel that Google should remain and risk itself, while they fear to do so themselves for obvious reasons. There seems to be a disconnect. Either they assume that Google as an entity would be given special privilege that a common Chinese citizen would receive if it went against the government (i.e. less severe punishment), or they unrealistically expect Google to 'stick it's neck out' where they refuse to.
If the Chinese are not willing to fight for those rights, then Google was correct to simply leave as it is not Google's place to fight for something that they themselves refuse to do.
Forgot to mention. On a mac, the remote software is built in and enabled on the HTPC in the preferences under Sharing. For windows, you can use MSTSC.EXE which used to be built in, but if I recall the 'server' functionality was stripped out of some home versions starting with Vista.
For keyboards and mice, be sure to go Bluetooth or RF. Make sure the range is acceptable for the room size. Most are VERY short range, where bluetooth and RF tend to be in the 20-50 foot range. Far more suitable for an HTPC.
The best route for maximum flexiability is a Media PC. Any PC will work, and any flavor of OS. I've used Windows and Mac PC's extensively. I haven't tried a Linux box yet, but I see no reason why those wouldn't serve just as well.
For Windows, nVidia drivers will give you overscan options out of the box. ATI isn't quite as user friendly (or it wasn't the last time I used their drivers, but that may have changed. The ones that do are excellent for clipping off the overscan so you get a nice edge to edge picture. If you want to do the tweaking at the driver/monitor level, PowerStrip is an excellent first place to start for PC for tweaking video frequencies and overscan/underscan.
For Mac, you'll want to look at SwitchResX which doe the same thing on the Mac side.
I'm sure folks can chime in on the Linux side of the equation.
For software, on the PC, I didn't do a lot of streaming, but I'd suggest starting with Plex, Hulu Desktop, and Boxbee for your web needs. Any browser will of course also work for the web content, but the one's with the 'full screen' option work best. For PC hardware, try to find a sound solution with either HDMI out (with Audio Support), or 5.1 optical out.
For Mac, I'd suggest the same software. Plex is especially handy since it will convert AAC to AC3 on the fly, meaning you get multi-channel AC3 output to your tuner without any special tools or tweaks needed. For hardware, all macs come with a TOSLINK Fiber/Analog dual combo port, so you can just pipe out optical digital audio on just about any Mac.
How long before this technology can be tuned to other types of infected cells like HIV?
From TFA: "The 70-nanometer attack bots—made with two polymers and a protein that attaches to the cancerous cell's surface—carry a piece of RNA called small-interfering RNA (siRNA), which deactivates the production of a protein, starving the malign cell to death."
Seems like once they know how to write the write 'key' for it to attach to a cell wall, the rest should be fairly do-able?
OS's like Linux typically don't use a whole lot of swap given the typical amount of ram in use these days. Also, video editing tends to hit a bottleneck on the CPU, not the disk subsystem. I would think situations that need to read large amounts of data, or a large number of smaller files would benefit most. Things like loading game levels with large 3-D textures, opening large files in Adobe, database maintenance, system boots, etc.
The cutoff level would be an income of four times the federal poverty level. For one person, that’s about $44,000 a year. For a family of four, the comparable figure is about $88,000.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2010/0320/Health-care-reform-bill-101-Who-gets-subsidized-insurance
A better question is how many 60 year olds do you see in perfect health? The human body is auto-repairing within limits, a car is not. Generally, diseases requiring long term health care are not of the type that the human body can repair. There are very few circumstances that a car can't be repaired for general breakdowns.
They know what's in the bill. The points have been debated endlessly for over a year with many congressmen and women putting their job on the line for it. To claim they don't know what's in it due to the number of pages is ridiculous. I can read a 2000 page novel in a weekend and give you a very detailed outline of what's in it. It also wasn't a very good 'closed door' meeting if every deal made in the meeting is published in the bill now is it? Considering we all knew what was discussed the same day also makes that argument a little silly. The political buzzards were circling within minutes, and folks in the room were actively tweeting about the discussions going on like the various deals being discussed. Any detail discussed behind closed doors is in black and white, and you can bet that any opponents of the bill will go over every letter of the bill with a fine tooth comb. There is no hiding what's in it.
