I just can't figure why one needs to hand over an SSN to buy even a prepaid phone plan.
Really?
My prepaid phone has some basic (and out of date) information on me. No DOB, no SSN.
Someone I knew had a stalker, arrested multiple times for stalking her. He'd somehow get her phone number. He'd find out when she moved and to where. She resorted to living with friends and moving frequently, but had no cell phone. I bought a prepaid phone with cash. They only asked for the money, and I said "thank you."
To activate it, I did it online with bogus information. False name, address, etc, etc. I told her, to add minutes, pay cash at any number of stores for a refill card, and I washed my hands of it. For personal reasons, we aren't talking, but she still has her gift phone that doesn't trace back to any real people. At least she can talk stalker free. Well, unless someone tells the stalker what the number is. I told her where to say she lives, works, etc, so everyone knows the decoy information, and very few people know the real information.
It's not that hard to disappear, you just have to pick your methods correctly.:)
That's the way I mark all of my cards. Block letters "CHECK ID" in the signature block. I've been doing that for probably 15 years or so. Only once a vendor said "You have to sign there", so I took their pen and scribbled my signature in what was left of the blank and they were satisfied. They didn't check my ID though. {sigh}
It used to be about 10% of the time someone would verify my ID. Now it's less than 1 in 50.
I have a friend who asks me to buy stuff for her. She gives me her bank card. I know the PIN, but I usually run it as credit. They'll ask to see my ID, look at it, look at me, and hand it back. Our names aren't even resembling similar. I don't have to say anything about her being my friend. Because the card wasn't flagged by the bank, they accept it.
My mom had her wallet lifted at work by a customer a few months ago. They ran up about $3k. She got the first call from one of the banks about the unusual activity. That's when she realized her wallet was gone. She called every issuing bank. It was something like 2 stores refused the transaction because the person with the card wasn't the person holding it. About 10 accepted the transactions before the bank was notified. Everything was voided so she wasn't responsible for it. They were caught a few months later in another city, doing the same thing. Apparently that's all the did. They'd float from city to city lifting wallets when they could and spending up everything on the cards. They royally screwed up in the fact that they kept their receipts. On the arrest in the other city, the police searched their vehicle and found receipts with lots of different names. They then started calling the banks to find out who the cardholder was. She got a call saying "Do you know... ? Did you make this purchase?" Nope, and nope, but they did meet the description of the people believed to have done the initial crime. Apparently most don't turn out like that, and the criminals keep everything they've won.
No, it's ok to rob banks because they're FDIC insured. Whatever you get from the bank, the fed pays them back. No harm, no foul, unless someone gets hurt in the process. Ok, we all end up paying, but at least someone gets the lump sum.:) Don't take watches, wallets, and purses though, individuals aren't insured for this kind of theft.
In LEO school (one of those things I though I'd do once upon a time), there was a huge discussion about criminal liability. If someone is hurt in the commission of a crime, it becomes a much bigger deal for the criminal. It doesn't matter if the criminal did it or not.
For example, if Mr. Criminal were robbing a bank, and there was an exchange of gunfire at some point. One of the cops bullets goes wild (they're anxious, and pull the trigger accidentally), and it hits an uninvolved 3rd party blocks away. Because it happened in the commission of the robbery, Mr. Criminal is liable. The same could apply to someone blocks away seeing what's happening (police cars screaming up to the bank, etc, etc), and he has a heart attack and dies. The logic behind it is that none of that would have happened if Mr. Criminal wasn't robbing the bank in the first place, even though he was completely unaware that the "victim" even existed.
So... I don't recommend robbing banks.:) That and most don't keep much in their cash drawers, so it may seem like a bold daring move, but in reality the criminal would probably walk out with around $2,000 cash. If he were really lucky there could be circumstances that would make it more profitable. I read a news story about a guy who did rob a bank. He just wanted to get enough money to keep from losing his house, and he had exhausted all of his other routes. He hit one of those lucky circumstances, and instead of walking out with a few thousand, he walked out with $107,000. (I can't even make some of this stuff up, the weirdos beat me to it.)
I think you got the important part. Most of us have never heard of them. They aren't a big outfit. Bragging up that you turned down big money is sometimes just a bragging point.
