Hamas have conspired to lend themselves a false legitimacy by claiming high civilian losses, when in fact they used human shields during ground offenses by deploying armed soldiers dressed as civilians in violation of the Geneva Convention rules of engagement. Hamas leadership has sought shelter underneath hospitals, putting the population least able to defend themselves at great risk. They even used a captured Red Cross vehicle to launch attacks, a flagrant violation of the Geneva Convention. Hamas have used mosques, schools, and civilian homes as hideouts and to store weapons and rocket launch sites or have placed their storage and/or sites adjacent to those dwellings.
The collateral damage was stragetically planned and such tactics had been previously used by Saddam Hussein during Operation Desert Storm of the 1991 Iraq-Kuwait conflict. They have attempted to deceive and manipulate international press and public opinion by staging rocket damaged areas in civilian areas and exploiting image manipulation, and the international press now carefully scrutinizes photographs and sources of information from those war zones.
Hamas has been planning a campaign of deceit from the beginning. While neither side are angels in this conflict, the greater sin is upon Hamas for their deceit.
Why on earth do we have these agencies that can't do their own work is beyond me...
I smell a rat. Many federal agencies have fallen victim to corporate control via regulatory capture.
Did it ever occur to anyone that one of the companies has a mole in the FTC and they are just using this offer to sniff out solutions to counteract on their side? Like applying for a patent to keep such solutions off the market?
It looks like you're trying to surf the internet. Would you like help?
1) Yes
2) No
3) Get me a beer
4) Google "Kill Clippy"
5) I saw what you did in front of the computer last night. Shame if your girlfriend were to find out
I got my BTEE in 1988 and enjoyed a career as a Systems Engineer combining EE skills with software development skills without a CS degree.
During college I had classes in microprocessors, assembler, APL (shudder), and structured programming using Pascal. All provided the foundation for picking up other languages and CS concepts on my own.
I went on to become proficient in C/C++, VB, LabVIEW and had successful projects in database systems, ATE (Automated Test Equipment), and image processing. ATE drew on both my EE and software skills heavily. Image processing really separates the men from the boys and put my college skillset to work as it required statistics, advanced math, structured programming, GUI concepts, efficient assembler concepts, and even my EE background to crank out a good imaging system.
Another college skill I used in systems engineering is technical writing. It's not a course often seen in CS/IT curriculums yet was essential for drawing up competent user manuals and for business development.
From my experience with other CS people in the field, I don't think just a CS degree is enough. The CS/IT field is crowded, but what many employers are looking for are systems people who are skilled in multiple fields. Combine the CS studies with others such as EE or ME and it will open a lot more doors. Having multiple fields also broadens your skill set - if the job market for CS is contracted, you can always fall back on the other skills.
The major labels' profit model based around sales of shiny circular pieces of plastic is no longer valid because customers stopped patronizing them years ago out of disgust over labels suing their customers and exploiting musicians out of royalties. So their new profit model is based around litigation against customers. Looked how well that worked during the dinosaur age.
Image Processing - my primary job function - relies on calculus, statistics, algebra, trig, geometry, matrix math, domain transforms, you name it. Look at any image processing function library and you will see functions heavy in math. We need developers with image processing experience and a strong math background is a requirement. This is the stuff that separates the men from the boys.
My job title is Measurements Engineer and you better believe that advanced math is a regular tool. Our company has the largest staff of PhDs, MSxx, and other degreed personnel in the country and math is the tool for solving problems.
Anybody who has ever developed a control system for large industrial format actuators has used an advanced math tool involving calculus. It's called PID - Proportional Integral Derivative - which is an essential tool to optimize latency between command and response and prevent destructive overshoots and oscillations.
Content providers keep adding more and more commercials to content, the content gets worse and worse, and they keep driving up subscription costs by demanding more $$$ from cable companies and demanding worthless channels to be bundled together.
TW charges too much, keeps pushing their prime channels to higher priced tiers, and refuses to offer als carte programming to customers.
Comcast is no better than TW, and to add salt to the wound they spy on their customers for the government and the MAFIAA.
DirecTV has poor service, fails to deliver product, and screws customers for cancelling services. I had them for 4 weeks with the promise of internet service. No one installed the internet service. After being passed around DirecTV phone support for 90 minutes, I cancelled my service because they failed to deliver. And I STILL had to pay a $135 early termination fee, despite not signing any contractual agreement.
The industry is getting greedy and corrupt, and consumers are tired of it. Very soon my parents will join the exodus.
There's no money in it anymore for authors. They got tired of getting screwed out of royalties from Hollywood Accounting which used fraudulent accounting tricks to convert a net profit into a net loss.
