I've dabbled with online dating since there was an "online". My first experience was on The Source when I started chatting with a customer service rep and we developed a rapport online. She eventually flew down to stay with me for a week, and later I went up and stayed with her in Virginia. We ended up being friends for many years.
Since that time, I've tried most of the online services, in between dating women that I met out in public or through friends. I've had plenty of ups and downs. I even turned one experience into a published story on the "classified dating" scene when I set up an experiment, taking out five different classified ads, written in five different styles, and analyzed the results. It was quite amusing. I had a funny ad, a serious ad, a romantic ad, a sexy ad, etc., and I kept a diary and a spreadsheet of the women I met and my experiences. If you think men are "players", let me tell you I ran into plenty of women who "played" men. A common thing I discovered is how much women BS guys virtually. I was contacted by several women who responded to several of my ads at the same time, not knowing I was the same person, telling me, "your ad was the only one I responded to." Some women I met turned into really weird stalkers, while others were obviously looking for free meals and guys to pay for stuff and entertain them and had no intention of getting involved. Later when I started dabbling with match.com, yahoo.com, lavalife, matchmaker.com, salon personals, and others, I discovered that the same M.O. applies. I know some female friends who actively do the online stuff just to get a chance to go out to eat more often without paying.
That's not to say I didn't have some positive experiences. I've met many great women through the online services, and many who are still great friends. I had a few serious relationships, but by far, the women I met online were generally much less emotionally stable than women in real life. This is probably due to the ease with which someone can pretend to be someone they're not online. But you find out soon enough. It's still very eye-opening to find out how totally psycho some of these women are. (I've heard similar stories from my female friends about men they've met too.)
In the last 4-5 years I started to notice a pattern of diminishing returns from the online dating services. When sites like match.com initially were discovered by the mainstream, the quality of people online was much higher than it is now. I would not get involved in these services now, even just for fun because there's a lot more deception going on than there used to be. Yahoo is probably the worst in terms of bogus solicitations, but there are new breeds of sites that are inherently deceptive by their very design, such as eHarmony.com, which I think is probably one of the worst offenders, comparing their process to that of an impersonal "mate shopping spree" and structuring the process so there's no way you can get to know the other person (or even see what they look like!) without paying lots of money.
After many years, I decided I would not participate in these mediums any more. Most of my friends also have lost faith. If there's one thing that the online sites teach you, it's that you're better off looking in real life. The only exception to this is if you're very antisocial -- in which case you'll find a plethora of equally antisocial people to mingle with, but you might not like the results. Usually we seek out people that compliment what we have to offer and a lot of the terminally insecure online personalities are looking for people to "save" them. Two needy people end up as a recipe for disaster. Take a cruise, go do something you like doing and look for people that are out there. Online is great for meeting new friends and stuff, but don't take it seriously, and don't believe what you read.
My parents were among those that converted from PC to Mac. I was really impressed with how easily they were able to do so without any problems. The stability of the Mac is dramatically better than a PC and the applications are much better integrated.
I have to admit, after playing around on their iMac, I will probably end up getting one myself. It's so much more elegant than a PC. It didn't take me long to figure out how to get to the shell and poke around the BSD kernel either. I really like the way OSX has things organized. In just an hour or two, I felt completely comfortable navigating the machine and getting it to do what I wanted. I seriously doubt a Mac user could do the same on a PC.
I think it's funny there's so many people here upset at the attention AJAX has been getting. I have to assume these are traditional Java (not Jscript) programmers who are once again upset that other technology has upstaged the hype that Java carried around with it that never materialized.
However, unlike Java, AJAX has immediate and obvious value to net-based applications. Java never had a niche where it could show off what it was uniquely good at. So unlike the Java hype, AJAX really does something better than what's widely available (aside from maybe Flash). One look at Google Maps and you can clearly see this is some new technology that adds value. Java really never did that, and I'm sure I'll get modded down by Java-phants that really don't like to be reminded of this. But this hype has more substance than the Java hype ever had. Relatively speaking IMO of course. Hype is hype anyway.
One thing that bothers me is that a person's credit report is tied to their SSN. So if you want to look up your credit report, apply for credit, or do anything signficant financially, your SSN is required. And then there's some new provision to the Patriot Act, according to financial institutions, that they like to use as an excuse to require a person's SSN. Is this legitimate? I know that there was a law in 76 or 80 that mandated that a consumer was under no obligation to ever give out his SSN to companies, but I've also found in some circumstances, such as applying for credit, if you refuse to divulge this information, they will not accept your application. Are there really any alternatives?
And does anyone have any experience with the commercial "free credit report" companies? They obviously take peoples SSN's. I've wanted to pull my credit report but have been wary of providing a SSN to some third party over the net.
An open source project is good, but when it operates under a closed OS, you cannot guarantee the integrity of the application.
There's a reason why windows-based open source projects don't get as much respect. It's because Windows is NOT a stable platform. A developer cannot write a Windows application, open source or not, and not be plauged with support problems that have absolutely nothing to do with the program itself, and are the fault of bugs in the Windows OS itself. At least, if Windows was open-source, some of these developers would try to fix Windows problems to lessen their own support issues, but they can't.
The truth is, it's really painful to develop under Windows generally, especially if you're publishing commercial software that has to be supported. There are too many variables that you can't control that wreak havoc with the integrity of your application. Windows is the worst example of this, but not the only one.
Subscription based licensing will encourage the release of products that don't suck. Because if the product sucks, nobody will renew the subscription.
