If everyone did as you suggest, you would be living in an environment where criminals rule. They would KNOW, not just hope, KNOW that no law-abiding citizen would be dangerous to them. All they have to do is pull out their guns and they get money. If everyone throws them money when they show a gun, that would be incentive to keep on doing it. Yes, it's a cliche, but it's the truth: When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. I don't own a gun, but I'm glad many of my friends do.
and other crap too numerous to list... I can't imagine one more toolbar being noticable. One time back in 1997 or so, I was messing with Word 97. I enabled every single toolbar available. It ended up I had room for one line of text. I took a screen-shot and saved it as the wallpaper to confuse other users of the computer. Crap to numerous to list? I don't understand what you mean.
Incidentally, do you abuse everyone who does things that annoy you, or are you just a sociopath on the telephone where they can't smack you upside the head for being an asshole?
If someone doesn't bother me, I don't bother them. If they bother me in my home trying to sell me something when I haven't done anything to make them think I'm interested, yes, I'll be an asshole. That's THEIR problem for bothering me. If they go out of their way to get into my space and make themselves a bother, I have no problem telling them how I feel. I don't think that makes me a sociopath. To be a sociopath, you need to have a personality disorder that makes you antisocial. I'm not antisocial. I enjoy company. I don't enjoy some salesperson making a pitch to me unsolicited.
Fuck 'em. I don't care if they need the money, they are being paid to waste my time, and I will abuse them, waste their time, annoy them, in whatever way I can
I always figured it was my job to contribute to the downfall of the telemarketing industry. If I abused someone enough, maybe they would get out of the business. If enough people refused to work in the industry, there would be fewer callers. Just doing my part. I only wish others would do theirs.
I left the phone off the hook and their taped message happily talked on and on. My record with them was nearly 30 minutes.
My favorite was when I got a telemarketing call and they wouldn't tell me their address. I've never been 100% sure it is a requirement for them to tell me where they are, but I claimed it was. I would just hang on the line until they told me. They tried hanging up, but their phone system wouldn't drop the call. After 10 seconds, someone picked up the phone. There'd be silence, then you could hear them hanging up and picking it up again and again. Then someone would say "Hello?" I answered them and asked if they would tell me where they were. Finally someone did. They were calling from Trinidad. REALLY? I live in the US. I just set the phone down and walked away until I had to use the phone for something else.
I saw these on a "home improvement" type show several years ago. I remember on the show they installed these in an office building. They filmed as the inspectors showed up. They were going to fine the builder for having the electricity turned on the wiring was approved. They had to explain in detail that it wasn't electricity running these lights. I've wanted them ever since. I wanted to install them in my house when I bought it, but I've had other more important things to improve first.
So you're complaining because they are offering you a way to minimize getting screwed by your insurance company? If it's the junk mail that bothers you, trash it along with those pesky credit card "preapproval" offers. Seriously, when it comes to bad business practices, what you've described is saint-like compared to what I've seen and experienced.
Actually, it's the drug companies doing the screwing here. The makers of prescription allergy medicines have fought against the government making their drugs available without a prescription. They do this because once it's available without a prescription, the consumer will have to foot the entire bill. Since it's only available by prescription and the companies advertise directly to the consumer so the consumer demands it regardless of what their doctor might recommend, and the price they charge for it is a rediculous sum of money (I just called. It's $92 for a 30 day supply of Allegra at my local pharmacy.), the insurance company is paying huge amounts for it. To make up for this, they end up raising their co-pay for these medicines. The drug company starts offering rebates directly to the consumer who doesn't care how much the insurance company has to pay, not noticing the rise in premiums and increasing co-pays. I'm not looking at how much is coming out of my pocket this one time I get a prescription. I'm looking at how much is coming out of mine and everyone else's pocket and going into the drug company's pocket. We are paying the price to the drug companies because we are paying the insurance premiums to the insurance companies that end up paying the drug companies.
As for the credit card "preapproval" offers, I don't get them because I've asked the credit reporting agencies to not give out my information without my express written approval. No company has the right to dig into my credit history or bother me in my home to try to get my business. I'm not saying this is the worst business practice out there. I'm just saying I don't like their business practices and I won't deal with a company that does business like this.
fourth one is getting your name, and address for statistics and sending out marketing info
Exactly the reason I don't do rebates. My friends call to tell me about "great deals" they found in computer gear. Then say "That's right, you don't do rebates. Nevermind." If a company wants to give a good deal, give it. Don't make me jump through hoops and get put on your marketing list. When comparison shopping, I always just ignore the rebate.
