You've pointed out what wrong with most of the "new" laws. I know your example is well dated, but...
Consider the new slew of laws regarding texting while driving.
It's illegal to drive while distracted. It has been for an awful long time. If that distraction involved in injury or death, it's even more so.
Then quite a while ago, they had to spell out that you could drive while watching TV. Any vehicle mounted TV couldn't be in view of the driver. Recently, they started with cell phones. You can't text while driving. You can't read your mail while driving. You can't hold your phone to your ear. Oddly enough, you can still hold in depth conversations if you go buy a earpiece. I don't quite get that one. I've seen plenty of folks in other real-world situations where you can't make them see the reality of their physical situation because they are on the phone. It wasn't necessary to add any of those laws to the books, other than it made government officials look productive.
So when will they make the laws saying it's illegal to eat, shave your legs, put on makeup, and scream at the kids in the back seat while driving? Ok, I've never seen them all at once, but I've seen various combination of those with cars driving erratically.
Great, so now it's illegal to impersonate someone else online. I expect they'll have to extend that to say you can't talk on a forum with a name that someone else uses. I guess I'm SOL, my online name matches dozens of other people. Worse, my real name matches thousands of other people in the US, and who knows how many world wide. If we just look in the scope of the Entertainment industry, my name matches about a dozen actors, directors, producers, and other production crew members. Hell, IMDB finds JW Smythe possibly matching 19 people, none of which are me. I swear, they're not me. "Smythe" even shows results in iafd.com. Again, not me.
No fucking wonder the law books are so bloated. In the quest for lawmakers to feel self important, they will keep adding laws to the books to continually restate other laws. It doesn't just bloat lawbooks, but these laws frequently carry different punishments for the same crime. Hmm, you had a phone, and you were driving carelessly, and screaming at the kids in the back seat, but your bumper sticker that says "Meet.Me.For.Cheap.Sex.com" has the name "Slut Monkey" on it. That's the stage name of someone else.
(oddly enough, I couldn't find a reference to "Slut Monkey" being either a stage name nor movie title. Production will start tomorrow. All female applicants should send their resume with measurements, nude photos, acts their willing to perform, and current STD test results.)
Actually, these aren't for car searches. They are for blood alcohol searches.
For at least the last 20 years, the bottom of Florida drivers licenses have read "Operation of a motor vehicle constitutes consent to any sobriety test required by law."
The good part of this is, they're requiring *BLOOD* tests. Ok, it'll still convict you if you've been drinking and driving. At least the score will be accurate. Breath tests are notoriously incorrect. Beyond that, if you get BOTH the breath and blood test, the blood test supersedes any other sobriety test.
I've heard from several local lawyers that if you're ever stopped for a DUI, and it goes beyond asking for the drivers license and registration, you have the right to demand the blood test. The reason is two fold. First, it's more accurate, as I mentioned above. The other is that you now have the luxury of time. You're in no rush to go anywhere any more. They'll take you to the jail, book you in (which takes hours), then book you out to go to the hospital where you'll sit for more hours, and only THEN will they draw blood.
If I've had two drinks, I'm still ok to drive, but completely sober in 2 hours.
If I have two drinks, and then get stopped within minutes of leaving the establishment, I should test somewhere between a 0.01 and 0.034. More than likely due to errors in the breath machines, I'll test 0.1 to 0.6. In two hours, both drinks will have metabolized, and a blood test will read 0.00.
Of course, if you've done a dozen shots in that hour, along with whatever else you were drinking, you'll still show above the legal limit by the time you get to the hospital.
Most DUI's are caught because they....
1) are driving erratically.
2) slurring their speech.
3) will say "no officer, I only had 3 drinks. See, it's here on the receipt (showing a dozen)." right before puking on his shoes and passing out.
If you fall into that case, you're still screwed. They'll drag you off to the hospital, and draw your blood which will show the reality of your intoxication.
I promise restoration of the rights of all people, as protected by the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
I promise transparency in our government, and open public audit of all government projects.
I promise revocation of the Income Tax (25% of your income for most citizens), to be replaced by a 2% sales tax. This effectively gives a 23% raise to all working citizens.
I promise increase in tariffs on foreign goods to be no less than 2% of the retail value, to encourage growth in the industrial sectors of America.
I promise immediate closure of all tax "loop holes" to ensure all "big money" corporations pay in their fair share.
I promise yearly "dividend" payments to the citizens of the United States on any excess tax paid by the citizens and profit from foreign tariffs.
I promise health care in the form of open access doctors and hospitals to be no less than 25% of the total medical service field (at least 25% of doctors will be free for the citizens). You may still purchase insurance, and doctors may still provide special expert service, but for those who can't afford it, free services are available, and more positions will be available for both new and skilled doctors.
I promise open borders, reducing the lengthy and confusing immigration/emigration procedures. Diverse and contridactory policies exist now, including Canadians who are welcome across the friendly open borders, but Mexicans who are frequently detained, arrested, or left to die in military style borders and checkpoints. This will reduce operational costs for enforcement agencies by billions yearly.
I promise retiring the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, returning their duties to the appropriate intelligence agencies. This removes over $55 billion in yearly government expenses that are simply not necessary.
And oddly enough, I'm dead serious. I'm not a billionaire, so I cannot afford the campaign. The estimated cost for the 2008 Presidential election was $1.6 billion per candidate. Neither established party back me. I would hurt their corporate interests.
And yes, I am an American born citizen. I have traveled to the majority of US states, and both bordering nations. I don't know everything, but I know people who I can trust who are experts in their fields. No individual can run the country properly, but a good team will return the United States to it's prior reputation of the nation all others want to emulate, rather than the most powerful and embarrassing nation in the world.
I beg to differ. In most elections, it's the selection of the lesser of two evils.
Consider an election between a has been celebrity, partially deaf, (and was later found to have Alzheimers) pro-war, pro military growth candidate, versus an anti-war candidate who wanted tax reform and to help the lower and middle classes.
Damn peaceniks. They'll invite the reds right to our door! May as well start learning Russian, we'll be under their flag in no time, singing "Amepnka, kpacnbar"
I sincerely regret to inform you that the "Anonymous Coward" account is for the exclusive use of spammers, trolls, and goatse links. Your insightful posting is far outside of the acceptable terms of service for such an account.
With any public figure, you will find they have misstated things on occasion. Well, except Ross Perot, but that's another discussion. Some public figures, [pointing towards Palin] the mistakes are not the exception.