Or maybe, in cases like Symantec's Norton Utilities, trying to remove the software can make your system worse, so you reluctantly continue to pay to keep your computer from crashing, and pray that maybe, just maybe, the next update will fix the program's problems.
This is a topic that really gets my goat. I can appreciate paying a fee for software updates, but programs like Quickbooks extort money from their customers, big amounts of money, just to update the tax tables in the software. This is ridiculous and someone should start a class action lawsuit. The software ceases to function properly until you pay them for these tiny bits of data that are otherwise public information.
I think, just like software, other forms of media should have numeric version numbers. This way, when the "developer" ruins future releases, we can easily refer back to earlier, superior versions./missing Journalism version 1.0
Obviously you know very little about capital punishment in general, and the USA Patriot Act in particular.
Obviously, you think that you can merely state I'm wrong, without providing any contrary evidence, to convince weak-minded people that your perspective has any legitimacy.
It doesn't. Therefore, you're branded as an arrogant, ignorant idiot.
Read the text of the Patriot act. If you interfere with commerce that's considered an act of terrorism. If one computer that is involved in commerce is compromised, that's considered an act of terrorism, and punishiable by the death penalty. It's in the law. So STFU cause you don't know what you're talking about.
If you're going to mouth off and claim other people are wrong, at least provide some evidence, otherwise you're just advertising that you're an ignorant moron. I have no patience for idiots like you who challenge other peoples' arguments and then think the testimony of your anonymous weirdness is proof positive. Do us a favor and don't procreate ok?
The TOS states that "offensive" names were against the rules, specifically names of dieties. So if you created a character that was similar to 'Jesus' that was against the rules. This is supposedly because other "Christian" players would complain that it is offensive (meanwhile they might worship in-game Gods such as Rallos Zek, Karana or Fennin Ro). I always felt this was a total and complete breach of the line between fantasy and reality, and I really felt sorry for the losers who would be upset over these issues, but more sorry for SOE who felt compelled to pander to a minority of whiny idiots.
The same goes for the title system. We too, were forced to deal with those who implemented pseudo-titles into their character names, but at least Sony allowed older characters to be grandfathered into the system and slide by.
After wasting more than four years of my life playing and moderating these games, I woke up one morning and realize that sunshine was kinda rad. My advice is that if you boycott any game that doesn't make gameplay fun, and this sounds just like that kind of scenario, which is why I quit Everquest and all those similar glass-eating games.
Hey! I dislike spammers as much as the next guy but blanket statements like this don't help the cause.
Do you understand what spamming is? Do you understand why people spam and how they can profit from it?
Spamming is based on theft. Spamming involves a disproportionate exploitation of resources vs. costs. Spammers steal bandwidth and resources, and most of them steal identity information as well. Pure and simple. What people like Ralsky do is break the law, each and every day. This isn't speculation. This is a fact. If you identify one zombied PC he has exploited as an SMTP server, he's broken at least a half-dozen laws, including federal ones. There is no doubt about that.
I'm not talking about legitimate e-mail operators. There's a big difference between sending to a mailing list, or operating a promotional mailing from a fixed IP block. That's not what the bad spammers do, and these days we distinguish between different types of UCE because this new breed, like Ralsky, have no ethics and no compunction whatsoever to flagrantly steal other peoples' resources and indiscriminately pollute the net with profoundly inappropriate solicitations. They break laws each and every day, each and every minute. Go google "computer crime laws" and you'll see tons of listings on every level that clearly could apply to activities perpetrated on a daily basis by these spammers.
If spammers operated from fixed IP blocks, most of the anti-spammer arguments might hold water, but they don't. The vast majority of spam these days is now coming from compromised computers that are repurposed as on-the-fly SMTP servers unbeknowst to their owners, and ignored by their ISPs. The only way to deal with this is a) RBL the irresponsible ISPs, and b) go after these guys for computer tampering and other criminal offenses.
All the spammers these days who want to accomplish anything are exploiting zombie relays. This is illegal. It can also be considered a capital crime under the USA Patriot Act.
Ignorant, uninformed responses like yours really tick me off.
As an ISP that has to spend twice as much on bandwidth and resources as I need because of the bandwidth spammers consume, I can certify that it costs me a lot of money.
Upwards of 70-80% of all mail traffic on the net is spam. Probably at least one third of all Internet traffic may end up being bandwidth and resources these scumbags steal, usually by exploiting armies of compromised, zombied PCs to do their distribution.
Don't even get me started about the countless hours of tech support, computer downtime and other wasted resources due to innocent (and sometimes naive) computer users who have inadvertently had trojan software/plug-ins or worms invade their machines... This is all the work primarily of spammers.
It's not a simple case of installing a mail filter. That doesn't do a goddam thing to stop spamming. This is like you turning off your television as a way to stop the war in Iraq. Good luck.
Spammers routinely violate numerous state and federal laws. Computer tampering is actually now a capital crime under the USA Patriot Act. If this guy interfered with any network that conducts commerce or government activities, he could be convicted under these clauses. That's the tip of the iceburg.
The reason spammers operate is because it has been profitable for them due to their operating expenses (apathetic law enforcement, hazy jurisdiction, theft of third-party bandwidth and resources).
As more of these people get raided and have to deal with serious legal and criminal issues, the "cost" of operating will go up substantially, and as a result, it will not be as profitable for them to operate.
