When I was in the Army, I had an ambulance driver who would get bored and break open a mercury thermometer play with the mercury then toss it into the trash. I used to get pissed but not for any of the reasons you might suspect. First he always would get a thermometer from our ER not from the patient care areas, and second it took forever to get replacement thermometers as our particular facility was low on the list of places that got supplies. The "hazards" of mercury and poor disposal were not even close to being on my radar. Fortunately I was able to send him back to his home unit before he broke all the thermometers...
It's obvious 95% of the posters here have never worked on a real service desk. I spent 3.5 years working as a Security Account Admin and sent every password in cleartext and here's why. End users & their managers are remarkably computer illiterate. If I salted or hashed the passwords as so many have suggested, I would get a reply within 5 minutes saying "my password didn't work." As it was I still had about a 50% success rate with end users actually getting their passwords to work. Another issue I faced was a language barrier. Our work spanned 6 continents and roughly 18 time zones. as a result we provided 24 hour service and to a warehouse worker in Shanghai, my e-mails probably looked like they were written by an alien; which is why their managers were always copied on the e-mails. As a rule to ensure some security, all e-mails were sent encrypted and never sent to a third party address which angered the UPS & FedEx shippers in Asia. I also often copied the regional service desk person, as it was likely they spoke the language of the end user or someone on the service desk spoke it.
Didn't need your ID because he was your "sponsor" with a military ID. If no one is active, reserve or retired military, everybody has to hand over an ID. That stopped my fiance (no US issued ID yet) from entering a military post, had to call my nephew who is active duty to escort us in.
Armored Dragon, you are really trying to make friends in Hardin County aren't you? LOL I live close enough to hear tank fire (well used to, Fort Benning is awfully far away) I can't totally disagree with you, but you are correct US Hwy 31W cuts through the post and several state roads go through there as well. It is finally a closed post though, went to show my fiance the post and had to show IDs to get on post.
So maybe someone can clear this up for me... The drone I guess was spotted by radar? or visual? or ESP? So rather than "jettison their load" why didn't the planes climb a hundred feet and dump it's load over the drone? As for the idiot that was dumb enough to fly the drone I dare you to file a claim against the US Forest Service for damage, I suspect he will be ignorant enough to cross a fire line to save his precious drone, like he jackass that flew his over an active fire scene. Unfortunately the firefighters simply damaged it and didn't bring it down. For the record, you fly your drone over my fence, I will take it down and keep it, I'll see you in court for aerial trespassing. If you want to see what's in my backyard, pull up Google maps and look.
Define offensive. I am offended by Nazism, ISIS, and extremists on all edges of the racial spectrum, yet these same companies carry products for these groups. Some of these groups have probably killed, maimed and horrifically destroyed more lives than the racists who are too overweight to waddle off their porch to get their mail, much less commit a crime against those with a different skin tone. Yes a disturbed man killed 9 people praying in a church, but the last time I looked one megalomaniac took the advice of a psychopathic crony and killed 6 million people because of their religion, ethnicity, race, or sexual preference, yet I can still find books he wrote, flags & clothing depicting the symbols he used and even find groups who still revere him. That offends me more than a historical flag that was co-opted into a racist movement that has devolved into a joke. Racism, sexism, religious bigotry all still exist worldwide and I will do what I can to smash those groups, but a company refusing to sell or make certain items will simply raise the price for the existing items and make them more desirable (Hmm this sounds like the war on drugs that we are winning so well in the US...) If ebay & Amazon won't sell these items and if flag companies refuse to silkscreen them, someone somewhere is about to make a lot of money on "banned" items.