Slipping a bit off topic... The last rebate I did wasn't for electronic gear, it was for allergy medicine. I really think the company was perpetrating insurance fraud. With prescription allergy medicine co-pays going through the roof, they offered to reimburse the patient's co-pay. This after they are refusing to have their medicine available without prescription (which would make customers pay full price for it without insurance). I sent in the rebate offer with a note on the slip saying "Do not put me on any marketing lists." They did anyway and I started getting mailings from them encouraging me to buy more of their medicine and send in more rebates. I called them and stated point-blank that because of their practices, I will not be purchasing their product again and I'd better not get another flyer from them. People have to do this or these corporations' business practices will just keep getting worse.
True, the actual loss of the tapes may not be BoA's fault, but more security should have been taken. In my opinion, data should be secure when being transferred to storage. Again in my opinion, this means the data is carried by a trusted entity that is bonded or the data is encrypted before being carried by an untrusted entity.
Whenever I find what I believe is a piece of spyware on any machine I work on, I'll go and find the privacy policy and possibly see if I can "accidentally" install it or if I have to intentially install it. I also read the EULA if it comes up. No, I don't do this with every piece of spyware I run across, just whenever I come across a new one. Unfortunately, I haven't done that with this company. I guess I've been lucky to not have encountered any of their software. Or else I knew it was and just didn't research it. Dammit.
In the article, first it talks about what the ACC is:
The findings offer rigorous scientific evidence for a new way of conceptualizing the complex executive control processes taking place in and around the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a brain area located near the top of the frontal lobes and along the walls that divide the left and right hemispheres.
Then near the end, they describe one part of this experiment:
"We started by building a detailed computer simulation of the ACC, and then we found that the computer predicted the existence of the early warning signal in ACC."
I didn't know scientists knew enough about the function of the brain to construct a computer model of a part they assume they know the function of. (nice sentense structure, I know) In other words, they assume they know the function of one part of the brain and they make a computer model of it. The computer model can predict when something in the computer model will happen. Does this seem a little fishy to anyone else?
In my opinion, I believe that yes, our subconscious mind can make connections between seemingly disparate facts and spur action the conscious mind can't understand the reasoning for. I also believe the tribesmen in question used both this, lessons handed down through the generations and the activity of the animals to save themselves. I don't think you need a computer model to tell you this.
If one reduces gasoline tax and taxes by the mile instead, there is less incentive to buy a more fuel efficient vehicle
The point of this tax is to offset the missing taxes because people are starting to buy more fuel-efficient vehicles. Because they are buying less gas (more efficient or hybrids) or no gas (electric or fuel-cell) and are not paying enough taxes. The milage tax is supposed to catch those who are no longer paying enough gas tax to maintain roads.
Your point still stands, though. In the end, whether you buy a gas-guzzler or a fuel-cell car, you will still be paying the same amount. What's the incentive to save gas if we still pay the same amount to drive a vehicle with no guts? I'd rather have a faster/more powerful car if I'm paying the same amount.
Actually, there isn't a patch for this per se. They are releasing a bloodhound signature that should catch any currently unknown viruses that try to exploit this. This really isn't a patch. The only way to fully protect any machine with these Symantec Products is to upgrade to the latest version of the software.
I don't see this anywhere in the linked-to article. Maybe someone could point it out to me. If a spokesman for Symantec said this, he should immediately put out a correction since I'm confident his thinking was of an exploit as compared to a vulnerability.
A friend of mine has had a book published by Publish America. He is a good writer, but his work hasn't caught on with the big publishing houses. Since "his life is writing" in much the same way as many on Slashdot's "life is computers" (I know, I know, don't flame, you know what I mean), he will take publication where he can. He is slowly gathering respect in the small-press world.
The way I understand Publish America to work is that you pay them the initial set-up fee then they'll serve as the publisher and wholesaler for your book. I believe they do on-demand publishing. When a book is ordered, they print it up and send it out. Granted, not all vanity press is on-demand, but this is the basic idea of how vanity press works. I always thought that anyone with enough money could have Publish America print a book for them. Had this "scandal" not come along, I would have continued to think this is the way it always worked.
