"The economy, I do not think you realize just how big it is. Realize that we could end up triggering a global depression in the next couple months if the politicians in power right now fuck it up."
Go to the BBC site. They have excellent coverage of why we had to do some of what we did.
"It always depresses me to see how many college students have no idea who they are, and just float about on the breeze of the moment, going for the buck instead of what they already see a passion for doing."
Considering the high cost of education. Can you really blame them for chasing dollars?
"The District of Columbia is far ahead of its federal government overlord in bringing data to standard XML formats and RSS-enabling it. DC's government has what it calls a "data catalog" offering live data feeds of crime reports, construction reports, building permits and many other types of information. "
I can see some that if not screened carefully could cause problems in this "sharing" environment.
Also don't forget there have been examples were citizen information has accidentally been leaked. Soon retracted but "sharing" only means the mistake propagates faster.
Certainly a reasonable post. However note to a man not one has discussed to the other side of the issue. How far and by what means should law enforcement do it's job without constituents lambasting them for their failures (and they will most assuredly fail)? A weighty question, but then privacy is weighty and plenty have commentary on that.
"As a controls engineer I can just imagine tracking the temp in every room of my house with respect to outside temp and setting up a sweet PID controller on my thermostat to control temps much better than a single temp sensor in a central location in the house. Toss some flappers into the air ducts and you could probably set up a house to keep a temp +-5 degrees throughout the entire house."
Or I could buy a programmable thermostat that does all that.
"How bosses can't know where their employees are going on the intertubes is beyond me as we have people checking the log files and see the people trying to get to boobsgonewild.com, donkeylove.com and giganticasses.com for 20 minutes at"
I noticed you didn't turn those into clickable links.:)
"So, as I said, I'll stay with Ubuntu, because if nothing else, at least it runs on my machine with only 512 MB of ram. (I'm poor, and it works, why would I upgrade?)"
TinyXP is nice for those who don't need all the extras. There's also a Vista version.
"It's no longer enough to be a C++ Programmer for example, if they're hiring a C++ Programmer for Embedded Systems. They can afford to be that fussy."
Considering the skill set for an embedded programmer is different than just a programmer, I can see why. It takes awhile to get the needed skills and today's embedded systems aren't as forgiving. eg. cellphones, set top boxes.
"Ummmmmm... yes. Until such time as they start writing laws in a language that the average person can read and understand and so, can defend themselves."
"Thou shall not murder" seems pretty clear and look what happened to that.
". Of course it would require much clearer and more straight forward laws and rules with less chance for built in loop holes for weasels to find their way through."
It's human nature to see what we can get away with. Just ask any parent.
"There is a reason they get well paid... it takes forever to learn how to wade through the self made bullshit."
Much like any technical profession.
"Lawyers on the other hand work with legislators to word our laws such that simple ideas and other things are too complex for the common man to understand."
What's complicated about the fact that some things can have subtle and shaded distinctions?
"You really want to make the Executive even more powerful? Are you nuts?"
Think of it as a fine-grained power to say no. Sort of a counter agent to the whole "lets lump it all together and vote on it" that causes so much grief.
Do away with the latter and you don't need the former.
"Of course, Blizzard could easily appease the color-hostile fans by adding a graphics option that reduces chroma by 90% and brightness by 50% everywhere but the HUD."
"It amazes me that this employee chose illegal means of getting an archiving program instead of using a FOSS solution such as 7-zip ( http://www.7-zip.org/)."
Why should it be surprising? The idea that attitudes don't have consequences should have been debunked.
How does Comcast help its customers track their usage so they can avoid exceeding the limit?
We are in the process of creating a usage meter that will measure consumption for the Comcast account which will be available in the coming months. In the meantime, we offer a meter for free with our McAfee security suite available at http://security.comcast.net/
There are many online tools customers can download and use to measure their consumption. Customers can find such tools by simply doing a Web search - for example, a search for "bandwidth meter" will provide some options. Customers using multiple PCs should just be aware that they will need to measure and combine their total monthly usage in order to identify the data usage for their entire account. Comcast cannot verify that any tools customers may find themselves and use to measure data usage are accurate or without other flaws. Comcast's determination of each customer account's data usage is final.
