From the article. "If dual core Opterons do indeed have two memory controllers, the pincount of dual core Opterons will go up significantly - it will also make them incompatible with current sockets. AMD is all about maintaining socket compatibility so it is quite possible that they could only leave half of the memory controllers enabled, in order to offer Socket-940 dual core Opterons. AMD isn't being very specific in terms of implementation details, but these are just some of the options."
Mod the parent down. If Anandtech would have taken 2 minutes to research that question, they would have discovered that the Opteron CPUs were designed from the beginning to accomodate dual-core CPUs. Only half of the memory controller has actually been connected in their previously shipping chips. Tom's hardware managed to figure that out, I don't why the for-sale fanboys at Anandtech couldn't. It's all just more Intel FUD.
Yes, and if the consumer chooses to ignore said disclaimer (which isn't hard to find in my experience), well...they're stupider then i thought.
Right. But the problem here is that there wasn't a disclaimer. It was all advertising saying that SpywareAssasin offered "iron-clad" protection. Then a fake scan saying that you were infected, then a $30 fee to "clean" the infection that never existed in the first place. There's a huge difference there.
Typically you'll see 'these statements have not been evaluated by the FDA and are not intended to cure, prevent or treat any disease.'
Or the ever-popular "intended only for entertainment purposes" on the phone-psychic commercials. That doesn't mean that the product is any more or less legitimate. That just means that the person selling it is willing to tack on a short disclaimer at the end that invalidates most of what they claimed previously in the hopes that a lot of people will believe the advertising and igonore the disclaimer.
Buy anti-spyware software and get a product that does nothing.
Use free anti-spyware software and get something that works.
OK, I think you're reading way to much into this. People weren't buying anti-spyware software, they were being tricked into paying for smoke and mirrors. If they had bought an actual anti-spyware application (like Giant's AntiSpyware, which is now part of Microsoft) then they would have gotten a working product that is generally regarded as one of the better in the category. There are quite a few commercial anti-spyware applications that are effective. Even some of the best known "free" spyware is still supported in part by sales to corporate entities (Ad-Aware and SpyBot S&D come to mind) because it is only free for personal use.
I know that it's popular on Slashdot to bash people who pay for any software, but only a fool would try to turn this situation into a demonstration of "free" software being better than a "non-free" product.
If someone wants to buy a "spirit healing rock" from me, why shouldn't he be able to? If he's dumb enough to buy it, well, what do they say about a fool and his money?
There's a difference between making vague, general, or unproveable claims (one way or another) and outright fraud. A "spirit healing rock" can't be tested to prove what it actually does. You could advertise the rock as "using mystical powers to make you feel better" and probably get away with it. But the moment you slap on a claim that is demonstrably false like "this rock uses mystical powers to cure cancer" then you are committing fraud and will likely get busted.
And while it's awfully popular right now to complain about "government interfering with business", I think that most people realize that a certain amount of "interference" (Republican-speak for "oversight") is desirable to protect the populace from criminaly fraudulent behavior. I don't recall anybody complaining about government interfering with business in cases like Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, Healthsouth, Global Crossing, etc. Neither do I recall much complaining when the government bailed out the airlines after 9/11 to keep them in business.
No kidding. If they can rack up a couple million in sales and abscond with the cash, it does no good to have shut the site down. If they are merely forced to repay all the money that they fraudulently obtained then there still isn't a penalty because they wound up back where they started. In cases like this the responsible party needs spend some time in jail, and they need to pay fines that go beyond simply returning what they took. If there's no risk of losing something then it will just happen again.
Well, not to get into a pissing match or anything, but I doubt very seriously that in any state there is ever a large chance of coming across someone with a legally concealed weapon. For example, in Ohio we recently passed a concealed carry law which went into effect last April. When the law was being debated, it's sponsors claimed that up to 5% of the state's population would end up with the permits. The population of the state of Ohio is approximately 11.5 million people. In the first 10 weeks after the law went into effect (when the biggest rush would be expected), the state issued permits to about 18,000 people approximately 1/6 of 1% of the population. So far after nearly a full year of availability they have issued permits to about 45,000 people, roughly 2/5 of 1% of the population. If I were a criminal I would really like those odds.
Outside the US yes, but inside the US on statistics done on a State by State basis concealed gun permits actually reduce crime.
