Stories like this really irk me, and show how the industry wants to make the notion of identity theft much scarier than it really is. This is an example of an "identity thief?" This moron used stolen credit cards and shipped the crap to his parents' house where he lived. He's an idiot. Other people with common sense wouldn't do stupid shit like what he was doing. There's no skill involved in what he did. Any waiter or someone who handles credit cards on a daily basis could do the same thing, but they don't because they're not idiots like this guy.
In the end, anybody he ripped off probably didn't have to pay, so it was the merchants that got screwed if anybody, and this is becoming harder and harder to pull off.
If there's one thing this article does point out, it's that if the feds really want to stop identity theft damages, they'd shut down Western Union. That money transfer service pretty much solely exists now to play a party to scams of this nature.
So, yes, we all know this guy doesn't know what he's talking about, ha ha ha, but has anyone bothered to write a calm, reasonable letter explaining to him how the internet really works, or told him why it took so long for him to receive his "internet"? How about picking up the phone and calling his office and offering a bit of help?
Yes, it's fun to laugh at this garbage, but if all we do is laugh then nothing in government ever has a chance to improve. Individuals can make a difference.
Are you serious? Are you so naive that you think this guy is motivated by a thorough understanding of issues, as opposed to money, power, vanity and appeasing select corporate benefactors that lead to his eventual reelection?
Keep that idealism of yours tucked away. Someone's going to drag it into the street and beat it over the head with a Pringles can full of cement.
The bible does a good job itself of bashing christians and humanity. We don't need to make fun of christians. A casual glimpse into the irrational rules their so-called god has handed down to them, which they don't seem to question is evidence enough:
So what does the Bible tell us?
Who should we kill? ?
- Homosexuals (Lev.20:13, Rom.1:26-32) - Adulterers (Lev.20:10, Deut.22:22) - Disobedient children (Deut.21:20-21, Lev.20:9, Exod.21:15) - Women who are not virgins on their wedding night (Deut.22:13-21) - All non-Christians (parable told by Christ - Luke.19:27) - Those accused of wickedness by at least two people (Deut.17:2-7) - Anyone who works on the Sabbath (Exod.35:2-3, Num.15:32-6) (not even to kindle a fire, and no exclusion for ambulance drivers)
Women
- It is shameful for a woman to speak in church (1Cor.14:34-5) - A man must OK his wifes words if they are to have force (Num.30:8) - A woman must not teach or hold authority over a man (1Tim.2:12) - Lot saves the messengers from the men of Sodom by offering up his virgin daughters to do to them as you please (Gen.19:8) - Kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourself every girl who has never slept with a man (Moses - Num.31:17-8)
Slavery
- God supports slavery (Lev.25:44-6, Exod.21:2-8, Eph.6:5, Col.3:22) - Instructions on how to sell your daughter as a slave (Exod.21:7-8) - When to give your slaves severe or light beatings (Luke.12:42-8) - OK to beat slaves only if they dont die within 2 days (Exod.21:20-1) - How to mark your slave: drive an awl through its ear (Deut.15:17)
Marriage
- Its best if all people remain unmarried. Marriage is a lesser-of-two- evils compromise for Christians too weak to resist their sexual urges, for it is better to marry than to burn. (Paul - 1Cor.7:1-2, 8-9, 25-6, 38) - The rapist of an unwed woman must buy her and make her his wife (apparently a far more 'holy' union than a genuine, loving same-sex relationship) - Deut.22:28-9
Justice
- If a man suspects his wife of cheating he can serve her a cursed drink; if she becomes deformed, then that proves her guilt (Num.5:12-31) - 42 children killed by bears for calling a prophet baldy (2King.2:23-4) - OK to beat your children with a rod - it wont kill them (Prov.23:13-4) - God commits, orders, or endorses every form of atrocity known to man (pretty much pick a page of the Old Testament at random)
Do the Old Testament laws still apply?
- Every jot and tittle (Christ Matt.5:17-9)
Christ, what a role model
- Christ tells us we must hate our entire family, and even our own life, if we want to be one of His disciples (Luke.14:26) - Those who abandon their families will be rewarded (Matt.19:29) - For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother... And a man's foes shall be they of his own household. (Christ - Matt.10:35-6) - I came not to send peace, but a sword (Christ - Matt.10:34) - If you dont have a sword, sell your clothes to buy one (Luke.22:36) - Curses fig tree for not bearing fruit in off-season (Mark.11:12-4, 20-1) - Didnt want to help girl because she was a dog gentile (Matt.15:22-8)
The fact that people like you think you're being persecuted because some of us recognize the foolishness of blindly following goofball mythology is amusing.