I worked at a place once, that was totally full of themselves. And no, I'd be pretty sure none of you ever heard of it. The CEO told us in a company meeting (attendance required) that he had turned down a 10 million dollar from Microsoft to buy us out. I thought about it while he continued, why would Microsoft offer 10 million to this little outfit? They had a small customer base and parts of some products (some of which actually worked). Payroll had been questionable. Actually payday was a game. Everyone would get their checks, and make a mad dash to the bank to cash them. The people who got there first got paid. The late ones had to wait until the bosses found more money somewhere. Frequently we were paid in shares of the company for working overtime. Even that became a joke, where we'd compare who had the most "shares" in the company. In all reality, those shares were worthless.
About a year later, they really did sell to another company for pennies. Well, I think the CEO walked away with $10k. The staff (to be laid off by phone call the following day) had the pleasure of taking home office equipment that the buying company didn't want to bother moving. A handful of employees transferred to the buying company's office out of state and lasted there for a few months until they were laid off.
Just because someone says there was an offer of something means absolutely nothing, unless someone was actually making the offer and it could be reasonably believed that they would follow through.
One company that *did* make mad money didn't brag about it to anyone. I was aware of the numbers, because of the work I did. They didn't do a lot of marketing, most of it was by word of mouth. Once, they hired a sales person who made the mistake of saying the company had just been sold and he was now doing sales for it. The owner got an email asking why he sold his company. That was the last day that sales minion ever worked there. I wouldn't say it was more than a couple minutes between the time the boss found out, and the guy was flying out the door.
If you have to pretend someone's going to give you lots of money for your company to make it sound big, then that means you're in a fantasy world. Sorry 4^2.
For getting sick, try some good old fashion New York street meat. Not only is there a good chance of getting sick you won't even know if it's beef or rat that you're eating.:)
I was out drinking with someone of Russian descent. Like, moved to the US from Russia. We are of roughly equal size. 2 shots, and he was pretty much lit. 8 shots, and I could barely feel it. They were straight shots, they were in mixed drinks. He had two single mixed drinks. I had 4 doubles. The proof was about equal across all the drinks.
Then again, I'm a European mutt, with German, Irish, and French genes. I've always noticed it takes more for me to have the same effects as others. Well, until I sit down in an Irish pub, with just off the boat Irishmen. Then we're all about equal.
Maybe because you didn't read the rest of the sentence.
Some stars we can observe. We see light or other radiation coming from them. Some we only believe exist because of other evidence which indicates that they exist (fluctuations of orbits, irregularities in observed patterns, etc).
Maybe if I put the word "directly" before the second "observed" it would help your headache.
Two trains leave City A in opposite directions, traveling 60 mph. Person A is traveling by car on a parallel road to the tracks at 28 mph. Person B is traveling by car perpendicular to the tracks at 34mph. In 37 minutes, how far are the cars from each train?
Despite human beliefs, we still aren't the center of the universe. Never have been. Never will be. We're a speck way out on a spiral arm of an insignificant galaxy, in the backwaters of the universe. We aren't the point of origin for all travel in the universe, and even our perception of the universe is limited to what we currently believe to be true.
Ditto. I thought it was very egotistical of us to believe that in the entire universe, our way is best.
There are 9 × 10^21 (9,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) stars in the observable universe. Many of the stars themselves are unobservable, but we can see them because they are part of a galaxy that is obviously far away, and appears as a faint dot in our sky. That's only in the 46 billion light years from our lonely rock in the cosmos that we can observe.
The odds that there isn't another populated planet (or a few hundred thousand of them) is pretty slim. Some are likely to be as advanced as us. The possibility is there that some are more advanced. Or worse, they were more advanced but have long since died off, but their "perfect" clocks still exist and are still running.
But hey, more power to 'em. If they want to declare us the winners, I won't argue. We're the best. Yea! Humans!
Ya, it's easy to say that, until you're on the event horizon of one some crazy scientist in Russia made, and then we're all just screwed.:)
We're playing with things that we've only theorized about. Unfortunately theories are only that. They're guesses based on our current knowledge. They'll be proven to be right or wrong later on. That's the whole game that theoretical physicists play. They can argue their whole lives and still never come up to the same answer.
Since no one has ever observed and been able to test the actual properties of a superdense material that could form a black hole, we only guess. It's in the best interests of all of us if they test and are right though.
Not to say they shouldn't try though. If they do make a superdense atom which in turn creates a black hole that sucks up the whole world, it will likely happen so fast that to any of us it will be instantaneous. It may be eons to the outside world though, if the theories of time dilation at the event horizon are correct.