F-ed up or not, consider if the elections aren't rigged by the companies and interests who own and operate the voting boxes. Everything is perfectly fair.
There are enough Palin zealots riding around on their dinosaurs, pitching stones from Anchorage to Moscow.
There are also a lot of people who swear by the phrase "never vote for the incumbent"
Assuming the overlap isn't 100%, and the sum of the two groups discounting overlap is greater than 51%.
This stunt could put Palin in office.
Never, ever, ever, put someone up as a candidate that "can't win" to ensure your own party can, because sure as hell you'll get that person in.
I really don't want Palin in. I don't want to go to the beach and admire the oil slicks from thousands of new oil rigs. I don't want us to declare war on Columbia, Cambodia, and Canada, because they all "sound the same". And by golly shucks, she'll single handedly bring the average IQ of the country down to low double digits (ok, down by 3 points, but still), even if it's just from directing schools to teach what she knows to be true.
Information on intelligence assets is on a need to know basis only. We cannot confirm nor deny that any individual or group of individuals may or may not work for any agency that you may or may not believe may or may not exist.
I hope that answers all of your questions. Have a nice day.
I agree, the statistics can show cheating, but they can also show a cheater who in reality isn't.
What if several students get the same "wrong" answer. Does it indicate cheating, or does it indicate that the material was taught wrong, so they all gave the same wrong answer.
If done properly, they won't use a single data point (one question) to determine cheating. When I was in school, I didn't cheat on tests. No need. I really didn't care.:) There were plenty of instances where the teacher would say "all of you got this question wrong." In discussion with the teacher after the test, it would frequently turn out that the question was poorly phrased, the material (or even the textbook) was taught incorrectly, or that a group studied together and learned the wrong information.
With current grade school (K-12) textbooks, it's not unusual to find horribly wrong information printed in the books. I'd frequently argue answers marked "wrong", when my answer reflected not only what the textbook showed as correct, but was also reflected in my notes. They are testing on the materials as taught, not on the truth of the subject. That was driven into me, where I would sometimes answer with a truly correct answer, and the teacher would say "but that's not what we taught".
Consider a question like "Who invented the radio?" I, as most of you, were taught it was Marconi. Tesla beat him to it by several years. Loomis demonstrated it before either of them. If you were to answer Tesla or Loomis, you would likely be wrong, because the text book and teacher both said Marconi.
During a math competition (I was forced, I swear), on several questions, our team would come up with one answer, and several other teams would come up with another answer (all the same) just after us. We were lucky it was a fair competition. Initially ours would be declared wrong. We'd prove our answer, discuss it with the proctor, and then we were awarded the question, because we were actually correct, and the provided answer was simply wrong. That's not to say the "right" answer is always wrong, but everyone makes mistakes, including teachers.
At one point, I was grading tests for teachers. When using many datapoints, it became obvious when there was cheating. This isn't anything new, teachers have been doing it for years. I'd sometimes see results where two students, who sat beside each other, would have virtually identical tests. There would be some discrepancy, because they knew if all the answers were the same, it would be too obvious. This would be a regular pattern with them. Once separated (seated at opposite sides of the classroom), their tests would would immediately be significantly different. It didn't call for suspension or expulsion, it simply indicated that their seating would need to change. One test early in the semester isn't going to make or break the student's grade, but detecting abnormalities early and ensuring the problem was eliminated would maintain the appropriate test environment.
The best method to ensure there was no cheating was for the teacher to remain aware of the testing environment. They'd (oh my gosh) actually watch the students. They'd test in a clean area (no other materials other than the test paper and pencil). They'd walk around the classroom to observe students from different positions during the testing. The want or need to rely on statistics to determine cheating is an effort to be lazy, where they can't be bothered with trying to be effective test proctors.
Even though I passed the sniffer, when they went to swab my stuff (I was again "randomly" selected) I was kind enough to say, "I may test positive for explosives. I was at the shooting range before coming here. I do not have any weapons or ammunition in my possession."
It was amazing though, somewhere between saying "explosive" and "shooting" every TSA agent in the place spun around and was looking directly at me. I guess they only heard the keywords. The guy actually doing the swabbing understood I was just clarifying my position.
I talked to him a bit longer, since he didn't seem to be in a rush to get rid of me, but also wasn't detaining me. I asked how many people had tested positive that he knew of. He told me that no one at that airport had ever tested positive (it's an international airport). The only one he knew of was someone at another large airport about 100 miles away. One. And it turned out to be a false alarm.
It's all a show.
I had a talk with another TSA agent one morning. I was 3 hours early for the first flight of the morning, and there was no one else around. After going through the song and dance, being that I had time to waste, and he was obviously bored, we talked. Even they know it's a show. If you think about it, it's obvious. DHS/TSA is putting on this huge multi-billion dollar farce that's making quite a few government contractors a fortune. They're all jumping at the chance to sell the government the latest, greatest innovation to {cough} protect us.
If terrorists wanted to do something, consider the options. If normal security had been operating normally, no knives would have made it through the X-ray and metal detector. No change was required, except it was government sponsored terrorism. What's the regular MO of the terrorists? Put explosives somewhere. Set them off. Road-side explosives. Cars and vans packed with explosives and driven into targets and detonated. A vest packed with explosives, walked in and detonated.
What can you put explosives on to detonate? Cars, boats, planes, trains, people, stray dogs, remote control airplanes, hot air balloons, weather balloons. Even a chunk of C4 or Semtex shaped and painted like a basketball will make an awful big mess. Ok, that may be a bit heavy, but a softball size would still make a mess.
So, what's to stop say a freight ship loaded with explosives, from floating into New York harbor? Not too damned much. "But where would a terrorist get a freighter?" Somalia seems to be an obvious choice. Or a retired cruise ship purchased cheap. Or even a fishing boat or pleasure craft. If the water is too slow and vulnerable, you, I, or anyone with a few hundred thousand can go purchase a perfectly good airliner. In just a quick search, I found a 727-200 in Egypt for $275,000. Crashing a plane into a building is bad. An airliner full of explosives nosediving from 50,000 feet straight down into any number of International airports would be catastrophic. Not only would it kill everyone in the blast radius, but likely destroy a pretty nasty number of aircraft.
None of these is an impossible idea, nor ideas the government and terrorists haven't considered. They have the budget. They have practice doing most of them. So why don't they try anything?
If terrorists were intent on attacking the United States, all the nonsense at the airports is useless. The only thing driving the "terror" is the US Government.