Liberal nut-jobs eh? Call us names. It still doesn't make your bible coherent or moral in any objective sense of the word.
At one point, I had two employees and gave them both full healthcare coverage.
It's a total fallacy that small companies aren't taking care of their people as good as large ones. In fact, it's usually the other way around. We're tremendously flexible when it comes to addressing employee needs. I had an employee that wanted to work from home and needed some extra money when his wife had a baby, so I moved him from full time to a subcontractor, so he could pay taxes later and have more flexibility. You can't get big corporations to do stuff like that.
Actually, I've worked at IBM. And it's exactly what I'm talking about. I've worked for several large companies in a variety of service and product-oriented businesses.
There's an inherent propensity for these big companies to become detached from a sense of responsibility to the customer (except when you're in some board meeting with ad agencies, then that's all you yap about).
All you have to do is turn on the television and watch a few commercials to clearly recognize how much corporate america has lost touch with consumers.
Big companies drive business via any means other than having good products and service. How much of that do you see as a selling point these days? Companies promote their products and service now via "brand loyalty" and "lifestyle marketing" using beautiful people, unrealistic situations, cartoon characters, catchy jingles, comedy routines, and grandiose yet profoundly unrealistic promises of nirvana. When's the last time you saw a commercial that actually focused on the PRODUCT and not some mythical construct the product represents deep inside the depths of the monkey brain?
Big companies turn into slow-moving, self-absorbed beasts. If you work in a fun department within one of those big companies, you're a minority.
It's the whole left-wing "big successful corporations are bad and that makes me feel enlightened" mindset.
That's now an oxymoron if you ask me.
How many "big corporations" are really successful? You can't name one big corporation that isn't either playing "voodoo accounting" to pretend they're successful, or has a shitload of oppressed employees they're taking advantage of. 99.9% of the "big successful corporations" are a half-inch away from completely imploding upon themselves. Have you had your head under a rock for the last decade or what? Read the news lately bro?
I work for a small company. I used to work for several big companies. I don't make as much money now as I used to, but I have ten times more freedom and ten times more happiness and ten times less stress. I do more work than I did at the big companies, but it seems less like "work." Even though, technically I don't make as much money as I did working at some larger companies, somehow it feels like I do have more money. Maybe this is because the quality of my life has improved to the point where I am not engaging in consumeristic, distractive or self-destructive behavior as much as in the past, and this leaves me more resources as well as more peace of mind?
When I worked at big companies, there always was an illogical hierarchy that insured good ideas would get buried behind the ambitions of politically-motivated managers. People used internal memos to talk in lieu of face-to-face conversations. We had way too many meetings that didn't get a goddam thing done. And half the staff's specialization involved blaming others for things that went wrong. Normally accountability and responsibility go hand-in-hand, but not in big companies. And things constantly broke down and got lost in the cracks. When I was young, this was huge hit to my idealism and I had to make a decision: Did I want to live my life this way and end up being programmed to accept mediocrity as the status quo? Or did I want to find an environment where the people were truly appreciated and weren't constantly living in fear that some corporate boss would cut their job without even introducing himself?
Walk into a small business and you find employees that actually know things; employees that usually are more integrated with the local community; employees that are happier.
Walk into any big corporation and you find a bunch of uptight, miserable people who hate their jobs; don't care whether the customer is happy, and generally feel powerless to effect positive change on any grand scale within their operation.
There are obviously exceptions. Companies like Whole Foods treat their employees right, but these corporations are very atypical. Walk into a Wal-Mart and see if any employee there really gives a crap whether you find what you're looking for.
The bigger they are, the harder they fall. It's also a fallacy that smaller companies don't employee more people. There are millions and millions of Americans working for small companies or self-employed. They are an intregal part of the workforce in the country.
This is a testamonial to the shortsightedness of America and specifically the business and political communities. This is happening all over the country. Most local governments give huge breaks to "big" companies to locate in their towns, while ignoring or hasseling the small businesses with too much buracracy. And they wonder why they don't generate as much tax revenue or big companies pull out, relocate, shut down or outsource out of the country? It may seem like some quick-fix or quick-cash but it's never worth it in the long and run.
