First you'd have to find an actual person at Google.
As others have pointed out, they [Google] routinely ignore support requests and a real person almost never answers the support line. Some might think that this is a bad thing, but actually there's a silver lining. If you cannot call Google or contact support to reset your account then it's likely that an attacker will also fail to get through. Combined with the fact that no domain registrar is going to reassign gmail.com to some random caller and you actually have a fairly decent security situation. Hard to social engineer due to poor customer service and practically impossible to get the gmail.com domain MX record reassigned, especially over the phone.
Selling weapons, whether the traditional kinetic kind or the more modern software kind, tends to attract the wrong sort of attention. Unless you're under the protection of a government, either as an employee or a contractor working for or with them, I would advise against it. Making powerful enemies requires powerful friends to avoid unpleasant consequences the likes of which are better left to the imagination.
Doesn't Google share at least part of the blame here for not allowing users to opt-out of automatic updates once an extension is installed? As the article points out, it's precisely this ability to automatically "push update" thousands or tens of thousands of users without recourse, combined with lax enforcement by Google of update rules, that makes this situation attractive to the advertisers. Why not instead allow users to decide what the update policy will be on their device, as in Firefox?
2008-2016's top issues were, in order: the economy, the economy, and the economy.
Too bad Obama didn't get that memo. Instead, he wasted precious time on disastrous health care reforms, idiotic foreign policies (aka the "Russian Reset"), inappropriate forays into racially charged domestic news events and a host of other non issues that were either much less important than the worst economy in a generation or simply not important at all. The President should have been focused on the economy from day one in 2008, but instead he took his eye off the ball and fiddled while Rome burned. He was far more interested in ramming through health care reforms quickly, during the brief period of time that his party controlled Congress, regardless of how crude or ill considered, than he was about plight of the American middle class. Obama will be remembered by future generations as the President who presided over the destruction of the middle class, paralyzed by his own ineptitude and blinded by delusions of grandeur. The only consolation is that the people who voted for him, the young, will live long enough to regret it as they face diminished prospects and a bruising fall down the economic ladder climbed in previous generations by their parents and grandparents.
I think you have a misunderstanding of the point of a public debate.
Given the state of public education and debate in the United States today, it's not difficult to see how or why many Americans have a great number and variety of misunderstandings concerning not just debate, but civics and even basic science too. It's quite discouraging actually.
In fairness even many non-technical adults get this wrong. Because they don't understand how technology actually works they fail to understand that "privacy controls" don't actually control anything. This is true because the data, whether "deleted" or not, continues to exist in the company's databases which are likely copied and backed up in many places. As the parent said, if you gave it to them once they have it forever. It should also be remembered that when a company is bought or sold, the new owners might decide to sell the data or use it for affiliate marketing or for other purposes. Your data is their coin and once they have it they never give it back.
As long as we're clear that your right to deliberately poison the acoustic spectrum ends at your property-line
The range on these is about 120 feet, or 140 feet without the baffle, so In a large free standing store with a parking lot or a private mall, it would not be difficult to keep the audible range within the property boundaries. As for the notice, I doubt that it would a problem. Notices are generally required only when the area is under surveillance and video or audio are being recorded and even then not all places require that.
Say the company buys a $10,000 computer and estimates it will be worth $1000 in 5 years time, it then takes the remaining $9000 and divides it by 5 years, which gives $1800 per year.
I'm no accountant, but I don't remember the depreciation schedule for computers being quite that generous. I think that you would probably have to spread it out over more than 5 years, at least here in the United States.
After. The bankruptcy was a Chapter 11 reorganization, so the new shareholders were motivated both to prevent a repeat performance and increase the value of their equity going forward. I think that after looking at the stock performance since the reorganization, you'll agree that the effort was largely successful. In fact, a chapter 11 bankruptcy often provides a good opportunity to pick up a quality reorganized company at an attractive price, especially when the underlying business is still good in principle. Unfortunately for us average investors these deals often involve the company being taken private for a time before re-emerging as a new IPO which means that the best returns usually go to the private equity guys. Even so, a company that continues to grow after the post-bankruptcy IPO can still deliver outstanding value to an ordinary investor, especially when the company is later acquired by another company at a premium to the appreciated share price.
