The most they could possibly do (at least, in most states) is to trespass you, and even that would be looking for a court fight. A traveler has the same right to keep and bear arms as anyone else, and a place of lodging would reasonably and legally be expected to accommodate this right.
First, never sign up for a Comcast service online, ever. Always call or go to a store location.
Second, when they bring up the installation fee, say "no, this is going to be a self-install, and I already have cable from the curb to my house, and I know it's already connected in the box. I don't need anyone to come out."
The $90 fee is supposed to cover the guy coming out to the curb to connect your particular cable to the splitter hanging off the main line in the distribution box. If you don't already have that cable connected (even if your house is wired for cable), you really do need the guy to come out (unless you know how to open the box, and which cable is yours, and you have the tool to reach in the security collar to connect it... and I don't advise telling Comcast if you do have all those things). If you're the type who likes to open your own cable box and connect your house, I would do that first, and then simply tell Comcast that you know it's already connected (maybe you asked the Comcast guy to confirm it when he was out hooking up your neighbor's cable... *wink*).
They'll waive it pretty easily if you can convince them you know your stuff and don't need a guy to come out. If you fail the first time, talk to a different person or ask for a super. They'll get it done, and be a lot more competent about it than CenturyLink.
Interesting, my Nokia stock is doing pretty well lately, and will do a lot better as 5G starts getting rolled out since they build a very large percentage of the gear running the back-end cell networks... Nokia is dead, long live Nokia!
Also, the current Nokia mobiles are designed by former Nokia folks at HMD global, and manufactured by former Nokia folks in a former Nokia factory now owned by Foxconn. So the Nokia cell phones live on through a combination of licensing, and people who used to design/build them now designing/building them again, with a different corporate structure that gives the actual Nokia company a way back into the mobile market with little to no risk. Watch for them to acquire HMD global in the next couple years if all keeps going as well as it has been.
Actually, even though they've ceased feature development, they still provide security updates, and in a timely fashion too... unlike so many insecure Android devices out there (I have a couple).
I don't miss it, because I still carry a Lumia 950 as my primary phone. Why do I do this? Because I've used Android, and the OS is slow and clunky and unintuitive to use, even though I've been using Android tablets for several years. And iOS? It looks like a pile of regurgitated icons splattered around a desktop leftover from Windows 95. The hardware may be decent enough, and things might play nice together if one is willing to invest in an entirely Apple household of hardware, but the basic layout and design of the UI on both iOS and Android is rubbish by comparison to Windows Phone.
Microsoft made a LOT of blunders with Windows Phone, for sure... killing Project Astoria was probably one of the last nails in the coffin for the OS, as that would have allowed for the app ecosystem everyone wanted. Letting people get used to nifty features like truly unified messaging, and then pulling them back out, also was a big blunder, IMO, though possibly driven by the companies (facebook, etc.) that they originally had integration with.
Many of the features Windows Phone had are still not in any other mobile OS, and several have even (sadly) been stripped from the current versions of Windows Phone. Even so, if I could by a current handset (say, a Nokia 8) and load Windows Phone onto it instead of Android, I would do so in a heartbeat, because for everything I *really* need a phone to do, it just works.
Case in point, Musk, who clearly kept his cash by funding Tesla, and SpaceX, and Boring Company, and whatever other businesses he's funded/invested in/etc... those nasty rich people like Musk sure do like to hoard their money, creating all those nasty jobs and everything... we wouldn't want more of that, no sirree.
If you'll notice, I actually said that racism is quite a large problem at Microsoft, but it tends to be anti-white (at least, in the orgs I worked in).
For your next question, "Who gets mad that they enjoy 9 out of 10 opportunities instead of 10 out of 10 opportunities?" I would say "everyone, and rightly so." Black, Asian, Mexican, White, all deserve to have access to 10 out of 10 opportunities. Saying that someone should be automatically excluded from a percentage of them because of race is, *gasp*, racism, even if the excluded person is white.
Has anyone noticed that the CEO is not a white male? How about the top HR person? Most of management? Microsoft is FAR from being a place where white male dominance is a thing. In fact, on the team I was on for several years, it was commonly observed that the best way to not get a promotion was to be white. It didn't really matter if you were a white male or white female, you were probably getting a mediocre to poor review no matter what you had done, so that someone the same race as the director could get the promotion. If you were a female from the same part of the world and were sufficiently subservient, you might also get a promotion, but us uppity white folk were last in line (in addition to being last to leave the building every night).
