In the old days, you paid for a magazine subscription for a magazine full of ads and 30lbs of "Subscribe now!" cards. People always think their pennies are magical and that the $100 or so they pay the cable company should be more than enough for every network to afford multi-million dollar sports licenses and TV Shows all by itself.
People complain that TV Networks are greedy but they have to deal with greedy actors, greedy directors, greedy producers, greedy lawyers, and all other sorts of greedy people to make shows for greedy viewers who think making good TV is cheap and easy.
People skip ads, they just do more of those product placement things where characters in a show suddenly spend 5 minutes describing in detail the features of the navigation system of the car they're driving to a crime scene while their passenger enjoys a tasty Subway sandwich before cranking up the latest Justin Beiber CD and extolling how much they "love this song" while you get a pop up ad in a corner for Joe Bob's Heating & Air $39.95 summer tune up special.
There's a very small ethnic population where I live (meaning, there's very few illegals), yet the Emergency Rooms are still packed.
The reason for Emergency Rooms being packed has nothing to do with the patients' immigration status. They're packed because it's often the only way for someone to see a doctor when they're sick or injured in a timely manner.
Many people work during doctor's hours, don't have employers that grant paid sick leave and/or don't have any 24 hour clinics or doctors with late hours. And some people have skeezy jobs where calling in sick could even cost them their job. So an Emergency room is their only option to see a doctor without losing a day's pay or their job.
And good health care and benefits don't change anything. If anything, that makes it even worse. If I call my Doctor's office on Monday and tell them I have a lung infection, they'll usually be able to squeeze me in sometime early the next week. Because "it doesn't cost anything to see the doctor to check every sniffle and bruise because insurance will cover it", all the doctors under my insurance are booked solid weeks in advance. So if I'm really sick, it's off to the emergency room to sit around a bunch of other sick people, hoping I don't add something else to my existing condition, to get a prescription for some basic antibiotics to treat it before it gets serious because it's the only good option.
Something like this, where someone knows what's wrong with them or has something that is easily diagnosed can get a needed medication without having to see a doctor would help reduce the load on emergency rooms and allowing pharmacists to give medication for chronic conditions without needing to get a doctor's approval would help reduce the load a bit on Primary Care physicians as well.
The difference is that with a car, it's real, tangible property and it's reasonable to expect the common person to be able to secure their car in such a way that it can't easily be used without their permission or knowledge.
An IP address however is intangible property. Someone can steal it without your knowledge and with the typical wireless network, they can do so fairly easily. Especially since many people don't even know they "own" one and have no clue how to do the equivalent of looking in the driveway to see if theirs is secure or not.
Yes, they have other tools to prove copyright infringement by the owner of an IP. But they're a lot more difficult, time consuming, and require more direct law enforcement interaction to enforce than simply logging IPs in a torrent swarm, filing some papers and sending out letters. They may try to change the laws to bring that back. But even a temporary victory is a victory.
As soon as they're served papers they find "a regrettable error", give the person a refund and move on to defraud the next person who can't afford a lawyer.
This only affects their return and exchange policy. It doesn't affect warranties.
If you return your defective Avatar Blu Ray for a working Avatar Blu Ray, it won't trigger the 90 day block as it's a warranty replacement, not an exchange.
It only comes into effect if you take it back for a refund, credit or different product.
I still wouldn't buy anything from Best Buy if I can help it as I can find anything they stock somewhere else for much less. But this isn't a bad policy considering the alternatives of restocking fees or refusing returns entirely that some stores employ.
But it's not the fault of the prison. Kneecapping the prisons in order to mitigate the indignities suffered by people who are sent to prison when they don't deserve it isn't a solution.
The first time some drug cartel lackey got himself arrested for some minor offense that wasn't deemed serious enough to warrant a search and stabs some white collar criminal to death with a weapon he had stashed in his ass, people would be screaming that it's the prison's fault for not searching him.
