Just get a Tablet/Netbook of your choice and use that for web surfing, personal email, video and music streaming, etc.
Its a far more honest way of going about it, and by shopping around you will find a tablet that fits your needs, and can be slipped into the same carrying case the laptop uses. You may only need a wifi model, but tablets with data plans are not that expensive. You can add encryption to the tablet, if you want.
This gives you the freedom to do as you wish, and you can still move things back and forth between the tablet and the laptop as needed via any number of means when you have a legitimate reason to do so.
If you expect there to be tracking software on the machine out of the gate, then trying to go down the deception road is just a Bad Idea. Key loggers will log what ever you do, and removing them is not likely to go unnoticed. Key loggers things, if properly installed, can even read work you do in a USB thumb-drive based Linux distribution. And depending on how savvy your company's IT department is you may find any attempt to use the laptop in way other than what was intended will trigger alarms. Wiping the drive and restoring it to some back level state amounts to an admission you were doing something you weren't supposed to do. And you may not be given the opportunity to do so, when IT walks in (or accesses it remotely) to do a routine upgrade, and finds all sorts of ebooks and games, etc.
Nope, my advice is to celebrate your first pay check with a gift to yourself of that Tablet or Netbook you've always wanted. This way, you and your employer stay on each other's good side.
The actors in the story you linked to weren't really a 'private police force'.
True, but the point was that it was fairly easy to get them ousted. One egregious incident was all it took. Had they been city employees or actual police, there would be nothing that could be done. You'd be stuck with them. This may be an offsetting factor to consider when evaluating the idea of private sector police contracts. The citizens (and other government agencies) may actually have more control over a private contractor than they do over their own police force.
In fact, the Sheriff stepped in right over the City of Seattle's head and put deputies in the facility. The State stepped in and levied fines. You could bet that wouldn't happen if the contractors had been actual city police officers.
Rentacops and mall cops are indeed a joke, but even they have the right to detain and hold till the real police arrive, and you get booked into jail either way. There are other private security firms in the US, as any Google search will find. Many are quite professional. Some are simply misfits. But at least they are misfits you might actually be able to get rid of.
The story lists the tasks that might be taken over by private companies:
The breathtaking list of policing activities up for grabs includes investigating crimes, detaining suspects, developing cases, responding to and investigating incidents, supporting victims and witnesses, managing high-risk individuals, patrolling neighbourhoods, managing intelligence, managing engagement with the public, as well as more traditional back-office functions, such as managing forensics, providing legal services, managing the vehicle fleet, finance and human resources
That seems like pretty much the entire job description short of actual Arrest. (The Detaining Suspects bit may mean running the jail, or arrest, its unclear).
The good side of this is you might have more luck suing a corporation than the constabulary. (No clue about UK law here, just a guess). And when the public becomes unsatisfied its much easier for city government to cancel the contract and find a new firm. The new guys will probably be on their best behavior for a few months at least.
Its not unheard of to find private police forces employed by some jurisdictions in the US. And its not unheard of the have entire companies fired. An incident in a Seattle transit hub eventually lead to fines and term termination of their contract.
49.2% of Kia is held by a holding company named Hyundai Kia Automotive Group, a group of affiliated companies interconnected by complex shareholding arrangements, with Hyundai Motor Company regarded as the de facto representative of the Group.
I fail to see how this argument is germane to anything I said.
The idea that we should ban skinny models because.5% of girls have a brush with anorexia while doing nothing about banning fat models to "protect" the 35% of obese people is ludicrous.
This has nothing to do with publicly funded health care.
Yet for all the work we do to tell her how incredible and awesome she is, there's a constant barrage of ads screaming that she's ugly and dumb and girls are wimpy.
Really? Seems you must have an entirely different source of advertising than I see. The tendency over the last 10 years is to portray men and boys as idiots who can't figure out which end of a hammer to pound with, and are utterly helpless in taking care of themselves, while the 75 pound girl can throw two them over her shoulder and carry them up two flights of stairs.
All these ads these days seem to be written by and for women. The same is true of most tv shows.
For example, they may be skinny because the government is spending on healthcare rather than spending on hunger.
Ah, no. Just No.
Anorexia is a mental illnesses, not a poverty issue.
Poor people in the USA aren't wasting away from lack of food. The majority of them are too fat, because they can only afford cheap fattening foods, and filling a belly of a hungry child is more important than filling it with a weight conscious diet.
This has NOTHING to do with Anorexia which hunger or poverty.
Outliers in both directions, but in the present case, not to the same extent.
The outliers in weight clearly favor the heavy side, and its a far tougher nut to crack that the anorexic who looked at a magazine. I suggest the researchers come up with a believable way to control the tendency towards overweight by changing pictures in a magazine. Then they would have something of true value.
One could even make the case that removing the skinny side of normal from the cultural images may push the tendency towards acceptance of more obesity. This would have a far greater effect on health care costs than anorexia.
One half of one percent of women go thru a period of anorexia. Of these only 5 – 10% die of their disorder within 10 years. Yet 35.7% of Americans suffer from obesity. Medical costs for obesity on average were $1,429 higher per person per year.
So the outliers aren't significant on the skinny side, but they are devastating on the fat side.
"Don't "idiots" need representation as much as I do, quite possibly more?"
Idiots need to be taken care of, not put in charge.
I disagree with your racist assessment that:
Not to mention the fact that while there are plenty of thoroughly uninformed white people, those more likely to be uniformed are going to tend to be minorities who don't have the same access to information
Minorities often have a better grasp of who they want to vote for, since the issue tends to affect them to a greater extent due to the very fact that they are minorities. Even if they don't read english, you can't assume the don't talk to their friends and discuss the issues, or that they are uninformed.
There may be many who just don't see the point in voting, haven't got the slightest interest, and could not possibly care less about the outcome. I'm not convinced that society is served when such people are hunted down and cajoled into voting for voting's sake.
Let me play devil's advocate and suggest your worry is universal and not limited to anything the GP posted. Where ever secret paper ballots are used, in any form, there is almost always a serial number, which is recorded against the voter, but not on the final ballot. Too many people in the chain to keep such a thing a secret for all these years.
Actually, I remember reading somewhere that consecutive encryption of a file (or a data stream) provides no additional protection against brute force attacks. The brute force needed to decrypt the end result is virtually the same, whether you encrypt once or twice. Something about a "meet in the middle" attack.
Not sure if this is true in all cases because TripleDES is a common encryption technique. I (obviously) don't understand all that I read about this stuff.
Why not install the latest version of dropbox and have the picture automatically uploaded as soon as its taken.
That way its propagated to all the computers you have which are idling with Dropbox running in the background. There are other services that do this as well.
The company is injecting patients with their own stem cells after massive multiplication of “minimally modified” stem cells.
This seems to be something of a loop hole in current regulation.
Some advocates of the treatments argue, however, that preparations based on a patient's own cells should not be classed as drugs, and should not therefore fall under the FDA's jurisdiction.
...
The legal standing of stem-cell treatments is currently being debated in a court case brought by Regenerative Sciences of Broomfield, Colorado, which was ordered by the FDA in 2010 to stop administering mesenchymal stem cells to patients5. One of the key issues being debated is whether the cells are “minimally manipulated” before being reinjected into the patient. Treatment with the patient's own, unprocessed tissue does not always require FDA approval.
I'm betting this gets reigned in somewhat, if not by the FDA, then by Texas, as the state has already made it clear it wants some oversight.
This whole thing sounds like several bad made for TV movies I've seen.
Nope. Wrong. I can have it both ways. You don't get to make those rules. Its way above your pay grade missie.
Nothing seriously damaging was revealed, but that does not mean Manning did not engage in espionage or that he did not violate his duties as a soldier.
No harm, no foul is not the rules you play by in the real world.
No need. They long since have clinked all the wine glasses and slapped all the back, and chuckled at all the jokes. They know exactly what wikileaks has and aren't worried a bit, in spite of the grave face they put on to entertain the naive.
It would appear that Wikileaks doesn't have much intelligence either. I mean I haven't seen anything really secret or seriously sensitive in any of their releases, mostly stuff equating to gossip or which was already known. I've read all the Gee Wow articles about all the secret cables, and other documents, but found them much to do about nothing, and the expected fallout from their release amounted to nothing.
It would appear they have no access to the truely secret stuff. Which is not the same thing as the Government not having any secret stuff. It just means anonymous and wikileaks go after soft targets.
Re:Our whole calendar is messed up.
on
The Math of Leap Days
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Exactly my point. Nobody's going to listen to any ideas of changing this at this point because there is no need, and a lot of pain involved.
If you planned it for 10 years you would still have 50% of our automated infrastructure stuck on old time keepers. Bazillions of contracts, deeds, etc would need rewrite, and virtually all historical texts would need corrections.
The only place where there is anything to gain is in date computations in computers, and we have that solved.
Its a mess, but not a debilitating one.
Converting to any other system would be all pain, and zero gain.
That's bound to annoy everyone else that uses that machine.
Which, in the case of a personal laptop, amounts to the null set.
But lets assume you actually have a multi user machine. So what if I have to install the drivers for a printer that is near me on the network, and some other user has to install drivers for a printer near them, and all the drivers are specific to the user?
Isn't that what ~/bin is for?
The security model for Linux as a multiuser machine is getting in the way of its actual use pattern. And if Linus Torvalds can see this, why can't you?
Slashdot Mirror
Just get a Tablet/Netbook of your choice and use that for web surfing, personal email, video and music streaming, etc.
Its a far more honest way of going about it, and by shopping around you will find a tablet that fits your needs, and can be slipped into the same carrying case the laptop uses. You may only need a wifi model, but tablets with data plans are not that expensive. You can add encryption to the tablet, if you want.
This gives you the freedom to do as you wish, and you can still move things back and forth between the tablet and the laptop as needed via any number of means when you have a legitimate reason to do so.
If you expect there to be tracking software on the machine out of the gate, then trying to go down the deception road is just a Bad Idea. Key loggers will log what ever you do, and removing them is not likely to go unnoticed. Key loggers things, if properly installed, can even read work you do in a USB thumb-drive based Linux distribution. And depending on how savvy your company's IT department is you may find any attempt to use the laptop in way other than what was intended will trigger alarms. Wiping the drive and restoring it to some back level state amounts to an admission you were doing something you weren't supposed to do. And you may not be given the opportunity to do so, when IT walks in (or accesses it remotely) to do a routine upgrade, and finds all sorts of ebooks and games, etc.
Nope, my advice is to celebrate your first pay check with a gift to yourself of that Tablet or Netbook you've always wanted. This way, you and your employer stay on each other's good side.
The actors in the story you linked to weren't really a 'private police force'.
True, but the point was that it was fairly easy to get them ousted. One egregious incident was all it took.
Had they been city employees or actual police, there would be nothing that could be done. You'd be stuck with them.
This may be an offsetting factor to consider when evaluating the idea of private sector police contracts. The citizens (and other government agencies) may actually have more control over a private contractor than they do over their own police force.
In fact, the Sheriff stepped in right over the City of Seattle's head and put deputies in the facility. The State stepped in and levied fines.
You could bet that wouldn't happen if the contractors had been actual city police officers.
Rentacops and mall cops are indeed a joke, but even they have the right to detain and hold till the real police arrive, and you get booked into jail either way.
There are other private security firms in the US, as any Google search will find. Many are quite professional. Some are simply misfits. But at least they are misfits you might actually be able to get rid of.
The story lists the tasks that might be taken over by private companies:
The breathtaking list of policing activities up for grabs includes investigating crimes, detaining suspects, developing cases, responding to and investigating incidents, supporting victims and witnesses, managing high-risk individuals, patrolling neighbourhoods, managing intelligence, managing engagement with the public, as well as more traditional back-office functions, such as managing forensics, providing legal services, managing the vehicle fleet, finance and human resources
That seems like pretty much the entire job description short of actual Arrest. (The Detaining Suspects bit may mean running the jail, or arrest, its unclear).
The good side of this is you might have more luck suing a corporation than the constabulary. (No clue about UK law here, just a guess). And when the public becomes unsatisfied its much easier for city government to cancel the contract and find a new firm. The new guys will probably be on their best behavior for a few months at least.
Its not unheard of to find private police forces employed by some jurisdictions in the US. And its not unheard of the have entire companies fired. An incident in a Seattle transit hub eventually lead to fines and term termination of their contract.
Kia is Hyundai.
No they aren't.
You are both PARTLY correct.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kia_Motors
49.2% of Kia is held by a holding company named Hyundai Kia Automotive Group, a group of affiliated companies interconnected by complex shareholding arrangements, with Hyundai Motor Company regarded as the de facto representative of the Group.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyundai_Kia_Automotive_Group
Diet is NOT a small contributor to weight gain.
Wait, where did I mention anything about making fat people feel lousy?
I happen to be fat, you Insensitive Clod!
I fail to see how this argument is germane to anything I said.
The idea that we should ban skinny models because .5% of girls have a brush with anorexia while doing nothing about banning fat models to "protect" the 35% of obese people is ludicrous.
This has nothing to do with publicly funded health care.
Yet for all the work we do to tell her how incredible and awesome she is, there's a constant barrage of ads screaming that she's ugly and dumb and girls are wimpy.
Really?
Seems you must have an entirely different source of advertising than I see.
The tendency over the last 10 years is to portray men and boys as idiots who can't figure out which end of a hammer to pound with, and are utterly helpless in taking care of themselves, while the 75 pound girl can throw two them over her shoulder and carry them up two flights of stairs.
All these ads these days seem to be written by and for women. The same is true of most tv shows.
For example, they may be skinny because the government is spending on healthcare rather than spending on hunger.
Ah, no. Just No.
Anorexia is a mental illnesses, not a poverty issue.
Poor people in the USA aren't wasting away from lack of food.
The majority of them are too fat, because they can only afford cheap fattening foods, and filling a belly of a hungry child is more important than filling it with a weight conscious diet.
This has NOTHING to do with Anorexia which hunger or poverty.
Outliers in both directions, but in the present case, not to the same extent.
The outliers in weight clearly favor the heavy side, and its a far tougher nut to crack that the anorexic who looked at a magazine. I suggest the researchers come up with a believable way to control the tendency towards overweight by changing pictures in a magazine. Then they would have something of true value.
One could even make the case that removing the skinny side of normal from the cultural images may push the tendency towards acceptance of more obesity. This would have a far greater effect on health care costs than anorexia.
One half of one percent of women go thru a period of anorexia. Of these only 5 – 10% die of their disorder within 10 years. Yet 35.7% of Americans suffer from obesity. Medical costs for obesity on average were $1,429 higher per person per year.
So the outliers aren't significant on the skinny side, but they are devastating on the fat side.
"Don't "idiots" need representation as much as I do, quite possibly more?"
Idiots need to be taken care of, not put in charge.
I disagree with your racist assessment that:
Not to mention the fact that while there are plenty of thoroughly uninformed white people, those more likely to be uniformed are going to tend to be minorities who don't have the same access to information
Minorities often have a better grasp of who they want to vote for, since the issue tends to affect them to a greater extent due to the very fact that they are minorities. Even if they don't read english, you can't assume the don't talk to their friends and discuss the issues, or that they are uninformed.
There may be many who just don't see the point in voting, haven't got the slightest interest, and could not possibly care less about the outcome. I'm not convinced that society is served when such people are hunted down and cajoled into voting for voting's sake.
Let me play devil's advocate and suggest your worry is universal and not limited to anything the GP posted.
Where ever secret paper ballots are used, in any form, there is almost always a serial number, which is recorded against the voter, but not on the final ballot. Too many people in the chain to keep such a thing a secret for all these years.
Actually, I remember reading somewhere that consecutive encryption of a file (or a data stream) provides no additional protection against brute force attacks. The brute force needed to decrypt the end result is virtually the same, whether you encrypt once or twice. Something about a "meet in the middle" attack.
Not sure if this is true in all cases because TripleDES is a common encryption technique.
I (obviously) don't understand all that I read about this stuff.
ALL location devices?
Your breadth of knowledge is astounding. I congratulate you sir.
Why not install the latest version of dropbox and have the picture automatically uploaded as soon as its taken.
That way its propagated to all the computers you have which are idling with Dropbox running in the background.
There are other services that do this as well.
The company is injecting patients with their own stem cells after massive multiplication of “minimally modified” stem cells.
This seems to be something of a loop hole in current regulation.
Some advocates of the treatments argue, however, that preparations based on a patient's own cells should not be classed as drugs, and should not therefore fall under the FDA's jurisdiction.
...
The legal standing of stem-cell treatments is currently being debated in a court case brought by Regenerative Sciences of Broomfield, Colorado, which was ordered by the FDA in 2010 to stop administering mesenchymal stem cells to patients5. One of the key issues being debated is whether the cells are “minimally manipulated” before being reinjected into the patient. Treatment with the patient's own, unprocessed tissue does not always require FDA approval.
I'm betting this gets reigned in somewhat, if not by the FDA, then by Texas, as the state has already made it clear it wants some oversight.
This whole thing sounds like several bad made for TV movies I've seen.
Human eyes involved instead of computer algorithms.
because you can't have it both ways.
Nope. Wrong.
I can have it both ways. You don't get to make those rules. Its way above your pay grade missie.
Nothing seriously damaging was revealed, but that does not mean Manning did not engage in espionage or that he did not violate his duties as a soldier.
No harm, no foul is not the rules you play by in the real world.
Big deal. Probably common knowledge since there were so many people involved.
Who would this be secret from? The Russians? The Israelis? Its mere speculation any way from
a FOR PROFIT public sector source.
Nothing to see here, move along please.
Please tell that to that to the US Government
No need.
They long since have clinked all the wine glasses and slapped all the back, and chuckled at all the jokes.
They know exactly what wikileaks has and aren't worried a bit, in spite of the grave face they put on to entertain the naive.
It would appear that Wikileaks doesn't have much intelligence either. I mean I haven't seen anything really secret or seriously sensitive in any of their releases, mostly stuff equating to gossip or which was already known. I've read all the Gee Wow articles about all the secret cables, and other documents, but found them much to do about nothing, and the expected fallout from their release amounted to nothing.
It would appear they have no access to the truely secret stuff. Which is not the same thing as the Government not having any secret stuff. It just means anonymous and wikileaks go after soft targets.
Exactly my point.
Nobody's going to listen to any ideas of changing this at this point because there is no need, and a lot of pain involved.
If you planned it for 10 years you would still have 50% of our automated infrastructure stuck on old time keepers. Bazillions of contracts, deeds, etc would need rewrite, and virtually all historical texts would need corrections.
The only place where there is anything to gain is in date computations in computers, and we have that solved.
Its a mess, but not a debilitating one.
Converting to any other system would be all pain, and zero gain.
That's bound to annoy everyone else that uses that machine.
Which, in the case of a personal laptop, amounts to the null set.
But lets assume you actually have a multi user machine.
So what if I have to install the drivers for a printer that is near me on the network, and some other user has to install drivers for a printer near them, and all the drivers are specific to the user?
Isn't that what ~/bin is for?
The security model for Linux as a multiuser machine is getting in the way of its actual use pattern. And if Linus Torvalds can see this, why can't you?
Why is it everyone has their own scheme for rebuilding Calendars?
And why so much significance tied to the winter solstice? That hardly matters anymore in a global economy.
Not this son.
That was the other son, the one that was passed over for the throne, -, er, ah, chairmanship.