You know, I was watching the West Wing reruns last night and a similar notion was presented by one of the characters. Then the other character says "That's funny. You'd think that if your goal was to deter crime you would want the weapons displayed, not concealed."
I still haven't heard a rational counter-argument for that.
That would be like passing a law that makes it illegal for drug dealers to sell without a license. The best possible impact this could have would be forcing scammers to move their operations out of state.
There are some states that have a law requiring drug dealers to pay taxes on their drugs and get tax stickers to place on their product indicating that the taxes were paid. Nobody does it, but the intent was to add a charge of tax evasion onto anyone who was busted buying or selling drugs, even in the smallest amount. This was back in the 80's in the days before we had mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders.
But all is not despair. Do you smell that? I do, it's the smell of legislation that will never be passed. This is just another one of those bills we keep seeing that has absolutely no chance of ever becoming law
Except that it has already been passed and signed into law and is scheduled to take effect on May 2nd.
What do you like to do? Pick a degree that will let you do it and go for it. Getting an MBA may double your salary if you take a management job, but if you have no interest or affinity for management then you will quickly find yourself unsatisfied or unhappy, and then the degree is pretty much worthless.
Marketability is a great thing, but employers can tell when you have a passion for your work. I would prefer to have a single truly driven employee than three clock-punchers.
The opportunities for a CPA are limitless. A CPA with CS in an audit position are tremendous. Its worth looking into.
Assuming that the idea of auditing large complex companies sounds like a fun time for you. If not, you might want to steer clear.
The differentiating factor is going to be whether or not you know anything else. Having an MBA is great, but if you haven't worked for large companies or in management before then your degree is largely theoretical. I liken today's overabundance of MBA programs to the overabundance of MCSE boot camps from 4 or 5 years ago. They'll churn out candidates by the thousands, but unless the candidates have the practical experience to back up their diplomas, they're going to begin to find that those MBAs aren't worth much at all.
This is not to say that having an MBA with no experience means that you're useless. It just means that you're going to have a harder time competing.
Although great news for games players, developers and media users, how is 8 processors going to be any benefit to the average corporate desktop that uses MS Office, IE and handful of other non-processor-intensive apps?
Because most modern operating systems are written to allow for executing multiple threads simultaneously. If you run two or more apps at once you will see a benefit. When I'm at work I tend to be running 9 or 10 apps at a time, and I'm by no means exceptional in that regard.
At the time I was in my early 20's and had worked for the same company for almost 6 years doing 80-hour weeks, so burnout was definitely possible. And while I don't know about you, I don't know of anyone in their early 20's who thinks particularly responsibly or long-term. Being in my early 20's with three months salary in the bank (I didn't come from money to start with) put me ahead of probably 90% of the the people in that age group. Throw in the fact that I also had additional savings in a 401k and that number probably jumps to 98%. Unfortunately you just skipped right past my very valid point and decided to put me down for not being rich. I hope that you got something out of playing the superior, because you certainly didn't add anything of value to the conversation.
BTW, my point was that even if you're doing it for the right reasons and have planned or saved for it, there's no guarantee that things will work out well.
Absolutely. You can always learn new programming tools and add another bullet point to your resume. You can't always find a new job just because you want one. Even if you do find a new job you have no guarantee that it won't be worse than the job that you just left. Who knows, you might end up unemployed for 6 months and end up having to take a job using C# just to pay the bills while making only 75% of what you were making at your previous employer and with a new boss who treats you like crap. Leaving a decent job simply because you didn't like the programming tools (if that was truly your reason) is a pretty messed up thing to do.
I have only once in my life quit a job without having another one lined up. In that case I was completely burned out on an industry that I had worked in for years, I wanted to get into a completely different line of work, I wanted to live in a different city, and I had several months of salary in the bank. The first three months were great because I had no responsibility and plenty of money to pay the bills. The next three months were awful because I was broke and had to live with my relatives.
That means that if they don't have a better product or service to offer than the company he is working for now, he won't consider. He wants to work for the market leader.
This isn't about True being responsible for the actions of their members. This is about True being responsible for the blatant flaws in their touted systems that could lead to someone getting seriously hurt.
Your second scenario is the more likely. The key issue is that True.com doesn't verify the identity of the applicant. You can register under a false name to avoid being red-flagged. True.com may actually have been the victim of a fraud in that case. But they also happen to have a huge freaking hole in their process that very easily renders the background check process meaningless. But instead of fixing it or admitting it publicly to their users, they use their background check process as the cornerstone of their marketing. They are in effect saying "you can trust us because we run background checks on our members, and therefore our users are safer than those of our competitors" when nothing of the sort is true. They are actually inviting themselves to be held to a higher standard than other dating services.
