I wondered whether such a thing already exists (the Internet seemingly has everything) so I did a quick search. I didn't find a portable Faraday cage, but I did find SharkSkin Covert Electromagnetic Trilaminate Dive Hood which claims to "reduces the Human Body's Electric Signal making you Less-Detectable to Underwater Marine Life." I wonder if it would work the other way also: Reduce electromagnetic frequencies entering a human brain.
Of course, WiFi Allergies are 100% bunk, but it might be an interesting "treatment" for the psychological symptoms. As a bonus, we'll know not to complain about the WiFi being down to people walking around with SharkSkin hoods.
While I don't have depression or any other medically diagnosed condition, I can sympathize with having a daily battle with your brain. Mine seems determined to convince me that nobody likes/loves me, that I stink at everything I do, and that everything that goes wrong is somehow my fault. I fight it back the best I can, but my brain is relentless. Some days I beat it back and others I sink into misery over the world hating me so much.
Now what I have is extremely minor compared to what other people have to deal with. I don't know how people with those conditions deal with it. (Not only with the condition, but the people who inevitably tell them "well, you should just smile and you'll stop being depressed!")
Last night, I thought my wife was asleep and I went about upgrading our router's firmware. Turns out she was watching Hulu. I can confirm that my wife also suffers from a Lack-of-Wifi allergy. No WiFi made her really cranky. I think it's contagious too because the longer the router was down (I encountered difficulties bringing it back up after the firmware upgrade), the crankier I got as well. All of the symptoms went away once the router worked again and the WiFi came back on.
If a baseless accusation of being a John ruins your marriage, you got bigger problems to worry about. I'd recommend you visit a good divorce attorney tomorrow.
This isn't just some random guy walking up to a couple and saying "Your husband was seen with a prostitute." This is an official letter from the police. There's (for better or worse) a sense of authority there. People (such as his wife, family, friends, co-workers) will think "they wouldn't be accusing him of that unless there was proof it happened." Even if he denies it, the doubt will still be there. (After all, someone who is guilty would deny it too, right?)
This could either lead to more problems or worsen existing ones. Perhaps the couple is going through money problems and stress is running high. The husband was supposed to be out looking for work (and was) but now the wife wonders if instead he was spending what little money they have left on prostitutes. Is it rational? No, but people can often be irrational when in the heat of the moment. Something like this could crumble a relationship all because LA is trying to "tackle pre-crime."
Coming at this from another angle, if it doesn't ruin relationships, it could ruin the reputation of the police department (or what little reputation it has left). If people see these letters as a joke, then any accusation from the police might be seen as false. Actual criminal cases could be impacted because people don't take the police seriously.
I know someone whose wife was pregnant. The pregnancy went horribly wrong and the fetus had zero chance of survival (congenital deformities as well as no bladder or kidneys). They had to make a choice I wouldn't wish on anyone: Have an abortion or carry it to term and give birth to a dead baby. The latter would also have put his wife in danger also so they decided on the abortion.
On their way into the clinic, they were accosted by pro-life demonstrators who verbally abused them for "murdering their baby." Here's a couple who is making a horrible decision after being through a horrible situation and these people just walk up with no knowledge of the situation and pile more abuse on. When his wife was taken in for the procedure (he wasn't allowed in), he decided he had enough and confronted them. He even videoed it and posted it to YouTube as well as blogged about it.
Regardless of your views, preying on people at their weakest (physically or psychologically) is just wrong. If you want to oppose abortion in the political arena, go right ahead (but don't be surprised if you're opposed by those who want abortion to remain an option). However, don't just assume you know the whole tale and then assume you know what's right for the person you're accosting. Some people need to re-learn the grade school lesson about what happens when you "assume."
(NOTE: I'm using the general "you" here. Not referring to anyone in particular here.)
The simple truth is that you need to line up a long term (9-12 month) freelance contract before you quit your day job.
And you've hit on one of my three top reasons why I would find the transition to full-time freelancer to be tricky. (Right after "I prefer the steady income of a salaried job" and "I'm horrible at selling myself.") Right now I freelance in my spare time. I can put in about 10 hours a week freelancing in addition to my full-time job. This gives me enough time to take on one or two clients without overbooking myself (or winding up with no life because I'm working 24 hours a day).