But I find it hard to believe that human pollution is the only or even the biggest cause. Yes, I believe we are heading for a major world-wide catastrophy because of drought and flooding. I believe part of this is due to so many human beings using so much water, causing it to be either evaporated or polluted. The ocean does a good job of fixing the problem, but only on a geologic time-scale. The water that is evaporated eventually comes down as too much rain somewhere else. So we end up with droughts and floods in different places.
That, I believe, is the limit of humans having any major affect on our climate. As another post mentioned, we have been on a warming trend since the last ice-age. There have been several temporary warm-ups throughout history before there was much wide-scale industrialization. The world is in a constant state of change. Life is all about adjusting to those changes. Those beings that can't adapt will die-out. That's what evolution is all about.
I know I'm asking for a Troll rating on this one, but it's not meant as a troll. I am merely stating my opinion based on my own observations.
I'm sure all the system administrators here see this pretty regularly. If everything is going fine and there is no problem, it's "The d****d sysadmin has a slack job. Why do we even need him around?" If there IS a problem, it's "That d****d sysadmin doesn't know what the h*** he's doing."
I reread the AOL story and then your reply. We're talking about two different things. I'm not looking at the spam making it through to the end users. I'm talking about the spam that I'm managing to block. The amount of spam I'm blocking continues to increase. The amount of spam I'm seeing as an end user (for me at least) is staying about the same (virtually zero).
Granted, 100,000 may not currently be in the wild, but I saw 33 different varieties of Windows viruses (over 3500 actual files) bouncing off my email gateway last week and not one Linux, Mac or other OS virus.
My boss asked me to put together a graph of the amount of spam we've blocked over the past 18 months. I've seen a pretty steady (other than the occasional trough or spike) increase in spam the whole time. The number increases week by week and I don't see an end in site, unless you consider the point when my mail gateway gets overwhelmed by the amount. For 1200 email users, we're sitting at just over 150,000 blocked spams per week.
CAN-SPAM [iirc] defines spam as [other than unsolicited] email with fake headers. If you don't misrepresent yourself in email it's not technically spam as far as CAN-SPAM is concerned.
The Federal Trade Commission issued on Thursday its final regulations as to what the government will consider commercial bulk e-mail, or spam, which is subject to restrictions under the federal Can-Spam Act.
According to the FTC, bulk e-mail is commercial if it includes advertising and promotion or if the subject line or beginning of the message would be reasonably considered to be advertising or promotion.
Slashdot Mirror
If everyone did as you suggest, you would be living in an environment where criminals rule. They would KNOW, not just hope, KNOW that no law-abiding citizen would be dangerous to them. All they have to do is pull out their guns and they get money. If everyone throws them money when they show a gun, that would be incentive to keep on doing it. Yes, it's a cliche, but it's the truth: When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. I don't own a gun, but I'm glad many of my friends do.
A show has to have 100 episodes before it can go in to syndication.
I'm not sure about that. The original Trek series has been in syndication practially since it went off the air.
and other crap too numerous to list... I can't imagine one more toolbar being noticable.
One time back in 1997 or so, I was messing with Word 97. I enabled every single toolbar available. It ended up I had room for one line of text. I took a screen-shot and saved it as the wallpaper to confuse other users of the computer. Crap to numerous to list? I don't understand what you mean.
Incidentally, do you abuse everyone who does things that annoy you, or are you just a sociopath on the telephone where they can't smack you upside the head for being an asshole?
If someone doesn't bother me, I don't bother them. If they bother me in my home trying to sell me something when I haven't done anything to make them think I'm interested, yes, I'll be an asshole. That's THEIR problem for bothering me. If they go out of their way to get into my space and make themselves a bother, I have no problem telling them how I feel. I don't think that makes me a sociopath. To be a sociopath, you need to have a personality disorder that makes you antisocial. I'm not antisocial. I enjoy company. I don't enjoy some salesperson making a pitch to me unsolicited.
Fuck 'em. I don't care if they need the money, they are being paid to waste my time, and I will abuse them, waste their time, annoy them, in whatever way I can
I always figured it was my job to contribute to the downfall of the telemarketing industry. If I abused someone enough, maybe they would get out of the business. If enough people refused to work in the industry, there would be fewer callers. Just doing my part. I only wish others would do theirs.
I left the phone off the hook and their taped message happily talked on and on. My record with them was nearly 30 minutes.