There are a lot of problems with the culture of Microsoft, and racism *is* one of them, but it's certainly not white-dominant racism. The biggest difference is, as a white male, I don't have a voice if I try to claim discrimination. My recourse is pretty much limited to either "shut up and deal with it" or "find a better company to work for." So, after years of the first option, I finally took the second option. That's white male privilege at work right there... "you're a white male, so you have the privilege to shut up and take it or get the hell out."
Going with the Crypto idea and public/private keys and a revocation list... what happens if your private key gets revoked by mistake?
People complain about how hard it is to get off the terrorist watch list; how hard will it be to get off the Identity Revocation List? "I'm sorry, you must present your valid identity card to file a complaint." "Your identity can not be found. Please try again." "Your identity has been revoked. Please wait, Identity Removal Services agents will be with you shortly. Please enjoy your time in Guantanamo Bay."
Windows 10 Fall Creators Update? It looks WAY too much like the current Windows 10 FAIL Creators Update...
I don't exactly mean this as a troll... I'm one of the few still using a Windows phone (Lumia 950), partly because I love the hardware itself, partly because they got me into that "ecosystem" when I was working there and they gave me my first smartphone, a Windows Phone 7 device. So, I've stuck with it, but this latest update is pure FAIL. The OS (on mobile) has gone backwards in *nearly* every way possible. Cortana doesn't work right (suddenly stopped reading my incoming text messages over bluetooth, about 90% of the time). Maps suddenly look awful, and do random strange things (like auto-zooming, when auto-zoom is turned off). Apps that used to be stable now crash repeatedly. There are a couple of minor bug fixes and updates that are nice, but they're far outweighed by the regressions.
It's bad enough I'm actually considering switching to an Android, even though I hate that OS almost as much as I despise Apple iOS (I've used both, have 3 Android tablets, a MacBook Pro for work, and have used other people's iPhones / iPads enough to know they're not quite up to par with Windows 95 yet, in most regards).
Next phone will probably be a Nokia 8, once available, but not really looking forward to it. I think the best smartphone OS I've used was Windows Mobile 8.1; 10 has never gotten back to the place 8.1 was at, in terms of basic reliable functionality. Maybe Fall update will fix the FAIL, but it seems doubtful. I actually wonder if Microsoft is introducing bugs to Mobile on purpose, just to drive people off of it so they can quit supporting it. It seems like a very Microsoft thing to do.
So... If vegetative patients are at a lowered state, and these psychoactive drugs can elevate mental state, has anyone done a study giving these drugs to someone in a vegetative state / coma to see if it can bring them out of it, even temporarily?
I'm certain there are all sorts of ethical concerns there (medical experiments on someone who's incapable of consent, etc.), but what if this could help some of those patients regain function?
Seriously, I thought this project was dead a long time ago. Or maybe I was using a recent version, and it just *felt* dead, because it was SO FAR BEHIND. Don't get me wrong, I think free options are great, and I got through most of college using OpenOffice. At the time (early 2000s), it was pretty much feature-equivalent to MS Office. Then MS Office got better, and OpenOffice just sort of... didn't. If LibreOffice is still actually under development, maybe I'll give it a shot on one of my Linux systems. Modernizing the UI is a good step, as last time I used it it still LOOKED like a product from 2000.
People love to hate on Windows Phone, but the Nokia/Lumia hardware is top-notch. Even their low-end phones are quite readable in bright sunlight, and the touch screens work with modestly thick gloves, too.
Power steering doesn't "lock solid," it becomes "much more difficult to steer." The only way steering "locks" is if the ignition turns to the point of locking the steering wheel, or something very catastrophic mechanically happens to prevent the mechanism from turning. I've had a full-size bus I was driving lose power while going down the freeway. It became MUCH harder to steer - I was leaning out of my seat, grabbing the wheel hard with both hands, and pulling HARD to keep it going where it needed to go, but it didn't "lock solid." It was simply much, MUCH more difficult to steer. My life and the lives of my passengers potentially depended on it though, so I made it happen.
Having my life or the lives of those around me depend on a crap "smart gun" firing when needed... there's no simple way to MAKE that fire if it loses power.