Not only that, they are actively pursuing legislation that essentially forces their competitors to a) admit that True.com's service is safer than their own because of background checks and b) advertise that statement on every one of their user profile pages. If you're going to go that far you had better have a solid system for weeding out the undesirables, and you had better be prepared to have it thoroughly scrutinized and be held to that higher standard.
That's pretty much it. You can try to look at True.com as an individual, but then an individual isn't making millions of dollars off of setting people up on blind dates. Also, an individual who sets up their friend on blind dates isn't expected to have performed a criminal background check on the suitor.
Because True.com is making a business out of setting people up on dates AND they are advertising that they screen out felons via background checks they would be held to a higher standard than a friend would. And since True.com doesn't actually verify that the person who they are researching is the same person who is setting up an account I'd say that there is definitely a big hole in their system. This hole would lead any reasonable person to have a false sense of security about other True.com members. So you can look at it from several angles. Is it false advertising? Possibly. If the product is the matching service, is the service defective? Possibly. Is True.com likely to be held liable if something terrible happens to a member that True could have prevented if there wasn't a gaping hole in their background check policy? You betcha!
You can talk tort classes and breach of contracted duty all you want, but you and I both know that the reality is that any lawyer fresh out of school could whip this into a multi-million dollar settlement or judgement with minimal effort.
Interesting. Look what I found on the Rapsheets.com web site (btw, am I the only one who sees "rapsheets" and thinks "rapesheep"?):
Good News from Rapsheets!
Rapsheets has been acquired by ChoicePoint. Due to this recent acquisition, Rapsheets is now able to offer its consumer users access to ChoiceTrust.com, a comprehensive site offering background check products for family security and more.
I suppose that's all in how you define "good news," considering what ChoicePoint has been through in the past week.
I think it does in the sense that there is (once again) an business that has decided that it's financial interests are more imporant than society's interests in general. I thik that it is absolutely a government abuse whenever legislators are (presumably) being bribed (we'll call it "lobbied") into creating new laws that serve no legitimate public interest but will quite nicely serve and promote the business interests of their contributors. I think that it's doubly so when they use big scary words like "Internet" and "sex-offender" and "predator" to try to scare people into taking their side without examining the facts. I don't believe that governemnt should be for sale, and when our politicians have stopped making laws for the people and decided instead to make laws for profit then our rights are being violated.
I'm not sure about that. By stating that they've done a background check, the implication (and certainly the impression that they are trying to convey) is that the individual is "safe". If that individual turns out to be a convicted sex offender who registered under a false name and a patron of True.com gets raped, they would definitely have a case.
The actual legal technicalities (and certain kinds of logic) might say is that True.com wouldn't be liable. But realistically, if the cornerstone of your marketing is that your users are pre-screened and safe, and that pre-screening turns out to be smoke and mirrors then you have a problem. If a reasonable person would believe that all True.com members were "safe" and a known rapist slips through because you don't even bother to verify their actual identity (so much for "True", eh?), then you're very likely to lose a jury case. And a whole lot of money. And probably your business.
Now I'm not a psycho. And I'm not a sicko. But I am paranoid, so I can think like one. If I were looking for a victim, I would want to go someplace where the potential victims would least expect to be assaulted. Someplace where they would feel safe. Someplace that pre-screens their members for a criminal history. So I would think that if I wanted to lull women into a false sense of security, I should open an account at True.com and use the name of someone who I know has a clean record. Then it's happy hunting with nobody the wiser.
I disagree about them "not being the greatest idea". Back when I was single I used to use online dating services all the time. I met a fair number of people online, and went out on dates with 6 or 8 of them over the course of a couple of years. They were all nice people. Some of them were better matches than others. There was this one woman who forgot to mention that she was an ultra-conservative who was offended by everything the least bit progressive (and of course I'm an advertised ultra-liberal) but overall it wasn't too bad. No serial killers, no stalkers, no married women, and no psychopaths. We would usually go on a few dates and then decide that we weren't quite right, and then I'd meet someone else. Overall it was really much different than "normal" dating. The biggest difference with a service is that you're selecting from a pool of people who are looking to meet someone, whereas with normal life that woman at the coffee shop who's cute may have no interest in meeting someone.