Nah, it'll never happen. They won't admit that it happened, and then the CIA will get a hold of it and start doing experiments like they did with LSD.:)
It's all fun and games until some scientist does a swan dive out a window and goes splat in Manhattan.
psst, read that again carefully. You have to be one of the loonies to get them to give you all their money before the "end of the world" comes. {grin} You wouldn't believe the score at Y2K. I can't wait until Dec 21, 2012! I have my eye on a nice yacht.
Except for the fact that it's wildly hallucinogenic. That's why it took a few months for them to report it. What didn't officially come out was this:
"We were all tripping so hard, somehow we ended up naked, running around in the lab apparently for like two days. No one remembers a thing, but the technicians that found us said we were laughing our asses off and talking to non-existent creatures in the room."
It's always embarrassing when something like that comes out.
Just put that into Google, and it'll show up highlighted in the searches. Chrome offers to translate the page, so you get it in English too.:) It's not like it really matters which way I show it, it's not like you can read Cyrillic if you asked.:)
Nope, it's Unobtainium. **THEY** have the 6 atoms of it, not you or I. Go ahead, try to get a sample, I dare you.
It's another instance of the man keeping us common folks down.
At least they didn't make a black hole with it this time. Just think about it. What's a black hole? It's a super dense object, which attracts objects towards it, which in turn are crushed under it's gravitational attraction, adding to it's mass in an unstoppable chain reaction. All it takes is one atom, and poof, we're all screwed. And they're trying for heavier and heavier atoms. It's the damned Reds. I tell you, they're looking to destroy the world! They're going to do it, and this time we're helping them! It's the Reds and the Republicans! They're going to kill us all! KILL US ALL I TELL YOU!
This time even your tinfoil hat won't help! There's no escape! There's only one thing to do. Send me all of your worldly possessions, and pray to god that there is a god, and your soul can escape!
If you turned on the radio, and heard that there was an alien invasion, nuclear attack, or whatever, would you really stay at home listening to the radio?
You know, if heard on a major radio station that ICBM's had been launched towards the US, and it was from a reliable source and sounded authentic, I probably wouldn't be hanging around in a metro area either. Of course now we have other methods for fact checking. I could (oh my gosh) go to any number of news sites, or check broadcast TV, but those were a simpler time. Television was a new technology, with only a few thousand in existence world wide. Radio was common. Phones were fairly common, but who would you call? I'd be pretty sure the important numbers would be tied up. Even if I had heard it, but couldn't confirm it, that doesn't mean it isn't true. What's the time between apogee and impact? 15 minutes? I don't want to be tied up in the mad rush trying to escape the metro area, I'd rather already be out and on my way. Expected highway speed at night with ICBM's headed for me? about 120mph. Expected highway speed once everyone else knows? < 2mph.
It doesn't fully back what he was saying, but does suggest that the media did play up the response to the show more than actually happened. Oh, imagine that.:)
What he says seems to come from the Wikipedia article, which cite this book and this book. Both books were published over 60 years after the events happened. Actual evidence shows that people did evacuate, or at least gather in Gover's Mill. There were many calls placed in to the police, radio stations, etc...
The "frequent interruptions" were 3. One at the beginning, one in the middle, and one at the end. I have listened to the show, and that's how I recall it, but one of these days I'll sit down and listen again. Maybe in a couple years with my daughter, when she's old enough to believe.:)
Funny thing, I was casually talking to some folks about 64 bit platforms. We didn't bother to look online, but we were all pretty sure Itanium was already dead.:) I'm sure this isn't a nail in the coffin, just another obscure software that's not supporting it any more. As most have said, most people are using better OS's with them anyways.
I know WinXP x86_64 was like running WinNT for DEC Alpha. It was there, but it was terrible and didn't do everything you needed. Oh god, WinNT for Alpha was absolutely terrible. Microsoft needs to focus on their market segment, stupid users who don't know any better but to keep buying their software.
Slashdot Mirror
Really?
My prepaid phone has some basic (and out of date) information on me. No DOB, no SSN.
Someone I knew had a stalker, arrested multiple times for stalking her. He'd somehow get her phone number. He'd find out when she moved and to where. She resorted to living with friends and moving frequently, but had no cell phone. I bought a prepaid phone with cash. They only asked for the money, and I said "thank you."