Naw, no trolling... not much anyway. When I say "close to perfect," I mean something closer to "the best desktop OS UI that's been created yet, by anyone, where most things 'just work.'" And I say that writing this from a Mac that I've been using as my primary daily laptop for two years - and I STILL hate the UI. The multi-monitor/projector support is TERRIBLE, Finder has one of the worst file explorer layouts I've seen, it's about a 10-step process to switch from normal headphones to USB or back, my task bar or whatever it's called in MacLand shrinks to where I can hardly see what I'm clicking if I open too many things at once, the network settings are disjointed, and it's not even possible to use a shortcut key to lock the desktop when I'm walking away from my desk! (And no, a "hot corner" is NOT THE SAME, even though that's the dirty cheap hack I have in place as a substitute).
So, compared to that hot steaming mess in the road, Windows 7 is pretty close to perfect.
...back in 2001, the year of Linux on the Desktop. Seriously, getting a desktop "right" is hard... Apple certainly hasn't figured it out yet, none of the Linux camps have figured it out... it's hard. The only one that may have come close to perfecting it was Microsoft with Windows 7, and then they went and screwed it all up after they had it.
"See that guy? He's crazy! Let's go for an easier target." Crazy = unpredictable = bad target. On the other hand, I've been told they probably avoid me because I look like I might rip someone's heart out with my bare hands and eat it, just to see if it tastes like bacon. So skipping is not always necessary to be a bad target.
...is an enemy of freedom. How she keeps getting re-elected, I'll never understand. She ought to be tried for sedition, and hanged after being convicted by a jury of her peers.
Real SED drives implement this standard, which includes the disk changing the key - it's how Instant Secure Erase works, among other things (old key is thrown out, new key is generated by the hard drive). If the WD product really behaves as described in that link, then I'd agree - that implementation of the controller is flawed (and also, not TCG/Opal compliant, I'd wager). More than likely, the drive inside the enclosure implements the standards correctly (or nearly so), and the problems are in the USB controller side of things. SED drives are not very user-friendly, and WD was probably trying to mask that.
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The most they could possibly do (at least, in most states) is to trespass you, and even that would be looking for a court fight. A traveler has the same right to keep and bear arms as anyone else, and a place of lodging would reasonably and legally be expected to accommodate this right.
First, never sign up for a Comcast service online, ever. Always call or go to a store location.
Second, when they bring up the installation fee, say "no, this is going to be a self-install, and I already have cable from the curb to my house, and I know it's already connected in the box. I don't need anyone to come out."
The $90 fee is supposed to cover the guy coming out to the curb to connect your particular cable to the splitter hanging off the main line in the distribution box. If you don't already have that cable connected (even if your house is wired for cable), you really do need the guy to come out (unless you know how to open the box, and which cable is yours, and you have the tool to reach in the security collar to connect it... and I don't advise telling Comcast if you do have all those things). If you're the type who likes to open your own cable box and connect your house, I would do that first, and then simply tell Comcast that you know it's already connected (maybe you asked the Comcast guy to confirm it when he was out hooking up your neighbor's cable... *wink*).
They'll waive it pretty easily if you can convince them you know your stuff and don't need a guy to come out. If you fail the first time, talk to a different person or ask for a super. They'll get it done, and be a lot more competent about it than CenturyLink.
Interesting, my Nokia stock is doing pretty well lately, and will do a lot better as 5G starts getting rolled out since they build a very large percentage of the gear running the back-end cell networks... Nokia is dead, long live Nokia!
Also, the current Nokia mobiles are designed by former Nokia folks at HMD global, and manufactured by former Nokia folks in a former Nokia factory now owned by Foxconn. So the Nokia cell phones live on through a combination of licensing, and people who used to design/build them now designing/building them again, with a different corporate structure that gives the actual Nokia company a way back into the mobile market with little to no risk. Watch for them to acquire HMD global in the next couple years if all keeps going as well as it has been.
Actually, even though they've ceased feature development, they still provide security updates, and in a timely fashion too... unlike so many insecure Android devices out there (I have a couple).
I don't miss it, because I still carry a Lumia 950 as my primary phone. Why do I do this? Because I've used Android, and the OS is slow and clunky and unintuitive to use, even though I've been using Android tablets for several years. And iOS? It looks like a pile of regurgitated icons splattered around a desktop leftover from Windows 95. The hardware may be decent enough, and things might play nice together if one is willing to invest in an entirely Apple household of hardware, but the basic layout and design of the UI on both iOS and Android is rubbish by comparison to Windows Phone.
