"Nice collection of music you got there... pity if something should 'happen' to it... you oughta pay us some 'protection'..."
Having to pay for the "right" to make a backup of something they send out on flawed, easily destroyed media? Uhm... no. Consumers have the right to protect their own investment from destruction.
Why not just rate stories on their frequencies of lies, distortions, unsupported assertions, and factual inaccuracies?
Problems:
- Lies of comission = stuff they just plain get wrong - Lies of omission = stuff they deliberately leave out to tilt the story - Bias-words; portraying the "facts" with a strong tilt or weasel words designed to push a positive/negative impression of something, like describing terrorists as "freedom fighters" or "insurgents" or "militants" instead, or running a story that twists and tilts with giving as little description to one side, while trying to give unneeded detail to the other ("20 Israeli citizens were injured or killed, while a Palestinian child 8 months old clutching a blankie and his grandmother...").
- Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics - hunt down a "statistic" that you claim supports your position. Usually accompanied by ignoring any other information/statistics that point the other way. - Cherry-picked quoting - taking something out of context, or deliberately leaving out half a sentence to completely twist the meaning of a statement around.
And then after you get that out, there's the simple editorializing they always slip into their stuff (really, they can't help themselves), and the outright propaganda nonsense (such as Arabic news reports that use the wording "occupied palestine" to describe the nation of Israel).
Unfortunately, there are (and don't say there aren't) certain apps we use that Firefox and Opera just don't like to behave with.
Plus, if you take Google Crapbar and any other "helper" toolbars out of the equation, IE7 runs just fine. It's the crapbars causing the crash, every time - and half the time Google Crapbar turns out to have gotten into the system in some little "tag-along" arrangement, usually through an "automatic update" of Java or Acrobat Reader where you have to go into the "advanced" install mode to DENY the Google Crapbar permission to install.
is anyone thinking they should really remember to "don't be evil" when it comes to all these crap-ass browser plugins? EVERY TIME I get called in to help a user because "my internet is crashing", it's because Google Crapbar slunk in alongside something else they installed, and is crashing on IE's loadup.
I mean, come on. WE DON'T NEED YOUR INVASIVE CRAPBAR, IF WE WANT TO SEARCH THE BROWSER HAS A FUCKING SEARCH FIELD BUILT RIGHT IN.
Given the amount of security-sensitive or financially-sensitive documentation on the computers, OF COURSE they should be destroyed, or else wiped beyond recovery.
Read your regulations. HIPPA (medical record) regulations alone require the destruction of any data like that using national-security level tools. Either you break the drive itself, you push it through one hell of a magnetic field a certain number of times, or you use one hell of an overwriting tool that makes 16+ passes on the drive to ensure that traces of previous data are completely gone.
This is a non-story, and the only reason it's being pushed time and again is as a kludge to try to attack Bush. I'll admit there are a hell of a lot of reasons to attack Bush (the bribery and scams over illegal immigration/amnesty alone!), but this one isn't it.
Having been called by a number of users about "my java says it needs updating", I can assure you - the revelation that Google Crapbar is being pushed is ONLY present if you click into the "advanced" update path and not the normal.
On the "updates" that pop up later, no. They slip it by on the first update if the user's not canny enough to click "advanced" and then realize it's trying to push Google Crapbar.
it's not half as bad as Google's pushing their "toolbar" along with Java updates... where you have to go into "advanced" install of the update to even KNOW that it's pushing Google Crapbar, let alone to drop it.
We've seen more problems with "my IE is crashing" lately, and every time it's that Google Crapbar that slipped in because the users didn't even get the chance to know it was coming in.
So, if these individuals are going to be in the state anyway
There's your first problem. They should NOT be in the state anyway. And as for evidence, do a quick search. There are umpteen studies on the matter and government officials (like the ones in Texas) have even been caught trying to doctor data.
it's worse than that. If you're on the default settings or even setting up a new one to lock it down, you could just as easily wind up catching someone else's by honest mistake.
Should they come pre-locked down? Good luck, you have to have defaults for setup purposes or a hardware reset. Should you leave it open? I know I had to MAC-address lock my stuff (stupid Wii wouldn't recognize Cisco WPA-PSK properly, PS3 barfed on it too). If I were less tech-savvy I might have simply turned off security to get it running.
And then there's so many devices that grab any un-secured point by default - you could be "hijacking" an open WAP without even knowing it.