While there's no guarantee that you won't meet some psycho using a dating service, there's also no guarantee that that you won't meet a psycho at the bar, grocery, laundromat, office, friend's house, church, or anywhere else you pick someone else up. As long as you are careful (don't give out too much personal info, take it slow, meet in public places until you get a good feel for the person, follow your gut instincts, etc) then there shouldn't be problems.
Have you purchased an HP server lately? We use nothing but their Proliant line at work, and they're great. Contrary to your point, I have NEVER had any issues installing any version of Windows on one of our HP boxes. You can boot from the Smartstart disk, ask a few questions, and let it do the rest in 20 minutes. Or you can boot from the Windows CD and do it like you would on anything else. The only "propretary crap" that I've ever seen installed are their Insight Management agents, which are actually quite useful.
Pricewise, they're a tad more expensive than Dell, but Dell gets deep discounts on CPUs from Intel because they sell nothing but Intel. And Dell's servers (at least their 1U systems, which I have also used extensively) tend to crap out quite regularly. In general I find them highly competitive with most other entry level and midrange servers.
Yes, but the difference in market penetration between a "regular" network (over-the-air broadcast) versus a cable network can be staggering. A broadcast channel is available to everyone with a set, whether or not they want it, pay for it, or even know it's there. A channel like Sci-Fi has to be carried by the cable companies. Even on those cable networks that carry the channel, it still may not be available to many subscribers who do not opt for the more expensive packages.
I was looking for some current numbers, but couldn't find an apples to apples comparison. I did find out that in 1998 there were just over 100 million television viewing households, and that UPN was available in either 93% or 95% of those. That was in 1998, so 7 years later it is likely that both numbers have increased. Assuming 2% per year growth in the number of television viewing housholds, and minimal increase in market penetration would put UPN at around 110 million housholds. The numbers that I have been able to find for Sci-Fi indicate that it is available in around 65 million households. A little back of the napkin math comes out with Enterprise getting about 2.5% of available viewers while BSG pulled in about 5%. That's a huge difference in TV ratings.
Slashdot Mirror
From the article. "If dual core Opterons do indeed have two memory controllers, the pincount of dual core Opterons will go up significantly - it will also make them incompatible with current sockets. AMD is all about maintaining socket compatibility so it is quite possible that they could only leave half of the memory controllers enabled, in order to offer Socket-940 dual core Opterons. AMD isn't being very specific in terms of implementation details, but these are just some of the options."
Mod the parent down. If Anandtech would have taken 2 minutes to research that question, they would have discovered that the Opteron CPUs were designed from the beginning to accomodate dual-core CPUs. Only half of the memory controller has actually been connected in their previously shipping chips. Tom's hardware managed to figure that out, I don't why the for-sale fanboys at Anandtech couldn't. It's all just more Intel FUD.
Yes, and if the consumer chooses to ignore said disclaimer (which isn't hard to find in my experience), well...they're stupider then i thought.
Right. But the problem here is that there wasn't a disclaimer. It was all advertising saying that SpywareAssasin offered "iron-clad" protection. Then a fake scan saying that you were infected, then a $30 fee to "clean" the infection that never existed in the first place. There's a huge difference there.
Typically you'll see 'these statements have not been evaluated by the FDA and are not intended to cure, prevent or treat any disease.'
Or the ever-popular "intended only for entertainment purposes" on the phone-psychic commercials. That doesn't mean that the product is any more or less legitimate. That just means that the person selling it is willing to tack on a short disclaimer at the end that invalidates most of what they claimed previously in the hopes that a lot of people will believe the advertising and igonore the disclaimer.
Buy anti-spyware software and get a product that does nothing.
Use free anti-spyware software and get something that works.
OK, I think you're reading way to much into this. People weren't buying anti-spyware software, they were being tricked into paying for smoke and mirrors. If they had bought an actual anti-spyware application (like Giant's AntiSpyware, which is now part of Microsoft) then they would have gotten a working product that is generally regarded as one of the better in the category. There are quite a few commercial anti-spyware applications that are effective. Even some of the best known "free" spyware is still supported in part by sales to corporate entities (Ad-Aware and SpyBot S&D come to mind) because it is only free for personal use.
I know that it's popular on Slashdot to bash people who pay for any software, but only a fool would try to turn this situation into a demonstration of "free" software being better than a "non-free" product.
