You mean MySpace, right? I mean, Facebook is just about as trustworthy as MySpace or a 5-year-old child at keeping your "secret" data "secret", but at least get your evil super-villain correct.
Also, if you just delete the account, they have your most recent information available for sale. Be sure to alter the information and let the new information age a bit before deleting it.
Not only that, but the quality of MICR is iffy from check printer to check printer, so most check processing companies have a little yellow strip they can stick on the bottom of the check and re-code a new MICR line so the check can be processed. So you really don't need magnetic ink on the check at all.
Plus many of the check processors have moved on to OCR and don't care if the ink is magnetic anyway.
Hmm, if only there was a way to avoid that drive to the bank. If only there was some way to, I don't know, somehow get the information on the check to your bank so it could be deposited, but in a simple enough way that someone who only deals with a few checks a month doesn't have to buy any really high-tech gear.
News: Deposit Checks To Your Bank By Taking a Photo
Didn't they do a movie about this a few years back? The electrons were all unusually large, and red, though. Seems to me they were almost, I dunno, tomato-shaped.
I'm not Herman Farbage, so I'm not terribly concerned.
Doesn't the goverment quite frequently change their minds about what they will do with resources after the fact?
Hell, certain agencies "change their minds" between approval and collection. "After the fact" is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg.
It's COLD HARD REALITY, FACTS, AND PRECENDENCE.
I think the word you are looking for is "precedents", not "precedence". The former is an indication of past behavior (as in "governmental invasion of privacy is not without precedent"), the latter is an indicator of priority (as in "your right to privacy should always take precedent over the government's need to protect you").
But if I have my diseased organs taken out and have the organs of a dead person put in, that's more acceptable to God than if I allow bits of me to be reused after I'm dead?
Actually, fine, whatever. It's a fine theological point that a Rabbi could not doubt explain quite concisely. It doesn't change the fact that the decision makes its followers a drain on an already overburdened system. You cannot expect equal treatment without equal willing participation on an overburdened system.
The point of the law is that, if a person is unwilling to add to the bank of available organs (regardless of reason), they should not expect the same level of priority for a needed organ when it becomes available. Note the distinction between "unwilling" and "unable" (for example, if a person's organs are unsuitable for donation that should not push them down the list).
Judaism is actually a very well reasoned religion and have revised their decisions on various things in modern times such as use of electricity on the sabbath, etc.
Maybe some "golden rule" treatment of the organ donor/recipient line will prompt another one of these well-reasoned decisions, and either ban the receipt of organs or allow the donation of them.
Awwwww, darn, and I had this lovely snarky reply about math skills all worked up and everything. Killjoy!:)
But I agree, pick any organization of any reasonable size and it's almost inevitable that a laptop or smartphone will vanish at some point. That's why they need to be encrypted, with a good "nuke remote" option.
I carry a laptop and a Blackberry, and if either is stolen all I have to do is call my company's helpdesk at an 800# and give them my employee number and which device has been stolen, and the device will cease to operate the next time it connects to the Internet (for the laptop) or the cellular network (for the Blackberry). Then a fresh device is waiting for me when I get back to the office. Thankfully I've never had to exercise that option, but we have had people who have.
Combine that with a solid "home directories are on file server" policy, and the loss of a laptop means maybe the loss of a day or two worth of work, and another day reconfiguring the new machine once it arrives. So, to us, the laptops are really hardware to be replaced, not critical business data subject to loss.
we installed each browser on the same Windows 7 computer and tested their speed in the SunSpider benchmark, their memory usage with the Google home page open in a single tab, and their startup times – measured from the moment we clicked the icon to the browser window appearing.
Expectation for any sort of consistency in the testing parameters has been set to zero. But, at least we get to see which browsers are most-liked and offer a nice user experience, right?
Then we asked seven members of the PC Pro team to abandon their favoured browser and switch to one of these alternatives. To say they were delighted to do so would be a lie: there was gnashing of teeth, wailing and screaming pleas for mercy. All these fell on deaf ears. We provide full reviews of each browser in the Reviews section, but for a helpful summary click through to the next page.
