The pen I used to fill out my grocery loyalty card form is probably a "device", so I've been violating this recently issued patent since the 90s, or something like that.
Why do you bother filling those in at all? I never have.
If I go to a different store that has one of those cards, I ask the checker for one, which she happily swipes immediately and gives me the discount. She says "fill this in and mail it back", and then watches me crumple it up as I stuff it in my pocket. She knows.
No need to lie at all.
And sometimes, if I smile pleasantly, she'll pull the card out of her pocket and swipe it, so I get the discount and she gets the points.
There are over two million adverse drug reactions to FDA approved drugs per year.
There are two differences here. First, the side effects are documented and published. Second, the side effects are based on the approved drug and packaging system, not on whatever filler or compounding agent the pill maker had on hand that day.
I.e., if you get a side effect from Cozaar in the US, it's because of the drug or the FDA approved contents. If you get gangrene from Cozaar made in Thailand, it could be from the Cozaar drug, or the bag of whatever they used with it to form the pills that day, or from a rat or two that fell into the pill machine at the uninspected factory.
My assumption is that the FDA is acting like my daddy, and I'm just a little kid, too stupid to make my own choices and decisions. Maybe I WANT to buy medicine from Canada.
The important thing to notice is that while you were being told the medicine was from Canada, it was actually from someplace else where the standards may not be what you would expect.
You're not too stupid, the seller was too unethical. Big difference.
Maybe I believe if a problem existed, then CANADA would handle it, under their false-advertising laws.
Except it was advertised to YOU and sold to YOU in the USA and is a violation of US law.
In any case, just as abortion if MY choice, buying pills online should be MY choice, and not have to worry about the FDA sending me to my room like a bad little kid.
The FDA didn't do anything to you. They did it to the guy selling misrepresented drugs.
The last time I tried using an online pharmacy, it gave every appearance of being in the US and that I was buying US manufactured drugs. The package that arrived came from Thailand with a customs form declaring that this was a "gift" from a relative of mine living in Thailand. I immediately threw the package away and did a chargeback on the credit card. I had no reason to think that the contents were what I had ordered since the seller had already lied to me (not in the US) and the US government (a "gift").
The second attempt by the seller to bypass Customs and import laws netted me a nice letter from US Customs Service asking about a shipment from a relative in Thailand that contained non-FDA approved medicine, at least according to the internal labels. I told them what had happened, and that was the last I heard of it.
I am sick-and-tired of this BS where the government thinks citizens are children who have to be cared for.
So, if someone sells you a car where he's turned the odometer back from 100,000 miles to 10,000, the government should keep out of it and not arrest him for fraud? Should the USDA pull all the inspectors from the meat packing plants beacause you should have the right to choose for yourself the quality and packing for what you eat?
Wow....well, why don't they isolate the one kid with the problem...rather than ban everyone else that is normal from eating something that is a childhood favorite?
Because that would stigmatize the abnormal, I mean, special child and interfere with his self esteem and equality.
It is much better to put coke bottle lens glasses on the people with perfect vision than to let those without feel like they are less than equal.
Peanut allergies are, I have been told, the reason why airlines no longer hand out little bags of peanuts and hand out little bags of pretzels or "snack mix" which doesn't have peanuts -- when they hand out anything at all, that is. That is also why I always carry my own bags of peanuts.
Sure, that is a serious risk, but when some people have to choose between rent and their medication, it is a risk that they might be willing to take.
Note that the FDA apparently isn't prosecuting the people who bought from this guy, just this guy for defrauding his customers. He was, according to the summary, selling drugs he claimed were manufactured in Canada but were in truth manufactured who knows where. That's fraud. Misrepresentation.
Yes, the people should be able to take their risks. They should be told the truth about those risks before deciding, though.
Down here in the US, Boost Mobile is $50/month for unlimited everything, and shrinks by $5 every 6th month until you bottom out at $35 (add $5 to that for Android phones, $10 for Blackberry).
Watch out. I waited a long time for them to get the latest smart phone (can't remember which brand) and bought one immediately. It worked long enough to sign up for service and then started rebooting itself every ten minutes or so. Getting through the phone tree to talk to someone about the problem was a nightmare until I found the "dealer shortcut" of dialing '88' immediately after getting the voice prompts.
I decided that keeping this service wasn't worth the hassle, which then created a second nightmare of trying to cancel and get my money back. It took a long time to get past the stock "just let your service run out in a month" answer and actually find someone who would authorize a refund of all money paid on an account that had never been used. They were also uncooperative enough on the phone that I decided to pay for registered mail to return the handset, which I was glad I did. I could prove they actually got it when they tried to claim I hadn't sent it.
If this company works for you, fine. For me, it was an education that T-Mobile customer service really wasn't the worst on the planet, and far from it.
If you're not under contract anymore what is to stop them from just saying sorry contract over, then insert whatever plan they want on the 25th month of a 24mo contract?
The fact that you haven't agreed to service at that price?