If I were to go full-time freelancer, I'd need more clients, but I can't take on more while also working at my day-job. So I'd need to rely on a greatly reduced income for a few months until I built up enough clients to match my current salary. Of course, this could take months and months during which we'd fall more and more behind financially.
This isn't to say that it couldn't be done. (If I were ever let go from my job and couldn't find a new one right away, full-time freelance might wind up being my new work-situation.) It's just that, at this point in my life, it is an unlikely and very risky path for me to take.
The judgement effectively put the song in the public domain. If someone else stepped forward today to claim copyright on the song, they would need to prove not only why they should be granted copyright on it, but why they stayed silent so long while Warner/Chappell Music claimed copyright on it. In short, they would have a severe uphill battle to be awarded copyright on Happy Birthday.
The only problem with this is that the costs for checking the validity of patents would then be put on the companies sued for patent infringement. Small companies might not be able to afford lengthy lawsuits and might just settle with the patent trolls so bad patents would not only continue to be used, but would get "settlement momentum" in their favor.
If patent examiners actually examined patents, the courts would only need to deal with the edge cases and the patent lawsuit costs on businesses would drop. Yes, this might mean more government expenses to hire patent examiners who actually do their jobs, but these costs would spread out across everyone - not just a few companies being sued.
Software patents also tend to be constantly amended until they are as vague as possible. These can then sit unused for 10 years at which time they are dusted off, interpreted to apply to some widely used technology, and pointed at to demand payments for use of said technology.
The USPTO can (and does) award patents for almost anything. The patent examiners aren't experts in every field and if they receive advice that an item, method, or process is unique and non-obvious, they will award a patent.
But a patent is just a pretty piece of paper until you try to enforce it. Only then will the courts actually look at the merit of the patent and declare it enforceable or invalid.
Except the courts tend to start from the position "If the USPTO granted this, it is valid unless proven otherwise." So anyone can patent anything and then the people sued for patent infringement are on the hook to prove the patent isn't valid. This can cost a lot of time and money (not to mention stress of wondering if your entire business will go under because of some stupid patent troll). It can be easier and cost less time/money/stress just to pay the patent troll (especially if you are a small business with a small legal budget).
The USPTO should be the ones initially deciding whether or not a patent is valid. The courts' responsibility should be to catch the few that the USPTO lets through, not to catch all of them and decide which are valid and which aren't. The fact that the USPTO seems to want to punt responsibility for checking the validity of patents onto the courts is one of the major reasons that the patent system is broken.
The key reason why I don't freelance is because I suck at selling myself to new people. Once I am in they tend to love me, but before that I am just like any other smo.
I have this problem too. This is second only to "need a steady source of income" in reasons why I only freelance on the side. I know I'm good at what I do, but when it comes time to sell my talents to others my brain suddenly turns on me and tells me that I know nothing and there are tons of people out there who know more than I do. The latter is true - there's always someone who knows more than you - but just because others know more than me doesn't mean I know nothing. Still, it's hard to battle your own brain.
There's a term for this: Impostor Syndrome. You feel like a fraud who is going to be discovered at any moment - all despite the skills you have or your works being well received. I've heard from many IT professionals who feel this way also.
A friend of mine who freelances full-time told me I should quit my day job and become a full-time freelancer. And, yes, there is a temptation there because the freelance rates I charge are over 3 times my day job's hourly rate. However, whenever I look into it, I quickly realize how much more I'd need to make just to stay at my current level (once you factor in health care and other benefits I'm currently getting), how much I'd need to work unpaid (to drum up more business), and how much my "salary" would fluctuate month to month. That last one is a deal breaker. I'm supporting my wife and two kids. I can't afford to not know how much I'm going to be making month to month because the work has dried up for a couple of months, but might pick up soon (maybe, perhaps). I need that steady paycheck so I can budget how much we can spend on necessities, how much we can spend on niceties, and how much we can save. I have nothing but respect for those who freelance full-time, but don't listen to anyone who tries to claim that it is easy and 100% guaranteed to make you more money than a full-time job.
