It's pretty easy to predict what will happen next. Google will start Google Auctions. It will be integrated into GMail, the Google Desktop Bar, and all the other G-functions. Google is really trying to get a foothold onto your desktop and this will be the next step. Google Auctions will be integrated with Froogle. Froogle may even filter out all eBay auctions. Google has the balls, the know-how and the money to do it.
Yahoo Auctions has been around for a long time. I used them religously before I finally bit the bullet and switched to eBay. I could find more of my gear for less on eBay than I ever could on Yahoo. It simply wasn't worth using Yahoo. This was at least 9 years ago. eBay is still going strong while Yahoo Auction still sucks. You do the math.
To set the groundwork for a lawsuit against a larger company. If they sue a smaller company that is less able to defend itself then they've created a great foothold to move forward with a suit against the big boys.
Being a sheep is hardly the way to right a wrong. Would you teach your children to act in a similar manner? "Son, just give the bully your lunch money next time (as the son sits in the kitchen crying and bleeding from his lip). He'll eventually eat himself to death and won't bother you any more." Passification gets you no where in life. You've got to grow a backbone and kick a bully's ass once in a while (through legal channels of course).
Does anyone know how to disable the user-quoting bullshit at the beginning of stories like this? It's really fucking annoying to have 4 pages of badly-quoted and out of context comment before I even get to the meat of the discussion. REALLY ANNOYING!
And.... it's animated porn. It's not even real porn. It's a couple animated characters having animated sex. Can that poissibly be more harmful than real porn? Aren't kids already supposed to know the difference between real and make-believe? (Not that kids should have been playing an adult game anyways)
I could be completely wrong here but I recall maybe a dozen episodes of Law and Order (New York) where Adam Schiff talked about being elected. Maybe it was 2 dozen episodes. I only mention this because they tended to stay pretty close to reality in things such as that, especially when it could be used to point out the silly mud-slinging in local elections.
I recall a TV commercial from around 10 years ago that laid this out quite nicely. In fact I think it was a Mastercard commercial. It showed a hockey team and went out to list all of the dental procedures that they as a team had underwent. It basically went something like:
20 pieces of bridgework
36 crowns
56 false teeth
## something else
and then the priceless punchline.
The numbers were incredible. Of a team of like 2 dozen people they had underwent hundreds of dental procedures. Hockey is single-handedly keeping the dental industry in the black.
There have been two killed in as many weeks outside the back door of my office. The first was turned into a hood ornament for one of the company vehicles. The second was overlooked too long and has now become a grease spot on the pavement. I'm surprised PETA isn't picketing the local power companies.
Here here. I did quite a bit of research into this a few months ago after 2 encounters in one week with a large local contractor who did not request a locate either time before excavating a street or a parking lot. Both times they severed lines and they didn't call anyone either time. Kansas law outlines stiff fines for failing to call beyond the cost of repairs. The problem is enforcement. I don't think anyone ever bothers to enforce these laws and impose the fines. If fines in the tens of thousands of dollars were actually enforce then I don't think we'd have nearly the problem that we have now.
I was a bit spoiled coming into the modem age. I was a Mac user. With the exception of a few product lines geared specifically to home users (Performas) and excluding many of the all-in-one models and some other models made after the original Bondi Blue iMac, the Macs relied on external modems. This was actually a wonderful thing. I can't begin to count the number of times I saw a machine with an internal modem completely fried due to a lightning strike. I can't explain it but I have yet to see a machine with an external modem fried. I don't know why but I haven't seen a single one. External peripherals are also appealing to basic users because it's a component that they can add themselves without paying to have someone crack open their machine.