I thought the sniffers and "wipe" explosive residue detection was funny. Well, not in good ways. I was at a shooting range just before going to the airport. My hands and clothes were guaranteed to have residue on them, since I could smell it. I tested negative. You'd think a little something would show, since I had handled about 300 rounds, firing 200 myself, not more than an hour before going through it.
When I've mentioned this before, I've heard comments both ways from people who professionally handle explosives. Some say they had no results. Some say they've been detected. Maybe it worked once in a while, but definitely not well enough to catch the random terrorist who doesn't really exist.
Laptops are wonderful tools. I realized a long time ago that I had the best weapon on the plane in the event of a hijacking. Swing with the hinge edge forward, and it won't have to deal with air resistance. Blunt force trauma is a bitch, especially when it causes a skull fracture. If I ever hear anyone say "I'm hijacking this plane", that'll probably be the last words they ever say. Hopefully the airline will reimburse the cost of my laptop. I'm sure the warranty doesn't cover "beat the shit out of a hijacker":)
Then again, I have enough training where the laptop isn't really necessary. It just makes the job easier. There's plenty of environmental obstacles on a plane to make his fall less than comfortable. Head into the overhead storage, arm rests, and then pounded into the floor. "Oops, I was just trying to take him down." will probably be the only excuse necessary.
You may think that's funny, but she almost hit me a few days ago.
It was nothing compared to the lady dialing her iPhone with her nose while putting on finger nail polish and drifting into the oncoming lane. Somehow she didn't hit anyone, but that was only by dumb luck and good reactions from the other drivers, who were more than happy to give her a 1-finger salute. She was oblivious to what happened. And yes, I'm serious. She passed me on the left when I saw what she was doing. She sped past me and into the oncoming lane, before drifting into my lane almost hitting me.
I remember the days when the drivers seat was used for driving, not used for everything else, and occasionally turning that big round wheel.
You know, I heard rumors about that, but I don't see how it could have possibly worked. The light flickered as traffic went by. Knowing that a packet was sent is useless if you don't know the payload of it.
This is a different case entirely though. Well, mostly. They've reinvented fiber optic networks, without the fiber. Of course, that increases the noise for the receiving end, the chances for interception, and the ability for someone to break a connection with a Post-It note or paintball gun.
plea bargaining negotiations are not a set rule anywhere that I know of. They are a tool used by law enforcement to get the more important case. Sometimes you'll get off. Sometimes they'll promise the judge will be nice to them. In reality, unless they do not charge you at all, there's no promise of anything.
Much like bargaining in any other situation, a verbal statement is almost impossible to enforce. The previous example was completely hypothetical, but say it was real, and I was the person who couldn't form a proper sentence to save my life. As soon as I said "it was them", I've given away my only bargaining power. I gave the information they wanted. They probably know it, and now I'm screwed. What's better, to get two suspects with whatever on them, or to get three (including me). All three would likely have public defenders, but you can be pretty sure that one won't survive to make it to court. Snitches, pedophiles, and rapists don't have a long life expectancy in jail. It's not only the guys who got fingered that will be upset, but whoever is going to lose revenue due to due to their salesmen being off the street, and any seized merchandise.
Since I'm free and alive (to the best of my knowledge), obviously I wasn't in such a situation.
Sometimes you don't want to be quite so obvious about the error. They're good to log though.:)
On one of my sites, it's very dependent on the database working. Sometimes the database isn't available, say someone rebooted it during the middle of the day. Shit happens. Instead of throwing a nasty "Couldn't connect to database - timeout connecting to 192.168.229.11", it just says "Sorry, we are temporarily down. Please check back in a few minutes.". Of course, the nasty error is logged. Of course *I* know where the database is, but sometimes I am unavailable also, like sleeping, or flying somewhere. Sometimes someone with no personal knowledge of the code needs to fix things. Looking at the log is a lot friendlier than saying "Hey, go find that error in the code, and then go find where the variables come from to populate it." I'm a fairly clean programmer. Sometimes it takes what seems like forever to dig through their chaos of code, just to find out that site/lib/funks/special/cdb12232010.cgi has two functions in it, one of which connects to the database, and site/lib/cf/import/cf12012010.txt has the less than intuitively named variables for the DB server and credentials. Ok, I just made up those paths, but I've seen stuff like those and worse.
You know, that's one of the points I evaluate when looking for a new distribution. Do they follow some sort of standards that will play nicely with others. My biggest beef is when you compare the distro's documentation with the author's documentation, and find a huge discrepancy. If the authors documentation clearly states/etc/[package] for configuration,/var/[package] for the data, and/var/log/[package].log for the log, it should be that way. I'm just stunned with some of the systems I've worked on. Lets use Apache as an example. httpd.conf. Pretty easy idea. It resides where?
1)Path: "/usr/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf"
Apache (2.0 and 2.2) (official)
FreeBSD 6.1 (sometimes)
2)Path: "/etc/apache2/apache2.conf"
Debian and Ubuntu
OSX Leopard
OpenSUSE
SLES
3)Path: "/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf" with pieces in "/etc/httpd/conf.d"
Fedora, RHEL, and CentOS
Redhat (up to version 9), and Menervia
6)Path: "C:/Program Files/Apache Software Foundation/Apache2.2/conf/httpd.conf"
Windows
7)Path: "/etc/apache2/httpd.conf"
Solaris 10
Gentoo
8)"/etc/httpd/httpd.conf"
Slackware 12 and newer
8 different places, with at least 2 different names. As I recall, Redhat actually used quite a few different paths over the years. That was a blast working for a place with virtually every version of Redhat released in the last 10 years. Their idea of standardization was "do exactly what the distro said, don't make any changes" Of course, that meant I'd find 3 or 4 different httpd.conf files with strange timestamps, because people before me had gone in, tried to make a change, found it didn't work in that file, and kept moving on until they found the right file. It may have been easier to look at the startup file, except nothing was to start automatically, you were only to reference the manual procedure document in the event of a system reboot. The manual was never right.
On various machines people have asked me to work on, when they ask "Can you fix this in the web server", I hop on, and run "locate httpd.conf && locate apache.conf", just to see how many targets I'll have. A lot of them aren't just distributions, but variances of distributions for specific tasks. Sometimes it's obvious. Sometimes I'll spend 15 minutes trying to find the right one. And no, a lot of time common tools like lsof don't help because they aren't installed, and there's no easy way to get it there.