A friend of mine, who freelances full-time, keeps insisting that I should quit my full-time job and become a full-time freelancer. I've looked at it and the potential money I could make far outstrips what I earn at my current job. However, there's the potential of freelancing and the reality. The reality would be that I would work about half of a day on billable work and half a day on non-billable work (e.g. communicating with clients, drumming up new business, etc.). I also wouldn't have the stability of knowing that this month's paycheck will be the same as last month's and the same as next month's. I might make a lot this month only to see the work dry up for two months before picking up again. My monthly income could fluctuate wildly which isn't that great when you're supporting a family.
I have nothing but respect for the people who freelance full-time, but that's not for me and I don't think people who tout this as "the next big thing" have workers' best interests at heart.
It's not technology which is driving people to having six jobs in a lifetime. It's greedy fucking corporations laying off loyal workers at the drop of a dime. "Oh no, quarterly profits are down a tenth of a percent. Lay off 25% of those bottom-line-sucking employees!".
Followed by the executives saying "We've saved $10 million so let's give ourselves $11 million raises. Oh no, we're in the red again. Time for more layoffs!"
Granted, it's not in person, but I'm a fan of Bernie Sanders. As for what he would do differently from Chavez? Well, for one he wouldn't abolish the US Constitution. He would have to work with Congress and within the confines set by the Supreme Court just the same as any other presidential candidate will have to. If you're asking about his specific policy stances, you should probably go to his website for those.
Wasn't it all but admitted to that they are stopping the data collection because now they expect the phone companies to do the data collection for them and give them unlimited access to it? This way, they can say "we've stopped data collection" while still getting all the data that they would have had access to had they continued collecting it.
As opposed to your "nothing bad happened to me so obviously nothing needs to change?"
Not every bad thing means change needs to happen, but you can't just dismiss offhand any account of bad things happening and resultant calls for change.
I don't think it's the anonymity that brings out the worst in people, but the separation of comment and audience. As I sit here typing this, my "audience" is a bunch of pixels on the screen. It's all too easy to remember that there's an actual human on the other side of those pixels. Most people wouldn't say horribly offensive stuff to a person's face for various reasons ranging from it's rude to they don't want to be fired to they don't want to get punched in the face. Online communications take away many of those societal pressures to stay polite which leads some people to act as though the people they are communicating with don't deserve basic human respect.
This isn't to say that using real names wouldn't keep some people civil - it might for some people - but the vast majority of online idiots will continue to be idiots whether they post as a pseudonym or their real names.
The problem I see with this - and base this statement on first hand experience - is that you either tend to be very distracted and always looking at the next thing, or you tend to be incredible focused on one single thing for a very long time.
My brain is like that already without any help from drugs! So does this mean I'm living a free, perpetual low-level acid trip?
I actually did switch one of my systems to LibreOffice. I haven't gotten around to switching the rest, but I do like it better than OpenOffice. OpenOffice is better than Microsoft Office, though.
I've been putting off my Windows 10 upgrade because, as great as it seemed like the OS was going to be, the spyware and now the uninstalling of programs has completely put me off. I have a spare laptop (Windows Vista, I believe) that I mainly use for Kodi and to share out my external hard drive. I'm now considering installing Linux on it as a test. I'm not sure which distribution to use. Which one would be the best to migrate from Windows for Kodi/network file sharing? Would it allow me to boot the laptop back into Windows (in case I needed to access something from there)? Would it support USB remote controls/keyboards like this one?
If this install succeeds, my main laptop (used for web development, web browsing, document creation with OpenOffice, and light image editing) could be next.
The actual DMCA process (when not abused) isn't so bad:
1) Copyright holder claims that John Doe violated his copyright. 2) Copyright holder takes ISP to court to prove this actually happened. 3a) Copyright holder's case doesn't convince the judge to issue a subpoena. End here. 3b) The judge is convinced and issues a subpoena. 4) The ISP gives the copyright holder the user's information. 5) The copyright holder sues the user.
Overall, the process is relatively fair. The ISP can't be expected to be the judge of whether something is a copyright violation. That's for the courts. There are definitely improvements that can be made like in penalty amounts, but it's a decent process.
The problem here is that RightsCorp and the judge are saying that the process should be:
1) Copyright holder makes a few accusations against a user. 2) ISP kicks user off.
