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User: tompaulco

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  1. Re:Don't ask, don't tell on SCOTUS: GPS Trackers Are a Form of Search and Seizure · · Score: 1

    Stingrays are not related to this bill as anyone operating a Stingray is already in violation of civil and criminal law as well as being subject to a large number of FCC fines.

  2. Re:DBAs first? Strange on IT Jobs With the Best (and Worst) ROI · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The DBA probably gets paid a lot because the company is desperate for someone to come in and fix the database after the developers thought they could do the job themselves.

  3. Re:The Job Title doesn't matter.... on IT Jobs With the Best (and Worst) ROI · · Score: 2

    People who do have talent and drive also sometimes end up not succeeding. The people who are willing to step on anyone will definitely end up succeeding though.

  4. Politically Incorrect? on Secret Service Plans New Fence, Full Scale White House Replica, But No Moat · · Score: 1

    I'm waiting for some explanation of how fence can be politically incorrect. Does it discriminate against handicapped people? Do we need to build wheelchair ramps so the "differently abled" can also jump the fence?

  5. Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount? on Measuring How Much "Standby Mode" Electricity For Game Consoles Will Cost You · · Score: 1

    Apparently they were at first honoring the warranty and replacing the entire water heater, but that got to be too expensive, so they stopped doing that and started saying it was installed incorrectly.

  6. Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount? on Measuring How Much "Standby Mode" Electricity For Game Consoles Will Cost You · · Score: 1

    There was an article maybe a year or two back about TV standby power. It was about the same. 10 watts to as much as 15 watts. I'm sure the new fancy phone home TVs use even more in standby mode.

  7. Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount? on Measuring How Much "Standby Mode" Electricity For Game Consoles Will Cost You · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Well, I can vouch for the fact that we have over the last 12 years replaced just about all of the water heaters in our rental houses. The water heaters which were replaced were built in the 70s and 80s. I guess I can expect something 30 years old to fail. In fact, it probably wouldn't have failed even after 30 years if we would have checked and replaced the anode. However, the new water heaters which we have replaced them with have already had problems within just a few short years. We have had to replace pilot assemblies, thermocouples, and one has a safety device with a well known calibration problem which causes it to fail and close the dampers so that you can't light the water heater. The suggested fix is to replace the water heater because the safety is not considered field serviceable. The safety device on that unit failed after about a month of operation. One month of use seems entirely to short for a water heater, especially compared to 30 years or more for the previously installed unit.

  8. Re:The Canadian middle class is dying out. on Best Buy Kills Off Future Shop · · Score: 1

    Seems to me those fancy trucks and SUVs you speak of may perhaps belong to the upper class? I think your confusing the 150K+ a year crowd with the middle class.

    Middle class is more of a median income between that and the poverty line, most of the 30-60K people aren't out driving around in new 60K+ vehicles, most of us are the ones in the crappy older vehicles. and the rest are the ones on the bus

    Seems kind of unlikely. At least where I live, the upper crust drives fancy sedans. The lower class drives fancy trucks and SUVs and the middle class drives cheap econoboxes.

  9. Similar issue with my government on UK Licensing Site Requires MSIE Emulation, But Won't Work With MSIE · · Score: 2

    When I was recently laid off and applied for unemployment, I discovered that signing up for unemployment requires MSIE. Well, a lot of sites say that, so i tried it in Firefox. It didn't work, the workflow just went in circles. Then I tried it in MSIE and found the same thing. However, when i read very carefully, I noticed that it said that it had to be a specific, no longer supported version of MSIE. I set the compatibility level to that version, and then it worked. But I am sure everybody that has been laid off from work knows how to override the automatic updating of MSIE and set the compatibility level back to an older version.

  10. Re:One more view. on Ellen Pao Loses Silicon Valley Gender Bias Case Against Kleiner Perkins · · Score: 2

    I have worked in Tech for over 25 years as well. I would say that it has been my experience that there are more males involved in tech, but that it is far easier for a woman to be promoted to management than for a man. Also, pretty much all of my managers in tech, whether male or female, were not very tech savvy.

  11. Re:MY data in AMAZON's cloud ?? on Amazon Announces Unlimited Cloud Storage Plans · · Score: 1

    Oh I KNOW that they store it in a multitude of locations. What I want to know is what kind of technology they are using such that when their system crashes they manage to lose the data on ALL of the multitude of locations. That must be some pretty fancy technology.
    Or they don't really store it in multiple locations.

  12. Re:MY data in AMAZON's cloud ?? on Amazon Announces Unlimited Cloud Storage Plans · · Score: 1

    What happens when your house burns down?

    I guess the same thing that happens when the Amazon location with your data burns down.

    Amazon restores the data on the guy's servers from their backups? No wonder everybody is all tinfoil hat over Amazon.

    Yes, exactly. just like Comcast offers service to the address of the house you are going to buy. At least until after you buy it.

  13. Re:MY data in AMAZON's cloud ?? on Amazon Announces Unlimited Cloud Storage Plans · · Score: 1

    I guess the same thing that happens when the Amazon location with your data burns down.

  14. Trillion guesses per second on Generate Memorizable Passphrases That Even the NSA Can't Guess · · Score: 1

    How about instead of allowing a trillion guesses per second, you only allow one every two seconds. Then it would take an average of a googleplex of years to happen upon the correct password.

  15. Re:Paypal better pick what it wants to be... on PayPal To Pay $7.7 Million For Sanctions Violations · · Score: 2

    Why aren't the big banks doing this? I guess because they can't tack on all kinds of horrendous fees and still get people to use it, and PayPal's business model isn't profitable enough for them.

    I have a different guess. My guess is that big banks are banks and have to obey the banking regulations and so they can't afford to compete with companies like Paypal which doesn't have to obey the banking regulations even though they act as a bank.

  16. Re:I hate PayPal on PayPal To Pay $7.7 Million For Sanctions Violations · · Score: 1

    I will not use a service that enjoys all of the benefits of being a bank without having to abide by the regulations of being a bank. Obviously this article indicates that they are being held to SOME of the regulations of being a bank, but clearly they are not being held to all of them. A bank cannot just decide to freeze your account except under specific and documented circumstances.

  17. Multimillionaire? on Win Or Lose, Discrimination Suit Is Having an Effect On Silicon Valley · · Score: 1

    A multimillionare woman complains of being passed up for promotion? How rich are the guys (I assume they are guys. For all I know, they are also women) that got the promotion( if there was even a promotion to be had)?

  18. Re:Jeremy Clarkson? on Jeremy Clarkson Dismissed From Top Gear · · Score: 1

    Well, he is known somewhat in Rally, which I will concede, but he is most known for X games and Drifting, which other people may consider racing, but I don't.

  19. Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me on Comcast's Incompetence, Lack of Broadband May Force Developer To Sell Home · · Score: 1

    I've seen several posts in this thread where the install was scheduled, and Comcast still reneged.

  20. Re:Jeremy Clarkson? on Jeremy Clarkson Dismissed From Top Gear · · Score: 1

    Yes, you must, but I'm not sure why. I've heard of those three. Ferrara is an actor who has appeared in one movie of note. Foust is a race car driver of little note, and Wood is a guy that is on Top Gear US. Their attempts to mimic the UK capers fall flat, they had guests on for maybe a season before the guest starts realized it wasn't worth it, even for two bit reality show idiots. The shows are week after week of station wagons and SUVs. I still watch it, but it has nothing on the original.

  21. Re:too bad.... but... on Jeremy Clarkson Dismissed From Top Gear · · Score: 1

    I've never known a media producer to act in a way which would not provoke a physical attack at some point.

  22. Re:Kitsap County resident here... on Comcast's Incompetence, Lack of Broadband May Force Developer To Sell Home · · Score: 1

    Yeah, Comcast is incompetent, but there's more to the story than meets the summary. I took a look at his website, and found his resume, and a couple of things leapt out at me...

    - All of his previous employment was in Southern California. To residents here on the Peninsula that's almost always a huge warning sign with flashing red letters. We've all seen too many folk move here from big cities who don't grasp that despite the apparent nearness of Seattle and Tacoma, Kitsap County is still pretty much country/rural. Not so much as it was when the Navy brought me out here nearly thirty years ago, but it's still not a city. It's not even close.

    - His address turns out to be out in the boonies, in the kind of place big city folk like to buy houses and then complain that it's not like living in the cheek-by-jowl suburbs. Sorry dude, but when you live at the end of a quarter mile long shared driveway off of a back country road, it should be pretty obvious that you don't live in Palo Alto or Mountain View anymore.

    You are exactly right. However, if someone tells you multiple times that they can provide you a service and then reneges, they are responsible for damages, whether it is in downtown L.A., Kitsap County, or Timbuktu Michigan.

  23. Re:Contract contingency? on Comcast's Incompetence, Lack of Broadband May Force Developer To Sell Home · · Score: 1

    The contingency would not survive closing. In other words, he would have had to get the service installed before he owned the house for that to work.

    Yes, and since he didn't own the home, he would not be able to instantiate the service. Catch 22.

  24. Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me on Comcast's Incompetence, Lack of Broadband May Force Developer To Sell Home · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If wired broadband internet is a critical feature of any house you buy, verify before you buy.

    What verification steps can you possibly take beyond what he did? Hack into their computers to determine if there really had been service at that address?

  25. Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me on Comcast's Incompetence, Lack of Broadband May Force Developer To Sell Home · · Score: 2

    The moral is sometimes the price is too high and so we should accept that a company lies to us? No. The company lied, it costs people damages. The company must pay for it's crimes. End of story.