You may have noticed that persons under 25 are the main customers of that branch of McDonald's.
Perhaps, but I wonder how much they're really spending. For example, here in the United States the Six Flags corporation, which operates themed parks around the country, used to market heavily to teenagers until they realized three things. First, unruly teenagers scare away families and especially families with young children. Second, they tend to break things. Third and finally, they don't spend as much as you might think. In response to these realizations, they reduced the marketing to teenagers, kicked out the troublemakers and their profits improved. Coincidence? I think not.
We have those abominations here and let me tell you, being over 25 or even over 35 is no guarantee you won't hear them.
You're free to take your business elsewhere. I believe that's why they call it a free market economy.
Ban the mosquitoes, not the kids.
It's called private property and the police cannot seem to be bothered with "low priority" calls these days. Indeed, their priority on a loitering complaint, short of rioting and looting, is generally somewhere between barely interested and not their problem. What's a business owner to do about unruly packs of young people driving away paying customers when banning them from the premises is either not practical or not enforceable as a matter of law?
If, as you've suggested, your whole CS program was a grade-curved culture of relentless competition, then educationally and culturally, that's actually probably not a good thing.
That depends upon your point of view. There's a certain satisfaction and confidence that comes from knowing that your skills are a cut above the rest. Employers also tend to notice these things which is why graduates from highly ranked and competitive programs are more sought after and receive better initial offers from companies hiring them. A graduate of these institutions can also be reasonably well assured that the value of their degree will not be diluted over time by a host of lesser quality graduates who benefited from reduced standards that damaged the reputation of the institution in subsequent years. Now, I do think that students ought to be told up front what will be expected of them, but I don't agree that grading on a curve is a bad thing, either educationally or culturally. Quite the contrary, it's my belief that such programs produce superior graduates who are better equipped to handle the challenges of the working world and that that's worth far more than a high GPA from an average school.
Really? How many of which? How many of the blacks and latinos were Americans, and how many were international students?
Well, without giving away where I attended school, suffice it to say that the numbers were not equal, neither in an absolute sense nor as a percentage of the population at large. However, two things were true: nobody in the class cared about these things enough to say anything and there was at least one person from each of those racial groups present in the graduating class. I think you'll find that the situation is similar in the science and engineering departments of most American universities. The science majors are there to learn, not to protest or party or be politically active. We left that to the idiot fraternity jocks and the touchy-feely intellectual types in the liberal arts colleges.
This sounds like a perfect use case for The Mosquito anti-loitering device. To summarize for those who aren't familiar, the basic idea here is to discourage loitering of young people by playing a loud and obnoxious tone continually or in bursts at around 17.4 Khz, which while audible to most persons 25 years of age or younger, is much less audible or completely inaudible to older adults. This takes advantage of the fact that hearing, especially at the high pitched edge of the audible range, tends to decline with age. These types of devices can usually be configured to activate or deactivate between certain times, upon detection of motion or manually.
This is totally bullshit and it's being done for bullshit political reasons. Nothing good comes from the politicization of science and yet the politicians cannot resist making a political issue of the lack of "diversity" in CS education. In my own CS experience nobody gave a shit about whether you were black, white, asian or latino and yes we had all of those races represented in the program. What mattered was whether or not you could hack it and continue advancing through the curriculum. The grades were always on a curve and the competition was intense. If you weren't smart enough or fast enough you washed out. In CS, as in other sciences, people respect knowledge, ability and intelligence, not the color of your skin or your cultural background. If you wanted to major in foo-fa the Humanities department was on the other side of campus.