I think you're totally unqualified to talk about opportunities for underage professionals without connections. Connections are more valuable than experience, education or even skill.
I don't disagree that connections are extremely important, but unless you were born with a platimum spoon in your mouth, you still have to work hard to be respected by others and get to the point where you can surround yourself with friends and associates who have influence.
For every person who had influential parents and associates who helped them along and ended up being successful, there is probably at least one or more others that had the same situation that choose to not fully-exploit the resources available to them. If you think it's exclusively about "connections" you're being naive.
People get bitter when they hear stories like yours because they're the guys and girls with the CS degree who wind up working in tech support while some bigwig's kid causes them grief with buggy software. When they were that age, they were lucky to get a job at Burger King... and it's not because they didn't use their time more wisely.
Well, I am NOT some "bigwig's kid". My parents were strictly middle-class. My father had a degree in engineering and paid his own way through college working multiple jobs and my mother worked in a shoe store. I wouldn't call this priviledged. My mother eventually went to college and earned a degree, again by working two full-time jobs while she raised her family after a divorce. I don't think my situation was typical except my parents may have had a more substantive work ethic than the average family who spends their idle time watching CSI. By the way, I had a job at Burger King too.
I appreciate the point you're making, HOWEVER, for many many years I searched for good tech people to bring on board with my company. I understand some people have to work harder to get to the same level as others who might have had more resources. BUT I have consistently run into uber lazy tech people who thought the world owed them something they were unwilling to earn legitimately. I don't care if you're driving a Ferrari or a Schwinn, there's a certain level of responsibility and capability, trust and faith that transcends connections and resources that can put someone in line to progress as far as they want in their career. The bottom line is that these people are a rare find. And the easy way to excuse someone's laziness is to say, "Oh well, the reason I'm not making big bucks is because I don't have the right connections." NO. The reason you're not making big bucks is because you're lazy! There are too many kids out of college now that haven't learned much beyond how to make a beer bong and purchase term papers online. These are the CSCI grads who should be working at Burger King instead of Microsoft. Their fault.
I was doing a lot of subcontracting when I was younger. When I was working for the Fortune 500 company, my father got me that job and he handled it all. So I know nothing about what the law was at that time. However, when I was younger and working, people didn't seem to care about my age except they were concerned I was so young I wouldn't be responsible enough to work on something so important to their business... so I had to be that much more dilligent.
Someone modded my post a "troll". That's really sad. I know there are people here who are big gamer fans and I didn't mean to malign those who like to obsess over sitcoms and shit like that. It's just not what I did, and I honestly think if my parents hadn't made an effort to not expose me to much TV during formative years, I wouldn't have had the skillset I have now. I'm very grateful to them for it. Some here, apparently resent it, but that's not my fault. I'm only trying to empower others, and not really brag about myself... I'm just saying, you can do what this kid has done; I know because I did stuff like what he's doing too. You just have to use your time and energy more wisely. I don't think playing Halo several hours a day is going to get you a great job... your milage may vary... but don't take it out on me.
...by age 30, had you moved out of your parents basement?...by age 40, had you kissed a girl?
I moved out of my parents house when I turned 18. I'd post the number of women I've slept with but I'm worried my current girlfriend would read this and be horified, not that I want to know how many men she's slept with either.
But ha ha, I get your funny joke... in my case I didn't match the stereotype though.
Good for this kid. He's not necessarily a genius, but he is atypical IMO. Not because other kids his age couldn't do the same, but because most other kids his age aren't because they're being sedated by mass media.
When I was 14 I was doing programming for a Fortune 500 company; when I was 15 I wrote and designed the accounting system for my city's municipal water company; when I was 16 I wrote my own BBS system, which got the attention of Bell Atlantic who then contracted with me to develop a prototype of one of the first online electronic yellow page systems. By the time I was 17, I had written software for Disney, the United Nations and plenty of other companies. I really don't think I was special... I just made the most out of my time and resources. If I had unlimited access to a Playstation or 500 channels of television when I was a teen, I'd probably be working for an insurance company or a restaurant instead of being self employed and successful doing something I truly enjoy.
For a long time, I've been thinking that a centralized IP database would be extremely useful. You know the big retailers and sites like Google cherish this info. This list could be very helpful towards those ends. A name and address cross-referenced with an IP address? That's hot in the data mining business.
