Do you even read the comments before you flame? The grandparent said NOTHING about speed limits being a slippery slope. He was talking about MONITORING, which is entirely different than just having a limit in the traditional sense. If you're going to attack someone, which you seem to really get off on doing, at least make sure you've understood them first to avoid making yourself look like an ass in the process; oh wait, it's way too late for that one.
I've noticed Consumer Reports has given glowing reviews to Sears products (Craftsman and Kenmore) in the past and I have purchased some of them based on a CR recommendation, only to be very disappointed in their performance. A vaccum cleaner, drill, refrigerator and leaf blower were all highly recommended and then gave me nothing but problems until a short time later when I replaced them all with products of a different brand. Perhaps Sears somehow sponsors or supports CR? Either that or they just have no realistic way of testing reliability over a period of time.
I'm not sure what that would be. I'm not taking my passport to the bar; not to mention some people don't even have one. I'm not carrying my birth certificate around. It's a fine line between ensuring proper identity and driving away legitimate customers.
Expand the policy a little further and tell people not to use common sayings to form an acronym. For example, instead of using something common like Thank God It's Friday, use something that nobody would think of, like I Drive A Porsche (especially effective if you don't drive a Porsche). Add some numbers and punctuation after that, and there's no way anybody is guessing it without a brute force character-by-character attack.
This is only if they have a legitimate reason to require ID, like suspicion of a crime. If the person can produce the ID sooner, like by getting it from their house, there is no reason to hold them for 72 hours. If a cop locks somebody up for this amount of time and then releases them with no charges filed, and they cannot show they had probable cause to detain the person, they are begging for a lawsuit. Most police departments would pay out a settlement rather than trying to fight a false arrest suit.
This is by design. Politicians are afraid to appear weak on immigration law to prevent voter backlash. At the same time, they are very afraid to crack down on illegal immigration because, once again, they would lose votes. There are enough immigrants who have become citizens and enough descendants of immigrants in this country that the pro-immigration groups now have significant voting power. Politicians cannot ignore the opinions of immigrants, legal and otherwise, due to their supporters' voting power. Immigration law is becoming one of those "third rails" of politics, where no politician wants to touch it with a 10 foot poll.
I have never understood why some places require 2 IDs. If you can get a convincing looking fake ID, getting a second non-photo and non-birthdate ID would be no problem at all. Have your older brother, or whoever's ID you're using, to apply for a credit card and then cancel it shortly after the card arrives. There's your second ID.
I wonder if bar owners who bought these scanners realize they've been sold a bunch of snake oil. All they do is read the 3D barcode or mag stripe on the license. Forging this information would be the easiest aspect of making a fake ID. You can get free software that creates these codes. That, combined with a little analysis of valid licenses would be enough to figure out the encoding system and make your own. The scanners could only detect a very poorly made fake ID, which a trained bouncer or bartender should be able to spot anyway. But I guess these things make the bar owners feel better, not to mention if a minor were caught in the bar it would help the owner if they can show that they made every reasonable effort to keep minors out.
Speaking of attacking in every way possible, I'm surprised some group of "white hat hackers" hasn't come up with a DDOS spammer attack bot, kind of like the Lycos screensaver. This is something that couldn't be done by a corporation for liability reasons, but I doubt the FBI or other law enforcement groups are going to care if people are DDOSing known spamming networks. Even better, the spammers can't sue anyone unless they want a class action countersuit on behalf of those spammed.
That's not a sacrifice I'm willing to make for a movie I have purchased. If the manufacturer has intentionally disabled a feature on my player for the sole purpose of annoying me, I'm not buying the disc. I never buy a DVD without doing a web search to see if it has forced previews. If so, I don't buy, no matter how much I like the movie. In fact, I'm a lot more likely to download a movie off the internet if it means a better quality product than the one I would be paying money for.
This is not about piracy; it's about control. People who blow almost $30,000 on a glorified DVD player have no need to pirate the movies. This is about the movie studios keeping 100% control over how the end user uses the product they have paid for. If a company is allowed to make an expensive jukebox, then a company will be allowed to make a cheap one. Which means individuals will be able to buy them, someone might install a copy of a movie they didn't pay for, someone might figure out how to get the annoying ads off of the beginning of the movie, etc. The studios just don't get it. They fought the VCR from the beginning, and they are continuing to fight every new version of the home video recorder. Ultimately, these stupid efforts at control cost the studios a lot more than they could ever gain from it, but this is what happens when a business is run "by the numbers" with no regard for the customers.
Most of these types of suits have been dismissed. Scopes.com has determined that a lot of them are urban legends. In response to a few of these criminals winning judgements, many states have passed laws making it nearly impossible for these suits to be filed. It definitely makes me ill to think someone could make money like this, but the system isn't quite as broken as it sounds.
I don't think it will have any effect. The scumware makers would have to convince a court that users should not be allowed to run software of their choice on their own machines. I see very few legal strategies that could work here, especially if the case went to a jury. Would you, as a juror, side with the spyware/adware companies?
The reason these tests came about is the complete failure of some schools to teach anything at all. For years, the Chicago public schools would graduate students who couldn't even read what was written on their diplomas. The only way to fix this, in districts where the parents don't care about education, is standardized testing. Somebody must hold schools accountable, and if the parents won't then the government must.
I think you just hit the real reason in that last sentence. People are used to putting up with computer related bullshit (crashing software, software/hardware incompatibilities, lost passwords, etc.) that they have conditioned themselves to the reality that computers aren't perfect. Those that don't understand how they work don't know what kinds of bullshit they have to put up with and what kinds can be fixed. They just put up with things as long as the computer is still usable. Kind of like driving a car with plastic bags in place of windows; it just doesn't bother some people enough to make them fix it.
Once again, profanity. Fundies hate anything more extreme than gosh darn shucks. Also, I believe there was a mild romance scene in Saving Ryan's Privates. Oops, wrong movie. Saving Private Ryan, yes, it had lots of profanity and general "soldier talk". That combined with some disrespect for authority (the German soldiers) means this movie is fit for fundie parents but not their kids.
Oprah contributes to the correct political campaigns (Repubs and Dems). Stern did not do this and therefore made a convenient target for the bible beaters. This, by the way, is the same reason Martha Stewart went to jail for what was barely stock fraud but Bill Gates got a slap on the wrist for monopolistic activities.
I'd say it's the sex and the mixture of sex and violence that bothers them. Conservative bible beaters are not known for being offended by gratuitous violence alone, provided there is no nudity and nobody saying Goddamit or something like that. If a very graphic war video were shown on TV where Iraqis got blown apart by American bombs, I bet my life savings that the fundie bible beaters wouldn't object at all.
Wow, these people are suck whackos that for a second I thought it was some sort of parody site. Who appointed them God, and decided that all TV shows had to meet their super conservative standards? But they do support one thing that most Slashdotters approve of: a la carte cable TV channels.
Tell you what, bud, from now on I as a US citizen will set better policies, kay? What do you want me to change, debt relief, foreign aid, military? Want me to pull us out of Iraq? Just say it and I'll do it.
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Do you even read the comments before you flame? The grandparent said NOTHING about speed limits being a slippery slope. He was talking about MONITORING, which is entirely different than just having a limit in the traditional sense. If you're going to attack someone, which you seem to really get off on doing, at least make sure you've understood them first to avoid making yourself look like an ass in the process; oh wait, it's way too late for that one.
I've noticed Consumer Reports has given glowing reviews to Sears products (Craftsman and Kenmore) in the past and I have purchased some of them based on a CR recommendation, only to be very disappointed in their performance. A vaccum cleaner, drill, refrigerator and leaf blower were all highly recommended and then gave me nothing but problems until a short time later when I replaced them all with products of a different brand. Perhaps Sears somehow sponsors or supports CR? Either that or they just have no realistic way of testing reliability over a period of time.
I'm not sure what that would be. I'm not taking my passport to the bar; not to mention some people don't even have one. I'm not carrying my birth certificate around. It's a fine line between ensuring proper identity and driving away legitimate customers.
Expand the policy a little further and tell people not to use common sayings to form an acronym. For example, instead of using something common like Thank God It's Friday, use something that nobody would think of, like I Drive A Porsche (especially effective if you don't drive a Porsche). Add some numbers and punctuation after that, and there's no way anybody is guessing it without a brute force character-by-character attack.
This is only if they have a legitimate reason to require ID, like suspicion of a crime. If the person can produce the ID sooner, like by getting it from their house, there is no reason to hold them for 72 hours. If a cop locks somebody up for this amount of time and then releases them with no charges filed, and they cannot show they had probable cause to detain the person, they are begging for a lawsuit. Most police departments would pay out a settlement rather than trying to fight a false arrest suit.
This is by design. Politicians are afraid to appear weak on immigration law to prevent voter backlash. At the same time, they are very afraid to crack down on illegal immigration because, once again, they would lose votes. There are enough immigrants who have become citizens and enough descendants of immigrants in this country that the pro-immigration groups now have significant voting power. Politicians cannot ignore the opinions of immigrants, legal and otherwise, due to their supporters' voting power. Immigration law is becoming one of those "third rails" of politics, where no politician wants to touch it with a 10 foot poll.
I have never understood why some places require 2 IDs. If you can get a convincing looking fake ID, getting a second non-photo and non-birthdate ID would be no problem at all. Have your older brother, or whoever's ID you're using, to apply for a credit card and then cancel it shortly after the card arrives. There's your second ID.
I wonder if bar owners who bought these scanners realize they've been sold a bunch of snake oil. All they do is read the 3D barcode or mag stripe on the license. Forging this information would be the easiest aspect of making a fake ID. You can get free software that creates these codes. That, combined with a little analysis of valid licenses would be enough to figure out the encoding system and make your own. The scanners could only detect a very poorly made fake ID, which a trained bouncer or bartender should be able to spot anyway. But I guess these things make the bar owners feel better, not to mention if a minor were caught in the bar it would help the owner if they can show that they made every reasonable effort to keep minors out.
Better check for a hidden tape recorder first!
Just goes to prove that AWOL management clearly has no clue what is going on at their company. Start shorting the stock, if there's any left to short.
Speaking of attacking in every way possible, I'm surprised some group of "white hat hackers" hasn't come up with a DDOS spammer attack bot, kind of like the Lycos screensaver. This is something that couldn't be done by a corporation for liability reasons, but I doubt the FBI or other law enforcement groups are going to care if people are DDOSing known spamming networks. Even better, the spammers can't sue anyone unless they want a class action countersuit on behalf of those spammed.
That's not a sacrifice I'm willing to make for a movie I have purchased. If the manufacturer has intentionally disabled a feature on my player for the sole purpose of annoying me, I'm not buying the disc. I never buy a DVD without doing a web search to see if it has forced previews. If so, I don't buy, no matter how much I like the movie. In fact, I'm a lot more likely to download a movie off the internet if it means a better quality product than the one I would be paying money for.
This is not about piracy; it's about control. People who blow almost $30,000 on a glorified DVD player have no need to pirate the movies. This is about the movie studios keeping 100% control over how the end user uses the product they have paid for. If a company is allowed to make an expensive jukebox, then a company will be allowed to make a cheap one. Which means individuals will be able to buy them, someone might install a copy of a movie they didn't pay for, someone might figure out how to get the annoying ads off of the beginning of the movie, etc. The studios just don't get it. They fought the VCR from the beginning, and they are continuing to fight every new version of the home video recorder. Ultimately, these stupid efforts at control cost the studios a lot more than they could ever gain from it, but this is what happens when a business is run "by the numbers" with no regard for the customers.
Most of these types of suits have been dismissed. Scopes.com has determined that a lot of them are urban legends. In response to a few of these criminals winning judgements, many states have passed laws making it nearly impossible for these suits to be filed. It definitely makes me ill to think someone could make money like this, but the system isn't quite as broken as it sounds.
I don't think it will have any effect. The scumware makers would have to convince a court that users should not be allowed to run software of their choice on their own machines. I see very few legal strategies that could work here, especially if the case went to a jury. Would you, as a juror, side with the spyware/adware companies?
The reason these tests came about is the complete failure of some schools to teach anything at all. For years, the Chicago public schools would graduate students who couldn't even read what was written on their diplomas. The only way to fix this, in districts where the parents don't care about education, is standardized testing. Somebody must hold schools accountable, and if the parents won't then the government must.
For the last time, a socialist rag like commondreamers is an opinion piece. NOT an impartial collection of facts to be used in an argument.
I think you just hit the real reason in that last sentence. People are used to putting up with computer related bullshit (crashing software, software/hardware incompatibilities, lost passwords, etc.) that they have conditioned themselves to the reality that computers aren't perfect. Those that don't understand how they work don't know what kinds of bullshit they have to put up with and what kinds can be fixed. They just put up with things as long as the computer is still usable. Kind of like driving a car with plastic bags in place of windows; it just doesn't bother some people enough to make them fix it.
No shit. These idiots are giving a lot of TV shows free publicity. I'm definitely going to watch FX more!
Once again, profanity. Fundies hate anything more extreme than gosh darn shucks. Also, I believe there was a mild romance scene in Saving Ryan's Privates. Oops, wrong movie. Saving Private Ryan, yes, it had lots of profanity and general "soldier talk". That combined with some disrespect for authority (the German soldiers) means this movie is fit for fundie parents but not their kids.
Nice try Oligonicella. We see right through your AC post.
Oprah contributes to the correct political campaigns (Repubs and Dems). Stern did not do this and therefore made a convenient target for the bible beaters. This, by the way, is the same reason Martha Stewart went to jail for what was barely stock fraud but Bill Gates got a slap on the wrist for monopolistic activities.
I'd say it's the sex and the mixture of sex and violence that bothers them. Conservative bible beaters are not known for being offended by gratuitous violence alone, provided there is no nudity and nobody saying Goddamit or something like that. If a very graphic war video were shown on TV where Iraqis got blown apart by American bombs, I bet my life savings that the fundie bible beaters wouldn't object at all.
Wow, these people are suck whackos that for a second I thought it was some sort of parody site. Who appointed them God, and decided that all TV shows had to meet their super conservative standards? But they do support one thing that most Slashdotters approve of: a la carte cable TV channels.
Tell you what, bud, from now on I as a US citizen will set better policies, kay? What do you want me to change, debt relief, foreign aid, military? Want me to pull us out of Iraq? Just say it and I'll do it.