That's not as big an issue for long time California residents, like your 20 year veteran sewer tech, as it might be in other parts of the country. Here in California we have this little thing called Proposition 13. This was passed by the voters in 1978 and it limited property taxes to 1% of the assessed value (retroactive to 1975 assessed values for those who owned their homes as of 1978) with an allowed increase in assessed value of not more than 2% annually. This amendment to the state constitution is probably the single most lasting achievement of Howard Jarvis and the tax revolts of the late seventies and early eighties. Of course, the state has found other ways to get money besides property taxes, which explains the very high gas and sales taxes in California and the high state income tax. However, very rarely are people in California, especially long time residents, forced out of their properties by rising property taxes. It's also interesting to note how Prop 13 has served to increase home prices in California relative to other states without such tax limitations, even adjusting for the good climate and other factors here in California, as a result of the added perk of this tax savings.
This Stefan Frei guy is just another dishonest shill saying something colossally stupid in public to draw attention to himself and the products that his company is selling. Forcing anyone to buy something or pay a fine to anyone without prior restraint of free contract or due process in court of law is so antithetical to the very basis of western civilization that it ought to be summarily dismissed from further debate or discussion with prejudice.
He murdered his uncle for political reasons and doesn't want everyone to know about it
That's not the official line, but unofficially you'd better believe that he wants everyone to know it. This is young Kim saying to other high level elites, "Don't even think about trying to stage a coup to overthrow me because if I'm willing to kill a family member to make a point, just imagine what I'll do to you." A bit crude and heavy handed perhaps, but effective none the less.
as the calculators get routinely erased and reset.
You mean you never wrote the fake reset program on your TI? That was classic although the newer ones support mini SD cards so a student could keep the programs on the cards and switch cards after wiping the programs stored in the onboard memory.
I dare say he's doing well enough now not to have to make a few bucks more by screwing his fellow citizens.
It's not about money for these Silicon Valley types. Oh sure, they want enough for their lifestyle, gadgets and projects but beyond a certain point money doesn't satisfy them. Money to those guys is a means to an end and the end which they seek is power to meddle in the lives of others. People like Zuckerberg want to remake the world as they see fit. They consider themselves to be superior to the rest of us and have no qualms about using unsavory methods to achieve their "enlightened" goals. I would much prefer that they simply took their money and enjoyed it in private, without involving those of us who aren't willing to participate, but no they have to spend it on meddling with the "imperfect" society. Mark and his H1-B supporters can go to hell as far as I'm concerned. Let them move to India if they want cheap workers, but I'll be damned if I'd vote for anyone who supported Zuckerberg and his H1-B ambitions.
I can understand Zuck, et al, spouting propaganda to get out of their personally horrid underprivileged conditions
Underprivileged? Zuck was the very definition of privilege and advantage when growing up. His background was upper middle class at the very least.
what they really need to teach in schools is critical thinking.
That doesn't suit the purposes of the ruling class and so is not taught. The last thing they want is for the future peons of America to think for themselves critically instead of believing all of the marketing, advertising and bullshit that the elite and their corporations plan to dump in their laps.
It's admirable, but it isn't what they're claiming it is.
You're dealing with Silicon Valley types here, hype and hyperbole are second nature to these people. Most of these guys have their heads so far up in the clouds that they forget what they sound like when talking to ordinary people who live outside their bubble world. Mostly, they're full of shit but the average person doesn't seem to recognize this and so the public eats their crap up because they don't know any better.
the idea that computers can be tools that do what we tell them to do, and not just magic black boxes for mindless content consumption.
Unfortunately, this new interest comes at a time when the big players in the industry, like Apple, are well along in the process of doing away with the general purpose computer and replacing it with walled garden tablet like devices who's primary purpose is mindless consumption. In very real ways programming is becoming ever less accessible to the average person or at least less open to the sorts of spontaneous discovery and experimentation that attract new people into the field. For example, it's difficult now to have the sort of VIC-20, Commodore-64 or Apple II experience that inspired well know programmers like Linus Torvalds and many others to become interested in computing and programming at an early age.
Slashdot Mirror
First you'd have to find an actual person at Google.