If someone wants to buy a "spirit healing rock" from me, why shouldn't he be able to? If he's dumb enough to buy it, well, what do they say about a fool and his money?
There's a difference between making vague, general, or unproveable claims (one way or another) and outright fraud. A "spirit healing rock" can't be tested to prove what it actually does. You could advertise the rock as "using mystical powers to make you feel better" and probably get away with it. But the moment you slap on a claim that is demonstrably false like "this rock uses mystical powers to cure cancer" then you are committing fraud and will likely get busted.
And while it's awfully popular right now to complain about "government interfering with business", I think that most people realize that a certain amount of "interference" (Republican-speak for "oversight") is desirable to protect the populace from criminaly fraudulent behavior. I don't recall anybody complaining about government interfering with business in cases like Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, Healthsouth, Global Crossing, etc. Neither do I recall much complaining when the government bailed out the airlines after 9/11 to keep them in business.
No kidding. If they can rack up a couple million in sales and abscond with the cash, it does no good to have shut the site down. If they are merely forced to repay all the money that they fraudulently obtained then there still isn't a penalty because they wound up back where they started. In cases like this the responsible party needs spend some time in jail, and they need to pay fines that go beyond simply returning what they took. If there's no risk of losing something then it will just happen again.
Well, not to get into a pissing match or anything, but I doubt very seriously that in any state there is ever a large chance of coming across someone with a legally concealed weapon. For example, in Ohio we recently passed a concealed carry law which went into effect last April. When the law was being debated, it's sponsors claimed that up to 5% of the state's population would end up with the permits. The population of the state of Ohio is approximately 11.5 million people. In the first 10 weeks after the law went into effect (when the biggest rush would be expected), the state issued permits to about 18,000 people approximately 1/6 of 1% of the population. So far after nearly a full year of availability they have issued permits to about 45,000 people, roughly 2/5 of 1% of the population. If I were a criminal I would really like those odds.
Outside the US yes, but inside the US on statistics done on a State by State basis concealed gun permits actually reduce crime.
You know, I was watching the West Wing reruns last night and a similar notion was presented by one of the characters. Then the other character says "That's funny. You'd think that if your goal was to deter crime you would want the weapons displayed, not concealed."
I still haven't heard a rational counter-argument for that.
That would be like passing a law that makes it illegal for drug dealers to sell without a license. The best possible impact this could have would be forcing scammers to move their operations out of state.
There are some states that have a law requiring drug dealers to pay taxes on their drugs and get tax stickers to place on their product indicating that the taxes were paid. Nobody does it, but the intent was to add a charge of tax evasion onto anyone who was busted buying or selling drugs, even in the smallest amount. This was back in the 80's in the days before we had mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders.
But all is not despair. Do you smell that? I do, it's the smell of legislation that will never be passed. This is just another one of those bills we keep seeing that has absolutely no chance of ever becoming law
Except that it has already been passed and signed into law and is scheduled to take effect on May 2nd.
What do you like to do? Pick a degree that will let you do it and go for it. Getting an MBA may double your salary if you take a management job, but if you have no interest or affinity for management then you will quickly find yourself unsatisfied or unhappy, and then the degree is pretty much worthless.
Marketability is a great thing, but employers can tell when you have a passion for your work. I would prefer to have a single truly driven employee than three clock-punchers.
The opportunities for a CPA are limitless. A CPA with CS in an audit position are tremendous. Its worth looking into. Assuming that the idea of auditing large complex companies sounds like a fun time for you. If not, you might want to steer clear.
The differentiating factor is going to be whether or not you know anything else. Having an MBA is great, but if you haven't worked for large companies or in management before then your degree is largely theoretical. I liken today's overabundance of MBA programs to the overabundance of MCSE boot camps from 4 or 5 years ago. They'll churn out candidates by the thousands, but unless the candidates have the practical experience to back up their diplomas, they're going to begin to find that those MBAs aren't worth much at all.
This is not to say that having an MBA with no experience means that you're useless. It just means that you're going to have a harder time competing.
Although great news for games players, developers and media users, how is 8 processors going to be any benefit to the average corporate desktop that uses MS Office, IE and handful of other non-processor-intensive apps?
Because most modern operating systems are written to allow for executing multiple threads simultaneously. If you run two or more apps at once you will see a benefit. When I'm at work I tend to be running 9 or 10 apps at a time, and I'm by no means exceptional in that regard.