OK, expectation of any sort of positive review of any browser has been set to zero.
The only consolation is that the popularity of the top 12 browsers is re-examined every six months.
Which means PCPro will have a steady ad revenue from writing meaningless reviews cobbled from the barest minimum of testing where the browser used by the least whiny of the random-picked team gets top marks just because that person hates change the least.
In fact, maybe a PC Pro browser is exactly what the EU needs
If it's written with the same attention and care to detail as the articles, the first installed instance of it will crash the Internet and bring civilization to a smoking ruin.
Not precisely what I had in mind with the term "eliminating positions". I was thinking 2 weeks pay and don't let the door hit you in the ass, just like in the corporate world. If you're lucky.
But - what companies hire other than "at will" any more, and what argument is there to hire on a bunch of full-timers for projects or keep the current markup on temps?
How many netbook models are out there today? 100? 200? That can't be good for any one of them. Yet it is. Competition means multiple companies all trying to make the best device for each user, at the best price. It worked with desktops, it worked with laptops, it worked with netbooks, and guess what? It'll work with tablets.
When netbooks became "the hot thing" as a format for casual computing, companies crawled out of the woodwork to make 'em, but they all used the same basic components, just configured a little differently. Asus has at least 6 current models of the eee, Dell has a generous handful of netbooks, and plenty of other companies make them. Yet most of them can run your choice of Windows or Linux (you just have to install Linux yourself on a lot of them). Most can even support MacOS with no problems at all. Sure, you run into a few minor hardware incompatibilities (Linux Mint loves EVERYTHING about my wife's Asus eeePC except the microphone, but it's a brand new one and I expect the driver fix will be out soon, plus she's OK with the 2-step workaround when she wants to video-conference with her mother, who runs a Windows 7 laptop).
The same thing will happen with TabletPCs. If the form factor takes off, most of the netbook manufacturers will rebuild their devices without a keyboard. Same processors, same base components, same hard drives, same screens (just add touch sensitivity). This will be a VERY easy conversion. I expect most will run Intel's N450 Pinewood, feature about a GB of ram, and use a small factor hard drive. Because, guess what? Those components exist, they're cheap, and they work darned well in small form factor machines.
It'll be thicker and heavier than an iPad, but not by much, and the reduction in moving parts will probably make up for the cost of the touch-sensitive screen, so you could probably make and sell them profitably for about $250-300 (given that $300 is about the going rate for a decent netbook right now) and that would include a battery that could last 10 hours, a webcam, a 250GB hard drive, and all the standard connectors along the edge (VGA, USB, Ethernet, etc). In other words, a thinner, lighter, "keyboardless netbook". And the ability to run everything your desktop does, connect to its network shares, etc etc.
In fact, really, the only "oddball" tablet out there is going to be the iPad. I'm not hating on Apple here, I'm sure it will be a great device. Apple makes great stuff. But it's the only device that is unlikely to run anything but the iPhone/iPodTouch/iPad OS. It's the only thing you won't be able to use your tether-capable cell phone on. It's the only thing that won't allow you to run any app you can download. Everything else out there will be capable of running the same OS your desktop does - or at least a minimized variant of it (Windows Seven Starter, for example). And all the same applications.
No, no, this is Slashdot, it's OK to vent. Tell us what you REALLY think about it. You sound ambivalent.
If it wasn't good enough to be bad, was it at least bad enough to be good? In a "Plan Nine From Outer Space" / Mystery Science Theater 3000 kind of way? Could Mike (or Joel) and the 'bots save this snoozefest and turn it into a laughfest, or at least make it chuckle-worthy?
Or was it, as they say, just a large sack of suck?
That is possible, but they still can't do the study they want to do today, because the information they have collected up to the point people start checking the tickyboxes was collected without the permission to release it.
If they implemented the opt-in this week, they'd start collecting data and they'd probably have some useful data NEXT year.
However, that also leads to some interesting questions about data validity. A valid study uses truly random data from a full range of customers. The new study, if done, would use data from ONLY customers who are unconcerned about the privacy implications AND are engaged enough to actually take action to opt in. Based on that demographic, they would need to remove "The X Files", "Enemy of the State", and just about any movie or series that has the slightest hint of government conspiracy-ism in it, because no customers in the study would EVER rent them.
