Not just Guitar Hero, Destiny, too. And it's working —four of the top five PlayStation® Store for PS4 purchases are Destiny in-game currency this week.
This is the type of approach most of us "law hackers" (aka "armchair attorneies") would try as a next step. The flip side (and the down side) is that AT&T will never allow the actual issue to appear before a judge. They will:
- parade out yours terms of service agreement as a contract and request sunmary dismissal
- cancel your service
- bury you in motions: change of venue to their HQ state (which is likely in those terms of service), dismissal insufficient standing — you're not an expert, you hacked your gear to obtain incorrect figures, et cetera
At the end of the day, they can simply outspend the average user, and it's in their best interest to do so. Lending any sort of credibility to such a lawsuit would expose them to similar suits from other users — up to a potential class action. The lawsuit will never even make it to anyone technical for review of it's merit. They have an in-house legal team and many firms on retainer to deal with just such suits.
It all sucks, but that's the real world view for the little guy in our legal system.
Technically, I believe PS4 simply hasn't added these features to it's OS yet. Many features of the PS3's XMB still aren't supported on the PS4 or on the Vita yet. In fact, the Vita even emulates the XMB to provide access to many of these features.
I read this, and thought, "Wait, I'm currently playing this in simulationâ¦" It's sad that this is manner in which life has chosen to imitate art.
It also raises the question, "Did the researchers see the game and decide to try it? Is the game really a covert proof-of-concept? Or is this *really* just a coincidence? (Go away you nutty conspiracy theorists!)"
Whilst studying for my BS in computer engineering 20 years ago, I struggled with the same issue. Now, after all these years, I'm poised to complete my Doctorate of Engineering in mathematics. The trick was grasping the basic concepts of advanced maths (theory, not equations and applications) and then solving them using software, either commercial or custom.
One thing that was a *huge* help was Mathematica. It's damned expensive on a student's budget, but it was an amazing learning tool that, at least, helped me earn that first degree. Most tech colleges require MatLab, which is an amazing tool as well, but it's hard to match Wolfram's software.
I'm not suggesting that you just key in your homework and coast â" Mathematica always provides reference material, links, and other sources that a great way to pull apart the problem and make it understandable.
Lastly, if Mathematica is out of your budget, use Wolfram Alpha. This free tool has more capabilities than Mathematica did 20 years ago. There are also low cost modules for Computer Science, DiffEqs, Stats, Integration, and more.
Best of luck. I hope your degree leads you into a successful career.
I know there are only a few diehard holdout BeOS geeks still out there, and I know we have a terrible secret the world has never uncovered: BeFS. This file system, coded and deployed (production) in 1992, is 64-bit, multi-threaded, and fully journaled â" attributes taken for granted today, but only futuristic buzzwords for other OSes of the day. Hard drives deployed on R4, an Intel x86 or PPC OS, were typically 6GB IDE drives. BeFS can handle single files of up to 18,000 petabytes - all of recorded human history at the time was only ~100 petabytes.
BeFS is built on an OODB. It's tough, reliable, and well documented (there are even three venerated O'Reilly books on the subject â" two dedicated to *just* the filesystem). It's what zfs and btfs want to be when they grow up.
And today, it's discarded. While Linux, OS X, BSD and other OSes could be compiled with kernel support, they aren't. Running it essentially means putting a virtual FS in a file.
Tragic â" another example of reinventing the wheel.
You're absolutely right. I *hate* to use a cliché, but this is just another example that "the terrorists... er, lobbyists have won."
There's no reason we need to throw away the Constitution or the Bill of Rights just to get the "bad guys". It's not like every police agency from the small town sheriff to the FBI isn't familiar with the process of obtaining warrants to tap phone lines. This just means they've no need for probable cause.
The flip side of this is that nearly every wireless hub sold from 2007 to today have encryption and/or authentication turned on by default. More of the population is aware of the risks today than ever before. It's hard to imagine that any illegal endeavour would use unencrypted wireless access. And while nearly every encryption method has been cracked, it's been a brute force attack — not something a law enforcement agency wardriving will be cracking onsite — unless you can fit a supercomputer or a super-computing grid in your car.
