If its just an auto-dialer playing a taped message, the honeypot might be ineffective, although it still spares the subscriber from getting these calls.
I used to work in the telemarketing business, in the back room managing the data so I may have some uncommon insight here.
Legitimate telemarketers work off large lists of numbers, provided by their customers. In this case though it may be simply the list was generated as a complete block of an entire exchange or three. Anyway, the list when provided gets scrubbed against any DNC lists, usually one for client, one for state (by area code) and one exceptions list. (screamers, 911 and other emergency services, cell phone and fax blocks, etc) Sounds like these clods are also skipping that step. By scrubbed I mean dispositioned a DNC termination, that number will not be called.
Anyway, the dial servers are dialing lines faster than all the TCs on the floor can answer. They auto pace their dialing so they get on average someone that has just answered their phone just in time for a TC to become available (off previous call) to keep our TC idle time as low as possible. (cranking up the pass call rate beyond a certain % is also illegal, maybe they're doing that too? that's what gets you calls where there's nobody there when you answer)
So, the TCs can disposition a call such as "no thank you", "call me back later", "answering machine", or some form of sale. Non terminating dispositions just get you dropped back into the pool for calling back again. Robocalls can disposition calls too, such as detecting answering machines or quick hangups. So, having a machine play a recorded message may not help any, depending on how the call gets dispositioned. Or it may cause that number in the list to get terminated and never called again. Depends on what they want to do. I remember getting robocalls for "your new car warranty is about to expire!" almost continuously for a month. In those cases it didn't matter if you took the call, let it ring, or put it on a machine, you'd still get called again in a few hours. But that's not very efficient. They were being highly illegal so for them they probably were more interested in take-the-money-and-run rather than trying to work out an efficient call method for the long haul.
The effectiveness of the honeypot comes down to a battle of resources. The object of the honeypot is to tie up their resources to such a degree that their cost-to-revenue drops below acceptable and they move on. Lets say they are robocalling a block of 10,000 numbers, only 4,000 of which are used. If they call a number that is unused, and you play back an easily identifiable recording, it may be caught by the dialer even before the TC gets it, in which case the dialer dispositions it recording, which may terminate it. In that case, by the time they've gone first pass through all 10k numbers, all 6,000 inactive numbers are terminated and will not be reattempted. So they now focus round 2 on what's left of the 4,000 live bodies. This method fails to deter them because it's only a VERY minor inconvenience on pass 1 only.
If you can get to the TCs and they have to disposition it, you take up a little bit more of their resources in manpower, but you're still very unlikely to survive the first pass. 98% of the recorded disconnect notices will be terminated by the TCs on round 1 and never called again. Again you have not accomplished much.
It becomes much more effective when you can take up their time, such as what this guy is doing. Stall them, tie up a TC and a line on their end, for as long as possible. In the above example, lets say they have 50 TCs taking calls. If 60% of the numbers they call are spoof recordings, you are tying up 30 of their 50 TCs at a time. Assuming you have the tech resources to pull this off, it's wonderful. You have just dropped their conversion rate 60%. If they have anywhere else to call, they will do so, quickly. If they don't give up, they either have nowhere else to cal
it kind of looked like he may have been pressing a button on the side of the board when it was time for the next move. His hand always returned to that position and moved a bit. after each move from either side.
I also saw that "oops" of pushing the pawn too far, obviously there's an undo function there somewhere or he had not yet released the move.
I thought the adding of the clocks to the board was a very nice touch. But looks like the room was darkened and no place to put one's legs under the table while playing. two minor drawbacks.
some birds can literally see magnetic fields, but only if the vision in their right eye is sharp
Given that some birds (particularly raptors) have insanely sharp distance vision, that's not really that much to ask. Any animal that can spot a rabbit on the ground hundreds of feet away has some amazing vision.
Paranoid as I tend to be, I would hope most of them would. Dumpster diving at a hotel would seem like an otherwise excellent way to dug up some fraud otherwise. If not just for the hotel staff then for the patrons. Makes one wonder just how much sensitive information gets casually tossed in the hotel room trashscan by the average guest? I can't say that I've EVER seen a shredder next to the bible and alarm clock before.
They've already provided it to the Chinese (and the British, not sure who else).
I'm sure the US Govt has had it LONG since before those guys. One of those "but under the Patriot Act, we don't have to TELL you" kinds of things I'm sure. It's like a rootkit for the Constitution.
We had FPSes in 1990. I don't remember any of them being online
Marathon rocked at the time, hands down the best FPS of its day. It featured LAN gaming for up to 8 (or was it 16?) players. There were hacks around that would knit together distant LANs vpn-style for internet play, but the game wasn't designed for that level of lag so it didn't play well over the internet.
(it also had a story line that, in the context of a fps, rivaled that of Ultima. It's a shame that feat is rarely equalled even nowadays)
could you provide some sort of documents on vapor being recovered by a system that is provably 1 way??
Wikipedia is among the hits describing vapor recovery at the pump.
Imagine the increased danger of filling your tank when for every gallon of fuel you pumped in, close to a cubic foot of concentrated gas vapor gushed out around the nozzle. Just thinking about that gives me a headache, a common reaction to inhaling gasoline vapor.
And it's referred to as "Vapor Recovery" when filling underground station tanks from the trucks. Google for "gas pump vapor recovery" for more information. I'd actually not considered that before seeing it just now, but it's probably equally important when filling the station tanks. Just imagine the cloud of gas vapor hanging around the big tanker truck by the time it's done offloading on a calm day.
Think about it. What organization wouldn't be at least somewhat interested in trying to put their entire mission statement in their logo? Success. And appropriate for them to use a hash for it. Although their choice of hash was poor. You'd think they would have used a more modern hash that's considered more secure? But maybe they wanted to go with that because they weren't intending for it to be secure, just fit, and be appropriate.
and just how are we supposed to find anything "meaningful" in the result of a one way hash? To say that a one way hash (with an arbitrary sized input)"encodes" anything is just plain stupid.
Oh I know! It's the original draft of the Constitution of the United States! Imagine that, all in 16 bytes! What amazing compression! Really, you're not going to fit much "meaningful" beyond a telephone number in a ciphertext THAT small. It's a hash.
True. But instead, you're venting HIGHLY flammable AND explosive gasses out of the tank and back down the hose into the station's tank. Most people don't know about that. (liquid gas by itself is NOT explosive, it's merely flammable - gas vapor OTOH is highly explosive, which is why we use it for fuel) When you're pushing 15 gallons into the tank, there's a reason there's not a whoosh of gas vapor out around the nozzle from the displacement occurring.
They do that of course (1) as a safety measure and (2) to save a buck or two in the long run, as that vapor goes back to the storage tank (instead of sucking in air to replace the lost gas) and some of that will condense back into gas for them to sell.
Know what happens when there's a problem with the vapor backflow? Nothing. Well, maybe a kaBOOM but what I mean is there's no safety on it. Know what happens when the temps get too high or current inrush spikes? The fast charge system halts the fill. So you see, it's actually safer than a gas quick fill. There's a computer carefully watching many aspects of the charge all the time.
The gas station really is already giving you a quick-fill, by bending the safety of the system a bit. Don't you hate it when you happen to use a pump somewhere on a road trip that's really SLOW? I remember having to wait 10 minutes for a fill once, in the dead of winter on a road trip. I waited inside, and when I got outside it had JUST finished... AND had just started gushing fuel all over the ground because the full-shutoff failed. (probably the pump and the shutoff were both having issues with the cold, it was well below zero, and it was diesel fuel)
Also after watching the video you will notice he waited for a FULL charge. They slow down the rate when it gets closer to full. The article states 50% charge in 3 minutes, and yet it took him over 10 to get 100% charge, so the remaining 50% requires 7 more minutes. Probably a higher ratio than that even, as he said he didn't get it fully discharged. Looks like they're probably taking the conservative side of safe on this still.
Streisand Effect in motion perhaps? You'd think they would've learned this lesson by now? Or maybe they think it's working in their favor, "hey look at all the FREE PRESS we (RIAA) are getting!"
"abundant" does not equal "easily available". The Sun for instance, is "relatively" close to us in space, and contains more helium than we could ever use, many million times over. Stars tend to have a lot of that and hydrogen in them. But it's not easy for us to get, obviously.
The problem with helium is it's light enough to escape earth's gravity well, and drift off into space. Because of that, it's not in our atmosphere anywhere in any concentration. So we have to get it from the ground. Looks like the main source is natural gas wells. So all we need to renew our helium supply is more dinosaurs.
I wonder how he stilted the legs to get himself that high.
you can see the stilts under construction earlier in the video, looks like they're custom fitted to the bottom of a boot, kind of looks like he's adding a blade on an ice skate the first time you see it, when he's doing the metal cutting. I assume they just carved out the leg foam and fit them in.
very nice. wonder how heavy it'll be when done? Fun to see the various stages of construction, things like using the turkey carver to carve up the leg foam, little tricks like that which let you see how anyone can do it with common tools, no need for complex or expensive mold constructions etc. Can't wait to see part 2.
Primary mission objective succes is defined as 100 points. You do the math.
Adding up all that comes to what, 1925 pts possible. And they are saying 100 is a success? So if they achieve 5% of what they set out to do, that's a "success"?
I suppose it's easier to look at things as a success when you set your standards that low? Don't know what school these guys attended, but I'm pretty sure anything below 60% at MIT fails you.
GRANTED. Space is a tough house to play. But still, 5% is "success"? I'd hope for at least 25% at the minimum. With that low of a bar, any ONE of SEVEN objectives would give you a passing grade. This is like saying "unless it blows up on launch, we're calling it a success".
When I read "Careful Balance" I immediately pictured a large scale, with an elephant on the left tray and a mouse on the right. This is the "careful balance" the RIAA wants so badly to preserve.
"We're giving you a $0.35 refund on that. Oh, and you, we're suing for the same thing as that guy but for $2.8 billion"
That's the weak point of this particular law. It's one of those "vague, let the officers interpret it" laws, so in reality, the law isn't determining if what you are doing is illegal, the officers are, and that's not how the legal system is supposed to work.
If they wanted to drag this out, I'm sure their lawyer could mount their main attack on "destructive device" and pull a win, because it would be trivial to show that the term could apply to a wide variety of things that no reasonable person would consider unlawful. Once you show a law can be used to convict even one innocent person, the law becomes unenforceable in court.
They probably will simply get the charges dropped, because the cops usually like having vague laws like that on the books because it allows them to make more flexible judgement calls. (which can be good OR bad for the public, and that's the problem) They won't want this to go to court because they'll lose their bad (but useful) law if it does. Or at least get a precedent set against it on the books.
a tuned antenna, such as those 22'ish element beams for the band you're having problems with, attached to a spectrum analyzer or any number of other useful RF gear, and just wave it around and see where it's coming from. would take you all of about 20 minutes to nail down the house its coming from.
The antenna's cheap. The analyzer, well, find a friendly ham radio operator in your area that's sympathetic to dealing with interference and borrow it or have them give you a hand.
Or on the very cheap you could get one of those crummy little "Wifi hotspot detectors" that is only an RF meter. (does not for example, give ssids or allow you to select only open networks - you want one of the $15 ones with four lights on it for strength) and follow that around. They're directional and there are other tricks you can use to get a better bearing from them.
I used to play cat n mouse / fox hunt a lot, and trust me, a directional antenna is definitely NOT required to track them down. Sure can make the job quicker tho.
If you don't carry a balance and are therefore not paying any interest then what difference does the rate make to you?
The initial reason I got a credit card was to establish credit, and to buy things I could not at the time pay outright, like my first computer.
Now, neither of those are issues. But I still like to have a credit card. I prefer to use a regular credit card rather than my bank's visa/debit card for one-shot purchases from companies I have no established good rep for, in case they pull something shady or it gets skimmed it can be easier to dispute a straight visa than a visa/debit, particularly since they don't already hold a lot of my money. I'd rather have a $2000 fraudulent charge sitting on my visa bill for a month or so than deducted temporarily from my savings.
That, and it's a fair safety net in case I have some urgent problem or get hit by several unexpected bills all at once. A lot more convenient than taking out a short term loan. Have to do that by charging though, as it's next to impossible to find any credit card company with an even halfway sane interest rate on cash withdrawls. If you're going to go that route you need TWO cards. One to do the large cash withdrawl on, and then another to take advantage of their "transfer your high interest balance from other cards to us and we'll do xxx" offers.
I have no intention of ever "living on credit", though I know there's a lot of people that seem to prefer living just a little bit beyond their means and are always charging stuff and carrying a small balance. If every month you're looking at all your credit card bills and deciding which ones to pay off and which ones not, you're living beyond your means and need to do some self-reflection.
That, and the final reason would be if I DO charge something, and forget to pay the bill that month, it can be the difference between say, a buck in interest, or five bucks. I see no reason to throw my money away like that even if it's a small amount. It's safer to just make a point of keeping a low interest card so if you do goof, it's a cheap mistake.
Sorry, but I don't have a lot of pity for people that don't plan things out and expect everything to go perfect tomorrow. Comments like yours somewhat demonstrate the commonality of this problem though. "Why should I bother with that, all I have to do is make sure everything goes perfect and I'll be fine". No thank you. Not where my money and health are concerned.
you typically only get to choose a bank (checking account, credit card, mortgage, car loan) for the first couple years.
I had this happen with my first bank. Smallish savings and loan, a local bank. At one point they said they were going to start charging for the checking account. I went down and talked with them and they cut me a deal. If I started using electronic statements they'd keep the checking free. There was also a "service charge" on my savings account if I didn't maintain a minimum balance, which went away also. Things stayed that way for some years.
Then the bank merged with a larger bank, and suddenly I started seeing money disappearing out of my savings. Now I'd never really actually used it, and only had $50 or so in it, but they were eating about $2/month off it in a service charge. So I called them and they said they'd changed their policies after the merger, and that's how things were going to be now. So picked up all my money and moved it to a local credit union. They take really good care of me.
You'd think things like this would be so destructive to your customer base that they'd have to think twice about it, yet they just do it without batting an eyelash. And so we walk. And they don't seem to care?
Funny, I forgot to take the money out of savings. I stopped checking my electronic statements when I closed my checking account. Anyway, got a notice some time later saying my savings account now had a negative balance. So I gave them a call to laugh at them and tell them they could close the account. I was almost expecting them to tell me to come pay the $1.50 or whatever negative on the account, but they didn't have THAT much nerve. Idiots.
My first credit card was from Chase. It was on one of those flyer boxes posted on a board in one of the dorms. Not the best interest rate at the time but not too bad. They steadily lowered my rate over the years. I'd call them up and ask for a lower rate and they'd see I'd been a customer for awhile and had a good record and would knock a few points off. it finally settled at 9.9 fixed for several years. I used it frequently, but I almost always paid my entire balance. I did buy my first laptop computer on it though, and that took several months to pay off.
Now a lot of people just throw away those "change in terms of service" notices they get from their credit card companies, but *I* read them. And one day I got a notice saying they were going to jack up my interest rate for no apparent reason. So I called them to cancel the card. She transferred me to someone else that said forget about that, we won't raise your rate. (I suppose I was transferred to a "stop this customer from closing their account" rep)
So last year I got another one. This time they were jacking the rate up to something outrageous like 17%. (from 9.9) Called them again and expected to be put through the same transfer, but this rep was having none of that. I explained what had happened last time and she says no, this one is not negotiable. She explained that "due to changing economic circumstances" they had to raise their rate. I asked her to transfer me to an account specialist, but to my surprise, I got exactly the same answer. So I explained to her one more "changing economic circumstance" they were now going to experience.
It's too bad too. They provided me with good service, and even had some really cutting-edge features for the time. Back in 1992 they had an offer for me to email (yes really) a scan (yes, REALLY) of my picture and my signature, and they sent me a new card, with my picture and my signature on the front of the card. (I had to use a serial port quickcam to make the pics) REALLY nice feature, and nice to have a second photo ID and the signature really big on the front of the card. To this day I don't know of any bank that offers that, though there are a few that let you upload a picture and can have that as the entire face of your card. I need to do that with my current main credit card, an AT&T mastercard. (9.9%)
I've heard though that they classify customers like me as "dead beats" because we don't carry a balance for them to charge interest on. I suppose it's possible that's why I got sacked. It's just a shame to have to cancel your first credit card, that helped you establish credit, that you've had for almost 20 years.
he appears to have over 50 investments listed, over half of which I can't identify what business they're in.
It's very possible that his financial planner has set up those investments and maintains them for him and he has no idea if any of them are in drilling or not.
But OTOH that doesn't make it any less of a conflict of interest, whether or not he's aware of it, it's there.
Copyright applies to a great deal more than speech.
But yes, that ruling stinks. It basically says someone with lobbying dollars can buy exceptions to the first amendment. And at the same time it reinforces the eagerness of the courts (federal in this case) to sell out to big business/groups whom they are trying to fool us into believing are somehow representing "the people". If you want to be making that sort of comparison, "big business" is pretty much the polar opposite of "the people".
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If its just an auto-dialer playing a taped message, the honeypot might be ineffective, although it still spares the subscriber from getting these calls.
I used to work in the telemarketing business, in the back room managing the data so I may have some uncommon insight here.
Legitimate telemarketers work off large lists of numbers, provided by their customers. In this case though it may be simply the list was generated as a complete block of an entire exchange or three. Anyway, the list when provided gets scrubbed against any DNC lists, usually one for client, one for state (by area code) and one exceptions list. (screamers, 911 and other emergency services, cell phone and fax blocks, etc) Sounds like these clods are also skipping that step. By scrubbed I mean dispositioned a DNC termination, that number will not be called.
Anyway, the dial servers are dialing lines faster than all the TCs on the floor can answer. They auto pace their dialing so they get on average someone that has just answered their phone just in time for a TC to become available (off previous call) to keep our TC idle time as low as possible. (cranking up the pass call rate beyond a certain % is also illegal, maybe they're doing that too? that's what gets you calls where there's nobody there when you answer)
So, the TCs can disposition a call such as "no thank you", "call me back later", "answering machine", or some form of sale. Non terminating dispositions just get you dropped back into the pool for calling back again. Robocalls can disposition calls too, such as detecting answering machines or quick hangups. So, having a machine play a recorded message may not help any, depending on how the call gets dispositioned. Or it may cause that number in the list to get terminated and never called again. Depends on what they want to do. I remember getting robocalls for "your new car warranty is about to expire!" almost continuously for a month. In those cases it didn't matter if you took the call, let it ring, or put it on a machine, you'd still get called again in a few hours. But that's not very efficient. They were being highly illegal so for them they probably were more interested in take-the-money-and-run rather than trying to work out an efficient call method for the long haul.
The effectiveness of the honeypot comes down to a battle of resources. The object of the honeypot is to tie up their resources to such a degree that their cost-to-revenue drops below acceptable and they move on. Lets say they are robocalling a block of 10,000 numbers, only 4,000 of which are used. If they call a number that is unused, and you play back an easily identifiable recording, it may be caught by the dialer even before the TC gets it, in which case the dialer dispositions it recording, which may terminate it. In that case, by the time they've gone first pass through all 10k numbers, all 6,000 inactive numbers are terminated and will not be reattempted. So they now focus round 2 on what's left of the 4,000 live bodies. This method fails to deter them because it's only a VERY minor inconvenience on pass 1 only.
If you can get to the TCs and they have to disposition it, you take up a little bit more of their resources in manpower, but you're still very unlikely to survive the first pass. 98% of the recorded disconnect notices will be terminated by the TCs on round 1 and never called again. Again you have not accomplished much.
It becomes much more effective when you can take up their time, such as what this guy is doing. Stall them, tie up a TC and a line on their end, for as long as possible. In the above example, lets say they have 50 TCs taking calls. If 60% of the numbers they call are spoof recordings, you are tying up 30 of their 50 TCs at a time. Assuming you have the tech resources to pull this off, it's wonderful. You have just dropped their conversion rate 60%. If they have anywhere else to call, they will do so, quickly. If they don't give up, they either have nowhere else to cal
it kind of looked like he may have been pressing a button on the side of the board when it was time for the next move. His hand always returned to that position and moved a bit. after each move from either side.
I also saw that "oops" of pushing the pawn too far, obviously there's an undo function there somewhere or he had not yet released the move.
I thought the adding of the clocks to the board was a very nice touch. But looks like the room was darkened and no place to put one's legs under the table while playing. two minor drawbacks.
How does I2P compare with TOR?
some birds can literally see magnetic fields, but only if the vision in their right eye is sharp
Given that some birds (particularly raptors) have insanely sharp distance vision, that's not really that much to ask. Any animal that can spot a rabbit on the ground hundreds of feet away has some amazing vision.
I highly doubt they go through a shredder.
Paranoid as I tend to be, I would hope most of them would. Dumpster diving at a hotel would seem like an otherwise excellent way to dug up some fraud otherwise. If not just for the hotel staff then for the patrons. Makes one wonder just how much sensitive information gets casually tossed in the hotel room trashscan by the average guest? I can't say that I've EVER seen a shredder next to the bible and alarm clock before.
They've already provided it to the Chinese (and the British, not sure who else).
I'm sure the US Govt has had it LONG since before those guys. One of those "but under the Patriot Act, we don't have to TELL you" kinds of things I'm sure. It's like a rootkit for the Constitution.
We had FPSes in 1990. I don't remember any of them being online
Marathon rocked at the time, hands down the best FPS of its day. It featured LAN gaming for up to 8 (or was it 16?) players. There were hacks around that would knit together distant LANs vpn-style for internet play, but the game wasn't designed for that level of lag so it didn't play well over the internet.
(it also had a story line that, in the context of a fps, rivaled that of Ultima. It's a shame that feat is rarely equalled even nowadays)
could you provide some sort of documents on vapor being recovered by a system that is provably 1 way??
Wikipedia is among the hits describing vapor recovery at the pump.
Imagine the increased danger of filling your tank when for every gallon of fuel you pumped in, close to a cubic foot of concentrated gas vapor gushed out around the nozzle. Just thinking about that gives me a headache, a common reaction to inhaling gasoline vapor.
And it's referred to as "Vapor Recovery" when filling underground station tanks from the trucks. Google for "gas pump vapor recovery" for more information. I'd actually not considered that before seeing it just now, but it's probably equally important when filling the station tanks. Just imagine the cloud of gas vapor hanging around the big tanker truck by the time it's done offloading on a calm day.
Think about it. What organization wouldn't be at least somewhat interested in trying to put their entire mission statement in their logo? Success. And appropriate for them to use a hash for it. Although their choice of hash was poor. You'd think they would have used a more modern hash that's considered more secure? But maybe they wanted to go with that because they weren't intending for it to be secure, just fit, and be appropriate.
and just how are we supposed to find anything "meaningful" in the result of a one way hash? To say that a one way hash (with an arbitrary sized input)"encodes" anything is just plain stupid.
Oh I know! It's the original draft of the Constitution of the United States! Imagine that, all in 16 bytes! What amazing compression! Really, you're not going to fit much "meaningful" beyond a telephone number in a ciphertext THAT small. It's a hash.
You don't have to heat the fuel tank to do that.
True. But instead, you're venting HIGHLY flammable AND explosive gasses out of the tank and back down the hose into the station's tank. Most people don't know about that. (liquid gas by itself is NOT explosive, it's merely flammable - gas vapor OTOH is highly explosive, which is why we use it for fuel) When you're pushing 15 gallons into the tank, there's a reason there's not a whoosh of gas vapor out around the nozzle from the displacement occurring.
They do that of course (1) as a safety measure and (2) to save a buck or two in the long run, as that vapor goes back to the storage tank (instead of sucking in air to replace the lost gas) and some of that will condense back into gas for them to sell.
Know what happens when there's a problem with the vapor backflow? Nothing. Well, maybe a kaBOOM but what I mean is there's no safety on it. Know what happens when the temps get too high or current inrush spikes? The fast charge system halts the fill. So you see, it's actually safer than a gas quick fill. There's a computer carefully watching many aspects of the charge all the time.
The gas station really is already giving you a quick-fill, by bending the safety of the system a bit. Don't you hate it when you happen to use a pump somewhere on a road trip that's really SLOW? I remember having to wait 10 minutes for a fill once, in the dead of winter on a road trip. I waited inside, and when I got outside it had JUST finished... AND had just started gushing fuel all over the ground because the full-shutoff failed. (probably the pump and the shutoff were both having issues with the cold, it was well below zero, and it was diesel fuel)
Also after watching the video you will notice he waited for a FULL charge. They slow down the rate when it gets closer to full. The article states 50% charge in 3 minutes, and yet it took him over 10 to get 100% charge, so the remaining 50% requires 7 more minutes. Probably a higher ratio than that even, as he said he didn't get it fully discharged. Looks like they're probably taking the conservative side of safe on this still.
I was hoping to see them establish a Power over BlueTooth in the standard but I guess we have to wait for 5?
Streisand Effect in motion perhaps? You'd think they would've learned this lesson by now? Or maybe they think it's working in their favor, "hey look at all the FREE PRESS we (RIAA) are getting!"
"abundant" does not equal "easily available". The Sun for instance, is "relatively" close to us in space, and contains more helium than we could ever use, many million times over. Stars tend to have a lot of that and hydrogen in them. But it's not easy for us to get, obviously.
The problem with helium is it's light enough to escape earth's gravity well, and drift off into space. Because of that, it's not in our atmosphere anywhere in any concentration. So we have to get it from the ground. Looks like the main source is natural gas wells. So all we need to renew our helium supply is more dinosaurs.
I wonder how he stilted the legs to get himself that high.
you can see the stilts under construction earlier in the video, looks like they're custom fitted to the bottom of a boot, kind of looks like he's adding a blade on an ice skate the first time you see it, when he's doing the metal cutting. I assume they just carved out the leg foam and fit them in.
very nice. wonder how heavy it'll be when done? Fun to see the various stages of construction, things like using the turkey carver to carve up the leg foam, little tricks like that which let you see how anyone can do it with common tools, no need for complex or expensive mold constructions etc. Can't wait to see part 2.
Primary mission objective succes is defined as 100 points. You do the math.
Adding up all that comes to what, 1925 pts possible. And they are saying 100 is a success? So if they achieve 5% of what they set out to do, that's a "success"?
I suppose it's easier to look at things as a success when you set your standards that low? Don't know what school these guys attended, but I'm pretty sure anything below 60% at MIT fails you.
GRANTED. Space is a tough house to play. But still, 5% is "success"? I'd hope for at least 25% at the minimum. With that low of a bar, any ONE of SEVEN objectives would give you a passing grade. This is like saying "unless it blows up on launch, we're calling it a success".
When I read "Careful Balance" I immediately pictured a large scale, with an elephant on the left tray and a mouse on the right. This is the "careful balance" the RIAA wants so badly to preserve.
"We're giving you a $0.35 refund on that. Oh, and you, we're suing for the same thing as that guy but for $2.8 billion"
Can anybody remind my why somebody would pay for a dell to use at home?
Potheads in tv advertisements maybe?
Duuuuude, you're gettin a.... hey, are those CHEETOS?
That's the weak point of this particular law. It's one of those "vague, let the officers interpret it" laws, so in reality, the law isn't determining if what you are doing is illegal, the officers are, and that's not how the legal system is supposed to work.
If they wanted to drag this out, I'm sure their lawyer could mount their main attack on "destructive device" and pull a win, because it would be trivial to show that the term could apply to a wide variety of things that no reasonable person would consider unlawful. Once you show a law can be used to convict even one innocent person, the law becomes unenforceable in court.
They probably will simply get the charges dropped, because the cops usually like having vague laws like that on the books because it allows them to make more flexible judgement calls. (which can be good OR bad for the public, and that's the problem) They won't want this to go to court because they'll lose their bad (but useful) law if it does. Or at least get a precedent set against it on the books.
a tuned antenna, such as those 22'ish element beams for the band you're having problems with, attached to a spectrum analyzer or any number of other useful RF gear, and just wave it around and see where it's coming from. would take you all of about 20 minutes to nail down the house its coming from.
The antenna's cheap. The analyzer, well, find a friendly ham radio operator in your area that's sympathetic to dealing with interference and borrow it or have them give you a hand.
Or on the very cheap you could get one of those crummy little "Wifi hotspot detectors" that is only an RF meter. (does not for example, give ssids or allow you to select only open networks - you want one of the $15 ones with four lights on it for strength) and follow that around. They're directional and there are other tricks you can use to get a better bearing from them.
I used to play cat n mouse / fox hunt a lot, and trust me, a directional antenna is definitely NOT required to track them down. Sure can make the job quicker tho.
If you don't carry a balance and are therefore not paying any interest then what difference does the rate make to you?
The initial reason I got a credit card was to establish credit, and to buy things I could not at the time pay outright, like my first computer.
Now, neither of those are issues. But I still like to have a credit card. I prefer to use a regular credit card rather than my bank's visa/debit card for one-shot purchases from companies I have no established good rep for, in case they pull something shady or it gets skimmed it can be easier to dispute a straight visa than a visa/debit, particularly since they don't already hold a lot of my money. I'd rather have a $2000 fraudulent charge sitting on my visa bill for a month or so than deducted temporarily from my savings.
That, and it's a fair safety net in case I have some urgent problem or get hit by several unexpected bills all at once. A lot more convenient than taking out a short term loan. Have to do that by charging though, as it's next to impossible to find any credit card company with an even halfway sane interest rate on cash withdrawls. If you're going to go that route you need TWO cards. One to do the large cash withdrawl on, and then another to take advantage of their "transfer your high interest balance from other cards to us and we'll do xxx" offers.
I have no intention of ever "living on credit", though I know there's a lot of people that seem to prefer living just a little bit beyond their means and are always charging stuff and carrying a small balance. If every month you're looking at all your credit card bills and deciding which ones to pay off and which ones not, you're living beyond your means and need to do some self-reflection.
That, and the final reason would be if I DO charge something, and forget to pay the bill that month, it can be the difference between say, a buck in interest, or five bucks. I see no reason to throw my money away like that even if it's a small amount. It's safer to just make a point of keeping a low interest card so if you do goof, it's a cheap mistake.
Sorry, but I don't have a lot of pity for people that don't plan things out and expect everything to go perfect tomorrow. Comments like yours somewhat demonstrate the commonality of this problem though. "Why should I bother with that, all I have to do is make sure everything goes perfect and I'll be fine". No thank you. Not where my money and health are concerned.
you typically only get to choose a bank (checking account, credit card, mortgage, car loan) for the first couple years.
I had this happen with my first bank. Smallish savings and loan, a local bank. At one point they said they were going to start charging for the checking account. I went down and talked with them and they cut me a deal. If I started using electronic statements they'd keep the checking free. There was also a "service charge" on my savings account if I didn't maintain a minimum balance, which went away also. Things stayed that way for some years.
Then the bank merged with a larger bank, and suddenly I started seeing money disappearing out of my savings. Now I'd never really actually used it, and only had $50 or so in it, but they were eating about $2/month off it in a service charge. So I called them and they said they'd changed their policies after the merger, and that's how things were going to be now. So picked up all my money and moved it to a local credit union. They take really good care of me.
You'd think things like this would be so destructive to your customer base that they'd have to think twice about it, yet they just do it without batting an eyelash. And so we walk. And they don't seem to care?
Funny, I forgot to take the money out of savings. I stopped checking my electronic statements when I closed my checking account. Anyway, got a notice some time later saying my savings account now had a negative balance. So I gave them a call to laugh at them and tell them they could close the account. I was almost expecting them to tell me to come pay the $1.50 or whatever negative on the account, but they didn't have THAT much nerve. Idiots.
My first credit card was from Chase. It was on one of those flyer boxes posted on a board in one of the dorms. Not the best interest rate at the time but not too bad. They steadily lowered my rate over the years. I'd call them up and ask for a lower rate and they'd see I'd been a customer for awhile and had a good record and would knock a few points off. it finally settled at 9.9 fixed for several years. I used it frequently, but I almost always paid my entire balance. I did buy my first laptop computer on it though, and that took several months to pay off.
Now a lot of people just throw away those "change in terms of service" notices they get from their credit card companies, but *I* read them. And one day I got a notice saying they were going to jack up my interest rate for no apparent reason. So I called them to cancel the card. She transferred me to someone else that said forget about that, we won't raise your rate. (I suppose I was transferred to a "stop this customer from closing their account" rep)
So last year I got another one. This time they were jacking the rate up to something outrageous like 17%. (from 9.9) Called them again and expected to be put through the same transfer, but this rep was having none of that. I explained what had happened last time and she says no, this one is not negotiable. She explained that "due to changing economic circumstances" they had to raise their rate. I asked her to transfer me to an account specialist, but to my surprise, I got exactly the same answer. So I explained to her one more "changing economic circumstance" they were now going to experience.
It's too bad too. They provided me with good service, and even had some really cutting-edge features for the time. Back in 1992 they had an offer for me to email (yes really) a scan (yes, REALLY) of my picture and my signature, and they sent me a new card, with my picture and my signature on the front of the card. (I had to use a serial port quickcam to make the pics) REALLY nice feature, and nice to have a second photo ID and the signature really big on the front of the card. To this day I don't know of any bank that offers that, though there are a few that let you upload a picture and can have that as the entire face of your card. I need to do that with my current main credit card, an AT&T mastercard. (9.9%)
I've heard though that they classify customers like me as "dead beats" because we don't carry a balance for them to charge interest on. I suppose it's possible that's why I got sacked. It's just a shame to have to cancel your first credit card, that helped you establish credit, that you've had for almost 20 years.
he appears to have over 50 investments listed, over half of which I can't identify what business they're in.
It's very possible that his financial planner has set up those investments and maintains them for him and he has no idea if any of them are in drilling or not.
But OTOH that doesn't make it any less of a conflict of interest, whether or not he's aware of it, it's there.
Copyright applies to a great deal more than speech.
But yes, that ruling stinks. It basically says someone with lobbying dollars can buy exceptions to the first amendment. And at the same time it reinforces the eagerness of the courts (federal in this case) to sell out to big business/groups whom they are trying to fool us into believing are somehow representing "the people". If you want to be making that sort of comparison, "big business" is pretty much the polar opposite of "the people".