Anyone informed enough to know there is an opt-in is probably going to be informed enough to know it won't really help them. Anyone uninformed of the issues would also not know about the opt-in. You might get a 10% opt-in rate if you're lucky, and most of those people incessantly post what movie they are watching on Twitter anyway, or maintain a Facebook "favorite movies" list, so you can get more accurate and more in-depth data from a larger audience with a lot less effort (grin).
Just make a "Netflix" fan page on Facebook, and as soon as people join you get to see their favorite movies lists, and chances are you also get their approximate location and birthdate.
If they were taking full-timers and laying them off then rehiring them as contractors (with no benefits) that's clearly illegal - it's a process called "conversion".
But they are simply saying that jobs that are currently filled with a contractor will be filled with full-time "at will" employees now. Contractors are already "at will", and the contracting firm is (in theory) paid a lot extra because they can rapidly add or subtract resources as needed. You pay extra for the flexibility. Flexibility which, in this case, the state doesn't need as much.
Now the state is saying "we have people that we know we'll need for 5 years or so. We can't hire them full-time under existing State terms because we cannot eliminate their positions when we don't need them any more, but it's terribly expensive to hire them for 5 years at about triple what they actually get paid." That $128/hr contractor MIGHT be getting paid $45 an hour with benefits. Their firm takes the rest.
I can't even see the State union getting upset about this, these employees will likely be Union members, with the only exception being they have a fixed term of employment rather than "employed until retired or dead" like most State jobs. But it beats working for the contracting firm.
About the only people I can see getting upset about this is, well, contracting houses.
But the State is large enough that it really doesn't need the assistance finding talent, and the employment terms are long enough that people will still jump at the chance. I mean, c'mon, how many people in "real world" IT last more than 5 years in a given job? My record, after over 20 years in the field, is 4 years 10 months, ending in a layoff. I'm really hoping my current employer is "the one I retire from", because they are really nice folks to work for. But lifetime employment is nearly unheard of nowadays.
I find your post offensive and have clicked on the CEOP button Slashdot has installed. Prepare for a visit!
Seriously, what good would this button do in preventing anything? If the child is duped into meeting up with Chester Molester, then they aren't going to press the button. If the child is suspicious, they are going to either use the existing "report as offensive" button which already exists, or they are going to yell for Mom or Dad who will call CEOP on the telephone so they can respond in time to maybe send an armed response team to meet up with Chester and make sure he goes to jail where he'll get all the sexual attention he needs from the hardened inmates. Nothin' Bubba likes better than being the first to soften up a child molester.
Something like this just invites abuses of the system, and/or lacks the immediate response times needed to actually catch the actual dangerous pedophiles and make sure they go away for a long time. It's actually going to discourage useful reports (those that happen quickly enough to prevent issues) and encourage abuses of the reporting system. Like those two girls last year who reported they were stuck in a storm drain system over Facebook rather than calling the local police for help.
It doesn't hurt that this was all based on a made-up article that initially created false claims about a social network that was NOT Facebook, then some asshat editor changed the name of the social network to Facebook. I'd be far more worried about someone getting targeted on a more random site like Slashdot's private messaging system, where fewer people are looking and private messages are private.
It wouldn't. But it's a change to the Facebook page that everyone can see, and feel comforted by.
In order to be effective, yes, you have to have a kid who is smart enough to tell his/her parents "hey, this bloke wants to meet me at the local park at midnight to give me candy", at which point the parents pick up the phone and call (is it 999 over there on the other side of the pond? Anyway, whatever the police number is) and ask them to meet you there so Chester can get all the lovin' attention he needs from Bubba (or whatever Bubba's British cousin is called).
But it's a shiny, and when you add a shiny it makes things safer, yes? Think of the CHILDREN, man! Shiny! Vote for me!
So he made up a bunch of facts about an unknown social network, then his editors changed the name of the social network, and the suggested response is to implement a solution that has never solved any real, existing problems.