Getting really offtopic it, I have to mention one instance of a Mac internal modem I encountered. I was once an Apple service tech as a Authorized Apple Dealer and Service Dept. A customer brought in their Performa 6400 (tower) that could no longer dial out. Of course the first thing I asked was if they'd had any recent storms in their area or if they'd had any other lightning-related damage to other devices in their house. The answers were the evening before they noticed the problem and their answering machine had died as well. I was confident that the modem was friend and that I would likely sell them a replacement and a quality surge strip that also protected the phone line. I told the customer that I would call them by the end of the day. That would give me time to find them a good deal on replacement parts. I spent the rest trying to find out what was actually wrong with the modem. Software-wise the modem was in perfect working order. With ZTerm I could talk to the modem, read registers, take it on and off the hook, etc. It worked great. The only problem was that I could get a dial-tone. I finally gave up and stuck it on the shelf to deal with it later. Later in the afternoon I happened to walk behind the rack where I could see the back of the machine. That's when I noticed the problem. The 4 spring-loaded leads in the RJ11 connected were burnt off. Literally. You could see where they'd melted back to tiny stubs. The damned lightning melted off the wires but otherwise didn't damage the modem or the Mac!
To this day I get dumb looks from techs when I tell them that story. It's true though. Lightning is a fickle bitch. Look what happened in Caddy Shack. Lightning struck down that old golfer but didn't harm his caddy standing 10 feet away. Amazing...
The answer is both. BB constantly changes their policies for the simple reason that they can say with some degree of honestly that doing XYZ is no longer their policy. Of course it doesn't matter what their policy is. They entered into a binding contract with you when they told you it would be replaced no questions asked (in almost every state at least). The sales droids lie as a basic means to ensure sales. This of course is standard opperating procedure from BB management. Basicaly BB's business model revolves around abusing its customerbase and banks on the customerbase being too ignorant to know when its getting screwed. Don't shop at BB.
Rare and expensive? You spent more money on the crack you're smoking than a basic USR Sportster would have cost you. Hey look, here's some more of the ever elusive "rare and expensive" external modem. Ooooh.... Aaaaaaahhh....
That's good and all, but how are they supposed to be able to identify child porn anyway? Sure some of it is obvious. Quite frankly some of it isn't. I've seen some images that most people would immediately assume were child porn when in fact it's a young 20-something-er dolled up to look young. If you didn't recognize the actress you would mistake her for a minor. I'd like to know just how exactly they plan on eliminating the false-positives. They must eliminate all FPs because a mistake could literally ruin a person's life.
Then again I wonder how this will affect other cultures. Does a culture where females marry at 14 perceive nude images of a person of the same age to be child porn? I'd never thought about that before. I recall an incident where some local photo developing shop called the cops on a foreign couple because they had images developed of the woman and her child nude in the tub and on a bed. Of course SRS freaked out. In reality no harm was done (except to the family). This was a common thing in their culture (and most others I would think). It makes you wonder.
I just wish it was possible to code a protocol that wouldn't present a security vulerablity to expose that port directly to the Internet.
No code will ever be impervious to attack. That's the way it will always be. The sooner programmers get over their own damned egos the sooner they'll be able to formulate methods for responding rapidly to security incidents. The head-in-the-sand approach only protects your ears. Your ass still gets shot off in the end.
A comfortable chair is only a factor in the prevention of work-related back pain. The majority of back pain is caused by leg and arm position and posture. For example let me layout my setups. I have one of the worst chair/desk setups at work. My desk is one of those desk with server space below, and multiple shelves for monitors and such. It does not have a keyboard drawer either. The platform for my laptop or a keyboard is 4-5 inches higher than normal. I have two choices of chairs. I have 2 chairs that are meant ofr a draft table and do not have arms. I have 2 other chairs that are plain office chairs one with arms that doesn't go as high as a normal chair. The lower platform that holds a few tower servers is 4-5 inches off the ground. I'm also 6' 1 1/2". I sit in the short chair with arms. My chair is scooted up to desk as far as it can go and my feet are on top of the server platform. My arms are kept in a raised position resting on top of the platform for keyboards. I keep my laptop on this level pushed far to the back so my arms have as much surface area as possible to spread out the load. My arms aren't on the arm rests of the chair. I sit in this position for 8-10 hours a day. Needless to say my back is killing me.
Preventing back pain is about positioning your monitor at the correct height with your eyes. It's about placing you arms at the correct angle to your body and supporting them. It's about keyboard positioning and angle. It's about the location of your mouse. It's about the location of your legs and feet. The chair brings this all together.