That seems to be what they're heading towards. There's a Best Buy in a local mall that doesn't sell anything (other than phones and Geek Squad services) from in store stock. It's just a showroom with display models of TVs, car stereo equipment, computers, computer peripherals like mice and video cards, appliances etc. You pick what you what, the guy at the counter orders it for you through their website and it's shipped to your door. There's never more than 5 employees in the store at a time. If they did that everywhere and eliminated all the costs of maintaining the huge stores they should be able to bring their prices down to online shopping levels. I'd probably buy there a lot more as you get to actually see what you are buying in person first and can avoid the return shipping costs when you have to return or RMA something by taking it to the store.
Asking employees for their passwords is already very likely illegal under the law. It's up to consumers (and Facebook) to exercise their rights under those laws to end the practice by challenging the practice in court. If the courts establish that the practice is legal, then Congress will have to step in and create laws to prohibit it.
But, this amendment didn't do anything to strengthen the laws or protect consumers. It was just a "pass the buck" amendment that shifted the apparent burden of stopping the practice from Congress to the FCC. That way if the courts somehow validate the practice, Congress could then say "It's not in our hands. It's in the FCC's." so they won't be stuck between the rock and a hard place between the voters who abhor the practice and the corporate campaign contributors who do not. It just set up the FCC to fall on the sword instead of Congress and did nothing to protect consumers.
All those Tea partiers, Occupy protesters etc and the like are useless and clueless.
There's a bunch of them in my area and I went to one of their little meetings plastered with "We are the 99%" posters all over the place. It was an hour of them first bashing the Republicans and Democrats followed by another hour of them debating which one they should vote for. I asked some of them why they'd vote for either one when they spent an hour accusing both of being in the pocket of lobbyists and corporate Super Pacs and don't instead back a 3rd party candidate. The answer was always the same "A 3rd party candidate couldn't win and our vote would be wasted if we backed them." The scientists are right. People aren't smart enough for Democracy.
The IRS mostly just collects the money and enforces the tax code. Congress makes the tax code and decides how to spend the money. I hate Congress. It's not the IRS' fault Congress blows the money they collect. I actually like the IRS. , they're one of the less intrusive departments of Government. Most people never have to deal with the IRS outside of filing their returns each year and filling out paperwork for a new job. Since the 80s when they began restructuring the agency and spun off a lot of their more "abusable" duties to other agencies within the Treasury department, the IRS has very little subjective power which leaves them little room to screw people without any cause. They of course have instances incompetency and of corrupt agents crossing lines, but corrupt IRS agents tend to be far more rare than corrupt politicians, lawyers or cops. Most IRS horror stories are due to them being forced to enforce bad laws (again, usually the fault of Congress), not bad intentions by agents or the agency itself.
They're certainly not compatible better than an agency who gets it's rocks off by fondling old ladies and kids and then tries to say they're doing it to protect them from being terrorized.
I could also choose to play fetch with either breed or I could (barring legal and societal issues) grind them up and make burgers with them. If I play fetch with them, they're a pet. If I make burgers, they're meat. What they are doesn't make the distinction between pet and meat. How I use them does.
The same goes for Cannabis in regards to whether it's Hemp or Marijuana. If I grow Cannabis and smoke it, it's marijuana. If grow it, decorticate the stems and make a shirt from the fiber, it's hemp.
Slashdot was never a "technology website". It's been billed forever as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters." While technology is one of the major areas that matter to nerds, and thus has always made up a large chunk of the content published here, it's not our sole area of interest. And as the technological boom has slowed and been consolidated since the initial days of this website, due in no small part to it being more heavily legislated, it's no surprise non-technological content has become more prevalent.
As "nerds" we tend to expect our Governmental representatives to make a reasonable attempt to educate themselves and base their positions and actions on facts and logical reasoning rather than attempt to enact laws which would affect our lives based on their own pandering, desperation, and good ole fashioned incompetence. And we tend to view those who do not with vile contempt.