I find this rush by all these companies to nearly try to out-do each other on ridding their product lines of merchandise with the confederate flag, once again not just the rectangular flag of racism but all flags used will be swept up in their rush to "erase the past" is almost laughable. Go to ebay or Amazon and search for ISIS flags, Mein Kampf and the Anarchist's Cookbook, and I'm sure if I researched further plenty of white supremacist literature plus an assortment of books written encouraging those with African heritage to rise against the oppression of those with European heritage, not to mention translations and studies of the Koran stating that the extremist views are correct. All of these things, which in some cases have directions on how to start your own brand of terrorism, are still for sale but not those evil flags. I suppose I'll go shopping and wear my Nazi uniform while flying my ISIS flag extolling to my neighbors the virtues of rising up against "The Evil White Man"
There is little reason to believe that Americans, when exposed to nazi propaganda, will suddenly start goose stepping,
Really? So all the neo-nazi organizations that hoard authentic nazi relics and proudly wear swastikas and SS logo on clothing and as tattoos are all figments of my imagination?
Germans who see the battle flag of the Confederacy decide to wage war against the United States.
And the Red Brigade, although not very active in Germany anymore wasn't for the overthrow of the US government?
I used to have what I called a confederate battle flag, then I woke up, read a little history and realized the rectangular flag was pure and simple a product of the anti-civil rights racists and tossed it. If I ever decided to buy another flag, I would buy either of the two versions the Confederate States actually flew over their government buildings, probably the version with the square battle flag in the corner and the red stripe on the fly, it's the one flying over the Confederate cemetery in the next county over, but I prefer my US & Dutch flags.
IIRC that is one reason why "WKRP in Cincinnati" hasn't been released on DVD, during the run of the show they used short clips from current hits in the studio with all the blackmail (um copyright) money paid for the airing on TV, now they would have to go back and renegotiate all over again for the rights to play them on DVD, or over dub all those with music they could get the rights too.
I haven't had VM since I was hired by my employer 5 years ago. All the teams I'm on have group numbers that are manned 24/7. I do have a personal number, but the only people who get that are businesses that ask for a "work number" the ringer for that line has always been turned off and no vm so they get ring after ring without an answer. I don't even know if anyone has ever called it. Any calls that I might care about will come to our group line, usually from clients that have no access to our system and need us to assist them; or more commonly "Hey customer service gave me this number, can you guys do X?"; and my favorite "I forgot my badge, can someone let me in?"
It was a lot of things to a lot of opportunists, but the main driver in the creation of the TSA was the fear after 9/11. This was an irrational response, since airport security did not "break down" and allow 9/11 to occur - box cutters were allowed on planes because it never occurred to anyone that someone would be able to hijack an airplane with a razor blade.
On the bright side we have another example of how expensive and incompetent the government is at doing a straightforward task. I'm not saying that the private sector would be more competent, but they sure would be cheaper.
Really? Then why did have to explain my multi-tool every time I went through security? The private security my local airport used understood what it was and ignored that there was a small knife blade inside, they would see the pliers and not ask too much about the blade inside. I had a few occasions that I did have to put my multi-tool in my checked bag, or ask someone to take it home for me, but those were much more the exception than the rule.
You haven't this plan in action. It's full of fraud & abuse. I used to manage an apartment complex and at the urging of the landlord to have a full building to help his bottom line & costs; we allowed a family to move in that I had misgivings about, the elderly lady that filled out the application looked great on paper but a wheelchair bound 82 year old woman moving into an apartment with her daughter & granddaughter didn't quite fit. As time went on it unraveled, the daughter didn't work and hadn't for years, the granddaughter was mentally challenged. Between them they had at least 8 different cell phones, at that point I quit trying to keep track of numbers, it seems each agency they visited for benefits (welfare, food stamps, government clinics, etc.) handed them a cell phone and a certain number of minutes each month, apparently there was no check & balance to combine minutes on a single phone or if they already were receiving Lifeline service. They finally had a cell phone turned into a landline, about a month before they couldn't keep up the rent payment and moved elsewhere, that was also about the time I got out of the managing business after I starting seeing the landlord's standards drop to "Have they got money?" to keep the building full. I still go to the barber shop and several apartments are now empty and next to the for rent sign is a for sale sign. I know a gentleman who has a Lifeline phone, he refers to it as "Line 2" and uses his smart phone as his Line 1. He is working full time and owns the house he lives in outright, but still has a Lifeline phone, I have no idea how he did that. Adding broadband to this program can only bring about more waste, fraud & abuse. I could possibly see where it might be useful for families that have children under 18, but I'm certain that my 2 examples above would be happy to take the service, I wonder if the gentleman will have a second broadband service routed to his home?