I sure hope someone posts the list. They should put up a site where you can type in an IP and get a name and address. VERY, VERY useful in cases where you're getting spam from zombied PCs or someone's harassing you behind an IP and the ISP won't do anything about it.
Ultimately, I believe that there is human intervention in many areas of the Google index. They know that a site like Wikipedia has premium content, and therefore it should not get outsmarted via SEO in many areas. I suspect there is some type of hidden weight ranking on a per-site or per-domain basis that helps offset what these traffic monetizing groups are doing.
I still run Windows 98SE on at least half the machines in my office. Microsoft discontinues support? Big whoop. I use BigFix + AVG + Firefox + Eudora. I bypass the vast majority of crapware that is responsible for most of the security updates in the first place. I run 99.99% of all popular applications on a decade-old operating system and every time Microsoft threatens to obsolete a platform tier, I laugh. You should too. Vista is accounts payable candy for big corporations. The vast majority of advantages you might get with this OS can be gained alternatively by not being a n00b when it comes to safe computing practices.
Just say no, to software mafia: Microsoft, Symantec, Quicken, et. al.
What I don't understand is since Tivo holds a bunch of patents why aren't they going after the other PVR producers? I figure they must have some legal angle to pull a "SCO" on Comcast, Cox, DirecTV, Dish and other companies that are edging them out of the marketplace. At least in the case of Tivo they were one of the first, the best, and shouldn't be upstaged by second rate monopolist-funded copycats.
First, there aren't nearly as many reknown scientists who refute the idea of global warming as those that believe it is happening. Second, follow the money and you'll see those that are against global warming theories have a financial interest in promoting this theory.
This is because there's virtually no regulation of the advertising industry any more. It used to be you couldn't say something was "free" unless there was some real "free" component of substance, but nowadays, about 95% of most claims are bullshit.
Slashdot Mirror
Stories like this really irk me, and show how the industry wants to make the notion of identity theft much scarier than it really is. This is an example of an "identity thief?" This moron used stolen credit cards and shipped the crap to his parents' house where he lived. He's an idiot. Other people with common sense wouldn't do stupid shit like what he was doing. There's no skill involved in what he did. Any waiter or someone who handles credit cards on a daily basis could do the same thing, but they don't because they're not idiots like this guy.
In the end, anybody he ripped off probably didn't have to pay, so it was the merchants that got screwed if anybody, and this is becoming harder and harder to pull off.
If there's one thing this article does point out, it's that if the feds really want to stop identity theft damages, they'd shut down Western Union. That money transfer service pretty much solely exists now to play a party to scams of this nature.
So, yes, we all know this guy doesn't know what he's talking about, ha ha ha, but has anyone bothered to write a calm, reasonable letter explaining to him how the internet really works, or told him why it took so long for him to receive his "internet"? How about picking up the phone and calling his office and offering a bit of help?
Yes, it's fun to laugh at this garbage, but if all we do is laugh then nothing in government ever has a chance to improve. Individuals can make a difference.
Are you serious? Are you so naive that you think this guy is motivated by a thorough understanding of issues, as opposed to money, power, vanity and appeasing select corporate benefactors that lead to his eventual reelection?
Keep that idealism of yours tucked away. Someone's going to drag it into the street and beat it over the head with a Pringles can full of cement.
Stevens doesn't sound stupid to me at all.
Obviously, statistically-speaking this makes sense. Some people had to vote for the guy.
So the Senator thinks his e-mail is slow because it's stuck in some tube?
Maybe the NSA needs faster servers?
The bible does a good job itself of bashing christians and humanity. We don't need to make fun of christians. A casual glimpse into the irrational rules their so-called god has handed down to them, which they don't seem to question is evidence enough:
So what does the Bible tell us?
Who should we kill? ?