We also tend to view with contempt those who use out of context "examples" in an attempt to bolster their positions of ignorance. For example, people like you. To someone who is mentally stable and healthy it would be obvious that the +5 Insightful moderation due to the entire comment in context with the entirety of the discussion rather than just the small portion of it you chose to quote without context. The comment itself suggested it would be more effective towards achieving the representative's stated goals to tax sports related products and merchandise as sports and sporting events are generally proven by events such as the Port Said riot and the beating of a Giants fan at Dodger Stadium to contribute to far more deaths, violence and bullying than video games. The rant you quoted was in reference to the ideal that people like Mr. Fourkiller focus on video games rather than sports because they find video game players a much easier and safer target and thus have less qualms about imposing restrictions on their rights and freedoms in an attempt to bolster their own egos through a demonstration of their power.
Hemp and Marijuana are not distinct types of Cannabis. There is no reason someone couldn't decorticate the stems of a crop of White Widow and make a rope from it while also getting high from the buds.
The terms Hemp and Marijuana are simply slang terms referring to the intended use of the Cannabis plant. Marijuana is Cannabis grown for the sole purpose of harvesting the psychoactive compounds while Hemp is grown primarily for the purpose of harvesting the non-phychoactive compounds. The strains used in Hemp production today have been bred to produce very low (as low as 0.03%) levels of THC due to regulatory and societal pressures but nothing biologically precludes plants having much higher concentrations of THC from being used in the production of Hemp.
They've already tried that. California already has very stringent regulations on scrap buying.
From the CA Scrap Theft Compliance Guide
Scrap dealers must maintain records of transactions for two years, which must be submitted to law enforcement in the city or county in which the transaction occurred.
Scrap metal dealers are prohibited from providing payment by cash or check for purchases of more than $20 unless the check is mailed or the cash or check is provided no earlier than three days after the sale date. The payment delay is excused if a customer has been to the same yard at least five times per month for three months in a row.
Additionally, the recycler must obtain a photograph or video of the seller, the seller's thumbprint, a copy of the seller's driver's license, a description of the seller's vehicle and the license plate number of the seller's vehicle.
There is a 90-day tag-and-hold policy when notified by law enforcement.
There's almost as much paperwork involved in selling a couple garbage bags full of beer cans as it is to buy a gun. And scrap yards also have numerous regulations on their metal accounting and many counties have created agencies to audit scrap buyers which makes it quite difficult to launder metal. Yet scrap theft is still a major problem in California. Regulations and bureaucracy aren't working. However copper clad cable isn't likely to do a whole to stop it. There's already tons of regular copper stand that it'd cost too much to replace and it won't stop the thieves stealing other sources of scrap like air conditioners.
The setup I use is made for simplicity. I wanted something that worked, not a new hobby. And I have built them for friends and family and wanted something anyone with just a little computer skill to be able to manage themselves so I wouldn't be getting called to fix things every 10 minutes.
I use one of the Norco 20 or 24 bay Server Cases ($300-400 on Newegg) for the server. It's a rackmountable case but works just fine sitting on a table or a sturdy closet shelf. After swapping out the Delta fans it comes with, it's fairly quiet. I have mine sitting on a small table in my home office and it doesn't bother me at all.
The hardware inside can be whatever you want and can be added to and upgraded over time. I started with a Supermicro 8 port SATA card and 6 1TB HDs in a JBOD setup on a Core 2 server mobo (for a couple PCI-X slots) I picked up on Ebay. Over the course of 3 or 4 years it's now on an Intel I5 system with 20 2TB in Raid 5 using a fairly cheap Areca hardware raid card and an HP SAS Expander Card. I added the HDs over time, buying one every month or so at first and then buying 2 or 3 at a time once they started getting cheap. Thankfully I finished and have plenty of warranty left in case of a failure now that they're not.
I also tried a bunch of NAS OSes, Linux distros, and WHS but they all had something that annoyed me when I tried to use them as a media server OS. For something as simple as serving media files for the home, a simple OS like Windows is perfect. I just threw on a copy of Windows Server 2k8 from my Technet sub (Win 7 would be fine as well. 2k8 is just a bit easier to run headless) and added Sickbeard, Coach Potato and some ripping and conversion tools.
