Um, considering what I paid for it, my mailbox bloody well better be mine.
There are laws restricting the *use* of mailboxes to USPS purposes only. And if you take a bat to your neighbor's mailbox, the feds *could* make a case of it (they don't, they leave that up to local enforcement). However, If I want to smash my own box up with a sledgehammer, or fill it with cement, that's my business, though my mail carrier probably won't leave me my mail if I do...
Note that I did not use that capitalized word Branch, I used branch.
Despite the specific meaning the US Govt attributes to the word, it does not eliminate its more common usage, meaning "a division of an organization" or "a separate but dependent part of a central organization".
I guarantee that ignoring it would not have made it go away. I'm pretty familiar with the whole situation, and trying to ignore this would have been a complete disaster.
Tell me, when a truck is headed straight toward you, do you just ignore it and figure nothing will come of it?
In 1976 the Postal Service filed its first annual comprehensive statement to comply with an amendment to the 1970 Postal Reorganization Act. The amendment, now codified as Title 39, United States Code (USC), Section 2401 (e), required that a comprehensive statement accompany the annual Postal Service budget submission to Congress. The amendment further required the Postal Service to explain and address 1) the plans, policies, and procedures designed to comply with the statutory mission of the Postal Service; 2) general postal operations, including data on service standards, mail volume, productivity, trends in postal operations, and analyses of the impact of internal and external factors upon the Postal Service; 3) financial information relating to expenditures and obligations incurred; and 4) other matters necessary to ensure that Congress is "fully and currently consulted and informed on postal operations."
From Wikipedia: "The United States Postal Service (USPS) is the United States government-owned corporation...".
So maybe they are technically no longer a branch of the govt, but they certainly are wholly owned by it, which sounds to me like they are still run by the government. You'll also remember that the USPS can't raise postal rates without congressional approval either.
And from a Priority Mail box I have:
"This packaging is the property of the U.S. Postal Service and is provided solely for use in sending Priority Mail. Misuse may be a violation of Federal law."
Betcha won't find that on a private corporation's packages...
Not true. Jose's a friend and a co-worker of mine.
FedEx didn't send a letter right away. The *first* thing they did was call his ISP and threaten them with DMCA action if they didn't shut the site down. Only after they refused did they contact Jose, at which point, Jose told them to put it in writing, and contacted his attorney. Even so, had they been even remotely reasonable, Jose probably would have worked something out with them. Instead, they threatened him with everything in and out of the book, and generally behaved like thugs.
Frankly, at this point, there's almost no way FedEx will come out of this with *anything* in their favor. Using the DMCA without justification puts them in a position to be countersued if they push too hard. (BTW, they haven't actually filed suit, nor officially announced intention to do so yet, they're still just blustering and threatening.)
Yeah, and FedEx really pissed off Jose's lawyer too. They demanded that she take down her comments at http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/
There are dumber things to do than to tell a university lawyer that they can't print their opinions. But offhand, I can't think of any. And even better yet, she's not just some staff lawyer, she's the Executive Director for the Center for Internet and Society Cyberlaw Clinic.
FedEx got taken advantage of, because they are stupid.
To get the boxes, you have to have an account.
Now, when an account that does a low volume of shipping asks for an unusually large number of boxes, don't you think it might be a good idea to ask for a deposit?
All it would take is for them to require a monetary deposit that would be applied as a credit on the account for future shipping costs when an unusually large amount of materials is requested. The end-result is that the boxes are still free, as long as the customer actually uses them for shipping. And small customers who ask for small amounts of shipping materials would still get them without charge.
Don't play this game with the USPS. Unlike FedEx, the USPS has very strict terms of use for their materials, printed clearly on each box/envelope. And, since they are a branch of the federal government, it's a federal offense to violate those terms.
Apple's mice do travel up and down the touch sensitivity is simply to determine if you want left or right.
It's gonna be mighty confused if I use it then. I never lift my fingers from the buttons. It's much more comfortable and less strain-inducing to let my hand lightly rest across the mouse.