I'm starting a car company, our cars will be well built, stylish, full of popular bells & whistles that the public will like & uber expensive...Oh one tiny catch...you have to buy your gas at the dealership, air your low tires at the dealership, in fact everything is so proprietary that you will need to use the dealership for everything; and if you don't not only is your warranty void, we reserve the right to prosecute you...but of course our fanbois will come out in droves to defend us & line up for days when the next years model comes out.
I am not in favor of capitol punishment and here are my reasons which have taken a good part of my adult life to figure out:
1. The state can & will make mistakes. Someone once said let 100 guilty men go free, instead of killing 1 innocent man.
2. If the person is innocent of the crime, they have the rest of their natural lives to exonerate themselves. If they can show malice in the trial or sentencing then they may have recourse against the state or the individual who sent them to prison.
3. If they are guilty, they have to wake up every day and knowing the person looking back at them in the mirror is guilty. That may be worse than the release of death....
4. Life without parole is a perfectly acceptable sentence, they will no longer be a menace in society.
5. I do not have a citation, but in my home state according to a newspaper article, since 1972 we have put to death 4 people. In that time 15 I believe have died on death row before they faced the chair or the needle, so effectively they had life without parole.
6. No need to comment, I have spent over 3 decades thinking on and reading about capitol punishment. I now simply state my point and walk away, feel free to take it, leave it or dismiss it.
Yes the balls can be rigged but after speaking with some lottery folks years ago, they go to great lengths to insure there's no tampering with the balls. The state lottery decided to do their first ever live draw remotely and I was assigned there doing first aid/security (I was in the National Guard) The lottery security guy was explaining how they had several sets of balls. All sets were weighed before and after the draw and had to be within a very narrow window of weight both before & after. the draw set is also chosen randomly and before and after the draw each ball is weighed to make sure there is no tampering as well as the set holder without the balls. So about 15 minutes prior the sets were weighed, one was chosen each ball was weighed and the set holder was weighed. The draw was done live and immediately after the everything was reweighed and passed. This was 20 years ago so the methods may have improved or changed. I don't play much but I think the big money is still ping pong balls, now the small every 5-10 minute is RNG I guess.
I was born during the Johnson Administration and was not eligible to vote until Reagan was in office. I have made the decision that for the rest of my life I will not vote for a President who has the same last name as any President who has held office since my birth. If I remember American history correctly, our founding fathers voted against dynasties with muskets and several of the foreign states we have been at odds with in the past 60 years are dynasties although they are voted in democratically (when there is only one party it's pretty easy) and we do have the sham of two parties that are simply 2 different dynasties taking turns screwing the American public. So any Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, or Obama that runs will NOT get my vote, although there might be an exception for a Johnson, as Gary Johnson is not related to Lyndon Johnson and is not part of the two party dynasty.
It's all (insert ideology you disagree with here) fault!!! I'll start It's all global warming/global cooling/democrats/republicans/liberals/conservatives/evolutionists/creationists/fracking fault!!! They all did it the dirty rotten SOBs....Did I miss anyone?
Same thing was done to Troi in TNG when she tested for full Commander. The no-win forced her to choose a crewmate to die to save the ship in a holodeck simulation. She failed until she realized someone had to die. Of course the person she ordered protested but eventually went off to their "death" for the greater good. Back to the subject: Kudos to him for thinking outside the box, very creative, hopefully it will be channeled in a positive direction.
The problem with these sorts of incidents is that on the unlikely chance it had been an actual terrorist attack, the police could be sued if they wasted any time at all. That would include calling the closed library.
That's the problem with this whole thing: the police can't afford to verify the calls and have to treat all of them as real.
Scenario goes like this:
911 call comes in
911 dispatcher verifies location and forwards dispatch info to local police
Local police flag this up to SWAT for immediate response WHILE AND AT THE SAME TIME calling the library for verification
Local police discover it's a prank and notify SWAT en-route so that when they arrive, they're expecting everything to be fine and just do a once-over with a single uniformed officer instead of a full SWAT deployment.
Nobody gets sued, nobody gets harmed, and the SWAT team is ready for redeployment much faster than otherwise (plus, they have MUCH less paperwork to fill out).
911 operator gets no answer as the library IS CLOSED DID YOU MISS THAT PART?
I was a first responder who backed up the local SWAT team a few times, both real & false alarms. These guys take everything, including their training mock scenarios very seriously. I got shot (training rounds still hurt like a mother-) for showing up late at a mock hostage scenario at a local sports stadium once. The bad guys took control of the announcers booth, and were holding the PA guy hostage. It was funny hearing the bad guys demand a million dollars and a helicopter on the 50 yard line over the PA and insulting the SWAT team the whole time. I can only imagine what someone outside was thinking if they heard that.
So how does one get on this "list"? I have absolutely no problem with any hajis showing up on my doorstep, I'll gladly let them meet 72 virgins...or whatever is waiting for them...
I used to work in the telecommunications field before I moved to IT (not a big change, but I digress) I started as a field worker, house to house doing the physical repair work. I was often warned "this caller is a real ass" by our dispatcher which I found it meant they managed to escalate the call to a real supervisor. Almost without exception when I showed up knocking on the door, they were always sweet & polite. The reason: I was a real body was standing there to help them, not read a script. After years of doing that, I briefly left the field looking elsewhere and when that idea fizzled I went back to telecommunications but decided to take my knowledge into the call center, thinking better hours, no bad weather and nearly the same pay. After training, I lasted about 3 weeks on the phone, forced to read from a script when I knew exactly what needed to be done to fix the issue, forced to use only IE, at times intentionally not telling a user the whole truth (we were not allowed to tell users that service would be interrupted for 6-8 hours overnight for upgrade work), working overnight didn't help either....drunks, bullies, and general asses calling. I had enough and had a connection to get into IT and took it.
But of course, the person who is stealing your credit card info is most likely your waiter, and they have a minute or two with your card over at the POS to copy down the CVV manually.
And this is why the United States needs to move to EMV (Chip & Pin) like the rest of the world. Rather than the waiter taking your card away, they bring you a hand-held terminal, which you then take and perform the last portion of the contract yourself, with the card never leaving your hands.
Funny, my new Chip & PIN card came in the mail from one of my CC last week...still no word on the PIN yet, perhaps I need to contact them directly & no it is not my current bank...
In October 2012 I was on vacation visiting an old Army buddy. He is a firefighter/paramedic and happened to be on duty the night Chicago Fire premiered. As a former firefighter/EMT myself, he invited me to the station to watch with his shift. Within 2 minutes we were all howling and how ridiculously bad the show was written. One of the guys was online chatting with some of the other firefighter/paramedics who were watching at home. I think they hit almost every stereotype they could fit in that first episode. I still watch Chicago Fire when my schedule allows, and still shake my head at how badly the show is written. I actually watch for the plot lines that aren't wrapped around fire/EMS situations. True it's fluff but that's what I will expect from CSI:Cyber, terrible hacker/computer writing, maybe a believable personal plot that will all be fluff. My police friends have the same complaints about Chicago Police too, but that's another story...
Welcome to Europe! If you scream assault you will be laughed at. I am currently immigrating to the Netherlands, there are bike lanes all over the country, they are bike lanes not for anything else. My first time there, being a tourist I stopped on a bike lane to take a photo...the man who ran me over never apologized he just hit me and continued on...my Bride and in-laws politely informed me I was wrong and photos should be taken off the bike path. They also were snickering as I was picking myself up after being hit.
