I disagree with comcasts analogy. Its not like getting a busy signal, its like an operator coming on the line mid conversation and tell both partys please try again later and disconnecting them. The busy signal occurs when you initiate the call and the receiving end is busy an unable to answer. What they are doing is at a certain threshold (that no one knows of course), getting into the middle of the connection, pretending to be each other, and disconnecting the connection.
A better analogy for comcast to use would be something along the lines of we are promoting identify theft by pretending to be the recipient and closing your connection so we can redirect the traffic and steal whatever you are downloading:) (okay the last paragraph is sorta absurd.. but still it amused me when I read that back to myself so it stays)
I have 2 old S2 Directivos, and a SA S2 tivo, and my pride and joy, the overpriced S3 (I bought it before the HD Tivo was released). I use Fios now, but I kept the DTivo's as media players, they are all hacked to hell and gone and support the multiroom viewing, as does my S2, I am waiting on the S3 to support it as well, in Nov hopefully. I no longer have subscriptions active on the DTV's, but they function for their purpose, mediaservers.
As to why, originally I was told hell no on the S3 due to its price, 5 min of using the fios DVR (with no fucking page up or down buttons...) my fiance got frustrated and almost murdered the remote.. and ordered me to purchase the S3:)
but this is slightly OT for this topic.. so back on topic, it would be great PR for Verizon (assuming they have FIOS in the area), to provide her free service for a year, and use her story for advertising to destroy comcast:) For the record, I am no verizon fan, in fact, on my list of companies that should die a horrible and painful death (no that is not a threat.. no physical death to personnel should occur, except maybe the CEO), the list goes, in this order, ATT, Comcast and Verizon
Depends on which Tivo, you can pickup the Series 3 for between 600 and 800, or an HD Tivo for about 300, which has the same innards as the Series 3, minus the THX, the OLED (not even needed, but a nicety) display, and the fancy backlit remote, all of which can easily be lived without.
As for the satellites, I do remember the HD Tivo for Directv, and it was extremely expensive, not to mention now completely useless since they switched to a new signal with the new sats they launched.
Actually, in many cases they do not make any changes to the drug at all, but rather find a new purpose that allows them to refile (ie initially a cold medicine, then repurposed to include allergy medication).
I would not be surprised if they know exactly what a medication can cover, but choose to only advertise it for one purpose till the patent is about to expire, then miraculously find a new problem to solve and get the patent extended...
Was also a hold out on registering.. but I think I started following around 98 when I was working Tech support at Erols Internet, or abuse at uunet (pre mci days)
Actually, they are not assembled in the US. For that matter, neither are many cisco products, which are used across the entire dod/federal infrastructure. However, the requirements for use in DOD and Federal entities are strict, and every component in the device has to be accounted for. Checkpoint is a prime example, the Feds got to peek at the underlying source code for revue before it was certified.
There are a number of reasons not to buy Chinese products, but really this is not one of them, as most products these days are manufactured in the Asiapac area. However, with regards to lenovo, the US gov no longer purchases products not designed or owned by US entities unless it can not be avoided. Specifically *put on your tinfoil hat* that the chinese are embedding hardware that is designed to spy on the owner of that hardware *remove tinfoil hat* While is has not been proved, atleast when the products where designed in the US, all components were accounted for, there are a few components in some products coming out of Asia that are installed on the pcb's but have no description and are unaccounted for.
Granted, the above, is all pure speculation, but not completely out of the question.
I would be more worried about food products coming out of China at this point, then about boycotting electronics due to a political stance, because if that were the case.. you may as well stop buying products made in South America, most of Asia, hell even some places in EU, none of the gov's on this planet have clean hands.
Yes, you are the reason that insurance rates are so high.. well you and people like you who abuse the insurance process. That being said, from a legal standpoint, if there is a hardware issue, I do not think Apple can say go away, your warranty is void. Well they can, but I am sure someone would be able to challenge it in court. Sure, if you mess with the software and there is a problem and the phone stops working, your on your own, that is perfectly legal, but if say the screen fails, on its own, or there is any other hardware failure, the warranty should still cover that. Take a look at the auto industry, I believe way back when, many many years ago, the auto manufacturers tried a stunt like this to prevent you from using third party aftermarket parts (example radios and turbo's etc etc). In the end, all that ends up with a voided warranty are the pieces you screwed with, you put in an aftermarket radio and your engine randomly stops working, they still have to warranty the engine, but they will not have to bother helping you with your radio problems.
