I'll just copy and paste part of my response from above:
None of that is necessary - you can just tell them to leave and lock the door. No, really - you can.
If they are who they say they are, they'll seize everything you own and throw you in jail until even your dust has decayed. A warrant won't even be required as you will have impeded a federal investigation. Far more can be done with paper than with guns.
Oh, and that warrant you're trying not to have served...they have the local sheriff's deputy hand deliver it to you at home, or they'll wait for you to leave the house and deliver it to you wherever you happen to be going. Service of legal documents is really not that hard, and it doesn't have to be at the place of business - just to an officer of the company wherever they happen to bump into you.
Not even necessary - you can just tell them to leave and lock the door. No, really - you can.
If they are who they say they are, they'll seize everything you own and throw you in jail until even your dust has decayed. If not, they won't bother coming back.
See how easy it is to tell if they're real or not?
Stop calling it a democracy - we are a representative democracy. Voters decide nothing at the national level except who will represent them*. The representatives which are elected by the majority, or rather a plurality since voting is voluntary and exercised by a minority of the population in many areas, which then create everything you see in the government. YOUR agents of the republic are doing this (whether you voted for them or not, they are still your representatives), presuming you are a US citizen.
*Most citizens can't even be bothered to vote, and even fewer can be bothered to research the positions and background of the candidates. Can you imagine all 300 million people in the US trying to wrestle with all of the international policy and domestic programs that the congress is supposed to be working on?
Tablets are a fabulous form factor. Light, portable, long battery lives. If you think surfing on a tablet is just like on your phone, you clearly have not used a tablet. Phones simply do not have the real estate for what I would consider comfortable surfing, or consuming any content other than audio-only.
And, WTF are you doing worrying about firmware bugs? That's the thing about tablets - they're like toasters, you're not supposed to have to worry about firmware; if you are than you're doing something beyond what a tablet is intended to do. (and, on the same topic - why not complain about phone firmware and short life cycles?)
MS sells a Windows tablet that doesn't run any windows programs and has nearly zero native apps, and it's not selling well? The tablet offered essentially nothing, and people realized that. Apple tablets had a huge support structure (iTunes) when they launched - they couldn't DO anything, but you had access to CONSUME all sorts of stuff. Android tablets had a reasonable support structure, and if you decided that you just wanted to try it out -or hack it - there were dozens of bottom dollar versions you could buy and not feel bad throwing away if it didn't pan out.
Microsoft actually missed the boat waaaaay back when they EOL'd WM6 phones and didn't have a replacement. If they had had the forethought to create a migration plan before WM was left for dead, they would have been beyond either of the other two players. Granted the idea of a captured marketplace with dirt cheap applications (iTMS) was a true paradigm shift in software sales and mobile applications, but MS was caught flat footed. In trying to catch up, they put their expensive hardware out before anybody was using the software. If the Surface RT had launched 5 years after the Win phone, it might have had a chance.
Worth checking: 16g/disc = 31,250 discs per 500kg payload. at 50GB/disc, that's 1562 TB or 12,500Tb/per payload. At 50km/hr, or 0.014km/s, I get 174 Tb-km/s
So 31 Tb/s over 7200km is 223,200 Tb-km/s
It looks rather biased in favor of the fiberoptic line. Moreso since stationwagons have particularly bad speeds when operated under water.
This is why, at the end of each day, I use a sledge hammer to pound my phone, all my computers, my wireless equipment, and my ISP interface into little pieces and then put them all in a 3000 degree furnace before burying them in the backyard. Each morning I get up and install all new equipment, then reinstall everything from the original CDs, creating a day-unique username and password for everything. Sure, it takes a while, and costs a few thousand dollars a day, and restoring my 5TB movie server from backup is a pain, but it's the price I pay for convenience and privacy.
In ten years, can you convert your gasoline car to run on solar, wind, hydro, or nuclear power? You can with an electric car. They are not a panacea, but they do allow us to move away from a specific fuel dependency (and one which also doesn't compete with food).
Let's say run a company with 2 million employees and you have a departments which specialize in graphic design for the company, including the best and brightest with all the technology and creativity at their fingertips. Accounting doesn't get to hire an outside firm to design their new departmental logo.
The US already has a department for this - NOAA. If the CIA want's this kind of data, they need to go ask NOAA for it, not spend 2/3 of a million dollars on some contractor to put together a useless fluff piece based on simple regression of public NOAA data (which is all 630k will buy you in the gov't contracting market).
Consider this: since our economy is based on carbon fuels (renewable sources are very small), every dollar (or euro or yuan) goes into creating carbon emissions.
