ipconfig hadn't even been invented when I went to high school. It was so early in the computer era that they still thought keyboarding ought to be a prerequisite to a programming class.
[Insert obligatory story about learning to use a keypunch in high school]
Hang on... I gotta go tell those damn kids to get off my lawn.
Is it an eye problem? Perhaps. I have a slight astigmatism and wear glasses when I'm reading a book or looking at a computer monitor, but otherwise don't need them.
How about the credit agencies be required to inform me when they give out reports about me? They already know everything about me, right?
You can get this service, for a fee. Unfortunately, you have to pay for it.
Also, you can put a fraud alert on your credit file. That forces the lender to contact you directly to confirm your application. Unfortunately, you have to renew it every 60-90 days, at all 3 credit reporting agencies. Of course, you can pay a fee to have someone do it for you.
I've been paying for this service for a few years. I don't like it, but it's a necessary evil after my birth certificate was stolen during a burglary at the home of another family member.
Re:Location without GPS
on
iPad Review
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure that the iPhone, and therefore most likely the iPad, can get location without GPS via Skyhook and the known locations of wireless access points.
You are correct. I was surprised when my iPod Touch was able to identify my location. It took some research before I figured out that it was getting it from Skyhook Wireless. It actually put my position on the street just outside the house, presumably where someone drove by with a sniffer and picked up the SSID of the WiFi AP I was using.
You can prove me wrong by pointing to a nationwide enforced gun control policy that has resulted in higher homicide rates.
No problem at all: Jamaica, in the early 1970's.
The government imposed a complete prohibition on guns. Possession of a bullet meant a mandatory life sentence. There was even a special gun court where people were tried in secret.
After a drop in homicide and crime rates that lasted only 6 months, both increased rapidly until they were double and triple the rates before the crackdown, only a few years later. At one point, the "justifiable" homicide rate by police officers was higher than the overall homicide rate in the US.
Another example that isn't really a cause-effect relationship, but is more like a cause-no effect relationship: The United Kingdom. Before enactment of gun control, gun crime was practically non-existent. From 1890-92, there were only 3 handgun homicides (an average of one a year) among a population of 30 million. In 1904, there were only four armed robberies in London.
Gun control began in the UK in 1920, and accelerated in 1954. Violent crime has been climbing every since. After a 1997 ban on handguns, the use of handguns in crime rose by 40% in the following two years. Over a six-month period in 2001, robberies at gunpoint rose by 53% in London.
In 2002, the chances of being mugged in London were six times greater than being mugged in New York. The rates of assault, robbery and burglary in the UK were much higher than the US. In 2002, 53% of UK burglaries occurred while the occupants were at home, compared with only 13% in the US -- where apprehended burglars admit they fear armed homeowners more than the police.
In a UN study of crime in 18 developed nations published in July, 2002, England and Wales led the Western world, with nearly 55 crimes per 100 people.
Of course, the homicide rate in the US is still higher. But here's an interesting fact: if you remove all the homicides committed with a firearm in the US, the remaining homicide rate is still higher than the UK.
The US homicide rate is dominated by criminals killing each other over disputes. Deaths of innocent people caused by strangers gets all the press coverage, but in reality they are much less common.
The cars do not have a Manual gearbox or ignition as such. Both are computer controlled. You only get a "start" button for the ignition, and thats about it, the rest is not in your hands. You can't just "shift into neutral" like in existing cars, or just turn a key to cut power to the engine.
According to Toyota:
The Prius can be shifted into neutral.
The power button shuts off the ignition if you hold it down for 3 seconds.
Pressing the brake pedal and the accelerator at the same time will cause the throttle to be disconnected.
This is nothing more than a compilation and reporting system. NASA doesn't investigate "incidents". They just compile and report the data in aggregate.
The original reports are confidential. Pilots are encouraged to file them, and fines and penalties are even waived for unintentional violations of aviation statutes and regulations, if the pilot files an ASRS report.
Hostile intent doesn't mean you have the right to lethal force in any state. It would allow you to attack him certainly, and probably threaten him with a gun, but not to shoot him without further provocation. Which doesn't mean you wouldn't get away with it with a conservative jury and a good lawyer, but the idea of excessive force exists pretty much everywhere.
Sorry, but you are wrong.