Also check out your bed. Is your mattress comfortable? Do you wake up feeling decent or does your back hurt? You may need a new mattress. Go to a mattress store and try a few different models out. That may help as well. My chiropractor once told me something that he learned in school. A survey was conducted of the mattresses in a number of American households. The results showed that something like 90% of them were worn out and the owners didn't realize it. Mattresses don't last forever.
Right. What the CSR started with was ok. However it should have ended after he declined the offer.
I just went through the same thing last week with SBC. It took my over 90 minutes on the phone a close to a dozen CSRs later. The first thing I did when each person picked up the phone is that I politely informed them that I was recording this phone call for my records, that my name was XYZ, my telephone number was ABC, and that I'd like to cancel my SBC services. Then they'd transfer me again. It was a fun evening.
Completely contrary to SBC is Cox Communication. I love calling Cox. I get extremely fast service. Their people are knowledgable. They're nice. It is an absolute pleasure calling Cox. I believe this demonstrates how it's not the individual CSR that causes this human relations problems. It's the company. This kind of crap comes top down. If the CEO has a bad attitude towards customers then the VPs under him will as well. The region managers under the VPs will carry that mentality down to the area managers and department managers. That of course gets fed to the CSRs and technicians. I can't stand calling SBC for service on a business circuit. Of all the times I've called SBC I have yet to have the assholes actually call me before they arrived on site or even make an attempt to find me when they did arrive on site. I always make a big to do when I'm opening a case with SBC to note in the comments for the technician to talk to me directly once he arrived onsite. Every time I'd find out in passing (from a building staffer or by seeing their vehicle in the parking lot) that they're onsite and screwing around in a wiring closet or data center. I've even asked the techs why they didn't call or find me. Their answer is always that they didn't know they were supposed to call. I'd then pick up their clipboard with the service ticket attached and point out the note in the comments of the ticket that instructs them to call me. They of course would reply that they don't normally read that part of the ticket because it pertained to a different group within SBC. I even took it a step further once and said "well that's damned strange. You manage to read the text around it in the "Comments" section that's "meant for another department" to note that you needed to bring out a new smartjack DSL module. SBC is full of a bunch of dicks. Like I said mentality is bred from the top down.
It depends on where both parties were physically located. Certain states allow one-party consent to recording a conversation. Vincent would be that one party. Other states are all-party consent states where both parties have to give their consent. There is no such thing as a 2-party consent state. The state with the most restrictive law takes precedence.
This is quite similar to what I experienced last week when I canceled all my SBC services (telephone and DSL). Everytime I told the person that I wanted to cancel my SBC services I'd first get the run around and then that person would say that they couldn't help me and would transfer me to another department. I was on the phone with them for over an hour and a half. At the end of it all they told me that if I issued the order to terminate my telephone service that I wouldn't be able to transfer my number to another company (apparently they won't allow a number to be transfered if there is a order in the system on that account). I was furious by this point. I told the guy that I'd been "on the phone for an hour and a half while his fucking coworkers bounced back and forth between each other" (identical background noise) and could care less if I lost my number because "the only people who ever call me on it are salesdroid assholes" like that one's that work for SBC and call me every 2 days try to sell me a service that I already own. As soon as the guy had this change in the system I started into a script that I wrote in advance that stated that my business relationship with SBC and AT&T is now considered terminated and that "any future sales calls would be considered unsolicited, undesired, and illegal". I then told him to put me on SBC's & AT&T's internal Do Not Call list. (for those of your that don't understand the meaning of all of this, read up on the Federal Do Not Call Registry and the implications it has towards marketers. They are required to have an internal do not call list) So what did the SBC guy do? He transferred me again. This new person tried to talk me into keeping their services.
Slashdot Mirror
It's pretty easy to predict what will happen next. Google will start Google Auctions. It will be integrated into GMail, the Google Desktop Bar, and all the other G-functions. Google is really trying to get a foothold onto your desktop and this will be the next step. Google Auctions will be integrated with Froogle. Froogle may even filter out all eBay auctions. Google has the balls, the know-how and the money to do it.