Let's hope the FBI follows through on this and puts this guy in jail. There's no doubt he committed a ton of crimes, including computer tampering, pornography, identity theft, etc. Spammers routinely break loads of laws in operating their business. Finally, we're seeing some agencies start to enforce these laws.
When you look at the results, and you see two colleges with virtually unlimited resources and millions of dollars spent on their vehicles, huge corporate sponsors and engineers at their beck and call from Boeing to Catepillar, who finished, and then this dinky little Team Grey from a suburb of New Orleans, with a splintered development team as a result of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, and they FINISHED just behind the big guys, leaving other heavily-funded vehicles in the dust.
Relatively speaking, a small indy group, even if their time was a tad slower than CMU or Stanford, essentially put those three teams to shame when you compare the resources they had available to them.
The real story here is who is behind the Grey team's car. It must be a far superior design than either CMU or Stanford's considering the limited resources and experience they had in addressing the challenge.
I think it is you who has shown the degree of your own antisemitism. That's really sad.
But you don't need to take my word for it. Have this church group (and I don't give a damn if they're mormons, muslims, christians, branch davidians, atheists, satanists, or subgeniuses) contact any local authorities in any of the affected areas. They're all going to say the same thing. If you come down here without being invited, you're in the way and you'd be better off helping out at one of the shelters.
But what do I know? I've been down here working. I watched two weeks ago as a gas truck with 14,000 gallons of gas rolled into town to help with the relief efforts. They were ignored by officials and the guy ended up pulling the tanker into the parking lot of a mall, writing "free gas" on a piece of cardboard, and giving the stuff away. They spent $44,000 to get this tanker from California to New Orleans and they were turned away and ended up in a suburb giving gas to people who didn't need it. It was a classic example of poorly planned "aid."
First off, the "Hurricane Pam" exercise estimated at best, they'd evacuate 70% of the population. In reality, state and local officials evacuated 80% of the population. The fact is the action on the part of state and local officials was much better than even the study indicated. This is the single most significant reason behind the low fatality rate: unparalleled success in implementing the initial evacuation.
Furthermore, the report made it clear that in the aftermath of the storm, state and local officials would be overwhelmed and it was recognized by all that the Feds would need to act quickly to help with post-disaster evacuations and other critical elements. FEMA recognized this and assured those involved it could react quickly. It didn't.
Let me reiterate this: The initial evacuation of New Orleans and the surrounding areas was the most successful large scale evacuation ever implemented in the history of the United States. Period. It was tremendously successful (compare this with Houston, who had substantive federal presence BEFORE Rita even came ashore, sat and watched what happened with Louisiana, and still horribly botched their own evacuation plan). It's highly questionable whether anyone, any state, any officials could have executed a better initial evacuation than the people of Louisiana. PERIOD.
Now there were some problems with evacuees left in the city, but it was made VERY CLEAR, everyone was to evacuate and there were no places to run to. Additional resources could have been made available in retrospect to deal with this situation, but it is trivial in comparison to the fact that the state and local authorities executed an evacuation plan that was dramatically better than all the research indicated was even possible!
To blame local officials is RIDICULOUS. FEMA commissioned the study. The study predicted exactly what would happen. On the state and local levels officials OUTPERFORMED what was expected of them. On the Federal level, it was EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE. These are the facts.
All I can say is, don't believe 98% of what you've heard or read. I was there. Most of it is BS. There was a speech given by the Governor that hinted that National Guard troops may be authorized to shoot looters, but there's no evidence that troops ever shot and killed any looters. And the speech was just propaganda to drive home the point that looting would not be tolerated.
It's been widely reported now that most of the early news reports about the chaos in the city was wildly exaggerated.
And specifically, the National Guard had virtually nothing to do with exacerbating any of these problems.
Right-wing, left-wing. Whatever. I'm just telling you what I've seen.
There are lots of people who are worth blaming, but the National Guard is not one of those groups. Bush and his cronies however, are another matter entirely. He had to be embarassed by the mayor before he finally got FEMA off its butt to provide the resources that were their responsibility in the first place.
All over now? Really? Well, tell that to Waveland, MS, which is practically gone. Tell that to the owners of the 65,000+ homes that were completely destroyed on the MS Gulf Coast. Tell that to the people down here who still wait for hours to get food at what few stores that are open. Tell that to all the elderly people who still have fallen trees in their yards with no one to help remove them unless they pay some inflated price. Tell that to the people who had damage to their power meters or power masts who have to pay close to 2,000 bucks to have something repaired that would normally cost $500. Tell that to the thousands who lost the vehicles and can't get to what few stores are open to get diapers and formula.
I've been to Waveland. I know how it is.
If your community is anything like the others I've been to, you know that the local officials are very weary of outside contractors coming in and taking jobs away from locals. That's part of the building process. There are plenty of people who have been displaced that will become part of the rebuilding effort.
I don't see electricians in this church group. I see some people without a plan. Like you said, people have been displaced. What are they going to do? Wander in and hand out water? Wield a chainsaw and get injured and then become a burden to the local resources? What is the reason for them coming? What skills do they offer in the disaster area? They just want to know what to bring... if they had a plan, they'd know what was needed. The whole thing doesn't seem right.
I'm not belittling the generosity of others. I just think if a church group from up north wants to help, they can do more effective things than rent a u-haul and drive into a disaster area with no plan or invitation.
I don't know of a single official in any of the affected jurisdictions that would publicly encourage little gangs of relief groups to meander through their area. This so-called relief effort seems to be more of a "Christian road trip" than anything really helpful. Like I said before, if they want to help, they should volunteer at one of the shelters. That would be a better use of their time and resources.