- Homosexuals (Lev.20:13, Rom.1:26-32)
- Adulterers (Lev.20:10, Deut.22:22)
- Disobedient children (Deut.21:20-21, Lev.20:9, Exod.21:15)
- Women who are not virgins on their wedding night (Deut.22:13-21)
- All non-Christians (parable told by Christ - Luke.19:27)
- Those accused of wickedness by at least two people (Deut.17:2-7)
- Anyone who works on the Sabbath (Exod.35:2-3, Num.15:32-6)
(not even to kindle a fire, and no exclusion for ambulance drivers)
Women
- It is shameful for a woman to speak in church (1Cor.14:34-5)
- A man must OK his wifes words if they are to have force (Num.30:8)
- A woman must not teach or hold authority over a man (1Tim.2:12)
- Lot saves the messengers from the men of Sodom by offering up
his virgin daughters to do to them as you please (Gen.19:8)
- Kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourself
every girl who has never slept with a man (Moses - Num.31:17-8)
Slavery
- God supports slavery (Lev.25:44-6, Exod.21:2-8, Eph.6:5, Col.3:22)
- Instructions on how to sell your daughter as a slave (Exod.21:7-8)
- When to give your slaves severe or light beatings (Luke.12:42-8)
- OK to beat slaves only if they dont die within 2 days (Exod.21:20-1)
- How to mark your slave: drive an awl through its ear (Deut.15:17)
Marriage
- Its best if all people remain unmarried. Marriage is a lesser-of-two-
evils compromise for Christians too weak to resist their sexual urges,
for it is better to marry than to burn. (Paul - 1Cor.7:1-2, 8-9, 25-6, 38)
- The rapist of an unwed woman must buy her and make her his wife
(apparently a far more 'holy' union than a genuine, loving same-sex relationship) - Deut.22:28-9
Justice
- If a man suspects his wife of cheating he can serve her a cursed drink;
if she becomes deformed, then that proves her guilt (Num.5:12-31)
- 42 children killed by bears for calling a prophet baldy (2King.2:23-4)
- OK to beat your children with a rod - it wont kill them (Prov.23:13-4)
- God commits, orders, or endorses every form of atrocity known to
man (pretty much pick a page of the Old Testament at random)
Do the Old Testament laws still apply?
- Every jot and tittle (Christ Matt.5:17-9)
Christ, what a role model
- Christ tells us we must hate our entire family, and even our own life, if we want to be one of His disciples (Luke.14:26)
- Those who abandon their families will be rewarded (Matt.19:29)
- For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the
daughter against her mother... And a man's foes shall be they of his
own household. (Christ - Matt.10:35-6)
- I came not to send peace, but a sword (Christ - Matt.10:34)
- If you dont have a sword, sell your clothes to buy one (Luke.22:36)
- Curses fig tree for not bearing fruit in off-season (Mark.11:12-4, 20-1)
- Didnt want to help girl because she was a dog gentile (Matt.15:22-8)
The fact that people like you think you're being persecuted because some of us recognize the foolishness of blindly following goofball mythology is amusing.
Liberal nut-jobs eh? Call us names. It still doesn't make your bible coherent or moral in any objective sense of the word.
When vulnerabilities are outlawed, only outlaws will use vulnerabilities.
At one point, I had two employees and gave them both full healthcare coverage.
It's a total fallacy that small companies aren't taking care of their people as good as large ones. In fact, it's usually the other way around. We're tremendously flexible when it comes to addressing employee needs. I had an employee that wanted to work from home and needed some extra money when his wife had a baby, so I moved him from full time to a subcontractor, so he could pay taxes later and have more flexibility. You can't get big corporations to do stuff like that.
Actually, I've worked at IBM. And it's exactly what I'm talking about. I've worked for several large companies in a variety of service and product-oriented businesses.
There's an inherent propensity for these big companies to become detached from a sense of responsibility to the customer (except when you're in some board meeting with ad agencies, then that's all you yap about).
All you have to do is turn on the television and watch a few commercials to clearly recognize how much corporate america has lost touch with consumers.
Big companies drive business via any means other than having good products and service. How much of that do you see as a selling point these days? Companies promote their products and service now via "brand loyalty" and "lifestyle marketing" using beautiful people, unrealistic situations, cartoon characters, catchy jingles, comedy routines, and grandiose yet profoundly unrealistic promises of nirvana. When's the last time you saw a commercial that actually focused on the PRODUCT and not some mythical construct the product represents deep inside the depths of the monkey brain?
Big companies turn into slow-moving, self-absorbed beasts. If you work in a fun department within one of those big companies, you're a minority.
It's the whole left-wing "big successful corporations are bad and that makes me feel enlightened" mindset.
That's now an oxymoron if you ask me.
How many "big corporations" are really successful? You can't name one big corporation that isn't either playing "voodoo accounting" to pretend they're successful, or has a shitload of oppressed employees they're taking advantage of. 99.9% of the "big successful corporations" are a half-inch away from completely imploding upon themselves. Have you had your head under a rock for the last decade or what? Read the news lately bro?