To play media, I use XBMC. It'll play anything, including ISOs so I don't have to rip and convert my movies and it's very easy to manage. I used to use old computers and build HTPCs out of them but now I use things like Acer Revo, Zotac Zbox or Apple TVs. Whatever's cheapest that's small and can play HD video. I load XBMC on them and attach them to the back of the TV with Velcro, run an IR receiver (if the mini-PC doesn't have one, I buy a cheap one on Ebay) and I'm good to go.
The hardest part of my setup was that house wasn't wired with Ethernet and I don't have the skills or confidence to start drilling holes to run it myself. I had an electrician come out and run conduit to each room in the house where I'd ever want video and then ran Cat 6 through that. With everything being wired through a GB switch, everyone in the house (up to 4 TVs going at once) can be watching something off the server and we rarely have any stuttering and I spend very little time administrating it.
We're their product only as long as we're also clients. Just like many of Facebook's clients/product used to be Myspace's clients/product. Or Google's clients/product used to belong to companies like AltaVista, Infoseek, Lycos, and Yahoo.
They dominate in several industries only because they are the most popular in the search industry. If people abandoned their search business tomorrow, much of the success of their other businesses would evaporate.
The nature of anything that primarily exists only on the Internet is that it's power is indelibly linked to it's popularity. No matter how big they are, anyone with an idea and some programming skills could come along with something people like more and render them insignificant very quickly.
Or they could have, before the patent office became the congressional protection racket it is today. That's likely much of the impetus behind Senators calling for an investigation of Google. Election season is coming up and it's time for a shakedown.
Yep. the only thing broken about TV is the profit margins for the manufacturers.
TVs aren't something you buy new every year. It's a simple device with one major function, displaying pictures. There's only been 2 major developments in the technology since it became a common household item in the 50s. The switch from Black and White to Color in the 70s and now the mass switch to Digital/HDTV. Both of which were just TV implementing commercial theater's technology improvements. And commercial theaters aren't the most technically imaginative industry as their main business is content delivery, not technology.
TV manufacturers have watched as new technologies focused around software have found ways to successfully do what they've failed to do for half a century, getting many people to gladly buy a new, expensive replacement every year or two. But unlike a computer or smart phone, TV is still cursed with being a simple hardware product with a simple function that is most often improved by plugging something new into it rather than buying a new TV. And with screen sizes already as massive as is practical in most homes and picture that's near the upper limits of human perception, there's few obvious ways to improve TV that would create the constant upgradability of things like smart phones at the moment. Some manufacturers are looking towards Windows 8 and hoping it will allow TVs to become an acceptable internet device and perhaps even eventually replace the home computer. But whether consumers will prefer to stick to their computers or prefer and iPad is uncertain. So some manufacturers have resorted to blowing all those boom profits on what they've done in the past, following commercial theaters by trying to get people to buy into 3D at home.
Sony has 400 disk changers for CD, DVD and Blu-Ray. I had the DVD one for a year or so before I switched to ripping. It could be a pain entering info for a movie that Gracenote didn't have and there were a few lockup issues on menus with some bargain bin disks but it well for the most part. And I've seen setups with several of them racked together for huge movie collections. The Blu-Ray one is on Amazon for ~$610.
They're listed as discontinued in the US store but I don't know if that's because there's something wrong with them now or if they just stopped being profitable. It might be worth looking into though if the "ripping to a server/media center system" doesn't appeal to you.
It's more hate against some dick who works for Google, not Google itself. It's a common tale when some nobody looks down and sees that badge around his neck and thinks "I am one of the chosen of our great overlord. I shall use that power to subjugate the meek." Not something that goes over well with Geeks who grew up playing D&D and reading things like Lord of the Rings as it tends to trigger their "Epic Hero" response.
Exactly. The Ohio Supreme are not determining if the builder is liable. They are only determining if it's possible for them to be held liable for things not covered by the Home Warranty.
Centex's argument is that whether it's their fault or not, it's not covered under the Home Warranty so they can't be held liable even if it was their fault and thus the Jones' can't sue them over it. The Jones' are arguing that they have the right to sue based on "Workmanlike manner" clauses in the law and that those clauses can't be waived.