As others have pointed out, they [Google] routinely ignore support requests and a real person almost never answers the support line. Some might think that this is a bad thing, but actually there's a silver lining. If you cannot call Google or contact support to reset your account then it's likely that an attacker will also fail to get through. Combined with the fact that no domain registrar is going to reassign gmail.com to some random caller and you actually have a fairly decent security situation. Hard to social engineer due to poor customer service and practically impossible to get the gmail.com domain MX record reassigned, especially over the phone.
Selling weapons, whether the traditional kinetic kind or the more modern software kind, tends to attract the wrong sort of attention. Unless you're under the protection of a government, either as an employee or a contractor working for or with them, I would advise against it. Making powerful enemies requires powerful friends to avoid unpleasant consequences the likes of which are better left to the imagination.
Doesn't Google share at least part of the blame here for not allowing users to opt-out of automatic updates once an extension is installed? As the article points out, it's precisely this ability to automatically "push update" thousands or tens of thousands of users without recourse, combined with lax enforcement by Google of update rules, that makes this situation attractive to the advertisers. Why not instead allow users to decide what the update policy will be on their device, as in Firefox?
The number of ways of killing someone are limited only to your creativity.
That didn't seem to help Wile E Coyote, somehow the Road Runner always got away.
2008-2016's top issues were, in order: the economy, the economy, and the economy.
Too bad Obama didn't get that memo. Instead, he wasted precious time on disastrous health care reforms, idiotic foreign policies (aka the "Russian Reset"), inappropriate forays into racially charged domestic news events and a host of other non issues that were either much less important than the worst economy in a generation or simply not important at all. The President should have been focused on the economy from day one in 2008, but instead he took his eye off the ball and fiddled while Rome burned. He was far more interested in ramming through health care reforms quickly, during the brief period of time that his party controlled Congress, regardless of how crude or ill considered, than he was about plight of the American middle class. Obama will be remembered by future generations as the President who presided over the destruction of the middle class, paralyzed by his own ineptitude and blinded by delusions of grandeur. The only consolation is that the people who voted for him, the young, will live long enough to regret it as they face diminished prospects and a bruising fall down the economic ladder climbed in previous generations by their parents and grandparents.
I think you have a misunderstanding of the point of a public debate.
Given the state of public education and debate in the United States today, it's not difficult to see how or why many Americans have a great number and variety of misunderstandings concerning not just debate, but civics and even basic science too. It's quite discouraging actually.
In fairness even many non-technical adults get this wrong. Because they don't understand how technology actually works they fail to understand that "privacy controls" don't actually control anything. This is true because the data, whether "deleted" or not, continues to exist in the company's databases which are likely copied and backed up in many places. As the parent said, if you gave it to them once they have it forever. It should also be remembered that when a company is bought or sold, the new owners might decide to sell the data or use it for affiliate marketing or for other purposes. Your data is their coin and once they have it they never give it back.
As long as we're clear that your right to deliberately poison the acoustic spectrum ends at your property-line
The range on these is about 120 feet, or 140 feet without the baffle, so In a large free standing store with a parking lot or a private mall, it would not be difficult to keep the audible range within the property boundaries. As for the notice, I doubt that it would a problem. Notices are generally required only when the area is under surveillance and video or audio are being recorded and even then not all places require that.
Say the company buys a $10,000 computer and estimates it will be worth $1000 in 5 years time, it then takes the remaining $9000 and divides it by 5 years, which gives $1800 per year.
I'm no accountant, but I don't remember the depreciation schedule for computers being quite that generous. I think that you would probably have to spread it out over more than 5 years, at least here in the United States.
After. The bankruptcy was a Chapter 11 reorganization, so the new shareholders were motivated both to prevent a repeat performance and increase the value of their equity going forward. I think that after looking at the stock performance since the reorganization, you'll agree that the effort was largely successful. In fact, a chapter 11 bankruptcy often provides a good opportunity to pick up a quality reorganized company at an attractive price, especially when the underlying business is still good in principle. Unfortunately for us average investors these deals often involve the company being taken private for a time before re-emerging as a new IPO which means that the best returns usually go to the private equity guys. Even so, a company that continues to grow after the post-bankruptcy IPO can still deliver outstanding value to an ordinary investor, especially when the company is later acquired by another company at a premium to the appreciated share price.