I work for a small company. I used to work for several big companies. I don't make as much money now as I used to, but I have ten times more freedom and ten times more happiness and ten times less stress. I do more work than I did at the big companies, but it seems less like "work." Even though, technically I don't make as much money as I did working at some larger companies, somehow it feels like I do have more money. Maybe this is because the quality of my life has improved to the point where I am not engaging in consumeristic, distractive or self-destructive behavior as much as in the past, and this leaves me more resources as well as more peace of mind?
When I worked at big companies, there always was an illogical hierarchy that insured good ideas would get buried behind the ambitions of politically-motivated managers. People used internal memos to talk in lieu of face-to-face conversations. We had way too many meetings that didn't get a goddam thing done. And half the staff's specialization involved blaming others for things that went wrong. Normally accountability and responsibility go hand-in-hand, but not in big companies. And things constantly broke down and got lost in the cracks. When I was young, this was huge hit to my idealism and I had to make a decision: Did I want to live my life this way and end up being programmed to accept mediocrity as the status quo? Or did I want to find an environment where the people were truly appreciated and weren't constantly living in fear that some corporate boss would cut their job without even introducing himself?
I would never go back.
Walk into a small business and you find employees that actually know things; employees that usually are more integrated with the local community; employees that are happier.
Walk into any big corporation and you find a bunch of uptight, miserable people who hate their jobs; don't care whether the customer is happy, and generally feel powerless to effect positive change on any grand scale within their operation.
There are obviously exceptions. Companies like Whole Foods treat their employees right, but these corporations are very atypical. Walk into a Wal-Mart and see if any employee there really gives a crap whether you find what you're looking for.
The bigger they are, the harder they fall. It's also a fallacy that smaller companies don't employee more people. There are millions and millions of Americans working for small companies or self-employed. They are an intregal part of the workforce in the country.
This is a testamonial to the shortsightedness of America and specifically the business and political communities. This is happening all over the country. Most local governments give huge breaks to "big" companies to locate in their towns, while ignoring or hasseling the small businesses with too much buracracy. And they wonder why they don't generate as much tax revenue or big companies pull out, relocate, shut down or outsource out of the country? It may seem like some quick-fix or quick-cash but it's never worth it in the long and run.
Who cares?
Who in their right mind that has any serious sense of security and performance is still using IE? Much ado about nothing. Firefox is the clear winner.
Nice one, but may I recommend next year you do something like:
* Slashdot purchased by Microsoft
* Slashdot to become a part of MySpace
* Slashdot renamed to "Colon Slashdot" to call attention to the importance of routine prostrate exams.
Isn't it just a tad early to make the change? At least according to my time zone.
I think you're totally unqualified to talk about opportunities for underage professionals without connections. Connections are more valuable than experience, education or even skill.
I don't disagree that connections are extremely important, but unless you were born with a platimum spoon in your mouth, you still have to work hard to be respected by others and get to the point where you can surround yourself with friends and associates who have influence.
For every person who had influential parents and associates who helped them along and ended up being successful, there is probably at least one or more others that had the same situation that choose to not fully-exploit the resources available to them. If you think it's exclusively about "connections" you're being naive.
People get bitter when they hear stories like yours because they're the guys and girls with the CS degree who wind up working in tech support while some bigwig's kid causes them grief with buggy software. When they were that age, they were lucky to get a job at Burger King... and it's not because they didn't use their time more wisely.
Well, I am NOT some "bigwig's kid". My parents were strictly middle-class. My father had a degree in engineering and paid his own way through college working multiple jobs and my mother worked in a shoe store. I wouldn't call this priviledged. My mother eventually went to college and earned a degree, again by working two full-time jobs while she raised her family after a divorce. I don't think my situation was typical except my parents may have had a more substantive work ethic than the average family who spends their idle time watching CSI. By the way, I had a job at Burger King too.
I appreciate the point you're making, HOWEVER, for many many years I searched for good tech people to bring on board with my company. I understand some people have to work harder to get to the same level as others who might have had more resources. BUT I have consistently run into uber lazy tech people who thought the world owed them something they were unwilling to earn legitimately. I don't care if you're driving a Ferrari or a Schwinn, there's a certain level of responsibility and capability, trust and faith that transcends connections and resources that can put someone in line to progress as far as they want in their career. The bottom line is that these people are a rare find. And the easy way to excuse someone's laziness is to say, "Oh well, the reason I'm not making big bucks is because I don't have the right connections." NO. The reason you're not making big bucks is because you're lazy! There are too many kids out of college now that haven't learned much beyond how to make a beer bong and purchase term papers online. These are the CSCI grads who should be working at Burger King instead of Microsoft. Their fault.