Authors are refusing to partner with Hollywood, so they are resorting to easier content like remakes or TV-shows-turned-into-movies or comic books.
Hollywood hasn't made a movie in YEARS that was a good story that didn't rely on CGI.
Obama has been catering to public unions his entire term and this is just another example of it. His solutions to high unemployment over the years has been to expand the public sector. Besides the political deception that he is "creating jobs", that translates to higher taxes for the rest of us which we can ill afford.
I live in New York state and the reason we have the highest state taxes is public unions. They hold too much influence in state government and there are too many lawmakers sympathetic to the public unions. Fifteen years ago there were 10 private sector jobs paying for every 1 public sector job, now it is 4 to 1 which has been pushing up taxes. This worsening ratio continues because 1)businesses are leaving the state taking jobs with them and 2) the state keeps expanding the public sector at the expense of the taxpayer. State pensions is another driving force behind high taxes (state employees don't even pay income tax on their PENSIONS). Many state citizens are leaving and soon I will join the exodus. In the last twenty years, only one new business has set up shop in New York state. One!
There are too many parallels between NYS and Obama's public sector policies. Obama has proven that he is hostile to the private sector by broadening regulations, and the reason businesses are reluctant to hire is because they have had to employ resources just to ensure compliance with the new regulations! Four more years of Obama and businesses will be leaving the country. Obama just doesn't get it and he never will.
The solution is not to throw $$$ at the problem. The solution is to get the parents involved in their childrens' education.
A judge shouldn't be publicly trying to change the laws
SCOTUS has been doing exactly that with Obamacare and Arizona's illegal immigrant enforcement, as well as many other laws throughout its history. State courts also do the same thing with state and county laws.
The court system cannot create law, but it can scuttle law(s) that it finds egregious or unconstitutional. Posner is well within his jurisprudence with his actions.
As for appearances of an agenda, Posner is hardly the first. I'm surprised no one has shone the spotlight on Obama appointee SCOTUS justice Elena Kagan for not recusing herself from the Obamacare case.
Back when Windows 95 was announced, IBM was a competitor with their OS/2. IBM kept requesting but never got the technical details of W95 until the day of release. That intentional withholding just one spark of the antitrust case against Microsoft.
Seventeen years later MS pulls the same trick again and have confirmed that they are never, ever to be trusted.
What worries me more is regulatory capture. US corporations have been infiltrating federal agencies (FDA, EPA, ICC, FCC just to name a few) to place cronies in top positions who are sympathetic to the corporations rather than serving the public.
Of course the R/MAAFIA would need huge $$$ resources to do this on an international basis and we should be boycotting them to prevent them from using sleazy underhanded tactics to accomplish their greedy evil plans of world domination (look how they purposely shut out public review of ACTA/SOPA).
Not knowing the election/appointment process of the international agencies, just how vulnerable are they to regulatory capture?
They are the people who actually manufacture the devices for the OEMs. Microsoft can surely hire Foxconn or Flextronics to build their tablets. iPads and Surface tablets coming off parallel assembly lines in the same building at Foxconn. Don't think it can't or won't happen.
Manufacturing is one thing.
Designing is another.
Given Microsoft's track record of designing unreliable software, I don't have much faith in their design of hardware.
And I have no interest in a tablet running an OS that is a popular target for hackers, viruses, and rootkits. It happened to me one too many times and has pushed me away from Windows.
I've been hearing impaired from a birth defect and worn hearing aids for over forty years. I have been in the engineering field for my career and currently work for a large worldwide corporation known for its generous benefits.
But the insurance pays up to $800 for a hearing aid. You can't get a digital aid for that little $$$.
I can tell you that the digital hearing aid I have been using for the last twenty years is from ReSound. It is the best I have ever worn, the clarity is excellent and I seldom have to ask people to repeat anymore. I can walk from a quiet office to a loud production floor with zero adjustment. The only situation it doesn't work well (no hearing aid does) is a large party with loud chatter.
I have tried the newer digital aids (Widex, Oticon) and they are not as good as the ReSound.
We pay for (x) minutes, (y) text msgs, and (z) bandwidth per month for our mobile devices. Ads consume those resources so we effectively pay for those ads. That's not what mobile customers signed up for.
It's the same reason that the feds banned unsolicited ads to fax machines and business phones - the end receiver pays for the transmission.
It would be a big inconvenience if I got an incoming call signal while talking to a human and only find out it is an ad.