Slashdot Mirror
When I was in the Army, I had an ambulance driver who would get bored and break open a mercury thermometer play with the mercury then toss it into the trash. I used to get pissed but not for any of the reasons you might suspect. First he always would get a thermometer from our ER not from the patient care areas, and second it took forever to get replacement thermometers as our particular facility was low on the list of places that got supplies. The "hazards" of mercury and poor disposal were not even close to being on my radar. Fortunately I was able to send him back to his home unit before he broke all the thermometers...
It's obvious 95% of the posters here have never worked on a real service desk. I spent 3.5 years working as a Security Account Admin and sent every password in cleartext and here's why. End users & their managers are remarkably computer illiterate. If I salted or hashed the passwords as so many have suggested, I would get a reply within 5 minutes saying "my password didn't work." As it was I still had about a 50% success rate with end users actually getting their passwords to work. Another issue I faced was a language barrier. Our work spanned 6 continents and roughly 18 time zones. as a result we provided 24 hour service and to a warehouse worker in Shanghai, my e-mails probably looked like they were written by an alien; which is why their managers were always copied on the e-mails. As a rule to ensure some security, all e-mails were sent encrypted and never sent to a third party address which angered the UPS & FedEx shippers in Asia. I also often copied the regional service desk person, as it was likely they spoke the language of the end user or someone on the service desk spoke it.
Didn't need your ID because he was your "sponsor" with a military ID. If no one is active, reserve or retired military, everybody has to hand over an ID. That stopped my fiance (no US issued ID yet) from entering a military post, had to call my nephew who is active duty to escort us in.
Armored Dragon, you are really trying to make friends in Hardin County aren't you? LOL I live close enough to hear tank fire (well used to, Fort Benning is awfully far away) I can't totally disagree with you, but you are correct US Hwy 31W cuts through the post and several state roads go through there as well. It is finally a closed post though, went to show my fiance the post and had to show IDs to get on post.
So maybe someone can clear this up for me... The drone I guess was spotted by radar? or visual? or ESP? So rather than "jettison their load" why didn't the planes climb a hundred feet and dump it's load over the drone? As for the idiot that was dumb enough to fly the drone I dare you to file a claim against the US Forest Service for damage, I suspect he will be ignorant enough to cross a fire line to save his precious drone, like he jackass that flew his over an active fire scene. Unfortunately the firefighters simply damaged it and didn't bring it down. For the record, you fly your drone over my fence, I will take it down and keep it, I'll see you in court for aerial trespassing. If you want to see what's in my backyard, pull up Google maps and look.
Define offensive. I am offended by Nazism, ISIS, and extremists on all edges of the racial spectrum, yet these same companies carry products for these groups. Some of these groups have probably killed, maimed and horrifically destroyed more lives than the racists who are too overweight to waddle off their porch to get their mail, much less commit a crime against those with a different skin tone. Yes a disturbed man killed 9 people praying in a church, but the last time I looked one megalomaniac took the advice of a psychopathic crony and killed 6 million people because of their religion, ethnicity, race, or sexual preference, yet I can still find books he wrote, flags & clothing depicting the symbols he used and even find groups who still revere him. That offends me more than a historical flag that was co-opted into a racist movement that has devolved into a joke. Racism, sexism, religious bigotry all still exist worldwide and I will do what I can to smash those groups, but a company refusing to sell or make certain items will simply raise the price for the existing items and make them more desirable (Hmm this sounds like the war on drugs that we are winning so well in the US...) If ebay & Amazon won't sell these items and if flag companies refuse to silkscreen them, someone somewhere is about to make a lot of money on "banned" items.