Stop drinking the kool-aid dude. It's rotting your brain.
Do a search on the Hurricane Pam exercise contracted by FEMA. Then go to FEMA's site and look at their responsibilities. You have been misled by the media over who was in charge of what.
Please accept my apology in advance but the more I think about this thread, the more it upsets me.
I don't see a group of people wanting to help others. I see a group wanting to make itself feel better by wandering into a disaster area and getting in the way.
98% of what others have posted here is not relevant.
It doesn't matter where you go in the affected areas. By the time you get down here, essentials will be available everywhere. Right now, even in the most outlying areas, essential supplies, including gas, are readily available. Food, water, repellant, tools, gas. It's all available within a convenient distance now. You're too late.
I've been in the area since the storm. I've lived in New Orleans for 20+ years. I've been all over the area. I've been on boats. I've been rescuing people, animals, handing out food, you-name-it, I've done it.
You guys are leaving in a few weeks? What for? It's all over now.
Let me be blunt. Don't use us as an excuse to make yourselves feel better about yourselves.
What you can expect to find is a string of communities working hard to rebuild and your U-Haul won't make a difference. Maybe if you had been down here three weeks ago it might have, but honestly, at this late point, it's more a superficial, shallow token than any real needed help. You come down here you're going to be IN THE WAY. Yea, if you're giving stuff away, you'll find people who will appreciate it, but the gesture is largely ceremonial and you might want to re-examine whether or not you're doing this for yourselves as opposed to those who have been victimized.
With all due respect, I am resentful of the little media circus you've staged on Slashdot.
If you want to help, you'll offer a place to stay up where you are for refugees and offer them conveniences there. Coming down here is SELFISH.
If you come down here you're going to run into one of two scenarios:
a) A city that is in the process of getting back up to speed and you're in the way. You can do what other people have done, which is just set up somewhere and give out shit and people will line up, but most of the people will be the type that just take anything that's free and you'll just be enabling a bunch of freeloaders. We don't need that.
b) A "no-mans-zone" where everything has been destroyed and people are coming in and getting their shit and leaving. Again, you'll be in the way, unless you're brave enough to enter some of these flooded residences and help residents get a few precious items. But trust me, you'll spend about 10 minutes in one of these cesspools and decide you'd rather be back watching FOX on cable, so do us a favor and don't bother. The people who are in the hardest hit areas are getting their stuff and leaving... and if you want to help them, get them a goddam place to live.. don't come down and hover over the entrails that was their home handing out water bottles.
Please do not exploit us for your own selfish psychological needs. Many have come down here long before you people decided way too late that maybe you could launch some "humanitarian mission" and have been turned away.
If you want to help those affected by Katrina, go to one of the shelters housing evacuees. Those people are the ones that need the most help. The people that are in the city now are self-sufficient, or they have places to go. God is watching. Think about it. Don't use us. We've been abused already. Go to Houston or Dallas or Arkansas and help people in the shelters. DON'T COME to the affected area. Those that are down here have what they need. If you come down here and you ignore the people that are displaced in shelters, that's the biggest sin of all, at the expense of your selfish need to feel useful according to your own terms, in blatant disregard for the real needs of those affected by this tragedy.
I'm down here in the middle of this mess. I've been helping with rescue efforts. The rescue efforts are over. The relief efforts are, for the most part, over as well.
If you want to help us, the best thing you can do is make sure the media's prototypically-short attention span doesn't waiver from the fact that this area needs help... big help.. not some church group handing out towels.
What we need are people WATCHING THE MONEY that's being spent down here. That's where we need the most help. If we don't get it, New Orleans is going to end up like Iraq... with billions given to politically-connected special interest groups and no substantive infrastructure or improvement. That's the legacy the current administration is doing in the wake of an ADD populace who isn't paying attention.
What we need most are people who are paying close attention to what the feds are doing. The people of the Gulf Coast can deal with things. If you REALLY want to help, be active politically, and insist that taxpayer money goes directly to local communities instead of Halliburton. Right now, a shitload of federal money is going to Halliburton, just like it is in Iraq.
Don't come down here. Get on the phone and call your representatives and demand that the resources dedicated to this area are not squandered away in a plethora of no-bid contracts. That's what's happening now. Everything else is paltry compared to this.
If you really want to help, that's what you need to do. If you want to go on some goofy, fuzzy, feel-good, field trip that won't make any significant difference, go ahead with your other plans. But I sincerely urge you to seriously consider what I'm saying. I cannot stress how important it is. WATCH THE MONEY LIKE A HAWK!! We are going to get screwed if the American people don't pay attention!
I'm down here in the middle of this mess. I've been helping with rescue efforts. The rescue efforts are over. The relief efforts are, for the most part, over as well.
If you want to help us, the best thing you can do is make sure the media's prototypically-short attention span doesn't waiver from the fact that this area needs help... big help.. not some church group handing out towels.
What we need are people WATCHING THE MONEY that's being spent down here. That's where we need the most help. If we don't get it, New Orleans is going to end up like Iraq... with billions blown and still no infrastructure or improvement. That's the legacy the current administration is doing in the wake of an ADD populace who isn't paying attention!
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I've dabbled with online dating since there was an "online". My first experience was on The Source when I started chatting with a customer service rep and we developed a rapport online. She eventually flew down to stay with me for a week, and later I went up and stayed with her in Virginia. We ended up being friends for many years.