"Those who fail to study history are doomed to repeat it"
Back in the 1950s, New York City enacted a dance tax. Any club or hall that had floor space for dancing had to pay the tax.
The clubowners' response was to fill the dance floors with tables and chairs. With no place for people to dance, they evaded the tax.
Music performers would get booked under the condition that they do not play music that could be danced to. This gave rise to bop and other forms of improvisation jazz.
Needless to say the "dance tax" was revoked.
Besides the proposed dance tax, the wedding/parade tax is beyond absurd and is a greedy power grab by the copyright industry. First off unlike a hall or club, there is no admission being charged for a wedding or parade.
If the salaries for those positions were acceptable to the people with those skills, they would have no problem filling the positions.
I get weekly emails from companies wanting me to do contract work, all senior engineer level work, as a contractor (no benefits, 1099 work), and the hourly rate is pathetic. Then they cry about not being able to hire engineers, and how we need to outsource/bring in H1Bs. Let them struggle.
Unfortunately too true.
I had a respectable career in contract engineering (not IT) until we got a new VP. I found myself working six months then out of work the other six months. Was actually told I was shut out of other work because of my salary. The last time they brought me back they cut my salary by 20%. When I was let go from that return, I decided I would never work for them again.
Other friends I know at that company had the same thing happen to them. One of them got an offer to return but at half his salary and no benefits. He told them to shove it.
I would agree with you, except I have a much, much bigger problem with corporations sending UNDERCOVER FUCKING AGENTS into people's homes under false pretenses.
Not just undercover agents, but agents who are not affiliated with law enforcement. This is extremely troubling.
While they have uncovered a copyright infringement operation, the case is on very shaky ground because of the tactics under which evidence was procured.
The courts would have serious issues regarding the gathering of evidence by non-law enforcement entities and used to justify a warrant in a court of law. Law enforcement has strict guidelines under which evidence is admissible in a court of law and private entities are not exempt from these guidelines. This is malicious enough that the evidence should be barred from a court of law and the person(s) responsible should be reprimanded.
Legal precedent has been established for DECADES. It is common for vindictive friends or relatives to report a false crime to law authorities. Knowing this, law authorities take such reports with a grain of salt. Founder of Co$ L. Ron Hubbard had a habit of reporting enemies to the FBI during the 1950s communist witch hunt and they eventually just ignored him. Today there are criminal charges for filing a false report of a crime.
Slashdot Mirror
"Cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger!"
"No Coke, just Pepsi"
And let's not forget that during past conflicts:
Hamas have conspired to lend themselves a false legitimacy by claiming high civilian losses, when in fact they used human shields during ground offenses by deploying armed soldiers dressed as civilians in violation of the Geneva Convention rules of engagement. Hamas leadership has sought shelter underneath hospitals, putting the population least able to defend themselves at great risk. They even used a captured Red Cross vehicle to launch attacks, a flagrant violation of the Geneva Convention. Hamas have used mosques, schools, and civilian homes as hideouts and to store weapons and rocket launch sites or have placed their storage and/or sites adjacent to those dwellings.
The collateral damage was stragetically planned and such tactics had been previously used by Saddam Hussein during Operation Desert Storm of the 1991 Iraq-Kuwait conflict. They have attempted to deceive and manipulate international press and public opinion by staging rocket damaged areas in civilian areas and exploiting image manipulation, and the international press now carefully scrutinizes photographs and sources of information from those war zones.
Hamas has been planning a campaign of deceit from the beginning. While neither side are angels in this conflict, the greater sin is upon Hamas for their deceit.
I smell a rat. Many federal agencies have fallen victim to corporate control via regulatory capture.
Did it ever occur to anyone that one of the companies has a mole in the FTC and they are just using this offer to sniff out solutions to counteract on their side? Like applying for a patent to keep such solutions off the market?
We use SSDs in a few Windows machines at work. Running 24/7/365 production. We were replacing them every couple of years.
It looks like you're trying to surf the internet. Would you like help?
1) Yes
2) No
3) Get me a beer
4) Google "Kill Clippy"
5) I saw what you did in front of the computer last night. Shame if your girlfriend were to find out
I got my BTEE in 1988 and enjoyed a career as a Systems Engineer combining EE skills with software development skills without a CS degree.
During college I had classes in microprocessors, assembler, APL (shudder), and structured programming using Pascal. All provided the foundation for picking up other languages and CS concepts on my own.
I went on to become proficient in C/C++, VB, LabVIEW and had successful projects in database systems, ATE (Automated Test Equipment), and image processing. ATE drew on both my EE and software skills heavily. Image processing really separates the men from the boys and put my college skillset to work as it required statistics, advanced math, structured programming, GUI concepts, efficient assembler concepts, and even my EE background to crank out a good imaging system.