My own system, on networks I'm in control of, has been a lot easier. Like you said, if we don't like it, we can change it. I do the same, regardless of the platform (with a subtle variation for Windows machines)./[something]/ holds all important server files./[something]/httpd/conf/httpd.conf is where Apache's config lives./[something]/httpd/bin/httpd is where the binary lives./[something]/dns/conf/ is where named's configurations live. Symbolic links for "known" locations all point back to this tree. It's a lot easier to back up/[something]/ than to back up all the crap that is lying around in the various other trees. Migration between servers or platforms becomes almost trivial. Automation scripting becomes simplistic.
That's not to say Windows is any better./etc/hosts is actually c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts . Very intuitive. The IIS equivalent of httpd.conf? ha. How about/etc/rc.d/rc.local? A dozen or so registry locations, the system servi
"Most girls are whores", and the previous narrative (although brief and poorly phrased), are two completely different situations.
The first would be a general statement, not a personal insight. It's usually one that comes from the guy who can't get laid, and is angry at the remainder of the population who is.
The second would imply intimate knowledge of the topic.
Consider it in a real-life context. If you were walking down the street, and the police stopped you and asked "Son, do you have any drugs on you?", if you were to answer "no pig, but dem niggas down dere do. ya, dem onez runnin'" indicates that you have intimate knowledge of the behavior of others. You might be let off. You might be charged either for intent to purchase, or as an accessory (i.e., lookout, delivery boy, etc).
In both cases, it's better to say one of two things.
1) Am I free to go?
2) I have nothing to say without my attorney present.
You know, that's a great argument *FOR* strict dress code guidelines.
If you know Jim is wearing pretty princess underwear, that's *WAY* more than anyone needed to know.:) Maybe if he wore pants also, it wouldn't be an issue.
There's nothing that unusual about a $500k check. They get floated around when homes are bought and sold.
If (for example), I had a home worth $750k and I only owed $250k on it, upon selling it, I'd get a lovely $500k check.
Cheno and Riverside are in the Los Angeles area, and it's perfectly reasonable to for that to happen there. Hell, when I was out there, you couldn't buy a shithole 1br house in a dangerous neighborhood for $300k. That was before the housing bubble burst, but still...
There are other legitimate reasons for it. Large business deals including selling a business.
The bank really should have taken better precautions, *AND* I'm sure they were insured for such losses. They would rather put the burden on the customer than hand it off to their insurer, or risk their own money. I don't believe FDIC covers this type of loss.
As for the bank's own money, they make a fortune on their depositors and on loans. That money doesn't go much farther than the bank and the shareholders. $500k is a drop in the bucket for most banks. That bank in particular in Q1 2010 made $7.2 million, with total assets of $110.8 million. Yes, they could have afforded to protect their customer. It's not in their best interest though. They'd rather hit the customer for the losses.
The guy, who was dumb for doing it, should really have won. No, he shouldn't gain anything from it, but the bank should be hit with punitive damages. They won't be though. They have the money to buy their way out of trouble.
From the bank's perspective though, it could have been a scam on HIS part. If I doctored up a check, deposited it in my account, and then sent most of it off to a friend in another country, and then said I had no involvement when the check bounced, who's to know who the real thief is.
Since they aren't seeking criminal charges against him, I'd suspect they don't really think he was involved to gain from it.
Well, you failed to do all the fun math associated with it. Even without, you're still right.
He has a lot to consider, that doesn't come from the universities recruiter, high school guidance counselor, or his parents that went to the school that they want him to go to.
As a side note, I'll be using "he" as a theoretical person, since neither the journalist nor the submitter were actually asking the question.
1) Does his career choice require a degree? If he is going to be a doctor or a lawyer, sure, it's required. For most other things, it's not. Either there's non-degree tech school, such as for nursing, law enforcement, auto/aviation mechanic, or a million other trades.
2) Does he have some self esteem issue that would really be helped by a degree? (hint: no degree can change who you are)
3) Does he have an abundance of time or money to waste on getting the degree. This is where most of the people with degrees stand up and scream, and a few say "you know, he's right".
Most employers don't care if you have a degree, as long as you can do the job. A few give pay incentives to those with degrees, but it's usually very low (as in a 1% to 5% increase on base salary).
I've personally known.....
A gentleman with a masters in political science. He did 2nd level tech support for a small Internet company.
An english major who struggled through various low pay jobs, and finally worked her way up the ranks with a company, to work in accounting, and went to a tech school to get the employer required degree.
A holder of a bachelors in psychology, who shuffled papers for Verizon.
And finally. A gentleman with a doctorate in something (can't remember, doesn't matter), who worked with the previously mentioned individual. As it later was discovered, his doctorate was from a papermill university. Since he kept up with his workload, they kept him on, and didn't even lower his base salary to that which he should have been at.
The list could be a lot longer, but it really doesn't matter. I do personally know quite a few people with masters and doctorates, who did very well for themselves. The important part to mention is that they didn't do very well because of the piece of paper, nor from spending 4 to 8 years in school. They did well because they learned their job, and excelled. No one that I know of was ever handed a job on a silver platter, unless daddy was a millionaire (or better). When I've been involved in hiring, even it's to just research the individual's qualifications (I'm good at digging up dirt on people), a degree has never been much more than "oh that's nice.". That leads back to your statement quite nicely. 50/50.
I liked how the story mentioned the sticker in the back window. Anyone can buy those stickers. You can buy the license plate frame, window sticker, key chain, and even degrees. You too can get all the supplies necessary to be from the university of your choice. The prices range from about $200 to $10,000, and you never have to do any academic work other than keying in your credit card number on their web site.
Businesses tend to be lazy about verifying information. Verifying references is barely done any more. Verifying university credentials, even less. We'll use one of the people I know as an example. He'd been working various jobs anywhere from middle management to C-level for many years. Only one employer attempted to verify his credentials. It was only then that he found out, the school had changed hands no less than 3 times since his graduation. The school wasn't even at the same location. He spent several days making phone calls trying to find anyone who could confirm that he went there, only to get answers from "I don't know" to "We don't have any records that old, sorr
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You've pointed out what wrong with most of the "new" laws. I know your example is well dated, but...
Consider the new slew of laws regarding texting while driving.
It's illegal to drive while distracted. It has been for an awful long time. If that distraction involved in injury or death, it's even more so.