No court involved. No burden of proof. Nothing. Just "X did this wrong" followed by punishment.
Oh, there are plenty of people here that own copyrights to things. Did you ever take a photo with your smartphone? Congrats, you own a copyright! Now if a hundred of us were to claim that RightsCorp violated our copyrights (whether or not they did is immaterial since RightsCorp is claiming that the mere accusation counts), RightsCorp's ISP would have no choice but to kick them offline.
Slashdot Mirror
I wondered whether such a thing already exists (the Internet seemingly has everything) so I did a quick search. I didn't find a portable Faraday cage, but I did find SharkSkin Covert Electromagnetic Trilaminate Dive Hood which claims to "reduces the Human Body's Electric Signal making you Less-Detectable to Underwater Marine Life." I wonder if it would work the other way also: Reduce electromagnetic frequencies entering a human brain.
Of course, WiFi Allergies are 100% bunk, but it might be an interesting "treatment" for the psychological symptoms. As a bonus, we'll know not to complain about the WiFi being down to people walking around with SharkSkin hoods.
Everyone knows D&D doesn't cause death. It's dice that causes death!
While I don't have depression or any other medically diagnosed condition, I can sympathize with having a daily battle with your brain. Mine seems determined to convince me that nobody likes/loves me, that I stink at everything I do, and that everything that goes wrong is somehow my fault. I fight it back the best I can, but my brain is relentless. Some days I beat it back and others I sink into misery over the world hating me so much.
Now what I have is extremely minor compared to what other people have to deal with. I don't know how people with those conditions deal with it. (Not only with the condition, but the people who inevitably tell them "well, you should just smile and you'll stop being depressed!")
Last night, I thought my wife was asleep and I went about upgrading our router's firmware. Turns out she was watching Hulu. I can confirm that my wife also suffers from a Lack-of-Wifi allergy. No WiFi made her really cranky. I think it's contagious too because the longer the router was down (I encountered difficulties bringing it back up after the firmware upgrade), the crankier I got as well. All of the symptoms went away once the router worked again and the WiFi came back on.
But the more you dilute his royalty fee over time, the more it is worth. If you pay him $1 spread out over 20 years, he'll be rich beyond measure!
This isn't just some random guy walking up to a couple and saying "Your husband was seen with a prostitute." This is an official letter from the police. There's (for better or worse) a sense of authority there. People (such as his wife, family, friends, co-workers) will think "they wouldn't be accusing him of that unless there was proof it happened." Even if he denies it, the doubt will still be there. (After all, someone who is guilty would deny it too, right?)
This could either lead to more problems or worsen existing ones. Perhaps the couple is going through money problems and stress is running high. The husband was supposed to be out looking for work (and was) but now the wife wonders if instead he was spending what little money they have left on prostitutes. Is it rational? No, but people can often be irrational when in the heat of the moment. Something like this could crumble a relationship all because LA is trying to "tackle pre-crime."
Coming at this from another angle, if it doesn't ruin relationships, it could ruin the reputation of the police department (or what little reputation it has left). If people see these letters as a joke, then any accusation from the police might be seen as false. Actual criminal cases could be impacted because people don't take the police seriously.
I know someone whose wife was pregnant. The pregnancy went horribly wrong and the fetus had zero chance of survival (congenital deformities as well as no bladder or kidneys). They had to make a choice I wouldn't wish on anyone: Have an abortion or carry it to term and give birth to a dead baby. The latter would also have put his wife in danger also so they decided on the abortion.
On their way into the clinic, they were accosted by pro-life demonstrators who verbally abused them for "murdering their baby." Here's a couple who is making a horrible decision after being through a horrible situation and these people just walk up with no knowledge of the situation and pile more abuse on. When his wife was taken in for the procedure (he wasn't allowed in), he decided he had enough and confronted them. He even videoed it and posted it to YouTube as well as blogged about it.
Regardless of your views, preying on people at their weakest (physically or psychologically) is just wrong. If you want to oppose abortion in the political arena, go right ahead (but don't be surprised if you're opposed by those who want abortion to remain an option). However, don't just assume you know the whole tale and then assume you know what's right for the person you're accosting. Some people need to re-learn the grade school lesson about what happens when you "assume."