Actually, if the problem is made up, then a useless made-up solution seems like a perfect one.
Using the existing solutions would be be better and more efficient, but how's that going to pander the votes of the clueless masses who want to protect the children from this evil Internet thing that sneaks into their houses at night and eats their children while they sleep?
I've heard of all the problems with Vonage customer service. I guess I just got lucky every time. I switched from unlimited to limited after a while, then called to cancel and got put on the really cheap "retention plan" for a while. Then I finally decided I really didn't need it and got three months of free service (a month at a time), then had no problems canceling whatsoever when I finally decided I was done.
I also called support several times for technical issues, and usually got decent responses.
I do know stories of other Vonage customers having trouble with tech support ran rampant, and that was true for me on a couple of calls back around 2007 or so, but they really cleaned up their act. When I finally canceled late last year, they did make a billing error but corrected it immediately and refunded more than they owed me in apology. That was literally the only billing issue I had with them, and I was with them for quite some time.
As someone who used Vonage as a primary phone for over four years (over five Internet companies in three states), I disagree. I found it about as clear as the cell phones I had used for years prior, and their business model less objectionable than the land line company that wanted $100 for setup plus my SSN or $200 in additional escrow. And $18 a month including taxes and 400 minutes of calling beats $45 with no long distance included.
You do have to have a decent router, though, and the ones they provide are... well... crap. Once I put mine behind a half-decent router, it worked very well.
I will agree, however, that your Internet connection had better have low latency, or it's goi..i.i.ng-g-g to s..oun..d b..ad. Various firmware upgrades to the Vonage router really helped with this, though.:)
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.fcc.gov/mb/facts/otard.html
You mean MySpace, right? I mean, Facebook is just about as trustworthy as MySpace or a 5-year-old child at keeping your "secret" data "secret", but at least get your evil super-villain correct.
Also, if you just delete the account, they have your most recent information available for sale. Be sure to alter the information and let the new information age a bit before deleting it.
Not only that, but the quality of MICR is iffy from check printer to check printer, so most check processing companies have a little yellow strip they can stick on the bottom of the check and re-code a new MICR line so the check can be processed. So you really don't need magnetic ink on the check at all.
Plus many of the check processors have moved on to OCR and don't care if the ink is magnetic anyway.
Hmm, if only there was a way to avoid that drive to the bank. If only there was some way to, I don't know, somehow get the information on the check to your bank so it could be deposited, but in a simple enough way that someone who only deals with a few checks a month doesn't have to buy any really high-tech gear.
News: Deposit Checks To Your Bank By Taking a Photo
Oh, yeah, right. The article we are discussing.
Didn't they do a movie about this a few years back? The electrons were all unusually large, and red, though. Seems to me they were almost, I dunno, tomato-shaped.
I'm not Herman Farbage, so I'm not terribly concerned.
Sun will be Purple tomorrow.
You never know, it might! (pouts). :)
Doesn't the goverment quite frequently change their minds about what they will do with resources after the fact?
Hell, certain agencies "change their minds" between approval and collection. "After the fact" is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg.
It's COLD HARD REALITY, FACTS, AND PRECENDENCE.
I think the word you are looking for is "precedents", not "precedence". The former is an indication of past behavior (as in "governmental invasion of privacy is not without precedent"), the latter is an indicator of priority (as in "your right to privacy should always take precedent over the government's need to protect you").
Actually, I suppose both kind of apply. (grin)
But if I have my diseased organs taken out and have the organs of a dead person put in, that's more acceptable to God than if I allow bits of me to be reused after I'm dead?
Actually, fine, whatever. It's a fine theological point that a Rabbi could not doubt explain quite concisely. It doesn't change the fact that the decision makes its followers a drain on an already overburdened system. You cannot expect equal treatment without equal willing participation on an overburdened system.
The point of the law is that, if a person is unwilling to add to the bank of available organs (regardless of reason), they should not expect the same level of priority for a needed organ when it becomes available. Note the distinction between "unwilling" and "unable" (for example, if a person's organs are unsuitable for donation that should not push them down the list).