Another college skill I used in systems engineering is technical writing. It's not a course often seen in CS/IT curriculums yet was essential for drawing up competent user manuals and for business development.
From my experience with other CS people in the field, I don't think just a CS degree is enough. The CS/IT field is crowded, but what many employers are looking for are systems people who are skilled in multiple fields. Combine the CS studies with others such as EE or ME and it will open a lot more doors. Having multiple fields also broadens your skill set - if the job market for CS is contracted, you can always fall back on the other skills.
The major labels' profit model based around sales of shiny circular pieces of plastic is no longer valid because customers stopped patronizing them years ago out of disgust over labels suing their customers and exploiting musicians out of royalties. So their new profit model is based around litigation against customers. Looked how well that worked during the dinosaur age.
Image Processing - my primary job function - relies on calculus, statistics, algebra, trig, geometry, matrix math, domain transforms, you name it. Look at any image processing function library and you will see functions heavy in math. We need developers with image processing experience and a strong math background is a requirement. This is the stuff that separates the men from the boys.
My job title is Measurements Engineer and you better believe that advanced math is a regular tool. Our company has the largest staff of PhDs, MSxx, and other degreed personnel in the country and math is the tool for solving problems.
Anybody who has ever developed a control system for large industrial format actuators has used an advanced math tool involving calculus. It's called PID - Proportional Integral Derivative - which is an essential tool to optimize latency between command and response and prevent destructive overshoots and oscillations.
Programming isn't all games and accounting.
I use my mother's mother's mother's maiden name. Unless you know my family genealogy, it's a lot harder to get that from Google.
I had to resort to adding layers of generations when my (now ex) wife attempted to open credit cards behind my back.
Content providers keep adding more and more commercials to content, the content gets worse and worse, and they keep driving up subscription costs by demanding more $$$ from cable companies and demanding worthless channels to be bundled together.
TW charges too much, keeps pushing their prime channels to higher priced tiers, and refuses to offer als carte programming to customers.
Comcast is no better than TW, and to add salt to the wound they spy on their customers for the government and the MAFIAA.
DirecTV has poor service, fails to deliver product, and screws customers for cancelling services. I had them for 4 weeks with the promise of internet service. No one installed the internet service. After being passed around DirecTV phone support for 90 minutes, I cancelled my service because they failed to deliver. And I STILL had to pay a $135 early termination fee, despite not signing any contractual agreement.
The industry is getting greedy and corrupt, and consumers are tired of it. Very soon my parents will join the exodus.
There's no money in it anymore for authors. They got tired of getting screwed out of royalties from Hollywood Accounting which used fraudulent accounting tricks to convert a net profit into a net loss.
Authors are refusing to partner with Hollywood, so they are resorting to easier content like remakes or TV-shows-turned-into-movies or comic books.
Hollywood hasn't made a movie in YEARS that was a good story that didn't rely on CGI.
Obama has been catering to public unions his entire term and this is just another example of it. His solutions to high unemployment over the years has been to expand the public sector. Besides the political deception that he is "creating jobs", that translates to higher taxes for the rest of us which we can ill afford.
I live in New York state and the reason we have the highest state taxes is public unions. They hold too much influence in state government and there are too many lawmakers sympathetic to the public unions. Fifteen years ago there were 10 private sector jobs paying for every 1 public sector job, now it is 4 to 1 which has been pushing up taxes. This worsening ratio continues because 1)businesses are leaving the state taking jobs with them and 2) the state keeps expanding the public sector at the expense of the taxpayer. State pensions is another driving force behind high taxes (state employees don't even pay income tax on their PENSIONS). Many state citizens are leaving and soon I will join the exodus. In the last twenty years, only one new business has set up shop in New York state. One!
There are too many parallels between NYS and Obama's public sector policies. Obama has proven that he is hostile to the private sector by broadening regulations, and the reason businesses are reluctant to hire is because they have had to employ resources just to ensure compliance with the new regulations! Four more years of Obama and businesses will be leaving the country. Obama just doesn't get it and he never will.
The solution is not to throw $$$ at the problem. The solution is to get the parents involved in their childrens' education.
SCOTUS has been doing exactly that with Obamacare and Arizona's illegal immigrant enforcement, as well as many other laws throughout its history. State courts also do the same thing with state and county laws.
The court system cannot create law, but it can scuttle law(s) that it finds egregious or unconstitutional. Posner is well within his jurisprudence with his actions.