I was doing a lot of subcontracting when I was younger. When I was working for the Fortune 500 company, my father got me that job and he handled it all. So I know nothing about what the law was at that time. However, when I was younger and working, people didn't seem to care about my age except they were concerned I was so young I wouldn't be responsible enough to work on something so important to their business... so I had to be that much more dilligent.
Someone modded my post a "troll". That's really sad. I know there are people here who are big gamer fans and I didn't mean to malign those who like to obsess over sitcoms and shit like that. It's just not what I did, and I honestly think if my parents hadn't made an effort to not expose me to much TV during formative years, I wouldn't have had the skillset I have now. I'm very grateful to them for it. Some here, apparently resent it, but that's not my fault. I'm only trying to empower others, and not really brag about myself... I'm just saying, you can do what this kid has done; I know because I did stuff like what he's doing too. You just have to use your time and energy more wisely. I don't think playing Halo several hours a day is going to get you a great job... your milage may vary... but don't take it out on me.
I moved out of my parents house when I turned 18. I'd post the number of women I've slept with but I'm worried my current girlfriend would read this and be horified, not that I want to know how many men she's slept with either.
But ha ha, I get your funny joke... in my case I didn't match the stereotype though.
Good for this kid. He's not necessarily a genius, but he is atypical IMO. Not because other kids his age couldn't do the same, but because most other kids his age aren't because they're being sedated by mass media.
When I was 14 I was doing programming for a Fortune 500 company; when I was 15 I wrote and designed the accounting system for my city's municipal water company; when I was 16 I wrote my own BBS system, which got the attention of Bell Atlantic who then contracted with me to develop a prototype of one of the first online electronic yellow page systems. By the time I was 17, I had written software for Disney, the United Nations and plenty of other companies. I really don't think I was special... I just made the most out of my time and resources. If I had unlimited access to a Playstation or 500 channels of television when I was a teen, I'd probably be working for an insurance company or a restaurant instead of being self employed and successful doing something I truly enjoy.
For a long time, I've been thinking that a centralized IP database would be extremely useful. You know the big retailers and sites like Google cherish this info. This list could be very helpful towards those ends. A name and address cross-referenced with an IP address? That's hot in the data mining business.
I sure hope someone posts the list. They should put up a site where you can type in an IP and get a name and address. VERY, VERY useful in cases where you're getting spam from zombied PCs or someone's harassing you behind an IP and the ISP won't do anything about it.
Ultimately, I believe that there is human intervention in many areas of the Google index. They know that a site like Wikipedia has premium content, and therefore it should not get outsmarted via SEO in many areas. I suspect there is some type of hidden weight ranking on a per-site or per-domain basis that helps offset what these traffic monetizing groups are doing.
I still run Windows 98SE on at least half the machines in my office. Microsoft discontinues support? Big whoop. I use BigFix + AVG + Firefox + Eudora. I bypass the vast majority of crapware that is responsible for most of the security updates in the first place. I run 99.99% of all popular applications on a decade-old operating system and every time Microsoft threatens to obsolete a platform tier, I laugh. You should too. Vista is accounts payable candy for big corporations. The vast majority of advantages you might get with this OS can be gained alternatively by not being a n00b when it comes to safe computing practices.
Just say no, to software mafia: Microsoft, Symantec, Quicken, et. al.
What I don't understand is since Tivo holds a bunch of patents why aren't they going after the other PVR producers? I figure they must have some legal angle to pull a "SCO" on Comcast, Cox, DirecTV, Dish and other companies that are edging them out of the marketplace. At least in the case of Tivo they were one of the first, the best, and shouldn't be upstaged by second rate monopolist-funded copycats.
First, there aren't nearly as many reknown scientists who refute the idea of global warming as those that believe it is happening. Second, follow the money and you'll see those that are against global warming theories have a financial interest in promoting this theory.
This is because there's virtually no regulation of the advertising industry any more. It used to be you couldn't say something was "free" unless there was some real "free" component of substance, but nowadays, about 95% of most claims are bullshit.