Then quite a while ago, they had to spell out that you could drive while watching TV. Any vehicle mounted TV couldn't be in view of the driver. Recently, they started with cell phones. You can't text while driving. You can't read your mail while driving. You can't hold your phone to your ear. Oddly enough, you can still hold in depth conversations if you go buy a earpiece. I don't quite get that one. I've seen plenty of folks in other real-world situations where you can't make them see the reality of their physical situation because they are on the phone. It wasn't necessary to add any of those laws to the books, other than it made government officials look productive.
So when will they make the laws saying it's illegal to eat, shave your legs, put on makeup, and scream at the kids in the back seat while driving? Ok, I've never seen them all at once, but I've seen various combination of those with cars driving erratically.
Great, so now it's illegal to impersonate someone else online. I expect they'll have to extend that to say you can't talk on a forum with a name that someone else uses. I guess I'm SOL, my online name matches dozens of other people. Worse, my real name matches thousands of other people in the US, and who knows how many world wide. If we just look in the scope of the Entertainment industry, my name matches about a dozen actors, directors, producers, and other production crew members. Hell, IMDB finds JW Smythe possibly matching 19 people, none of which are me. I swear, they're not me. "Smythe" even shows results in iafd.com. Again, not me.
No fucking wonder the law books are so bloated. In the quest for lawmakers to feel self important, they will keep adding laws to the books to continually restate other laws. It doesn't just bloat lawbooks, but these laws frequently carry different punishments for the same crime. Hmm, you had a phone, and you were driving carelessly, and screaming at the kids in the back seat, but your bumper sticker that says "Meet.Me.For.Cheap.Sex.com" has the name "Slut Monkey" on it. That's the stage name of someone else.
(oddly enough, I couldn't find a reference to "Slut Monkey" being either a stage name nor movie title. Production will start tomorrow. All female applicants should send their resume with measurements, nude photos, acts their willing to perform, and current STD test results.)
Actually, these aren't for car searches. They are for blood alcohol searches.
For at least the last 20 years, the bottom of Florida drivers licenses have read "Operation of a motor vehicle constitutes consent to any sobriety test required by law."
The good part of this is, they're requiring *BLOOD* tests. Ok, it'll still convict you if you've been drinking and driving. At least the score will be accurate. Breath tests are notoriously incorrect. Beyond that, if you get BOTH the breath and blood test, the blood test supersedes any other sobriety test.
I've heard from several local lawyers that if you're ever stopped for a DUI, and it goes beyond asking for the drivers license and registration, you have the right to demand the blood test. The reason is two fold. First, it's more accurate, as I mentioned above. The other is that you now have the luxury of time. You're in no rush to go anywhere any more. They'll take you to the jail, book you in (which takes hours), then book you out to go to the hospital where you'll sit for more hours, and only THEN will they draw blood.
If I've had two drinks, I'm still ok to drive, but completely sober in 2 hours.
If I have two drinks, and then get stopped within minutes of leaving the establishment, I should test somewhere between a 0.01 and 0.034. More than likely due to errors in the breath machines, I'll test 0.1 to 0.6. In two hours, both drinks will have metabolized, and a blood test will read 0.00.
Of course, if you've done a dozen shots in that hour, along with whatever else you were drinking, you'll still show above the legal limit by the time you get to the hospital.
Most DUI's are caught because they....
1) are driving erratically.
2) slurring their speech.
3) will say "no officer, I only had 3 drinks. See, it's here on the receipt (showing a dozen)." right before puking on his shoes and passing out.
If you fall into that case, you're still screwed. They'll drag you off to the hospital, and draw your blood which will show the reality of your intoxication.
The problem with it is that she implied that *she* had some dealings with Russia. In reality, her only dealings would have been buying Russian Vodka.
For the 2012 election, the answer is easy.
Write in JWSmythe!
I promise restoration of the rights of all people, as protected by the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
I promise transparency in our government, and open public audit of all government projects.
I promise revocation of the Income Tax (25% of your income for most citizens), to be replaced by a 2% sales tax. This effectively gives a 23% raise to all working citizens.
I promise increase in tariffs on foreign goods to be no less than 2% of the retail value, to encourage growth in the industrial sectors of America.
I promise immediate closure of all tax "loop holes" to ensure all "big money" corporations pay in their fair share.
I promise yearly "dividend" payments to the citizens of the United States on any excess tax paid by the citizens and profit from foreign tariffs.
I promise health care in the form of open access doctors and hospitals to be no less than 25% of the total medical service field (at least 25% of doctors will be free for the citizens). You may still purchase insurance, and doctors may still provide special expert service, but for those who can't afford it, free services are available, and more positions will be available for both new and skilled doctors.
I promise open borders, reducing the lengthy and confusing immigration/emigration procedures. Diverse and contridactory policies exist now, including Canadians who are welcome across the friendly open borders, but Mexicans who are frequently detained, arrested, or left to die in military style borders and checkpoints. This will reduce operational costs for enforcement agencies by billions yearly.
I promise retiring the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, returning their duties to the appropriate intelligence agencies. This removes over $55 billion in yearly government expenses that are simply not necessary.
And oddly enough, I'm dead serious. I'm not a billionaire, so I cannot afford the campaign. The estimated cost for the 2008 Presidential election was $1.6 billion per candidate. Neither established party back me. I would hurt their corporate interests.
And yes, I am an American born citizen. I have traveled to the majority of US states, and both bordering nations. I don't know everything, but I know people who I can trust who are experts in their fields. No individual can run the country properly, but a good team will return the United States to it's prior reputation of the nation all others want to emulate, rather than the most powerful and embarrassing nation in the world.
I beg to differ. In most elections, it's the selection of the lesser of two evils.
Consider an election between a has been celebrity, partially deaf, (and was later found to have Alzheimers) pro-war, pro military growth candidate, versus an anti-war candidate who wanted tax reform and to help the lower and middle classes.
Damn peaceniks. They'll invite the reds right to our door! May as well start learning Russian, we'll be under their flag in no time, singing "Amepnka, kpacnbar"
Sir (or Ma'am),
I sincerely regret to inform you that the "Anonymous Coward" account is for the exclusive use of spammers, trolls, and goatse links. Your insightful posting is far outside of the acceptable terms of service for such an account.
Sincerely,
Slashdot Abuse Department
(or just me under false pretext, but hey) :)
With any public figure, you will find they have misstated things on occasion. Well, except Ross Perot, but that's another discussion. Some public figures, [pointing towards Palin] the mistakes are not the exception.
F-ed up or not, consider if the elections aren't rigged by the companies and interests who own and operate the voting boxes. Everything is perfectly fair.