(NOTE: I'm using the general "you" here. Not referring to anyone in particular here.)
And you've hit on one of my three top reasons why I would find the transition to full-time freelancer to be tricky. (Right after "I prefer the steady income of a salaried job" and "I'm horrible at selling myself.") Right now I freelance in my spare time. I can put in about 10 hours a week freelancing in addition to my full-time job. This gives me enough time to take on one or two clients without overbooking myself (or winding up with no life because I'm working 24 hours a day).
If I were to go full-time freelancer, I'd need more clients, but I can't take on more while also working at my day-job. So I'd need to rely on a greatly reduced income for a few months until I built up enough clients to match my current salary. Of course, this could take months and months during which we'd fall more and more behind financially.
This isn't to say that it couldn't be done. (If I were ever let go from my job and couldn't find a new one right away, full-time freelance might wind up being my new work-situation.) It's just that, at this point in my life, it is an unlikely and very risky path for me to take.
The judgement effectively put the song in the public domain. If someone else stepped forward today to claim copyright on the song, they would need to prove not only why they should be granted copyright on it, but why they stayed silent so long while Warner/Chappell Music claimed copyright on it. In short, they would have a severe uphill battle to be awarded copyright on Happy Birthday.
The only problem with this is that the costs for checking the validity of patents would then be put on the companies sued for patent infringement. Small companies might not be able to afford lengthy lawsuits and might just settle with the patent trolls so bad patents would not only continue to be used, but would get "settlement momentum" in their favor.
If patent examiners actually examined patents, the courts would only need to deal with the edge cases and the patent lawsuit costs on businesses would drop. Yes, this might mean more government expenses to hire patent examiners who actually do their jobs, but these costs would spread out across everyone - not just a few companies being sued.
Software patents also tend to be constantly amended until they are as vague as possible. These can then sit unused for 10 years at which time they are dusted off, interpreted to apply to some widely used technology, and pointed at to demand payments for use of said technology.
Except the courts tend to start from the position "If the USPTO granted this, it is valid unless proven otherwise." So anyone can patent anything and then the people sued for patent infringement are on the hook to prove the patent isn't valid. This can cost a lot of time and money (not to mention stress of wondering if your entire business will go under because of some stupid patent troll). It can be easier and cost less time/money/stress just to pay the patent troll (especially if you are a small business with a small legal budget).
The USPTO should be the ones initially deciding whether or not a patent is valid. The courts' responsibility should be to catch the few that the USPTO lets through, not to catch all of them and decide which are valid and which aren't. The fact that the USPTO seems to want to punt responsibility for checking the validity of patents onto the courts is one of the major reasons that the patent system is broken.
I have this problem too. This is second only to "need a steady source of income" in reasons why I only freelance on the side. I know I'm good at what I do, but when it comes time to sell my talents to others my brain suddenly turns on me and tells me that I know nothing and there are tons of people out there who know more than I do. The latter is true - there's always someone who knows more than you - but just because others know more than me doesn't mean I know nothing. Still, it's hard to battle your own brain.
There's a term for this: Impostor Syndrome. You feel like a fraud who is going to be discovered at any moment - all despite the skills you have or your works being well received. I've heard from many IT professionals who feel this way also.
A friend of mine who freelances full-time told me I should quit my day job and become a full-time freelancer. And, yes, there is a temptation there because the freelance rates I charge are over 3 times my day job's hourly rate. However, whenever I look into it, I quickly realize how much more I'd need to make just to stay at my current level (once you factor in health care and other benefits I'm currently getting), how much I'd need to work unpaid (to drum up more business), and how much my "salary" would fluctuate month to month. That last one is a deal breaker. I'm supporting my wife and two kids. I can't afford to not know how much I'm going to be making month to month because the work has dried up for a couple of months, but might pick up soon (maybe, perhaps). I need that steady paycheck so I can budget how much we can spend on necessities, how much we can spend on niceties, and how much we can save. I have nothing but respect for those who freelance full-time, but don't listen to anyone who tries to claim that it is easy and 100% guaranteed to make you more money than a full-time job.