0. If you buy stuff or services, where does the money go?
1. To the seller (20%) - who pays for stuff (goto 0), services (goto 0), and fuel (heat, electricity, personal transportation - carbon emissions)
2. To the distributer (20%) - who pays for stuff (goto 0), services (goto 0), and fuel (heat, electricity, transportation - carbon emissions)
3. To the shipper (5%) - of which most goes to fuel (carbon emissions), and the rest goes for stuff (goto 0), and services (goto 0)
4. To the producer (55%)
5. And the producer pays for wages for people [to buy stuff (goto 0), services (goto 0), fuel (heat, electricity, manufacturing - carbon emissions)] and raw materials [which used carbon-based fuels for extraction/mining/refinement/etc. and results in carbon emissions]
With the industrial revolution switch from human power to machine power, the entire economy is based on us paying for energy. The root of all transactions are to pay for fuel. Nobody "pays" for crop growth or minerals - dollars don't flow to mother nature or the ruler of the earth as a dead-end, just to the people who use energy to promote growth or extract minerals. If the economy were based entirely on real/near-time solar sources (sun, wind, hydro) and nuclear, that would be a different equation as all roads wouldn't lead to carbon emissions. But even buying a solar panel or windmill is non-green, as current technology spends as much in fossil fuel to mine, refine, produce, distribute, install, and maintain the equipment as you get back in power.
Now, that kind of sucks, but it does offer insight into how to *truly* reduce carbon emissions, and that is to minimize your lifecycle costs for everything. Being efficient *is* being green if you're at the end-user point where you cannot control the mix of energy production sources. If you are at the energy producer level (which is almost none of us), you can control carbon emissions through the selection of source - coal, oil, nat gas. (I leave out nuclear and solar, as they are simply purchasers of carbon-based materials like the rest of us, and I leave out fiber incineration/contemporary organics as that's primarily an oil-based source as oil is used for promotion, harvest, and transportation).
"In the United States...radio companies pay only songwriters and music publishers, not record companies. The system, dating back almost a century, is based on the idea that radio play has enough promotional value for performers that they do not also need to be paid royalties."
Yes, that's right - the actual performance of the song gets them NOTHING, NADA, ZILCH, not one thin dime. So if Clear Channel plays a Radiohead song on 200 radio stations 100 times in a month reaching (on average) 40,000 listeners per station, that's 800 Million listener-plays for absolutely $zero.
Remind me again why RadioHead is getting such a raw deal at $1000/4M plays, but $0 is just fine?
Using upper case, lower case, and numbers - separate them into three sections with dots if needed - gives just about 57 trillion combinations.
Xx.6y.18 is a valid location identifier, and it's shorter than the old 8 chr random password generator I used to use when I had the password crazed sysadmin back in the 90s.
Would you suggest changing the mains voltage for the US power grid? "Evolving" to 220v would reduce substation transformer requirements and reduce copper usage in residential construction. Or perhaps people don't know how to use electricity properly, so screw them when nothing works.
Are you kidding? Every legislator has 20/10 vision when it comes to seeing the money special interests hand out like water for re-elections. Those who claim to recognize it, however are apparently unable to recognize to the paid shills who show up at their doorstep to feed them "well researched" bullshit that is biased towards the shill's handlers. Corrupt or stupid, but certainly not blind.
Funny - I tell prospective colleagues that my FB account is for my hobbies; if they would like to connect to me professionally they may send me an invitation on LinkedIn. On a related note, I also don't give out my personal cell phone number. If you want to get in touch with me, call my office phone and leave a message or send me an email, or send a text message to my office number.
That's not the point. If you are not going to transact business in a country specifically over the concern about your puppies being killed, you should be aware of which other countries kill puppies as a matter of routine governmental intelligence gathering. And by which others, I mean all of them. In fact, I would say that any country who doesn't kill puppies as part of their internal intelligence operations either has no significant stake in world affairs or is lying. Killing puppies is a fact of modern intelligence gathering; no, let me restate that - killing puppies has always been a fact of all intelligence gathering: governmental, corporate, and private.
To pull out of a country over a "moral issue" and then to ignore such moral issues occurring everywhere else is just grandstanding.
Are you considering not dealing with the US over concern that the NSA is spying on your communications which pass through the US? I ask because the CIA are spying on pretty much every one else internationally. Oh, and should you feel that other countries are *not* spying on your communications...well, that's the kind of naivete they're counting on so that they can expect that you won't be moving to any annoying end-to-end communication encryption any time soon.
This is, if I'm reading it right, just hitchhiking. Safe 99% of the time, which means you'll probably only get raped/mugged/beaten and left for dead once every 100 trips or so - maybe twice a year. Less if you actually die.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll just copy and paste part of my response from above:
None of that is necessary - you can just tell them to leave and lock the door. No, really - you can.
If they are who they say they are, they'll seize everything you own and throw you in jail until even your dust has decayed. A warrant won't even be required as you will have impeded a federal investigation. Far more can be done with paper than with guns.