There are enough Palin zealots riding around on their dinosaurs, pitching stones from Anchorage to Moscow.
There are also a lot of people who swear by the phrase "never vote for the incumbent"
Assuming the overlap isn't 100%, and the sum of the two groups discounting overlap is greater than 51%.
This stunt could put Palin in office.
Never, ever, ever, put someone up as a candidate that "can't win" to ensure your own party can, because sure as hell you'll get that person in.
I really don't want Palin in. I don't want to go to the beach and admire the oil slicks from thousands of new oil rigs. I don't want us to declare war on Columbia, Cambodia, and Canada, because they all "sound the same". And by golly shucks, she'll single handedly bring the average IQ of the country down to low double digits (ok, down by 3 points, but still), even if it's just from directing schools to teach what she knows to be true.
Information on intelligence assets is on a need to know basis only. We cannot confirm nor deny that any individual or group of individuals may or may not work for any agency that you may or may not believe may or may not exist.
I hope that answers all of your questions. Have a nice day.
I agree, the statistics can show cheating, but they can also show a cheater who in reality isn't.
What if several students get the same "wrong" answer. Does it indicate cheating, or does it indicate that the material was taught wrong, so they all gave the same wrong answer.
If done properly, they won't use a single data point (one question) to determine cheating. When I was in school, I didn't cheat on tests. No need. I really didn't care. :) There were plenty of instances where the teacher would say "all of you got this question wrong." In discussion with the teacher after the test, it would frequently turn out that the question was poorly phrased, the material (or even the textbook) was taught incorrectly, or that a group studied together and learned the wrong information.
With current grade school (K-12) textbooks, it's not unusual to find horribly wrong information printed in the books. I'd frequently argue answers marked "wrong", when my answer reflected not only what the textbook showed as correct, but was also reflected in my notes. They are testing on the materials as taught, not on the truth of the subject. That was driven into me, where I would sometimes answer with a truly correct answer, and the teacher would say "but that's not what we taught".
Consider a question like "Who invented the radio?" I, as most of you, were taught it was Marconi. Tesla beat him to it by several years. Loomis demonstrated it before either of them. If you were to answer Tesla or Loomis, you would likely be wrong, because the text book and teacher both said Marconi.
During a math competition (I was forced, I swear), on several questions, our team would come up with one answer, and several other teams would come up with another answer (all the same) just after us. We were lucky it was a fair competition. Initially ours would be declared wrong. We'd prove our answer, discuss it with the proctor, and then we were awarded the question, because we were actually correct, and the provided answer was simply wrong. That's not to say the "right" answer is always wrong, but everyone makes mistakes, including teachers.
At one point, I was grading tests for teachers. When using many datapoints, it became obvious when there was cheating. This isn't anything new, teachers have been doing it for years. I'd sometimes see results where two students, who sat beside each other, would have virtually identical tests. There would be some discrepancy, because they knew if all the answers were the same, it would be too obvious. This would be a regular pattern with them. Once separated (seated at opposite sides of the classroom), their tests would would immediately be significantly different. It didn't call for suspension or expulsion, it simply indicated that their seating would need to change. One test early in the semester isn't going to make or break the student's grade, but detecting abnormalities early and ensuring the problem was eliminated would maintain the appropriate test environment.
The best method to ensure there was no cheating was for the teacher to remain aware of the testing environment. They'd (oh my gosh) actually watch the students. They'd test in a clean area (no other materials other than the test paper and pencil). They'd walk around the classroom to observe students from different positions during the testing. The want or need to rely on statistics to determine cheating is an effort to be lazy, where they can't be bothered with trying to be effective test proctors.
Even though I passed the sniffer, when they went to swab my stuff (I was again "randomly" selected) I was kind enough to say, "I may test positive for explosives. I was at the shooting range before coming here. I do not have any weapons or ammunition in my possession."
It was amazing though, somewhere between saying "explosive" and "shooting" every TSA agent in the place spun around and was looking directly at me. I guess they only heard the keywords. The guy actually doing the swabbing understood I was just clarifying my position.
I talked to him a bit longer, since he didn't seem to be in a rush to get rid of me, but also wasn't detaining me. I asked how many people had tested positive that he knew of. He told me that no one at that airport had ever tested positive (it's an international airport). The only one he knew of was someone at another large airport about 100 miles away. One. And it turned out to be a false alarm.
It's all a show.
I had a talk with another TSA agent one morning. I was 3 hours early for the first flight of the morning, and there was no one else around. After going through the song and dance, being that I had time to waste, and he was obviously bored, we talked. Even they know it's a show. If you think about it, it's obvious. DHS/TSA is putting on this huge multi-billion dollar farce that's making quite a few government contractors a fortune. They're all jumping at the chance to sell the government the latest, greatest innovation to {cough} protect us.
If terrorists wanted to do something, consider the options. If normal security had been operating normally, no knives would have made it through the X-ray and metal detector. No change was required, except it was government sponsored terrorism. What's the regular MO of the terrorists? Put explosives somewhere. Set them off. Road-side explosives. Cars and vans packed with explosives and driven into targets and detonated. A vest packed with explosives, walked in and detonated.
What can you put explosives on to detonate? Cars, boats, planes, trains, people, stray dogs, remote control airplanes, hot air balloons, weather balloons. Even a chunk of C4 or Semtex shaped and painted like a basketball will make an awful big mess. Ok, that may be a bit heavy, but a softball size would still make a mess.
So, what's to stop say a freight ship loaded with explosives, from floating into New York harbor? Not too damned much. "But where would a terrorist get a freighter?" Somalia seems to be an obvious choice. Or a retired cruise ship purchased cheap. Or even a fishing boat or pleasure craft. If the water is too slow and vulnerable, you, I, or anyone with a few hundred thousand can go purchase a perfectly good airliner. In just a quick search, I found a 727-200 in Egypt for $275,000. Crashing a plane into a building is bad. An airliner full of explosives nosediving from 50,000 feet straight down into any number of International airports would be catastrophic. Not only would it kill everyone in the blast radius, but likely destroy a pretty nasty number of aircraft.
None of these is an impossible idea, nor ideas the government and terrorists haven't considered. They have the budget. They have practice doing most of them. So why don't they try anything?
If terrorists were intent on attacking the United States, all the nonsense at the airports is useless. The only thing driving the "terror" is the US Government.