The only issue in this case is whether the "Workmanlike manner" clauses can be waived by contract. The issue of the floor joists and Centrex's liability would be determined in a separate case if the Supreme Court rules that the "Workmanlike manner" clauses can not be waived.
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In the old days, you paid for a magazine subscription for a magazine full of ads and 30lbs of "Subscribe now!" cards. People always think their pennies are magical and that the $100 or so they pay the cable company should be more than enough for every network to afford multi-million dollar sports licenses and TV Shows all by itself.
People complain that TV Networks are greedy but they have to deal with greedy actors, greedy directors, greedy producers, greedy lawyers, and all other sorts of greedy people to make shows for greedy viewers who think making good TV is cheap and easy.
People skip ads, they just do more of those product placement things where characters in a show suddenly spend 5 minutes describing in detail the features of the navigation system of the car they're driving to a crime scene while their passenger enjoys a tasty Subway sandwich before cranking up the latest Justin Beiber CD and extolling how much they "love this song" while you get a pop up ad in a corner for Joe Bob's Heating & Air $39.95 summer tune up special.
Photoshop piracy guilt waning... waning... GONE!
There's a very small ethnic population where I live (meaning, there's very few illegals), yet the Emergency Rooms are still packed.
The reason for Emergency Rooms being packed has nothing to do with the patients' immigration status. They're packed because it's often the only way for someone to see a doctor when they're sick or injured in a timely manner.
Many people work during doctor's hours, don't have employers that grant paid sick leave and/or don't have any 24 hour clinics or doctors with late hours. And some people have skeezy jobs where calling in sick could even cost them their job. So an Emergency room is their only option to see a doctor without losing a day's pay or their job.
And good health care and benefits don't change anything. If anything, that makes it even worse. If I call my Doctor's office on Monday and tell them I have a lung infection, they'll usually be able to squeeze me in sometime early the next week. Because "it doesn't cost anything to see the doctor to check every sniffle and bruise because insurance will cover it", all the doctors under my insurance are booked solid weeks in advance. So if I'm really sick, it's off to the emergency room to sit around a bunch of other sick people, hoping I don't add something else to my existing condition, to get a prescription for some basic antibiotics to treat it before it gets serious because it's the only good option.
Something like this, where someone knows what's wrong with them or has something that is easily diagnosed can get a needed medication without having to see a doctor would help reduce the load on emergency rooms and allowing pharmacists to give medication for chronic conditions without needing to get a doctor's approval would help reduce the load a bit on Primary Care physicians as well.
The difference is that with a car, it's real, tangible property and it's reasonable to expect the common person to be able to secure their car in such a way that it can't easily be used without their permission or knowledge.
An IP address however is intangible property. Someone can steal it without your knowledge and with the typical wireless network, they can do so fairly easily. Especially since many people don't even know they "own" one and have no clue how to do the equivalent of looking in the driveway to see if theirs is secure or not.
Yes, they have other tools to prove copyright infringement by the owner of an IP. But they're a lot more difficult, time consuming, and require more direct law enforcement interaction to enforce than simply logging IPs in a torrent swarm, filing some papers and sending out letters. They may try to change the laws to bring that back. But even a temporary victory is a victory.
As soon as they're served papers they find "a regrettable error", give the person a refund and move on to defraud the next person who can't afford a lawyer.
It has potential for serial/thrill killers, terrorists or assassins though so it's still kind of scary.
If you return your defective Avatar Blu Ray for a working Avatar Blu Ray, it won't trigger the 90 day block as it's a warranty replacement, not an exchange.
It only comes into effect if you take it back for a refund, credit or different product.
I still wouldn't buy anything from Best Buy if I can help it as I can find anything they stock somewhere else for much less. But this isn't a bad policy considering the alternatives of restocking fees or refusing returns entirely that some stores employ.
I hear there's a really good restaurant out there. Right at the end.
But it's not the fault of the prison. Kneecapping the prisons in order to mitigate the indignities suffered by people who are sent to prison when they don't deserve it isn't a solution.