Hell, do you think Joe Schmuck who's used to flipping open his laptop at Starbucks will notice which connection he's on if he randomly flips it open somewhere and sees a running connection? Nope, he'll just start checking his email.
I live here legally. I pay taxes, pay for my health insurance, pay the hospital to deliver my kids, raise my kids. My kids go to the college one state over. I get raped for $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ tuition.
Asswad from Mexshitco comes up. Has a bunch of kids (free on the public dime by giving a false name or just not paying the hospital). Enrolls their kids in every free-public-money scam thanks to the Democraps, uses up MY tax money. Has his kids sitting around shitting up the school system to the point where all the non-spanish-speaking teachers are run off and my kids have to wait for the brainless shitheads to catch up before anything else can be taught, or else I wind up spending MORE of my money to send my kids to a decent school because his kids have fucked over the school but good.
Now we hit college time. His kids are supposed to get all sorts of "minority scholarships" for "underpriviledged minorities", and they're talking about giving his kids in-state tuition????
WTF IS GOING ON HERE.
No, seriously. Enough is enough. I've run the numbers and no longer want the mooching illegals around ruining the schools, ruining the health care and emergency rooms, running up the costs in insurance (I have to pay an extra %1000/year for uninsured/underinsured coverage thanks to all the mexshitcans around here), and all the rest of the trouble they cause. Enough is enough.
My private health care woes started trying to get private insurance at age 22. I started looking at the route you're on when young. I know the score, and the insurance companies are pure crap to anyone going private.
The ability for companies to turn people down for stupid reasons, and to make it into "oops, you were turned down by X" as a red flag are two of the biggest possible screw-overs.
if god forbid you have a chronic or congenital condition - heart murmur, asthma, family history of anything at all, severe allergy to something or other.
Really. From experience: private health insurance isn't worth the paper it's written on, and your rates will screw you if there is anything that they can call a risk... or worse yet, you get "coverage" and then they claim that everything under the sun is "related to a pre-existing condition" and force you to go into court to try to get them to pay, knowing they can run the clock for fucking years before having to present you with your check and hoping that you'll give up after the umpteenth appeal their army of shysters^H^H^H^H^H demonic assholes^H^H^H^H^H^H lawyers file.
Shop around for doctors like you do anything else
It's the emergency stuff I most worry about. There's nothing worse than sitting in the emergency room and being told by the nurse that you have to talk to the insurance company's lawyer to get approval while you're coughing blood. And when it's an emergency, "shop around" doesn't apply.
That and the fact that you can't "shop around" for insurance. Every time you apply for insurance and get rejected, they stick it in the file and it's a black mark against you for future applications because the other companies go "hey, company X rejected, let's find out why using triplicate forms and make sure it takes longer than they're willing to spend time on to even apply for ours."
Really? I hate the silver spoon assholes myself. Then again, I'm a Gen-Y who had to work my way up and had a job at age 14.
they need constant hand-holding,
Try not hiring stupid silver spoon assholes.
they have no job loyalty,
See parent post - when you can be laid off at any time, when your work doesn't give a crap about you, when the employer is constantly trying to find new and inventive ways to screw you for health insurance or even for basic wages, why should you be "loyal" to them? How about when I watched my dad, a "loyal" employee for three decades, booted out the door after his company was acquired with the equivalent of a "don't let the door hit you on the way out"???
they demand more than they're worth,
Probably so that they can have something left when the employer inevitably fucks them over.
they disrespect older employees,
Give respect, receive respect. It's a two-way street.
and they're naive about corporate culture
On the contrary, they know enough about it to know that employee "loyalty" is something their employer likely doesn't deserve and to be alert enough to know that they shouldn't expect the employer to give a shit if something happens.
Bat shit and sulfur are two pretty important components of gunpowder, too.
Funny how that worked out... you're casting an explosive spell and using explosive components. Most of the old "material components" are still explained in spell flavor text, btw.
Still, there's something to be said for it. Archers have to carry ammunition. Why wouldn't wizards need to keep their material components up to date?
Rental stores usually let the DVD copies out far earlier than the street date. They make a point in my area of trying to advertise that you can watch it from them earlier than you can own the DVD.