Since that time, I've tried most of the online services, in between dating women that I met out in public or through friends. I've had plenty of ups and downs. I even turned one experience into a published story on the "classified dating" scene when I set up an experiment, taking out five different classified ads, written in five different styles, and analyzed the results. It was quite amusing. I had a funny ad, a serious ad, a romantic ad, a sexy ad, etc., and I kept a diary and a spreadsheet of the women I met and my experiences. If you think men are "players", let me tell you I ran into plenty of women who "played" men. A common thing I discovered is how much women BS guys virtually. I was contacted by several women who responded to several of my ads at the same time, not knowing I was the same person, telling me, "your ad was the only one I responded to." Some women I met turned into really weird stalkers, while others were obviously looking for free meals and guys to pay for stuff and entertain them and had no intention of getting involved. Later when I started dabbling with match.com, yahoo.com, lavalife, matchmaker.com, salon personals, and others, I discovered that the same M.O. applies. I know some female friends who actively do the online stuff just to get a chance to go out to eat more often without paying.
That's not to say I didn't have some positive experiences. I've met many great women through the online services, and many who are still great friends. I had a few serious relationships, but by far, the women I met online were generally much less emotionally stable than women in real life. This is probably due to the ease with which someone can pretend to be someone they're not online. But you find out soon enough. It's still very eye-opening to find out how totally psycho some of these women are. (I've heard similar stories from my female friends about men they've met too.)
In the last 4-5 years I started to notice a pattern of diminishing returns from the online dating services. When sites like match.com initially were discovered by the mainstream, the quality of people online was much higher than it is now. I would not get involved in these services now, even just for fun because there's a lot more deception going on than there used to be. Yahoo is probably the worst in terms of bogus solicitations, but there are new breeds of sites that are inherently deceptive by their very design, such as eHarmony.com, which I think is probably one of the worst offenders, comparing their process to that of an impersonal "mate shopping spree" and structuring the process so there's no way you can get to know the other person (or even see what they look like!) without paying lots of money.
After many years, I decided I would not participate in these mediums any more. Most of my friends also have lost faith. If there's one thing that the online sites teach you, it's that you're better off looking in real life. The only exception to this is if you're very antisocial -- in which case you'll find a plethora of equally antisocial people to mingle with, but you might not like the results. Usually we seek out people that compliment what we have to offer and a lot of the terminally insecure online personalities are looking for people to "save" them. Two needy people end up as a recipe for disaster. Take a cruise, go do something you like doing and look for people that are out there. Online is great for meeting new friends and stuff, but don't take it seriously, and don't believe what you read.
My parents were among those that converted from PC to Mac. I was really impressed with how easily they were able to do so without any problems. The stability of the Mac is dramatically better than a PC and the applications are much better integrated.
I have to admit, after playing around on their iMac, I will probably end up getting one myself. It's so much more elegant than a PC. It didn't take me long to figure out how to get to the shell and poke around the BSD kernel either. I really like the way OSX has things organized. In just an hour or two, I felt completely comfortable navigating the machine and getting it to do what I wanted. I seriously doubt a Mac user could do the same on a PC.
I think it's funny there's so many people here upset at the attention AJAX has been getting. I have to assume these are traditional Java (not Jscript) programmers who are once again upset that other technology has upstaged the hype that Java carried around with it that never materialized.
However, unlike Java, AJAX has immediate and obvious value to net-based applications. Java never had a niche where it could show off what it was uniquely good at. So unlike the Java hype, AJAX really does something better than what's widely available (aside from maybe Flash). One look at Google Maps and you can clearly see this is some new technology that adds value. Java really never did that, and I'm sure I'll get modded down by Java-phants that really don't like to be reminded of this. But this hype has more substance than the Java hype ever had. Relatively speaking IMO of course. Hype is hype anyway.
One thing that bothers me is that a person's credit report is tied to their SSN. So if you want to look up your credit report, apply for credit, or do anything signficant financially, your SSN is required. And then there's some new provision to the Patriot Act, according to financial institutions, that they like to use as an excuse to require a person's SSN. Is this legitimate? I know that there was a law in 76 or 80 that mandated that a consumer was under no obligation to ever give out his SSN to companies, but I've also found in some circumstances, such as applying for credit, if you refuse to divulge this information, they will not accept your application. Are there really any alternatives?
And does anyone have any experience with the commercial "free credit report" companies? They obviously take peoples SSN's. I've wanted to pull my credit report but have been wary of providing a SSN to some third party over the net.
Thoughts? Comments?
An open source project is good, but when it operates under a closed OS, you cannot guarantee the integrity of the application.
There's a reason why windows-based open source projects don't get as much respect. It's because Windows is NOT a stable platform. A developer cannot write a Windows application, open source or not, and not be plauged with support problems that have absolutely nothing to do with the program itself, and are the fault of bugs in the Windows OS itself. At least, if Windows was open-source, some of these developers would try to fix Windows problems to lessen their own support issues, but they can't.
The truth is, it's really painful to develop under Windows generally, especially if you're publishing commercial software that has to be supported. There are too many variables that you can't control that wreak havoc with the integrity of your application. Windows is the worst example of this, but not the only one.
Subscription based licensing will encourage the release of products that don't suck.
Because if the product sucks, nobody will renew the subscription.
Or maybe, in cases like Symantec's Norton Utilities, trying to remove the software can make your system worse, so you reluctantly continue to pay to keep your computer from crashing, and pray that maybe, just maybe, the next update will fix the program's problems.