The mere act of unlawful entry into a habitation is enough to justify the use of deadly force in self-defense in many states. There is no duty to warn the intruder or use less than lethal force.
Stop pretending you know the law and read up on it. This Wikipedia article provides a good summary and lots of useful links:
And unless he was threatening you with a weapon, you'll be tried, found guilty, and executed for murder as you deserve.
Maybe in your state, but not in mine.
There are several states in the US in which an intruder in a habitation is presumed to have hostile intent, regardless of whether he is threatening you or has a weapon.
I ran the test and the measurements were 10% of the speed of my FIOS connection.
It offered me the opportunity to rerun the test using Ookla as the host. That returned 25 megabit/sec down and 15 megabit/sec up -- which is what my connection is supposed to do.
They apparently need to implement some sort of queue, so that they don't saturate their own connection with too many simultaneous tests.
What I want to know is why the safety wasn't set on the gun.
It looks like the firearm in question is a S&W.380 Sigma. It is "double-action" only: each pull of the trigger draws back the hammer to fire. There's no external safety.
I haven't been able to find anything that indicates the weight of the trigger for that gun. I'll venture that it's probably about 6-8 pounds, but some DA guns are as high as 13 pounds.
I'm also vaguely curious as to what sort of shooting game the kid was playing that involved pointing the gun at himself....
As you and several others have mentioned, it's unlikely the child would be able to pull the trigger with her trigger finger. And I suspect that's what happened:
The child picked up the firearm by mistake and tried to pull the trigger. When it didn't work, she fumbled with it and pointed the firearm at herself as she pulled the trigger with her thumb.
HardOCP was apparently the original source of the allegation that D&H Distributing was the source of the counterfeit CPUs. They have since apologized to D&H, claiming that their source of information was someone inside NewEgg.
At no time did HardOCP speculate as to what company was supplying the counterfeit processors to Newegg. Our source that informed us of the supplier being D&H Distributing came from within Newegg's organization. We belived the information to be accurate and reported it to our readers. Newegg is stating that IPEX shipped it the counterfeit processors. I am not sure as to why we would get conflicting information, and we will further investigate that.
At this time we offer our apologies to D&H Distributing for naming it as the supplying distributor. HardOCP was simply reporting the information that we believed to be accurate. We would NEVER "speculate" on something of this nature, as there is NOTHING for us to gain by misinforming our readers. We will be investigating further as to why we were misinformed on this detail.
I would kill to be able to walk up to my car and have the doors unlock when I got within a few feet. No buttons, no PIN numbers, just the physical proximity of the key. Why don't we have this yet?
We do. You just have to be willing to spend the money for a vehicle that has the feature.
Mine does. And it wasn't horribly expensive. It doesn't automatically unlock the door, but if I touch the inside of the door handle while the key fob is in my pocket, it unlocks the door. It will do the same for the trunk (or "boot", if you prefer).
As a bonus, I don't have to put a key in the ignition. And, it won't let me lock the key in the car or the trunk. My biggest problem is walking into the garage and locking the door behind me, before I realize that the key/key fob isn't in my pocket.
It also recognizes two different key fobs, so it will move the seat, side view mirrors, and steering wheel to the positions for me (rather than the settings for my soon-to-be wife).
The technology isn't much more complex than a push-button remote, so I think it's a matter of time before it becomes standard on all but economy cars.
a simple attack that allows him to recover the passwords for any Verizon MiFi device.
The attack is based on searching through a limited set of default passwords.
Changing the password to something other than the default prevents this attack. I don't have a Verizon MiFi device, but I have one from Sprint. By default, it was an open access point. I quickly changed it to something else before I left the store, and changed it again later at a distant location over the (somewhat) secure connection.
It was literally the first one sold from the store where I bought it. Sprint may have since changed to something like Verizon has done, with a (non-) random password. But, I would have changed it anyway.
My Verizon router (for FIOS) had a similar setup, although I don't think it's a predictable SSID and password. However, it was WEP-64. Needless to say, it was the first thing I changed.
An aside: I made the initial connection and changed the password in the Sprint store with my iPhone. The staff was really amused by that, and asked how fast the connection was. I used the iPhone speedtest to tell them -- about the same as the PCMCIA Sprint AirCard I had before this.