It will eventually take quantum computing to make this possible, but by then, we'll likely be using quantum non-locality cryptology. Oh well.
I use Apple's iLife suite — specifically iPhoto — to manage external FireWire drives. I know it sounds like I'm just another Apple fanboy, but it really is a great photo management suite.
You make an excellent point in the first part of your remarks - tickets did exist before radar and the like..
However, speeding tickets are criminal charges - they simply aren't felony charges (unless the speeder is exceeding the limit by greater than 15 mph in most states). There may not be a jury, but with most moving violations, while de died by the jurist, are still held to the standard of reasonable doubt. While this may indeed come down to the more credible witness, it still shocks the sensible mind that this is within the scope of reasonable juris purdence.
It hardly meets the burden of "beyond a reasonable doubt".
I'm surprised it made it as far as it did. I hope the Ohio Supreme Court isn't an elected body — or their jobs will all be on the chopping block next election day!
The parents in this thread are exactly right - this is NOAA. Beyond that, NOAA also has the authority if the NOAA Corp, one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. This service is lead by Rear Admiral Jonathan W. Bailey, Director of the NOAA Commissioned Corps and Director of the Office of Marine and Aviation Operations and Rear Admiral Philip M. Kenul, Director of Marine and Aviation Operations Centers. The over 300 officers in this corps have access to the further resources of the US Navy and US Coast Guard. This corps provides a diversity of professionals trained in engineering, earth sciences, oceanography, meteorology, fisheries science, and other related disciplines - all experts in their respective fields, all with something to contribute to the "issue" of climate change.
In fact, the NOAA Corps is now recruiting for its 115th Basic Officer Training Class - expanding personnel in key leadership, expertise, and officer roles. Why do we need to waste more government money on yet another pointless, duplicative program? Task these able-bodied professionals with the job - one they are already undertaking.
Wanna join the 115th Basic Officer Training Class?
To be considered for BOTC 115, a complete application package must be submitted to the NOAA Corps Recruiting Unit no later than May 29, 2009. The tentative start date for BOTC 115 is August 30, 2009. More information can be found at:
http://www.noaacorps.noaa.gov/recruiting/index.html.
But thank god! I honestly believe my bank accounts are worth a helluva lot more than my vote. Maybe I'm just a little too cynical (or too rich, I suppose - right!), but, honestly, who's really going to try to "steal" an election though the use of electronic fraud? I mean, there are much easier methods to steal an election, like using the court system - right?
I'm honestly pleased that Diebold (Premier, whatever) is putting more effort, money, and focus on securing, developing, and making ATMs more robust than voting machines. It has more impact on the user at the end of the day.
(And, let me be clear - I always vote. I'm not just some loser non-voter who thinks all votes are worthless. I just think that, in comparison, my ATM card is worth more than my ballot.)
As another crusty old high-school-turned-grown-up, I heartily recommend you try "D&D Tactics" for the PSP if you're looking for the real "tabletop RPG on the computer". It's much more legalistic than WoW - more precisely, its complexity is transparent. The systems takes on the role of DM, and the game plays just like a well written tabletop campaign. A key advantage of the game is that it takes care of all rules, roles, and effects, so you can focus on play - because of this, you can control an entire party in turn-based combat. Much like its inspiration, there are nearly limitless variations - races, classes, weapons, spells, items, and more are turned like a firehose onto the player almost immediately. The one thing this entire paradigm loses, of course, is social interaction. Thankfully, the PSP's ad hoc WiFi allows multiple players to game together on separate PSPs.
Like you, I was yearning for a walk down D&D memory lane. For the past two years, I've been buying up a full set of AD&D 2nd Ed. books from the worldwide garage sale that is eBay. (Let's face it, 2nd Ed. AD&D is the only real D&D... Gygax rules!) I've been trying to get friends on-board but everyone else is more interested in WoW and other MMORPGs. This game was a great way for me to get the D&D fix I was jonesing for.