This is a topic that really gets my goat. I can appreciate paying a fee for software updates, but programs like Quickbooks extort money from their customers, big amounts of money, just to update the tax tables in the software. This is ridiculous and someone should start a class action lawsuit. The software ceases to function properly until you pay them for these tiny bits of data that are otherwise public information.
I think, just like software, other forms of media should have numeric version numbers. This way, when the "developer" ruins future releases, we can easily refer back to earlier, superior versions. /missing Journalism version 1.0
Obviously you know very little about capital punishment in general, and the USA Patriot Act in particular.
Obviously, you think that you can merely state I'm wrong, without providing any contrary evidence, to convince weak-minded people that your perspective has any legitimacy.
It doesn't. Therefore, you're branded as an arrogant, ignorant idiot.
Read the text of the Patriot act. If you interfere with commerce that's considered an act of terrorism. If one computer that is involved in commerce is compromised, that's considered an act of terrorism, and punishiable by the death penalty. It's in the law. So STFU cause you don't know what you're talking about.
If you're going to mouth off and claim other people are wrong, at least provide some evidence, otherwise you're just advertising that you're an ignorant moron. I have no patience for idiots like you who challenge other peoples' arguments and then think the testimony of your anonymous weirdness is proof positive. Do us a favor and don't procreate ok?
I've always had problems with the naming policy.
The TOS states that "offensive" names were against the rules, specifically names of dieties. So if you created a character that was similar to 'Jesus' that was against the rules. This is supposedly because other "Christian" players would complain that it is offensive (meanwhile they might worship in-game Gods such as Rallos Zek, Karana or Fennin Ro). I always felt this was a total and complete breach of the line between fantasy and reality, and I really felt sorry for the losers who would be upset over these issues, but more sorry for SOE who felt compelled to pander to a minority of whiny idiots.
The same goes for the title system. We too, were forced to deal with those who implemented pseudo-titles into their character names, but at least Sony allowed older characters to be grandfathered into the system and slide by.
After wasting more than four years of my life playing and moderating these games, I woke up one morning and realize that sunshine was kinda rad. My advice is that if you boycott any game that doesn't make gameplay fun, and this sounds just like that kind of scenario, which is why I quit Everquest and all those similar glass-eating games.
Yes, there is no doubt.
Thank you, judge, jury and executioner.
Hey! I dislike spammers as much as the next guy but blanket statements like this don't help the cause.
Do you understand what spamming is? Do you understand why people spam and how they can profit from it?
Spamming is based on theft. Spamming involves a disproportionate exploitation of resources vs. costs. Spammers steal bandwidth and resources, and most of them steal identity information as well. Pure and simple. What people like Ralsky do is break the law, each and every day. This isn't speculation. This is a fact. If you identify one zombied PC he has exploited as an SMTP server, he's broken at least a half-dozen laws, including federal ones. There is no doubt about that.
I'm not talking about legitimate e-mail operators. There's a big difference between sending to a mailing list, or operating a promotional mailing from a fixed IP block. That's not what the bad spammers do, and these days we distinguish between different types of UCE because this new breed, like Ralsky, have no ethics and no compunction whatsoever to flagrantly steal other peoples' resources and indiscriminately pollute the net with profoundly inappropriate solicitations. They break laws each and every day, each and every minute. Go google "computer crime laws" and you'll see tons of listings on every level that clearly could apply to activities perpetrated on a daily basis by these spammers.
If spammers operated from fixed IP blocks, most of the anti-spammer arguments might hold water, but they don't. The vast majority of spam these days is now coming from compromised computers that are repurposed as on-the-fly SMTP servers unbeknowst to their owners, and ignored by their ISPs. The only way to deal with this is a) RBL the irresponsible ISPs, and b) go after these guys for computer tampering and other criminal offenses.
All the spammers these days who want to accomplish anything are exploiting zombie relays. This is illegal. It can also be considered a capital crime under the USA Patriot Act.
Ignorant, uninformed responses like yours really tick me off.
As an ISP that has to spend twice as much on bandwidth and resources as I need because of the bandwidth spammers consume, I can certify that it costs me a lot of money.
Upwards of 70-80% of all mail traffic on the net is spam. Probably at least one third of all Internet traffic may end up being bandwidth and resources these scumbags steal, usually by exploiting armies of compromised, zombied PCs to do their distribution.
Don't even get me started about the countless hours of tech support, computer downtime and other wasted resources due to innocent (and sometimes naive) computer users who have inadvertently had trojan software/plug-ins or worms invade their machines... This is all the work primarily of spammers.
It's not a simple case of installing a mail filter. That doesn't do a goddam thing to stop spamming. This is like you turning off your television as a way to stop the war in Iraq. Good luck.
Spammers routinely violate numerous state and federal laws. Computer tampering is actually now a capital crime under the USA Patriot Act. If this guy interfered with any network that conducts commerce or government activities, he could be convicted under these clauses. That's the tip of the iceburg.
This is a very good sign.
The reason spammers operate is because it has been profitable for them due to their operating expenses (apathetic law enforcement, hazy jurisdiction, theft of third-party bandwidth and resources).
As more of these people get raided and have to deal with serious legal and criminal issues, the "cost" of operating will go up substantially, and as a result, it will not be as profitable for them to operate.
Let's hope the FBI follows through on this and puts this guy in jail. There's no doubt he committed a ton of crimes, including computer tampering, pornography, identity theft, etc. Spammers routinely break loads of laws in operating their business. Finally, we're seeing some agencies start to enforce these laws.