My favorite was when I got a telemarketing call and they wouldn't tell me their address. I've never been 100% sure it is a requirement for them to tell me where they are, but I claimed it was. I would just hang on the line until they told me. They tried hanging up, but their phone system wouldn't drop the call. After 10 seconds, someone picked up the phone. There'd be silence, then you could hear them hanging up and picking it up again and again. Then someone would say "Hello?" I answered them and asked if they would tell me where they were. Finally someone did. They were calling from Trinidad. REALLY? I live in the US. I just set the phone down and walked away until I had to use the phone for something else.
I saw these on a "home improvement" type show several years ago. I remember on the show they installed these in an office building. They filmed as the inspectors showed up. They were going to fine the builder for having the electricity turned on the wiring was approved. They had to explain in detail that it wasn't electricity running these lights. I've wanted them ever since. I wanted to install them in my house when I bought it, but I've had other more important things to improve first.
So you're complaining because they are offering you a way to minimize getting screwed by your insurance company? If it's the junk mail that bothers you, trash it along with those pesky credit card "preapproval" offers. Seriously, when it comes to bad business practices, what you've described is saint-like compared to what I've seen and experienced.
Actually, it's the drug companies doing the screwing here. The makers of prescription allergy medicines have fought against the government making their drugs available without a prescription. They do this because once it's available without a prescription, the consumer will have to foot the entire bill. Since it's only available by prescription and the companies advertise directly to the consumer so the consumer demands it regardless of what their doctor might recommend, and the price they charge for it is a rediculous sum of money (I just called. It's $92 for a 30 day supply of Allegra at my local pharmacy.), the insurance company is paying huge amounts for it. To make up for this, they end up raising their co-pay for these medicines. The drug company starts offering rebates directly to the consumer who doesn't care how much the insurance company has to pay, not noticing the rise in premiums and increasing co-pays. I'm not looking at how much is coming out of my pocket this one time I get a prescription. I'm looking at how much is coming out of mine and everyone else's pocket and going into the drug company's pocket. We are paying the price to the drug companies because we are paying the insurance premiums to the insurance companies that end up paying the drug companies.
As for the credit card "preapproval" offers, I don't get them because I've asked the credit reporting agencies to not give out my information without my express written approval. No company has the right to dig into my credit history or bother me in my home to try to get my business. I'm not saying this is the worst business practice out there. I'm just saying I don't like their business practices and I won't deal with a company that does business like this.
fourth one is getting your name, and address for statistics and sending out marketing info
Exactly the reason I don't do rebates. My friends call to tell me about "great deals" they found in computer gear. Then say "That's right, you don't do rebates. Nevermind." If a company wants to give a good deal, give it. Don't make me jump through hoops and get put on your marketing list. When comparison shopping, I always just ignore the rebate.
Slipping a bit off topic... The last rebate I did wasn't for electronic gear, it was for allergy medicine. I really think the company was perpetrating insurance fraud. With prescription allergy medicine co-pays going through the roof, they offered to reimburse the patient's co-pay. This after they are refusing to have their medicine available without prescription (which would make customers pay full price for it without insurance). I sent in the rebate offer with a note on the slip saying "Do not put me on any marketing lists." They did anyway and I started getting mailings from them encouraging me to buy more of their medicine and send in more rebates. I called them and stated point-blank that because of their practices, I will not be purchasing their product again and I'd better not get another flyer from them. People have to do this or these corporations' business practices will just keep getting worse.
It's just that now, it affects terrabytes, not megabytes, of data at once.
It's pushing the petabyte range now.
True, the actual loss of the tapes may not be BoA's fault, but more security should have been taken. In my opinion, data should be secure when being transferred to storage. Again in my opinion, this means the data is carried by a trusted entity that is bonded or the data is encrypted before being carried by an untrusted entity.
No, they'll partner with them. See this User Friendly strip and this one.
Whenever I find what I believe is a piece of spyware on any machine I work on, I'll go and find the privacy policy and possibly see if I can "accidentally" install it or if I have to intentially install it. I also read the EULA if it comes up. No, I don't do this with every piece of spyware I run across, just whenever I come across a new one. Unfortunately, I haven't done that with this company. I guess I've been lucky to not have encountered any of their software. Or else I knew it was and just didn't research it. Dammit.
I didn't know scientists knew enough about the function of the brain to construct a computer model of a part they assume they know the function of. (nice sentense structure, I know) In other words, they assume they know the function of one part of the brain and they make a computer model of it. The computer model can predict when something in the computer model will happen. Does this seem a little fishy to anyone else?
