Is there not a way to just block the ability to direct dial International Calls at the Phone company level. That way a calling card could be used to only dial international?
If the phone company does not offer such a protection, they are in a manner condoning such abuse are they not?
Likewise, why does my bank not allow me to create a whitelist of those authorized to debit my account? That would defang debit card and check fraud, at least for those customers who really took an interest in their own security. Maybe there just aren't that many of us.
lookup pebble bed reactors. we can get 10x the amount of energy out of uranium, and thorium, and produce 1/10th the waste that lasts 2 centuries rather than 10,000 years. nuclear is a no-brainer.
There are some great new designs out there... If we applied ourselves, we could certainly better the current reactors, which seem to have been designed around the time of the Crimean War.
But there are tremendous barriers to doing this in the US. The fact that the barriers are political more than technical doesn't make them any less real.
I think that we first need to concentrate on a massive social engineering project, educating people about nuclear power. Social engineering is the key to enabling the next generation of nuclear power.
It may be an insurmountable task for this country, though. Nuclear power has as much good buzz as, say, slavery, and we only seem to respect technologies that play music.
Don't fall for that gold-infused keyboard cleaner bullshit. Nothing is more important than the pH of the cleaner, which should match that of the primordial seas.
If your keyboard is too acidic vowels will suffer from a lack of sensitivity, making a left circle-strafe difficult.
For this reason, I wear museum artifact restoration style cotton gloves whenever I use my keyboard, to keep my keyboard free of any possible pH imbalance.
That and a green sharpie are all you need and anyone who says otherwise is selling you snake oil.
Wait, what were we talking about?
Excuse me, I need to go break in some ethernet cables.
You could get the best of both worlds by using online bill pay services but not setting up _automatic_ payments. That's what I do. The system tells me when a bill comes in, and then I log in and pay it by typing in a number and choosing a date to send it. (I have only one bill that comes to my house any more.)
Some of the payments are sent electronically. Some are sent by check. It depends on the bill. Comcast takes electronic funds transfers. My gardener doesn't.
That way I am in touch with every cent that leaves, but I don't have to mess with stamps and envelopes myself. Some kind of robot does that part for me, saving me lots of time.
A government-employed attorney decides to take a matter to trial. It's FAR better to keep poorly written or easily abused laws off the books than to try to use them wisely and rely on the jury as a safety net.
I work in games, as a writer even, and I largely agree with that. (I am the exception--I was lucky enough to be hired AS a writer. Watch in awe as I make that hard to believe, by rambling on.)
Everyone from the lead designer on down may want to create the most finely crafted story possible, but in the end... There has to be a budget for it.
And before you say, "but good writing can be cheap!" don't forget that the budget includes programmers making tools to facilitate putting that text in the game, and GUI designers accounting for big wads of text, and translation costs, and if you are outsourcing because you have a lot of content planned, someone in the office needs to spend time wrangling those assets, and what about voiceover? It all adds up.
Plus, the pesky writer will want things in the game world to match the story. That means working with art to get the in-game assets to line up with the writing. Where the story is too ambitious (giant robot, etc), you have to bargain, or just give up and think of something else.
Making the writing an integral part of the game cuts across all the other disciplines in the studio. Cutting corners, making the text a short tacked-on afterthought done by the level designers, is therefore pretty tempting to a lot of projects.
When management and the other departments are all in to it and supportive, it's great. Without that support, the writers are sunk, no matter how skilled they are.
My advice to the OP is to read at +5, because most of what I would suggest has already been posted.
I would also add that if you are expecting the rockstar lifestyle, you will be sorely disappointed at most studios. It can still be a great job though.
Oh, I agree. I wasn't trying to say that fear was the RIGHT reaction. If foreign merchant ships want to have mercenaries on board I think we should find a way to make that work--and their home ports should extend us the same courtesy.
Pirates... Sheesh. History, like Hollywood, has run out of ideas and is relaunching old ideas.
I can't find the reference right now, but when I was reading about piracy last week arming the merchant ships was said to be difficult politically.
I think it was something like this: the merchant ships have to pass through many nations' waters, and in some of those nations the arms needed to fight off pirates are illegal. So... if you have private armed guards on board, you're breaking the law at some of your ports. Therefore, being a well behaved company, you don't have guards at all.
This is lame, even as it makes sense. How would a US port feel about a foreign ship pulling in when a dozen civilians with grenade launchers are strolling around on deck? The Coast Guard would go ape.
Anyway, I would like to find a proper explanation for the current state of affairs.
My friend, the reason why I complained about the treatment is that it was the store's policy to give a refund, even without a receipt. (Well, with no receipt, you'd get a store credit, technically.) I wrongly assumed that all readers would know that about the place.
So I went back to the store to take advantage of the posted policy--which is lenient to attract customers--and was unhappy at being treated poorly.
If I was trying to get something out of the store that the store was not offering, I would be a dick and you would have a point. But they said, "come on back if you want to return it, even without a receipt, and we will take care of you" and then almost called the police when I did it.
It was probably a clerk having a bad day and a power trip because Best Buy is not famous for such shenanigans. Other shenanigans, yes. But still... a bad experience like that will color your impressions of a place.
I hope you understand better now what happened, and that you are not still defending the store's actions.
You may feel that such policies are silly and too forgiving, but that is another topic. Regardless they remain common in big retail chains here.
Best Buy is on it. I went into a BB to return something once, and I didn't have a receipt... They made me wait while they reviewed the security videos to make sure I walked in the store, and didn't just pick the item up off a shelf.
They were very rude throughout the entire affair, which surely made any real shoplifters nearby head for the hills.
So, invest with confidence! Best Buy is an invulnerable retail fortress. What could go wrong?
So Crichton isn't Hemingway. Big deal. He wrote enjoyable books, for the most part, and did so for decades. He wrote stories that kept you thinking about them after you put the book down, even if they had flaws.
Books, like movies and even food, don't have to be "art" to be worthwhile and worthy of some respect.
As a (hack) writer myself I have much respect for authors like Crichton, (old) King, and even Dean Koontz. Their works won't be taught in school, but they sweep you away for a few hours, and get under your skin. And for me anyway, they make me want to write a book myself.* They make it look easy, in the way only real talent can.
Compare Crichton to a real hack like Robin Cook. Ugh!
I will be lifting a glass in his memory tonight, and I rarely drink. The world's a poorer place without him and his tales of Science Run Amok.
* Not that I have written a book lately because hey, I am lazy, but that's another story.
If only 2% of voters are that kind of loser, I believe that we are doing well. I think 2% is cause to celebrate. I would like to see how our 2% compares to other cultures.
Less than 2% would be even better. We'll get there in time.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually I have a CU too, not a bank.
It would be work, sure, but it seems like such a good idea--a default deny stance on withdrawals. I'd switch to a bank/CU that offered that.
Maybe the Linux mascot should not be Tux the Penguin, but Moloch the Owl.
Is there not a way to just block the ability to direct dial International Calls at the Phone company level. That way a calling card could be used to only dial international?
If the phone company does not offer such a protection, they are in a manner condoning such abuse are they not?
Likewise, why does my bank not allow me to create a whitelist of those authorized to debit my account? That would defang debit card and check fraud, at least for those customers who really took an interest in their own security. Maybe there just aren't that many of us.
Poor grammar, though. It should have been the "MAY SPAM" act.
Man, that's even more cynical than my comment!
I'm not buying any app over $5 without a demo.
Dr. Walter Bishop (Cambridge) was doing this in the '70s.
lookup pebble bed reactors. we can get 10x the amount of energy out of uranium, and thorium, and produce 1/10th the waste that lasts 2 centuries rather than 10,000 years. nuclear is a no-brainer.
There are some great new designs out there... If we applied ourselves, we could certainly better the current reactors, which seem to have been designed around the time of the Crimean War.
But there are tremendous barriers to doing this in the US. The fact that the barriers are political more than technical doesn't make them any less real.
I think that we first need to concentrate on a massive social engineering project, educating people about nuclear power. Social engineering is the key to enabling the next generation of nuclear power.
It may be an insurmountable task for this country, though. Nuclear power has as much good buzz as, say, slavery, and we only seem to respect technologies that play music.
If politics gave us what we truly wanted, it would be called "leadership" instead.
Just reading that quote in your post made MY head explode. It's so dumb that I think you need to read it in a mirror to be safe.
Or is that for fighting Medusa? I can't remember.
Don't fall for that gold-infused keyboard cleaner bullshit. Nothing is more important than the pH of the cleaner, which should match that of the primordial seas.
If your keyboard is too acidic vowels will suffer from a lack of sensitivity, making a left circle-strafe difficult.
For this reason, I wear museum artifact restoration style cotton gloves whenever I use my keyboard, to keep my keyboard free of any possible pH imbalance.
That and a green sharpie are all you need and anyone who says otherwise is selling you snake oil.
Wait, what were we talking about?
Excuse me, I need to go break in some ethernet cables.
You could get the best of both worlds by using online bill pay services but not setting up _automatic_ payments. That's what I do. The system tells me when a bill comes in, and then I log in and pay it by typing in a number and choosing a date to send it. (I have only one bill that comes to my house any more.)
Some of the payments are sent electronically. Some are sent by check. It depends on the bill. Comcast takes electronic funds transfers. My gardener doesn't.
That way I am in touch with every cent that leaves, but I don't have to mess with stamps and envelopes myself. Some kind of robot does that part for me, saving me lots of time.
I haven't had new checks printed in 5 years.
Thank goodness my CU doesn't use Checkfree...
A government-employed attorney decides to take a matter to trial. It's FAR better to keep poorly written or easily abused laws off the books than to try to use them wisely and rely on the jury as a safety net.
I'm not actually troubled much by this at all. This is what happens to someone who falsifies their information to use an online service TO A BAD END.
Thank goodness it's the government who will decide what a "bad end" means!
I work in games, as a writer even, and I largely agree with that. (I am the exception--I was lucky enough to be hired AS a writer. Watch in awe as I make that hard to believe, by rambling on.)
