This wont go anywhere even though the wording of the Bill should actually be attractive to states like Texas, Missouri, etc that are decidedly conservative but are currently suing over "obamacare" on the basis of states rights. This simply lifts federal law and puts the issue in the states hands as it should be...but there is far too much money in the "war on drugs". The prison industry and law enforcement agencies at both the state and federal level rely on the war on drugs far to heavily to just let it go without a major fight. People tend to forget that the US has the largest prison population per capita of any country in the world (including all the govt's considered oppressive and anti-human rights) that simply isn't sustainable without the endless war going on.
That happens more often than you think, Its actually happened to me twice..once with a telco I worked for where my department was eliminated as a cost saving measure, my department had 16 people when I started, was down to 2 engineers by the time I was let go. Within two weeks they were calling both of us to try and get us to come back, we both refused to come back in a salary position but offered to come back as contractors...shit was bad so they paid up, I spent a total of one month in two cities and made more in that time than I made in 6 months while I was working there.
The second time was two years ago with my own business, a client decided I was too expensive and decided to "go a different direction", the guy they hired was a relative of one of the company's partners and over a holiday break they managed to have their main server go down after a storm. Their new IT guy kept trying to fix the old machine with random parts, turns out he was hiding the fact that he hadn't had a good backup in over a month. I got a call saying they needed my help, I explained that they had ditched me, and that it was a holiday break (my biggest client closes for a week during the holiday season), they said it didn't matter what it cost they just needed their data. I told them I would do it on an hourly basis on the condition that the idiot who was now in charge just stayed out of the way. I billed them at 2.5x my standard rate, I kept backup hardware of all my clients gear on hand and still had the board and raid card that matched their system at home. Got the new machine up and didn't even have to restore anything, fixed the backup problem made a good backup and presented them a nice bill. They offered to "bring me onboard" again, I told them I didn't have time but wished them luck with my replacement.
A few generations until seeing a paper book is as rare as seeing a lion? Thats a bit absurd, I dont know anyone who has thrown out their book collection after getting a kindle. I have a rather extensive collection and though they mostly collect dust now I have no plans on ditching them. I can see a day where new books are no longer published but just expecting all of the old ones to just disappear is ridiculous.
The problem with my local news broadcasts is their insistence on filling 2 hours with 15 minutes of real local news and a bunch of fluff or national news from yesterday. The worst part is the break it up into segments so if you want local events you have to watch the first 15 minutes...if you want weather its about an hour in and finally if you want local sports you have to wait until the last 15 minutes. In between they run the expose into the dangers of sniffing paint, how copper thieves could steal your air conditioner and other paranoia pieces along with the latest stories about puppies, kittens or how local businesses donated a computer to a handicapped kid.
Oh yea I forgot its not really about getting people to quit smoking (negligible sales drops = success) its more about tax revenue...cant really be serious about getting people to quit.
Because stuff like this is always spun as the innocent corporation vs the evil hackers...most television and online news sources wont even mention the plain text passwords, lack of security updates, etc....it will just be presented as sony did nothing wrong and the bad guys keep trying to keep you from being able to play your playstation.
Agreed...Paypal can DIAF. I had heard horror stories but ignored them and continued to use them for years, mainly to pay for stuff but once in a while to sell on ebay. About a month ago I had been cleaning my basement and ran across some collectibles that I had no use for but were worth a decent amount so I listed them....have no negative feedback at all, have never had a payment dispute and have been a member for 9 years, a few days before 3k worth of auctions are about to close I get a notice from paypal that my account was deemed "high risk" so there would be a 21 day hold on any transactions which apparently includes even shipping fees. Several of the buyers were overseas so I was stuck with several hundred dollars in shipping while having to wait 3 weeks to actually get access to the payments, I called paypal about it and was told the easiest way around it was to buy confirmed shipping labels from paypal themselves...which would get the release changed from 21 days to 3. Apparently paypal is now creating a "protection racket" for ebay.