I thought the sniffers and "wipe" explosive residue detection was funny. Well, not in good ways. I was at a shooting range just before going to the airport. My hands and clothes were guaranteed to have residue on them, since I could smell it. I tested negative. You'd think a little something would show, since I had handled about 300 rounds, firing 200 myself, not more than an hour before going through it.
When I've mentioned this before, I've heard comments both ways from people who professionally handle explosives. Some say they had no results. Some say they've been detected. Maybe it worked once in a while, but definitely not well enough to catch the random terrorist who doesn't really exist.
Laptops are wonderful tools. I realized a long time ago that I had the best weapon on the plane in the event of a hijacking. Swing with the hinge edge forward, and it won't have to deal with air resistance. Blunt force trauma is a bitch, especially when it causes a skull fracture. If I ever hear anyone say "I'm hijacking this plane", that'll probably be the last words they ever say. Hopefully the airline will reimburse the cost of my laptop. I'm sure the warranty doesn't cover "beat the shit out of a hijacker" :)
Then again, I have enough training where the laptop isn't really necessary. It just makes the job easier. There's plenty of environmental obstacles on a plane to make his fall less than comfortable. Head into the overhead storage, arm rests, and then pounded into the floor. "Oops, I was just trying to take him down." will probably be the only excuse necessary.
You may think that's funny, but she almost hit me a few days ago.
It was nothing compared to the lady dialing her iPhone with her nose while putting on finger nail polish and drifting into the oncoming lane. Somehow she didn't hit anyone, but that was only by dumb luck and good reactions from the other drivers, who were more than happy to give her a 1-finger salute. She was oblivious to what happened. And yes, I'm serious. She passed me on the left when I saw what she was doing. She sped past me and into the oncoming lane, before drifting into my lane almost hitting me.
I remember the days when the drivers seat was used for driving, not used for everything else, and occasionally turning that big round wheel.
I prefer mine much higher on the spectrum. Closer to 10^20Hz. It takes care of pesky problems in your transmission stream too.
You know, I heard rumors about that, but I don't see how it could have possibly worked. The light flickered as traffic went by. Knowing that a packet was sent is useless if you don't know the payload of it.
This is a different case entirely though. Well, mostly. They've reinvented fiber optic networks, without the fiber. Of course, that increases the noise for the receiving end, the chances for interception, and the ability for someone to break a connection with a Post-It note or paintball gun.
plea bargaining negotiations are not a set rule anywhere that I know of. They are a tool used by law enforcement to get the more important case. Sometimes you'll get off. Sometimes they'll promise the judge will be nice to them. In reality, unless they do not charge you at all, there's no promise of anything.
Much like bargaining in any other situation, a verbal statement is almost impossible to enforce. The previous example was completely hypothetical, but say it was real, and I was the person who couldn't form a proper sentence to save my life. As soon as I said "it was them", I've given away my only bargaining power. I gave the information they wanted. They probably know it, and now I'm screwed. What's better, to get two suspects with whatever on them, or to get three (including me). All three would likely have public defenders, but you can be pretty sure that one won't survive to make it to court. Snitches, pedophiles, and rapists don't have a long life expectancy in jail. It's not only the guys who got fingered that will be upset, but whoever is going to lose revenue due to due to their salesmen being off the street, and any seized merchandise.
Since I'm free and alive (to the best of my knowledge), obviously I wasn't in such a situation.
Sometimes you don't want to be quite so obvious about the error. They're good to log though. :)
On one of my sites, it's very dependent on the database working. Sometimes the database isn't available, say someone rebooted it during the middle of the day. Shit happens. Instead of throwing a nasty "Couldn't connect to database - timeout connecting to 192.168.229.11", it just says "Sorry, we are temporarily down. Please check back in a few minutes.". Of course, the nasty error is logged. Of course *I* know where the database is, but sometimes I am unavailable also, like sleeping, or flying somewhere. Sometimes someone with no personal knowledge of the code needs to fix things. Looking at the log is a lot friendlier than saying "Hey, go find that error in the code, and then go find where the variables come from to populate it." I'm a fairly clean programmer. Sometimes it takes what seems like forever to dig through their chaos of code, just to find out that site/lib/funks/special/cdb12232010.cgi has two functions in it, one of which connects to the database, and site/lib/cf/import/cf12012010.txt has the less than intuitively named variables for the DB server and credentials. Ok, I just made up those paths, but I've seen stuff like those and worse.
You know, that's one of the points I evaluate when looking for a new distribution. Do they follow some sort of standards that will play nicely with others. My biggest beef is when you compare the distro's documentation with the author's documentation, and find a huge discrepancy. If the authors documentation clearly states /etc/[package] for configuration, /var/[package] for the data, and /var/log/[package].log for the log, it should be that way. I'm just stunned with some of the systems I've worked on. Lets use Apache as an example. httpd.conf. Pretty easy idea. It resides where?
1)Path: "/usr/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf"
Apache (2.0 and 2.2) (official)
FreeBSD 6.1 (sometimes)
2)Path: "/etc/apache2/apache2.conf"
Debian and Ubuntu
OSX Leopard
OpenSUSE
SLES
3)Path: "/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf" with pieces in "/etc/httpd/conf.d"
Fedora, RHEL, and CentOS
Redhat (up to version 9), and Menervia
4)Path: "/usr/pkg/etc/httpd/httpd.conf"
NetBSD
5)Path "/usr/local/etc/apache22/httpd.conf"
FreeBSD 6.1 (sometimes)
6)Path: "C:/Program Files/Apache Software Foundation/Apache2.2/conf/httpd.conf"
Windows
7)Path: "/etc/apache2/httpd.conf"
Solaris 10
Gentoo
8)"/etc/httpd/httpd.conf"
Slackware 12 and newer
8 different places, with at least 2 different names. As I recall, Redhat actually used quite a few different paths over the years. That was a blast working for a place with virtually every version of Redhat released in the last 10 years. Their idea of standardization was "do exactly what the distro said, don't make any changes" Of course, that meant I'd find 3 or 4 different httpd.conf files with strange timestamps, because people before me had gone in, tried to make a change, found it didn't work in that file, and kept moving on until they found the right file. It may have been easier to look at the startup file, except nothing was to start automatically, you were only to reference the manual procedure document in the event of a system reboot. The manual was never right.