The contract would have been extended or initiated when you registered the phone through itunes on the initial setup. There are ways to bypass the initial itunes setup, and unlock (not sim unlock) the phone (most notably youtube and wireless were useless till you registered the phone) so that the phone was completely usable without having to extend or initiate a new contract with ATT
Exactly, this was my problem, I work in IA, and on the side I play with all sorts of security stuff on my own little network for fun and learning. I was trying to find a local (read: will ship to the US) place that I could purchase a cheap smart card reader/write to create smart card authentication tokens for multi factor authentication, and had no luck. Hopefully this will change things abit and I will be able to get one easily at a reasonable price.
Well, if you remove the tinfoil hat.... The yellow light times are based on the speed limit at the location and the amount of distance needed to stop. When a light turns yellow, it does not mean slam the gas pedal and rush the light... It means hit the brakes and come to a stop before the light turns red if you are over the distance for the speed limit of that intersection. Hell, here in DC.. the light will have been red for 3 or 4 seconds and traffic will still continue to run it. I am no fan of traffic cameras, however they have their place sometimes..
While I have not been able to find the law itself, or even why it is illegal, a search earlier today resulted in a number of different stories by different people that say the same thing, they are only being sold in 5 or so states, and its illegal to sell them in other states.. but no mention of why.. which is driving me insane.....
Judges don't get campaign contributions unless they decide to change jobs and run for public office, then in that case they are no longer judges, they have to step down. Judges are appointed.
With regards to in store warranties, depending on the product, would depend on whether or not I get one. During the dot.bomb era, when I was unemployed for a while, I ended up taking a job at Compusa as a repair tech. I never had to push any sales, but I would recommend the extended warranties for laptops when they were being given to students to take off to college. As the in store warranty would replace the laptop.. even if you tossed it at a wall... This was in 2002/2003 time frame.
These days, I only get it myself on high end products, when I bought my Nikon D70 a few years back, I knew I would be taking it with me to my best friends wedding in Jamaica, I knew I would be around water and sand, and I know myself (I can occasionally be clumsy), so although I never used the $300 in store warranty, it was worth it for the piece of mind of a $1700 piece of equipment.
Same goes for the TV I bought.. my dog has a habit of chasing the cats and his own tail, he may be a giant 80 pound dalmation.. but he thinks he is a 5 pound shitzu... and he runs into shit.. all the time, including the Tv (fortunately it has not broken yet). Sometimes they are useful...
But, I hate it when they push those warranties on smaller cheap items, if they break, buy a new one... heh
Why would the fact that its the FBI and not the NSA surprise you... Technically, keeping tabs on American citizens is actually the purview of the FBI, not the NSA. I suspect Bush went to the NSA instead of the FBI simply due to the controls in place, the NSA is very good at keeping secrets, where as things happening in the FBI always seem to be made public at some point.
Actually its pretty easy to keep something this large secret.. you make it modular, have 5 or 10 different contracting companies creating each module, which are seemingly harmless in the grand scheme of things, which each contractor kept in the dark about the others. Only a small select group of people would need to know the details for the big picture.
Those that use the service don't even need to see the big picture, only told they can point here and click there for their wiretapping goodness...
I used to work grave yard shift, I would often do the whole microsleep thing.. one time, on my way home I opened my eyes only to see a car about 20 feet in front of me stopped at a red light and I was doing about 60 (within the speed limit), I pulled hard into the left side median which was grass thankfully and blew through the light. No cop around, but it scared the crap out of me, from that day onwards, after work, I would pull into the parking lot of a local mall and take a nap. Every now and then a cop would tap on my window and tell me to move along as technically, its trespassing, but they never gave me a ticket understanding the issue, sometimes the same cop would do it. But with the agreement the police have with the owners of the mall, they had to atleast pester me:)
Never lie to an officer.. many of them have been officers for many many years, and have probably heard every lie, and every excuse you could come up with... its just going to piss them off and they will be liable to not only hit you with a speeding ticket, but anything else they can as well....
Thats not completely true, comcast still has to comply with state legislation, as well as their franchise agreements in each city/county/state they are in. If they violate those agreements, they can technically lose their franchise (although I doubt that this will ever happen). I could care less at this point, I despise comcast, not because of this particular issue, but rather their billing practices, and they love to jack up the prices every couple of months. I had comcast internet (no TV) for about a year and a half.. in that time I saw 6 price increases, now granted, these were minimal increases, I went from starting at $60 a month, and when I canceled, it was $90.