When manufacturing jobs started disappearing the comments from many were that everything was ok and that service related jobs would take their place, now the service related jobs seem to be going away too (McDonalds last week announced it was replacing cashiers with touch screen kiosks in 40,000 restaurants). What happens now? While I like progress and advancement in technology, it just doesn't seem to be very well thought out, if you eliminate jobs in the name of efficiency eventually you also end up eliminating a sizable portion of the customer base. You can have 100% efficiency but if there is no one left who can afford to buy what your selling your business is going to fail.
yes its triple play...the most obscene thing about it is that after your 2 year contract runs out they automatically "renew" the contract for you unless you call 2 months before the contract is about to expire and completely cancel the service. The new contract is at a higher rate and when that one expires they again do you the favor of renewing it...im now in a situation where after 6 years as a customer I have to pay an $250 termination fee to get out of a contract I didnt sign in the first place.
Basic cable like that hasnt existed in my area in years...the lowest package they offer is $65 without the box, $85 with the box, I have 2 boxes one in the living room and one in the den, the internet package I have is the "upgraded option" at 5/1 the basic one is 1.5/512.
I am so sick of seeing this happen. The municipal wifi project in my town was canceled by time warner. The end result was that 3 years later there is still no public wifi downtown, half of the surrounding neighborhoods still dont have coverage for anything but dial up and the people living here have exactly 1 choice for internet. My cable/internet bill is $178 a month for basic cable and 5/1 internet service.
While I understand the concept, I have yet to really find the value. I actually have more client asking me how they ended up on Linkedin and how to get off of it than I do ones asking how to join. What usually ends up happening is one of their clients or contacts sends out Linkedin requests (usually unknowingly) and they more often than not sign up thinking its a legitimate request and some way to exchange documents or keep in contact, the result seems to be spam semi related to their business. I myself still get at least one Linkedin request a week usually from people who have only corresponded with me via an email through craigslist or a forum I am a member of. I have a feeling their "subscriber" base is grossly different from the number of people who actually use it.
How is this different from the facial recognition that has been done in things like iPhoto for years.
Stranger is that just yesterday Google called facebooks "facial recognition" creepy and said it was something that google would likely not do and that some other company would have to "cross that line".
I would completely agree if it actually were the "best information", unfortunately with google and most other search engines it doesn't work that way. All to often the results are more the result of rank manipulation than by actual quality of information. Sometimes I think the biggest advancement in search engines would be for one to simply add a checkbox that allows the user to never see search results from certain sites again...if I could banish things like fixya, answers.yahoo.com and stuff like that it would cut my average search time in half.
Half of my clients seem to think typing something in google is how to get around on the internet. I still have to regularly explain bookmarks, favorites, etc and when troubleshooting half of the time they cant actually tell me the URL they are having trouble reaching or getting to work in their browser because all they do is type the name of the place in google, this change will simply help facilitate that ignorance. If it was infallible I wouldn't have a problem with it but search results vary and nearly every spyware infection and rootkit I have had to remove tends to come from clicking on the first thing that comes up on a search.
Oh please, I have friend who drools like pavlov's dog every time he sees the android robot. He is overlook any flaw, any shortcoming and lack of functionality and simply declare whatever the device is as perfect just like it is....its reached a point of absolute delusion. Many Sony fans are the same way, look at any PS3 fan forum and look at the excuses and apologies their fans make for the whole PSN fiasco. Even here there was at one time a rather overwhelming contingent that seemed to think the only reason Linux didn't rule the desktop was because everyone else was stupid...nothing else mattered. I think people get rabid passion for certain things because they fear "loosing" i.e. picking the wrong or least popular product, or fear of the perception their choice has on their peers. In reality there are far more people that buy things based on what they want to do and the products ability to do it, but the voice of logic and reason is usually low key because they are busy actually using their stuff rather than wasting time defending it.
Does anyone else make up passwords based on a shape or pattern on a keyboard? I got in that habit years ago, remembering them is more "muscle memory" than anything. Half of the time I couldn't even tell you what the actual letters are but can remember that its a Tree shape or fish shape, etc.