Of course, that's why I still have my old Trackman Marble FX, it's designed to keep the hand in "position of function". I used to have RSI issues, but not from the keyboard, it was from the *mouse*. Modern ones are better, but designing a mouse where you have to keep your fingers hovering, but not touching is certainly not a step forward.
To me, this is all about Apple's childish refusal to admit that one-button mice suck. They're giving in, but trying to not admit it by producing something that doesn't *look* like it has two buttons.
PHP is as interpretted as Java and C# are. It uses a 'Virtual Machine' just like they do
Wrong. PHP is interpreted. Java is partially compiled. It may seem a small difference, but it's big difference in performance. With PHP files, the file is interpreted from scratch, every time, including syntax checks, etc. With Java files, part of this is done the first time the file is run, then never again unless the file changes.
If the software is closed source, the only person that can fix the flaw is the vendor and giving presentations to a bunch of hackers about exploiting the vulnerability doesn't seem very responsible.
Bullshit.
First, Blackhat != hacker convention. It's a meeting of security professionals.
Second, while the vendor may be the only one who can fix the code, they are not the only one who can fix the problem. If I was a sysadmin and oversaw a network with serious security needs, I might consider replacing my hardware if I knew it was not secure. Cisco isn't the only router vendor out there.
Third, if the vendor knows that I know there's a problem, and that I might jump to a different vendor if I think they're dragging their feet, you'd better be assured that they will put a higher priority on fixing the problem.
Proof? Let's put Win98 next to XP and see which is more stable.
Actually, I kind of did that last night. I was performing upgrades on a friend's computers, one Win XP, the other Win 98se. Both got new network adapters.
Win XP upgrade, flawless, pain-free.
Win 98 upgrade, painful, frustrating, and involving strange boot errors that show up once, but not on a second reboot. Plus the weirdest network config error I've seen, where a gateway address of 0.0.0.0 showed up for no reason during the middle of a session.
First read that line as "vague nerve stimulator" and thought to myself "Wow ! The FDA's approving something without really knowing what it does ?!" Wouldn't be the first time i guess;)
You may have read the words wrong, but you got the correct meaning.
The FDA *doesn't* really know what it does, or if it works. They really just don't seem to give a damn about properly validating treatments for mental disorders.
Ammonia definitely is a hazardous chemical, and you don't even wanna know what happens if you mix it with bleach.
I know very well what it does. I had a friend who thought it was the greatest cleaner in the world until I explained to him why he was getting dizzy from using it.
In this case, all that the ammonia does is to liberate the chlorine from the bleach, producing chlorine gas. So *technically*, it's not the ammonia that's the primary issue, it's the bleach.
Ammonia is highly alkaline, and is also mildly corrosive. It's the latter of the two properties that probably affects you so badly. But all that proves is that it's highly dangerous to *you*. The vast majority of people can handle being around fair amounts of it in well-ventilated areas with no bad effect.
If a person is worried about having a slow, underpowered car, why doesn't he get a car with a V8 or turbocharger?
Hey, slow isn't always underpowered.:)
I drive a truck that I frequently pull a 10,000lb trailer with. With or without the trailer, I really can't tell when the A/C kicks in. I'm not going to break any speed records with this rig, but I'm developing most of my power in the lower rpm range.
OTH, with your idea, the peltiers can be ran in reverse and heat the car, as well as cool.
Which would have to be the dumbest idea I've heard of for any vehicle with an I/C engine. Even the smallest internal combustion engine gives off a huge amount of waste heat. This gives you all the heat you want, at no additional cost.
For an electric or hybrid running on electric, it makes just enough sense to get you to the realization that you really can't afford to drain your batteries just for cabin heat. The smarter move here is to put on another sweater.
If by "one good whiff" you mean to snort up a hundred ml or so directly into your nose, maybe.
I worked in a blueprint shop some years back. You had 12-16 people working in a room with 9-10 machines leaking ammonia into the room, eight hours a day, six days a week. Can't remember any of us dying from it. Heck, I can't remember anyone getting *sick* from it, even on the first day on the job.