The first time some drug cartel lackey got himself arrested for some minor offense that wasn't deemed serious enough to warrant a search and stabs some white collar criminal to death with a weapon he had stashed in his ass, people would be screaming that it's the prison's fault for not searching him.
That seems to be what they're heading towards. There's a Best Buy in a local mall that doesn't sell anything (other than phones and Geek Squad services) from in store stock. It's just a showroom with display models of TVs, car stereo equipment, computers, computer peripherals like mice and video cards, appliances etc. You pick what you what, the guy at the counter orders it for you through their website and it's shipped to your door. There's never more than 5 employees in the store at a time. If they did that everywhere and eliminated all the costs of maintaining the huge stores they should be able to bring their prices down to online shopping levels. I'd probably buy there a lot more as you get to actually see what you are buying in person first and can avoid the return shipping costs when you have to return or RMA something by taking it to the store.
Defeating this amendment *did* benefit consumers.
Asking employees for their passwords is already very likely illegal under the law. It's up to consumers (and Facebook) to exercise their rights under those laws to end the practice by challenging the practice in court. If the courts establish that the practice is legal, then Congress will have to step in and create laws to prohibit it.
But, this amendment didn't do anything to strengthen the laws or protect consumers. It was just a "pass the buck" amendment that shifted the apparent burden of stopping the practice from Congress to the FCC. That way if the courts somehow validate the practice, Congress could then say "It's not in our hands. It's in the FCC's." so they won't be stuck between the rock and a hard place between the voters who abhor the practice and the corporate campaign contributors who do not. It just set up the FCC to fall on the sword instead of Congress and did nothing to protect consumers.
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/571
All those Tea partiers, Occupy protesters etc and the like are useless and clueless.
There's a bunch of them in my area and I went to one of their little meetings plastered with "We are the 99%" posters all over the place. It was an hour of them first bashing the Republicans and Democrats followed by another hour of them debating which one they should vote for.
I asked some of them why they'd vote for either one when they spent an hour accusing both of being in the pocket of lobbyists and corporate Super Pacs and don't instead back a 3rd party candidate. The answer was always the same "A 3rd party candidate couldn't win and our vote would be wasted if we backed them."
The scientists are right. People aren't smart enough for Democracy.
Tell people they're going to pitch the footage to MTV as a new reality show. 10 million idiots will sign up within a day.
The IRS mostly just collects the money and enforces the tax code. Congress makes the tax code and decides how to spend the money. I hate Congress. It's not the IRS' fault Congress blows the money they collect.
I actually like the IRS. , they're one of the less intrusive departments of Government. Most people never have to deal with the IRS outside of filing their returns each year and filling out paperwork for a new job. Since the 80s when they began restructuring the agency and spun off a lot of their more "abusable" duties to other agencies within the Treasury department, the IRS has very little subjective power which leaves them little room to screw people without any cause. They of course have instances incompetency and of corrupt agents crossing lines, but corrupt IRS agents tend to be far more rare than corrupt politicians, lawyers or cops. Most IRS horror stories are due to them being forced to enforce bad laws (again, usually the fault of Congress), not bad intentions by agents or the agency itself.
They're certainly not compatible better than an agency who gets it's rocks off by fondling old ladies and kids and then tries to say they're doing it to protect them from being terrorized.
I could also choose to play fetch with either breed or I could (barring legal and societal issues) grind them up and make burgers with them.
If I play fetch with them, they're a pet. If I make burgers, they're meat. What they are doesn't make the distinction between pet and meat. How I use them does.
The same goes for Cannabis in regards to whether it's Hemp or Marijuana. If I grow Cannabis and smoke it, it's marijuana. If grow it, decorticate the stems and make a shirt from the fiber, it's hemp.
Slashdot was never a "technology website". It's been billed forever as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters." While technology is one of the major areas that matter to nerds, and thus has always made up a large chunk of the content published here, it's not our sole area of interest. And as the technological boom has slowed and been consolidated since the initial days of this website, due in no small part to it being more heavily legislated, it's no surprise non-technological content has become more prevalent.