To activate it, I did it online with bogus information. False name, address, etc, etc. I told her, to add minutes, pay cash at any number of stores for a refill card, and I washed my hands of it. For personal reasons, we aren't talking, but she still has her gift phone that doesn't trace back to any real people. At least she can talk stalker free. Well, unless someone tells the stalker what the number is. I told her where to say she lives, works, etc, so everyone knows the decoy information, and very few people know the real information.
It's not that hard to disappear, you just have to pick your methods correctly. :)
That's the way I mark all of my cards. Block letters "CHECK ID" in the signature block. I've been doing that for probably 15 years or so. Only once a vendor said "You have to sign there", so I took their pen and scribbled my signature in what was left of the blank and they were satisfied. They didn't check my ID though. {sigh}
It used to be about 10% of the time someone would verify my ID. Now it's less than 1 in 50.
I have a friend who asks me to buy stuff for her. She gives me her bank card. I know the PIN, but I usually run it as credit. They'll ask to see my ID, look at it, look at me, and hand it back. Our names aren't even resembling similar. I don't have to say anything about her being my friend. Because the card wasn't flagged by the bank, they accept it.
My mom had her wallet lifted at work by a customer a few months ago. They ran up about $3k. She got the first call from one of the banks about the unusual activity. That's when she realized her wallet was gone. She called every issuing bank. It was something like 2 stores refused the transaction because the person with the card wasn't the person holding it. About 10 accepted the transactions before the bank was notified. Everything was voided so she wasn't responsible for it. They were caught a few months later in another city, doing the same thing. Apparently that's all the did. They'd float from city to city lifting wallets when they could and spending up everything on the cards. They royally screwed up in the fact that they kept their receipts. On the arrest in the other city, the police searched their vehicle and found receipts with lots of different names. They then started calling the banks to find out who the cardholder was. She got a call saying "Do you know ... ? Did you make this purchase?" Nope, and nope, but they did meet the description of the people believed to have done the initial crime. Apparently most don't turn out like that, and the criminals keep everything they've won.
No, it's ok to rob banks because they're FDIC insured. Whatever you get from the bank, the fed pays them back. No harm, no foul, unless someone gets hurt in the process. Ok, we all end up paying, but at least someone gets the lump sum. :) Don't take watches, wallets, and purses though, individuals aren't insured for this kind of theft.
In LEO school (one of those things I though I'd do once upon a time), there was a huge discussion about criminal liability. If someone is hurt in the commission of a crime, it becomes a much bigger deal for the criminal. It doesn't matter if the criminal did it or not.
For example, if Mr. Criminal were robbing a bank, and there was an exchange of gunfire at some point. One of the cops bullets goes wild (they're anxious, and pull the trigger accidentally), and it hits an uninvolved 3rd party blocks away. Because it happened in the commission of the robbery, Mr. Criminal is liable. The same could apply to someone blocks away seeing what's happening (police cars screaming up to the bank, etc, etc), and he has a heart attack and dies. The logic behind it is that none of that would have happened if Mr. Criminal wasn't robbing the bank in the first place, even though he was completely unaware that the "victim" even existed.
So... I don't recommend robbing banks. :) That and most don't keep much in their cash drawers, so it may seem like a bold daring move, but in reality the criminal would probably walk out with around $2,000 cash. If he were really lucky there could be circumstances that would make it more profitable. I read a news story about a guy who did rob a bank. He just wanted to get enough money to keep from losing his house, and he had exhausted all of his other routes. He hit one of those lucky circumstances, and instead of walking out with a few thousand, he walked out with $107,000. (I can't even make some of this stuff up, the weirdos beat me to it.)
Reference to beastiality, homosexuality, and bashing Christianity, all in one line. I'm very proud of you. :) I can't even attempt to better that one.
@JWSmythe kicks lonelynerd +b
I think you forgot booze and cigars. There's no real reason to only introduce two of the four best things in life.
Ahhh, I miss Vegas.
Aw come on, you posted a picture of an item that can't be bought.
My little girl would love it. She's 3, and has absolutely no fears. I'm sure she'd torment the neighbor kids with it though. :)
Now I'm curious. When you went to try it, how did you know the donkey was gay?
No. Wait. Don't tell me. I really don't want to know the answer. Some curious questions are better left ignored.
I think you got the important part. Most of us have never heard of them. They aren't a big outfit. Bragging up that you turned down big money is sometimes just a bragging point.