Yahoo Auctions has been around for a long time. I used them religously before I finally bit the bullet and switched to eBay. I could find more of my gear for less on eBay than I ever could on Yahoo. It simply wasn't worth using Yahoo. This was at least 9 years ago. eBay is still going strong while Yahoo Auction still sucks. You do the math.
To set the groundwork for a lawsuit against a larger company. If they sue a smaller company that is less able to defend itself then they've created a great foothold to move forward with a suit against the big boys.
Being a sheep is hardly the way to right a wrong. Would you teach your children to act in a similar manner? "Son, just give the bully your lunch money next time (as the son sits in the kitchen crying and bleeding from his lip). He'll eventually eat himself to death and won't bother you any more." Passification gets you no where in life. You've got to grow a backbone and kick a bully's ass once in a while (through legal channels of course).
Does anyone know how to disable the user-quoting bullshit at the beginning of stories like this? It's really fucking annoying to have 4 pages of badly-quoted and out of context comment before I even get to the meat of the discussion. REALLY ANNOYING!
Their software phones home and divulges my personal information to a 3rd-party.
This 3rd-party has access to my machine.
This 3rd-party uses that access to damage my functional computer.
Isn't this exactly what anti-spyware laws are meant to prevent?
And.... it's animated porn. It's not even real porn. It's a couple animated characters having animated sex. Can that poissibly be more harmful than real porn? Aren't kids already supposed to know the difference between real and make-believe? (Not that kids should have been playing an adult game anyways)
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=new+york+dist rict+attorney+elected&btnG=Google+Search
I could be completely wrong here but I recall maybe a dozen episodes of Law and Order (New York) where Adam Schiff talked about being elected. Maybe it was 2 dozen episodes. I only mention this because they tended to stay pretty close to reality in things such as that, especially when it could be used to point out the silly mud-slinging in local elections.
20 pieces of bridgework
36 crowns
56 false teeth
## something else
and then the priceless punchline.
The numbers were incredible. Of a team of like 2 dozen people they had underwent hundreds of dental procedures. Hockey is single-handedly keeping the dental industry in the black.
There have been two killed in as many weeks outside the back door of my office. The first was turned into a hood ornament for one of the company vehicles. The second was overlooked too long and has now become a grease spot on the pavement. I'm surprised PETA isn't picketing the local power companies.
Here here. I did quite a bit of research into this a few months ago after 2 encounters in one week with a large local contractor who did not request a locate either time before excavating a street or a parking lot. Both times they severed lines and they didn't call anyone either time. Kansas law outlines stiff fines for failing to call beyond the cost of repairs. The problem is enforcement. I don't think anyone ever bothers to enforce these laws and impose the fines. If fines in the tens of thousands of dollars were actually enforce then I don't think we'd have nearly the problem that we have now.
Getting really offtopic it, I have to mention one instance of a Mac internal modem I encountered. I was once an Apple service tech as a Authorized Apple Dealer and Service Dept. A customer brought in their Performa 6400 (tower) that could no longer dial out. Of course the first thing I asked was if they'd had any recent storms in their area or if they'd had any other lightning-related damage to other devices in their house. The answers were the evening before they noticed the problem and their answering machine had died as well. I was confident that the modem was friend and that I would likely sell them a replacement and a quality surge strip that also protected the phone line. I told the customer that I would call them by the end of the day. That would give me time to find them a good deal on replacement parts. I spent the rest trying to find out what was actually wrong with the modem. Software-wise the modem was in perfect working order. With ZTerm I could talk to the modem, read registers, take it on and off the hook, etc. It worked great. The only problem was that I could get a dial-tone. I finally gave up and stuck it on the shelf to deal with it later. Later in the afternoon I happened to walk behind the rack where I could see the back of the machine. That's when I noticed the problem. The 4 spring-loaded leads in the RJ11 connected were burnt off. Literally. You could see where they'd melted back to tiny stubs. The damned lightning melted off the wires but otherwise didn't damage the modem or the Mac!
To this day I get dumb looks from techs when I tell them that story. It's true though. Lightning is a fickle bitch. Look what happened in Caddy Shack. Lightning struck down that old golfer but didn't harm his caddy standing 10 feet away. Amazing...