Ha, that reminds me that I need to take them up on their 5 free days offer just so I can switch my character to the next skill that will take a month to train to L5.
Unless they changed it back, CCP changed character training a while ago so that it stopped when the account expired.
I can choose variable rates or fix my electricity rate for up to 24 months. I can also choose electricity solely from renewable sources (it's usually a fraction of a cent per kilowatt-hour more, compared to non-renewable sources from the same provider).
Rather than imposing a tax on producers, Minnesota legislators should consider giving consumers this kind of choice and let each individual decide whether they want to pay more for electricity from a renewable source.
The funny thing is: renewable sources are reportedly the least popular in the most "liberal" parts of Texas. I guess that when it's time to write that check, the money in their wallet is "greener" than their desire to save the planet.
I do know that there are many states that have taxes that vary by county.
It's worse than that. In Texas, the sales tax varies by city. There are a few towns/villages in the D/FW area that are literally a few blocks in size.
Either way, Amazon probably has the resources to do so, but do all online retailers? I doubt it...
The last time this subject came up on Slashdot, someone posted a link to an online source for sales tax assessment. I don't know if it used zip+4 or even the specific address.
But, I think the real problem is not how complex it is: it's the penalty if you get even the slightest detail wrong. If Amazon screws up an order and annoys a customer, they might lose a customer. If they make their best effort to collect sales tax and some bureaucrat disagrees, the state can come down on Amazon with the full force of the law.
Given the ambiguities of geopolitical boundaries (disputes are common), I wouldn't want to be in the cross-hairs of an bureaucrat that decides they want to make an example of me.
Traditional brick-and-mortar (and resident mail-order) businesses get a certificate from the state/city/county that specifically spells out the sales taxes they must collect, ideally before they ever make a sale. At least in my state, that's a defense against arbitrary changes after-the-fact.
So... To sum it up, you agree that the U.S. Carriers are screwing the U.S. Market over.
Screwing it over? No, I wouldn't go that far. I'm just trying to point out that the market in India (and developing countries) is different than the US.
Cell-phone networks in developing countries are oriented toward replacing the (lack of) land-lines. The land-line infrastructure is so bad that there's a huge demand. The providers are doing everything they can to bring more users (and usage) to the network, at a cost the locals can afford.
In the US, the cell-phone networks are currently supplementing land-lines. Yes, many people are dumping their land-line for a full-time mobile phone. But, those same people are still using land lines for data, because wireless data is (mostly) still more expensive than wired.
The honest truth is that supply and demand is at work. US cell phone networks were originally targeted at people that would pay a high price for the convenience. To some extent, that's still true: the mobile phone networks are heavily utilized at the current price. Why should the providers lower their price, when they can barely handle the existing load in some markets (i.e. NYC and SF)?
This model doesn't necessarily work in the developing countries: there aren't enough people with enough disposable income. Lowering the cost is the only way to make it affordable for enough people to make the effort worthwhile (and profitable). But, any given individual user doesn't impose much load on the network, because they can barely afford even the 1 cent/minute or 20 cents/day.
I just got back from a trip to India. In terms of mobiles, the US is lightyears behind them.
That's because in terms of landlines, India is light years behind the US.
In the developing world, landline phone systems are in shambles. Many of them are state-run monopolies, and quality and availability is non-existent. People had to literally wait months or years to get new phone service.
Mobile phone services were a way around that: private companies could build out a cellular network without running wires. Once the price of cell phones came down, it was affordable for almost anyone. For those that still can't afford it, "renting" a handset for a few minutes at a time has become a cottage industry.
In the US, cell phone networks were developed for a completely different market: the businessman (or woman) that needs a phone during the working day. That market still exists, and is lucrative for the cell phone providers. All the alternatives are designed to avoid cannibalizing that market.
Slashdot Mirror
They'd run across the field, go in groups and investigate anything that made a noise or entered the field.
Cows do this because they've been conditioned to expect to eat anytime a human approaches them. Any noise is a potential arrival of a human.
ipconfig hadn't even been invented when I went to high school. It was so early in the computer era that they still thought keyboarding ought to be a prerequisite to a programming class.
[Insert obligatory story about learning to use a keypunch in high school]
Hang on... I gotta go tell those damn kids to get off my lawn.
I though the joke was Q: "What are the bumps on the areolae for?"