You may have noticed that persons under 25 are the main customers of that branch of McDonald's.
Perhaps, but I wonder how much they're really spending. For example, here in the United States the Six Flags corporation, which operates themed parks around the country, used to market heavily to teenagers until they realized three things. First, unruly teenagers scare away families and especially families with young children. Second, they tend to break things. Third and finally, they don't spend as much as you might think. In response to these realizations, they reduced the marketing to teenagers, kicked out the troublemakers and their profits improved. Coincidence? I think not.
We have those abominations here and let me tell you, being over 25 or even over 35 is no guarantee you won't hear them.
You're free to take your business elsewhere. I believe that's why they call it a free market economy.
Ban the mosquitoes, not the kids.
It's called private property and the police cannot seem to be bothered with "low priority" calls these days. Indeed, their priority on a loitering complaint, short of rioting and looting, is generally somewhere between barely interested and not their problem. What's a business owner to do about unruly packs of young people driving away paying customers when banning them from the premises is either not practical or not enforceable as a matter of law?
If, as you've suggested, your whole CS program was a grade-curved culture of relentless competition, then educationally and culturally, that's actually probably not a good thing.
That depends upon your point of view. There's a certain satisfaction and confidence that comes from knowing that your skills are a cut above the rest. Employers also tend to notice these things which is why graduates from highly ranked and competitive programs are more sought after and receive better initial offers from companies hiring them. A graduate of these institutions can also be reasonably well assured that the value of their degree will not be diluted over time by a host of lesser quality graduates who benefited from reduced standards that damaged the reputation of the institution in subsequent years. Now, I do think that students ought to be told up front what will be expected of them, but I don't agree that grading on a curve is a bad thing, either educationally or culturally. Quite the contrary, it's my belief that such programs produce superior graduates who are better equipped to handle the challenges of the working world and that that's worth far more than a high GPA from an average school.
Really? How many of which? How many of the blacks and latinos were Americans, and how many were international students?
Well, without giving away where I attended school, suffice it to say that the numbers were not equal, neither in an absolute sense nor as a percentage of the population at large. However, two things were true: nobody in the class cared about these things enough to say anything and there was at least one person from each of those racial groups present in the graduating class. I think you'll find that the situation is similar in the science and engineering departments of most American universities. The science majors are there to learn, not to protest or party or be politically active. We left that to the idiot fraternity jocks and the touchy-feely intellectual types in the liberal arts colleges.
This sounds like a perfect use case for The Mosquito anti-loitering device. To summarize for those who aren't familiar, the basic idea here is to discourage loitering of young people by playing a loud and obnoxious tone continually or in bursts at around 17.4 Khz, which while audible to most persons 25 years of age or younger, is much less audible or completely inaudible to older adults. This takes advantage of the fact that hearing, especially at the high pitched edge of the audible range, tends to decline with age. These types of devices can usually be configured to activate or deactivate between certain times, upon detection of motion or manually.
This is totally bullshit and it's being done for bullshit political reasons. Nothing good comes from the politicization of science and yet the politicians cannot resist making a political issue of the lack of "diversity" in CS education. In my own CS experience nobody gave a shit about whether you were black, white, asian or latino and yes we had all of those races represented in the program. What mattered was whether or not you could hack it and continue advancing through the curriculum. The grades were always on a curve and the competition was intense. If you weren't smart enough or fast enough you washed out. In CS, as in other sciences, people respect knowledge, ability and intelligence, not the color of your skin or your cultural background. If you wanted to major in foo-fa the Humanities department was on the other side of campus.
many municipalities are greedy
How else will they be able to fund those generous public employee pension contributions?