I do mostly business consulting now but originally did home business and residential work, the biggest contributor to changing my business model was the plethora of scammers advertising cheap rates. Its really hard to charge a reasonable rate for quality work when the scammers are advertising to fix any virus problem or repair any pc for next to nothing...yes you get what you pay for but often you dont find that out until its too late and the result is the customer doesn't trust any "small business" for that sort of thing and usually goes to something like Geek Squad the next time. The last straw for me was a customer that had called to have me fix a problem that a dodgy repairman had screwed up. After completing the job even though I had explained my rates up front she started complaining about how much higher my rates were than the guy that messed up her computer before.
And Amazon makes it impossible for other book sellers to sell books on kindle? Am i missing something or are they just sore that Apple cut out an unneeded middle man.
While I do think that Hydrogen based cars is a great idea I know that a problem in their development was safety. Is having a direct connection to the pipeline at a publicly used service station a good idea? We see stupid things people do resulting in problems at regular gas stations all the time, will it use full time attendants or will just rely on people being smart while fueling up?
Can't say I would really care what they did with the channel, why in the world would anyone want to reward their owners and investors by buying into a "premium" service...they chose to chase other markets with their programming scheme and can ride that horse to bankruptcy as far as i'm concerned. Support the channels that support your viewing habits, if you like wresting and ghost hunter shows by all means continue to enjoy syfy, the rest of us will and have long since gone elsewhere for entertainment. Hell I never bothered with SGU because of where it was...
BBC America has actually done a great job of catering to former SciFi viewers, their Saturday night lineup is fantastic with Supernatural, Being Human, Doctor Who and soon to be Outcasts. BBCA even has STTNG and Battlestar Galactica now.
I know I lasted with Live about a year..the thing that pissed me off the most was having to buy either 400-800 or 1600 point cards...when the cheapest thing actually worth money was 500 and most games were 1200 so no matter what you either had too few or too many points. I understand why they do it, but I found it particularly annoying and know I cant be alone in that. To me is seemed rather shady and dishonest making me much more conscious about spending money with them.
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This wont go anywhere even though the wording of the Bill should actually be attractive to states like Texas, Missouri, etc that are decidedly conservative but are currently suing over "obamacare" on the basis of states rights. This simply lifts federal law and puts the issue in the states hands as it should be...but there is far too much money in the "war on drugs". The prison industry and law enforcement agencies at both the state and federal level rely on the war on drugs far to heavily to just let it go without a major fight. People tend to forget that the US has the largest prison population per capita of any country in the world (including all the govt's considered oppressive and anti-human rights) that simply isn't sustainable without the endless war going on.
That happens more often than you think, Its actually happened to me twice..once with a telco I worked for where my department was eliminated as a cost saving measure, my department had 16 people when I started, was down to 2 engineers by the time I was let go. Within two weeks they were calling both of us to try and get us to come back, we both refused to come back in a salary position but offered to come back as contractors...shit was bad so they paid up, I spent a total of one month in two cities and made more in that time than I made in 6 months while I was working there.
The second time was two years ago with my own business, a client decided I was too expensive and decided to "go a different direction", the guy they hired was a relative of one of the company's partners and over a holiday break they managed to have their main server go down after a storm. Their new IT guy kept trying to fix the old machine with random parts, turns out he was hiding the fact that he hadn't had a good backup in over a month. I got a call saying they needed my help, I explained that they had ditched me, and that it was a holiday break (my biggest client closes for a week during the holiday season), they said it didn't matter what it cost they just needed their data. I told them I would do it on an hourly basis on the condition that the idiot who was now in charge just stayed out of the way. I billed them at 2.5x my standard rate, I kept backup hardware of all my clients gear on hand and still had the board and raid card that matched their system at home. Got the new machine up and didn't even have to restore anything, fixed the backup problem made a good backup and presented them a nice bill. They offered to "bring me onboard" again, I told them I didn't have time but wished them luck with my replacement.
A few generations until seeing a paper book is as rare as seeing a lion? Thats a bit absurd, I dont know anyone who has thrown out their book collection after getting a kindle. I have a rather extensive collection and though they mostly collect dust now I have no plans on ditching them. I can see a day where new books are no longer published but just expecting all of the old ones to just disappear is ridiculous.