I find these claims about the number of pages rather stupid not to put too fine a point on it. One of the primary reasons lawyers thrive is due to ambiguity in law. "Thou shall not kill". Kill what? Only people? What about animals? What if there are religious rights in involved? Have we thought about the children? Have we though about the chickens? Law is messy, and needs very complex verbiage to define what's what.
I would rather have very specific terminology in a bill this complex, rather than some ambiguous concept that will be abused as was not intended in the original bill.
The human body is not a 'car'. It is infinitely more complex, and far more prone to failure, especially as it ages. Any number of debilitating conditions, caught early enough, will cost exponentially less than left alone. I'm not talking about big ones like Cancer, or Leukemia either. A simple cavity, or gum disease is a more accurate example. Catch them soon enough, and the trip will cost you $60-80 bucks. Wait too long, but want to save your tooth? About $600-$1000 for a crown. Too late to save it? Thousands of dollars for an implant or dentures, all just so that you will be able to eat properly.
Found this. Decent quick summary of what's in the final bill going to the presidents desk: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20000846-503544.html
You haven't done much homework if you think you'll be paying that much living paycheck to paycheck. The bill would fine someone who can afford coverage but refuses to. Folks who can't afford it will get subsidies to defray the costs. Typically people who can't afford insurance just create catastrophic care costs because they wait too long and then show up at their local emergency room, so even the managed care option for those where the government fronts the bill should be a little more manageable.
This will also prevent folks from gaming the health care system and making those of us that do pay for insurance cover their costs like folks used to with welfare. I'm also pleased about the pre-existing condition clauses which, being in IT, always makes me nervous considering how easy it is to lose your job to India these days. At least there will now be options to get insurance when you are unemployed.
Shameful that any company would fail at these basic tasks. It would take any competent admin very little time to compose policies that would effectively handle most of these. the others would require procedural changes but why would they continue to let the issue go if they know it's an audit exposure? (no pun intended)
From TFA:
For example, the GAO stated that the IRS continues to:
* use passwords that are not complex,
* ineffectively remove application accounts in a timely manner for separated employees,
* allow personnel excessive file and directory permissions,
* allow the unencrypted transmission of user and administrator login information,
* install security patches in an untimely manner
It appears that theyflyonthewall.com can appeal after one year. Apparently the judge saw the fact that the bar was basically making up for lack of security on the financial institutions part.
From TFA: "The judge said Theflyonthewall.com may apply in one year to lift the injunction if the banks do not take reasonable steps to halt the unauthorized distribution of research."
How long before unsafe sex becomes a concern? This smacks of the 60's for grasshoppers. Free love (as in beer). Woot!
I'm not stock monkey either, but I think this has to do with freedom of information. Specifically that once Morgan Stanley publishes their stock upgrades and downgrades, it's pretty much public information. That fact that this information has been barred is the item of interest.
From the Morgan/Stanley side, it might be appropriate to call it a trade secret. From the end user side, it becomes common knowledge so unless there are agreements with each user not to leak the knowledge, it seems like this law is invalid to my eyes. It seems to me that they are legislating a solution for Morgan/Stanley's lack of security.
Registration is easier, but too many false positives ended up scaring me away from Avast, as well as the fact that the free license expires yearly. This prompts a slew of calls from friends and family complaining that either their 'free' Antivirus software is saying they have to pay (it's confusing to the PC challenged and they click the wrong option), or they simply ignore it and hope nothing bad happens. Both ends are undesirable.
I also found the CPU requirements seemed to be creeping up, especially with the last major update. It's starting to be a real issue on older XP era hardware., especially taxing on startup for some reason.
I ended up switching to AntiVir and disabling the launch of the ad that pops up once a day using a policy. Although they only pop up once a day, I still found it irritating. Other than that, it seems lighter weight than Avast, and I haven't heard as many horror stories about false positives trashing my mothers iTunes library and whatnot.
Instructions to disable popup here: http://www.wikihow.com/Remove-the-Popup-Ads-in-Avira-Antivir
You joke on this, but what is the difference between an agent questioning you in real life and online? They are required to identify themselves in person, are they not? Why should online be any different?