I worked at a place once, that was totally full of themselves. And no, I'd be pretty sure none of you ever heard of it. The CEO told us in a company meeting (attendance required) that he had turned down a 10 million dollar from Microsoft to buy us out. I thought about it while he continued, why would Microsoft offer 10 million to this little outfit? They had a small customer base and parts of some products (some of which actually worked). Payroll had been questionable. Actually payday was a game. Everyone would get their checks, and make a mad dash to the bank to cash them. The people who got there first got paid. The late ones had to wait until the bosses found more money somewhere. Frequently we were paid in shares of the company for working overtime. Even that became a joke, where we'd compare who had the most "shares" in the company. In all reality, those shares were worthless.
About a year later, they really did sell to another company for pennies. Well, I think the CEO walked away with $10k. The staff (to be laid off by phone call the following day) had the pleasure of taking home office equipment that the buying company didn't want to bother moving. A handful of employees transferred to the buying company's office out of state and lasted there for a few months until they were laid off.
Just because someone says there was an offer of something means absolutely nothing, unless someone was actually making the offer and it could be reasonably believed that they would follow through.
One company that *did* make mad money didn't brag about it to anyone. I was aware of the numbers, because of the work I did. They didn't do a lot of marketing, most of it was by word of mouth. Once, they hired a sales person who made the mistake of saying the company had just been sold and he was now doing sales for it. The owner got an email asking why he sold his company. That was the last day that sales minion ever worked there. I wouldn't say it was more than a couple minutes between the time the boss found out, and the guy was flying out the door.
If you have to pretend someone's going to give you lots of money for your company to make it sound big, then that means you're in a fantasy world. Sorry 4^2.
For getting sick, try some good old fashion New York street meat. Not only is there a good chance of getting sick you won't even know if it's beef or rat that you're eating. :)
Mmmmm. Now I'm really hungry.
I'm not totally sure about that.
I was out drinking with someone of Russian descent. Like, moved to the US from Russia. We are of roughly equal size. 2 shots, and he was pretty much lit. 8 shots, and I could barely feel it. They were straight shots, they were in mixed drinks. He had two single mixed drinks. I had 4 doubles. The proof was about equal across all the drinks.
Then again, I'm a European mutt, with German, Irish, and French genes. I've always noticed it takes more for me to have the same effects as others. Well, until I sit down in an Irish pub, with just off the boat Irishmen. Then we're all about equal.
Maybe because you didn't read the rest of the sentence.
Some stars we can observe. We see light or other radiation coming from them. Some we only believe exist because of other evidence which indicates that they exist (fluctuations of orbits, irregularities in observed patterns, etc).
Maybe if I put the word "directly" before the second "observed" it would help your headache.
This was on your SAT test.
Two trains leave City A in opposite directions, traveling 60 mph. Person A is traveling by car on a parallel road to the tracks at 28 mph. Person B is traveling by car perpendicular to the tracks at 34mph. In 37 minutes, how far are the cars from each train?
Despite human beliefs, we still aren't the center of the universe. Never have been. Never will be. We're a speck way out on a spiral arm of an insignificant galaxy, in the backwaters of the universe. We aren't the point of origin for all travel in the universe, and even our perception of the universe is limited to what we currently believe to be true.
Ditto. I thought it was very egotistical of us to believe that in the entire universe, our way is best.
There are 9 × 10^21 (9,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) stars in the observable universe. Many of the stars themselves are unobservable, but we can see them because they are part of a galaxy that is obviously far away, and appears as a faint dot in our sky. That's only in the 46 billion light years from our lonely rock in the cosmos that we can observe.
The odds that there isn't another populated planet (or a few hundred thousand of them) is pretty slim. Some are likely to be as advanced as us. The possibility is there that some are more advanced. Or worse, they were more advanced but have long since died off, but their "perfect" clocks still exist and are still running.
But hey, more power to 'em. If they want to declare us the winners, I won't argue. We're the best. Yea! Humans!
Ya, it's easy to say that, until you're on the event horizon of one some crazy scientist in Russia made, and then we're all just screwed. :)
We're playing with things that we've only theorized about. Unfortunately theories are only that. They're guesses based on our current knowledge. They'll be proven to be right or wrong later on. That's the whole game that theoretical physicists play. They can argue their whole lives and still never come up to the same answer.
Since no one has ever observed and been able to test the actual properties of a superdense material that could form a black hole, we only guess. It's in the best interests of all of us if they test and are right though.