Escalating property taxes
That's not as big an issue for long time California residents, like your 20 year veteran sewer tech, as it might be in other parts of the country. Here in California we have this little thing called Proposition 13. This was passed by the voters in 1978 and it limited property taxes to 1% of the assessed value (retroactive to 1975 assessed values for those who owned their homes as of 1978) with an allowed increase in assessed value of not more than 2% annually. This amendment to the state constitution is probably the single most lasting achievement of Howard Jarvis and the tax revolts of the late seventies and early eighties. Of course, the state has found other ways to get money besides property taxes, which explains the very high gas and sales taxes in California and the high state income tax. However, very rarely are people in California, especially long time residents, forced out of their properties by rising property taxes. It's also interesting to note how Prop 13 has served to increase home prices in California relative to other states without such tax limitations, even adjusting for the good climate and other factors here in California, as a result of the added perk of this tax savings.
This Stefan Frei guy is just another dishonest shill saying something colossally stupid in public to draw attention to himself and the products that his company is selling. Forcing anyone to buy something or pay a fine to anyone without prior restraint of free contract or due process in court of law is so antithetical to the very basis of western civilization that it ought to be summarily dismissed from further debate or discussion with prejudice.
He murdered his uncle for political reasons and doesn't want everyone to know about it
That's not the official line, but unofficially you'd better believe that he wants everyone to know it. This is young Kim saying to other high level elites, "Don't even think about trying to stage a coup to overthrow me because if I'm willing to kill a family member to make a point, just imagine what I'll do to you." A bit crude and heavy handed perhaps, but effective none the less.
as the calculators get routinely erased and reset.
You mean you never wrote the fake reset program on your TI? That was classic although the newer ones support mini SD cards so a student could keep the programs on the cards and switch cards after wiping the programs stored in the onboard memory.
I dare say he's doing well enough now not to have to make a few bucks more by screwing his fellow citizens.
It's not about money for these Silicon Valley types. Oh sure, they want enough for their lifestyle, gadgets and projects but beyond a certain point money doesn't satisfy them. Money to those guys is a means to an end and the end which they seek is power to meddle in the lives of others. People like Zuckerberg want to remake the world as they see fit. They consider themselves to be superior to the rest of us and have no qualms about using unsavory methods to achieve their "enlightened" goals. I would much prefer that they simply took their money and enjoyed it in private, without involving those of us who aren't willing to participate, but no they have to spend it on meddling with the "imperfect" society. Mark and his H1-B supporters can go to hell as far as I'm concerned. Let them move to India if they want cheap workers, but I'll be damned if I'd vote for anyone who supported Zuckerberg and his H1-B ambitions.
I can understand Zuck, et al, spouting propaganda to get out of their personally horrid underprivileged conditions
Underprivileged? Zuck was the very definition of privilege and advantage when growing up. His background was upper middle class at the very least.
what they really need to teach in schools is critical thinking.
That doesn't suit the purposes of the ruling class and so is not taught. The last thing they want is for the future peons of America to think for themselves critically instead of believing all of the marketing, advertising and bullshit that the elite and their corporations plan to dump in their laps.
It's admirable, but it isn't what they're claiming it is.
You're dealing with Silicon Valley types here, hype and hyperbole are second nature to these people. Most of these guys have their heads so far up in the clouds that they forget what they sound like when talking to ordinary people who live outside their bubble world. Mostly, they're full of shit but the average person doesn't seem to recognize this and so the public eats their crap up because they don't know any better.
the idea that computers can be tools that do what we tell them to do, and not just magic black boxes for mindless content consumption.
Unfortunately, this new interest comes at a time when the big players in the industry, like Apple, are well along in the process of doing away with the general purpose computer and replacing it with walled garden tablet like devices who's primary purpose is mindless consumption. In very real ways programming is becoming ever less accessible to the average person or at least less open to the sorts of spontaneous discovery and experimentation that attract new people into the field. For example, it's difficult now to have the sort of VIC-20, Commodore-64 or Apple II experience that inspired well know programmers like Linus Torvalds and many others to become interested in computing and programming at an early age.