Oh, and that warrant you're trying not to have served...they have the local sheriff's deputy hand deliver it to you at home, or they'll wait for you to leave the house and deliver it to you wherever you happen to be going. Service of legal documents is really not that hard, and it doesn't have to be at the place of business - just to an officer of the company wherever they happen to bump into you.
Not even necessary - you can just tell them to leave and lock the door. No, really - you can.
If they are who they say they are, they'll seize everything you own and throw you in jail until even your dust has decayed. If not, they won't bother coming back.
See how easy it is to tell if they're real or not?
Stop calling it a democracy - we are a representative democracy. Voters decide nothing at the national level except who will represent them*. The representatives which are elected by the majority, or rather a plurality since voting is voluntary and exercised by a minority of the population in many areas, which then create everything you see in the government. YOUR agents of the republic are doing this (whether you voted for them or not, they are still your representatives), presuming you are a US citizen.
*Most citizens can't even be bothered to vote, and even fewer can be bothered to research the positions and background of the candidates. Can you imagine all 300 million people in the US trying to wrestle with all of the international policy and domestic programs that the congress is supposed to be working on?
Tablets are a fabulous form factor. Light, portable, long battery lives. If you think surfing on a tablet is just like on your phone, you clearly have not used a tablet. Phones simply do not have the real estate for what I would consider comfortable surfing, or consuming any content other than audio-only.
And, WTF are you doing worrying about firmware bugs? That's the thing about tablets - they're like toasters, you're not supposed to have to worry about firmware; if you are than you're doing something beyond what a tablet is intended to do. (and, on the same topic - why not complain about phone firmware and short life cycles?)
MS sells a Windows tablet that doesn't run any windows programs and has nearly zero native apps, and it's not selling well? The tablet offered essentially nothing, and people realized that. Apple tablets had a huge support structure (iTunes) when they launched - they couldn't DO anything, but you had access to CONSUME all sorts of stuff. Android tablets had a reasonable support structure, and if you decided that you just wanted to try it out -or hack it - there were dozens of bottom dollar versions you could buy and not feel bad throwing away if it didn't pan out.
Microsoft actually missed the boat waaaaay back when they EOL'd WM6 phones and didn't have a replacement. If they had had the forethought to create a migration plan before WM was left for dead, they would have been beyond either of the other two players. Granted the idea of a captured marketplace with dirt cheap applications (iTMS) was a true paradigm shift in software sales and mobile applications, but MS was caught flat footed. In trying to catch up, they put their expensive hardware out before anybody was using the software. If the Surface RT had launched 5 years after the Win phone, it might have had a chance.
Worth checking: 16g/disc = 31,250 discs per 500kg payload. at 50GB/disc, that's 1562 TB or 12,500Tb/per payload. At 50km/hr, or 0.014km/s, I get 174 Tb-km/s
So 31 Tb/s over 7200km is 223,200 Tb-km/s
It looks rather biased in favor of the fiberoptic line. Moreso since stationwagons have particularly bad speeds when operated under water.
This is why, at the end of each day, I use a sledge hammer to pound my phone, all my computers, my wireless equipment, and my ISP interface into little pieces and then put them all in a 3000 degree furnace before burying them in the backyard. Each morning I get up and install all new equipment, then reinstall everything from the original CDs, creating a day-unique username and password for everything. Sure, it takes a while, and costs a few thousand dollars a day, and restoring my 5TB movie server from backup is a pain, but it's the price I pay for convenience and privacy.
Right place, right time. If you think successful businesses are based just on know-how an sweat, you've missed pretty much all of human history.
And just because you get 500M doesn't mean you can make a business out of it - but it sure helps.
In ten years, can you convert your gasoline car to run on solar, wind, hydro, or nuclear power? You can with an electric car. They are not a panacea, but they do allow us to move away from a specific fuel dependency (and one which also doesn't compete with food).
Let's say run a company with 2 million employees and you have a departments which specialize in graphic design for the company, including the best and brightest with all the technology and creativity at their fingertips. Accounting doesn't get to hire an outside firm to design their new departmental logo.
The US already has a department for this - NOAA. If the CIA want's this kind of data, they need to go ask NOAA for it, not spend 2/3 of a million dollars on some contractor to put together a useless fluff piece based on simple regression of public NOAA data (which is all 630k will buy you in the gov't contracting market).
Consider this: since our economy is based on carbon fuels (renewable sources are very small), every dollar (or euro or yuan) goes into creating carbon emissions.