It is. And the answer is "It's braille for 'Kiss here'."
Is it an eye problem? Perhaps. I have a slight astigmatism and wear glasses when I'm reading a book or looking at a computer monitor, but otherwise don't need them.
How about the credit agencies be required to inform me when they give out reports about me? They already know everything about me, right?
You can get this service, for a fee. Unfortunately, you have to pay for it.
Also, you can put a fraud alert on your credit file. That forces the lender to contact you directly to confirm your application. Unfortunately, you have to renew it every 60-90 days, at all 3 credit reporting agencies. Of course, you can pay a fee to have someone do it for you.
I've been paying for this service for a few years. I don't like it, but it's a necessary evil after my birth certificate was stolen during a burglary at the home of another family member.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure that the iPhone, and therefore most likely the iPad, can get location without GPS via Skyhook and the known locations of wireless access points.
You are correct. I was surprised when my iPod Touch was able to identify my location. It took some research before I figured out that it was getting it from Skyhook Wireless. It actually put my position on the street just outside the house, presumably where someone drove by with a sniffer and picked up the SSID of the WiFi AP I was using.
You can prove me wrong by pointing to a nationwide enforced gun control policy that has resulted in higher homicide rates.
No problem at all: Jamaica, in the early 1970's.
The government imposed a complete prohibition on guns. Possession of a bullet meant a mandatory life sentence. There was even a special gun court where people were tried in secret.
After a drop in homicide and crime rates that lasted only 6 months, both increased rapidly until they were double and triple the rates before the crackdown, only a few years later. At one point, the "justifiable" homicide rate by police officers was higher than the overall homicide rate in the US.
Another example that isn't really a cause-effect relationship, but is more like a cause-no effect relationship: The United Kingdom. Before enactment of gun control, gun crime was practically non-existent. From 1890-92, there were only 3 handgun homicides (an average of one a year) among a population of 30 million. In 1904, there were only four armed robberies in London.
Gun control began in the UK in 1920, and accelerated in 1954. Violent crime has been climbing every since. After a 1997 ban on handguns, the use of handguns in crime rose by 40% in the following two years. Over a six-month period in 2001, robberies at gunpoint rose by 53% in London.
In 2002, the chances of being mugged in London were six times greater than being mugged in New York. The rates of assault, robbery and burglary in the UK were much higher than the US. In 2002, 53% of UK burglaries occurred while the occupants were at home, compared with only 13% in the US -- where apprehended burglars admit they fear armed homeowners more than the police.
In a UN study of crime in 18 developed nations published in July, 2002, England and Wales led the Western world, with nearly 55 crimes per 100 people.
Of course, the homicide rate in the US is still higher. But here's an interesting fact: if you remove all the homicides committed with a firearm in the US, the remaining homicide rate is still higher than the UK.
The US homicide rate is dominated by criminals killing each other over disputes. Deaths of innocent people caused by strangers gets all the press coverage, but in reality they are much less common.
The cars do not have a Manual gearbox or ignition as such. Both are computer controlled. You only get a "start" button for the ignition, and thats about it, the rest is not in your hands. You can't just "shift into neutral" like in existing cars, or just turn a key to cut power to the engine.
According to Toyota:
I believe NASA is the government agency that handles "incidents" in the aviation world.
NASA administrates the Aviation Safety Reporting System.
This is nothing more than a compilation and reporting system. NASA doesn't investigate "incidents". They just compile and report the data in aggregate.
The original reports are confidential. Pilots are encouraged to file them, and fines and penalties are even waived for unintentional violations of aviation statutes and regulations, if the pilot files an ASRS report.
And if I ever live in one of those states I intend to donate to any politician who attempts to fix that hideously broken law.
Do yourself a favor and stay in your current state of residence.
Hostile intent doesn't mean you have the right to lethal force in any state. It would allow you to attack him certainly, and probably threaten him with a gun, but not to shoot him without further provocation. Which doesn't mean you wouldn't get away with it with a conservative jury and a good lawyer, but the idea of excessive force exists pretty much everywhere.
Sorry, but you are wrong.
The mere act of unlawful entry into a habitation is enough to justify the use of deadly force in self-defense in many states. There is no duty to warn the intruder or use less than lethal force.