As "nerds" we tend to expect our Governmental representatives to make a reasonable attempt to educate themselves and base their positions and actions on facts and logical reasoning rather than attempt to enact laws which would affect our lives based on their own pandering, desperation, and good ole fashioned incompetence. And we tend to view those who do not with vile contempt.
We also tend to view with contempt those who use out of context "examples" in an attempt to bolster their positions of ignorance. For example, people like you. To someone who is mentally stable and healthy it would be obvious that the +5 Insightful moderation due to the entire comment in context with the entirety of the discussion rather than just the small portion of it you chose to quote without context. The comment itself suggested it would be more effective towards achieving the representative's stated goals to tax sports related products and merchandise as sports and sporting events are generally proven by events such as the Port Said riot and the beating of a Giants fan at Dodger Stadium to contribute to far more deaths, violence and bullying than video games. The rant you quoted was in reference to the ideal that people like Mr. Fourkiller focus on video games rather than sports because they find video game players a much easier and safer target and thus have less qualms about imposing restrictions on their rights and freedoms in an attempt to bolster their own egos through a demonstration of their power.
Hemp and Marijuana are not distinct types of Cannabis. There is no reason someone couldn't decorticate the stems of a crop of White Widow and make a rope from it while also getting high from the buds.
The terms Hemp and Marijuana are simply slang terms referring to the intended use of the Cannabis plant. Marijuana is Cannabis grown for the sole purpose of harvesting the psychoactive compounds while Hemp is grown primarily for the purpose of harvesting the non-phychoactive compounds.
The strains used in Hemp production today have been bred to produce very low (as low as 0.03%) levels of THC due to regulatory and societal pressures but nothing biologically precludes plants having much higher concentrations of THC from being used in the production of Hemp.
They've already tried that. California already has very stringent regulations on scrap buying.
From the CA Scrap Theft Compliance Guide
Scrap dealers must maintain records of transactions for two years, which must be submitted to law enforcement in the city or county in which the transaction occurred.
Scrap metal dealers are prohibited from providing payment by cash or check for purchases of more than $20 unless the check is mailed or the cash or check is provided no earlier than three days after the sale date. The payment delay is excused if a customer has been to the same yard at least five times per month for three months in a row.
Additionally, the recycler must obtain a photograph or video of the seller, the seller's thumbprint, a copy of the seller's driver's license, a description of the seller's vehicle and the license plate number of the seller's vehicle.
There is a 90-day tag-and-hold policy when notified by law enforcement.
There's almost as much paperwork involved in selling a couple garbage bags full of beer cans as it is to buy a gun. And scrap yards also have numerous regulations on their metal accounting and many counties have created agencies to audit scrap buyers which makes it quite difficult to launder metal. Yet scrap theft is still a major problem in California.
Regulations and bureaucracy aren't working. However copper clad cable isn't likely to do a whole to stop it. There's already tons of regular copper stand that it'd cost too much to replace and it won't stop the thieves stealing other sources of scrap like air conditioners.
I use one of the Norco 20 or 24 bay Server Cases ($300-400 on Newegg) for the server. It's a rackmountable case but works just fine sitting on a table or a sturdy closet shelf. After swapping out the Delta fans it comes with, it's fairly quiet. I have mine sitting on a small table in my home office and it doesn't bother me at all.
The hardware inside can be whatever you want and can be added to and upgraded over time. I started with a Supermicro 8 port SATA card and 6 1TB HDs in a JBOD setup on a Core 2 server mobo (for a couple PCI-X slots) I picked up on Ebay. Over the course of 3 or 4 years it's now on an Intel I5 system with 20 2TB in Raid 5 using a fairly cheap Areca hardware raid card and an HP SAS Expander Card. I added the HDs over time, buying one every month or so at first and then buying 2 or 3 at a time once they started getting cheap. Thankfully I finished and have plenty of warranty left in case of a failure now that they're not.