On various machines people have asked me to work on, when they ask "Can you fix this in the web server", I hop on, and run "locate httpd.conf && locate apache.conf", just to see how many targets I'll have. A lot of them aren't just distributions, but variances of distributions for specific tasks. Sometimes it's obvious. Sometimes I'll spend 15 minutes trying to find the right one. And no, a lot of time common tools like lsof don't help because they aren't installed, and there's no easy way to get it there.
My own system, on networks I'm in control of, has been a lot easier. Like you said, if we don't like it, we can change it. I do the same, regardless of the platform (with a subtle variation for Windows machines). /[something]/ holds all important server files. /[something]/httpd/conf/httpd.conf is where Apache's config lives. /[something]/httpd/bin/httpd is where the binary lives. /[something]/dns/conf/ is where named's configurations live. Symbolic links for "known" locations all point back to this tree. It's a lot easier to back up /[something]/ than to back up all the crap that is lying around in the various other trees. Migration between servers or platforms becomes almost trivial. Automation scripting becomes simplistic.
That's not to say Windows is any better. /etc/hosts is actually c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts . Very intuitive. The IIS equivalent of httpd.conf? ha. How about /etc/rc.d/rc.local? A dozen or so registry locations, the system servi
"Most girls are whores", and the previous narrative (although brief and poorly phrased), are two completely different situations.
The first would be a general statement, not a personal insight. It's usually one that comes from the guy who can't get laid, and is angry at the remainder of the population who is.
The second would imply intimate knowledge of the topic.
Consider it in a real-life context. If you were walking down the street, and the police stopped you and asked "Son, do you have any drugs on you?", if you were to answer "no pig, but dem niggas down dere do. ya, dem onez runnin'" indicates that you have intimate knowledge of the behavior of others. You might be let off. You might be charged either for intent to purchase, or as an accessory (i.e., lookout, delivery boy, etc).
In both cases, it's better to say one of two things.
1) Am I free to go?
2) I have nothing to say without my attorney present.
You know, that's a great argument *FOR* strict dress code guidelines.
If you know Jim is wearing pretty princess underwear, that's *WAY* more than anyone needed to know. :) Maybe if he wore pants also, it wouldn't be an issue.
Check your calendar. It's Dec 20, 2012. Hmmm, why is tomorrow circled in red?
There's nothing that unusual about a $500k check. They get floated around when homes are bought and sold.
If (for example), I had a home worth $750k and I only owed $250k on it, upon selling it, I'd get a lovely $500k check.
Cheno and Riverside are in the Los Angeles area, and it's perfectly reasonable to for that to happen there. Hell, when I was out there, you couldn't buy a shithole 1br house in a dangerous neighborhood for $300k. That was before the housing bubble burst, but still...
There are other legitimate reasons for it. Large business deals including selling a business.
The bank really should have taken better precautions, *AND* I'm sure they were insured for such losses. They would rather put the burden on the customer than hand it off to their insurer, or risk their own money. I don't believe FDIC covers this type of loss.
As for the bank's own money, they make a fortune on their depositors and on loans. That money doesn't go much farther than the bank and the shareholders. $500k is a drop in the bucket for most banks. That bank in particular in Q1 2010 made $7.2 million, with total assets of $110.8 million. Yes, they could have afforded to protect their customer. It's not in their best interest though. They'd rather hit the customer for the losses.
The guy, who was dumb for doing it, should really have won. No, he shouldn't gain anything from it, but the bank should be hit with punitive damages. They won't be though. They have the money to buy their way out of trouble.
From the bank's perspective though, it could have been a scam on HIS part. If I doctored up a check, deposited it in my account, and then sent most of it off to a friend in another country, and then said I had no involvement when the check bounced, who's to know who the real thief is.
Since they aren't seeking criminal charges against him, I'd suspect they don't really think he was involved to gain from it.
Well, you failed to do all the fun math associated with it. Even without, you're still right.
He has a lot to consider, that doesn't come from the universities recruiter, high school guidance counselor, or his parents that went to the school that they want him to go to.
As a side note, I'll be using "he" as a theoretical person, since neither the journalist nor the submitter were actually asking the question.
1) Does his career choice require a degree? If he is going to be a doctor or a lawyer, sure, it's required. For most other things, it's not. Either there's non-degree tech school, such as for nursing, law enforcement, auto/aviation mechanic, or a million other trades.
2) Does he have some self esteem issue that would really be helped by a degree? (hint: no degree can change who you are)
3) Does he have an abundance of time or money to waste on getting the degree. This is where most of the people with degrees stand up and scream, and a few say "you know, he's right".
Most employers don't care if you have a degree, as long as you can do the job. A few give pay incentives to those with degrees, but it's usually very low (as in a 1% to 5% increase on base salary).
I've personally known.....
A gentleman with a masters in political science. He did 2nd level tech support for a small Internet company.
An english major who struggled through various low pay jobs, and finally worked her way up the ranks with a company, to work in accounting, and went to a tech school to get the employer required degree.
A holder of a bachelors in psychology, who shuffled papers for Verizon.
And finally. A gentleman with a doctorate in something (can't remember, doesn't matter), who worked with the previously mentioned individual. As it later was discovered, his doctorate was from a papermill university. Since he kept up with his workload, they kept him on, and didn't even lower his base salary to that which he should have been at.
The list could be a lot longer, but it really doesn't matter. I do personally know quite a few people with masters and doctorates, who did very well for themselves. The important part to mention is that they didn't do very well because of the piece of paper, nor from spending 4 to 8 years in school. They did well because they learned their job, and excelled. No one that I know of was ever handed a job on a silver platter, unless daddy was a millionaire (or better). When I've been involved in hiring, even it's to just research the individual's qualifications (I'm good at digging up dirt on people), a degree has never been much more than "oh that's nice.". That leads back to your statement quite nicely. 50/50.
I liked how the story mentioned the sticker in the back window. Anyone can buy those stickers. You can buy the license plate frame, window sticker, key chain, and even degrees. You too can get all the supplies necessary to be from the university of your choice. The prices range from about $200 to $10,000, and you never have to do any academic work other than keying in your credit card number on their web site.
Businesses tend to be lazy about verifying information. Verifying references is barely done any more. Verifying university credentials, even less. We'll use one of the people I know as an example. He'd been working various jobs anywhere from middle management to C-level for many years. Only one employer attempted to verify his credentials. It was only then that he found out, the school had changed hands no less than 3 times since his graduation. The school wasn't even at the same location. He spent several days making phone calls trying to find anyone who could confirm that he went there, only to get answers from "I don't know" to "We don't have any records that old, sorr
Actually the new scale is: