I have consistenyl refused to sign that type of agreement
I almost did that when I hired on to my current employer. Fortunately, I grunted through and read it to the end. As it turns out, there were a few exceptions, and one full-out ammendment to the document that significantly altered things in my favor. The only thing I really had to do was to disclose any existing projects I owned that were directly related to the company's line of business. Anything I created from that point on, in their line of business, belongs to them. Fair enough in my mind. Anything not related to their line of business is mine, though I did put most of them on the disclosure sheet anyway, just for completeness.
Most of these docs are pure shite, but do be sure to read it through to the end.
Man, I thought that was the greatest commercial they've done! That line about the milkshakes alone had me laughing.
Fact: Higher butterfat content makes better ice cream.
I'll take one Jack in the Box milkshake over a lifetime supply of McD's artificial sludge any day.
Besides, I like the fact that they don't try to push their stuff off as being health-food. Anyone who eats there with an expectation of it being good for their diet certainly didn't get that impression from JB, and deserves what they get. I like their food, but I'd have to be insane to eat there every day.
Anyone using SPEWS is either lazy, ignorant, or could care less about the right way to do things.
Anyone bitching about getting blocked by SPEWS, but not dealing with it properly by threatening their spam-friendly ISP or moving to one that's not spam-friendly is either lazy, ignorant or is themselves spam-friendly.
I reserve the right to block those who tolerate spam-friendly ISPs, get over it.
Depends on the nature of the hole. A leak in a seam may not expand. A leak through material thinned due to corrosion definitely will. I just had first-hand experience with that on a hot water line in the wall of my house.
But also remember that as the pressure gets lower, there is less force pushing air *out* the hole.
Another reason, standard dictionaries suck. Unless you're going to use the equivalent of the Oxford unabridged, dictionaries fall flat for anyone who deals in specialist areas with uncommon words. My wife is in the medical field, which has a dictionary all it's own. And in my case, I get a lot of email dealing with historical issues, which means dealing with unusual spellings and obsolete terminology.
I have, twice. Both times I did very well, as long as the economy was good. During the good times, you can get hourly wages equal to 4-10 times what you would get as a wage slave. Problem is, you *need* to make this much as a consultant. First, you've got to pay all your own expenses, like medical, etc. Next, you've got paperwork to handle that you don't get paid for (taxes, accounting, billing, etc). And, last of all, it's not possible to get paid for all of your "workable hours". There's gaps between gigs, and there's the time you spend schmoozing and networking trying to find the next gig.
During the high times, this wasn't a problem for me. The gigs tended to be long-term, minimum 20 hours/week. Word of mouth was getting me more work than I could accept (even so, only one out of six proposals would pan out.) When the economy got tight, so did the hours, and so did the jobs. I was spending much more time drumming up the next job, the proposal acceptance rate dropped like a stone, and the lead-time even when the job was accepted went from two weeks to eight weeks. Many of the folks who had been recommending/hiring me for jobs were themselves either looking for jobs, or were trying to cut expenses so they *wouldn't* lose thier jobs.
And, on top of all of that, you've got to be one seriously self-motivated person to keep it going. The temptation to slack off can be very strong.
All new GM cars come with the OnStar service that aids in dialing 911 when the airbags are deployed. However, they act like the system is disabled after 6 months (or whatever the time period is) if you don't pay for an OnStar subscription.
It's one year, but yes, if your subscription expires, the OnStar system no longer functions.
After this time period, do they really disable this feature? Do they also quit tracking you (e.g. the privacy issue)? Or are both of these issues up to the OnStar god to decide?
OK, major point here. OnStar *does not persistently track you*. 99.9% of the time, there is no data being transmitted between your vehicle and OnStar. The OnStar system is really nothing much more complex than a cell phone hooked to a GPS unit. In the vast majority of cases, any data sent to OnStar is initiated by the driver (pressing the emergency button, pressing the call button, pressing the assist button). This causes the system to dial up OnStar, setting up the connection. There are only two circumstances where the system creates a connection without the driver's direct interaction. The first is in case of an accident that deplots the airbag. In this case, the vehicle's system automatcially dials the OnStar emergency number. The other is where the owner reports the vehicle is stolen. In this case, OnStar initiates contact with the vehicle. Note that this is the only *normal* case in which OnStar initiates the connection.
In the case of the FBI listening in, yes, this is possible, however, because this is a cell-phone call, and thus there's already a connection, it means that all of the other OnStar functions will not work, because they require the system to be able to dial *out*. This is why the court turned down the FBI's request.
This also shows why OnStar cannot continually track you, since the same issue would apply. In order to do so, they would be blocking all of the system's functionality.
Two types of folks who get concerned about weight.
Street-rodders. Accelleration is about power/weight ratio. The *easiest* bit to manage is the weight, since modern engines will only take so much modding. It also helps in cornering, etc. These folks will get crazy about removing every last ounce of unecessary weight.
Tow/Haulers. Granted, none of us would care too much about ten pounds, but vehicle weight, axle weight and tongue/bed weight are always a significant consideration.
Oh, and BTW, the Ford Focus wouldn't have OnStar, since it's not a GM product.
What kind of self-respecting hacker would own a late-model GM vehicle with Onstar anyway? Most of the serious bit-pushers that I know are driving 12 year old Subarus, Volkswagon Rabbits and clapped-out Honda motorcycles.
Apparently, a successful one. You may want to re-think your role-models.
My latest vehicle has OnStar. The first year is included in the vehicle price. I did some serious looking at whether I will renew or not, and came to the conclusion that I would renew at the base level (no direction service, etc). The stolen vehicle locator knocks a bit off my insurance, which defrays a bit of the cost. As for the rest, I consider it additional insurance. I hope I never really need it, but being able to get help at the push of a button, or automatically when the airbag deploys is a little piece of mind when you do a fair amount of cross-country driving.
I was intriqgued to see that someone hacked the OnStar, but frankly, I wasn't all that impressed with the technique. I would have been much more impressed if they had mapped the pinouts, and used a "dongle"-type connector to pull the data without modifying the original unit, and without disturbing the existing functionality. That would have impressed me.
You already opt-in to mailing lists by subscribing to them, which takes anywhere from 10 seconds to 5 minutes depending on the list. Would it be so hard to add them to a client-side white-list, perhaps an additional 10 to 30 seconds, in addition to subscribing?
No insult intended, but I see you've never run a large, non-tech mailing list. Seriously, a good bit of my time is spent hand-holding folks who can't manage to follow the instructions to confirm their subscription. Just the thought of talking them through adding the mailing list to a white list gives me the cold shivers.
Besides, as the owner of a small ISP, I already have enough expense in equipment. The thought of having to purchase massive processing power just to be able to keep the email flowing seems like a pretty stupid idea to me. I run ecomm and auction systems which send a lot of server-generated email messages. I don't need additional processor load on my systems.
Frankly, if you need to use their support site, you *should* be using windows/IE, since you're obviously not capable of handling anything else.
I've been on Cox for several years now. I use a Linux NAT firewall, a couple of windows boxes and a couple of Linux boxes (development environment). I cannot imagine not being able to get to their support pages being any kind of a handicap.
Heck, truth is, I didn't even know they *had* support pages.
Re:How harmful is spam... REALLY?
on
The Life of a Spammer
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Calling me ignorant, and then launching into a sadistic revenge fantasy, hardly bolsters your argument. In fact, I would say it automatically denotes you as being too emotionally involved to be a reliable source of information.
Ah yes, ten years of experience definitely disqualifies me as a reliable source of information, how amazing of you to have figured this out.
Surprisingly enough, it is possible to be highly knowledgable AND pissed off. You've got the pissed off part down, why not try being knowledgable next?
Re:How harmful is spam... REALLY?
on
The Life of a Spammer
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Wow, hard to believe anyone could be so ignorant of the costs of spam.
I own a small hosting outfit. The number one complaint of my customers is spam. I spend at least a couple hours a week dealing with it, either in adjusting/upgrading filters, teaching customers how to use it, or in cleaning out mail queues stuffed with it.
In labor costs alone, this is a big deal for me. It's lost income, since that's time I *could* have spent developing software for my customers. All this, and I'm just a *tiny* outfit.
Frankly, killing spammers is too good for them. I'm thinking more along the lines of tying them out in the sun until they're sunburned, then dropping them into tanks of fresh, pulped jalepeno peppers.
I can't say I'm sorry at all that we don't have flying cars.
Seriously, the average goober has enough trouble dealing with two dimensions. Three is far too much for them to handle while they lean over the seats to yell at their kids while talking on the cell-phone with one hand while holding the map in the other.
I'm paranoid enough worrying about them while I'm driving. I don't want to worry about one of them dropping out of the sky onto my house.
And, even if you make the completely insane jump of reason that would let you believe that the average driver would be safe, there's always maintenance to deal with. The average aircraft spends as much, or more time in routine maintenance than in the air. Well-publicised errors notwithstanding, aircraft are some of the most meticulously maintained machines on earth. This, compared with my fellow car drivers, who are often seen driving with missing headlights, cruising at 75mph on temporary spares, belching blue smoke because they can't be bothered to remember to change the oil frequently, etc.
I can see some limited applications for flying cars, mostly in emergency services (ie: ambulances). However, for the general public? No thank you, it gives me the shudders just to think of it.
They've been in my server block lists for longer than anyone else. Fomr the day they started business, they spammed me, all the time saying they had my permission to do so.
Spamcop had its flaws, but at least until now they were well-intentioned flaws.
What about HURD? Vapourware doesn't count as kernel development.
Well, first, I wouldn't consider it vaporware. It exists, you can dowload it and run it. Granted, it's pretty limited and not ready for prime-time, but it does exist.
As for whether or not it counts as kernel development... You're saying that if I spend three years writing a kernel, but it's not yet released, I haven't done any kernel development? Man I'd LOVE to be your employer... "Well son, it's true that you've been here every day, and it looked like you were doing work, but since we haven't released our product yet, you obviously haven't actually been doing work, so we're not going to pay you."
You're welcome to your opinion, but I happen to think you're dead wrong.
The combination of RBLs and personal block list I use block over 200 messages per day. In four years, I've had only four reported false positives. Two from known spam-haven ISPs and two from servers that were open relays.
Slashdot Mirror
Didn't read the article, did you? Nor did you even correctly read the comments...
It said non-nuclear explosion, and not in a facility, it was out in the Siberian wilderness.
But the impassioned, pointless diatribe was amusing. Can you do one on brussels sprouts next?
Man, I thought that was the greatest commercial they've done! That line about the milkshakes alone had me laughing.
Fact: Higher butterfat content makes better ice cream.
I'll take one Jack in the Box milkshake over a lifetime supply of McD's artificial sludge any day.
Besides, I like the fact that they don't try to push their stuff off as being health-food. Anyone who eats there with an expectation of it being good for their diet certainly didn't get that impression from JB, and deserves what they get. I like their food, but I'd have to be insane to eat there every day.
Anyone using SPEWS is either lazy, ignorant, or could care less about the right way to do things.
Anyone bitching about getting blocked by SPEWS, but not dealing with it properly by threatening their spam-friendly ISP or moving to one that's not spam-friendly is either lazy, ignorant or is themselves spam-friendly.
I reserve the right to block those who tolerate spam-friendly ISPs, get over it.
Actually, that was a typo, they actually meant "more than 82 counties".
received a dozen queries since Australian pricing for the licences was announced this morning
Yeah, but inquiries from their own sales staff aren't really all that meaningful.
Wankers.
Depends on the nature of the hole. A leak in a seam may not expand. A leak through material thinned due to corrosion definitely will. I just had first-hand experience with that on a hot water line in the wall of my house.
But also remember that as the pressure gets lower, there is less force pushing air *out* the hole.
Another reason, standard dictionaries suck. Unless you're going to use the equivalent of the Oxford unabridged, dictionaries fall flat for anyone who deals in specialist areas with uncommon words. My wife is in the medical field, which has a dictionary all it's own. And in my case, I get a lot of email dealing with historical issues, which means dealing with unusual spellings and obsolete terminology.
Spoken like someone who has never done it.
I have, twice. Both times I did very well, as long as the economy was good. During the good times, you can get hourly wages equal to 4-10 times what you would get as a wage slave. Problem is, you *need* to make this much as a consultant. First, you've got to pay all your own expenses, like medical, etc. Next, you've got paperwork to handle that you don't get paid for (taxes, accounting, billing, etc). And, last of all, it's not possible to get paid for all of your "workable hours". There's gaps between gigs, and there's the time you spend schmoozing and networking trying to find the next gig.
During the high times, this wasn't a problem for me. The gigs tended to be long-term, minimum 20 hours/week. Word of mouth was getting me more work than I could accept (even so, only one out of six proposals would pan out.) When the economy got tight, so did the hours, and so did the jobs. I was spending much more time drumming up the next job, the proposal acceptance rate dropped like a stone, and the lead-time even when the job was accepted went from two weeks to eight weeks. Many of the folks who had been recommending/hiring me for jobs were themselves either looking for jobs, or were trying to cut expenses so they *wouldn't* lose thier jobs.
And, on top of all of that, you've got to be one seriously self-motivated person to keep it going. The temptation to slack off can be very strong.
All new GM cars come with the OnStar service that aids in dialing 911 when the airbags are deployed. However, they act like the system is disabled after 6 months (or whatever the time period is) if you don't pay for an OnStar subscription.
It's one year, but yes, if your subscription expires, the OnStar system no longer functions.
After this time period, do they really disable this feature? Do they also quit tracking you (e.g. the privacy issue)? Or are both of these issues up to the OnStar god to decide?
OK, major point here. OnStar *does not persistently track you*. 99.9% of the time, there is no data being transmitted between your vehicle and OnStar. The OnStar system is really nothing much more complex than a cell phone hooked to a GPS unit. In the vast majority of cases, any data sent to OnStar is initiated by the driver (pressing the emergency button, pressing the call button, pressing the assist button). This causes the system to dial up OnStar, setting up the connection. There are only two circumstances where the system creates a connection without the driver's direct interaction. The first is in case of an accident that deplots the airbag. In this case, the vehicle's system automatcially dials the OnStar emergency number. The other is where the owner reports the vehicle is stolen. In this case, OnStar initiates contact with the vehicle. Note that this is the only *normal* case in which OnStar initiates the connection.
In the case of the FBI listening in, yes, this is possible, however, because this is a cell-phone call, and thus there's already a connection, it means that all of the other OnStar functions will not work, because they require the system to be able to dial *out*. This is why the court turned down the FBI's request.
This also shows why OnStar cannot continually track you, since the same issue would apply. In order to do so, they would be blocking all of the system's functionality.
Two types of folks who get concerned about weight.
Street-rodders. Accelleration is about power/weight ratio. The *easiest* bit to manage is the weight, since modern engines will only take so much modding. It also helps in cornering, etc. These folks will get crazy about removing every last ounce of unecessary weight.
Tow/Haulers. Granted, none of us would care too much about ten pounds, but vehicle weight, axle weight and tongue/bed weight are always a significant consideration.
Oh, and BTW, the Ford Focus wouldn't have OnStar, since it's not a GM product.
What kind of self-respecting hacker would own a late-model GM vehicle with Onstar anyway? Most of the serious bit-pushers that I know are driving 12 year old Subarus, Volkswagon Rabbits and clapped-out Honda motorcycles.
Apparently, a successful one. You may want to re-think your role-models.
My latest vehicle has OnStar. The first year is included in the vehicle price. I did some serious looking at whether I will renew or not, and came to the conclusion that I would renew at the base level (no direction service, etc). The stolen vehicle locator knocks a bit off my insurance, which defrays a bit of the cost. As for the rest, I consider it additional insurance. I hope I never really need it, but being able to get help at the push of a button, or automatically when the airbag deploys is a little piece of mind when you do a fair amount of cross-country driving.
I was intriqgued to see that someone hacked the OnStar, but frankly, I wasn't all that impressed with the technique. I would have been much more impressed if they had mapped the pinouts, and used a "dongle"-type connector to pull the data without modifying the original unit, and without disturbing the existing functionality. That would have impressed me.
You already opt-in to mailing lists by subscribing to them, which takes anywhere from 10 seconds to 5 minutes depending on the list. Would it be so hard to add them to a client-side white-list, perhaps an additional 10 to 30 seconds, in addition to subscribing?
No insult intended, but I see you've never run a large, non-tech mailing list. Seriously, a good bit of my time is spent hand-holding folks who can't manage to follow the instructions to confirm their subscription. Just the thought of talking them through adding the mailing list to a white list gives me the cold shivers.