As for appearances of an agenda, Posner is hardly the first. I'm surprised no one has shone the spotlight on Obama appointee SCOTUS justice Elena Kagan for not recusing herself from the Obamacare case.
Google "gps train accident" and read about the numerous accounts of GPS directing drivers into the path of an oncoming train.
No way would I get behind the wheel of these autonomous vehicles until GPS is fixed.
Back when Windows 95 was announced, IBM was a competitor with their OS/2. IBM kept requesting but never got the technical details of W95 until the day of release. That intentional withholding just one spark of the antitrust case against Microsoft.
Seventeen years later MS pulls the same trick again and have confirmed that they are never, ever to be trusted.
What worries me more is regulatory capture. US corporations have been infiltrating federal agencies (FDA, EPA, ICC, FCC just to name a few) to place cronies in top positions who are sympathetic to the corporations rather than serving the public.
Of course the R/MAAFIA would need huge $$$ resources to do this on an international basis and we should be boycotting them to prevent them from using sleazy underhanded tactics to accomplish their greedy evil plans of world domination (look how they purposely shut out public review of ACTA/SOPA).
Not knowing the election/appointment process of the international agencies, just how vulnerable are they to regulatory capture?
Manufacturing is one thing.
Designing is another.
Given Microsoft's track record of designing unreliable software, I don't have much faith in their design of hardware.
And I have no interest in a tablet running an OS that is a popular target for hackers, viruses, and rootkits. It happened to me one too many times and has pushed me away from Windows.
I've been hearing impaired from a birth defect and worn hearing aids for over forty years. I have been in the engineering field for my career and currently work for a large worldwide corporation known for its generous benefits.
But the insurance pays up to $800 for a hearing aid. You can't get a digital aid for that little $$$.
I can tell you that the digital hearing aid I have been using for the last twenty years is from ReSound. It is the best I have ever worn, the clarity is excellent and I seldom have to ask people to repeat anymore. I can walk from a quiet office to a loud production floor with zero adjustment. The only situation it doesn't work well (no hearing aid does) is a large party with loud chatter.
I have tried the newer digital aids (Widex, Oticon) and they are not as good as the ReSound.
When their lips are moving.
We pay for (x) minutes, (y) text msgs, and (z) bandwidth per month for our mobile devices. Ads consume those resources so we effectively pay for those ads. That's not what mobile customers signed up for.
It's the same reason that the feds banned unsolicited ads to fax machines and business phones - the end receiver pays for the transmission.
It would be a big inconvenience if I got an incoming call signal while talking to a human and only find out it is an ad.
This is beyond just annoying.
Back in the 1950s, New York City enacted a dance tax. Any club or hall that had floor space for dancing had to pay the tax.
The clubowners' response was to fill the dance floors with tables and chairs. With no place for people to dance, they evaded the tax.
Music performers would get booked under the condition that they do not play music that could be danced to. This gave rise to bop and other forms of improvisation jazz.
Needless to say the "dance tax" was revoked.
Besides the proposed dance tax, the wedding/parade tax is beyond absurd and is a greedy power grab by the copyright industry. First off unlike a hall or club, there is no admission being charged for a wedding or parade.
Unfortunately too true.
I had a respectable career in contract engineering (not IT) until we got a new VP. I found myself working six months then out of work the other six months. Was actually told I was shut out of other work because of my salary. The last time they brought me back they cut my salary by 20%. When I was let go from that return, I decided I would never work for them again.
Other friends I know at that company had the same thing happen to them. One of them got an offer to return but at half his salary and no benefits. He told them to shove it.
Not just undercover agents, but agents who are not affiliated with law enforcement. This is extremely troubling.
While they have uncovered a copyright infringement operation, the case is on very shaky ground because of the tactics under which evidence was procured.
The courts would have serious issues regarding the gathering of evidence by non-law enforcement entities and used to justify a warrant in a court of law. Law enforcement has strict guidelines under which evidence is admissible in a court of law and private entities are not exempt from these guidelines. This is malicious enough that the evidence should be barred from a court of law and the person(s) responsible should be reprimanded.
Legal precedent has been established for DECADES. It is common for vindictive friends or relatives to report a false crime to law authorities. Knowing this, law authorities take such reports with a grain of salt. Founder of Co$ L. Ron Hubbard had a habit of reporting enemies to the FBI during the 1950s communist witch hunt and they eventually just ignored him. Today there are criminal charges for filing a false report of a crime.
It's a global survey. That would include China, which is a well known piracy haven.
All those torrents are uesless without the index database, which the DDOS is preventing access to.