At the time I was in my early 20's and had worked for the same company for almost 6 years doing 80-hour weeks, so burnout was definitely possible. And while I don't know about you, I don't know of anyone in their early 20's who thinks particularly responsibly or long-term. Being in my early 20's with three months salary in the bank (I didn't come from money to start with) put me ahead of probably 90% of the the people in that age group. Throw in the fact that I also had additional savings in a 401k and that number probably jumps to 98%. Unfortunately you just skipped right past my very valid point and decided to put me down for not being rich. I hope that you got something out of playing the superior, because you certainly didn't add anything of value to the conversation.
BTW, my point was that even if you're doing it for the right reasons and have planned or saved for it, there's no guarantee that things will work out well.
Absolutely. You can always learn new programming tools and add another bullet point to your resume. You can't always find a new job just because you want one. Even if you do find a new job you have no guarantee that it won't be worse than the job that you just left. Who knows, you might end up unemployed for 6 months and end up having to take a job using C# just to pay the bills while making only 75% of what you were making at your previous employer and with a new boss who treats you like crap. Leaving a decent job simply because you didn't like the programming tools (if that was truly your reason) is a pretty messed up thing to do.
I have only once in my life quit a job without having another one lined up. In that case I was completely burned out on an industry that I had worked in for years, I wanted to get into a completely different line of work, I wanted to live in a different city, and I had several months of salary in the bank. The first three months were great because I had no responsibility and plenty of money to pay the bills. The next three months were awful because I was broke and had to live with my relatives.
That means that if they don't have a better product or service to offer than the company he is working for now, he won't consider. He wants to work for the market leader.
This isn't about True being responsible for the actions of their members. This is about True being responsible for the blatant flaws in their touted systems that could lead to someone getting seriously hurt.
Your second scenario is the more likely. The key issue is that True.com doesn't verify the identity of the applicant. You can register under a false name to avoid being red-flagged. True.com may actually have been the victim of a fraud in that case. But they also happen to have a huge freaking hole in their process that very easily renders the background check process meaningless. But instead of fixing it or admitting it publicly to their users, they use their background check process as the cornerstone of their marketing. They are in effect saying "you can trust us because we run background checks on our members, and therefore our users are safer than those of our competitors" when nothing of the sort is true. They are actually inviting themselves to be held to a higher standard than other dating services.
Not only that, they are actively pursuing legislation that essentially forces their competitors to a) admit that True.com's service is safer than their own because of background checks and b) advertise that statement on every one of their user profile pages. If you're going to go that far you had better have a solid system for weeding out the undesirables, and you had better be prepared to have it thoroughly scrutinized and be held to that higher standard.
Only if they claim to have run a background check with the user's dentist and verified that they have good teeth.
That's pretty much it. You can try to look at True.com as an individual, but then an individual isn't making millions of dollars off of setting people up on blind dates. Also, an individual who sets up their friend on blind dates isn't expected to have performed a criminal background check on the suitor.
Because True.com is making a business out of setting people up on dates AND they are advertising that they screen out felons via background checks they would be held to a higher standard than a friend would. And since True.com doesn't actually verify that the person who they are researching is the same person who is setting up an account I'd say that there is definitely a big hole in their system. This hole would lead any reasonable person to have a false sense of security about other True.com members. So you can look at it from several angles. Is it false advertising? Possibly. If the product is the matching service, is the service defective? Possibly. Is True.com likely to be held liable if something terrible happens to a member that True could have prevented if there wasn't a gaping hole in their background check policy? You betcha!
You can talk tort classes and breach of contracted duty all you want, but you and I both know that the reality is that any lawyer fresh out of school could whip this into a multi-million dollar settlement or judgement with minimal effort.
Interesting. Look what I found on the Rapsheets.com web site (btw, am I the only one who sees "rapsheets" and thinks "rapesheep"?):
Good News from Rapsheets!
Rapsheets has been acquired by ChoicePoint. Due to this recent acquisition, Rapsheets is now able to offer its consumer users access to ChoiceTrust.com, a comprehensive site offering background check products for family security and more.
I suppose that's all in how you define "good news," considering what ChoicePoint has been through in the past week.