The answer is both. BB constantly changes their policies for the simple reason that they can say with some degree of honestly that doing XYZ is no longer their policy. Of course it doesn't matter what their policy is. They entered into a binding contract with you when they told you it would be replaced no questions asked (in almost every state at least). The sales droids lie as a basic means to ensure sales. This of course is standard opperating procedure from BB management. Basicaly BB's business model revolves around abusing its customerbase and banks on the customerbase being too ignorant to know when its getting screwed. Don't shop at BB.
Rare and expensive? You spent more money on the crack you're smoking than a basic USR Sportster would have cost you. Hey look, here's some more of the ever elusive "rare and expensive" external modem. Ooooh.... Aaaaaaahhh....
Serious Sam 2 was the best game ever.
Then again I wonder how this will affect other cultures. Does a culture where females marry at 14 perceive nude images of a person of the same age to be child porn? I'd never thought about that before. I recall an incident where some local photo developing shop called the cops on a foreign couple because they had images developed of the woman and her child nude in the tub and on a bed. Of course SRS freaked out. In reality no harm was done (except to the family). This was a common thing in their culture (and most others I would think). It makes you wonder.
No code will ever be impervious to attack. That's the way it will always be. The sooner programmers get over their own damned egos the sooner they'll be able to formulate methods for responding rapidly to security incidents. The head-in-the-sand approach only protects your ears. Your ass still gets shot off in the end.
Preventing back pain is about positioning your monitor at the correct height with your eyes. It's about placing you arms at the correct angle to your body and supporting them. It's about keyboard positioning and angle. It's about the location of your mouse. It's about the location of your legs and feet. The chair brings this all together.
Also check out your bed. Is your mattress comfortable? Do you wake up feeling decent or does your back hurt? You may need a new mattress. Go to a mattress store and try a few different models out. That may help as well. My chiropractor once told me something that he learned in school. A survey was conducted of the mattresses in a number of American households. The results showed that something like 90% of them were worn out and the owners didn't realize it. Mattresses don't last forever.
That said exercise certainly helps too.
More information please....
American Express
I just went through the same thing last week with SBC. It took my over 90 minutes on the phone a close to a dozen CSRs later. The first thing I did when each person picked up the phone is that I politely informed them that I was recording this phone call for my records, that my name was XYZ, my telephone number was ABC, and that I'd like to cancel my SBC services. Then they'd transfer me again. It was a fun evening.
Completely contrary to SBC is Cox Communication. I love calling Cox. I get extremely fast service. Their people are knowledgable. They're nice. It is an absolute pleasure calling Cox. I believe this demonstrates how it's not the individual CSR that causes this human relations problems. It's the company. This kind of crap comes top down. If the CEO has a bad attitude towards customers then the VPs under him will as well. The region managers under the VPs will carry that mentality down to the area managers and department managers. That of course gets fed to the CSRs and technicians. I can't stand calling SBC for service on a business circuit. Of all the times I've called SBC I have yet to have the assholes actually call me before they arrived on site or even make an attempt to find me when they did arrive on site. I always make a big to do when I'm opening a case with SBC to note in the comments for the technician to talk to me directly once he arrived onsite. Every time I'd find out in passing (from a building staffer or by seeing their vehicle in the parking lot) that they're onsite and screwing around in a wiring closet or data center. I've even asked the techs why they didn't call or find me. Their answer is always that they didn't know they were supposed to call. I'd then pick up their clipboard with the service ticket attached and point out the note in the comments of the ticket that instructs them to call me. They of course would reply that they don't normally read that part of the ticket because it pertained to a different group within SBC. I even took it a step further once and said "well that's damned strange. You manage to read the text around it in the "Comments" section that's "meant for another department" to note that you needed to bring out a new smartjack DSL module. SBC is full of a bunch of dicks. Like I said mentality is bred from the top down.
It depends on where both parties were physically located. Certain states allow one-party consent to recording a conversation. Vincent would be that one party. Other states are all-party consent states where both parties have to give their consent. There is no such thing as a 2-party consent state. The state with the most restrictive law takes precedence.
I would mark you as a foe but unfortunately I have 200 other ignorant assholes marked as foes ahead of you.
Grrrrrr......