You are correct, facebook's like button is a glorified web bug. That is one reason why I have deleted my facebook account and I block facebook (and fcbkcdn) directly on my firewall.
However, if google starts doing the same thing, I will need to find a better way to filter out the tracking bs... I would need to surgically cut it out while still letting me use search and gmail.
This looks like a web bug to me. If you want to use an image for rendering purposes, you would link to an image with a static name like http://image.att.com/spacer.gif .
The article specifically shows the image name as http://click.wireless.att.com:8080/31198108.178649.1159326048.-3 If you think that is not passing information back to at&t you would probably believe that IE is the most secure and standards compliant browser.
You are correct. Even if you are on a DHCP network your IP will not change often if you are connected 24x7 allowing trackers to follow your IP.
However there is a solution. I block facebook and other major trackers at my router with a firewall rule. Any attempt to connect to facebook (or fcbkcdn) will be interrupted. If your router is not capable of blocking sites consider reflashing your router with dd-wrt, or use the simple technique of adding the domain you wish to block to your computer's host file pointing to 127.0.0.1. This will keep your home ip out of their logs and you will be virtually unknown to them
Thats for the home, if you use wi-fi (or a different network) on the road, use ghostery, no-script, and better privacy. This may not block your known ip address (depending on how your extensions actually work,) but you are on a public network that will not be associated with just one person/computer.
The really interesting thing is that if you take both parents' height, you can predict a child's final height within a narrow range (using midparental height).
Uh, No...
My mother is 5'9", My father is 5'10". What test based on them would predict my height of 6'11"? (Or my two brothers at 6'5" and 6'8".) An accurate and reliable test based on parents height does not exist. And no, I do not have a pituitary disorder. (One Dr that I no longer see, sent me for those tests in order to generate more revenue; the results were all normal, my pituitary gland works properly.)
No, that shouldn't change with net neutrality. AT&T will be able to charge residential clients what they want and business clients a different rate.
What AT&T wants to charge is a transmission fee.
End User 1 pays AT&T (or someone else) $35/month for a home internet connection. Business 2 pays ISP XXX $100/month for a static IP connection to one of its servers.
AT&T now says to Business 2, pay me $250 a month or your traffic will go into the slow lane. This will mean that web pages will take longer to load, VOIP will have static or reverberating voices, and video will look scrambled. Both the Business and the end user are paying for service, but AT&T wants to extort more money to allow data to be transmitted between the two.
There is nothing stopping AT&T from telling a company like Vonage to pay $10,000/month to transmit its data. This way if vonage takes customers away from AT&T, AT&T will make up the money from the lost customers by doing nothing more than pushing data and charging Vonage more. Of course if this happens, Vonage will be forced to charge end users more money and the customer loses. Also, watch the cable companies do the same thing to video sites. Of course with cable companies now offering VOIP and AT&T offering video with Uverse, expect all businesses on the net to pay more; even if they don't compete directly, AT&T and the cable companies will use these fees as a new source of revenue.
Remember, a few months ago when Microsoft was paying people to use bing? I had a few wireless networks in hotels send me to bing as soon as I got on their network. (I'm sure this was for a referral fee.) What will stop Microsoft from paying AT&T more money than Google (or for an exclusive contract?) Microsoft has already proven it is willing to lose money if it hurts Google. All of a sudden my search engine choice is being dictated to me by my ISP (unless I want to wait a long time.) And so help my wait time if I want to use the search engine of a brilliant college student who has a revolutionary algorithm but no money.
The last point is especially important. It doesn't have to be a search engine. I could be the next killer app. It will not go anywhere without an open internet.
Two years ago when I was looking for a job, a recruiter even asked me to lie and say that I had experience in.NET. Instead I told them not to represent me and to never call me again.
And while it may take time to notice, integrity pays off in the long run. 3 months ago, I found out that the project I that work on did not have any enhancements for the current development cycle. Everything for this system was shelved for "future" releases. However, because I actually do know the things that I put down in my resume and my manager learned that I am honest and competent, she went to the business group and told them to come up with funding and a project or else she would need to let me go. (I am a contractor.) I am still here with a funded project. Would you be still around if you didn't know the things you said you knew and lied on your resume?
It is ASSHOLES LIKE YOU that make the honest people in this world look bad. Watch out because Karma is a bitch. (Sorry, I would normally use symbols or abbreviations on my profanity due to people reading at work; but I can't hide it in this specific case.)
To move your buttons to the right side of windows...
Right click on the desktop and select "Change Desktop Background." This will bring up the appearance preferences.
Click the "Theme" tab.
Choose one of other themes. When you click on a theme, you will get an instant preview. When you select a theme that you like and the preview moves the buttons to the right click ok. (or you can customize it.)
The above will work, however, if someone knows a specific preference that will allow me to change it I would like to learn how. (I assume that there is a setting that will specifically set one side or the other, but I do not know it.)
Now that we are losing print and becoming web based it does not matter, the answer in HTML will always be ONE. You can put as much whitespace as you want at the end of a sentence and HTML will just convert it to one space.
Now you are welcome to add " " at the end of a line to get an extra space, but it will cost you 6 keystrokes.
I admit that I am a power user. My point was that I can hit the 250GB cap alone, without netflix and without illegal torrent downloads. If I can do it alone without netflix; a family can easily hit the cap and exceed it when you add in multiple people accessing the internet at the same time especially if you have multiple people streaming movies. That is why the cap is unreasonable.
My other point was that in the future we will demand bandwidth in ever increasing amounts yet the caps will hold us back. Looking back at the history of computers, my first computer had 5k of ram. Then 64k, 128k... My first PC had 512k which was less then the 640k max. Now I type this on a laptop with 4GB. (And yes as a power user it is not unusual to get to the point of hitting the swap partition.) Media was the same way, from 360k floppies to 1.4mb, 640mb cds, 4.3gb dvds, and now we are at the point of 50GB blu-rays. And sometimes (especially with games) we get to the point that we need multiple disks. No one dreamed of using all this memory and storage just a few years ago... Why do you think bandwidth that is barely adequate today will be sufficient tomorrow?
As for why I am complaining, it is simple... Once the infrastructure is built, it does not cost more to transmit 2MB over the network than it does to send 1MB. Companies advertise an "# Mbps" connection for a certain price and then overcharge us if we actually use it. Also, here in the US, we have literally given BILLIONS of dollars to the telecommunication companies to build out the network(through government subsidies and tax breaks); yet our access is more expensive and slower than many other industrialized nations. All this while the executives are complaining that they are losing money while getting multi-million dollar bonuses. (And when Time Warner announced it was testing smaller caps a year ago, people found out through their earnings reports that their internet division was raking in the dough without caps, and while barely putting any money into improving the infrastructure.)
Comcast's 250gb cap is reasonable? No it isn't, it is just a way for them to avoid investing more money in building their network and in addition protect their own movie service.
Between downloading patches, linux distros, and porn along with working from home connecting to remote machines, I have come up against that limit without netflix or any other movie streaming. (And this is all legal activity with bit torrent only being used for linux distros.)
Now if you add to that netflix or some other provider, add an additional tv or two, how much bandwidth can a family of four people use? They can easily break the 250GB barrier. (I did it alone.)
And this is today... in the future we will be expecting lossless HD video, video calling, and sharing home movies with friends and relatives instead of just pictures. Online games are just going to require more and more bandwidth and who knows how much bandwidth the next killer app will use or how addicted the next bunch of morons will be to the website that eventually slays facebook.
Comcast and all the others want to protect their monopolies (or duopolies as appropriate) and to increase their profit margins with the least bit of effort. The cost of bandwidth is in building it, it does not cost more to transfer extra bits over the network.
No, At-will is convenient for the employer, it rarely benefits the employee. It does limit the lawsuits on either side, but how many times can a company successfully sue an employee? Even when employment is not at will damages would rarely be able to exceed the employees wages and a companies legal fees would normally cost more than what a company would get back. The one benefit of at-will from an employee's point of view is that the few states that strictly enforce it (Georgia is one of these) nullify non-compete clauses because if we ended our employment agreement, an ex-employer can not dictate what job I can get next.(The GA supreme court has turned over non-competes based on this.)
employers rely on their reputation to attract good people
No, reputation does not stop bad companies from getting good people... Right now there is 10% unemployment in this country, should I get a job with evil company X or do I want to lose, my house and not eat tomorrow?
Local magazines publish annual ratings of the best places to work
This sounds better than it really is. It can give a general idea but sometimes the study is a few years old or it only includes a specific criteria. For example I noticed recently that a working woman's magazine's rating was largely based on how many female executives were in a company. That has only a small impact on how the rank and file women are treated and even less impact on how the men are treated. In a personal example, I used to work for a company, lets call it "Brown Package Delivery." Brown was constantly applauded for how it treated its employees. Of course most of Brown's workers delivered packages, were represented by a union, and back then they truly were considered to be well treated. However, I was employed to write code in an office. Like almost all developers, I did not have union representation. I was required to work unpaid overtime and had a performance review dropped from a 5.4 (out of 6) to a 4.6 due to not working enough unpaid overtime even though I finished all the work assigned. In addition I was notified of my tardiness whenever I did not make it in at 7am after staying up half the night due to the production support beeper. In short most of those ratings are useless unless you are the specific target group and even then they can be dated or dead wrong.
I agree. There are a few places that sell games and advocate against DRM.
Even though I had bought every command and conquer title from the begining, I stopped after C&C 3. I did not buy Red Alert 3 due to DRM and I will not buy C&C 4 either.
Today my money goes mostly to Stardock (which does not have DRM) and GOG.com (Which has old games with the original DRM removed.)
While it is true that a fix/service pack/upgrade can add new errors, *usually* they fix more than they add. In this case because they are trying to fix a Critical Error, taking it to fix a know potential fatal error even though it may introduce new errors is a good bet.
Sure, I can see all the people at Best Buy signing up to take training courses for the opportunity to buy a distro for $10.
On the serious side... What would make a retailer sell linux? There is no margin on FREE. Even bundled with a netbook or PC, linux would mean a lower cost, but the higher cost items may earn more profit. Also, by selling linux, the retailer earns the wrath of microsoft.
Until non-geek consumers demand linux, there is no incentive to sell it.
An SD card is about one square inch and as thick as a credit card. A micro-SD is smaller then the fingernail on my pinky. Even if you have labels that you can use, or attempt to use a sharpie, What are you going to write in a space that small that will hold its meaning at a glance?
Get plastic sandwich bags. toss the cards in there with a piece of paper describing the contents. Cheap and more effective than any other solution so far. If they are zip-lock bags, it will even save the day if you drop them in the bathroom...
Would you rather have easy competition, or a sure thing and increased pay?
But it has already been proven, that PHB's do not understand tech or what their people actually do. They would rather pay low wages for one or two clueless people than to actually pay a decent wage to someone who knows how to get something working.
I used to do that myself, but there is one problem with it.
If you set ReloadEvery with a five minute interval it will reload the inbox page even if you are composing a email. I lost a lot of typing that way. The way around this is to keep two windows open(or tabs); one that you normally view(and auto-reload) and one that you work from so that it does not reload at an inopportune time.
Slashdot Mirror
You are correct, facebook's like button is a glorified web bug. That is one reason why I have deleted my facebook account and I block facebook (and fcbkcdn) directly on my firewall.
However, if google starts doing the same thing, I will need to find a better way to filter out the tracking bs... I would need to surgically cut it out while still letting me use search and gmail.
This looks like a web bug to me. If you want to use an image for rendering purposes, you would link to an image with a static name like http://image.att.com/spacer.gif .
The article specifically shows the image name as http://click.wireless.att.com:8080/31198108.178649.1159326048.-3 If you think that is not passing information back to at&t you would probably believe that IE is the most secure and standards compliant browser.
They have an IP address.
You are correct. Even if you are on a DHCP network your IP will not change often if you are connected 24x7 allowing trackers to follow your IP.
However there is a solution. I block facebook and other major trackers at my router with a firewall rule. Any attempt to connect to facebook (or fcbkcdn) will be interrupted. If your router is not capable of blocking sites consider reflashing your router with dd-wrt, or use the simple technique of adding the domain you wish to block to your computer's host file pointing to 127.0.0.1. This will keep your home ip out of their logs and you will be virtually unknown to them
Thats for the home, if you use wi-fi (or a different network) on the road, use ghostery, no-script, and better privacy. This may not block your known ip address (depending on how your extensions actually work,) but you are on a public network that will not be associated with just one person/computer.
Being a dog owner, I think most dogs just want to hump, eat, and sleep. Some like to bark.
You're thinking of men.
Why do you think Dogs are man's best friend? We are envious.
The really interesting thing is that if you take both parents' height, you can predict a child's final height within a narrow range (using midparental height).
Uh, No...
My mother is 5'9", My father is 5'10". What test based on them would predict my height of 6'11"? (Or my two brothers at 6'5" and 6'8".) An accurate and reliable test based on parents height does not exist. And no, I do not have a pituitary disorder. (One Dr that I no longer see, sent me for those tests in order to generate more revenue; the results were all normal, my pituitary gland works properly.)
This is NYC... The alligators will just hang out in the sewers for winter.
At this point we will migrate from Simpsons plot to b-movie story line.
Even if it doesn't get cracked, we will see an "Intel Upgrade Service Crack" torrent. Malware authors love gullible people.
Of course, I am just saying that because even though it may take some time, eventually someone will crack it.
No, that shouldn't change with net neutrality. AT&T will be able to charge residential clients what they want and business clients a different rate.
What AT&T wants to charge is a transmission fee.
End User 1 pays AT&T (or someone else) $35/month for a home internet connection.
Business 2 pays ISP XXX $100/month for a static IP connection to one of its servers.
AT&T now says to Business 2, pay me $250 a month or your traffic will go into the slow lane. This will mean that web pages will take longer to load, VOIP will have static or reverberating voices, and video will look scrambled. Both the Business and the end user are paying for service, but AT&T wants to extort more money to allow data to be transmitted between the two.
There is nothing stopping AT&T from telling a company like Vonage to pay $10,000/month to transmit its data. This way if vonage takes customers away from AT&T, AT&T will make up the money from the lost customers by doing nothing more than pushing data and charging Vonage more. Of course if this happens, Vonage will be forced to charge end users more money and the customer loses. Also, watch the cable companies do the same thing to video sites. Of course with cable companies now offering VOIP and AT&T offering video with Uverse, expect all businesses on the net to pay more; even if they don't compete directly, AT&T and the cable companies will use these fees as a new source of revenue.
Remember, a few months ago when Microsoft was paying people to use bing? I had a few wireless networks in hotels send me to bing as soon as I got on their network. (I'm sure this was for a referral fee.) What will stop Microsoft from paying AT&T more money than Google (or for an exclusive contract?) Microsoft has already proven it is willing to lose money if it hurts Google. All of a sudden my search engine choice is being dictated to me by my ISP (unless I want to wait a long time.) And so help my wait time if I want to use the search engine of a brilliant college student who has a revolutionary algorithm but no money.
The last point is especially important. It doesn't have to be a search engine. I could be the next killer app. It will not go anywhere without an open internet.
I do NOT lie on my resume.
Two years ago when I was looking for a job, a recruiter even asked me to lie and say that I had experience in .NET. Instead I told them not to represent me and to never call me again.
And while it may take time to notice, integrity pays off in the long run. 3 months ago, I found out that the project I that work on did not have any enhancements for the current development cycle. Everything for this system was shelved for "future" releases. However, because I actually do know the things that I put down in my resume and my manager learned that I am honest and competent, she went to the business group and told them to come up with funding and a project or else she would need to let me go. (I am a contractor.) I am still here with a funded project. Would you be still around if you didn't know the things you said you knew and lied on your resume?
It is ASSHOLES LIKE YOU that make the honest people in this world look bad. Watch out because Karma is a bitch. (Sorry, I would normally use symbols or abbreviations on my profanity due to people reading at work; but I can't hide it in this specific case.)
To move your buttons to the right side of windows...
Right click on the desktop and select "Change Desktop Background." This will bring up the appearance preferences.
Click the "Theme" tab.
Choose one of other themes. When you click on a theme, you will get an instant preview. When you select a theme that you like and the preview moves the buttons to the right click ok. (or you can customize it.)
The above will work, however, if someone knows a specific preference that will allow me to change it I would like to learn how. (I assume that there is a setting that will specifically set one side or the other, but I do not know it.)
Now that we are losing print and becoming web based it does not matter, the answer in HTML will always be ONE. You can put as much whitespace as you want at the end of a sentence and HTML will just convert it to one space.
Now you are welcome to add " " at the end of a line to get an extra space, but it will cost you 6 keystrokes.
I admit that I am a power user. My point was that I can hit the 250GB cap alone, without netflix and without illegal torrent downloads. If I can do it alone without netflix; a family can easily hit the cap and exceed it when you add in multiple people accessing the internet at the same time especially if you have multiple people streaming movies. That is why the cap is unreasonable.
My other point was that in the future we will demand bandwidth in ever increasing amounts yet the caps will hold us back. Looking back at the history of computers, my first computer had 5k of ram. Then 64k, 128k... My first PC had 512k which was less then the 640k max. Now I type this on a laptop with 4GB. (And yes as a power user it is not unusual to get to the point of hitting the swap partition.) Media was the same way, from 360k floppies to 1.4mb, 640mb cds, 4.3gb dvds, and now we are at the point of 50GB blu-rays. And sometimes (especially with games) we get to the point that we need multiple disks. No one dreamed of using all this memory and storage just a few years ago... Why do you think bandwidth that is barely adequate today will be sufficient tomorrow?
As for why I am complaining, it is simple... Once the infrastructure is built, it does not cost more to transmit 2MB over the network than it does to send 1MB. Companies advertise an "# Mbps" connection for a certain price and then overcharge us if we actually use it. Also, here in the US, we have literally given BILLIONS of dollars to the telecommunication companies to build out the network(through government subsidies and tax breaks); yet our access is more expensive and slower than many other industrialized nations. All this while the executives are complaining that they are losing money while getting multi-million dollar bonuses. (And when Time Warner announced it was testing smaller caps a year ago, people found out through their earnings reports that their internet division was raking in the dough without caps, and while barely putting any money into improving the infrastructure.)
Comcast's 250gb cap is reasonable? No it isn't, it is just a way for them to avoid investing more money in building their network and in addition protect their own movie service.
Between downloading patches, linux distros, and porn along with working from home connecting to remote machines, I have come up against that limit without netflix or any other movie streaming. (And this is all legal activity with bit torrent only being used for linux distros.)
Now if you add to that netflix or some other provider, add an additional tv or two, how much bandwidth can a family of four people use? They can easily break the 250GB barrier. (I did it alone.)
And this is today... in the future we will be expecting lossless HD video, video calling, and sharing home movies with friends and relatives instead of just pictures. Online games are just going to require more and more bandwidth and who knows how much bandwidth the next killer app will use or how addicted the next bunch of morons will be to the website that eventually slays facebook.
Comcast and all the others want to protect their monopolies (or duopolies as appropriate) and to increase their profit margins with the least bit of effort. The cost of bandwidth is in building it, it does not cost more to transfer extra bits over the network.
Is there a good JavaScript Deobfuscator around?
Anything that would let me understand the crap some of my (ex-)co-workers write would be an invaluable tool. :D
...an at-will policy, and it works very well.
No, At-will is convenient for the employer, it rarely benefits the employee. It does limit the lawsuits on either side, but how many times can a company successfully sue an employee? Even when employment is not at will damages would rarely be able to exceed the employees wages and a companies legal fees would normally cost more than what a company would get back. The one benefit of at-will from an employee's point of view is that the few states that strictly enforce it (Georgia is one of these) nullify non-compete clauses because if we ended our employment agreement, an ex-employer can not dictate what job I can get next.(The GA supreme court has turned over non-competes based on this.)
employers rely on their reputation to attract good people
No, reputation does not stop bad companies from getting good people... Right now there is 10% unemployment in this country, should I get a job with evil company X or do I want to lose, my house and not eat tomorrow?
Local magazines publish annual ratings of the best places to work
This sounds better than it really is. It can give a general idea but sometimes the study is a few years old or it only includes a specific criteria. For example I noticed recently that a working woman's magazine's rating was largely based on how many female executives were in a company. That has only a small impact on how the rank and file women are treated and even less impact on how the men are treated. In a personal example, I used to work for a company, lets call it "Brown Package Delivery." Brown was constantly applauded for how it treated its employees. Of course most of Brown's workers delivered packages, were represented by a union, and back then they truly were considered to be well treated. However, I was employed to write code in an office. Like almost all developers, I did not have union representation. I was required to work unpaid overtime and had a performance review dropped from a 5.4 (out of 6) to a 4.6 due to not working enough unpaid overtime even though I finished all the work assigned. In addition I was notified of my tardiness whenever I did not make it in at 7am after staying up half the night due to the production support beeper. In short most of those ratings are useless unless you are the specific target group and even then they can be dated or dead wrong.
I agree. There are a few places that sell games and advocate against DRM.
Even though I had bought every command and conquer title from the begining, I stopped after C&C 3. I did not buy Red Alert 3 due to DRM and I will not buy C&C 4 either.
Today my money goes mostly to Stardock (which does not have DRM) and GOG.com (Which has old games with the original DRM removed.)
This sounds like a way to put punch cards back in every office.
That depends is it an even-numbered service pack?
While it is true that a fix/service pack/upgrade can add new errors, *usually* they fix more than they add. In this case because they are trying to fix a Critical Error, taking it to fix a know potential fatal error even though it may introduce new errors is a good bet.
What's the computer equivalent of the "This car protected by Smith & Wesson" bumper sticker?
http://fatpenguinblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/08/fp_linux-tux-born-2-frag.jpg
Sure, I can see all the people at Best Buy signing up to take training courses for the opportunity to buy a distro for $10.
On the serious side...
What would make a retailer sell linux? There is no margin on FREE. Even bundled with a netbook or PC, linux would mean a lower cost, but the higher cost items may earn more profit. Also, by selling linux, the retailer earns the wrath of microsoft.
Until non-geek consumers demand linux, there is no incentive to sell it.
They are trying to "fix" their parking tickets that their ambassadors have received at the UN.
An SD card is about one square inch and as thick as a credit card. A micro-SD is smaller then the fingernail on my pinky. Even if you have labels that you can use, or attempt to use a sharpie, What are you going to write in a space that small that will hold its meaning at a glance?
Get plastic sandwich bags. toss the cards in there with a piece of paper describing the contents. Cheap and more effective than any other solution so far. If they are zip-lock bags, it will even save the day if you drop them in the bathroom...
Has anyone else noticed that the image used is actually a highway id sign, not a mile marker sign?
Would you rather have easy competition, or a sure thing and increased pay?
But it has already been proven, that PHB's do not understand tech or what their people actually do. They would rather pay low wages for one or two clueless people than to actually pay a decent wage to someone who knows how to get something working.
I used to do that myself, but there is one problem with it.
If you set ReloadEvery with a five minute interval it will reload the inbox page even if you are composing a email. I lost a lot of typing that way. The way around this is to keep two windows open(or tabs); one that you normally view(and auto-reload) and one that you work from so that it does not reload at an inopportune time.