The problem with my local news broadcasts is their insistence on filling 2 hours with 15 minutes of real local news and a bunch of fluff or national news from yesterday. The worst part is the break it up into segments so if you want local events you have to watch the first 15 minutes...if you want weather its about an hour in and finally if you want local sports you have to wait until the last 15 minutes. In between they run the expose into the dangers of sniffing paint, how copper thieves could steal your air conditioner and other paranoia pieces along with the latest stories about puppies, kittens or how local businesses donated a computer to a handicapped kid.
Oh yea I forgot its not really about getting people to quit smoking (negligible sales drops = success) its more about tax revenue...cant really be serious about getting people to quit.
Because stuff like this is always spun as the innocent corporation vs the evil hackers...most television and online news sources wont even mention the plain text passwords, lack of security updates, etc....it will just be presented as sony did nothing wrong and the bad guys keep trying to keep you from being able to play your playstation.
Give away android tablets...
Agreed...Paypal can DIAF. I had heard horror stories but ignored them and continued to use them for years, mainly to pay for stuff but once in a while to sell on ebay. About a month ago I had been cleaning my basement and ran across some collectibles that I had no use for but were worth a decent amount so I listed them....have no negative feedback at all, have never had a payment dispute and have been a member for 9 years, a few days before 3k worth of auctions are about to close I get a notice from paypal that my account was deemed "high risk" so there would be a 21 day hold on any transactions which apparently includes even shipping fees. Several of the buyers were overseas so I was stuck with several hundred dollars in shipping while having to wait 3 weeks to actually get access to the payments, I called paypal about it and was told the easiest way around it was to buy confirmed shipping labels from paypal themselves...which would get the release changed from 21 days to 3. Apparently paypal is now creating a "protection racket" for ebay.
When manufacturing jobs started disappearing the comments from many were that everything was ok and that service related jobs would take their place, now the service related jobs seem to be going away too (McDonalds last week announced it was replacing cashiers with touch screen kiosks in 40,000 restaurants). What happens now? While I like progress and advancement in technology, it just doesn't seem to be very well thought out, if you eliminate jobs in the name of efficiency eventually you also end up eliminating a sizable portion of the customer base. You can have 100% efficiency but if there is no one left who can afford to buy what your selling your business is going to fail.
yes its triple play...the most obscene thing about it is that after your 2 year contract runs out they automatically "renew" the contract for you unless you call 2 months before the contract is about to expire and completely cancel the service. The new contract is at a higher rate and when that one expires they again do you the favor of renewing it...im now in a situation where after 6 years as a customer I have to pay an $250 termination fee to get out of a contract I didnt sign in the first place.
Basic cable like that hasnt existed in my area in years...the lowest package they offer is $65 without the box, $85 with the box, I have 2 boxes one in the living room and one in the den, the internet package I have is the "upgraded option" at 5/1 the basic one is 1.5/512.
I am so sick of seeing this happen. The municipal wifi project in my town was canceled by time warner. The end result was that 3 years later there is still no public wifi downtown, half of the surrounding neighborhoods still dont have coverage for anything but dial up and the people living here have exactly 1 choice for internet. My cable/internet bill is $178 a month for basic cable and 5/1 internet service.
While I understand the concept, I have yet to really find the value. I actually have more client asking me how they ended up on Linkedin and how to get off of it than I do ones asking how to join. What usually ends up happening is one of their clients or contacts sends out Linkedin requests (usually unknowingly) and they more often than not sign up thinking its a legitimate request and some way to exchange documents or keep in contact, the result seems to be spam semi related to their business. I myself still get at least one Linkedin request a week usually from people who have only corresponded with me via an email through craigslist or a forum I am a member of. I have a feeling their "subscriber" base is grossly different from the number of people who actually use it.
How is this different from the facial recognition that has been done in things like iPhoto for years.
Stranger is that just yesterday Google called facebooks "facial recognition" creepy and said it was something that google would likely not do and that some other company would have to "cross that line".