Stop pretending you know the law and read up on it. This Wikipedia article provides a good summary and lots of useful links:
Castle Doctrine in the United States
And unless he was threatening you with a weapon, you'll be tried, found guilty, and executed for murder as you deserve.
Maybe in your state, but not in mine.
There are several states in the US in which an intruder in a habitation is presumed to have hostile intent, regardless of whether he is threatening you or has a weapon.
Don't believe the pictures, boys. And even Eve Online has a feature on their in-game chat to disguise male voices as female (and vice-versa).
It offered me the opportunity to rerun the test using Ookla as the host. That returned 25 megabit/sec down and 15 megabit/sec up -- which is what my connection is supposed to do.
They apparently need to implement some sort of queue, so that they don't saturate their own connection with too many simultaneous tests.
What I want to know is why the safety wasn't set on the gun.
It looks like the firearm in question is a S&W .380 Sigma. It is "double-action" only: each pull of the trigger draws back the hammer to fire. There's no external safety.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_&_Wesson#Sigma_series
I haven't been able to find anything that indicates the weight of the trigger for that gun. I'll venture that it's probably about 6-8 pounds, but some DA guns are as high as 13 pounds.
I'm also vaguely curious as to what sort of shooting game the kid was playing that involved pointing the gun at himself....
As you and several others have mentioned, it's unlikely the child would be able to pull the trigger with her trigger finger. And I suspect that's what happened: The child picked up the firearm by mistake and tried to pull the trigger. When it didn't work, she fumbled with it and pointed the firearm at herself as she pulled the trigger with her thumb.
Counterfeit Intel CPU Saga Comes to a Close
At no time did HardOCP speculate as to what company was supplying the counterfeit processors to Newegg. Our source that informed us of the supplier being D&H Distributing came from within Newegg's organization. We belived the information to be accurate and reported it to our readers. Newegg is stating that IPEX shipped it the counterfeit processors. I am not sure as to why we would get conflicting information, and we will further investigate that.
At this time we offer our apologies to D&H Distributing for naming it as the supplying distributor. HardOCP was simply reporting the information that we believed to be accurate. We would NEVER "speculate" on something of this nature, as there is NOTHING for us to gain by misinforming our readers. We will be investigating further as to why we were misinformed on this detail.
I would kill to be able to walk up to my car and have the doors unlock when I got within a few feet. No buttons, no PIN numbers, just the physical proximity of the key. Why don't we have this yet?
We do. You just have to be willing to spend the money for a vehicle that has the feature.
Mine does. And it wasn't horribly expensive. It doesn't automatically unlock the door, but if I touch the inside of the door handle while the key fob is in my pocket, it unlocks the door. It will do the same for the trunk (or "boot", if you prefer).
As a bonus, I don't have to put a key in the ignition. And, it won't let me lock the key in the car or the trunk. My biggest problem is walking into the garage and locking the door behind me, before I realize that the key/key fob isn't in my pocket.
It also recognizes two different key fobs, so it will move the seat, side view mirrors, and steering wheel to the positions for me (rather than the settings for my soon-to-be wife).
The technology isn't much more complex than a push-button remote, so I think it's a matter of time before it becomes standard on all but economy cars.
Why the fuck do I get charged extra if my bag is 55 pounds, when the fat bastard behind me has 150 pounds on me, and his bag is slightly less?
Because your bag has to be tagged for special handling by the people that are loading and unloading your bag on it's trip to and from your plane.
It's about workplace safety regulations, not the amount of fuel that is burned.
Round circuit board is a needle Probe card.
Glad to see this is the "frist post". I saw that picture and had the same thought.
It's been about 30 years since I've seen one, though, and they weren't as complex as that one. Is the one in the picture dated November 17, 1994?
a simple attack that allows him to recover the passwords for any Verizon MiFi device.
The attack is based on searching through a limited set of default passwords.
Changing the password to something other than the default prevents this attack. I don't have a Verizon MiFi device, but I have one from Sprint. By default, it was an open access point. I quickly changed it to something else before I left the store, and changed it again later at a distant location over the (somewhat) secure connection.
It was literally the first one sold from the store where I bought it. Sprint may have since changed to something like Verizon has done, with a (non-) random password. But, I would have changed it anyway.
My Verizon router (for FIOS) had a similar setup, although I don't think it's a predictable SSID and password. However, it was WEP-64. Needless to say, it was the first thing I changed.
An aside: I made the initial connection and changed the password in the Sprint store with my iPhone. The staff was really amused by that, and asked how fast the connection was. I used the iPhone speedtest to tell them -- about the same as the PCMCIA Sprint AirCard I had before this.
Ha, that reminds me that I need to take them up on their 5 free days offer just so I can switch my character to the next skill that will take a month to train to L5.
Unless they changed it back, CCP changed character training a while ago so that it stopped when the account expired.
You can't switch electric companies like you can cell phone companies.
In your state (and Minnesota?), that might be true. In mine, it's not. I have the choice of many power generation companies:
http://powertochoose.org/
I can choose variable rates or fix my electricity rate for up to 24 months. I can also choose electricity solely from renewable sources (it's usually a fraction of a cent per kilowatt-hour more, compared to non-renewable sources from the same provider).
Rather than imposing a tax on producers, Minnesota legislators should consider giving consumers this kind of choice and let each individual decide whether they want to pay more for electricity from a renewable source.
The funny thing is: renewable sources are reportedly the least popular in the most "liberal" parts of Texas. I guess that when it's time to write that check, the money in their wallet is "greener" than their desire to save the planet.
I do know that there are many states that have taxes that vary by county.
It's worse than that. In Texas, the sales tax varies by city. There are a few towns/villages in the D/FW area that are literally a few blocks in size.
Either way, Amazon probably has the resources to do so, but do all online retailers? I doubt it...
The last time this subject came up on Slashdot, someone posted a link to an online source for sales tax assessment. I don't know if it used zip+4 or even the specific address.
But, I think the real problem is not how complex it is: it's the penalty if you get even the slightest detail wrong. If Amazon screws up an order and annoys a customer, they might lose a customer. If they make their best effort to collect sales tax and some bureaucrat disagrees, the state can come down on Amazon with the full force of the law.
Given the ambiguities of geopolitical boundaries (disputes are common), I wouldn't want to be in the cross-hairs of an bureaucrat that decides they want to make an example of me.
Traditional brick-and-mortar (and resident mail-order) businesses get a certificate from the state/city/county that specifically spells out the sales taxes they must collect, ideally before they ever make a sale. At least in my state, that's a defense against arbitrary changes after-the-fact.
So... To sum it up, you agree that the U.S. Carriers are screwing the U.S. Market over.
Screwing it over? No, I wouldn't go that far. I'm just trying to point out that the market in India (and developing countries) is different than the US.
Cell-phone networks in developing countries are oriented toward replacing the (lack of) land-lines. The land-line infrastructure is so bad that there's a huge demand. The providers are doing everything they can to bring more users (and usage) to the network, at a cost the locals can afford.
In the US, the cell-phone networks are currently supplementing land-lines. Yes, many people are dumping their land-line for a full-time mobile phone. But, those same people are still using land lines for data, because wireless data is (mostly) still more expensive than wired.
The honest truth is that supply and demand is at work. US cell phone networks were originally targeted at people that would pay a high price for the convenience. To some extent, that's still true: the mobile phone networks are heavily utilized at the current price. Why should the providers lower their price, when they can barely handle the existing load in some markets (i.e. NYC and SF)?
This model doesn't necessarily work in the developing countries: there aren't enough people with enough disposable income. Lowering the cost is the only way to make it affordable for enough people to make the effort worthwhile (and profitable). But, any given individual user doesn't impose much load on the network, because they can barely afford even the 1 cent/minute or 20 cents/day.
I just got back from a trip to India. In terms of mobiles, the US is lightyears behind them.
That's because in terms of landlines, India is light years behind the US.
In the developing world, landline phone systems are in shambles. Many of them are state-run monopolies, and quality and availability is non-existent. People had to literally wait months or years to get new phone service.
Mobile phone services were a way around that: private companies could build out a cellular network without running wires. Once the price of cell phones came down, it was affordable for almost anyone. For those that still can't afford it, "renting" a handset for a few minutes at a time has become a cottage industry.
In the US, cell phone networks were developed for a completely different market: the businessman (or woman) that needs a phone during the working day. That market still exists, and is lucrative for the cell phone providers. All the alternatives are designed to avoid cannibalizing that market.