I think it does in the sense that there is (once again) an business that has decided that it's financial interests are more imporant than society's interests in general. I thik that it is absolutely a government abuse whenever legislators are (presumably) being bribed (we'll call it "lobbied") into creating new laws that serve no legitimate public interest but will quite nicely serve and promote the business interests of their contributors. I think that it's doubly so when they use big scary words like "Internet" and "sex-offender" and "predator" to try to scare people into taking their side without examining the facts. I don't believe that governemnt should be for sale, and when our politicians have stopped making laws for the people and decided instead to make laws for profit then our rights are being violated.
I'm not sure about that. By stating that they've done a background check, the implication (and certainly the impression that they are trying to convey) is that the individual is "safe". If that individual turns out to be a convicted sex offender who registered under a false name and a patron of True.com gets raped, they would definitely have a case.
The actual legal technicalities (and certain kinds of logic) might say is that True.com wouldn't be liable. But realistically, if the cornerstone of your marketing is that your users are pre-screened and safe, and that pre-screening turns out to be smoke and mirrors then you have a problem. If a reasonable person would believe that all True.com members were "safe" and a known rapist slips through because you don't even bother to verify their actual identity (so much for "True", eh?), then you're very likely to lose a jury case. And a whole lot of money. And probably your business.
Now I'm not a psycho. And I'm not a sicko. But I am paranoid, so I can think like one. If I were looking for a victim, I would want to go someplace where the potential victims would least expect to be assaulted. Someplace where they would feel safe. Someplace that pre-screens their members for a criminal history. So I would think that if I wanted to lull women into a false sense of security, I should open an account at True.com and use the name of someone who I know has a clean record. Then it's happy hunting with nobody the wiser.
I disagree about them "not being the greatest idea". Back when I was single I used to use online dating services all the time. I met a fair number of people online, and went out on dates with 6 or 8 of them over the course of a couple of years. They were all nice people. Some of them were better matches than others. There was this one woman who forgot to mention that she was an ultra-conservative who was offended by everything the least bit progressive (and of course I'm an advertised ultra-liberal) but overall it wasn't too bad. No serial killers, no stalkers, no married women, and no psychopaths. We would usually go on a few dates and then decide that we weren't quite right, and then I'd meet someone else. Overall it was really much different than "normal" dating. The biggest difference with a service is that you're selecting from a pool of people who are looking to meet someone, whereas with normal life that woman at the coffee shop who's cute may have no interest in meeting someone.
While there's no guarantee that you won't meet some psycho using a dating service, there's also no guarantee that that you won't meet a psycho at the bar, grocery, laundromat, office, friend's house, church, or anywhere else you pick someone else up. As long as you are careful (don't give out too much personal info, take it slow, meet in public places until you get a good feel for the person, follow your gut instincts, etc) then there shouldn't be problems.
Have you purchased an HP server lately? We use nothing but their Proliant line at work, and they're great. Contrary to your point, I have NEVER had any issues installing any version of Windows on one of our HP boxes. You can boot from the Smartstart disk, ask a few questions, and let it do the rest in 20 minutes. Or you can boot from the Windows CD and do it like you would on anything else. The only "propretary crap" that I've ever seen installed are their Insight Management agents, which are actually quite useful.
Pricewise, they're a tad more expensive than Dell, but Dell gets deep discounts on CPUs from Intel because they sell nothing but Intel. And Dell's servers (at least their 1U systems, which I have also used extensively) tend to crap out quite regularly. In general I find them highly competitive with most other entry level and midrange servers.
Yes, but the difference in market penetration between a "regular" network (over-the-air broadcast) versus a cable network can be staggering. A broadcast channel is available to everyone with a set, whether or not they want it, pay for it, or even know it's there. A channel like Sci-Fi has to be carried by the cable companies. Even on those cable networks that carry the channel, it still may not be available to many subscribers who do not opt for the more expensive packages.
I was looking for some current numbers, but couldn't find an apples to apples comparison. I did find out that in 1998 there were just over 100 million television viewing households, and that UPN was available in either 93% or 95% of those. That was in 1998, so 7 years later it is likely that both numbers have increased. Assuming 2% per year growth in the number of television viewing housholds, and minimal increase in market penetration would put UPN at around 110 million housholds. The numbers that I have been able to find for Sci-Fi indicate that it is available in around 65 million households. A little back of the napkin math comes out with Enterprise getting about 2.5% of available viewers while BSG pulled in about 5%. That's a huge difference in TV ratings.