Judaism is actually a very well reasoned religion and have revised their decisions on various things in modern times such as use of electricity on the sabbath, etc.
Maybe some "golden rule" treatment of the organ donor/recipient line will prompt another one of these well-reasoned decisions, and either ban the receipt of organs or allow the donation of them.
I guess I just need a couple more pieces of flair.
Awwwww, darn, and I had this lovely snarky reply about math skills all worked up and everything. Killjoy! :)
But I agree, pick any organization of any reasonable size and it's almost inevitable that a laptop or smartphone will vanish at some point. That's why they need to be encrypted, with a good "nuke remote" option.
I carry a laptop and a Blackberry, and if either is stolen all I have to do is call my company's helpdesk at an 800# and give them my employee number and which device has been stolen, and the device will cease to operate the next time it connects to the Internet (for the laptop) or the cellular network (for the Blackberry). Then a fresh device is waiting for me when I get back to the office. Thankfully I've never had to exercise that option, but we have had people who have.
Combine that with a solid "home directories are on file server" policy, and the loss of a laptop means maybe the loss of a day or two worth of work, and another day reconfiguring the new machine once it arrives. So, to us, the laptops are really hardware to be replaced, not critical business data subject to loss.
Based on the quality of the linked article, he's overqualified for a job at PCPro.
From TFA:
we installed each browser on the same Windows 7 computer and tested their speed in the SunSpider benchmark, their memory usage with the Google home page open in a single tab, and their startup times – measured from the moment we clicked the icon to the browser window appearing.
Expectation for any sort of consistency in the testing parameters has been set to zero. But, at least we get to see which browsers are most-liked and offer a nice user experience, right?
Then we asked seven members of the PC Pro team to abandon their favoured browser and switch to one of these alternatives. To say they were delighted to do so would be a lie: there was gnashing of teeth, wailing and screaming pleas for mercy. All these fell on deaf ears. We provide full reviews of each browser in the Reviews section, but for a helpful summary click through to the next page.
OK, expectation of any sort of positive review of any browser has been set to zero.
The only consolation is that the popularity of the top 12 browsers is re-examined every six months.
Which means PCPro will have a steady ad revenue from writing meaningless reviews cobbled from the barest minimum of testing where the browser used by the least whiny of the random-picked team gets top marks just because that person hates change the least.
In fact, maybe a PC Pro browser is exactly what the EU needs
If it's written with the same attention and care to detail as the articles, the first installed instance of it will crash the Internet and bring civilization to a smoking ruin.
As I said, I believe it will be a great device. Just one that's incompatible with everything else out there, even Macs.
That doesn't mean it won't sell well, and it doesn't mean it won't be useful for its intended purpose.
offering the employee early retirement
Not precisely what I had in mind with the term "eliminating positions". I was thinking 2 weeks pay and don't let the door hit you in the ass, just like in the corporate world. If you're lucky.
I know. Slippery slope and all that.
But - what companies hire other than "at will" any more, and what argument is there to hire on a bunch of full-timers for projects or keep the current markup on temps?
How many netbook models are out there today? 100? 200? That can't be good for any one of them. Yet it is. Competition means multiple companies all trying to make the best device for each user, at the best price. It worked with desktops, it worked with laptops, it worked with netbooks, and guess what? It'll work with tablets.
When netbooks became "the hot thing" as a format for casual computing, companies crawled out of the woodwork to make 'em, but they all used the same basic components, just configured a little differently. Asus has at least 6 current models of the eee, Dell has a generous handful of netbooks, and plenty of other companies make them. Yet most of them can run your choice of Windows or Linux (you just have to install Linux yourself on a lot of them). Most can even support MacOS with no problems at all. Sure, you run into a few minor hardware incompatibilities (Linux Mint loves EVERYTHING about my wife's Asus eeePC except the microphone, but it's a brand new one and I expect the driver fix will be out soon, plus she's OK with the 2-step workaround when she wants to video-conference with her mother, who runs a Windows 7 laptop).