And as far as the average person is concerned, they'd be clearing out of the area long before it reached harmful levels. Man, that stuff *stinks*!
Arizona doesn't follow DST as it is and while it is confusing,
Funny, I don't find it confusing at all. I never have to change my clocks around, somehow pretending it has any kind of meaning. And, I know that no matter what the date, my time is GMT -7.
Given the increasingly global, and increasingly 24 hour world we live in, it makes much more sense to me to get rid of the anachronism of "daylight savings time" all together.
And just who defines what "over the top resource hogging" is?
This guy built a speaker cabinet, for his own use, rather than buying mainstream trash. Hardly what I would consider "over the top".
Seems like you can't swing a dead cat anymore without hitting some self-righteous wanker spouting tons of crap about how everyone else is "wasting resources" just because they think that someone else's projects are frivolous.
And while I do believe that 90% of the Hummers out there are a complete waste in the hands of those who own them, I would dearly love to see every person who uses them as a hot-button for their own agenda get run over by one.
I think we should celebrate things like this. We should appreciate folks who are willing to spend the brain-cycles necessary to design and build the things they dream up. They are the ones who are most likely to push society forward, because they are the ones who have developed the skills necessary to put their thoughts into action.
Who else should we celebrate? The useless lumps who sit on their sofas, buying the same cookie-cutter junk everyone else is buying? Oh yeah, I definitely want to congratulate every "Tommy Hilfiger" clone out there who's never had an original thought in his/her life.
OK, first issue. If you run any *significant* services, you have ports that need to be accessible by your machines, but nobody else's. The best example is database servers. My database runs on a separate machine. My webservers need to access it, but NOBODY else does. The database's access control is not enough, I don't even want anyone outside my network to see those ports, let alone try to muck with them.
Second issue. There are always new exploits coming up for the software you *do* have to expose (http, smtp, etc.) Firewalling unneeded ports (both directions) can prevent the exploit from becoming fully realized. Once upon a time, I had a machine get compromised through a web app. The trick is, the next step in it's script was to "phone home", which it could not do, because I don't allow outbound traffic for anything except what I *have* to, and them only on the exact ports and IPs necessary. I got alerted when suspicious outbound traffic was seen on the firewall.
Should you secure your apps? Hell yes. Firewalls can't help you if your allowed apps are insecure.
Should you be foolish enough to think this is as good as or better than a firewall? Um, what were your addresses again?
Microsoft isn't the only one to pull this kind of crap.
Some years ago Allaire corporation (now owned my Macromedia) Contacted me telling me that they wanted to hire me as a senior trainer. (Note that they mentioned a specific position. Heck, they even mentioned the pay scale.) At the time, I was extremely proficient with their product, and was extremely active in the local user group, mostly teaching advanced techniques to other programmers.
So, I sent my resume to them. Two days later, they call to tell me I'm not qualified, because I had never worked as a trainer with their product before. Never mind I was training people on their product for free, never mind that my resume showed extensive experience as an instructor/trainer in several other industries, and most of all never mind that I had been working with their product from long before they had ever developed a formal training program.
To say that I was pissed off was un understatement.
In return for their kindness, I've taken great pride in having moved every employer I've had since then away from Allaire's products. Hmmm, maybe I'll list that as a skill the next time I re-write my resume....
Funny thing is, it kind of isn't. See to be part of the United States, it would have to be a state, which it isn't. Yes, that may sound pedantic, but essentially it's true, DC is somewhere between being part of the US, and being a US territory (ala Puerto Rico or Guam). It's a legacy from a time when the US was more of a conferedacy of independent states rather than the homogenized federal system we have today.
But suffice it to say that there's a whole lot of legal things about DC that are different from the states.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh and BTW, your mailbox is not yours either,
Um, considering what I paid for it, my mailbox bloody well better be mine.
There are laws restricting the *use* of mailboxes to USPS purposes only. And if you take a bat to your neighbor's mailbox, the feds *could* make a case of it (they don't, they leave that up to local enforcement). However, If I want to smash my own box up with a sledgehammer, or fill it with cement, that's my business, though my mail carrier probably won't leave me my mail if I do...