0. If you buy stuff or services, where does the money go?
1. To the seller (20%) - who pays for stuff (goto 0), services (goto 0), and fuel (heat, electricity, personal transportation - carbon emissions)
2. To the distributer (20%) - who pays for stuff (goto 0), services (goto 0), and fuel (heat, electricity, transportation - carbon emissions)
3. To the shipper (5%) - of which most goes to fuel (carbon emissions), and the rest goes for stuff (goto 0), and services (goto 0)
4. To the producer (55%)
5. And the producer pays for wages for people [to buy stuff (goto 0), services (goto 0), fuel (heat, electricity, manufacturing - carbon emissions)] and raw materials [which used carbon-based fuels for extraction/mining/refinement/etc. and results in carbon emissions]
With the industrial revolution switch from human power to machine power, the entire economy is based on us paying for energy. The root of all transactions are to pay for fuel. Nobody "pays" for crop growth or minerals - dollars don't flow to mother nature or the ruler of the earth as a dead-end, just to the people who use energy to promote growth or extract minerals. If the economy were based entirely on real/near-time solar sources (sun, wind, hydro) and nuclear, that would be a different equation as all roads wouldn't lead to carbon emissions. But even buying a solar panel or windmill is non-green, as current technology spends as much in fossil fuel to mine, refine, produce, distribute, install, and maintain the equipment as you get back in power.
Now, that kind of sucks, but it does offer insight into how to *truly* reduce carbon emissions, and that is to minimize your lifecycle costs for everything. Being efficient *is* being green if you're at the end-user point where you cannot control the mix of energy production sources. If you are at the energy producer level (which is almost none of us), you can control carbon emissions through the selection of source - coal, oil, nat gas. (I leave out nuclear and solar, as they are simply purchasers of carbon-based materials like the rest of us, and I leave out fiber incineration/contemporary organics as that's primarily an oil-based source as oil is used for promotion, harvest, and transportation).
According to the WSJ:
"In the United States...radio companies pay only songwriters and music publishers, not record companies. The system, dating back almost a century, is based on the idea that radio play has enough promotional value for performers that they do not also need to be paid royalties."
Yes, that's right - the actual performance of the song gets them NOTHING, NADA, ZILCH, not one thin dime. So if Clear Channel plays a Radiohead song on 200 radio stations 100 times in a month reaching (on average) 40,000 listeners per station, that's 800 Million listener-plays for absolutely $zero.
Remind me again why RadioHead is getting such a raw deal at $1000/4M plays, but $0 is just fine?
Using upper case, lower case, and numbers - separate them into three sections with dots if needed - gives just about 57 trillion combinations.
Xx.6y.18 is a valid location identifier, and it's shorter than the old 8 chr random password generator I used to use when I had the password crazed sysadmin back in the 90s.
It wasn't removed...there just aren't any more seeders.
The internet is critical infrastructure now.
Would you suggest changing the mains voltage for the US power grid? "Evolving" to 220v would reduce substation transformer requirements and reduce copper usage in residential construction. Or perhaps people don't know how to use electricity properly, so screw them when nothing works.
Are you kidding? Every legislator has 20/10 vision when it comes to seeing the money special interests hand out like water for re-elections. Those who claim to recognize it, however are apparently unable to recognize to the paid shills who show up at their doorstep to feed them "well researched" bullshit that is biased towards the shill's handlers. Corrupt or stupid, but certainly not blind.
Funny - I tell prospective colleagues that my FB account is for my hobbies; if they would like to connect to me professionally they may send me an invitation on LinkedIn. On a related note, I also don't give out my personal cell phone number. If you want to get in touch with me, call my office phone and leave a message or send me an email, or send a text message to my office number.
It sure made me laugh.
Actually, Obama got the peace prize for being "not George W. Bush." That's a minor, but important distinction.
That's not the point. If you are not going to transact business in a country specifically over the concern about your puppies being killed, you should be aware of which other countries kill puppies as a matter of routine governmental intelligence gathering. And by which others, I mean all of them. In fact, I would say that any country who doesn't kill puppies as part of their internal intelligence operations either has no significant stake in world affairs or is lying. Killing puppies is a fact of modern intelligence gathering; no, let me restate that - killing puppies has always been a fact of all intelligence gathering: governmental, corporate, and private.
To pull out of a country over a "moral issue" and then to ignore such moral issues occurring everywhere else is just grandstanding.
Are you considering not dealing with the US over concern that the NSA is spying on your communications which pass through the US? I ask because the CIA are spying on pretty much every one else internationally. Oh, and should you feel that other countries are *not* spying on your communications...well, that's the kind of naivete they're counting on so that they can expect that you won't be moving to any annoying end-to-end communication encryption any time soon.
Have a great day!
Just because someone doesn't voluntarily invite you to a meeting does not mean that it's secret.
I think, "United States Customs has met with Google representatives to allow imports of Motorola devices" is more accurate.
This is, if I'm reading it right, just hitchhiking. Safe 99% of the time, which means you'll probably only get raped/mugged/beaten and left for dead once every 100 trips or so - maybe twice a year. Less if you actually die.
And for those of us who live in 99% the US, it's effectively imperative.
oops - correction, I meant (a) not (b).
(I never proof my work - it's too easy to just add another post. )