Now I use fios, granted, verizon is no better as a company, but atleast I know where I stand with them.
VA, DC and MD are like that, its not called a fixit ticket or anything like that, unfortunately you still have to appear at the court date and provide the proof that you resolved whatever the issue was relating to the mechanics of the vehicle, and the judge will just dismiss the case.
I doubt this would stand up in court (assuming there is no collusion in the court where you would go if you get a ticket in Waldo...) 1mph is well within the margin of error for both the speed tracking equipment, as well is the accuracy of the cars measurement instruments (speed etc).
I used to live in VA, now live in MD, technically the DC Metro area still. VA officers, especially the state troopers are known to be some of the harshest in the country when it comes to traffic enforcement (except for fairfax city [not county] officers, they have been known to be extreme bastards at times). VA still gives you a good 5 to 10mph leeway on speeding, as it is much harder to contest in court, even when you show up with speed calibration logs (you take your car to an inspection station in VA after getting the ticket, get it calibrated, if it shows calibration is off, the Judge usually dismisses the ticket for anything within the first 15mph of a speeding ticket)...
How do I know this.. well many years ago.. when I had a horrible driving record, and had been to 3 court mandated driver training programs.. and was 1 point/moving violation from spending 10 days in jail and losing my license for 90 days.. (it was at that point I decided speeding.. bad...), and many many traffic court appearances... its just how things worked in the court system there.
As for VA, they still use radar, which is accurate, but still has a margin of error, unlike MD, they no longer use radar, they use lidar.. which sucks.. cos that thing is extremely accurate, and impossible to contest (none of this it was the car next to me... since the officer points the damn laser at your license plate, and they usually tag you from miles away, long before you ever see them, so hitting the brakes when you do see them is way too late)....
While I agree with you, the fact that a malfunctioning unit could cause a major disruption in service to those around you is still a significant problem. The odds of every device shipping (however many thousands or millions) without a flaw is pretty slim. That being said, more work will need to be done to prevent such an outage should there be a flaw or a malfunction before it passes the FCC.
For the record, I am no fan of either MS or the FCC, but in this case, I would probably side with the FCC.
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I disagree with comcasts analogy. Its not like getting a busy signal, its like an operator coming on the line mid conversation and tell both partys please try again later and disconnecting them. The busy signal occurs when you initiate the call and the receiving end is busy an unable to answer. What they are doing is at a certain threshold (that no one knows of course), getting into the middle of the connection, pretending to be each other, and disconnecting the connection.
:) (okay the last paragraph is sorta absurd.. but still it amused me when I read that back to myself so it stays)
A better analogy for comcast to use would be something along the lines of we are promoting identify theft by pretending to be the recipient and closing your connection so we can redirect the traffic and steal whatever you are downloading
I have 2 old S2 Directivos, and a SA S2 tivo, and my pride and joy, the overpriced S3 (I bought it before the HD Tivo was released). I use Fios now, but I kept the DTivo's as media players, they are all hacked to hell and gone and support the multiroom viewing, as does my S2, I am waiting on the S3 to support it as well, in Nov hopefully. I no longer have subscriptions active on the DTV's, but they function for their purpose, mediaservers.
:)
:) For the record, I am no verizon fan, in fact, on my list of companies that should die a horrible and painful death (no that is not a threat.. no physical death to personnel should occur, except maybe the CEO), the list goes, in this order, ATT, Comcast and Verizon
As to why, originally I was told hell no on the S3 due to its price, 5 min of using the fios DVR (with no fucking page up or down buttons...) my fiance got frustrated and almost murdered the remote.. and ordered me to purchase the S3
but this is slightly OT for this topic.. so back on topic, it would be great PR for Verizon (assuming they have FIOS in the area), to provide her free service for a year, and use her story for advertising to destroy comcast
Depends on which Tivo, you can pickup the Series 3 for between 600 and 800, or an HD Tivo for about 300, which has the same innards as the Series 3, minus the THX, the OLED (not even needed, but a nicety) display, and the fancy backlit remote, all of which can easily be lived without.
As for the satellites, I do remember the HD Tivo for Directv, and it was extremely expensive, not to mention now completely useless since they switched to a new signal with the new sats they launched.
Actually, in many cases they do not make any changes to the drug at all, but rather find a new purpose that allows them to refile (ie initially a cold medicine, then repurposed to include allergy medication).
I would not be surprised if they know exactly what a medication can cover, but choose to only advertise it for one purpose till the patent is about to expire, then miraculously find a new problem to solve and get the patent extended...