A friend of mine, who freelances full-time, keeps insisting that I should quit my full-time job and become a full-time freelancer. I've looked at it and the potential money I could make far outstrips what I earn at my current job. However, there's the potential of freelancing and the reality. The reality would be that I would work about half of a day on billable work and half a day on non-billable work (e.g. communicating with clients, drumming up new business, etc.). I also wouldn't have the stability of knowing that this month's paycheck will be the same as last month's and the same as next month's. I might make a lot this month only to see the work dry up for two months before picking up again. My monthly income could fluctuate wildly which isn't that great when you're supporting a family.
I have nothing but respect for the people who freelance full-time, but that's not for me and I don't think people who tout this as "the next big thing" have workers' best interests at heart.
Followed by the executives saying "We've saved $10 million so let's give ourselves $11 million raises. Oh no, we're in the red again. Time for more layoffs!"
Granted, it's not in person, but I'm a fan of Bernie Sanders. As for what he would do differently from Chavez? Well, for one he wouldn't abolish the US Constitution. He would have to work with Congress and within the confines set by the Supreme Court just the same as any other presidential candidate will have to. If you're asking about his specific policy stances, you should probably go to his website for those.
Wasn't it all but admitted to that they are stopping the data collection because now they expect the phone companies to do the data collection for them and give them unlimited access to it? This way, they can say "we've stopped data collection" while still getting all the data that they would have had access to had they continued collecting it.
As opposed to your "nothing bad happened to me so obviously nothing needs to change?"
Not every bad thing means change needs to happen, but you can't just dismiss offhand any account of bad things happening and resultant calls for change.
I don't think it's the anonymity that brings out the worst in people, but the separation of comment and audience. As I sit here typing this, my "audience" is a bunch of pixels on the screen. It's all too easy to remember that there's an actual human on the other side of those pixels. Most people wouldn't say horribly offensive stuff to a person's face for various reasons ranging from it's rude to they don't want to be fired to they don't want to get punched in the face. Online communications take away many of those societal pressures to stay polite which leads some people to act as though the people they are communicating with don't deserve basic human respect.
This isn't to say that using real names wouldn't keep some people civil - it might for some people - but the vast majority of online idiots will continue to be idiots whether they post as a pseudonym or their real names.
My brain is like that already without any help from drugs! So does this mean I'm living a free, perpetual low-level acid trip?
I actually did switch one of my systems to LibreOffice. I haven't gotten around to switching the rest, but I do like it better than OpenOffice. OpenOffice is better than Microsoft Office, though.
I've been putting off my Windows 10 upgrade because, as great as it seemed like the OS was going to be, the spyware and now the uninstalling of programs has completely put me off. I have a spare laptop (Windows Vista, I believe) that I mainly use for Kodi and to share out my external hard drive. I'm now considering installing Linux on it as a test. I'm not sure which distribution to use. Which one would be the best to migrate from Windows for Kodi/network file sharing? Would it allow me to boot the laptop back into Windows (in case I needed to access something from there)? Would it support USB remote controls/keyboards like this one?
If this install succeeds, my main laptop (used for web development, web browsing, document creation with OpenOffice, and light image editing) could be next.
The actual DMCA process (when not abused) isn't so bad:
1) Copyright holder claims that John Doe violated his copyright.
2) Copyright holder takes ISP to court to prove this actually happened.
3a) Copyright holder's case doesn't convince the judge to issue a subpoena. End here.
3b) The judge is convinced and issues a subpoena.
4) The ISP gives the copyright holder the user's information.
5) The copyright holder sues the user.
Overall, the process is relatively fair. The ISP can't be expected to be the judge of whether something is a copyright violation. That's for the courts. There are definitely improvements that can be made like in penalty amounts, but it's a decent process.
The problem here is that RightsCorp and the judge are saying that the process should be:
1) Copyright holder makes a few accusations against a user.
2) ISP kicks user off.
No court involved. No burden of proof. Nothing. Just "X did this wrong" followed by punishment.
Oh, there are plenty of people here that own copyrights to things. Did you ever take a photo with your smartphone? Congrats, you own a copyright! Now if a hundred of us were to claim that RightsCorp violated our copyrights (whether or not they did is immaterial since RightsCorp is claiming that the mere accusation counts), RightsCorp's ISP would have no choice but to kick them offline.