I've been without a contract for cell service for five or six years now. I've upgraded my phone at least twice (not through the carrier), and I've never had them say "here's your new plan we want you to pay". In fact, I've gotten them to add on an obsolete data plan to my old grandfathered voice/text service, so I'm paying $10/month for data.
In the meantime, they've added 500 weekend anywhere minutes and changed how they charge for email to SMS messages so I get those free.
T-Mobile, in case you were wondering.
I also don't bother trying to watch TV on my phone either, and I watch movies that are locally stored, so YMMV.
I recently bought an unlimited data plan on e-bay and I was told over and over by AOL (assumption of liability) yes sir we will transfer the unlimited data. recorded her and everything.
That's what you get for trying to buy cell service from someone on eBay. What reputable cell service provider would use eBay as their sales floor?
mean that suddenly, police departments won't bother to collect other evidence, and further won't do any follow-up on the microstamping evidence except assuming guilt of the gun owner it points to.
If you don't think that the presence of a casing with your registered code at a murder won't result in an immediate search warrant to locate the weapon in your possession, you haven't been paying attention. Whether or not you are guilty, having the cops come turn your home and place of work upside down looking for your gun is a serious problem for most folks. Even if you voluntarily hand the gun over for inspection, they've got the warrant, they might as well look around for other guns you haven't registered.
Sure, they'll take a look at the person whose casings you stole. Great. Does that mean you successfully framed them? Almost certainly not.
Depends on your definition of "framed". Pointed the finger at, absolutely. Caused to be a suspect, yep. Disrupted their life by having to defend themselves against a bogus charge? Yep. Inconvenienced the hell out of? Priceless...
That sounds like a lot of fun, to me, especially if I didn't like someone very much.
The person those casings point to almost certainly won't have a motive for the killing, won't have been anywhere near the crime scene, and will have every motive in the world to cooperate with the police and let them know where there gun has been and, particularly, where and when it may have been fired and left casings that could have been stolen.
You certainly cannot object to any laws if you have nothing to hide, comrade.
But...but... the other gun guys said that microprinting is useless because the first thing a criminal will do is erase the microprinting,
The inconvenience is to law abiding citizens who will not erase the microprinting the first thing they do. Criminals who steal a gun for a one-time throw-away piece won't bother, they'll know that keeping the microprinting will cause a distraction to the police as they waste time hunting down the original owner and searching their houses and offices for the weapon.
But now you're saying that microprinting is bad because criminals will steal guns and innocent gun owners will get blamed for the crime due to the microprinting.
You really don't understand that there is more than one criminal involved in all the crimes taking place in the world, and that while some criminals might scrape the numbers off, many more will not, and that will lead police to innocent people who will be harassed and inconvenienced?
So which is it -- are criminals smart enough to sand the microprinting off a gun before using it, or will they not bother because they use stolen guns?
Yes. To both. You can't be serious with that question.
Since serial numbers are already recorded in gun sales (in some (all?) states),
Tracing a gun by its serial number requires the criminal dropping to gun or discarding it where police can find it, not just forgetting in the heat of the moment to pick up a shell casing (or being unable to find one he's trying to pick up). And you can't frame someone for a shooting by dropping his gun at the scene unless you have the gun. Using a shell casing requires only that you've picked up one of the shell casings from that gun from the firing range, or from the victim's trash, or bought the casing as a reloading supply at a gun show.
It's worth pointing out that most of the above issues also apply to cars... particularly newer ones.
The equivalent concept with cars would be if the car somehow embeded your licence plate number in the tire tracks. That's not an option on any car I know of. Do you?
I asked how it would increase inconvenience (for law abiding citizens) outside of increased cost?
You may not consider the appearance of the cops at your door with a search warrant for your house and property that they obtained from one shell casing at a crime scene to be an inconvenience, but I certainly do. Further, the inconvenience of having to police every round you fire anywhere just to prevent being framed with a discarded bit of brass is a serious inconvenience. At least, to most people. And needing to complete yet another set of paperwork to transfer a gun to someone else, trusting the system not to lose it enroute, is an inconvenience, to most people. You must be different.
Much of the inconvenience you cite is already applicable to weapons already,
You mean that a cop can indentify not only the make and model of gun from a shell casing, but the registered owner too? I don't think so. This branding of shell casings with an id number imprinted by the gun is new. Now, if you are stupid enough to drop your gun at the scene, yes, but this problem is caused by someone simply not picking up a piece of expended brass -- or dropping someone else's piece of brass deliberately.
They're not going to forge different numbers on the gun.
Nope. They either won't care because they've stolen the gun themselves and the coding points to some law abiding citizen, or the streetcorner gun dealer will tack on ten dollars for the added feature of scraping the coding of the Saturday night special off. (And yes, the Saturday night special is a revolver, typically, that doesn't drop brass at a shooting and thus it won't matter.)
The only people you will catch are those who are not career criminals and have probably left enough other clues that the coding isn't necessary. Remember, all it takes to defeat this law is to simply pick up your brass when you shoot someone. Or steal the gun to start with.
Increased cost? Yes... Inconvenience? How, other than a larger cost?
Your gun is stolen and used in a crime. The cops come looking for you.
When selling your gun to someone else, add on the cost and time of changing the micro-code registration.
When the paperwork for a legal sale gets lost, and the buyer uses the gun in a crime, police come looking for you.
When the paperwork is lost, and the new owner has his gun stolen and used in a crime, the cops come looking for you, then you finger the buyer, so double the fun and double the inconvenience for twice as many people.
When your "helpful" "friend" helps you police your brass at the shooting range and then drops a few casings at his next shooting, he's effectively framed you.
When the market for old guns explodes and it becomes harder and more expensive to buy one, it both costs money and time.
If you are trying to repair your gun, having to buy a new registered firing pin instead of someone's cheaper and readily available used one.
I recall one time hearing Carlin's rant about disease. He took a really sick shot at eating disorders. It was almost as if he completely ignored mental disorders as a cause of physical problems. No, it wasn't almost, he deliberately ignored them. He was busy telling anorexics to "just eat" and bulemics to stop, and that their body dysmorphic issues were all due to their poor decision making abilities. It was their fault and they should just suck it up and stop being whatever they were.
That one rant said more about George Carlin than anything else I've ever heard. I'm in full agreement. His "bullshit" meter is reading his own bile, not what's around him.
Does a hearing aid carry nearly enough power to burn you?
Guessing, yes, with a Li battery inside your ear canal.
Phone compatibility should be possible with a Bluetooth Interface, or a 3.5mm jack (for the ones where you have an external part as well)
How quickly the young hearing-able forget that the entire world isn't cellphones and iPods.
Phone compatibility means that the telephone you pick up on your desk (you know, the company wired phone system, for example, or your phone at home, or the one at the neighbor's house, or the (admittedly getting rarer) payphone) has an inductive emitter so that a properly designed hearing aid in your ear can pick up just the phone signal and not the background noise.
It's kinda relevant to remember the demographic of the users of hearing aids when talking about solutions to the problems they face.
"my hearing aid made my pacemaker crash" would be pretty shitty.
So would "my hearing aid shorted out and burned the inside of my ear". Or "everyone runs away when I approach because they are tired of the constant feedback my poorly fitted heading aid emits.". So would "I paid extra for a phone that was hearing aid compatible and this hearing aid doesn't work with it."
Their lists of severe side effects is a mile long, and to me seem just as bad or possibly even worse than the disease they treat.
That's a value judgement better left to the suffer of psoriasis, don't you think? Those side effects don't appear in every user, they appear in some fraction. What do you do if one of the side effects appears when you use the drug? Tell your doctor and get off it. That's exactly what happened when I was put on a blood pressure med. (Or a cholesterol one, I don't remember which.) One potential side effect was a cough, which I got. Told Doc, switched drugs, cough gone, new drug working.
One potential side effect of the blood pressure med is feeling light headed when standing suddenly. Ok, I can deal with that. I used to have low blood pressure so I know how to minimize that. Now I have reasonable pressure and less chance of stroke or blowing a kidney. I'll take the side effect over either of those problems any day.
Do you want your whole immune system knocked out to treat mild to moderate psoriasis.
I don't have psoriasis, so I can't know how bad it is or how much I would risk to get rid of the problem. Do you?
I enjoy not having to constantly worry about pneumonia TB and systemic fungal infections.
So do I. I also enjoy not having psoriasis.
Life is made up of risks. Some are worth taking. Some aren't. You choose one way. Someone else may choose another. And when they choose another, they may wind up not having the side effect that you seem so worried about. It's hard to know what someone else is going through and know if they should risk a 1% chance of a side effect to get relief from their medical problem. You are probably aware that every major surgical procedure has a potential side effect of death from anesthesia issues, don't you? Should all major surgery for everyone be stopped because you don't think the risk is worth it?
Every time there's something in the news about a bit of sanity coming from a senator, it seems to have Ron Wyden's name.
I guess it depends on your definition of sanity.
Ron Wyden is very good at scoring points by making the right kinds of noises. He depends on the Portland/Eugene vote to keep him elected, and very little on the rural parts of Oregon which are much more conservative.
He still has to deal with the "Smith killed a kid" ad that came out after he claimed he'd run a clean campaign, at least as far as I'm concerned. It is interesting that Republican PACs are assumed to be in the pocket of the candidates they support, and yet Wyden wasn't responsible for the ads his PAC ran during that campaign.
This absolutely kills the comeback that I used to use to the question: "if you're so smart, how come you ain't rich", to which I would say "when I win my Nobel, I will be". Now I can win a Nobel and not be rich. Very sad.
your car starts, suddenly you can only do voice activation on your phone, for example. they already sense passengers for air bag activation, so passenger cells can be excluded
So this system would be able to tell the difference between the cell phone I have in my pocket as the driver and the one being held by a passenger? You do realize that passenger airbags are WIRED into the car, so it is trivial for the CAR to disable the passenger airbag alone when there isn't one? "This wire goes to the passenger airbag disable circuit, activate it..."
How do you get a wireless signal to be so specific, and why couldn't the driver just hold his phone over the passenger seat to avoid being shut off, were there such a tightly beamed disable signal?
I've had the passenger airbag turn on because I've had a bag of groceries sitting there, so I guess that anyone who wants to use his cell phone while driving will just carry groceries everywhere and the car will think it's the passenger doing the texting...
this being slashdot, some idiot will concoct some scenario about why it won't work "what if you want to call 911! (so 911 calls are always enabled, genius)"
Why yes, there certainly could never be any possible problem with such a clever idea. Not at all. Please patent it.
You look up, the light is green and the car in front of you is already through the intersection. What is your reaction? Most people (you can claim to be special, but most people) will hit the gas to get moving while neglecting to take a few seconds to assess the overall situation (pedestrians, bikes, cross traffic, etc...).
Don't worry, the guy in front of you who has already gone has pushed the guy still waiting to make his left turn and the pedestrians still in the crosswalk out of the way for you. He's either dead or killed anything you would be endangering.
An autopilot in an airplane isn't having to deal with other aircraft twenty or thirty feet ahead and behind for the majority of the trip, or aircraft going the opposite direction twenty feet away at closest passage for the majority of the trip. Autopilots don't need to be accurate to within a foot or two to avoid running off the edge of the road, nor are there nearly continuous heading changes required just to stay on the road.
If an autopilot misses a turn (or starts one, for that matter) five seconds too soon, big deal. If an autopilot gets pushed off course 200 feet by a wind gust, it has a long time available to correct. If an autopilot fails completely, the pilot has a relatively long time to detect that fact and return to manual operation. Most pilots are not within 100 feet of a bridge abuttment to start with, so a failed autopilot won't lead to an immediate fireball as the plane flies into one ten seconds after the autopilot fails.
Yes, autopilots fly planes all over the place. They also have, usually, five or more ways that the pilot can immediately disable them when they fail, and when they fail it is either glaringly obvious (uncommanded 45 degree bank, e.g.); or subtle because there is no immediate danger created, and there is plenty of time for the pilot or ATC to notice the discrepancy and act.
In case you weren't aware, the "roads" that are part of the ATC traffic system (airways, they are called) are four miles wide. AND, the use of more accurate GPS and autopilots is actually making flying a bit less safe. Two VFR pilots using one of those airways, going at different speeds, and using the same altitude, are more like to run into each other using modern avionics because they are more likely to be in the same place at the same time. Used to be normal minor deviations from perfection would mean they wouldn't be. I've heard that some pilots now, as standard practice, set their courses a mile or more off the centerline just to avoid the guys who are on the centerline. Just as IFR (I follow roads) pilots tend to stay to the right of any road they follow so they won't meet some IFR pilot coming the opposite direction on the road centerline.
You are compelled to pay attention to their words...
No more so than the words coming from the radio in your dashboard. Nobody has a gun to your head saying "listen to your phone".
If "you can zone out" of a boisterous heated talk radio discussion, then you can certainly zone out of a phone conversation long enough to deal with the situation and then say "sorry, I had to negotiate some driving issue".
I can't count the number of times I've done that while having a ham chat, and the pressure to talk on the radio is immense because you know the guy on the other end has just turned the channel over and is waiting for you. I simply said "sorry, had to make a turn" or whatever. Nobody has ever come to my house to shoot me for not talking to them immediately.
However, they don't deserve extra rights just because they have more money.
They don't get any. "More money" has nothing to do with anything, it's just flamebait.
As an individual, I am allowed to donate $2500 to my favorite candidate.... But if I form a corporation, I can donate all the money I want to a super PAC.
Candidate vs. "super PAC". Different things. Different laws.
By forming a corporation, I suddenly have more free speech rights than anyone in the country who don't currently control a corporation.
Keep telling yourself that and maybe it will be true someday.
Sure, there are laws prohibiting super PACs from coordinating with campaigns, but the candidate can just have his lawyer form the super PAC and the communication between them will be protected by the attorneyâ"client privilege.
Now you really show you don't know what you are talking about. Attorney client privilege does not protect criminal actions participated in by both. And you as an individual have just as few limits on donating to a PAC as a corporatation, so the difference you are complaining about is all in your head.
(for the interest of partisanship I won't name that candidate)
Yes, this debate does seem to devaolve into partisanship. It was, after all, a conservative "corporation" that was spending money to advertise against the liberal darling of the day, Ms. Clinton.
If you have proof of a crime being committed and do not report it, then you are an accomplice.
Exit polls showed that 88% of Wisconsin voters had already made up their mind before the Democrats had put forward a candidate (in May).
Well, when the election is a recall, it seems reasonable for people to be able to judge whether the incumbent should be recalled or not independent of who the "opponent" is. The fact that 88% of the voters had decided that no recall was necessary should tell you something about the recall effort.
Hint: you don't vote to recall just because you don't like who got elected, it is supposed to be for gross malfeasance or other significant reason. If you're just calling for another election because you didn't like the outcome of the previous one, well, that's not a valid reason for another vote.
88% of voters made their call when the spending was completely one-sided.
They also made their call when the question of whether a recall was required came up, not months later.
A corporation, not being human, has no claim to human rights.
But the people who make up the corporation do, especially when those people have formed the corporation for the explicit purpose of exercising the right to free speech. As did Citizen's United.
Yeah, yeah, don't get me started on ridiculous laws and SCOTUS rulings to the contrary.
Yeah, that pesky first amendment. What a pain. Why can't we just ban all speech that we don't agree with?
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The pen I used to fill out my grocery loyalty card form is probably a "device", so I've been violating this recently issued patent since the 90s, or something like that.
Why do you bother filling those in at all? I never have.
If I go to a different store that has one of those cards, I ask the checker for one, which she happily swipes immediately and gives me the discount. She says "fill this in and mail it back", and then watches me crumple it up as I stuff it in my pocket. She knows.
No need to lie at all.
And sometimes, if I smile pleasantly, she'll pull the card out of her pocket and swipe it, so I get the discount and she gets the points.
There are over two million adverse drug reactions to FDA approved drugs per year.
There are two differences here. First, the side effects are documented and published. Second, the side effects are based on the approved drug and packaging system, not on whatever filler or compounding agent the pill maker had on hand that day.
I.e., if you get a side effect from Cozaar in the US, it's because of the drug or the FDA approved contents. If you get gangrene from Cozaar made in Thailand, it could be from the Cozaar drug, or the bag of whatever they used with it to form the pills that day, or from a rat or two that fell into the pill machine at the uninspected factory.
My assumption is that the FDA is acting like my daddy, and I'm just a little kid, too stupid to make my own choices and decisions. Maybe I WANT to buy medicine from Canada.
The important thing to notice is that while you were being told the medicine was from Canada, it was actually from someplace else where the standards may not be what you would expect. You're not too stupid, the seller was too unethical. Big difference.
Maybe I believe if a problem existed, then CANADA would handle it, under their false-advertising laws.
Except it was advertised to YOU and sold to YOU in the USA and is a violation of US law.
In any case, just as abortion if MY choice, buying pills online should be MY choice, and not have to worry about the FDA sending me to my room like a bad little kid.
The FDA didn't do anything to you. They did it to the guy selling misrepresented drugs.
The last time I tried using an online pharmacy, it gave every appearance of being in the US and that I was buying US manufactured drugs. The package that arrived came from Thailand with a customs form declaring that this was a "gift" from a relative of mine living in Thailand. I immediately threw the package away and did a chargeback on the credit card. I had no reason to think that the contents were what I had ordered since the seller had already lied to me (not in the US) and the US government (a "gift").
The second attempt by the seller to bypass Customs and import laws netted me a nice letter from US Customs Service asking about a shipment from a relative in Thailand that contained non-FDA approved medicine, at least according to the internal labels. I told them what had happened, and that was the last I heard of it.
I am sick-and-tired of this BS where the government thinks citizens are children who have to be cared for.
So, if someone sells you a car where he's turned the odometer back from 100,000 miles to 10,000, the government should keep out of it and not arrest him for fraud? Should the USDA pull all the inspectors from the meat packing plants beacause you should have the right to choose for yourself the quality and packing for what you eat?
Wow....well, why don't they isolate the one kid with the problem...rather than ban everyone else that is normal from eating something that is a childhood favorite?
Because that would stigmatize the abnormal, I mean, special child and interfere with his self esteem and equality.
It is much better to put coke bottle lens glasses on the people with perfect vision than to let those without feel like they are less than equal.
Peanut allergies are, I have been told, the reason why airlines no longer hand out little bags of peanuts and hand out little bags of pretzels or "snack mix" which doesn't have peanuts -- when they hand out anything at all, that is. That is also why I always carry my own bags of peanuts.
Sure, that is a serious risk, but when some people have to choose between rent and their medication, it is a risk that they might be willing to take.
Note that the FDA apparently isn't prosecuting the people who bought from this guy, just this guy for defrauding his customers. He was, according to the summary, selling drugs he claimed were manufactured in Canada but were in truth manufactured who knows where. That's fraud. Misrepresentation.
Yes, the people should be able to take their risks. They should be told the truth about those risks before deciding, though.
Down here in the US, Boost Mobile is $50/month for unlimited everything, and shrinks by $5 every 6th month until you bottom out at $35 (add $5 to that for Android phones, $10 for Blackberry).
Watch out. I waited a long time for them to get the latest smart phone (can't remember which brand) and bought one immediately. It worked long enough to sign up for service and then started rebooting itself every ten minutes or so. Getting through the phone tree to talk to someone about the problem was a nightmare until I found the "dealer shortcut" of dialing '88' immediately after getting the voice prompts.
I decided that keeping this service wasn't worth the hassle, which then created a second nightmare of trying to cancel and get my money back. It took a long time to get past the stock "just let your service run out in a month" answer and actually find someone who would authorize a refund of all money paid on an account that had never been used. They were also uncooperative enough on the phone that I decided to pay for registered mail to return the handset, which I was glad I did. I could prove they actually got it when they tried to claim I hadn't sent it.
If this company works for you, fine. For me, it was an education that T-Mobile customer service really wasn't the worst on the planet, and far from it.
If you're not under contract anymore what is to stop them from just saying sorry contract over, then insert whatever plan they want on the 25th month of a 24mo contract?
The fact that you haven't agreed to service at that price?
I've been without a contract for cell service for five or six years now. I've upgraded my phone at least twice (not through the carrier), and I've never had them say "here's your new plan we want you to pay". In fact, I've gotten them to add on an obsolete data plan to my old grandfathered voice/text service, so I'm paying $10/month for data.
In the meantime, they've added 500 weekend anywhere minutes and changed how they charge for email to SMS messages so I get those free.
T-Mobile, in case you were wondering.
I also don't bother trying to watch TV on my phone either, and I watch movies that are locally stored, so YMMV.
I recently bought an unlimited data plan on e-bay and I was told over and over by AOL (assumption of liability) yes sir we will transfer the unlimited data. recorded her and everything.
That's what you get for trying to buy cell service from someone on eBay. What reputable cell service provider would use eBay as their sales floor?
mean that suddenly, police departments won't bother to collect other evidence, and further won't do any follow-up on the microstamping evidence except assuming guilt of the gun owner it points to.
If you don't think that the presence of a casing with your registered code at a murder won't result in an immediate search warrant to locate the weapon in your possession, you haven't been paying attention. Whether or not you are guilty, having the cops come turn your home and place of work upside down looking for your gun is a serious problem for most folks. Even if you voluntarily hand the gun over for inspection, they've got the warrant, they might as well look around for other guns you haven't registered.
Sure, they'll take a look at the person whose casings you stole. Great. Does that mean you successfully framed them? Almost certainly not.
Depends on your definition of "framed". Pointed the finger at, absolutely. Caused to be a suspect, yep. Disrupted their life by having to defend themselves against a bogus charge? Yep. Inconvenienced the hell out of? Priceless... That sounds like a lot of fun, to me, especially if I didn't like someone very much.
The person those casings point to almost certainly won't have a motive for the killing, won't have been anywhere near the crime scene, and will have every motive in the world to cooperate with the police and let them know where there gun has been and, particularly, where and when it may have been fired and left casings that could have been stolen.
You certainly cannot object to any laws if you have nothing to hide, comrade.
But...but... the other gun guys said that microprinting is useless because the first thing a criminal will do is erase the microprinting,
The inconvenience is to law abiding citizens who will not erase the microprinting the first thing they do. Criminals who steal a gun for a one-time throw-away piece won't bother, they'll know that keeping the microprinting will cause a distraction to the police as they waste time hunting down the original owner and searching their houses and offices for the weapon.
But now you're saying that microprinting is bad because criminals will steal guns and innocent gun owners will get blamed for the crime due to the microprinting.
You really don't understand that there is more than one criminal involved in all the crimes taking place in the world, and that while some criminals might scrape the numbers off, many more will not, and that will lead police to innocent people who will be harassed and inconvenienced?
So which is it -- are criminals smart enough to sand the microprinting off a gun before using it, or will they not bother because they use stolen guns?
Yes. To both. You can't be serious with that question.
Since serial numbers are already recorded in gun sales (in some (all?) states),
Tracing a gun by its serial number requires the criminal dropping to gun or discarding it where police can find it, not just forgetting in the heat of the moment to pick up a shell casing (or being unable to find one he's trying to pick up). And you can't frame someone for a shooting by dropping his gun at the scene unless you have the gun. Using a shell casing requires only that you've picked up one of the shell casings from that gun from the firing range, or from the victim's trash, or bought the casing as a reloading supply at a gun show.
It's worth pointing out that most of the above issues also apply to cars... particularly newer ones.
The equivalent concept with cars would be if the car somehow embeded your licence plate number in the tire tracks. That's not an option on any car I know of. Do you?
I asked how it would increase inconvenience (for law abiding citizens) outside of increased cost?
You may not consider the appearance of the cops at your door with a search warrant for your house and property that they obtained from one shell casing at a crime scene to be an inconvenience, but I certainly do. Further, the inconvenience of having to police every round you fire anywhere just to prevent being framed with a discarded bit of brass is a serious inconvenience. At least, to most people. And needing to complete yet another set of paperwork to transfer a gun to someone else, trusting the system not to lose it enroute, is an inconvenience, to most people. You must be different.
Much of the inconvenience you cite is already applicable to weapons already,
You mean that a cop can indentify not only the make and model of gun from a shell casing, but the registered owner too? I don't think so. This branding of shell casings with an id number imprinted by the gun is new. Now, if you are stupid enough to drop your gun at the scene, yes, but this problem is caused by someone simply not picking up a piece of expended brass -- or dropping someone else's piece of brass deliberately.
They're not going to forge different numbers on the gun.
Nope. They either won't care because they've stolen the gun themselves and the coding points to some law abiding citizen, or the streetcorner gun dealer will tack on ten dollars for the added feature of scraping the coding of the Saturday night special off. (And yes, the Saturday night special is a revolver, typically, that doesn't drop brass at a shooting and thus it won't matter.)
The only people you will catch are those who are not career criminals and have probably left enough other clues that the coding isn't necessary. Remember, all it takes to defeat this law is to simply pick up your brass when you shoot someone. Or steal the gun to start with.
Increased cost? Yes... Inconvenience? How, other than a larger cost?
I recall one time hearing Carlin's rant about disease. He took a really sick shot at eating disorders. It was almost as if he completely ignored mental disorders as a cause of physical problems. No, it wasn't almost, he deliberately ignored them. He was busy telling anorexics to "just eat" and bulemics to stop, and that their body dysmorphic issues were all due to their poor decision making abilities. It was their fault and they should just suck it up and stop being whatever they were.
That one rant said more about George Carlin than anything else I've ever heard. I'm in full agreement. His "bullshit" meter is reading his own bile, not what's around him.
Does a hearing aid carry nearly enough power to burn you?
Guessing, yes, with a Li battery inside your ear canal.
Phone compatibility should be possible with a Bluetooth Interface, or a 3.5mm jack (for the ones where you have an external part as well)
How quickly the young hearing-able forget that the entire world isn't cellphones and iPods.
Phone compatibility means that the telephone you pick up on your desk (you know, the company wired phone system, for example, or your phone at home, or the one at the neighbor's house, or the (admittedly getting rarer) payphone) has an inductive emitter so that a properly designed hearing aid in your ear can pick up just the phone signal and not the background noise.
It's kinda relevant to remember the demographic of the users of hearing aids when talking about solutions to the problems they face.
"my hearing aid made my pacemaker crash" would be pretty shitty.
So would "my hearing aid shorted out and burned the inside of my ear". Or "everyone runs away when I approach because they are tired of the constant feedback my poorly fitted heading aid emits.". So would "I paid extra for a phone that was hearing aid compatible and this hearing aid doesn't work with it."
Their lists of severe side effects is a mile long, and to me seem just as bad or possibly even worse than the disease they treat.
That's a value judgement better left to the suffer of psoriasis, don't you think? Those side effects don't appear in every user, they appear in some fraction. What do you do if one of the side effects appears when you use the drug? Tell your doctor and get off it. That's exactly what happened when I was put on a blood pressure med. (Or a cholesterol one, I don't remember which.) One potential side effect was a cough, which I got. Told Doc, switched drugs, cough gone, new drug working.
One potential side effect of the blood pressure med is feeling light headed when standing suddenly. Ok, I can deal with that. I used to have low blood pressure so I know how to minimize that. Now I have reasonable pressure and less chance of stroke or blowing a kidney. I'll take the side effect over either of those problems any day.
Do you want your whole immune system knocked out to treat mild to moderate psoriasis.
I don't have psoriasis, so I can't know how bad it is or how much I would risk to get rid of the problem. Do you?
I enjoy not having to constantly worry about pneumonia TB and systemic fungal infections.
So do I. I also enjoy not having psoriasis.
Life is made up of risks. Some are worth taking. Some aren't. You choose one way. Someone else may choose another. And when they choose another, they may wind up not having the side effect that you seem so worried about. It's hard to know what someone else is going through and know if they should risk a 1% chance of a side effect to get relief from their medical problem. You are probably aware that every major surgical procedure has a potential side effect of death from anesthesia issues, don't you? Should all major surgery for everyone be stopped because you don't think the risk is worth it?
Every time there's something in the news about a bit of sanity coming from a senator, it seems to have Ron Wyden's name.
I guess it depends on your definition of sanity. Ron Wyden is very good at scoring points by making the right kinds of noises. He depends on the Portland/Eugene vote to keep him elected, and very little on the rural parts of Oregon which are much more conservative.
He still has to deal with the "Smith killed a kid" ad that came out after he claimed he'd run a clean campaign, at least as far as I'm concerned. It is interesting that Republican PACs are assumed to be in the pocket of the candidates they support, and yet Wyden wasn't responsible for the ads his PAC ran during that campaign.
This absolutely kills the comeback that I used to use to the question: "if you're so smart, how come you ain't rich", to which I would say "when I win my Nobel, I will be". Now I can win a Nobel and not be rich. Very sad.
your car starts, suddenly you can only do voice activation on your phone, for example. they already sense passengers for air bag activation, so passenger cells can be excluded
So this system would be able to tell the difference between the cell phone I have in my pocket as the driver and the one being held by a passenger? You do realize that passenger airbags are WIRED into the car, so it is trivial for the CAR to disable the passenger airbag alone when there isn't one? "This wire goes to the passenger airbag disable circuit, activate it..."
How do you get a wireless signal to be so specific, and why couldn't the driver just hold his phone over the passenger seat to avoid being shut off, were there such a tightly beamed disable signal?
I've had the passenger airbag turn on because I've had a bag of groceries sitting there, so I guess that anyone who wants to use his cell phone while driving will just carry groceries everywhere and the car will think it's the passenger doing the texting...
this being slashdot, some idiot will concoct some scenario about why it won't work "what if you want to call 911! (so 911 calls are always enabled, genius)"
Why yes, there certainly could never be any possible problem with such a clever idea. Not at all. Please patent it.
You look up, the light is green and the car in front of you is already through the intersection. What is your reaction? Most people (you can claim to be special, but most people) will hit the gas to get moving while neglecting to take a few seconds to assess the overall situation (pedestrians, bikes, cross traffic, etc...).
Don't worry, the guy in front of you who has already gone has pushed the guy still waiting to make his left turn and the pedestrians still in the crosswalk out of the way for you. He's either dead or killed anything you would be endangering.
Fly much?
A lot.
An autopilot in an airplane isn't having to deal with other aircraft twenty or thirty feet ahead and behind for the majority of the trip, or aircraft going the opposite direction twenty feet away at closest passage for the majority of the trip. Autopilots don't need to be accurate to within a foot or two to avoid running off the edge of the road, nor are there nearly continuous heading changes required just to stay on the road.
If an autopilot misses a turn (or starts one, for that matter) five seconds too soon, big deal. If an autopilot gets pushed off course 200 feet by a wind gust, it has a long time available to correct. If an autopilot fails completely, the pilot has a relatively long time to detect that fact and return to manual operation. Most pilots are not within 100 feet of a bridge abuttment to start with, so a failed autopilot won't lead to an immediate fireball as the plane flies into one ten seconds after the autopilot fails.
Yes, autopilots fly planes all over the place. They also have, usually, five or more ways that the pilot can immediately disable them when they fail, and when they fail it is either glaringly obvious (uncommanded 45 degree bank, e.g.); or subtle because there is no immediate danger created, and there is plenty of time for the pilot or ATC to notice the discrepancy and act.
In case you weren't aware, the "roads" that are part of the ATC traffic system (airways, they are called) are four miles wide. AND, the use of more accurate GPS and autopilots is actually making flying a bit less safe. Two VFR pilots using one of those airways, going at different speeds, and using the same altitude, are more like to run into each other using modern avionics because they are more likely to be in the same place at the same time. Used to be normal minor deviations from perfection would mean they wouldn't be. I've heard that some pilots now, as standard practice, set their courses a mile or more off the centerline just to avoid the guys who are on the centerline. Just as IFR (I follow roads) pilots tend to stay to the right of any road they follow so they won't meet some IFR pilot coming the opposite direction on the road centerline.
You are compelled to pay attention to their words ...
No more so than the words coming from the radio in your dashboard. Nobody has a gun to your head saying "listen to your phone".
If "you can zone out" of a boisterous heated talk radio discussion, then you can certainly zone out of a phone conversation long enough to deal with the situation and then say "sorry, I had to negotiate some driving issue".
I can't count the number of times I've done that while having a ham chat, and the pressure to talk on the radio is immense because you know the guy on the other end has just turned the channel over and is waiting for you. I simply said "sorry, had to make a turn" or whatever. Nobody has ever come to my house to shoot me for not talking to them immediately.
However, they don't deserve extra rights just because they have more money.
They don't get any. "More money" has nothing to do with anything, it's just flamebait.
As an individual, I am allowed to donate $2500 to my favorite candidate. ... But if I form a corporation, I can donate all the money I want to a super PAC.
Candidate vs. "super PAC". Different things. Different laws.
By forming a corporation, I suddenly have more free speech rights than anyone in the country who don't currently control a corporation.
Keep telling yourself that and maybe it will be true someday.
Sure, there are laws prohibiting super PACs from coordinating with campaigns, but the candidate can just have his lawyer form the super PAC and the communication between them will be protected by the attorneyâ"client privilege.
Now you really show you don't know what you are talking about. Attorney client privilege does not protect criminal actions participated in by both. And you as an individual have just as few limits on donating to a PAC as a corporatation, so the difference you are complaining about is all in your head.
(for the interest of partisanship I won't name that candidate)
Yes, this debate does seem to devaolve into partisanship. It was, after all, a conservative "corporation" that was spending money to advertise against the liberal darling of the day, Ms. Clinton.
If you have proof of a crime being committed and do not report it, then you are an accomplice.
Exit polls showed that 88% of Wisconsin voters had already made up their mind before the Democrats had put forward a candidate (in May).
Well, when the election is a recall, it seems reasonable for people to be able to judge whether the incumbent should be recalled or not independent of who the "opponent" is. The fact that 88% of the voters had decided that no recall was necessary should tell you something about the recall effort.
Hint: you don't vote to recall just because you don't like who got elected, it is supposed to be for gross malfeasance or other significant reason. If you're just calling for another election because you didn't like the outcome of the previous one, well, that's not a valid reason for another vote.
88% of voters made their call when the spending was completely one-sided.
They also made their call when the question of whether a recall was required came up, not months later.
A corporation, not being human, has no claim to human rights.
But the people who make up the corporation do, especially when those people have formed the corporation for the explicit purpose of exercising the right to free speech. As did Citizen's United.
Yeah, yeah, don't get me started on ridiculous laws and SCOTUS rulings to the contrary.
Yeah, that pesky first amendment. What a pain. Why can't we just ban all speech that we don't agree with?