Was also a hold out on registering.. but I think I started following around 98 when I was working Tech support at Erols Internet, or abuse at uunet (pre mci days)
Actually, they are not assembled in the US. For that matter, neither are many cisco products, which are used across the entire dod/federal infrastructure. However, the requirements for use in DOD and Federal entities are strict, and every component in the device has to be accounted for. Checkpoint is a prime example, the Feds got to peek at the underlying source code for revue before it was certified.
There are a number of reasons not to buy Chinese products, but really this is not one of them, as most products these days are manufactured in the Asiapac area. However, with regards to lenovo, the US gov no longer purchases products not designed or owned by US entities unless it can not be avoided. Specifically *put on your tinfoil hat* that the chinese are embedding hardware that is designed to spy on the owner of that hardware *remove tinfoil hat* While is has not been proved, atleast when the products where designed in the US, all components were accounted for, there are a few components in some products coming out of Asia that are installed on the pcb's but have no description and are unaccounted for.
Granted, the above, is all pure speculation, but not completely out of the question.
I would be more worried about food products coming out of China at this point, then about boycotting electronics due to a political stance, because if that were the case.. you may as well stop buying products made in South America, most of Asia, hell even some places in EU, none of the gov's on this planet have clean hands.
Yes, you are the reason that insurance rates are so high.. well you and people like you who abuse the insurance process. That being said, from a legal standpoint, if there is a hardware issue, I do not think Apple can say go away, your warranty is void. Well they can, but I am sure someone would be able to challenge it in court. Sure, if you mess with the software and there is a problem and the phone stops working, your on your own, that is perfectly legal, but if say the screen fails, on its own, or there is any other hardware failure, the warranty should still cover that. Take a look at the auto industry, I believe way back when, many many years ago, the auto manufacturers tried a stunt like this to prevent you from using third party aftermarket parts (example radios and turbo's etc etc). In the end, all that ends up with a voided warranty are the pieces you screwed with, you put in an aftermarket radio and your engine randomly stops working, they still have to warranty the engine, but they will not have to bother helping you with your radio problems.
The contract would have been extended or initiated when you registered the phone through itunes on the initial setup. There are ways to bypass the initial itunes setup, and unlock (not sim unlock) the phone (most notably youtube and wireless were useless till you registered the phone) so that the phone was completely usable without having to extend or initiate a new contract with ATT
Exactly, this was my problem, I work in IA, and on the side I play with all sorts of security stuff on my own little network for fun and learning. I was trying to find a local (read: will ship to the US) place that I could purchase a cheap smart card reader/write to create smart card authentication tokens for multi factor authentication, and had no luck. Hopefully this will change things abit and I will be able to get one easily at a reasonable price.
Yes, its called STP instead of UTP...
No no, Canada is the 50th state, not the 51st, Florida ceded to Cuba a little while ago.
You could always try the hardware hack on the 4 gigger, worst case you have a $300 brick :)
Well, if you remove the tinfoil hat.... The yellow light times are based on the speed limit at the location and the amount of distance needed to stop. When a light turns yellow, it does not mean slam the gas pedal and rush the light... It means hit the brakes and come to a stop before the light turns red if you are over the distance for the speed limit of that intersection. Hell, here in DC.. the light will have been red for 3 or 4 seconds and traffic will still continue to run it. I am no fan of traffic cameras, however they have their place sometimes..
While I have not been able to find the law itself, or even why it is illegal, a search earlier today resulted in a number of different stories by different people that say the same thing, they are only being sold in 5 or so states, and its illegal to sell them in other states.. but no mention of why.. which is driving me insane.....
Judges don't get campaign contributions unless they decide to change jobs and run for public office, then in that case they are no longer judges, they have to step down. Judges are appointed.
With regards to in store warranties, depending on the product, would depend on whether or not I get one. During the dot.bomb era, when I was unemployed for a while, I ended up taking a job at Compusa as a repair tech. I never had to push any sales, but I would recommend the extended warranties for laptops when they were being given to students to take off to college. As the in store warranty would replace the laptop.. even if you tossed it at a wall...
This was in 2002/2003 time frame.
These days, I only get it myself on high end products, when I bought my Nikon D70 a few years back, I knew I would be taking it with me to my best friends wedding in Jamaica, I knew I would be around water and sand, and I know myself (I can occasionally be clumsy), so although I never used the $300 in store warranty, it was worth it for the piece of mind of a $1700 piece of equipment.