Microsoft made a LOT of blunders with Windows Phone, for sure... killing Project Astoria was probably one of the last nails in the coffin for the OS, as that would have allowed for the app ecosystem everyone wanted. Letting people get used to nifty features like truly unified messaging, and then pulling them back out, also was a big blunder, IMO, though possibly driven by the companies (facebook, etc.) that they originally had integration with.
Many of the features Windows Phone had are still not in any other mobile OS, and several have even (sadly) been stripped from the current versions of Windows Phone. Even so, if I could by a current handset (say, a Nokia 8) and load Windows Phone onto it instead of Android, I would do so in a heartbeat, because for everything I *really* need a phone to do, it just works.
Case in point, Musk, who clearly kept his cash by funding Tesla, and SpaceX, and Boring Company, and whatever other businesses he's funded/invested in/etc... those nasty rich people like Musk sure do like to hoard their money, creating all those nasty jobs and everything... we wouldn't want more of that, no sirree.
Of course it is... I've been doing it on my Windows Phone for several years.
If you'll notice, I actually said that racism is quite a large problem at Microsoft, but it tends to be anti-white (at least, in the orgs I worked in).
For your next question, "Who gets mad that they enjoy 9 out of 10 opportunities instead of 10 out of 10 opportunities?" I would say "everyone, and rightly so." Black, Asian, Mexican, White, all deserve to have access to 10 out of 10 opportunities. Saying that someone should be automatically excluded from a percentage of them because of race is, *gasp*, racism, even if the excluded person is white.
Really, who comes up with this drivel?
Has anyone noticed that the CEO is not a white male? How about the top HR person? Most of management? Microsoft is FAR from being a place where white male dominance is a thing. In fact, on the team I was on for several years, it was commonly observed that the best way to not get a promotion was to be white. It didn't really matter if you were a white male or white female, you were probably getting a mediocre to poor review no matter what you had done, so that someone the same race as the director could get the promotion. If you were a female from the same part of the world and were sufficiently subservient, you might also get a promotion, but us uppity white folk were last in line (in addition to being last to leave the building every night).
There are a lot of problems with the culture of Microsoft, and racism *is* one of them, but it's certainly not white-dominant racism. The biggest difference is, as a white male, I don't have a voice if I try to claim discrimination. My recourse is pretty much limited to either "shut up and deal with it" or "find a better company to work for." So, after years of the first option, I finally took the second option. That's white male privilege at work right there... "you're a white male, so you have the privilege to shut up and take it or get the hell out."
Quick! Name a single billionaire who isn't also involved in job creation!
I'll bet you can't do it.
Going with the Crypto idea and public/private keys and a revocation list... what happens if your private key gets revoked by mistake?
People complain about how hard it is to get off the terrorist watch list; how hard will it be to get off the Identity Revocation List? "I'm sorry, you must present your valid identity card to file a complaint." "Your identity can not be found. Please try again." "Your identity has been revoked. Please wait, Identity Removal Services agents will be with you shortly. Please enjoy your time in Guantanamo Bay."
What are all the ways this could go wrong?
Windows 10 Fall Creators Update? It looks WAY too much like the current Windows 10 FAIL Creators Update...
I don't exactly mean this as a troll... I'm one of the few still using a Windows phone (Lumia 950), partly because I love the hardware itself, partly because they got me into that "ecosystem" when I was working there and they gave me my first smartphone, a Windows Phone 7 device. So, I've stuck with it, but this latest update is pure FAIL. The OS (on mobile) has gone backwards in *nearly* every way possible. Cortana doesn't work right (suddenly stopped reading my incoming text messages over bluetooth, about 90% of the time). Maps suddenly look awful, and do random strange things (like auto-zooming, when auto-zoom is turned off). Apps that used to be stable now crash repeatedly. There are a couple of minor bug fixes and updates that are nice, but they're far outweighed by the regressions.
It's bad enough I'm actually considering switching to an Android, even though I hate that OS almost as much as I despise Apple iOS (I've used both, have 3 Android tablets, a MacBook Pro for work, and have used other people's iPhones / iPads enough to know they're not quite up to par with Windows 95 yet, in most regards).
Next phone will probably be a Nokia 8, once available, but not really looking forward to it. I think the best smartphone OS I've used was Windows Mobile 8.1; 10 has never gotten back to the place 8.1 was at, in terms of basic reliable functionality. Maybe Fall update will fix the FAIL, but it seems doubtful. I actually wonder if Microsoft is introducing bugs to Mobile on purpose, just to drive people off of it so they can quit supporting it. It seems like a very Microsoft thing to do.