In my opinion, I believe that yes, our subconscious mind can make connections between seemingly disparate facts and spur action the conscious mind can't understand the reasoning for. I also believe the tribesmen in question used both this, lessons handed down through the generations and the activity of the animals to save themselves. I don't think you need a computer model to tell you this.
If one reduces gasoline tax and taxes by the mile instead, there is less incentive to buy a more fuel efficient vehicle
The point of this tax is to offset the missing taxes because people are starting to buy more fuel-efficient vehicles. Because they are buying less gas (more efficient or hybrids) or no gas (electric or fuel-cell) and are not paying enough taxes. The milage tax is supposed to catch those who are no longer paying enough gas tax to maintain roads.
Your point still stands, though. In the end, whether you buy a gas-guzzler or a fuel-cell car, you will still be paying the same amount. What's the incentive to save gas if we still pay the same amount to drive a vehicle with no guts? I'd rather have a faster/more powerful car if I'm paying the same amount.
Actually, there isn't a patch for this per se. They are releasing a bloodhound signature that should catch any currently unknown viruses that try to exploit this. This really isn't a patch. The only way to fully protect any machine with these Symantec Products is to upgrade to the latest version of the software.
I don't see this anywhere in the linked-to article. Maybe someone could point it out to me. If a spokesman for Symantec said this, he should immediately put out a correction since I'm confident his thinking was of an exploit as compared to a vulnerability.
A friend of mine has had a book published by Publish America. He is a good writer, but his work hasn't caught on with the big publishing houses. Since "his life is writing" in much the same way as many on Slashdot's "life is computers" (I know, I know, don't flame, you know what I mean), he will take publication where he can. He is slowly gathering respect in the small-press world.
The way I understand Publish America to work is that you pay them the initial set-up fee then they'll serve as the publisher and wholesaler for your book. I believe they do on-demand publishing. When a book is ordered, they print it up and send it out. Granted, not all vanity press is on-demand, but this is the basic idea of how vanity press works. I always thought that anyone with enough money could have Publish America print a book for them. Had this "scandal" not come along, I would have continued to think this is the way it always worked.
But I find it hard to believe that human pollution is the only or even the biggest cause. Yes, I believe we are heading for a major world-wide catastrophy because of drought and flooding. I believe part of this is due to so many human beings using so much water, causing it to be either evaporated or polluted. The ocean does a good job of fixing the problem, but only on a geologic time-scale. The water that is evaporated eventually comes down as too much rain somewhere else. So we end up with droughts and floods in different places.
That, I believe, is the limit of humans having any major affect on our climate. As another post mentioned, we have been on a warming trend since the last ice-age. There have been several temporary warm-ups throughout history before there was much wide-scale industrialization. The world is in a constant state of change. Life is all about adjusting to those changes. Those beings that can't adapt will die-out. That's what evolution is all about.
I know I'm asking for a Troll rating on this one, but it's not meant as a troll. I am merely stating my opinion based on my own observations.
I'm sure all the system administrators here see this pretty regularly. If everything is going fine and there is no problem, it's "The d****d sysadmin has a slack job. Why do we even need him around?" If there IS a problem, it's "That d****d sysadmin doesn't know what the h*** he's doing."
I reread the AOL story and then your reply. We're talking about two different things. I'm not looking at the spam making it through to the end users. I'm talking about the spam that I'm managing to block. The amount of spam I'm blocking continues to increase. The amount of spam I'm seeing as an end user (for me at least) is staying about the same (virtually zero).
How many of those are actually found in the wild?
Granted, 100,000 may not currently be in the wild, but I saw 33 different varieties of Windows viruses (over 3500 actual files) bouncing off my email gateway last week and not one Linux, Mac or other OS virus.
My boss asked me to put together a graph of the amount of spam we've blocked over the past 18 months. I've seen a pretty steady (other than the occasional trough or spike) increase in spam the whole time. The number increases week by week and I don't see an end in site, unless you consider the point when my mail gateway gets overwhelmed by the amount. For 1200 email users, we're sitting at just over 150,000 blocked spams per week.
CAN-SPAM [iirc] defines spam as [other than unsolicited] email with fake headers. If you don't misrepresent yourself in email it's not technically spam as far as CAN-SPAM is concerned.
You don't remember correctly. According to an article at News.com: