I actually did something like this with my local AAA office. It worked, in a way.
My home phone number is one digit off from that of a popular local towing company. One particular night dispatcher at AAA had a bad habit of misdialing, and no amount of reminding or "educating" or calling her boss in the morning would get her to stop. So I sent an official-looking sales letter to the office manager advertising my new 24/7 dispatch dispatch service. "Best of all, there's nothing to sign! Just call us any time at xxx-xxx-xxxx, which is actually not the towing company. We'll handle the rest and bill you later!" Etc., etc.
That's right, a dispatch dispatch service. For only $500 per call, I will take down all the information about your stranded AAA member, make and model of car, location, that sort of thing, and then call the actual towing company for you. The next time my little friend called, I logged all the information, thanked her, and passed along all the information to the towing company as promised.
A few days later, their accounts payable person called about this invoice for $500. I explained the nature of my service and said "we" were very happy that AAA chose us for their dispatch dispatch needs. They never paid the invoice, and I never heard back again from accounts payable, but I also never got called again by my little friend either.
The most common response to "Officer, am I under arrest or am I free to go?" is some variation on "Just get out of here, asshole." If they had enough evidence to arrest you they would have by then.
If you look and act like Guo, and you don't know what you're doing, you lose.
What he's saying is that if you don't look and act like him, you often don't even get the chance to try. You lose before anyone gets to see what you know.
It's not an all-or-nothing thing, but it's probably accurate that if you're a white or Asian dude of a certain age, people are willing to give you a shot that they won't necessarily give to others. That's the privilege.
I'd like to see H1B's cut back or eliminated along with easier availability of Green Cards. I don't mind competing with foreigners for jobs in the U.S., but I do mind competing with foreigners who are in a weak bargaining position that hurts all of us.
Which was probably overly generous to them. You can't seriously tell me that all of the thousands of little organizations with variations of "tea party" in their names were all compliant with their tax-exempt status. Even in the absence of a deliberate overarching strategy to break the law, people just aren't that good at following rules when they're not expecting special scrutiny.
If we can solve the problem of "how the hell do people get income to live on if nobody really needs to work?" then the problem of "what the hell will everyone do with all that free time?" should be pretty easy. I imagine there will be a lot of competitive self-improvement projects, such as trying to be the best-sculpted person at the gym; a lot of mediocre music being played because it's fun; some really outstanding home gardens; and, well, probably a lot of people spending all their time on sex and drugs.
However, one thing you can never fully mitigate is the cost of real estate. There's only so much land area on the planet, and some of it is much more valuable than other parts.
That's because they're not paying the full costs of the damage they allow through poor security practices. If they reimbursed you and me a millions of other people for our time and effort to clean up their mess, it wouldn't be cheaper than solving the problem.
(Yes, I know there's a short 'peak' when people get home from work and cook dinner and stuff.)
Additionally, if society is really feeling an urgency to use renewable energy sources, it's a lot easier to shift people's living and consumption patterns than it is to change the daily cycle of sunlight. Maybe we'll start arranging our lives around more power being available during the middle of the day and less at night. Habits and structures change over time for many reasons; this may be one of them.
The only reason that PV solar has not destabilized the power grid so far is because there is less than 1% of the electricity produced from it right now. If that should reach somewhere around 10% we'd have the grid instability be a daily occurrence. By "instability" I mean blackouts.
How are those daily blackouts coming along in Germany?
What bullshit. The IRS investigated all those fake nonprofits because there was a sudden crush of them and they didn't appear to be legitimate. And the investigators were right: many of them were straight-up electoral or lobbying organizations that don't qualify for tax-exempt status.
The right-wingers are screaming, yet again, because they got caught. It's not discrimination when you're the only ones trying to cheat.
Agreed. I voted for Obama twice and agree with a lot of his other policies, but this is bullshit. When your government's actions violate the Constitution, you don't need "oversight." You need indictments. And all the fancy dancing in the world doesn't change the fact that the Constitution specifically prohibits mass surveillance--the whole bit about being "secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures."
Look, I can even understand if Obama were to say he can't dismantle this surveillance apparatus all at once, he can only get started in the next couple of years on cutting out the most egregious abuses, yadda yadda. I realize there's a lot going on, and there's such a thing as institutional inertia. But damn. "Oversight" isn't the answer.
It was a Netware 3.12 shop (yes!) and I thought it would be a good idea to scan for vulnerable user passwords. I bought and installed a commercial password-cracker tool for admins, and watched it run. Maybe 20% of our users had pretty bad passwords: MyFirstName123, obvious dates like birthdays, that sort of thing. I got in touch with each such user individually and counseled them to pick something more resistant. One of them was really surprised though.
She was from a village in India, a place so small nobody even really has last names. And she used her uncle's single given name as her password, telling me later that it seemed like something nobody here in the U.S. would ever guess. She was half right: none of the humans knew that name, but our cracker's dictionary attack sure did!
So your point is right on: it's not that the imaginary cracker would know this woman's uncle's name--but the cracker wouldn't be too far off in guessing that perhaps someone was using that name for a password.
Yes and no. When I had a case in the Ohio Court of Appeals, I looked all over the rules for information on font sizes and such. Couldn't find any. Called the Clerk's office. The person who answered the phone there said, "Look, most of our filings are from inmates and they're handwritten. We're happy that your brief is typed at all."
Yes, barely won, the margin of votes was small in key states that could have tipped the electoral college vote either way.
Complete bullshit. Obama won the electoral vote 332 - 206. Suppose you give Romney all the close states, so anything less than a 55% win for Obama counts as a Romney state, okay? That gives Romney Florida (29), Ohio (18), and Virginia (13), changing the totals to Obama 272 - 266. You'd have to throw in Colorado (9), which Obama won by 5.37%, to make it a Romney win.
You do know people can look things up and check your facts, right?
Say what you want about the bin Ladin raid, about the ACA, about the website, whatever. But your point about the 2012 election being on the cusp is just completely wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
I actually did something like this with my local AAA office. It worked, in a way.
My home phone number is one digit off from that of a popular local towing company. One particular night dispatcher at AAA had a bad habit of misdialing, and no amount of reminding or "educating" or calling her boss in the morning would get her to stop. So I sent an official-looking sales letter to the office manager advertising my new 24/7 dispatch dispatch service. "Best of all, there's nothing to sign! Just call us any time at xxx-xxx-xxxx, which is actually not the towing company. We'll handle the rest and bill you later!" Etc., etc.
That's right, a dispatch dispatch service. For only $500 per call, I will take down all the information about your stranded AAA member, make and model of car, location, that sort of thing, and then call the actual towing company for you. The next time my little friend called, I logged all the information, thanked her, and passed along all the information to the towing company as promised.
A few days later, their accounts payable person called about this invoice for $500. I explained the nature of my service and said "we" were very happy that AAA chose us for their dispatch dispatch needs. They never paid the invoice, and I never heard back again from accounts payable, but I also never got called again by my little friend either.
True story.
I hope Simmons is consulting with an attorney to consider his options. It might also be worth a criminal complaint.
The most common response to "Officer, am I under arrest or am I free to go?" is some variation on "Just get out of here, asshole." If they had enough evidence to arrest you they would have by then.
Other important key phrases:
Notably, Feinstein didn't swear an oath to protect us from bombs and terrorists. She swore to "preserve, protect, and defend" the Constitution.
How the hell is this protecting the Constitution?
If you look and act like Guo, and you don't know what you're doing, you lose.
What he's saying is that if you don't look and act like him, you often don't even get the chance to try. You lose before anyone gets to see what you know.
It's not an all-or-nothing thing, but it's probably accurate that if you're a white or Asian dude of a certain age, people are willing to give you a shot that they won't necessarily give to others. That's the privilege.
Wait, so now the law is that colluding to reduce workers' wages is only illegal if there's no possible way around the collusion?
That's new information. Thanks.
I'd like to see H1B's cut back or eliminated along with easier availability of Green Cards. I don't mind competing with foreigners for jobs in the U.S., but I do mind competing with foreigners who are in a weak bargaining position that hurts all of us.
Which was probably overly generous to them. You can't seriously tell me that all of the thousands of little organizations with variations of "tea party" in their names were all compliant with their tax-exempt status. Even in the absence of a deliberate overarching strategy to break the law, people just aren't that good at following rules when they're not expecting special scrutiny.
If we can solve the problem of "how the hell do people get income to live on if nobody really needs to work?" then the problem of "what the hell will everyone do with all that free time?" should be pretty easy. I imagine there will be a lot of competitive self-improvement projects, such as trying to be the best-sculpted person at the gym; a lot of mediocre music being played because it's fun; some really outstanding home gardens; and, well, probably a lot of people spending all their time on sex and drugs.
Thus, Georgism.
Bingo. The thing that everyone forgets about "the Singularity" is that who owns the magic machines really matters.
University of Chicago.
That's because they're not paying the full costs of the damage they allow through poor security practices. If they reimbursed you and me a millions of other people for our time and effort to clean up their mess, it wouldn't be cheaper than solving the problem.
Additionally, if society is really feeling an urgency to use renewable energy sources, it's a lot easier to shift people's living and consumption patterns than it is to change the daily cycle of sunlight. Maybe we'll start arranging our lives around more power being available during the middle of the day and less at night. Habits and structures change over time for many reasons; this may be one of them.
How are those daily blackouts coming along in Germany?
What bullshit. The IRS investigated all those fake nonprofits because there was a sudden crush of them and they didn't appear to be legitimate. And the investigators were right: many of them were straight-up electoral or lobbying organizations that don't qualify for tax-exempt status.
The right-wingers are screaming, yet again, because they got caught. It's not discrimination when you're the only ones trying to cheat.
Yet. Don't give them ideas!
Agreed. I voted for Obama twice and agree with a lot of his other policies, but this is bullshit. When your government's actions violate the Constitution, you don't need "oversight." You need indictments. And all the fancy dancing in the world doesn't change the fact that the Constitution specifically prohibits mass surveillance--the whole bit about being "secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures."
Look, I can even understand if Obama were to say he can't dismantle this surveillance apparatus all at once, he can only get started in the next couple of years on cutting out the most egregious abuses, yadda yadda. I realize there's a lot going on, and there's such a thing as institutional inertia. But damn. "Oversight" isn't the answer.
Rights always have limitations and can be taken away for cause. That doesn't make them the same as mere privileges.
Bullshit. I give you 49 USC 40103(a)(2)
Sure, it's a crime. It's not a $183,000 crime. Proportionality matters.
True story from my sys admin days.
It was a Netware 3.12 shop (yes!) and I thought it would be a good idea to scan for vulnerable user passwords. I bought and installed a commercial password-cracker tool for admins, and watched it run. Maybe 20% of our users had pretty bad passwords: MyFirstName123, obvious dates like birthdays, that sort of thing. I got in touch with each such user individually and counseled them to pick something more resistant. One of them was really surprised though.
She was from a village in India, a place so small nobody even really has last names. And she used her uncle's single given name as her password, telling me later that it seemed like something nobody here in the U.S. would ever guess. She was half right: none of the humans knew that name, but our cracker's dictionary attack sure did!
So your point is right on: it's not that the imaginary cracker would know this woman's uncle's name--but the cracker wouldn't be too far off in guessing that perhaps someone was using that name for a password.
Yes and no. When I had a case in the Ohio Court of Appeals, I looked all over the rules for information on font sizes and such. Couldn't find any. Called the Clerk's office. The person who answered the phone there said, "Look, most of our filings are from inmates and they're handwritten. We're happy that your brief is typed at all."
Complete bullshit. Obama won the electoral vote 332 - 206. Suppose you give Romney all the close states, so anything less than a 55% win for Obama counts as a Romney state, okay? That gives Romney Florida (29), Ohio (18), and Virginia (13), changing the totals to Obama 272 - 266. You'd have to throw in Colorado (9), which Obama won by 5.37%, to make it a Romney win.
You do know people can look things up and check your facts, right?
Say what you want about the bin Ladin raid, about the ACA, about the website, whatever. But your point about the 2012 election being on the cusp is just completely wrong.