So... If vegetative patients are at a lowered state, and these psychoactive drugs can elevate mental state, has anyone done a study giving these drugs to someone in a vegetative state / coma to see if it can bring them out of it, even temporarily?
I'm certain there are all sorts of ethical concerns there (medical experiments on someone who's incapable of consent, etc.), but what if this could help some of those patients regain function?
Seriously, I thought this project was dead a long time ago. Or maybe I was using a recent version, and it just *felt* dead, because it was SO FAR BEHIND. Don't get me wrong, I think free options are great, and I got through most of college using OpenOffice. At the time (early 2000s), it was pretty much feature-equivalent to MS Office. Then MS Office got better, and OpenOffice just sort of... didn't. If LibreOffice is still actually under development, maybe I'll give it a shot on one of my Linux systems. Modernizing the UI is a good step, as last time I used it it still LOOKED like a product from 2000.
Sounds like someone got jealous of Powershell and decided to a "me too!" shell for the other OSs. Meh.
I've been trying to buy them for weeks! The performance is impressive, though.
People love to hate on Windows Phone, but the Nokia/Lumia hardware is top-notch. Even their low-end phones are quite readable in bright sunlight, and the touch screens work with modestly thick gloves, too.
Power steering doesn't "lock solid," it becomes "much more difficult to steer." The only way steering "locks" is if the ignition turns to the point of locking the steering wheel, or something very catastrophic mechanically happens to prevent the mechanism from turning. I've had a full-size bus I was driving lose power while going down the freeway. It became MUCH harder to steer - I was leaning out of my seat, grabbing the wheel hard with both hands, and pulling HARD to keep it going where it needed to go, but it didn't "lock solid." It was simply much, MUCH more difficult to steer. My life and the lives of my passengers potentially depended on it though, so I made it happen.
Having my life or the lives of those around me depend on a crap "smart gun" firing when needed... there's no simple way to MAKE that fire if it loses power.
Umm... Eject? I've never seen an Eject key on a keyboard, certainly not on my Macbook (which is also missing "Home" and "End" keys, because Apple).
Naw, no trolling... not much anyway. When I say "close to perfect," I mean something closer to "the best desktop OS UI that's been created yet, by anyone, where most things 'just work.'" And I say that writing this from a Mac that I've been using as my primary daily laptop for two years - and I STILL hate the UI. The multi-monitor/projector support is TERRIBLE, Finder has one of the worst file explorer layouts I've seen, it's about a 10-step process to switch from normal headphones to USB or back, my task bar or whatever it's called in MacLand shrinks to where I can hardly see what I'm clicking if I open too many things at once, the network settings are disjointed, and it's not even possible to use a shortcut key to lock the desktop when I'm walking away from my desk! (And no, a "hot corner" is NOT THE SAME, even though that's the dirty cheap hack I have in place as a substitute).
So, compared to that hot steaming mess in the road, Windows 7 is pretty close to perfect.
...back in 2001, the year of Linux on the Desktop. Seriously, getting a desktop "right" is hard... Apple certainly hasn't figured it out yet, none of the Linux camps have figured it out... it's hard. The only one that may have come close to perfecting it was Microsoft with Windows 7, and then they went and screwed it all up after they had it.
"See that guy? He's crazy! Let's go for an easier target." Crazy = unpredictable = bad target. On the other hand, I've been told they probably avoid me because I look like I might rip someone's heart out with my bare hands and eat it, just to see if it tastes like bacon. So skipping is not always necessary to be a bad target.
...is an enemy of freedom. How she keeps getting re-elected, I'll never understand. She ought to be tried for sedition, and hanged after being convicted by a jury of her peers.
http://www.trustedcomputinggro...
Real SED drives implement this standard, which includes the disk changing the key - it's how Instant Secure Erase works, among other things (old key is thrown out, new key is generated by the hard drive). If the WD product really behaves as described in that link, then I'd agree - that implementation of the controller is flawed (and also, not TCG/Opal compliant, I'd wager). More than likely, the drive inside the enclosure implements the standards correctly (or nearly so), and the problems are in the USB controller side of things. SED drives are not very user-friendly, and WD was probably trying to mask that.
You're making some pretty big assumptions yourself, there.