Wow.
That is the goofiest thing I've ever heard.
It's not even worth a rebuttal.
btw, I guess I misspelled the team name. It's "Gray." Sorry about that.
When you look at the results, and you see two colleges with virtually unlimited resources and millions of dollars spent on their vehicles, huge corporate sponsors and engineers at their beck and call from Boeing to Catepillar, who finished, and then this dinky little Team Grey from a suburb of New Orleans, with a splintered development team as a result of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, and they FINISHED just behind the big guys, leaving other heavily-funded vehicles in the dust.
Relatively speaking, a small indy group, even if their time was a tad slower than CMU or Stanford, essentially put those three teams to shame when you compare the resources they had available to them.
The real story here is who is behind the Grey team's car. It must be a far superior design than either CMU or Stanford's considering the limited resources and experience they had in addressing the challenge.
I think it is you who has shown the degree of your own antisemitism. That's really sad.
But you don't need to take my word for it. Have this church group (and I don't give a damn if they're mormons, muslims, christians, branch davidians, atheists, satanists, or subgeniuses) contact any local authorities in any of the affected areas. They're all going to say the same thing. If you come down here without being invited, you're in the way and you'd be better off helping out at one of the shelters.
But what do I know? I've been down here working. I watched two weeks ago as a gas truck with 14,000 gallons of gas rolled into town to help with the relief efforts. They were ignored by officials and the guy ended up pulling the tanker into the parking lot of a mall, writing "free gas" on a piece of cardboard, and giving the stuff away. They spent $44,000 to get this tanker from California to New Orleans and they were turned away and ended up in a suburb giving gas to people who didn't need it. It was a classic example of poorly planned "aid."
Sorry, you are wrong.
First off, the "Hurricane Pam" exercise estimated at best, they'd evacuate 70% of the population. In reality, state and local officials evacuated 80% of the population. The fact is the action on the part of state and local officials was much better than even the study indicated. This is the single most significant reason behind the low fatality rate: unparalleled success in implementing the initial evacuation.
Furthermore, the report made it clear that in the aftermath of the storm, state and local officials would be overwhelmed and it was recognized by all that the Feds would need to act quickly to help with post-disaster evacuations and other critical elements. FEMA recognized this and assured those involved it could react quickly. It didn't.
The reports, including the testimony by people involved in the study clearly show who dropped the ball on this, and it WAS NOT state and local officials.
Let me reiterate this: The initial evacuation of New Orleans and the surrounding areas was the most successful large scale evacuation ever implemented in the history of the United States. Period. It was tremendously successful (compare this with Houston, who had substantive federal presence BEFORE Rita even came ashore, sat and watched what happened with Louisiana, and still horribly botched their own evacuation plan). It's highly questionable whether anyone, any state, any officials could have executed a better initial evacuation than the people of Louisiana. PERIOD.
Now there were some problems with evacuees left in the city, but it was made VERY CLEAR, everyone was to evacuate and there were no places to run to. Additional resources could have been made available in retrospect to deal with this situation, but it is trivial in comparison to the fact that the state and local authorities executed an evacuation plan that was dramatically better than all the research indicated was even possible!
To blame local officials is RIDICULOUS. FEMA commissioned the study. The study predicted exactly what would happen. On the state and local levels officials OUTPERFORMED what was expected of them. On the Federal level, it was EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE. These are the facts.
All I can say is, don't believe 98% of what you've heard or read. I was there. Most of it is BS. There was a speech given by the Governor that hinted that National Guard troops may be authorized to shoot looters, but there's no evidence that troops ever shot and killed any looters. And the speech was just propaganda to drive home the point that looting would not be tolerated.
It's been widely reported now that most of the early news reports about the chaos in the city was wildly exaggerated.
And specifically, the National Guard had virtually nothing to do with exacerbating any of these problems.
Right-wing, left-wing. Whatever. I'm just telling you what I've seen.
There are lots of people who are worth blaming, but the National Guard is not one of those groups. Bush and his cronies however, are another matter entirely. He had to be embarassed by the mayor before he finally got FEMA off its butt to provide the resources that were their responsibility in the first place.
All over now? Really? Well, tell that to Waveland, MS, which is practically gone. Tell that to the owners of the 65,000+ homes that were completely destroyed on the MS Gulf Coast. Tell that to the people down here who still wait for hours to get food at what few stores that are open. Tell that to all the elderly people who still have fallen trees in their yards with no one to help remove them unless they pay some inflated price. Tell that to the people who had damage to their power meters or power masts who have to pay close to 2,000 bucks to have something repaired that would normally cost $500. Tell that to the thousands who lost the vehicles and can't get to what few stores are open to get diapers and formula.
I've been to Waveland. I know how it is.
If your community is anything like the others I've been to, you know that the local officials are very weary of outside contractors coming in and taking jobs away from locals. That's part of the building process. There are plenty of people who have been displaced that will become part of the rebuilding effort.
I don't see electricians in this church group. I see some people without a plan. Like you said, people have been displaced. What are they going to do? Wander in and hand out water? Wield a chainsaw and get injured and then become a burden to the local resources? What is the reason for them coming? What skills do they offer in the disaster area? They just want to know what to bring... if they had a plan, they'd know what was needed. The whole thing doesn't seem right.
I'm not belittling the generosity of others. I just think if a church group from up north wants to help, they can do more effective things than rent a u-haul and drive into a disaster area with no plan or invitation.