I find this rush by all these companies to nearly try to out-do each other on ridding their product lines of merchandise with the confederate flag, once again not just the rectangular flag of racism but all flags used will be swept up in their rush to "erase the past" is almost laughable. Go to ebay or Amazon and search for ISIS flags, Mein Kampf and the Anarchist's Cookbook, and I'm sure if I researched further plenty of white supremacist literature plus an assortment of books written encouraging those with African heritage to rise against the oppression of those with European heritage, not to mention translations and studies of the Koran stating that the extremist views are correct. All of these things, which in some cases have directions on how to start your own brand of terrorism, are still for sale but not those evil flags. I suppose I'll go shopping and wear my Nazi uniform while flying my ISIS flag extolling to my neighbors the virtues of rising up against "The Evil White Man"
There is little reason to believe that Americans, when exposed to nazi propaganda, will suddenly start goose stepping,
Really? So all the neo-nazi organizations that hoard authentic nazi relics and proudly wear swastikas and SS logo on clothing and as tattoos are all figments of my imagination?
Germans who see the battle flag of the Confederacy decide to wage war against the United States.
And the Red Brigade, although not very active in Germany anymore wasn't for the overthrow of the US government?
I used to have what I called a confederate battle flag, then I woke up, read a little history and realized the rectangular flag was pure and simple a product of the anti-civil rights racists and tossed it. If I ever decided to buy another flag, I would buy either of the two versions the Confederate States actually flew over their government buildings, probably the version with the square battle flag in the corner and the red stripe on the fly, it's the one flying over the Confederate cemetery in the next county over, but I prefer my US & Dutch flags.
IIRC that is one reason why "WKRP in Cincinnati" hasn't been released on DVD, during the run of the show they used short clips from current hits in the studio with all the blackmail (um copyright) money paid for the airing on TV, now they would have to go back and renegotiate all over again for the rights to play them on DVD, or over dub all those with music they could get the rights too.
I haven't had VM since I was hired by my employer 5 years ago. All the teams I'm on have group numbers that are manned 24/7. I do have a personal number, but the only people who get that are businesses that ask for a "work number" the ringer for that line has always been turned off and no vm so they get ring after ring without an answer. I don't even know if anyone has ever called it. Any calls that I might care about will come to our group line, usually from clients that have no access to our system and need us to assist them; or more commonly "Hey customer service gave me this number, can you guys do X?"; and my favorite "I forgot my badge, can someone let me in?"
It was a lot of things to a lot of opportunists, but the main driver in the creation of the TSA was the fear after 9/11. This was an irrational response, since airport security did not "break down" and allow 9/11 to occur - box cutters were allowed on planes because it never occurred to anyone that someone would be able to hijack an airplane with a razor blade.
On the bright side we have another example of how expensive and incompetent the government is at doing a straightforward task. I'm not saying that the private sector would be more competent, but they sure would be cheaper.
Really? Then why did have to explain my multi-tool every time I went through security? The private security my local airport used understood what it was and ignored that there was a small knife blade inside, they would see the pliers and not ask too much about the blade inside. I had a few occasions that I did have to put my multi-tool in my checked bag, or ask someone to take it home for me, but those were much more the exception than the rule.
You haven't this plan in action. It's full of fraud & abuse. I used to manage an apartment complex and at the urging of the landlord to have a full building to help his bottom line & costs; we allowed a family to move in that I had misgivings about, the elderly lady that filled out the application looked great on paper but a wheelchair bound 82 year old woman moving into an apartment with her daughter & granddaughter didn't quite fit. As time went on it unraveled, the daughter didn't work and hadn't for years, the granddaughter was mentally challenged. Between them they had at least 8 different cell phones, at that point I quit trying to keep track of numbers, it seems each agency they visited for benefits (welfare, food stamps, government clinics, etc.) handed them a cell phone and a certain number of minutes each month, apparently there was no check & balance to combine minutes on a single phone or if they already were receiving Lifeline service. They finally had a cell phone turned into a landline, about a month before they couldn't keep up the rent payment and moved elsewhere, that was also about the time I got out of the managing business after I starting seeing the landlord's standards drop to "Have they got money?" to keep the building full. I still go to the barber shop and several apartments are now empty and next to the for rent sign is a for sale sign. I know a gentleman who has a Lifeline phone, he refers to it as "Line 2" and uses his smart phone as his Line 1. He is working full time and owns the house he lives in outright, but still has a Lifeline phone, I have no idea how he did that. Adding broadband to this program can only bring about more waste, fraud & abuse. I could possibly see where it might be useful for families that have children under 18, but I'm certain that my 2 examples above would be happy to take the service, I wonder if the gentleman will have a second broadband service routed to his home?