Honestly, I'm a little surprised. The very first reply opens with GNOME != SUSE... but, let's look at this seriously - GNOME may not be SUSE, but it certainly is Novell. You're talking about a company that employs many key GNOME developers. To futher quote the replies to this post, GNOME != Miguel deIcaza - true - but a LOT closer to the mark is GNOME == Nat Friedman. More importantly, look at the list of GNOME project thought-leaders under Nat's leadership at Novell... people like Larry Ewing (F-Spot), Michael Meeks, Dave Camp, Joe Shaw, Robert Love, and (yes) Miguel de Icaza.
Even more concerning is influence that Novell simultaneously exerts over the KDE project. In this case, Novell certainly doesn't have the impact on KDE that TrollTech does - however, they do have the legacy SUSE team, who were (are?) huge KDE advocates, users, and comprise many of the developers.
So, does Novell present a nexus of influence and control on the core of Linux's desktop systems? Can they exert undue influence on these projects and, therefore, bend them to the good of their corporation - as opposed to the projects being driven primarily by unaffilated community developers? (Or at least a community of developers with varied and diverse affilations, effecting the same net result...)
And, then, the question that naturally flows from this discussion is "Is this a good thing?". While I don't think anyone one entity should have paramount influence over two competing projects, in this case there may be some significant advantages. Having a unified driver behind both GNOME and KDE could allow a desktop to take advantage of the best from each. We've seen Novell already attempt to do this in their own distro - SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 has many useful KDE features ported to GNOME and integrated into their standard desktop configuration.
I guess at the end of the day, it comes down to two questions: 1) Do you think really can influence both projects (or even either one)? and 2) Do you trust Novell to drive the desktop in a direction beneficial to all?
So, what I took from this article is that the NYPD has domestic and international espionage capabilities comparable to (or, worse, better than) our nation's designed intelligence bodies. They also seem to do a better job of sharing information between agencies than the CIA, NSA, the various military intelligence organizations, and the FBI.
This is yet another illustration of my point... the people that need to be in Iraq and Afghanistan are the NYPD and the LAPD. Their SWAT, negotiations, and (apparently!) intelligence teams are what's needed - these efforts ceased being appropriate "military actions" some time ago. What's needed now is an effective police force - which not the U.S. Army or Marines.
And, by the way, yes, I do agree with what will no doubt the general sentiment on there - that is an outrageous, appalling, and despicable invasion of the personal privacy rights of ordinary citizens around the globe... but, aside from whining about how corrupt our elected officials and expressing my outrage, I figured there was some small glimmer of upside in this piece.
So, I posted my original reply before I realized how many other people have these chronic pain issues on slashdot. Wow.
I've been incapacitated due to a mystery infection most of this year, which has given me time revert to my geek roots and begin programming, writing, recording, and interviewing patients and physicians on major healthcare issues. I'm still in the planning stages, unfortunately, but I'm trying to build some online community and develop a tool to help patients such as myself deal with a mess of doctors, prescriptions, procedures, hospitalizations, insurance information, and all the other data necessary to present oneself to a new doctor for treatment.
To these ends I've helped my local support community to start work on an initiative their calling "The Patient's Prescription". It is U.S.-centric for now, and barely off the ground yet. That said, I see an opportunity here, to contact a unique audience - geeks with chronic healthcare issues.
If you're interesting in seeing the beginnings of it all, feel free to visit http://www.patientsprescription.org/, though there's not much to look at just yet. Additionally, if you're interested in helping, please e-mail the group at volunteers@patientsprescription.org. If you can't volunteer, or don't have the ability or interest, but would like to be kept up to date on the community, please feel free to send a note to community@patientsprescription.org.
Please don't misinterpret my meaning in this post - the organization is right now incorporating as a non-profit. There will be no membership fees, nothing will ever cost any money, and all software will be free and open. We will never even ask for donations. I'm not posting this for any sort of personal gain, just to extend an invitation to participate. I wish the project was further along, but I wanted to strike while the iron was hot.
You make some really good points - i empathize with your situation. I find myself in the same situation as yourself, dealing with multiple incurable chronic pain issues. I've battled with intense pain since I was 5, but now, at 31, at least opiates provide some relief. I've commented in the past about addiction vs. dependance, but this article brings up another excellent opportunity.
If this natural enzyme can provide the pain relief of morphine or better, without the physical dependancy issues, it would be a welcome opportunity. In my situation, as I assume is the same yours (parent post), I'm taking a huge dose of Fentanyl daily, without side effects, sedation, or any other adverse reaction. The problem is, if I injure myself or have an acute (non-routine - for me) pain issue, ER physicians are hesitant to 1) believe that a patient could actually be taking 2g of fentanyl per day while remaining functional, or 2) effectively treat a patient in such a situation. My experience has been that they always attempt low-dose (relatively speaking, at least) IV morphine and following the standing clinical dosing guidelines for Joe Sixpack, to which any pain that actually lands such a patient in the ER will be refractory to. As a result, I now avoid ER's unless *absolutely* necessary - preferring instead to be admitted by a physician familiar with my history.
Honestly, my worst nightmare is that I'll end up in a car accident or some other unforeseen catastrophic medical issue that will require immediate pain management. There's not much out there that's more potent than fentanyl, and all of the hospitals in my area (a large, metropolitan city with many world-class healthcare institutions) have a policy of only administering fentanyl in an ICU setting. In fact, when i had my gallbladder removed in May, the anesthesiologist was shocked after they administered the IV sedatives for the operation, I was completely lucid and actually walked into the OR and laid myself down on the operating table. In that situation, they ended up giving me huge doses of IV Demerol post-op, which quickly builds up a toxic by-product in the body, damaging the nervous system. After three days, they basically discontinued all pain management (at my request) because I had begun having uncontrollable, Demerol-induced seizures.
(sigh) I'm sorry that I've been wordy and self-centered in this post, but I'm outlining my situation because I know (mostly from my physicians) that there are many, many other people in the same boat with me - to some extent or another. Breakthroughs like this (in TFA) are a welcome blessing to many people who don't want to spend their lives as slaves to opiates, and need to seek alternatives for chronic pain management.
Thank you, reader, for allowing me to bare my soul to you online. ^_^
My employer, a large bank, doesn't even use SSN's (or, more specifically TIN's - Taxpayer Identification Number) for non-financial information. Our employee ID numbers are unique, distinct, and not based on any formula. Now, that said, any employee that has a corporate credit card or is an officer of the company ("Officer", "Assistant Vice President", "Vice President", "Director", "Managing Director", "Senior Vice President", "Executive Vice President", "Senior Executive Vice President", etc., etc., etc.) does have their credit checked monthly by the company. But, I would assume that any company - not just a bank - would take that precaution with employees with purchasing or signatory authority. That system is based on SSN/TIN at our company - but it makes sense there.
I believe that there is a Federal Regulation that intends to restrict the use of SSN/TIN numbers for identification by (guessing here) 2010. I'm certain there is such a law for banks, but I believe that it extends to any US public company. Anyone have details on this?
One last thing - I know many people who use fake SSN's for non-financial uses. For some time, Richard Nixon's SSN was very popular. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not endorsing that practice - just sharing that it seems pretty common to me.
So, according to Bill AB 424 in the Great Sovereign State of California, any company negligent in the protection of customer identity data must immediately inform the offended party upon being made aware of the breach.
I understand that there have been several attempts to leverage that law on behalf of US citizens who can't afford to live in California (us poor, ol' east coast folks!) to require major corporations transacting any business in California to immediately disclose based on that law.
I'm sure there's jurisdictional issues, but there's at least some chance in hell that virtue jurisprudence will prevail.
Anyone with an actual Litt.D, SJD, or otherwise more qualified care to add fact to my hype and speculation?:)
Slashdot Mirror
Not just Guitar Hero, Destiny, too. And it's working —four of the top five PlayStation® Store for PS4 purchases are Destiny in-game currency this week.
Thanks for the clarity - it's much appreciated!
This is the type of approach most of us "law hackers" (aka "armchair attorneies") would try as a next step. The flip side (and the down side) is that AT&T will never allow the actual issue to appear before a judge. They will:
- parade out yours terms of service agreement as a contract and request sunmary dismissal
- cancel your service
- bury you in motions: change of venue to their HQ state (which is likely in those terms of service), dismissal insufficient standing — you're not an expert, you hacked your gear to obtain incorrect figures, et cetera
At the end of the day, they can simply outspend the average user, and it's in their best interest to do so. Lending any sort of credibility to such a lawsuit would expose them to similar suits from other users — up to a potential class action. The lawsuit will never even make it to anyone technical for review of it's merit. They have an in-house legal team and many firms on retainer to deal with just such suits.
It all sucks, but that's the real world view for the little guy in our legal system.
Technically, I believe PS4 simply hasn't added these features to it's OS yet. Many features of the PS3's XMB still aren't supported on the PS4 or on the Vita yet. In fact, the Vita even emulates the XMB to provide access to many of these features.
Sad, but regrettably accurate if past outcomes predict future behaviours.
I read this, and thought, "Wait, I'm currently playing this in simulationâ¦" It's sad that this is manner in which life has chosen to imitate art. It also raises the question, "Did the researchers see the game and decide to try it? Is the game really a covert proof-of-concept? Or is this *really* just a coincidence? (Go away you nutty conspiracy theorists!)"
Whilst studying for my BS in computer engineering 20 years ago, I struggled with the same issue. Now, after all these years, I'm poised to complete my Doctorate of Engineering in mathematics. The trick was grasping the basic concepts of advanced maths (theory, not equations and applications) and then solving them using software, either commercial or custom. One thing that was a *huge* help was Mathematica. It's damned expensive on a student's budget, but it was an amazing learning tool that, at least, helped me earn that first degree. Most tech colleges require MatLab, which is an amazing tool as well, but it's hard to match Wolfram's software. I'm not suggesting that you just key in your homework and coast â" Mathematica always provides reference material, links, and other sources that a great way to pull apart the problem and make it understandable. Lastly, if Mathematica is out of your budget, use Wolfram Alpha. This free tool has more capabilities than Mathematica did 20 years ago. There are also low cost modules for Computer Science, DiffEqs, Stats, Integration, and more. Best of luck. I hope your degree leads you into a successful career.
I know there are only a few diehard holdout BeOS geeks still out there, and I know we have a terrible secret the world has never uncovered: BeFS. This file system, coded and deployed (production) in 1992, is 64-bit, multi-threaded, and fully journaled â" attributes taken for granted today, but only futuristic buzzwords for other OSes of the day. Hard drives deployed on R4, an Intel x86 or PPC OS, were typically 6GB IDE drives. BeFS can handle single files of up to 18,000 petabytes - all of recorded human history at the time was only ~100 petabytes. BeFS is built on an OODB. It's tough, reliable, and well documented (there are even three venerated O'Reilly books on the subject â" two dedicated to *just* the filesystem). It's what zfs and btfs want to be when they grow up. And today, it's discarded. While Linux, OS X, BSD and other OSes could be compiled with kernel support, they aren't. Running it essentially means putting a virtual FS in a file. Tragic â" another example of reinventing the wheel.
You're absolutely right. I *hate* to use a cliché, but this is just another example that "the terrorists... er, lobbyists have won."
There's no reason we need to throw away the Constitution or the Bill of Rights just to get the "bad guys". It's not like every police agency from the small town sheriff to the FBI isn't familiar with the process of obtaining warrants to tap phone lines. This just means they've no need for probable cause.
The flip side of this is that nearly every wireless hub sold from 2007 to today have encryption and/or authentication turned on by default. More of the population is aware of the risks today than ever before. It's hard to imagine that any illegal endeavour would use unencrypted wireless access. And while nearly every encryption method has been cracked, it's been a brute force attack — not something a law enforcement agency wardriving will be cracking onsite — unless you can fit a supercomputer or a super-computing grid in your car.
It will eventually take quantum computing to make this possible, but by then, we'll likely be using quantum non-locality cryptology. Oh well.
That's a rather subjective winning criteria... I've met *many* "panels of doctors" that are no better than an iPad.
I use Apple's iLife suite — specifically iPhoto — to manage external FireWire drives. I know it sounds like I'm just another Apple fanboy, but it really is a great photo management suite.
You make an excellent point in the first part of your remarks - tickets did exist before radar and the like..
However, speeding tickets are criminal charges - they simply aren't felony charges (unless the speeder is exceeding the limit by greater than 15 mph in most states). There may not be a jury, but with most moving violations, while de died by the jurist, are still held to the standard of reasonable doubt. While this may indeed come down to the more credible witness, it still shocks the sensible mind that this is within the scope of reasonable juris purdence.
would accept this type of citation.
It hardly meets the burden of "beyond a reasonable doubt".
I'm surprised it made it as far as it did. I hope the Ohio Supreme Court isn't an elected body — or their jobs will all be on the chopping block next election day!
The parents in this thread are exactly right - this is NOAA. Beyond that, NOAA also has the authority if the NOAA Corp, one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. This service is lead by Rear Admiral Jonathan W. Bailey, Director of the NOAA Commissioned Corps and Director of the Office of Marine and Aviation Operations and Rear Admiral Philip M. Kenul, Director of Marine and Aviation Operations Centers. The over 300 officers in this corps have access to the further resources of the US Navy and US Coast Guard. This corps provides a diversity of professionals trained in engineering, earth sciences, oceanography, meteorology, fisheries science, and other related disciplines - all experts in their respective fields, all with something to contribute to the "issue" of climate change.
In fact, the NOAA Corps is now recruiting for its 115th Basic Officer Training Class - expanding personnel in key leadership, expertise, and officer roles. Why do we need to waste more government money on yet another pointless, duplicative program? Task these able-bodied professionals with the job - one they are already undertaking.
Want more information?
http://www.noaacorps.noaa.gov/
Wanna join the 115th Basic Officer Training Class?
To be considered for BOTC 115, a complete application package must be submitted to the NOAA Corps Recruiting Unit no later than May 29, 2009. The tentative start date for BOTC 115 is August 30, 2009. More information can be found at: http://www.noaacorps.noaa.gov/recruiting/index.html.
The problem will be global warming... talk about a way to increase oceanic temperatures and melt the polar ice caps!
Google - bad for the environment.... I never thought I'd see the day...
But thank god! I honestly believe my bank accounts are worth a helluva lot more than my vote. Maybe I'm just a little too cynical (or too rich, I suppose - right!), but, honestly, who's really going to try to "steal" an election though the use of electronic fraud? I mean, there are much easier methods to steal an election, like using the court system - right?
I'm honestly pleased that Diebold (Premier, whatever) is putting more effort, money, and focus on securing, developing, and making ATMs more robust than voting machines. It has more impact on the user at the end of the day.
(And, let me be clear - I always vote. I'm not just some loser non-voter who thinks all votes are worthless. I just think that, in comparison, my ATM card is worth more than my ballot.)
As another crusty old high-school-turned-grown-up, I heartily recommend you try "D&D Tactics" for the PSP if you're looking for the real "tabletop RPG on the computer". It's much more legalistic than WoW - more precisely, its complexity is transparent. The systems takes on the role of DM, and the game plays just like a well written tabletop campaign. A key advantage of the game is that it takes care of all rules, roles, and effects, so you can focus on play - because of this, you can control an entire party in turn-based combat. Much like its inspiration, there are nearly limitless variations - races, classes, weapons, spells, items, and more are turned like a firehose onto the player almost immediately. The one thing this entire paradigm loses, of course, is social interaction. Thankfully, the PSP's ad hoc WiFi allows multiple players to game together on separate PSPs.
Like you, I was yearning for a walk down D&D memory lane. For the past two years, I've been buying up a full set of AD&D 2nd Ed. books from the worldwide garage sale that is eBay. (Let's face it, 2nd Ed. AD&D is the only real D&D... Gygax rules!) I've been trying to get friends on-board but everyone else is more interested in WoW and other MMORPGs. This game was a great way for me to get the D&D fix I was jonesing for.
Honestly, I'm a little surprised. The very first reply opens with GNOME != SUSE... but, let's look at this seriously - GNOME may not be SUSE, but it certainly is Novell. You're talking about a company that employs many key GNOME developers. To futher quote the replies to this post, GNOME != Miguel deIcaza - true - but a LOT closer to the mark is GNOME == Nat Friedman. More importantly, look at the list of GNOME project thought-leaders under Nat's leadership at Novell... people like Larry Ewing (F-Spot), Michael Meeks, Dave Camp, Joe Shaw, Robert Love, and (yes) Miguel de Icaza.
Even more concerning is influence that Novell simultaneously exerts over the KDE project. In this case, Novell certainly doesn't have the impact on KDE that TrollTech does - however, they do have the legacy SUSE team, who were (are?) huge KDE advocates, users, and comprise many of the developers.
So, does Novell present a nexus of influence and control on the core of Linux's desktop systems? Can they exert undue influence on these projects and, therefore, bend them to the good of their corporation - as opposed to the projects being driven primarily by unaffilated community developers? (Or at least a community of developers with varied and diverse affilations, effecting the same net result...)
And, then, the question that naturally flows from this discussion is "Is this a good thing?". While I don't think anyone one entity should have paramount influence over two competing projects, in this case there may be some significant advantages. Having a unified driver behind both GNOME and KDE could allow a desktop to take advantage of the best from each. We've seen Novell already attempt to do this in their own distro - SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 has many useful KDE features ported to GNOME and integrated into their standard desktop configuration.
I guess at the end of the day, it comes down to two questions: 1) Do you think really can influence both projects (or even either one)? and 2) Do you trust Novell to drive the desktop in a direction beneficial to all?
So, what I took from this article is that the NYPD has domestic and international espionage capabilities comparable to (or, worse, better than) our nation's designed intelligence bodies. They also seem to do a better job of sharing information between agencies than the CIA, NSA, the various military intelligence organizations, and the FBI.
This is yet another illustration of my point... the people that need to be in Iraq and Afghanistan are the NYPD and the LAPD. Their SWAT, negotiations, and (apparently!) intelligence teams are what's needed - these efforts ceased being appropriate "military actions" some time ago. What's needed now is an effective police force - which not the U.S. Army or Marines.
And, by the way, yes, I do agree with what will no doubt the general sentiment on there - that is an outrageous, appalling, and despicable invasion of the personal privacy rights of ordinary citizens around the globe... but, aside from whining about how corrupt our elected officials and expressing my outrage, I figured there was some small glimmer of upside in this piece.
This is a really cool idea, and, as a computer engineer, I see the geek-cred the author earned in creating it...
But, obviously, this was his only printer, as evidenced by the poorly-drawn pencil sketch circuit diagram, this must have been his only printer!
All in the name science... or at least, all in the name screwing around with science! ^_^
So, I posted my original reply before I realized how many other people have these chronic pain issues on slashdot. Wow.
I've been incapacitated due to a mystery infection most of this year, which has given me time revert to my geek roots and begin programming, writing, recording, and interviewing patients and physicians on major healthcare issues. I'm still in the planning stages, unfortunately, but I'm trying to build some online community and develop a tool to help patients such as myself deal with a mess of doctors, prescriptions, procedures, hospitalizations, insurance information, and all the other data necessary to present oneself to a new doctor for treatment.
To these ends I've helped my local support community to start work on an initiative their calling "The Patient's Prescription". It is U.S.-centric for now, and barely off the ground yet. That said, I see an opportunity here, to contact a unique audience - geeks with chronic healthcare issues.
If you're interesting in seeing the beginnings of it all, feel free to visit http://www.patientsprescription.org/, though there's not much to look at just yet. Additionally, if you're interested in helping, please e-mail the group at volunteers@patientsprescription.org. If you can't volunteer, or don't have the ability or interest, but would like to be kept up to date on the community, please feel free to send a note to community@patientsprescription.org.
Please don't misinterpret my meaning in this post - the organization is right now incorporating as a non-profit. There will be no membership fees, nothing will ever cost any money, and all software will be free and open. We will never even ask for donations. I'm not posting this for any sort of personal gain, just to extend an invitation to participate. I wish the project was further along, but I wanted to strike while the iron was hot.
Thanks for once again humoring me. ^_^
You make some really good points - i empathize with your situation. I find myself in the same situation as yourself, dealing with multiple incurable chronic pain issues. I've battled with intense pain since I was 5, but now, at 31, at least opiates provide some relief. I've commented in the past about addiction vs. dependance, but this article brings up another excellent opportunity.
If this natural enzyme can provide the pain relief of morphine or better, without the physical dependancy issues, it would be a welcome opportunity. In my situation, as I assume is the same yours (parent post), I'm taking a huge dose of Fentanyl daily, without side effects, sedation, or any other adverse reaction. The problem is, if I injure myself or have an acute (non-routine - for me) pain issue, ER physicians are hesitant to 1) believe that a patient could actually be taking 2g of fentanyl per day while remaining functional, or 2) effectively treat a patient in such a situation. My experience has been that they always attempt low-dose (relatively speaking, at least) IV morphine and following the standing clinical dosing guidelines for Joe Sixpack, to which any pain that actually lands such a patient in the ER will be refractory to. As a result, I now avoid ER's unless *absolutely* necessary - preferring instead to be admitted by a physician familiar with my history.
Honestly, my worst nightmare is that I'll end up in a car accident or some other unforeseen catastrophic medical issue that will require immediate pain management. There's not much out there that's more potent than fentanyl, and all of the hospitals in my area (a large, metropolitan city with many world-class healthcare institutions) have a policy of only administering fentanyl in an ICU setting. In fact, when i had my gallbladder removed in May, the anesthesiologist was shocked after they administered the IV sedatives for the operation, I was completely lucid and actually walked into the OR and laid myself down on the operating table. In that situation, they ended up giving me huge doses of IV Demerol post-op, which quickly builds up a toxic by-product in the body, damaging the nervous system. After three days, they basically discontinued all pain management (at my request) because I had begun having uncontrollable, Demerol-induced seizures.
(sigh) I'm sorry that I've been wordy and self-centered in this post, but I'm outlining my situation because I know (mostly from my physicians) that there are many, many other people in the same boat with me - to some extent or another. Breakthroughs like this (in TFA) are a welcome blessing to many people who don't want to spend their lives as slaves to opiates, and need to seek alternatives for chronic pain management.
Thank you, reader, for allowing me to bare my soul to you online. ^_^
My employer, a large bank, doesn't even use SSN's (or, more specifically TIN's - Taxpayer Identification Number) for non-financial information. Our employee ID numbers are unique, distinct, and not based on any formula. Now, that said, any employee that has a corporate credit card or is an officer of the company ("Officer", "Assistant Vice President", "Vice President", "Director", "Managing Director", "Senior Vice President", "Executive Vice President", "Senior Executive Vice President", etc., etc., etc.) does have their credit checked monthly by the company. But, I would assume that any company - not just a bank - would take that precaution with employees with purchasing or signatory authority. That system is based on SSN/TIN at our company - but it makes sense there.
I believe that there is a Federal Regulation that intends to restrict the use of SSN/TIN numbers for identification by (guessing here) 2010. I'm certain there is such a law for banks, but I believe that it extends to any US public company. Anyone have details on this?
One last thing - I know many people who use fake SSN's for non-financial uses. For some time, Richard Nixon's SSN was very popular. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not endorsing that practice - just sharing that it seems pretty common to me.
So, before I RTFA, I just assumed that there was a "bully" that was to be handed over.
"News for Nerds," eh? A bully getting there just desserts would certainly be of interest to all us nerds who faced bullies throughout adolesence.
But, then, I suppose that after RTFA, the real bully here is that idiot Jack Thompson.
So, according to Bill AB 424 in the Great Sovereign State of California, any company negligent in the protection of customer identity data must immediately inform the offended party upon being made aware of the breach.
:)
I understand that there have been several attempts to leverage that law on behalf of US citizens who can't afford to live in California (us poor, ol' east coast folks!) to require major corporations transacting any business in California to immediately disclose based on that law.
I'm sure there's jurisdictional issues, but there's at least some chance in hell that virtue jurisprudence will prevail.
Anyone with an actual Litt.D, SJD, or otherwise more qualified care to add fact to my hype and speculation?