The same thing will happen with TabletPCs. If the form factor takes off, most of the netbook manufacturers will rebuild their devices without a keyboard. Same processors, same base components, same hard drives, same screens (just add touch sensitivity). This will be a VERY easy conversion. I expect most will run Intel's N450 Pinewood, feature about a GB of ram, and use a small factor hard drive. Because, guess what? Those components exist, they're cheap, and they work darned well in small form factor machines.
It'll be thicker and heavier than an iPad, but not by much, and the reduction in moving parts will probably make up for the cost of the touch-sensitive screen, so you could probably make and sell them profitably for about $250-300 (given that $300 is about the going rate for a decent netbook right now) and that would include a battery that could last 10 hours, a webcam, a 250GB hard drive, and all the standard connectors along the edge (VGA, USB, Ethernet, etc). In other words, a thinner, lighter, "keyboardless netbook". And the ability to run everything your desktop does, connect to its network shares, etc etc.
In fact, really, the only "oddball" tablet out there is going to be the iPad. I'm not hating on Apple here, I'm sure it will be a great device. Apple makes great stuff. But it's the only device that is unlikely to run anything but the iPhone/iPodTouch/iPad OS. It's the only thing you won't be able to use your tether-capable cell phone on. It's the only thing that won't allow you to run any app you can download. Everything else out there will be capable of running the same OS your desktop does - or at least a minimized variant of it (Windows Seven Starter, for example). And all the same applications.
No, no, this is Slashdot, it's OK to vent. Tell us what you REALLY think about it. You sound ambivalent.
If it wasn't good enough to be bad, was it at least bad enough to be good? In a "Plan Nine From Outer Space" / Mystery Science Theater 3000 kind of way? Could Mike (or Joel) and the 'bots save this snoozefest and turn it into a laughfest, or at least make it chuckle-worthy?
Or was it, as they say, just a large sack of suck?
That is possible, but they still can't do the study they want to do today, because the information they have collected up to the point people start checking the tickyboxes was collected without the permission to release it.
If they implemented the opt-in this week, they'd start collecting data and they'd probably have some useful data NEXT year.
However, that also leads to some interesting questions about data validity. A valid study uses truly random data from a full range of customers. The new study, if done, would use data from ONLY customers who are unconcerned about the privacy implications AND are engaged enough to actually take action to opt in. Based on that demographic, they would need to remove "The X Files", "Enemy of the State", and just about any movie or series that has the slightest hint of government conspiracy-ism in it, because no customers in the study would EVER rent them.
Anyone informed enough to know there is an opt-in is probably going to be informed enough to know it won't really help them. Anyone uninformed of the issues would also not know about the opt-in. You might get a 10% opt-in rate if you're lucky, and most of those people incessantly post what movie they are watching on Twitter anyway, or maintain a Facebook "favorite movies" list, so you can get more accurate and more in-depth data from a larger audience with a lot less effort (grin).
Just make a "Netflix" fan page on Facebook, and as soon as people join you get to see their favorite movies lists, and chances are you also get their approximate location and birthdate.
Problem solved!
How so?
If they were taking full-timers and laying them off then rehiring them as contractors (with no benefits) that's clearly illegal - it's a process called "conversion".
But they are simply saying that jobs that are currently filled with a contractor will be filled with full-time "at will" employees now. Contractors are already "at will", and the contracting firm is (in theory) paid a lot extra because they can rapidly add or subtract resources as needed. You pay extra for the flexibility. Flexibility which, in this case, the state doesn't need as much.
Now the state is saying "we have people that we know we'll need for 5 years or so. We can't hire them full-time under existing State terms because we cannot eliminate their positions when we don't need them any more, but it's terribly expensive to hire them for 5 years at about triple what they actually get paid." That $128/hr contractor MIGHT be getting paid $45 an hour with benefits. Their firm takes the rest.
I can't even see the State union getting upset about this, these employees will likely be Union members, with the only exception being they have a fixed term of employment rather than "employed until retired or dead" like most State jobs. But it beats working for the contracting firm.
About the only people I can see getting upset about this is, well, contracting houses.