What does my cousin's @netzero.com account say? I say mine was chucked in 1997...
I'm starting a car company, our cars will be well built, stylish, full of popular bells & whistles that the public will like & uber expensive...Oh one tiny catch...you have to buy your gas at the dealership, air your low tires at the dealership, in fact everything is so proprietary that you will need to use the dealership for everything; and if you don't not only is your warranty void, we reserve the right to prosecute you...but of course our fanbois will come out in droves to defend us & line up for days when the next years model comes out.
I am not in favor of capitol punishment and here are my reasons which have taken a good part of my adult life to figure out: 1. The state can & will make mistakes. Someone once said let 100 guilty men go free, instead of killing 1 innocent man. 2. If the person is innocent of the crime, they have the rest of their natural lives to exonerate themselves. If they can show malice in the trial or sentencing then they may have recourse against the state or the individual who sent them to prison. 3. If they are guilty, they have to wake up every day and knowing the person looking back at them in the mirror is guilty. That may be worse than the release of death.... 4. Life without parole is a perfectly acceptable sentence, they will no longer be a menace in society. 5. I do not have a citation, but in my home state according to a newspaper article, since 1972 we have put to death 4 people. In that time 15 I believe have died on death row before they faced the chair or the needle, so effectively they had life without parole. 6. No need to comment, I have spent over 3 decades thinking on and reading about capitol punishment. I now simply state my point and walk away, feel free to take it, leave it or dismiss it.
Yes the balls can be rigged but after speaking with some lottery folks years ago, they go to great lengths to insure there's no tampering with the balls. The state lottery decided to do their first ever live draw remotely and I was assigned there doing first aid/security (I was in the National Guard) The lottery security guy was explaining how they had several sets of balls. All sets were weighed before and after the draw and had to be within a very narrow window of weight both before & after. the draw set is also chosen randomly and before and after the draw each ball is weighed to make sure there is no tampering as well as the set holder without the balls. So about 15 minutes prior the sets were weighed, one was chosen each ball was weighed and the set holder was weighed. The draw was done live and immediately after the everything was reweighed and passed. This was 20 years ago so the methods may have improved or changed. I don't play much but I think the big money is still ping pong balls, now the small every 5-10 minute is RNG I guess.
I was born during the Johnson Administration and was not eligible to vote until Reagan was in office. I have made the decision that for the rest of my life I will not vote for a President who has the same last name as any President who has held office since my birth. If I remember American history correctly, our founding fathers voted against dynasties with muskets and several of the foreign states we have been at odds with in the past 60 years are dynasties although they are voted in democratically (when there is only one party it's pretty easy) and we do have the sham of two parties that are simply 2 different dynasties taking turns screwing the American public. So any Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, or Obama that runs will NOT get my vote, although there might be an exception for a Johnson, as Gary Johnson is not related to Lyndon Johnson and is not part of the two party dynasty.
It's all (insert ideology you disagree with here) fault!!! I'll start It's all global warming/global cooling/democrats/republicans/liberals/conservatives/evolutionists/creationists/fracking fault!!! They all did it the dirty rotten SOBs....Did I miss anyone?
Same thing was done to Troi in TNG when she tested for full Commander. The no-win forced her to choose a crewmate to die to save the ship in a holodeck simulation. She failed until she realized someone had to die. Of course the person she ordered protested but eventually went off to their "death" for the greater good. Back to the subject: Kudos to him for thinking outside the box, very creative, hopefully it will be channeled in a positive direction.
The problem with these sorts of incidents is that on the unlikely chance it had been an actual terrorist attack, the police could be sued if they wasted any time at all. That would include calling the closed library.