Note that I did not use that capitalized word Branch, I used branch.
Despite the specific meaning the US Govt attributes to the word, it does not eliminate its more common usage, meaning "a division of an organization" or "a separate but dependent part of a central organization".
I guarantee that ignoring it would not have made it go away. I'm pretty familiar with the whole situation, and trying to ignore this would have been a complete disaster.
Tell me, when a truck is headed straight toward you, do you just ignore it and figure nothing will come of it?
From http://www.usps.com/strategicplanning/cs04/
In 1976 the Postal Service filed its first annual comprehensive statement to comply with an amendment to the 1970 Postal Reorganization Act. The amendment, now codified as Title 39, United States Code (USC), Section 2401 (e), required that a comprehensive statement accompany the annual Postal Service budget submission to Congress. The amendment further required the Postal Service to explain and address 1) the plans, policies, and procedures designed to comply with the statutory mission of the Postal Service; 2) general postal operations, including data on service standards, mail volume, productivity, trends in postal operations, and analyses of the impact of internal and external factors upon the Postal Service; 3) financial information relating to expenditures and obligations incurred; and 4) other matters necessary to ensure that Congress is "fully and currently consulted and informed on postal operations."
From Wikipedia:
"The United States Postal Service (USPS) is the United States government-owned corporation...".
So maybe they are technically no longer a branch of the govt, but they certainly are wholly owned by it, which sounds to me like they are still run by the government. You'll also remember that the USPS can't raise postal rates without congressional approval either.
And from a Priority Mail box I have:
"This packaging is the property of the U.S. Postal Service and is provided solely for use in sending Priority Mail. Misuse may be a violation of Federal law."
Betcha won't find that on a private corporation's packages...
Actually he did.
In order to obtain those boxes he had to agree that they were for use shipping FedEx express services.
Really? Can you show proof of that? FedEx couldn't when Jose's Lawyer asked them for proof...
Not true. Jose's a friend and a co-worker of mine.
FedEx didn't send a letter right away. The *first* thing they did was call his ISP and threaten them with DMCA action if they didn't shut the site down. Only after they refused did they contact Jose, at which point, Jose told them to put it in writing, and contacted his attorney. Even so, had they been even remotely reasonable, Jose probably would have worked something out with them. Instead, they threatened him with everything in and out of the book, and generally behaved like thugs.
Frankly, at this point, there's almost no way FedEx will come out of this with *anything* in their favor. Using the DMCA without justification puts them in a position to be countersued if they push too hard. (BTW, they haven't actually filed suit, nor officially announced intention to do so yet, they're still just blustering and threatening.)
Yeah, and FedEx really pissed off Jose's lawyer too. They demanded that she take down her comments at http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/
There are dumber things to do than to tell a university lawyer that they can't print their opinions. But offhand, I can't think of any. And even better yet, she's not just some staff lawyer, she's the Executive Director for the Center for Internet and Society Cyberlaw Clinic.
FedEx got taken advantage of, because they are stupid.
To get the boxes, you have to have an account.
Now, when an account that does a low volume of shipping asks for an unusually large number of boxes, don't you think it might be a good idea to ask for a deposit?
All it would take is for them to require a monetary deposit that would be applied as a credit on the account for future shipping costs when an unusually large amount of materials is requested. The end-result is that the boxes are still free, as long as the customer actually uses them for shipping. And small customers who ask for small amounts of shipping materials would still get them without charge.
Don't play this game with the USPS. Unlike FedEx, the USPS has very strict terms of use for their materials, printed clearly on each box/envelope. And, since they are a branch of the federal government, it's a federal offense to violate those terms.
Apple's mice do travel up and down the touch sensitivity is simply to determine if you want left or right.
It's gonna be mighty confused if I use it then. I never lift my fingers from the buttons. It's much more comfortable and less strain-inducing to let my hand lightly rest across the mouse.
Of course, that's why I still have my old Trackman Marble FX, it's designed to keep the hand in "position of function". I used to have RSI issues, but not from the keyboard, it was from the *mouse*. Modern ones are better, but designing a mouse where you have to keep your fingers hovering, but not touching is certainly not a step forward.
To me, this is all about Apple's childish refusal to admit that one-button mice suck. They're giving in, but trying to not admit it by producing something that doesn't *look* like it has two buttons.
PHP is as interpretted as Java and C# are. It uses a 'Virtual Machine' just like they do
Wrong. PHP is interpreted. Java is partially compiled. It may seem a small difference, but it's big difference in performance. With PHP files, the file is interpreted from scratch, every time, including syntax checks, etc. With Java files, part of this is done the first time the file is run, then never again unless the file changes.
If the software is closed source, the only person that can fix the flaw is the vendor and giving presentations to a bunch of hackers about exploiting the vulnerability doesn't seem very responsible.
Bullshit.
First, Blackhat != hacker convention. It's a meeting of security professionals.
Second, while the vendor may be the only one who can fix the code, they are not the only one who can fix the problem. If I was a sysadmin and oversaw a network with serious security needs, I might consider replacing my hardware if I knew it was not secure. Cisco isn't the only router vendor out there.
Third, if the vendor knows that I know there's a problem, and that I might jump to a different vendor if I think they're dragging their feet, you'd better be assured that they will put a higher priority on fixing the problem.
Proof? Let's put Win98 next to XP and see which is more stable.
Actually, I kind of did that last night. I was performing upgrades on a friend's computers, one Win XP, the other Win 98se. Both got new network adapters.
Win XP upgrade, flawless, pain-free.
Win 98 upgrade, painful, frustrating, and involving strange boot errors that show up once, but not on a second reboot. Plus the weirdest network config error I've seen, where a gateway address of 0.0.0.0 showed up for no reason during the middle of a session.
Yeah, Win 98 is plenty stable...
First read that line as "vague nerve stimulator" and thought to myself "Wow ! The FDA's approving something without really knowing what it does ?!" Wouldn't be the first time i guess ;)
You may have read the words wrong, but you got the correct meaning.
The FDA *doesn't* really know what it does, or if it works. They really just don't seem to give a damn about properly validating treatments for mental disorders.
Ammonia definitely is a hazardous chemical, and you don't even wanna know what happens if you mix it with bleach.
I know very well what it does. I had a friend who thought it was the greatest cleaner in the world until I explained to him why he was getting dizzy from using it.
In this case, all that the ammonia does is to liberate the chlorine from the bleach, producing chlorine gas. So *technically*, it's not the ammonia that's the primary issue, it's the bleach.
Ammonia is highly alkaline, and is also mildly corrosive. It's the latter of the two properties that probably affects you so badly. But all that proves is that it's highly dangerous to *you*. The vast majority of people can handle being around fair amounts of it in well-ventilated areas with no bad effect.
If a person is worried about having a slow, underpowered car, why doesn't he get a car with a V8 or turbocharger?
:)
Hey, slow isn't always underpowered.
I drive a truck that I frequently pull a 10,000lb trailer with. With or without the trailer, I really can't tell when the A/C kicks in. I'm not going to break any speed records with this rig, but I'm developing most of my power in the lower rpm range.
No problem.
1995 Jeep Cherokee Sport in-line 6cyl
Curb Weight: 3,000+ lbs not including driver
Highway mileage: 24mpg
And that's a vehicle that's almost 10 years old. The newer vehicles are quite a bit more energy-efficient.
3,000 pounds isn't all that impressive, really.
OTH, with your idea, the peltiers can be ran in reverse and heat the car, as well as cool.
Which would have to be the dumbest idea I've heard of for any vehicle with an I/C engine. Even the smallest internal combustion engine gives off a huge amount of waste heat. This gives you all the heat you want, at no additional cost.
For an electric or hybrid running on electric, it makes just enough sense to get you to the realization that you really can't afford to drain your batteries just for cabin heat. The smarter move here is to put on another sweater.
One good whiff of ammonia can actually kill you.
If by "one good whiff" you mean to snort up a hundred ml or so directly into your nose, maybe.