It's important to note that when our new threshold goes into effect on October 1,2008 it will not change our practice around excessive use. We will continue to call only the top users who consume the most data each month, which is usually well over 250GB, which is the same practice we've had in place for several years.
250Gb/Month should be interpreted as start of a billing cycle to end of a billing cycle. Just call and ask at the first day of a billing cycle and set your meter appropriately. You can figure out the rest.
"Additionally, an easily-viewable bandwidth meter would in all probability only encourage customers to get much closer to the limit than they would otherwise. It's fear-based policy. The more of their customers that decide "I'd better not download this movie/album/ISO/whatever, I might hit my bandwidth cap", the better. Comcast wants customers to stay in the dark regarding usage and be as conservative as possible in their internet activities, while still pretending to offer the full 250 GB."
Gee! What you all say to get in a political dig. Keeping track of your bits is a solved problem for the customer. You all just have to use them. As for "pretending"? Well if you can go up to your limit? Then there's no "pretend", any more than there's "pretend" in your checking account.
Slashdot Mirror
"The economy, I do not think you realize just how big it is. Realize that we could end up triggering a global depression in the next couple months if the politicians in power right now fuck it up."
Go to the BBC site. They have excellent coverage of why we had to do some of what we did.
"It always depresses me to see how many college students have no idea who they are, and just float about on the breeze of the moment, going for the buck instead of what they already see a passion for doing."
Considering the high cost of education. Can you really blame them for chasing dollars?
"Listen kids, there is no future in IT. Plumbers and lawyers is where it is at."
A couple of Hurricanes will do that. The plumber for obvious reasons and the lawyer to litigate because your insurance wouldn't pay up.
"The District of Columbia is far ahead of its federal government overlord in bringing data to standard XML formats and RSS-enabling it. DC's government has what it calls a "data catalog" offering live data feeds of crime reports, construction reports, building permits and many other types of information. "
I can see some that if not screened carefully could cause problems in this "sharing" environment.
Also don't forget there have been examples were citizen information has accidentally been leaked. Soon retracted but "sharing" only means the mistake propagates faster.
Certainly a reasonable post. However note to a man not one has discussed to the other side of the issue. How far and by what means should law enforcement do it's job without constituents lambasting them for their failures (and they will most assuredly fail)? A weighty question, but then privacy is weighty and plenty have commentary on that.
One thought has occurred to me as part of this "sharing". Privacy and the other is Security.
"As a controls engineer I can just imagine tracking the temp in every room of my house with respect to outside temp and setting up a sweet PID controller on my thermostat to control temps much better than a single temp sensor in a central location in the house. Toss some flappers into the air ducts and you could probably set up a house to keep a temp +-5 degrees throughout the entire house."
Or I could buy a programmable thermostat that does all that.
"How bosses can't know where their employees are going on the intertubes is beyond me as we have people checking the log files and see the people trying to get to boobsgonewild.com, donkeylove.com and giganticasses.com for 20 minutes at"
I noticed you didn't turn those into clickable links. :)
"Managers who think you should be spending every second of the working day "working" are idiots. If that's what you want employ a robot."
*surveys the landscape*
Looks like they are. Just because some professions don't lend themselves to complete automation presently doesn't mean we should be complacent.
Maybe that says more about the American work environment. Are Europeans goofing off more?
"The next largest component was torrents of lectures (such as this [stanford.edu] machine learning class offered by Stanford)."
1-I'm assuming you're using rsync?
2-I'm assuming your downloading MPEG-4?
2a-I'm also assuming the transcripts aren't enough.
"What's the point of having the internet when you can't do anything on it?"
Like post to slashdot?
"So, as I said, I'll stay with Ubuntu, because if nothing else, at least it runs on my machine with only 512 MB of ram. (I'm poor, and it works, why would I upgrade?)"
TinyXP is nice for those who don't need all the extras. There's also a Vista version.
"It's no longer enough to be a C++ Programmer for example, if they're hiring a C++ Programmer for Embedded Systems. They can afford to be that fussy."