I also tried a bunch of NAS OSes, Linux distros, and WHS but they all had something that annoyed me when I tried to use them as a media server OS. For something as simple as serving media files for the home, a simple OS like Windows is perfect. I just threw on a copy of Windows Server 2k8 from my Technet sub (Win 7 would be fine as well. 2k8 is just a bit easier to run headless) and added Sickbeard, Coach Potato and some ripping and conversion tools.
To play media, I use XBMC. It'll play anything, including ISOs so I don't have to rip and convert my movies and it's very easy to manage.
I used to use old computers and build HTPCs out of them but now I use things like Acer Revo, Zotac Zbox or Apple TVs. Whatever's cheapest that's small and can play HD video. I load XBMC on them and attach them to the back of the TV with Velcro, run an IR receiver (if the mini-PC doesn't have one, I buy a cheap one on Ebay) and I'm good to go.
The hardest part of my setup was that house wasn't wired with Ethernet and I don't have the skills or confidence to start drilling holes to run it myself. I had an electrician come out and run conduit to each room in the house where I'd ever want video and then ran Cat 6 through that. With everything being wired through a GB switch, everyone in the house (up to 4 TVs going at once) can be watching something off the server and we rarely have any stuttering and I spend very little time administrating it.
They dominate in several industries only because they are the most popular in the search industry. If people abandoned their search business tomorrow, much of the success of their other businesses would evaporate.
The nature of anything that primarily exists only on the Internet is that it's power is indelibly linked to it's popularity. No matter how big they are, anyone with an idea and some programming skills could come along with something people like more and render them insignificant very quickly.
Or they could have, before the patent office became the congressional protection racket it is today. That's likely much of the impetus behind Senators calling for an investigation of Google. Election season is coming up and it's time for a shakedown.
TVs aren't something you buy new every year. It's a simple device with one major function, displaying pictures. There's only been 2 major developments in the technology since it became a common household item in the 50s. The switch from Black and White to Color in the 70s and now the mass switch to Digital/HDTV.
Both of which were just TV implementing commercial theater's technology improvements. And commercial theaters aren't the most technically imaginative industry as their main business is content delivery, not technology.
TV manufacturers have watched as new technologies focused around software have found ways to successfully do what they've failed to do for half a century, getting many people to gladly buy a new, expensive replacement every year or two. But unlike a computer or smart phone, TV is still cursed with being a simple hardware product with a simple function that is most often improved by plugging something new into it rather than buying a new TV. And with screen sizes already as massive as is practical in most homes and picture that's near the upper limits of human perception, there's few obvious ways to improve TV that would create the constant upgradability of things like smart phones at the moment.
Some manufacturers are looking towards Windows 8 and hoping it will allow TVs to become an acceptable internet device and perhaps even eventually replace the home computer. But whether consumers will prefer to stick to their computers or prefer and iPad is uncertain. So some manufacturers have resorted to blowing all those boom profits on what they've done in the past, following commercial theaters by trying to get people to buy into 3D at home.
The Blu-Ray one is on Amazon for ~$610.
They're listed as discontinued in the US store but I don't know if that's because there's something wrong with them now or if they just stopped being profitable. It might be worth looking into though if the "ripping to a server/media center system" doesn't appeal to you.
It's more hate against some dick who works for Google, not Google itself. It's a common tale when some nobody looks down and sees that badge around his neck and thinks "I am one of the chosen of our great overlord. I shall use that power to subjugate the meek." Not something that goes over well with Geeks who grew up playing D&D and reading things like Lord of the Rings as it tends to trigger their "Epic Hero" response.
Centex's argument is that whether it's their fault or not, it's not covered under the Home Warranty so they can't be held liable even if it was their fault and thus the Jones' can't sue them over it. The Jones' are arguing that they have the right to sue based on "Workmanlike manner" clauses in the law and that those clauses can't be waived.
The only issue in this case is whether the "Workmanlike manner" clauses can be waived by contract. The issue of the floor joists and Centrex's liability would be determined in a separate case if the Supreme Court rules that the "Workmanlike manner" clauses can not be waived.