Not to say they shouldn't try though. If they do make a superdense atom which in turn creates a black hole that sucks up the whole world, it will likely happen so fast that to any of us it will be instantaneous. It may be eons to the outside world though, if the theories of time dilation at the event horizon are correct.
Nah, it'll never happen. They won't admit that it happened, and then the CIA will get a hold of it and start doing experiments like they did with LSD. :)
It's all fun and games until some scientist does a swan dive out a window and goes splat in Manhattan.
psst, read that again carefully. You have to be one of the loonies to get them to give you all their money before the "end of the world" comes. {grin} You wouldn't believe the score at Y2K. I can't wait until Dec 21, 2012! I have my eye on a nice yacht.
Errr, I mean... They're going to kill us all! :)
Except for the fact that it's wildly hallucinogenic. That's why it took a few months for them to report it. What didn't officially come out was this:
"We were all tripping so hard, somehow we ended up naked, running around in the lab apparently for like two days. No one remembers a thing, but the technicians that found us said we were laughing our asses off and talking to non-existent creatures in the room."
It's always embarrassing when something like that comes out.
Dude.
#1) This is why your still single.
and
#2) The obligatory xkcd to explain it to you.
сто девятнадцать
:) It's not like it really matters which way I show it, it's not like you can read Cyrillic if you asked. :)
Just put that into Google, and it'll show up highlighted in the searches. Chrome offers to translate the page, so you get it in English too.
Nope, it's Unobtainium. **THEY** have the 6 atoms of it, not you or I. Go ahead, try to get a sample, I dare you.
It's another instance of the man keeping us common folks down.
At least they didn't make a black hole with it this time. Just think about it. What's a black hole? It's a super dense object, which attracts objects towards it, which in turn are crushed under it's gravitational attraction, adding to it's mass in an unstoppable chain reaction. All it takes is one atom, and poof, we're all screwed. And they're trying for heavier and heavier atoms. It's the damned Reds. I tell you, they're looking to destroy the world! They're going to do it, and this time we're helping them! It's the Reds and the Republicans! They're going to kill us all! KILL US ALL I TELL YOU!
This time even your tinfoil hat won't help! There's no escape! There's only one thing to do. Send me all of your worldly possessions, and pray to god that there is a god, and your soul can escape!
If you turned on the radio, and heard that there was an alien invasion, nuclear attack, or whatever, would you really stay at home listening to the radio?
You know, if heard on a major radio station that ICBM's had been launched towards the US, and it was from a reliable source and sounded authentic, I probably wouldn't be hanging around in a metro area either. Of course now we have other methods for fact checking. I could (oh my gosh) go to any number of news sites, or check broadcast TV, but those were a simpler time. Television was a new technology, with only a few thousand in existence world wide. Radio was common. Phones were fairly common, but who would you call? I'd be pretty sure the important numbers would be tied up. Even if I had heard it, but couldn't confirm it, that doesn't mean it isn't true. What's the time between apogee and impact? 15 minutes? I don't want to be tied up in the mad rush trying to escape the metro area, I'd rather already be out and on my way. Expected highway speed at night with ICBM's headed for me? about 120mph. Expected highway speed once everyone else knows? < 2mph.
There's an interesting write up here.
It doesn't fully back what he was saying, but does suggest that the media did play up the response to the show more than actually happened. Oh, imagine that. :)
What he says seems to come from the Wikipedia article, which cite this book and this book. Both books were published over 60 years after the events happened. Actual evidence shows that people did evacuate, or at least gather in Gover's Mill. There were many calls placed in to the police, radio stations, etc...
The "frequent interruptions" were 3. One at the beginning, one in the middle, and one at the end. I have listened to the show, and that's how I recall it, but one of these days I'll sit down and listen again. Maybe in a couple years with my daughter, when she's old enough to believe. :)
Nothing like that would ever happen. People are too smart to believe everything they hear or read. I read so on the Intertubenetweb.
[/sarcasm]
Funny thing, I was casually talking to some folks about 64 bit platforms. We didn't bother to look online, but we were all pretty sure Itanium was already dead. :) I'm sure this isn't a nail in the coffin, just another obscure software that's not supporting it any more. As most have said, most people are using better OS's with them anyways.
I know WinXP x86_64 was like running WinNT for DEC Alpha. It was there, but it was terrible and didn't do everything you needed. Oh god, WinNT for Alpha was absolutely terrible. Microsoft needs to focus on their market segment, stupid users who don't know any better but to keep buying their software.