Same goes for the TV I bought.. my dog has a habit of chasing the cats and his own tail, he may be a giant 80 pound dalmation.. but he thinks he is a 5 pound shitzu... and he runs into shit.. all the time, including the Tv (fortunately it has not broken yet). Sometimes they are useful...
But, I hate it when they push those warranties on smaller cheap items, if they break, buy a new one... heh
Why would the fact that its the FBI and not the NSA surprise you... Technically, keeping tabs on American citizens is actually the purview of the FBI, not the NSA. I suspect Bush went to the NSA instead of the FBI simply due to the controls in place, the NSA is very good at keeping secrets, where as things happening in the FBI always seem to be made public at some point.
Actually its pretty easy to keep something this large secret.. you make it modular, have 5 or 10 different contracting companies creating each module, which are seemingly harmless in the grand scheme of things, which each contractor kept in the dark about the others. Only a small select group of people would need to know the details for the big picture.
Those that use the service don't even need to see the big picture, only told they can point here and click there for their wiretapping goodness...
I used to work grave yard shift, I would often do the whole microsleep thing.. one time, on my way home I opened my eyes only to see a car about 20 feet in front of me stopped at a red light and I was doing about 60 (within the speed limit), I pulled hard into the left side median which was grass thankfully and blew through the light. No cop around, but it scared the crap out of me, from that day onwards, after work, I would pull into the parking lot of a local mall and take a nap. Every now and then a cop would tap on my window and tell me to move along as technically, its trespassing, but they never gave me a ticket understanding the issue, sometimes the same cop would do it. But with the agreement the police have with the owners of the mall, they had to atleast pester me :)
Never lie to an officer.. many of them have been officers for many many years, and have probably heard every lie, and every excuse you could come up with... its just going to piss them off and they will be liable to not only hit you with a speeding ticket, but anything else they can as well....
Thats not completely true, comcast still has to comply with state legislation, as well as their franchise agreements in each city/county/state they are in. If they violate those agreements, they can technically lose their franchise (although I doubt that this will ever happen). I could care less at this point, I despise comcast, not because of this particular issue, but rather their billing practices, and they love to jack up the prices every couple of months. I had comcast internet (no TV) for about a year and a half.. in that time I saw 6 price increases, now granted, these were minimal increases, I went from starting at $60 a month, and when I canceled, it was $90.
Now I use fios, granted, verizon is no better as a company, but atleast I know where I stand with them.
VA, DC and MD are like that, its not called a fixit ticket or anything like that, unfortunately you still have to appear at the court date and provide the proof that you resolved whatever the issue was relating to the mechanics of the vehicle, and the judge will just dismiss the case.
I doubt this would stand up in court (assuming there is no collusion in the court where you would go if you get a ticket in Waldo...) 1mph is well within the margin of error for both the speed tracking equipment, as well is the accuracy of the cars measurement instruments (speed etc).
I used to live in VA, now live in MD, technically the DC Metro area still. VA officers, especially the state troopers are known to be some of the harshest in the country when it comes to traffic enforcement (except for fairfax city [not county] officers, they have been known to be extreme bastards at times). VA still gives you a good 5 to 10mph leeway on speeding, as it is much harder to contest in court, even when you show up with speed calibration logs (you take your car to an inspection station in VA after getting the ticket, get it calibrated, if it shows calibration is off, the Judge usually dismisses the ticket for anything within the first 15mph of a speeding ticket)...
How do I know this.. well many years ago.. when I had a horrible driving record, and had been to 3 court mandated driver training programs.. and was 1 point/moving violation from spending 10 days in jail and losing my license for 90 days.. (it was at that point I decided speeding.. bad...), and many many traffic court appearances... its just how things worked in the court system there.
As for VA, they still use radar, which is accurate, but still has a margin of error, unlike MD, they no longer use radar, they use lidar.. which sucks.. cos that thing is extremely accurate, and impossible to contest (none of this it was the car next to me... since the officer points the damn laser at your license plate, and they usually tag you from miles away, long before you ever see them, so hitting the brakes when you do see them is way too late)....
While I agree with you, the fact that a malfunctioning unit could cause a major disruption in service to those around you is still a significant problem. The odds of every device shipping (however many thousands or millions) without a flaw is pretty slim. That being said, more work will need to be done to prevent such an outage should there be a flaw or a malfunction before it passes the FCC.
For the record, I am no fan of either MS or the FCC, but in this case, I would probably side with the FCC.