Everyone from the lead designer on down may want to create the most finely crafted story possible, but in the end... There has to be a budget for it.
And before you say, "but good writing can be cheap!" don't forget that the budget includes programmers making tools to facilitate putting that text in the game, and GUI designers accounting for big wads of text, and translation costs, and if you are outsourcing because you have a lot of content planned, someone in the office needs to spend time wrangling those assets, and what about voiceover? It all adds up.
Plus, the pesky writer will want things in the game world to match the story. That means working with art to get the in-game assets to line up with the writing. Where the story is too ambitious (giant robot, etc), you have to bargain, or just give up and think of something else.
Making the writing an integral part of the game cuts across all the other disciplines in the studio. Cutting corners, making the text a short tacked-on afterthought done by the level designers, is therefore pretty tempting to a lot of projects.
When management and the other departments are all in to it and supportive, it's great. Without that support, the writers are sunk, no matter how skilled they are.
My advice to the OP is to read at +5, because most of what I would suggest has already been posted.
I would also add that if you are expecting the rockstar lifestyle, you will be sorely disappointed at most studios. It can still be a great job though.
Oh, I agree. I wasn't trying to say that fear was the RIGHT reaction. If foreign merchant ships want to have mercenaries on board I think we should find a way to make that work--and their home ports should extend us the same courtesy.
Pirates... Sheesh. History, like Hollywood, has run out of ideas and is relaunching old ideas.
I can't find the reference right now, but when I was reading about piracy last week arming the merchant ships was said to be difficult politically.
I think it was something like this: the merchant ships have to pass through many nations' waters, and in some of those nations the arms needed to fight off pirates are illegal. So... if you have private armed guards on board, you're breaking the law at some of your ports. Therefore, being a well behaved company, you don't have guards at all.
This is lame, even as it makes sense. How would a US port feel about a foreign ship pulling in when a dozen civilians with grenade launchers are strolling around on deck? The Coast Guard would go ape.
Anyway, I would like to find a proper explanation for the current state of affairs.
Dragon should be ready to go by the time the shuttle retires.
SpaceX is doing GREAT work, but I am not going to place a big bet on a rocket--anyone's rocket--being ready on schedule.
My friend, the reason why I complained about the treatment is that it was the store's policy to give a refund, even without a receipt. (Well, with no receipt, you'd get a store credit, technically.) I wrongly assumed that all readers would know that about the place.
So I went back to the store to take advantage of the posted policy--which is lenient to attract customers--and was unhappy at being treated poorly.
If I was trying to get something out of the store that the store was not offering, I would be a dick and you would have a point. But they said, "come on back if you want to return it, even without a receipt, and we will take care of you" and then almost called the police when I did it.
It was probably a clerk having a bad day and a power trip because Best Buy is not famous for such shenanigans. Other shenanigans, yes. But still... a bad experience like that will color your impressions of a place.
I hope you understand better now what happened, and that you are not still defending the store's actions.
You may feel that such policies are silly and too forgiving, but that is another topic. Regardless they remain common in big retail chains here.
I'm voting for a parasite.
Well... Maybe a toxin. Break in to his apartment and check it out.
Best Buy is on it. I went into a BB to return something once, and I didn't have a receipt... They made me wait while they reviewed the security videos to make sure I walked in the store, and didn't just pick the item up off a shelf.
They were very rude throughout the entire affair, which surely made any real shoplifters nearby head for the hills.
So, invest with confidence! Best Buy is an invulnerable retail fortress. What could go wrong?
So Crichton isn't Hemingway. Big deal. He wrote enjoyable books, for the most part, and did so for decades. He wrote stories that kept you thinking about them after you put the book down, even if they had flaws.
Books, like movies and even food, don't have to be "art" to be worthwhile and worthy of some respect.
As a (hack) writer myself I have much respect for authors like Crichton, (old) King, and even Dean Koontz. Their works won't be taught in school, but they sweep you away for a few hours, and get under your skin. And for me anyway, they make me want to write a book myself.* They make it look easy, in the way only real talent can.
Compare Crichton to a real hack like Robin Cook. Ugh!
I will be lifting a glass in his memory tonight, and I rarely drink. The world's a poorer place without him and his tales of Science Run Amok.
* Not that I have written a book lately because hey, I am lazy, but that's another story.
I like to think he would have LOL'd at that. Well done sir!
Works in FreeBSD, anyway.
[1421][foo@ztest:~]$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/ad2s1a 1.9G 264M 1.5G 14% / /dev
/dev/ad2s1e 496M 24K 456M 0% /tmp
/dev/ad2s1f 136G 3.3G 121G 3% /usr
/dev/ad2s1d 2.4G 1.3G 915M 59% /var /pond
devfs 1.0K 1.0K 0B 100%
pond 915G 408G 507G 45%
If only 2% of voters are that kind of loser, I believe that we are doing well. I think 2% is cause to celebrate. I would like to see how our 2% compares to other cultures.
Less than 2% would be even better. We'll get there in time.