I don't know of a single official in any of the affected jurisdictions that would publicly encourage little gangs of relief groups to meander through their area. This so-called relief effort seems to be more of a "Christian road trip" than anything really helpful. Like I said before, if they want to help, they should volunteer at one of the shelters. That would be a better use of their time and resources.
Stop drinking the kool-aid dude. It's rotting your brain.
Do a search on the Hurricane Pam exercise contracted by FEMA. Then go to FEMA's site and look at their responsibilities. You have been misled by the media over who was in charge of what.
Please accept my apology in advance but the more I think about this thread, the more it upsets me.
I don't see a group of people wanting to help others. I see a group wanting to make itself feel better by wandering into a disaster area and getting in the way.
98% of what others have posted here is not relevant.
It doesn't matter where you go in the affected areas. By the time you get down here, essentials will be available everywhere. Right now, even in the most outlying areas, essential supplies, including gas, are readily available. Food, water, repellant, tools, gas. It's all available within a convenient distance now. You're too late.
I've been in the area since the storm. I've lived in New Orleans for 20+ years. I've been all over the area. I've been on boats. I've been rescuing people, animals, handing out food, you-name-it, I've done it.
You guys are leaving in a few weeks? What for? It's all over now.
Let me be blunt. Don't use us as an excuse to make yourselves feel better about yourselves.
What you can expect to find is a string of communities working hard to rebuild and your U-Haul won't make a difference. Maybe if you had been down here three weeks ago it might have, but honestly, at this late point, it's more a superficial, shallow token than any real needed help. You come down here you're going to be IN THE WAY. Yea, if you're giving stuff away, you'll find people who will appreciate it, but the gesture is largely ceremonial and you might want to re-examine whether or not you're doing this for yourselves as opposed to those who have been victimized.
With all due respect, I am resentful of the little media circus you've staged on Slashdot.
If you want to help, you'll offer a place to stay up where you are for refugees and offer them conveniences there. Coming down here is SELFISH.
If you come down here you're going to run into one of two scenarios:
a) A city that is in the process of getting back up to speed and you're in the way. You can do what other people have done, which is just set up somewhere and give out shit and people will line up, but most of the people will be the type that just take anything that's free and you'll just be enabling a bunch of freeloaders. We don't need that.
b) A "no-mans-zone" where everything has been destroyed and people are coming in and getting their shit and leaving. Again, you'll be in the way, unless you're brave enough to enter some of these flooded residences and help residents get a few precious items. But trust me, you'll spend about 10 minutes in one of these cesspools and decide you'd rather be back watching FOX on cable, so do us a favor and don't bother. The people who are in the hardest hit areas are getting their stuff and leaving... and if you want to help them, get them a goddam place to live.. don't come down and hover over the entrails that was their home handing out water bottles.
Please do not exploit us for your own selfish psychological needs. Many have come down here long before you people decided way too late that maybe you could launch some "humanitarian mission" and have been turned away.
If you want to help those affected by Katrina, go to one of the shelters housing evacuees. Those people are the ones that need the most help. The people that are in the city now are self-sufficient, or they have places to go. God is watching. Think about it. Don't use us. We've been abused already. Go to Houston or Dallas or Arkansas and help people in the shelters. DON'T COME to the affected area. Those that are down here have what they need. If you come down here and you ignore the people that are displaced in shelters, that's the biggest sin of all, at the expense of your selfish need to feel useful according to your own terms, in blatant disregard for the real needs of those affected by this tragedy.
I'm down here in the middle of this mess. I've been helping with rescue efforts. The rescue efforts are over. The relief efforts are, for the most part, over as well.
If you want to help us, the best thing you can do is make sure the media's prototypically-short attention span doesn't waiver from the fact that this area needs help... big help.. not some church group handing out towels.
What we need are people WATCHING THE MONEY that's being spent down here. That's where we need the most help. If we don't get it, New Orleans is going to end up like Iraq... with billions given to politically-connected special interest groups and no substantive infrastructure or improvement. That's the legacy the current administration is doing in the wake of an ADD populace who isn't paying attention.
What we need most are people who are paying close attention to what the feds are doing. The people of the Gulf Coast can deal with things. If you REALLY want to help, be active politically, and insist that taxpayer money goes directly to local communities instead of Halliburton. Right now, a shitload of federal money is going to Halliburton, just like it is in Iraq.
Don't come down here. Get on the phone and call your representatives and demand that the resources dedicated to this area are not squandered away in a plethora of no-bid contracts. That's what's happening now. Everything else is paltry compared to this.
If you really want to help, that's what you need to do. If you want to go on some goofy, fuzzy, feel-good, field trip that won't make any significant difference, go ahead with your other plans. But I sincerely urge you to seriously consider what I'm saying. I cannot stress how important it is. WATCH THE MONEY LIKE A HAWK!! We are going to get screwed if the American people don't pay attention!
I hate to say it, but that's good advice.
I'm down here in the middle of this mess. I've been helping with rescue efforts. The rescue efforts are over. The relief efforts are, for the most part, over as well.
If you want to help us, the best thing you can do is make sure the media's prototypically-short attention span doesn't waiver from the fact that this area needs help... big help.. not some church group handing out towels.
What we need are people WATCHING THE MONEY that's being spent down here. That's where we need the most help. If we don't get it, New Orleans is going to end up like Iraq... with billions blown and still no infrastructure or improvement. That's the legacy the current administration is doing in the wake of an ADD populace who isn't paying attention!