Considering the skill set for an embedded programmer is different than just a programmer, I can see why. It takes awhile to get the needed skills and today's embedded systems aren't as forgiving. eg. cellphones, set top boxes.
"Ummmmmm ... yes. Until such time as they start writing laws in a language that the average person can read and understand and so, can defend themselves."
"Thou shall not murder" seems pretty clear and look what happened to that.
". Of course it would require much clearer and more straight forward laws and rules with less chance for built in loop holes for weasels to find their way through."
It's human nature to see what we can get away with. Just ask any parent.
"There is a reason they get well paid... it takes forever to learn how to wade through the self made bullshit."
Much like any technical profession.
"Lawyers on the other hand work with legislators to word our laws such that simple ideas and other things are too complex for the common man to understand."
What's complicated about the fact that some things can have subtle and shaded distinctions?
"You really want to make the Executive even more powerful? Are you nuts?"
Think of it as a fine-grained power to say no. Sort of a counter agent to the whole "lets lump it all together and vote on it" that causes so much grief.
Do away with the latter and you don't need the former.
"Actually the black guy qualifies in anyone's book as a rich white guy ... Unless you're totally obsessed with skin color."
Or checklists.
When are people going to learn to assess politicians and parties on their actions, rather than their promises?
Why stop at politicians? There are plenty of people around who suffer from a word/deeds mismatch.
Those that might have really introduced change have already been weeded out. Vote for the puppet of your choice, folks.
The people who can change things aren't running for president.
"Of course, Blizzard could easily appease the color-hostile fans by adding a graphics option that reduces chroma by 90% and brightness by 50% everywhere but the HUD."
What do I have to roll to get that?
"It amazes me that this employee chose illegal means of getting an archiving program instead of using a FOSS solution such as 7-zip ( http://www.7-zip.org/)."
Why should it be surprising? The idea that attitudes don't have consequences should have been debunked.
"They are setting up their operations managers for an opportunity to fraudulently keep trimming the higher-usage customers off their bell curve."
http://help.comcast.net/content/faq/Frequently-Asked-Questions-about-Excessive-Use#tracking
How does Comcast help its customers track their usage so they can avoid exceeding the limit?
We are in the process of creating a usage meter that will measure consumption for the Comcast account which will be available in the coming months. In the meantime, we offer a meter for free with our McAfee security suite available at http://security.comcast.net/
There are many online tools customers can download and use to measure their consumption. Customers can find such tools by simply doing a Web search - for example, a search for "bandwidth meter" will provide some options. Customers using multiple PCs should just be aware that they will need to measure and combine their total monthly usage in order to identify the data usage for their entire account. Comcast cannot verify that any tools customers may find themselves and use to measure data usage are accurate or without other flaws. Comcast's determination of each customer account's data usage is final.
It's important to note that when our new threshold goes into effect on October 1,2008 it will not change our practice around excessive use. We will continue to call only the top users who consume the most data each month, which is usually well over 250GB, which is the same practice we've had in place for several years.
250Gb/Month should be interpreted as start of a billing cycle to end of a billing cycle. Just call and ask at the first day of a billing cycle and set your meter appropriately. You can figure out the rest.
"Additionally, an easily-viewable bandwidth meter would in all probability only encourage customers to get much closer to the limit than they would otherwise. It's fear-based policy. The more of their customers that decide "I'd better not download this movie/album/ISO/whatever, I might hit my bandwidth cap", the better. Comcast wants customers to stay in the dark regarding usage and be as conservative as possible in their internet activities, while still pretending to offer the full 250 GB."
Gee! What you all say to get in a political dig. Keeping track of your bits is a solved problem for the customer. You all just have to use them. As for "pretending"? Well if you can go up to your limit? Then there's no "pretend", any more than there's "pretend" in your checking account.
"... they get a fucking taxi?"
Were's Johnny Cab when you need one?
"All the money being spent on terrorism should be thrown into developping a 100% automated transit system. "
Driving doesn't destroy hotels and put mammoth craters in streets.
Read Scott McCloud's site and his books. Some of his ideas fit a 3D representation on the Web.