I would completely agree if it actually were the "best information", unfortunately with google and most other search engines it doesn't work that way. All to often the results are more the result of rank manipulation than by actual quality of information. Sometimes I think the biggest advancement in search engines would be for one to simply add a checkbox that allows the user to never see search results from certain sites again...if I could banish things like fixya, answers.yahoo.com and stuff like that it would cut my average search time in half.
Half of my clients seem to think typing something in google is how to get around on the internet. I still have to regularly explain bookmarks, favorites, etc and when troubleshooting half of the time they cant actually tell me the URL they are having trouble reaching or getting to work in their browser because all they do is type the name of the place in google, this change will simply help facilitate that ignorance. If it was infallible I wouldn't have a problem with it but search results vary and nearly every spyware infection and rootkit I have had to remove tends to come from clicking on the first thing that comes up on a search.
Oh please, I have friend who drools like pavlov's dog every time he sees the android robot. He is overlook any flaw, any shortcoming and lack of functionality and simply declare whatever the device is as perfect just like it is....its reached a point of absolute delusion. Many Sony fans are the same way, look at any PS3 fan forum and look at the excuses and apologies their fans make for the whole PSN fiasco. Even here there was at one time a rather overwhelming contingent that seemed to think the only reason Linux didn't rule the desktop was because everyone else was stupid...nothing else mattered. I think people get rabid passion for certain things because they fear "loosing" i.e. picking the wrong or least popular product, or fear of the perception their choice has on their peers. In reality there are far more people that buy things based on what they want to do and the products ability to do it, but the voice of logic and reason is usually low key because they are busy actually using their stuff rather than wasting time defending it.
Does anyone else make up passwords based on a shape or pattern on a keyboard? I got in that habit years ago, remembering them is more "muscle memory" than anything. Half of the time I couldn't even tell you what the actual letters are but can remember that its a Tree shape or fish shape, etc.
I do mostly business consulting now but originally did home business and residential work, the biggest contributor to changing my business model was the plethora of scammers advertising cheap rates. Its really hard to charge a reasonable rate for quality work when the scammers are advertising to fix any virus problem or repair any pc for next to nothing...yes you get what you pay for but often you dont find that out until its too late and the result is the customer doesn't trust any "small business" for that sort of thing and usually goes to something like Geek Squad the next time. The last straw for me was a customer that had called to have me fix a problem that a dodgy repairman had screwed up. After completing the job even though I had explained my rates up front she started complaining about how much higher my rates were than the guy that messed up her computer before.
And Amazon makes it impossible for other book sellers to sell books on kindle? Am i missing something or are they just sore that Apple cut out an unneeded middle man.
While I do think that Hydrogen based cars is a great idea I know that a problem in their development was safety. Is having a direct connection to the pipeline at a publicly used service station a good idea? We see stupid things people do resulting in problems at regular gas stations all the time, will it use full time attendants or will just rely on people being smart while fueling up?
Watch the british version on BBC America a couple times then try going back to the American version...it blows.
Can't say I would really care what they did with the channel, why in the world would anyone want to reward their owners and investors by buying into a "premium" service...they chose to chase other markets with their programming scheme and can ride that horse to bankruptcy as far as i'm concerned. Support the channels that support your viewing habits, if you like wresting and ghost hunter shows by all means continue to enjoy syfy, the rest of us will and have long since gone elsewhere for entertainment. Hell I never bothered with SGU because of where it was...
BBC America has actually done a great job of catering to former SciFi viewers, their Saturday night lineup is fantastic with Supernatural, Being Human, Doctor Who and soon to be Outcasts. BBCA even has STTNG and Battlestar Galactica now.
I know I lasted with Live about a year..the thing that pissed me off the most was having to buy either 400-800 or 1600 point cards...when the cheapest thing actually worth money was 500 and most games were 1200 so no matter what you either had too few or too many points. I understand why they do it, but I found it particularly annoying and know I cant be alone in that. To me is seemed rather shady and dishonest making me much more conscious about spending money with them.
So skynet really did get turned on a few weeks ago?