Besides, as the owner of a small ISP, I already have enough expense in equipment. The thought of having to purchase massive processing power just to be able to keep the email flowing seems like a pretty stupid idea to me. I run ecomm and auction systems which send a lot of server-generated email messages. I don't need additional processor load on my systems.
Um, it's not what it was painted with that was the major problem. The Hindenberg was filled with hydrogen.
Gee, what horrors!
Frankly, if you need to use their support site, you *should* be using windows/IE, since you're obviously not capable of handling anything else.
I've been on Cox for several years now. I use a Linux NAT firewall, a couple of windows boxes and a couple of Linux boxes (development environment). I cannot imagine not being able to get to their support pages being any kind of a handicap.
Heck, truth is, I didn't even know they *had* support pages.
Calling me ignorant, and then launching into a sadistic revenge fantasy, hardly bolsters your argument. In fact, I would say it automatically denotes you as being too emotionally involved to be a reliable source of information.
Ah yes, ten years of experience definitely disqualifies me as a reliable source of information, how amazing of you to have figured this out.
Surprisingly enough, it is possible to be highly knowledgable AND pissed off. You've got the pissed off part down, why not try being knowledgable next?
Wow, hard to believe anyone could be so ignorant of the costs of spam.
I own a small hosting outfit. The number one complaint of my customers is spam. I spend at least a couple hours a week dealing with it, either in adjusting/upgrading filters, teaching customers how to use it, or in cleaning out mail queues stuffed with it.
In labor costs alone, this is a big deal for me. It's lost income, since that's time I *could* have spent developing software for my customers. All this, and I'm just a *tiny* outfit.
Frankly, killing spammers is too good for them. I'm thinking more along the lines of tying them out in the sun until they're sunburned, then dropping them into tanks of fresh, pulped jalepeno peppers.
I can't say I'm sorry at all that we don't have flying cars.
Seriously, the average goober has enough trouble dealing with two dimensions. Three is far too much for them to handle while they lean over the seats to yell at their kids while talking on the cell-phone with one hand while holding the map in the other.
I'm paranoid enough worrying about them while I'm driving. I don't want to worry about one of them dropping out of the sky onto my house.
And, even if you make the completely insane jump of reason that would let you believe that the average driver would be safe, there's always maintenance to deal with. The average aircraft spends as much, or more time in routine maintenance than in the air. Well-publicised errors notwithstanding, aircraft are some of the most meticulously maintained machines on earth. This, compared with my fellow car drivers, who are often seen driving with missing headlights, cruising at 75mph on temporary spares, belching blue smoke because they can't be bothered to remember to change the oil frequently, etc.
I can see some limited applications for flying cars, mostly in emergency services (ie: ambulances). However, for the general public? No thank you, it gives me the shudders just to think of it.
2) It's where Perry gets a gander at the Palintir
Perry?
Did Pippin and Merry get merged into a single character?
Or maybe you meant Mippin?
The term "gore" is still widely in use. Generally, it refers to a triagular piece that "inserts" into something else.
The bit between where an entrance ramp on a highway meets the highway is a "gore point".
In sewing, gores are triangular pieces inserted between other pieces that help provide shape to a garment, often under the arms of jackets and such.
You mean like, oh
Or don't you think the National Security Agency handles senitive information?
ListBot founder Scott Banister
Listbot == spammers
They've been in my server block lists for longer than anyone else. Fomr the day they started business, they spammed me, all the time saying they had my permission to do so.
Spamcop had its flaws, but at least until now they were well-intentioned flaws.
What about HURD? Vapourware doesn't count as kernel development.
Well, first, I wouldn't consider it vaporware. It exists, you can dowload it and run it. Granted, it's pretty limited and not ready for prime-time, but it does exist.
As for whether or not it counts as kernel development... You're saying that if I spend three years writing a kernel, but it's not yet released, I haven't done any kernel development? Man I'd LOVE to be your employer... "Well son, it's true that you've been here every day, and it looked like you were doing work, but since we haven't released our product yet, you obviously haven't actually been doing work, so we're not going to pay you."
C) The FSF is _not_ involved in any kernel development.
Um, what about HURD?
You're welcome to your opinion, but I happen to think you're dead wrong.
The combination of RBLs and personal block list I use block over 200 messages per day. In four years, I've had only four reported false positives. Two from known spam-haven ISPs and two from servers that were open relays.
Seems to be a pretty good ratio to me.