That's the problem with this whole thing: the police can't afford to verify the calls and have to treat all of them as real.
Scenario goes like this: 911 call comes in 911 dispatcher verifies location and forwards dispatch info to local police Local police flag this up to SWAT for immediate response WHILE AND AT THE SAME TIME calling the library for verification Local police discover it's a prank and notify SWAT en-route so that when they arrive, they're expecting everything to be fine and just do a once-over with a single uniformed officer instead of a full SWAT deployment.
Nobody gets sued, nobody gets harmed, and the SWAT team is ready for redeployment much faster than otherwise (plus, they have MUCH less paperwork to fill out).
911 operator gets no answer as the library IS CLOSED DID YOU MISS THAT PART? I was a first responder who backed up the local SWAT team a few times, both real & false alarms. These guys take everything, including their training mock scenarios very seriously. I got shot (training rounds still hurt like a mother-) for showing up late at a mock hostage scenario at a local sports stadium once. The bad guys took control of the announcers booth, and were holding the PA guy hostage. It was funny hearing the bad guys demand a million dollars and a helicopter on the 50 yard line over the PA and insulting the SWAT team the whole time. I can only imagine what someone outside was thinking if they heard that.
So how does one get on this "list"? I have absolutely no problem with any hajis showing up on my doorstep, I'll gladly let them meet 72 virgins...or whatever is waiting for them...
I used to work in the telecommunications field before I moved to IT (not a big change, but I digress) I started as a field worker, house to house doing the physical repair work. I was often warned "this caller is a real ass" by our dispatcher which I found it meant they managed to escalate the call to a real supervisor. Almost without exception when I showed up knocking on the door, they were always sweet & polite. The reason: I was a real body was standing there to help them, not read a script. After years of doing that, I briefly left the field looking elsewhere and when that idea fizzled I went back to telecommunications but decided to take my knowledge into the call center, thinking better hours, no bad weather and nearly the same pay. After training, I lasted about 3 weeks on the phone, forced to read from a script when I knew exactly what needed to be done to fix the issue, forced to use only IE, at times intentionally not telling a user the whole truth (we were not allowed to tell users that service would be interrupted for 6-8 hours overnight for upgrade work), working overnight didn't help either....drunks, bullies, and general asses calling. I had enough and had a connection to get into IT and took it.
But of course, the person who is stealing your credit card info is most likely your waiter, and they have a minute or two with your card over at the POS to copy down the CVV manually.
And this is why the United States needs to move to EMV (Chip & Pin) like the rest of the world. Rather than the waiter taking your card away, they bring you a hand-held terminal, which you then take and perform the last portion of the contract yourself, with the card never leaving your hands.
Funny, my new Chip & PIN card came in the mail from one of my CC last week...still no word on the PIN yet, perhaps I need to contact them directly & no it is not my current bank...
In October 2012 I was on vacation visiting an old Army buddy. He is a firefighter/paramedic and happened to be on duty the night Chicago Fire premiered. As a former firefighter/EMT myself, he invited me to the station to watch with his shift. Within 2 minutes we were all howling and how ridiculously bad the show was written. One of the guys was online chatting with some of the other firefighter/paramedics who were watching at home. I think they hit almost every stereotype they could fit in that first episode. I still watch Chicago Fire when my schedule allows, and still shake my head at how badly the show is written. I actually watch for the plot lines that aren't wrapped around fire/EMS situations. True it's fluff but that's what I will expect from CSI:Cyber, terrible hacker/computer writing, maybe a believable personal plot that will all be fluff. My police friends have the same complaints about Chicago Police too, but that's another story...
Welcome to Europe! If you scream assault you will be laughed at. I am currently immigrating to the Netherlands, there are bike lanes all over the country, they are bike lanes not for anything else. My first time there, being a tourist I stopped on a bike lane to take a photo...the man who ran me over never apologized he just hit me and continued on...my Bride and in-laws politely informed me I was wrong and photos should be taken off the bike path. They also were snickering as I was picking myself up after being hit.