Plenty of video stores don't obey the street-date restrictions, either. Especially when a DVD hits areas like Hong Kong. National chain ones like Worst Buy and Wal(borg)mart, sure - but the little mom and pop shops don't care, if it's a chance to sell the merch or else lose your business, they'll sell the merch just to try to stay afloat. Every sale counts to them, especially when the only advantage they have over the Walmart (given that walmart's deliberately trying to run them out of business) is that they're still small enough to be under the radar; the MafiAA companies don't worry whether they broke the street date by a few days for like 5 people.
And I can guarantee you another way to get a movie early: order it with next-day delivery from Amazon (if you order a lot of stuff, get an Amazon Prime membership). I guarantee you, they will ship it out in the same batch as the stuff headed out "free ground delivery" speed and you'll have it at least a week before street date.
After all the other scandals, all the numerous people abused by stuck-up/corrupt twits high on their "admin" powers, all the constant bias and nonsense in the articles, it took this long for Jimbo's embezzlement to come out? Anyone with a clue figured out he was doing this years ago.
Now you know where your "donations" to the "wikimedia foundation" went... while you were suckered into giving him free labor.
some fucktard in the USPTO ruled they could be patented.
They let Magic:The Gathering have patents on turning a card sideways and upside down... nevermind that a good book on the tarot, or even an early-1900s copy of Hoyle's Book of Games, ought to be enough "prior art."
Then again, these are the same fucktards who think you can patent a software loop that calculates a simple mathematical equation.
He left before AD&D 2E - actually, was forced out after his ex-wife got controlling interest in TSR and decided as a "fuck you" to mess with the company.
The gold box games succeeded in spite of the system - oddly, I find 1st/2nd/AD&D easier to use (not to mention cross-compatible) than the 3.0/3.5 rules-lawyer nonsense.
At least he went before WotC completely pissed all over his design by releasing the crap known as 4E. There's nothing left of D&D in that system, just a bunch of WoW kludge.
Please say there's film. Please say we eventually see this guy cross-interrogated and his "credentials" and bullshit run through the wringer for all to see.
Slashdot Mirror
"Nice collection of music you got there... pity if something should 'happen' to it... you oughta pay us some 'protection'..."
Having to pay for the "right" to make a backup of something they send out on flawed, easily destroyed media? Uhm... no. Consumers have the right to protect their own investment from destruction.
Why not just rate stories on their frequencies of lies, distortions, unsupported assertions, and factual inaccuracies?
Problems:
- Lies of comission = stuff they just plain get wrong
- Lies of omission = stuff they deliberately leave out to tilt the story
- Bias-words; portraying the "facts" with a strong tilt or weasel words designed to push a positive/negative impression of something, like describing terrorists as "freedom fighters" or "insurgents" or "militants" instead, or running a story that twists and tilts with giving as little description to one side, while trying to give unneeded detail to the other ("20 Israeli citizens were injured or killed, while a Palestinian child 8 months old clutching a blankie and his grandmother...").
- Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics - hunt down a "statistic" that you claim supports your position. Usually accompanied by ignoring any other information/statistics that point the other way.
- Cherry-picked quoting - taking something out of context, or deliberately leaving out half a sentence to completely twist the meaning of a statement around.
And then after you get that out, there's the simple editorializing they always slip into their stuff (really, they can't help themselves), and the outright propaganda nonsense (such as Arabic news reports that use the wording "occupied palestine" to describe the nation of Israel).
yeah, but I prefer my bass-o-matic.
Repeatedly.
Unfortunately, there are (and don't say there aren't) certain apps we use that Firefox and Opera just don't like to behave with.
Plus, if you take Google Crapbar and any other "helper" toolbars out of the equation, IE7 runs just fine. It's the crapbars causing the crash, every time - and half the time Google Crapbar turns out to have gotten into the system in some little "tag-along" arrangement, usually through an "automatic update" of Java or Acrobat Reader where you have to go into the "advanced" install mode to DENY the Google Crapbar permission to install.
is anyone thinking they should really remember to "don't be evil" when it comes to all these crap-ass browser plugins? EVERY TIME I get called in to help a user because "my internet is crashing", it's because Google Crapbar slunk in alongside something else they installed, and is crashing on IE's loadup.
I mean, come on. WE DON'T NEED YOUR INVASIVE CRAPBAR, IF WE WANT TO SEARCH THE BROWSER HAS A FUCKING SEARCH FIELD BUILT RIGHT IN.
Come on. Slashdotters ought to know better. This is mod abuse, period.
Given the amount of security-sensitive or financially-sensitive documentation on the computers, OF COURSE they should be destroyed, or else wiped beyond recovery.
Read your regulations. HIPPA (medical record) regulations alone require the destruction of any data like that using national-security level tools. Either you break the drive itself, you push it through one hell of a magnetic field a certain number of times, or you use one hell of an overwriting tool that makes 16+ passes on the drive to ensure that traces of previous data are completely gone.
This is a non-story, and the only reason it's being pushed time and again is as a kludge to try to attack Bush. I'll admit there are a hell of a lot of reasons to attack Bush (the bribery and scams over illegal immigration/amnesty alone!), but this one isn't it.
Having been called by a number of users about "my java says it needs updating", I can assure you - the revelation that Google Crapbar is being pushed is ONLY present if you click into the "advanced" update path and not the normal.
On the initial install path, yes.
On the "updates" that pop up later, no. They slip it by on the first update if the user's not canny enough to click "advanced" and then realize it's trying to push Google Crapbar.
"Don't be evil" my ass.
it's not half as bad as Google's pushing their "toolbar" along with Java updates... where you have to go into "advanced" install of the update to even KNOW that it's pushing Google Crapbar, let alone to drop it.
We've seen more problems with "my IE is crashing" lately, and every time it's that Google Crapbar that slipped in because the users didn't even get the chance to know it was coming in.
instead, speaking the truth is enough to get labeled "troll" and "overrated" by liberal fuckwads.
So, if these individuals are going to be in the state anyway
There's your first problem. They should NOT be in the state anyway. And as for evidence, do a quick search. There are umpteen studies on the matter and government officials (like the ones in Texas) have even been caught trying to doctor data.
Start here and move forward.
it's worse than that. If you're on the default settings or even setting up a new one to lock it down, you could just as easily wind up catching someone else's by honest mistake.
Should they come pre-locked down? Good luck, you have to have defaults for setup purposes or a hardware reset. Should you leave it open? I know I had to MAC-address lock my stuff (stupid Wii wouldn't recognize Cisco WPA-PSK properly, PS3 barfed on it too). If I were less tech-savvy I might have simply turned off security to get it running.
And then there's so many devices that grab any un-secured point by default - you could be "hijacking" an open WAP without even knowing it.
Hell, do you think Joe Schmuck who's used to flipping open his laptop at Starbucks will notice which connection he's on if he randomly flips it open somewhere and sees a running connection? Nope, he'll just start checking his email.
I live here legally. I pay taxes, pay for my health insurance, pay the hospital to deliver my kids, raise my kids. My kids go to the college one state over. I get raped for $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ tuition.
Asswad from Mexshitco comes up. Has a bunch of kids (free on the public dime by giving a false name or just not paying the hospital). Enrolls their kids in every free-public-money scam thanks to the Democraps, uses up MY tax money. Has his kids sitting around shitting up the school system to the point where all the non-spanish-speaking teachers are run off and my kids have to wait for the brainless shitheads to catch up before anything else can be taught, or else I wind up spending MORE of my money to send my kids to a decent school because his kids have fucked over the school but good.
Now we hit college time. His kids are supposed to get all sorts of "minority scholarships" for "underpriviledged minorities", and they're talking about giving his kids in-state tuition????
WTF IS GOING ON HERE.
No, seriously. Enough is enough. I've run the numbers and no longer want the mooching illegals around ruining the schools, ruining the health care and emergency rooms, running up the costs in insurance (I have to pay an extra %1000/year for uninsured/underinsured coverage thanks to all the mexshitcans around here), and all the rest of the trouble they cause. Enough is enough.
My private health care woes started trying to get private insurance at age 22. I started looking at the route you're on when young. I know the score, and the insurance companies are pure crap to anyone going private.
The ability for companies to turn people down for stupid reasons, and to make it into "oops, you were turned down by X" as a red flag are two of the biggest possible screw-overs.
if god forbid you have a chronic or congenital condition - heart murmur, asthma, family history of anything at all, severe allergy to something or other.
Really. From experience: private health insurance isn't worth the paper it's written on, and your rates will screw you if there is anything that they can call a risk... or worse yet, you get "coverage" and then they claim that everything under the sun is "related to a pre-existing condition" and force you to go into court to try to get them to pay, knowing they can run the clock for fucking years before having to present you with your check and hoping that you'll give up after the umpteenth appeal their army of shysters^H^H^H^H^H demonic assholes^H^H^H^H^H^H lawyers file.
Shop around for doctors like you do anything else
It's the emergency stuff I most worry about. There's nothing worse than sitting in the emergency room and being told by the nurse that you have to talk to the insurance company's lawyer to get approval while you're coughing blood. And when it's an emergency, "shop around" doesn't apply.
That and the fact that you can't "shop around" for insurance. Every time you apply for insurance and get rejected, they stick it in the file and it's a black mark against you for future applications because the other companies go "hey, company X rejected, let's find out why using triplicate forms and make sure it takes longer than they're willing to spend time on to even apply for ours."
They depend too much on their parents' money
Really? I hate the silver spoon assholes myself. Then again, I'm a Gen-Y who had to work my way up and had a job at age 14.
they need constant hand-holding,
Try not hiring stupid silver spoon assholes.
they have no job loyalty,
See parent post - when you can be laid off at any time, when your work doesn't give a crap about you, when the employer is constantly trying to find new and inventive ways to screw you for health insurance or even for basic wages, why should you be "loyal" to them? How about when I watched my dad, a "loyal" employee for three decades, booted out the door after his company was acquired with the equivalent of a "don't let the door hit you on the way out"???
they demand more than they're worth,
Probably so that they can have something left when the employer inevitably fucks them over.
they disrespect older employees,
Give respect, receive respect. It's a two-way street.
and they're naive about corporate culture
On the contrary, they know enough about it to know that employee "loyalty" is something their employer likely doesn't deserve and to be alert enough to know that they shouldn't expect the employer to give a shit if something happens.
Jimbo can embezzle even more if they do that!
Bat shit and sulfur are two pretty important components of gunpowder, too.
Funny how that worked out... you're casting an explosive spell and using explosive components. Most of the old "material components" are still explained in spell flavor text, btw.
Still, there's something to be said for it. Archers have to carry ammunition. Why wouldn't wizards need to keep their material components up to date?
Rental stores usually let the DVD copies out far earlier than the street date. They make a point in my area of trying to advertise that you can watch it from them earlier than you can own the DVD.
Plenty of video stores don't obey the street-date restrictions, either. Especially when a DVD hits areas like Hong Kong. National chain ones like Worst Buy and Wal(borg)mart, sure - but the little mom and pop shops don't care, if it's a chance to sell the merch or else lose your business, they'll sell the merch just to try to stay afloat. Every sale counts to them, especially when the only advantage they have over the Walmart (given that walmart's deliberately trying to run them out of business) is that they're still small enough to be under the radar; the MafiAA companies don't worry whether they broke the street date by a few days for like 5 people.
And I can guarantee you another way to get a movie early: order it with next-day delivery from Amazon (if you order a lot of stuff, get an Amazon Prime membership). I guarantee you, they will ship it out in the same batch as the stuff headed out "free ground delivery" speed and you'll have it at least a week before street date.
is no less corrupt than the boss at its head.
After all the other scandals, all the numerous people abused by stuck-up/corrupt twits high on their "admin" powers, all the constant bias and nonsense in the articles, it took this long for Jimbo's embezzlement to come out? Anyone with a clue figured out he was doing this years ago.
Now you know where your "donations" to the "wikimedia foundation" went... while you were suckered into giving him free labor.
some fucktard in the USPTO ruled they could be patented.
They let Magic:The Gathering have patents on turning a card sideways and upside down... nevermind that a good book on the tarot, or even an early-1900s copy of Hoyle's Book of Games, ought to be enough "prior art."
Then again, these are the same fucktards who think you can patent a software loop that calculates a simple mathematical equation.
He left before AD&D 2E - actually, was forced out after his ex-wife got controlling interest in TSR and decided as a "fuck you" to mess with the company.
The gold box games succeeded in spite of the system - oddly, I find 1st/2nd/AD&D easier to use (not to mention cross-compatible) than the 3.0/3.5 rules-lawyer nonsense.
At least he went before WotC completely pissed all over his design by releasing the crap known as 4E. There's nothing left of D&D in that system, just a bunch of WoW kludge.
why they keep shipping me broken "repaired" xboxes.
Fucking mexicans.
MafiAA "expert" spanked. Film at 11.
Please say there's film. Please say we eventually see this guy cross-interrogated and his "credentials" and bullshit run through the wringer for all to see.