But the State is large enough that it really doesn't need the assistance finding talent, and the employment terms are long enough that people will still jump at the chance. I mean, c'mon, how many people in "real world" IT last more than 5 years in a given job? My record, after over 20 years in the field, is 4 years 10 months, ending in a layoff. I'm really hoping my current employer is "the one I retire from", because they are really nice folks to work for. But lifetime employment is nearly unheard of nowadays.
I find your post offensive and have clicked on the CEOP button Slashdot has installed. Prepare for a visit!
Seriously, what good would this button do in preventing anything? If the child is duped into meeting up with Chester Molester, then they aren't going to press the button. If the child is suspicious, they are going to either use the existing "report as offensive" button which already exists, or they are going to yell for Mom or Dad who will call CEOP on the telephone so they can respond in time to maybe send an armed response team to meet up with Chester and make sure he goes to jail where he'll get all the sexual attention he needs from the hardened inmates. Nothin' Bubba likes better than being the first to soften up a child molester.
Something like this just invites abuses of the system, and/or lacks the immediate response times needed to actually catch the actual dangerous pedophiles and make sure they go away for a long time. It's actually going to discourage useful reports (those that happen quickly enough to prevent issues) and encourage abuses of the reporting system. Like those two girls last year who reported they were stuck in a storm drain system over Facebook rather than calling the local police for help.
It doesn't hurt that this was all based on a made-up article that initially created false claims about a social network that was NOT Facebook, then some asshat editor changed the name of the social network to Facebook. I'd be far more worried about someone getting targeted on a more random site like Slashdot's private messaging system, where fewer people are looking and private messages are private.
It wouldn't. But it's a change to the Facebook page that everyone can see, and feel comforted by.
In order to be effective, yes, you have to have a kid who is smart enough to tell his/her parents "hey, this bloke wants to meet me at the local park at midnight to give me candy", at which point the parents pick up the phone and call (is it 999 over there on the other side of the pond? Anyway, whatever the police number is) and ask them to meet you there so Chester can get all the lovin' attention he needs from Bubba (or whatever Bubba's British cousin is called).
But it's a shiny, and when you add a shiny it makes things safer, yes? Think of the CHILDREN, man! Shiny! Vote for me!
So he made up a bunch of facts about an unknown social network, then his editors changed the name of the social network, and the suggested response is to implement a solution that has never solved any real, existing problems.
Actually, if the problem is made up, then a useless made-up solution seems like a perfect one.
Using the existing solutions would be be better and more efficient, but how's that going to pander the votes of the clueless masses who want to protect the children from this evil Internet thing that sneaks into their houses at night and eats their children while they sleep?
So was I, for the record. But that was many moons and several companies ago. And the shop I worked for back then has the same problem.
I've heard of all the problems with Vonage customer service. I guess I just got lucky every time. I switched from unlimited to limited after a while, then called to cancel and got put on the really cheap "retention plan" for a while. Then I finally decided I really didn't need it and got three months of free service (a month at a time), then had no problems canceling whatsoever when I finally decided I was done.
I also called support several times for technical issues, and usually got decent responses.
I do know stories of other Vonage customers having trouble with tech support ran rampant, and that was true for me on a couple of calls back around 2007 or so, but they really cleaned up their act. When I finally canceled late last year, they did make a billing error but corrected it immediately and refunded more than they owed me in apology. That was literally the only billing issue I had with them, and I was with them for quite some time.
Upgrading to a Linksys with HyperWRT/Thibor and eventually Tomato is what made my Vonage work really well.
Oh, almost forgot the obligatory meme. ... you insensitive clod! :)
As someone who used Vonage as a primary phone for over four years (over five Internet companies in three states), I disagree. I found it about as clear as the cell phones I had used for years prior, and their business model less objectionable than the land line company that wanted $100 for setup plus my SSN or $200 in additional escrow. And $18 a month including taxes and 400 minutes of calling beats $45 with no long distance included.
You do have to have a decent router, though, and the ones they provide are... well... crap. Once I put mine behind a half-decent router, it worked very well.
I will agree, however, that your Internet connection had better have low latency, or it's goi..i.i.ng-g-g to s..oun..d b..ad. Various firmware upgrades to the Vonage router really helped with this, though. :)