I worked in a blueprint shop some years back. You had 12-16 people working in a room with 9-10 machines leaking ammonia into the room, eight hours a day, six days a week. Can't remember any of us dying from it. Heck, I can't remember anyone getting *sick* from it, even on the first day on the job.
And as far as the average person is concerned, they'd be clearing out of the area long before it reached harmful levels. Man, that stuff *stinks*!
Arizona doesn't follow DST as it is and while it is confusing,
Funny, I don't find it confusing at all. I never have to change my clocks around, somehow pretending it has any kind of meaning. And, I know that no matter what the date, my time is GMT -7.
Given the increasingly global, and increasingly 24 hour world we live in, it makes much more sense to me to get rid of the anachronism of "daylight savings time" all together.
And just who defines what "over the top resource hogging" is?
This guy built a speaker cabinet, for his own use, rather than buying mainstream trash. Hardly what I would consider "over the top".
Seems like you can't swing a dead cat anymore without hitting some self-righteous wanker spouting tons of crap about how everyone else is "wasting resources" just because they think that someone else's projects are frivolous.
And while I do believe that 90% of the Hummers out there are a complete waste in the hands of those who own them, I would dearly love to see every person who uses them as a hot-button for their own agenda get run over by one.
Worthless junk in your opinion.
I think we should celebrate things like this. We should appreciate folks who are willing to spend the brain-cycles necessary to design and build the things they dream up. They are the ones who are most likely to push society forward, because they are the ones who have developed the skills necessary to put their thoughts into action.
Who else should we celebrate? The useless lumps who sit on their sofas, buying the same cookie-cutter junk everyone else is buying? Oh yeah, I definitely want to congratulate every "Tommy Hilfiger" clone out there who's never had an original thought in his/her life.
insightful?
OK, first issue. If you run any *significant* services, you have ports that need to be accessible by your machines, but nobody else's. The best example is database servers. My database runs on a separate machine. My webservers need to access it, but NOBODY else does. The database's access control is not enough, I don't even want anyone outside my network to see those ports, let alone try to muck with them.
Second issue. There are always new exploits coming up for the software you *do* have to expose (http, smtp, etc.) Firewalling unneeded ports (both directions) can prevent the exploit from becoming fully realized. Once upon a time, I had a machine get compromised through a web app. The trick is, the next step in it's script was to "phone home", which it could not do, because I don't allow outbound traffic for anything except what I *have* to, and them only on the exact ports and IPs necessary. I got alerted when suspicious outbound traffic was seen on the firewall.
Should you secure your apps? Hell yes. Firewalls can't help you if your allowed apps are insecure.
Should you be foolish enough to think this is as good as or better than a firewall? Um, what were your addresses again?
Microsoft isn't the only one to pull this kind of crap.
Some years ago Allaire corporation (now owned my Macromedia) Contacted me telling me that they wanted to hire me as a senior trainer. (Note that they mentioned a specific position. Heck, they even mentioned the pay scale.) At the time, I was extremely proficient with their product, and was extremely active in the local user group, mostly teaching advanced techniques to other programmers.
So, I sent my resume to them. Two days later, they call to tell me I'm not qualified, because I had never worked as a trainer with their product before. Never mind I was training people on their product for free, never mind that my resume showed extensive experience as an instructor/trainer in several other industries, and most of all never mind that I had been working with their product from long before they had ever developed a formal training program.
To say that I was pissed off was un understatement.
In return for their kindness, I've taken great pride in having moved every employer I've had since then away from Allaire's products. Hmmm, maybe I'll list that as a skill the next time I re-write my resume....
Since when was DC not part of the United States?
Funny thing is, it kind of isn't. See to be part of the United States, it would have to be a state, which it isn't. Yes, that may sound pedantic, but essentially it's true, DC is somewhere between being part of the US, and being a US territory (ala Puerto Rico or Guam). It's a legacy from a time when the US was more of a conferedacy of independent states rather than the homogenized federal system we have today.
But suffice it to say that there's a whole lot of legal things about DC that are different from the states.